Chapter 7 #2
Her chin lied. She hadn’t been fishing since she turned twelve years old, and much of her experience was at the pond on her family estate.
She’d fished with her brother every summer since she was tall enough to keep up, but he’d been the one to cut ash or hazel branches for their rods and bait her hooks with live and wriggling worms. That last summer they’d caught nearly half a dozen of her father’s prized ornamental tench before the steward realized what they were doing and sent them back to the house to do lines as punishment.
“Certainly.” The night elf’s eyes danced as if he were laughing at her, but he strode off into the dying light without hesitation, leading her deeper into the valley along some track visible only to himself.
To her disappointment, there were none of the night-blooming plants that made the forest at lower elevations such a delight to the senses.
No bloodwing vines, no shadowsprites, no glowing lichen or purple starmoss.
Even the emberwood trees were slightly stunted here, though they still glowed faintly in the gloom as her companion moved past them, awakening their light with the echo of his magic.
Despite her disgruntled mood, Ryn felt her spirits lift at this reminder that her father’s journal was entirely accurate. That such strange magic was possible, and she was here to experience it in person, rather than through the pages of a book.
So much of what she knew, she knew only through words. Drawings. The painstaking accounts of others who had actually lived. But this was real. Painfully so, if the state of her stomach was any indication.
Stories always seemed to leave that part out. They also left out the constant itch between the shoulder blades—the persistent crawling ache that suggested she was being watched.
It had begun the moment she entered the mist. Faint and intermittent at first, but now, even with Xaviel’s back to her, Ryn felt the pressure of phantom eyes.
It persisted as he led her to the banks of the tiny mountain lake she’d noted earlier, its glassy-surface perfectly reflecting the silvery arc of the rising moon.
As she peered into the depths of the water, wondering whether there were likely to be any fish, Xaviel stretched out full length on the ground beneath a nearby tree. His hands clasped behind his head, his eyes closed, and he said, “Wake me when dinner is ready,” before promptly beginning to snore.
Clearly, she should have considered that anyone with centuries of life behind them would have had plenty of time to develop a wildly annoying sense of humor.
Or… maybe it was just another kind of test. Either way, she needed to eat, so there was no point wasting time wailing for him to help her.
Scrounging around through the nearby brush—mostly by feel—netted her a not-quite-straight stick to fasten her line to. A slightly bigger problem was bait, but she used her sewing kit to fashion a makeshift lure using thread, a scrap of her skirt, and a few bits of moss.
It was probably too dark for this to work, but she had to at least try before giving up and going to sleep hungry.
Her first cast sent ripples across the pond’s surface—rings of motion that spread uninterrupted until they broke against the bank.
Ryn knew in a vague sense that different kinds of fish needed different baits and different techniques to catch them, but fish had not been her study. She knew how to find the dustiest of books in the farthest corner of an uncatalogued library, but living things…
After bouncing her line a few times, she drew in the hook, added a few more twists of thread and a pebble for weight, and then threw it out again.
Dark had nearly fallen, and Xaviel slept on, the gentle rasp of his snoring the only sound beyond her own breathing. She heard no night birds, no crickets, nothing but the occasional ripple of the water, and only the moon observed her ineptitude.
Her stomach growled once more, and she took a sip of water to quiet it. If this didn’t work, she could try again tomorrow. Perhaps dig up some worms, much as the idea unnerved her.
Ancient tombs filled with dust and bones and haunted relics?
Undaunting. Live worms? She almost retched at the thought, but it had to be easier than hunting.
She’d never learned to use a bow, and while she’d read books that explained cleaning and dressing game, it wasn’t something she’d actually tried for herself.
When her newest attempt drew no notice from the local fish population, Ryn decided it was simply too dark.
She was going to have to wait until morning, and began to pull in her line with a sigh of disappointment.
But before she pulled more than a few feet, the hook snagged on something beneath the water.
She pulled left, then right, but whatever it was, the hook was good and stuck.
Muttering under her breath, she fumbled in her pocket for her knife. She would have to cut the line free, which meant she would need to be extra careful tomorrow, as she did not have an unlimited supply of hooks.
Dropping to one knee beside the water, she bent to cut the line, only to find that it had abruptly gone slack. Odd. The only reason for that would be if…
A long, dark body leaped from the water, and she had only a moment to catch a glimpse of glowing eyes and moonlight glistening off a sinuous form before it crashed into her, knocking her backward onto the bank.
She didn’t even have enough breath to shriek as her hands encountered cold slime, narrow limbs, and a powerful, muscular tail that beat at her legs. The eyes were round and pale, and she could only imagine a mouthful of sharp teeth as it pressed closer and closer to her neck.
She’d dropped the knife, so it was her strength against the creature’s as they scrabbled for advantage, until she felt her fingers slip inside a cold, wet mouth with rubbery lips.
A retching sound escaped her, and then suddenly the weight was gone, as a strange, dark shape rose over her…
Moonlight glinted from long white hair that seemed to glow faintly in the twilight, and beneath shadowed brows, her rescuer’s eyes were a deep and ominous red. He loomed tall and threatening in the near-dark, one hand wrapped around the neck of her determined assailant.
“What… What an absolutely revolting thing!” She shuddered as she scrambled away, remembering only at the last moment that she must not under any circumstances ask a question, no matter how badly she wanted to know what it was.
“Mountain salamander,” Xaviel informed her, and she didn’t need to see his face to know that he was wildly amused, the wretch. “Sometimes they crawl out of their caves and go for a nice warm swim in the evenings. He probably objected to you disturbing his peace.”
Swallowing her revulsion, Ryn clambered to her feet and wiped her hands on her skirt.
“Let’s hope it’s edible.”
Xaviel gave a mocking laugh as he freed the struggling salamander from her hook and tossed it back into the dark waters of the lake.
“As amusing as it would be to watch you attempt to gut and skin it with that plaything you call a knife, I have no taste for killing a creature who has haunted this valley for nearly as long as I have.”
She had no taste for it either. For many different reasons, most of which involved slime and blood and eyeballs and guts.
“And yet, I still need to eat.”
The night elf sighed. “Wait here, human.”
An instant later, he was gone—replaced by a sleek, dark animal with sharp teeth that it bared momentarily in her direction before diving into the lake with barely a ripple.
And a mere handful of moments later, it reappeared, clambering out of the water with a large fish struggling in its teeth. Twice more, it dove, and when there were three gloriously fat fish lying on the bank, it shook itself, and then there was Xaviel once more.
Ryn’s eyes must have been wider than normal because he took one look at her, grimaced, and snagged the fish by their gills, holding them up with one eyebrow raised in what might have been either mockery or derision.
“Come with me, human. Before you accidentally meet your death at the hands of some other harmless creature.”