Chapter 16 #2
I still brought the fawn with me out to the barn, but not into the stalls.
None of the animals out here were as helpless as the infant squirrels, and I didn’t think she’d be stupid enough to attack one of them, but I wouldn’t risk it.
I spent the morning deep-cleaning all of the pens and cages, singing an old lullaby my grandmother would hum over us when the nights were particularly dark, her words only half-remembered.
Nonetheless, a powerful calm descended over the barn, and animals I’d struggled to handle and treat since they arrived were suddenly docile.
There were several times I put down my broom and began to head to the house out of habit, only to remember guiltily that there were no infants in need of feeding.
On the contrary, their remains were in the freezer, waiting for me to process them.
When the barn was clean and in order, I took the fawn and went out to the meadow.
It had been days since I walked the borders, and I needed to do it now more than ever, to guard against the collapse already in progress outside.
As I went, I collected protective plants—rowan and comfrey and heather, flowers that were easily made into charms and chains.
As we made our way through the tall grass, the fawn brushed against my hand.
I flinched, drawing it up defensively, but she merely bounded on in front before doubling back, and ahead of us I saw the flicker of whitetails leaping out of the orchard back into the tree line.
I strained to catch a glimpse of Mac, looking for the telltale hitch in her stride, but they were already obscured by the reddening leaves.
I followed the edge of the meadow to the front of the property, where the southern ward tree stood.
Unlike the new border to the west, this was the first tree I had planted after my mother passed.
Over the many years it had grown far taller than its neighbors, a towering beech with a trunk almost ten feet around, drawing strength and vigor from my magic and in turn pouring it back into the sanctuary.
These ward trees loomed even larger in my consciousness than the roses did, and I never felt more at peace than when I was standing under their shade.
But I’d come for neither peace nor shade today.
I walked around the trunk, trailing my hand over its smooth, gray bark, until I was interposed between it and the road.
Even through a screen of brush, the road seemed to press at my back, and I took a deep, steadying breath.
The fawn was playing with a particularly springy branch on one of the bushes, not paying any attention to me, but I was sure that would change in a moment.
I drew my knife, crude and crooked but sharp nonetheless. This was no relic from my mother or grandmother, who would’ve abhorred its use, but my first attempt at metalworking. The burn marks on the blade didn’t matter nearly as much as the intention beaten into the steel.
I cut the tip of my finger, and the mere opening of my skin released magic, potential humming within the red droplet that welled in the wake of the knife.
I pressed my finger to the bark and drew a rune of protection, going slow and steady so as not to break the line of blood, and making it as large as I could.
The rune was simple—a single line down, two others that broke away at a forty-five-degree angle and met at a point.
Thurisaz, it was called: Thor’s hammer, a powerful protection.
I didn’t trust in the Norse god of thunder any more than I trusted in Zeke’s god, but I knew how to trigger the muscle memory of the universe.
When the rune was complete, I stepped back to inspect my handiwork, careful to hold my balance as the ground sloped steeply into a deep ditch.
Thurisaz was perhaps the most aggressive of the runes of protection, one that modern practitioners often avoided because of the inherent threat, but it was exactly what I needed now.
I’d made it large, not visible from a casually passing car, but almost impossible to miss if someone were to walk by and glance that way.
In a short month, when the leaves had fallen, it would be completely exposed.
Let them see it, I thought grimly.
As I anticipated, the fawn was drawn to the scent of my blood. The rune was too high for her to reach, and I quickly wrapped my finger in a strip of cloth and shoved it in my jacket pocket. She scented the air and nosed my leg once, hard.
“Enough,” I snapped at her, and she withdrew.
We went west next. Although the trees on my new border were too small and young to sustain a working of this size, the old western ward tree still stood, contributing to the net of magic over the sanctuary, and I needed all the help I could get.
The old tree was a giant sycamore, so large it had created a clearing unto its own, the lowest branches still ten feet over my head.
I repeated the process here, opening my finger on the knife and drawing the rune across the sycamore’s papery bark.
The fawn was much more curious from the start this time, watching me prick my finger with rapt attention, but she made no attempt to nuzzle or nibble me.
I started to feel a little lightheaded as I finished the point of the rune; I’d been stupid not to bring food or water for myself.
I retreated to the edge of the clearing and plucked an apple from a neighboring tree.
The crunch as I bit into it almost masked the sound of a twig snapping behind me.
The devil was leaning against the trunk of the apple tree. His posture was a casual, familiar slouch, but his eyes, which were fixed on the rune, were sharp as glass.
“This is what you’ve resorted to, Tess?” he asked. “Blood offerings to a god you don’t believe in?”
I studied him for a moment before I answered, remembering the heat of his mouth and the eagerness of his hands in the thicket.
Had he believed I could be wooed like some breathless virgin, flattered into giving up my sanctuary?
Or had he known what the belladonna would show me, and hoped terror would bend me to his will?
“This god only demands blood,” I said finally, “and blood I can pay.”
“A small price for even smaller protection.”
“I need every small protection I can get.”
“A loser’s mantra if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Well, you’re wasting your time with a loser, then.”
My wrist was seized in an iron grip before my eyes even registered that he had moved. He lifted my hand and unwrapped the stained strip of cloth from my finger. I did not struggle; when a dog bit, you only made it worse by trying to pull away.
He drew my finger into his mouth and sucked the dried blood from it gently, no hint of teeth, although his tongue probed briefly at the raw slit. But then he released me, placing my hand back at my side as if I’d forgotten how to move it, and leaned in so close I thought he would kiss me.
“I can only give you so many chances, Tess,” he said. “I hope you make up your mind before I get bored.”
“My mind is made up. I told you before—without the sanctuary, I have nothing. I am nothing.”
“You might change your mind if you knew what was coming.”
“I know what’s coming. I saw it in the bones. I would rather fight till the end than give up preemptively.”
“That’s what you think I’m asking you to do? I’m not asking you to give up. I’m offering you the power to save it.”
“At the cost of the thing itself. You might grant me the power for this one time, but then what?”
“Yes, and then what?”
“Then the next time you are feeling bored or petulant you take it all back again and leave me with nothing.”
“I think you forget that I am not a man.”
No, I thought. You’re something far worse.
His eyes darkened, as if he could read my thoughts in my face, and I braced myself, as if anything the devil wanted to do to me could be mitigated by the strength of my own body. But instead he backed away, nodding as if to himself.
“Fine,” he said. “I believe you, Tess. Your mind is made up.”
I had thought I’d feel relief if I ever heard those words, and instead there was only panic. I stepped forward, thinking to close the gap again, but he had turned his back to me now.
“You had your own little Eden here,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll be sorry to see it die. At least it won’t be my fault this time.”
He was gone between one blink and the next. The forest was quieter in his wake, and a breeze moved through as if to clear away the lingering scent of salt. The apple, forgotten in my hand, leaked juice from where my nails had bitten into it. I dropped it, finding I was no longer hungry.