Chapter 2
Elver broke the green ice on the top of the pond with her bare foot, savouring the brittle crack as she sank in up to her ankles.
There had been a cold snap overnight and in this deepest, darkest part of the Jih Forest rarely a day passed without something freezing.
She waded in deeper, letting the frigid black water envelop her up to her chest. Since the Queen of Serpents had swapped out her blood for poison when she was a child, cold water did not particularly bother her.
She was jih now, a monster spirit in the forest of monsters, and the natural world could offer up very little to cause her discomfort.
In the middle of the pond, which was one of the smaller, hidden watery places of the forest, there was a ragged island made of reeds, and mud, and stunted weeping willows.
She headed towards it slowly, not wanting to startle its residents, but they were even more attuned to the forest than she was.
She’d made it less than halfway when a bristly head stuck up out of a thicket of reeds.
Large eyes flashed with blue-green light, briefly illuminating the island.
‘Hey, it’s only me,’ Elver called softly. ‘Just come to see how the cubs are getting on. I’ve brought treats!’ She raised the bag she held in one hand, and the watching creature made a low whistling noise of satisfaction.
Seen only in silhouette, the keltraxia looked a little like oversized foxes, with their long snouts and bushy tails, but seen up close, their bodies were covered in tiny blue scales, except where they sprouted red and orange feathers.
Their ears, covered in these feathers, looked like little bursts of flame, giving them the name by which humans knew them: fire-listeners.
Elver thought the human name was stupid.
The Queen of Serpents had told her the true names of all the jih spirits in the forest.
In the water around her, Elver could sense the movement of other things: frogs and fish and water snakes, but jih spirit creatures too, things with which she shared a kin-bond.
Something with silver gossamer fins and eight red eyes brushed against her leg and was gone in an instant.
Elver held the bag a little higher and continued.
The edge of the island was ringed with thick black mud, which Elver gamely stomped through until she was on what could charitably be called dry land.
Just beyond the wall of reeds, mosses, and heather, she could see a large nest of mud and sticks, and standing over it, the keltraxia vixen.
The creature opened her mouth, letting her tongue scent the air, and the long scarlet feathers on her ears flickered open like a bird taking flight.
‘You can smell these from the other side of the forest, I’m sure.
’ Elver placed the bag on the ground by the nest and opened it up so the vixen could get her snout inside.
Green Lady snails were only found in the far west of the forest, and knowing how much the keltraxia enjoyed them, Elver always made certain to collect a big bagful whenever she was near.
While the vixen munched and snorted her way through the bag, Elver carefully peeked over the edge of the nest. Inside was one as yet unhatched egg, and three healthy-looking keltraxia cubs.
Only recently hatched, they still had more feathers than scales, but their eyes were open and glowing with a softer version of the light their mother displayed.
Elver reached a hand down to them. The nearest stuck his snout into her palm and licked it with a rough tongue.
‘They’re doing well.’ She looked again at the egg and felt a little of her good mood slip away. ‘Shouldn’t that have hatched by now?’
The vixen turned to regard her, the fiery feathers on her ears lowered.
Not that one , the keltraxia said in the voice only Elver could hear. She is still and cold, and did not have the strength to break the shell.
Elver nodded. She understood—not everything that lived in the wood thrived—but it seemed unfair.
From the southern slopes of the forest, on the foothills that marked the beginning of the mountains, it was possible to see the roads that led to Addersport, and on them there passed a steady stream of human life: travellers, traders, wanderers.
They came with carts and caravans, on single horses or on foot.
There seemed to be no end of human life souring the world, yet this one little keltraxia cub had not had the chance to live.
We will eat it , the vixen continued. When the others are old enough to stomach it.
Elver grimaced. She rubbed her hands through her hair—bone white since the Queen of the Serpents had bitten her—and stepped away from the nest. The vixen came closer and briefly laid her head on top of Elver’s; a greeting between kin.
The snails are tasty , she said. Thank you, human-sister.
‘Not human any more,’ said Elver. ‘But you’re welcome, my friend.’
Elver made her own home by another source of water: the great Serpent Lake that nestled in the centre of the Jih Forest. She had found an abandoned hunter’s hut at the edge of the treeline, and over the years had transformed it into a place she could shelter.
There was a bed of fur and feathers, donated by the kindly, lumbering forms of the kartesh, monsters with the stocky, furry bodies of bears and the avian faces of owls; there was a mirror, brought to her by a roch, a vast bird with four fiery wings.
On a single shelf there was her beloved collection of books, stolen from travellers or found and brought to her by the other jih spirits of the forest—they knew that their sister had a fondness for the human habit of reading.
From the lake, she caught fish, and washed herself, and drank, and every now and then she would find messages from the Queen of Serpents.
On rare occasions, the god herself would appear, a huge golden shape coiling through the green water.
Elver was not a mage—the Queen of Serpents had none—so she could not call the god to her or ask it for a boon, but as a jih spirit she was one of the Queen’s own, and consequently, the god liked to visit.
Elver had the vague sense the god had taken a special interest in her since saving her from being sacrificed in Addersport.
The idea made her uneasy, as though it were all part of some larger painting, of which she could see only a tiny corner.
But she knew the Queen had brought her back from death while the people of Addersport had been all too eager to see a child thrown into the sea to save their own hides, and that was more than enough to earn Elver’s loyalty.
She thought then, as she often did, of the red-haired mage who had sacrificed her to a hungry god.
Humans were duplicitous, selfish and bloodthirsty.
The jih were all the company she needed now.
It was an hour’s walk back to the Serpent Lake from the keltraxia nest. Elver moved through the forest like a creature that had been born there, slipping through the undergrowth silently, noting the signs and marks and songs of the birds and small animals.
She paused at the edge of a stream as a platynus passed by, a vast monster whose reptilian head cleared the tallest treetops in the canopy.
Elver could see only its enormous flank, muscles as big as tree trunks clenching and releasing under leathery purple and yellow skin.
When she arrived at the lake, she stripped off her clothes—scavenged or crafted by her own hand—and washed quickly in the water, cleaning the black mud off her feet.
When she was dry and clothed again, she headed towards her ramshackle home, thinking to fetch her fishing spear and catch something for that night’s supper.
If there were plenty of fish about, she could start putting some by for the long winter that was beginning to breathe its cold air on the back of her neck.
But as she was picking up the spear she caught the scent of something acrid and sour against her tongue.
Woodsmoke. A human fire started with a splash of something else—oil, perhaps.
Elver turned and saw, on the far side of the lake, a point of buttery yellow light, and a thin line of black smoke that poked above the tops of the trees.
There was a figure there, sitting by the campfire, its head down as it looked at something in its lap.
‘ Intruder. ’
Elver felt the poison in her blood churn. A filthy human, here, in this place that was her home.
She left the spear by the hut and instead retrieved her knife, which she pushed through her belt.
Rather than following the edge of the lake around, she went back beyond the treeline, circling until she could see the human framed against the green water of the lake.
It was a woman in her middle age, her limbs long and rangy, and she wore a wide-brimmed hat.
There was a sword, still in its scabbard, lying on the sandy ground by her feet.
The interloper’s hair was short, and from her vantage point Elver could see the bare skin on the back of her neck.
All it would take was her cold, pale hand pressed to that section of skin, and the woman would quickly regret ever coming into the Jih Forest…
But that wasn’t enough.
Elver stepped out of the treeline, letting her feet crunch over the autumnal leaf litter, and watched with satisfaction as the human woman startled and turned, her eyes wide.
She pictured what the woman was seeing: an alarmingly pale girl of seventeen years with a shock of white hair and yellow eyes, a line of blueish scars marking her neck and shoulder and arm—the places where the Queen of Serpents had bitten her.
A monster-girl dressed in leather and bone and feather, with a knife in her hand.
Of course, she wouldn’t know that the knife was the last thing she had to worry about.