Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(39)

It was too horrid. He must escape.

“Where are you going?”

“GAHHHH!”

Her voice in his ear propelled Foxbrush into a faster pace, though he maintained enough control over himself to keep from breaking into a full-out run. “I . . . I . . .” He panted, for she had drawn up beside him, striding on her long legs, the leaves of her gown fluttering. Foxbrush could feel the silent thud of the lioness’s feet behind. “I am simply, um, going . . .”

“I haven’t told you whom to kill yet,” she said, using a patient voice that was more terrible even than her wrath. “You mortals really are odd beasts, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying but failing to outpace her, for she matched her stride exactly to his. And his own wasn’t great in any case, what with his shoes falling apart and leaving bits of themselves in his wake. “I really can’t kill anyone. And I really can’t marry you either!”

“Oh, that’s what you say now,” Nidawi replied with a merry laugh. “But you’ll change your mind. Mortals always do. I’ll make you a Faerie king, and though I won’t give you three lives, I’ll give you one nice long one. You mortals like that, don’t you?”

He caught another sneeze. His head was beginning to throb. Why, oh why had he not thought to grab an extra handkerchief before setting off on this fool’s errand? “I think you’re very kind, my lady,” he said, “but I prefer the life I’ve always had, humble though it may be.”

“A mortal life?” she asked, a sneer in her voice.

He nodded and she fell silent beside him. The trees cast their green shadows around them, and Foxbrush noticed for the first time that he heard no other sounds besides his own footsteps and the beat of the lioness’s paws. Nidawi moved without even a murmur of her fern-leaf gown, and there were no birds in the trees.

A grove of five thin silver-branch trees grew up nearby. Nidawi saw them and twisted her pretty mouth thoughtfully. “I’ll take you back to There if you like, my king,” she said, and her voice was quieter than it had been hitherto. “I’ll take you back to the mortal realm.”

“I . . . I can’t go before I find Daylily.”

“Lumé’s crown,” she snapped, and her long-fingered hand clamped down upon his arm. “If I never hear another word about this chit of a mortal girl of yours, it’ll be too soon!”

She whirled him about to face her. She was suddenly neither a young woman nor even a child, but a much older woman, stern, beautiful, not alluring so much as commanding. There were streaks of silver amid the black and green of her hair, and her large eyes glowed with purple fire.

“I can’t make you love me, but I can certainly make you obey me!” she snarled, and her voice was deep and dreadful, and it struck him in the gut. “You’re going to the mortal realm, and you’ll think about what I’ve told you. And when I come to you again, I hope you’ll have a different song to sing into my ear!”


Foxbrush opened his mouth to speak but did not have a chance. For Nidawi the Everblooming pushed him violently. For a moment, he glimpsed silver branches overhead as he flew and he fell . . .

. . . and he lay stunned.

Several moments passed before he realized that he did not lie upon crushed ferns. Nor did the canopy of the Wood’s branches and leaves close above his head but rather, blue sky, open and clear.

No sign anywhere of Nidawi or the lioness.

Foxbrush sat up, frowning, and looked about. He still clutched the scroll in one hand, and it comforted him, though he could not say why. Not many yards away stood the Wilderlands, casting long shadows that could not quite reach him. But he himself lay beyond its borders on rocks like the floor of a long-dry river. The gorge wall rose steeply behind him.

Frowning, Foxbrush got to his feet and brushed himself off. How he had come to be here, he could not guess. Had everything in recent memory been no more than a dream?

“Hullo?” No one answered, neither the specters of his imagination nor even Lionheart, whom he thought might still be near. His head hurt where he’d struck it, and he rubbed it uneasily, groaning.

“I know,” he muttered. “I know what happened. You hit your head when you slid down the trail. When Leo chased you. You must have knocked yourself out, and it’s all been a crazed dream . . . the sylphs, the woman, the lion . . . all a dream.”

But what a dream! Especially for a man who usually dreamed in numbers.

He shook himself out, noticing with dismay the tears in his shirt, the state of his shoes—both buckles missing—and the rents in his trousers.

He should have known better. He should have known better than to think he could find Daylily. Hero-ing was not for the likes of him.

Moving stiffly, too dizzy to make the climb, he started up the path, clutching the wall as he went. His sneezes were fading, so that was a mercy at least. He could draw a complete breath and his eyes were clearer. The sun was high and very hot overhead. He did not seem to have been unconscious very long, which was just as well. Strange that no one had come searching for him yet. They were probably all in a clamor at the Eldest’s House, and when he returned and told his tale, they would nod solemnly, then laugh to themselves as soon as his back was turned.

Maybe he could sneak in unnoticed?