Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(52)

Foxbrush was out of breath before he’d gone far. Lack of exercise and terror made it so that he could scarcely keep himself upright as he plunged through the tangle of vines. By necessity he found the beaten trail. There was no break in the foliage anywhere else, so he ran down the trail with all the speed he could muster. He did not know where he was going or what he hoped to achieve by this foolish dash. Perhaps he had gone a little mad.

This was when he started hearing things.

“Danger! Danger!”

“Stranger!”

The voices relayed this rumor as fast as he could run, faster even. He heard it whispering through the treetops, darting on ahead of him, then looping round and coming back. They did not speak in a language he knew, but he understood the words even so.

“Danger! Stranger!”

It must be the figs. He must have eaten too many bad figs, and this, all this, must be the result of one spoiled-fig-induced nightmare!

Something landed on his shoulders.

Foxbrush screamed as he was knocked flat, and he felt strong fingers grabbing first his ears and then his hair and then his chin, twisting his head as though to wrench it off. He scrambled for balance, and something coiled and serpentine slithered over his bare hand. He screamed, and the thing on his back screamed as well, and the thing that had crawled over his hand screamed louder still, and then something struck his heel.

It was like having a nail driven swiftly into his foot, then yanked out with equal swiftness. Foxbrush’s screams intensified, but his voice was drowned out by all the other voices shouting: “Danger! Stranger! Danger!”

Monkeys and birds and who knows what else erupted in eerie chorus on all sides. The whole world came alive in screeches and caws and bellows and shrieks and even a sound like a great wooden drum being thumped by enormous fists.

Foxbrush curled up into a ball, his hands over his head, his knees hiding his face, and felt fists and beaks and claws pummeling him from all sides. He waited to die.

It was in this position that Redman found him.

The light was mostly gone from the forest by that time, but Redman’s one good eye was comfortable in the dark, and he feared none of those living near the village. So he stood, his arms crossed, and looked down on the crumpled form of the stranger. “Well,” said he, “we’re not all born to be heroes.”

With that he knelt and took hold of Foxbrush’s shoulder. Foxbrush only curled tighter, like an overlarge hedgehog. Redman snorted. “Come,” he said, valiantly disguising any hint of disgust. “Let’s get you back to my wife’s house and clean you up again.”

Foxbrush, hearing a mortal voice, dared peek between his fingers. “Where . . . where are the monsters?” he gasped.

“No monsters, lad,” said Redman.

“They were attacking me!”

“They’re all gone now. I paid totem-tribute, and they’ve backed down.”

Though he understood none of this, Foxbrush did not resist as Redman hauled him to his feet, though he winced at the pain in his wounded heel. Redman, noticing, put Foxbrush’s arm over his broad shoulders. There was no use in fighting. Foxbrush submitted like a docile sheep to Redman’s prodding, and together they hobbled back the way they had just come. Lemurs watched with solemn moon eyes, and night birds laughed from their perches. It was as though the whole of nature was amused at Foxbrush’s expense, and he, feeling the shame, hung his head and thought he’d never lift it again.

Then the wind spoke his name.

It howled down from the sky above the trees, touching only the topmost branches, but these with such wild force that all the creatures dwelling above hastened to climb down. As it blew, the wind called in a voice Foxbrush thought he recognized.

Foxbrush! Foxbrush, I have come for you!

It moved on, passing quickly like a shudder. Foxbrush, frozen in Redman’s support, heard the echoes calling. Foxbrush! Foxbrush!

Redman stood quite still, his eyes upturned. “A sylph,” he said.

Foxbrush could not deny it, not even in his head. He’d tried hard enough while wandering the Between. But this was not the Between. This was the mortal world, the world of clay and death and of cold, hard reality. He really was here. He really had just heard a sylph calling his name in this real world where such things should not exist.

He hated his life more in that moment than he ever had before.

“That’s no good,” Redman said, readjusting his grip on Foxbrush’s arm. “They start calling your name in the night, and you begin to think you need to go after them. Don’t follow a sylph’s voice, lad! You’ll never be seen again.”

Foxbrush tried to speak, but the pain in his foot with each step cut him off. At last he managed to gasp, “Are there . . . are there many of them? In Southlands?”

“What? Sylphs?”

Foxbrush nodded.

“Enough, that’s for sure. They and others of their kind. Faerie beasts, as the Silent Lady called them. The rivers used to hold them back, but now that the rivers are gone many venture up from the Wood.”

Foxbrush felt he should understand this. His brain hurt when he tried, however, so he stopped trying. They took several more painful steps.

Redman said, “Why would a sylph be calling for you?”

“I don’t know,” Foxbrush replied honestly enough. Another two hobbling steps, then, “I think I met sylphs earlier today. In the Wilderlands.”