The Will and the Wilds(2)

Pulling my attention from the lads, I approach the soap maker and select his least expensive lye. I have lavender in the mysting garden if I want to smell fair, and it helps that many species of mysting find lavender repulsive. I offer my coin. Papa pulls me toward another vendor, gesturing to a goat shank.

A cool sensation, like that of melting snow in the first weeks of spring, runs up my arm and dances across my shoulders, causing me to shiver. The silver bracelet around my left wrist feels heavy, and I swing its dark, egg-shaped stone into my palm. It’s cold as deep soil against my skin, leaving me with no doubt.

There is a mysting nearby.

Though I’ve cultivated an interest in mystings, planted by my grandmother years ago, I shudder. Monsters are only ever fascinating from afar. I lift my head from the butchered meat my father examines and look around, acutely aware of the sound of my own breathing. We are in the heart of Fendell, surrounded by townspeople and their homes. It’s unlikely a mysting will show itself in such a crowd, but the suddenness of the chill concerns me. As though the creature entered the plane nearby, and didn’t merely wander within reach of the charm’s senses.

How close is this one? I massage the stone, coaxing its answer.

My father notices my stillness right away. “Where?” he asks. “What?”

The only faces I see are human, a few of them peering back at me with confusion, or maybe disdain for the odd girl and her senseless father. They are easy to forgive. They do not have a Telling Stone. They do not know what I know.

I shake my head in response to my father’s question. I’m unsure. My father quits his purchase and, with his hand on my back, leads me away from the market.

“Let’s head home,” he murmurs. A breeze picks up bits of his dark-blond hair and tosses them across his eyelashes. A few strands stick. Some of my own darker locks brush against the stubble of his jaw. With my pinky finger I pull them free, letting the hair fall back against my chin.

I slide away from him just enough to grasp his calloused hand—a hand that once knew the weight of a king’s sword, but no more, thanks to me. “Papa, home is this way.” I tug him south.

He pauses—“Yes. It is.”—and follows me. All the while my free hand stiffens with cold. The Telling Stone pulses against my skin like a second heartbeat. I keep it pressed to my hip, concealing it, for such a powerful charm would sell at a grand price, and there are those who wouldn’t think twice about stealing it for their own gain. We skirt a wagon, two men on horseback, and a young girl selling wreaths of oon berry to keep away evil. I think to warn them of the mysting nearby, but I’ve done so before to ill effect. The townsfolk murmur about me, I know, even more so because my warnings have always come to naught. Never has a mysting outright attacked Fendell. The thieves who creep about in the night are usually human, and although a dead traveler is occasionally found in the road, most would sigh and say it is the consequence of venturing so close to the wildwood after dark.

The road whittles back down to a footpath, and then to a trail of trodden weeds.

The knuckles of my left hand ache, but now that we’re away from the crowd, I sense the mysting clearly. “Deep in the wildwood,” I whisper, though I do not think anyone else is close enough to overhear me. Closing my eyes, I turn my thoughts from the rhythm of my father’s steps to the cadence of the Telling Stone’s pulse. I grit my teeth as another shudder courses through my body, then open my eyes. “A gobler.”

“Gobler?” Papa repeats. “Here?”

I nod and release the stone, though warmth is slow to return to my hand—the silver chain of the bracelet conducts the stone’s chill across my wrist. Goblers do not frequent our part of the country. They are not suited for the wildwood, preferring colder lands with plenty of water. But I know it is a gobler the stone has sensed, and never in my years of wearing it has it led me astray. More likely than not, this creature will vanish into the wood like so many before it, never crossing my path.

But the day a person becomes complacent with mystings is the day her safety is forfeit.

I quicken my feet, seeking the refuge of our home, which is not clustered in safety with the rest of the town. Ours is a robust house, built by my father during a time of peace in Amaranda. It’s constructed of the sturdiest trees from the wildwood and is a little larger than most of the residences in town. At the time of its construction, my father made good coin and possessed all his faculties.

To understand my father’s sacrifice, why he risked so much for a simple stone, one need only look to the horror in which I came into this world.

My mother, Elefie Rydar, was a beautiful woman, or so I am told. I have her eyes and hair, though I’ve heard she was much taller, with a strong jaw, while I inherited the heart-shaped face of my paternal grandmother. She was a silversmith’s daughter, and my father a swordsman for Lord Eris. They fell in love quickly and wed, and my father purchased this land on the border of Fendell, green and fertile as all earth is near the wildwood.

My mother loved the forest. It is easy to love, even with the whispers of mystings weaving through the trees. For one with knowledge, a mysting is no more harmful than a snake or a bear; if you take precautions and avoid them, you can live in relative peace. But even the cautious can fall to the sting of venom or stumble upon a mother and her cub. Thus was the story of my mother.

They were grinlers. They lack speech and common understanding, but their deficiencies in intelligence are made up for in ferocity. Small, feral creatures, they reach between knee and hip height, with wild, matted manes that encompass their entire bodies. Their thin limbs end in humanlike hands that sport long, terrible claws, and their rounded snouts bear short tusks, or possibly thick fangs. They travel in packs like wolves, but any similarity ends there. I would prefer wolves to grinlers. Wolves are more merciful.