The Will and the Wilds(34)
His jaw clenches at the sentiment. Perhaps he doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t meet my eyes.
I gather my things and walk a different way back—straight west to leave the wildwood as quickly as possible, then south toward home. I clutch the Telling Stone the entire time, half expecting the escaped beuhger to return. Maekallus must have spoken truth, however, because I never get the slightest shiver of cold. Wherever the creatures are, they’re far away.
And so is the gobler.
CHAPTER 15
While grinlers hunt in packs, they attack their prey one at a time. This may be to prevent the prey from escaping, should it evade a strike. More study is needed.
While I’ve studied mystings from afar for several years now, I’m not sure what entertains them. But I try to imagine what I’d want to do if chained in a confined space for days, weeks, with nothing to pass the time. I would climb trees, or burn circles in the weed-clotted earth, or maybe weave crowns of leaves or flowers. Carve my name into a tree, perhaps. But I would grow restless, and I am a simple woman who leads a simple life. When Maekallus tells me he’s going mad, I believe him.
After I tend my mysting garden, I pack a meal for him, hoping Papa won’t notice the shortage of food in the cupboards. Meat is expensive, but Maekallus seems to prefer it. He is, after all, a predator. Then I gather some string for cat’s cradle, a few books from my meager shelf, and my father’s strategy game, fell the king. He has not played it in some years. He taught me the rules, more or less, but kept forgetting his strategy, and after so many losses, his interest in the board and its cherrywood pieces waned. I bring my usual supplies, including bandages, and belt the dagger at my waist.
Once my father is cared for and occupied, I venture into the wildwood. The sun is well out, so I head into the forest straightway. I suppose if I run into anyone who cares about my destination, I could tell them I’m visiting my grandmother. While the gossip mill delights in stories about my immediate family—my mother’s passing, my father’s mind, my infatuation with the wildwood—few even knew of my grandmother’s existence, let alone her passing. She and my grandfather were incredibly self-sufficient, and when they did need supplies, they went to the market in Crake, not Fendell.
I try to ignore the ache in my right hand, which has already begun to bleed tar again, and enjoy the beauty of the wildwood. Its trees are tall and ancient, and the summer sun against the canopy bathes everything in warm green light. Gnats sparkle over a decaying log. Crickets chirp with the rising heat. The shadow of a bird crosses my path, and the call of a jay pierces the symphony of insect and fowl.
I take a break near one of the wildwood’s slender brooks, one that will dry up before winter comes. Sitting on a short stone, I look into that water and breathe deeply, feeling the emptiness within me and trying not to dwell on what I’ve lost. On whether I’ll ever get it back. Then I put my feet under me, brush off my gray dress, and continue on my way, tucking a bit of dark hair behind my ear as I go. I pick my way over root and rock, grass and clover, admiring the fiery orange of some wildflowers.
I am some ways into the wildwood when my stone turns cold.
I halt, my heart riotous, my thoughts rushing to the mystings from the night before. I grab a crown of oon berry from my basket and settle it over my head. My dress is washed in lavender. I fear it will not be enough.
I hurry toward the clearing, knowing I’ll never make it before I’m overtaken, and grab my Telling Stone and my dagger in slick hands. The stone is cold, so very cold, and it whispers the word I fear most.
Grinlers.
The irony of my ready lie strikes me enough to bring tears. Visiting my grandmother. My mother had been doing that very thing, with this very knife, when grinlers tore her apart. How utterly foolish I have become, to have treated the wildwood so casually.
I run.
The Telling Stone chills to the point where I must drop it or have a hole burned through my hand. I stumble on something, but don’t fall, and keep running. If I can just get to Maekallus. If I can just make it to the glade—
I hear them. It is not just the grunts and snorts once described to me by my grandmother, but a mad giggle, high pitched and half-swallowed. The quick, brushing steps of their feet startle two quail from a nearby thicket. The grinlers are closing in. Oh gods above, I can smell them. Subtle and sour, like decaying mushrooms.
Tears stream down my face. “Help!” I cry through my burning throat. Anyone. A hunter, Tennith, even a pack of wolves. The furry creatures appear between the trees, and I stop short, digging my toes into mud. I turn, but there are more charging toward me from behind, giggling and snorting, their marble eyes blazing with hunger, their clawed hands raised.
I will die just like she did.
Tears fall from my chin, and I lift my dagger in my bleeding, shaking hand. “Maekallus,” I whisper, my throat tight.
Help me.
The cut on Maekallus’s hand burns fiercely enough that he loses his grip on the branch and falls back to the earth, knocking his horn on the way down. Pain shoots up his tailbone and across his forehead. Cursing, he examines the bandage Enna tied around his palm, which is now mottled and sore from the black bruising of the mortal realm. Blood seeps through the gauze, two drops rolling down the curve of his wrist.
Within him, the fragments of her soul whirl, panicked.