The Will and the Wilds(40)

Is that the reason why the soul inside him continues to live so fiercely? Because she wills it not to lose its vigor? To stay alive? To possibly, one day, return to her?

Is this newest piece of soul the reason why, when Enna had fallen into deep slumber after healing him, he’d felt panic entirely his own?

He turns from her, focusing on the task at hand. There is a way for mystings to sense one another, if they want to be sensed. Attaby is the type to not have his guard up.

Maekallus pushes the magic out of him, deeper into the forest, away from human civilization. The energy is so thin already; it barely grazes the surface of the wildwood. But just as it burns out, he detects something distinctly rooter. Straight east.

Opening his eyes, he walks out of the circle, letting his hooves—the hooves that now bear five points, similar to toes—scuff the rune as he goes. He gestures in the direction.

“Attaby.”

“You’re sure?” Enna asks.

“As sure as I can be.”

“But if it’s not . . .”

He folds his arms and leans his weight onto one leg. “What was it that you bothered me with, over and over? That we should try?”

A small smile touches her lips. He tries not to mirror it. “Then we should go, while we’ve still time. Lead the way.”

Maekallus passes out of the glade, to the point where the binding spell prevents him from going any farther. He presses against it; the curse presses back.

Enna takes one step past him, clutching the stone in her hand. He can’t fathom it—the Will Stone, all this time, in the hands of a mortal. The rumors that it had been stolen by a human must be true. A human of Enna’s acquaintance? This father of hers? Or had it simply traded hands from merchant to merchant, sold as a simple charm of warning? Leave it to humans to peddle away the greatest weapon of his time.

The spell slackens. He takes one step, another. Grins. It’s like stretching after a year-long slumber. Like sex after months of solitude.

“Prey and predators,” he mumbles, ducking under a tree to avoid catching it with his horn. Thick forests really aren’t prime locations for narvals. When he isn’t lurking about human cities, he prefers open plains. “I almost feel free.”

Enna smiles beside him. “I’m glad.”

The gobler’s spell, however, begins to tug again.

“You need to actively want my company.” He moves to jab her with his tail, only to remember it’s been sacrificed to the maw of the mortal realm. Will it return, once he descends? “Otherwise I can’t accompany you. Unless you know this part of the wildwood, I would suggest willing me here.”

Needless to say, the first time Enna had given up willing him out of his prison, it had not been pleasant. He’d been jerked back to the glen so forcefully it was a wonder he hadn’t broken anything.

She doesn’t respond.

“Enna?”

She snaps to attention. “Oh, sorry.”

The spell relaxes.

He eyes her. She’s been . . . leaving the present more and more lately. In response to the thought, the bits of her soul light up like fireflies, pressing against him as if attempting to get closer to her. It’s only the soul, he tells himself, and it’s . . . strange. Maekallus has never felt for so long in his entire existence.

The one he can clearly remember, anyway.

Enna begins to prattle. He isn’t sure why. Perhaps she doesn’t like the silence, or she wants a distraction, or she has some weird human need to share her stories. She talks about growing a mushroom farm—how anyone can eat those things is beyond him—and the different plants in her garden, all of which Maekallus had to put in his mouth during their first attempts to break the gobler’s spell. He cringes to remember it. She asks him questions about the beuhger again, then talks about what she knows about goblers, and then prods him for information about the slyser—the large, serpentine mysting who’d come up through the summoning circle—for that ridiculous book of notes of hers. Then she goes on about her grandmother, and how the older woman had once hired a rooter to protect her home. How it was the one true evidence Enna had that a docile mysting could exist, though her grandmother had never recorded the rooter’s name.

“Maybe it was . . . what did you say his name was, again?”

“Attaby.”

“Attaby.” She smiles. Such a small, simple thing, but it’s strangely beautiful. “It doesn’t sound like a mysting name.”

“I suppose you’re the expert.”

She shrugs. “It’s just . . . too friendly.”

Maekallus picks his way up a sudden, short incline in the forest floor. “Then it’s perfect for him.”

Enna struggles behind him; he grabs her forearm and hauls her up. She scrapes her knee, but doesn’t protest. “Is it?”

“Rooters are doleful little ka’pigs. They do well in this realm, frolicking in the meadows and wiping their asses on the doorsteps of humans.”

“Maekallus.”

“You deny it?”

“No.” She takes a second to catch her breath. “It’s just . . . I don’t think anyone has ever said ‘asses’ in front of me before.”

He shrugs and trudges ahead. Stops so she can catch up. Gods, she’s weak. He knows humans aren’t usually so weak. It has to be the soul.