The Will and the Wilds(70)

He follows me to my room, worried, but when I softly shut the door, he doesn’t intrude. I stand there for a long moment, head resting against the wood. I reach up a hand and rub dried tears from my eyelids. The sun pours through my window, making the room too warm. It’s almost silent within, but even these walls can’t block out the noise of the forest.

Pulling away from the door, I reach around and unfasten the three buttons at the back of my ruined dress. I let it puddle on the floor, my punctured underclothes with it.

There, just over my diaphragm, is a small circle, almost like scar tissue. No larger than a pinhead. I touch it. The skin feels bruised, but it’s not discolored. I find another circle at the center of my back, barely missing my spine. This one is bigger, the size of a gold farkle, our largest denomination of coin. I recognize it, although I don’t know how. Maybe by the size, maybe by the color. Maybe by the feeling of it inside me, hard and unyielding and magicked, for anything else would have taken my life.

His horn. The tip of it, plunged through me. Why? Not to return me to the mortal realm. I trace the small scar beneath my breasts, thinking again of the pinhead. Pinned.

And what else would he have need to pin, except my soul to my body? So it could not escape?

A new surge of sorrow erupts. I cover my mouth with my hands to muffle the sound and drop to my knees. Tears spatter the pile of clothes. The too-warm Will Stone brushes my wrist.

I think of his yellow eyes. Without my soul inside him, what has he become? Unfeeling, unknowing, uncaring—

Mysting.





I am renewed. I am returned. I am everything I once was. I am whole.

And yet I am useless.

I feel as though my own home is a dream, faded around the edges, and I have become a specter within it. I am complete, and yet my heart is so broken I can’t find its pieces. I remind myself that he is a mysting, that he lied to me, that he betrayed me, but the words are no salve to the deep and unrelenting ache. All I know for certain is that he is gone, and that, beyond all reason, I love him. Loved him, for my mind is clear enough to know Maekallus is no longer the being who shattered me so completely, and that makes it hurt so much more. I cannot even lure him back to me, for the powerful Will Stone cannot reach into the monster realm to find him. I cannot even bring myself to worry for the portal ring deep in the wildwood, save for when I clutch the Will Stone and pray Scroud’s scouts will pass over this place.

I know how pathetic I am, yet I can’t seem to heal myself. I place one handkerchief in the laundry and take a second to wipe my eyes, which are growing sore from the constant application of linen. My dear, kind father does not ask after my troubles or try to make them right. He merely remains silent, feeds me when I forget to eat, and places a kiss on my head when I sit on the rug before the unlit hearth, where Maekallus had once lain beside me.

It takes another day for me to realize the gobler’s mark has vanished from my arm. Whether it was nullified by my entrance into the monster realm or vanquished by the power of the narval horn, I’ll never know.

I sleep a sleep without nightmares. Without dreams at all. I am still broken and sore in the morning, but I force myself from my bed and put a broom in my hand, determined to reclaim the life he so selflessly returned to me. Whenever I pass the east-facing windows, I look out into the wildwood, wishing and hoping, but the stone tells me he is not here. The bracelet remains fastened around my right wrist. I haven’t the heart to move it.

I tend my garden, pulling weeds without a thought in my head, trying to will the sweet summer air to mend me. I make dinner and burn myself on the pot, then guide my father through the steps of finishing the meal.

All this time, the stone hangs from my wrist, not cool, not hot. But after we’ve eaten, when Papa is setting up a game of fell the king, the stone turns cold, chilled as snowfall in an instant. My broken heart leaps, and I clasp the charm tightly against my palm.

But it is not a narval it warns me of. It warns me of many things, many mystings. The first name it whispers is orjan.

It is with utter despondency that I realize Maekallus was right. That it wasn’t safe to use the stone near Scroud. That he is intimately familiar with it. That the moment I unleashed its power in his presence, I confirmed what the first, dead gobler had known.

The stone is here. And now the great mysting lord has come to reclaim it.





“Papa.”

My voice is hoarse, though I’ve barely spoken the last two days. I rush from the house, leaving the front door open. The sun is half-set, casting everything in shadow. “Papa,” I say, a little louder. I run around to the cellar and call down into its darkness. “Papa!”

“Enna?” he calls back.

“Papa, mystings. In the wildwood. They’re coming this way. We need to leave.”

“Mystings?” he repeats, and his face appears at the bottom of the ladder, a basket half-filled with mushrooms in one hand and a lantern in the other.

“Please, Papa. Scroud is coming.”

There’s a glint in his eye, and not just from the lantern. A moment of recognition, and then it’s gone.

He sets down the basket and climbs up with the lantern. “I should have kept a horse.”

Regrets do us no good. I grab his arm and pull him into the house, grateful he’s hale again. I grab a sack and load it with whatever food I can find. The Will Stone brushes my arm and stings. I hiss, but refuse to take it off. Instead I wrap a cloth around it, tucking the ends beneath the bracelet.