The Will and the Wilds(73)

Time is the best healer, my grandmother used to say, but it is a cruel master that takes pleasure in my torment and withholds its salve. The pieces of my heart are as shattered as the Will Stone, and they are so heavy that when I cannot occupy my mind with a distracting enough task, I can barely breathe for their weight. I cannot forget, for the horn lives inside me, keeping my soul where no other can take it. But if I cannot forget, then I cannot heal, and thus I find myself trapped in an endless loop of sorrow and self-pity.

My mother never cried, or so I’ve heard. I always thought myself like her, but my time without my soul made me weak, and the tears come easily now, especially at night when I am alone to dwell in my regrets. It worried my father, at first. Now I think he’s made his peace with it, though I have not.

After a wearying day of helping Papa dig out the cellar to make space for mushroom shelves, I collapse onto my bed, dusted with filth. Yes, time is cruel. I weep just as much as I did the morning I found Maekallus gone and my soul restored to me. The pin through my breast no longer pains me. On occasion it warms, as if speaking to me the same way the Will Stone once did, but it cools down just as quickly, leaving me unable to interpret. The foolish part of me searches for him in those moments of warmth, imagining that he’s calling to me, but he is never there.





Maekallus holds very still until the pesky dragonfly hovers a little closer. Then he flicks his tail, slicing through the insect’s long body with its sharp point.

He gives the halved insect a cursory glance before ducking his long horn under an oak branch and continuing on his way, hoofing softly through the edge of the wildwood. He’s spent way too much time here. At first, he told himself he was fleeing the unrest in the Deep. Scroud had lost another battle—this one before it had even begun—and his remaining followers had abandoned him for good, hating him for their banishment from the mortal realm. While Maekallus is glad to see his former tormentor so diminished, he doesn’t want to partake in the ensuing anarchy. So he returns to the wildwood, following memorized paths.

But when Maekallus finds her house empty, he searches farther, sneaking through the streets and taverns with his invisibility up, listening and watching. It takes a week to find her, though she has yet to see him. He wonders if she even can—the Will Stone no longer hangs from her wrist.

The things he could have done with the thing . . . To think he’d given it back to her. Twice.

That was a different Maekallus. One he remembers but doesn’t understand. He recalls loving the mortal woman, enough that he’d do anything for her, but he can’t . . . comprehend it now. Yet he finds himself pulled to this place, as though she made a binding spell all her own. Perhaps she is a witch. This new spell tugs at him in the same spot the first one had.

He hates it. Yet the memories eat at him. Enna is different than Narah, the brothel woman. Enna had been a part of him once. She made him mortal, for a moment.

He hasn’t eaten a soul since expelling hers. He wonders if doing so would bring the emotions associated with his memories pouring back. Does he want to feel that way again? Those feelings had come with a heft of miserable emotions. He also knows that Enna would hate him if he consumed another mortal’s soul just to remember the connection they once shared. That makes him hesitate.

And he hates it.





CHAPTER 32

One Month Later




The trees in the wildwood whisper of autumn. Some seem to crave it, their leaves already tipped yellow and orange. I hate the cold, but the beginning of autumn is my favorite time of year. The ancient trees are brilliant in their symphony of color. A person can walk among them and feel as if they’ve walked into the sunset itself. Ash trees will soon wear crowns of gold, and maples will burst into tangible flame. Then the leaves will drop, and for days it will be like a rainbow of snowfall, and it will be beautiful. It’s no wonder my mother could not resist crossing through the wildwood the day the grinlers found her. I was born at the peak of the leaves’ vibrancy.

I crouch outside our little home, tending the oon berry I’d uprooted in the wildwood and transplanted here. I had to wait for the moving sickness to wear off the plants before I could meddle with them, and today I weave their slender, thorny branches together, creating a loose braid between the small bushes. Thorns stick to my gloves, and an occasional burst berry stains them. The winter will strip them of everything but the thorns, but they will continue to dissuade mystings, even in a frozen and withered state. I do not yet have enough to surround the house, but thus far we’ve seen no mystings in these parts. I make sure to follow the rules—staying inside at night, washing my clothes in lavender, carrying silver, never straying too far into the wildwood. I no longer have the Will Stone to warn me, so my days of frivolous adventure have come to an end.

I finish my work, wipe my hands on my apron, and tuck hair behind my ears. I’ve always preferred my hair short, but I haven’t taken the time to trim it in a while. It sits on my shoulders now. A piece falls forward again, and I brush it away, jangling the silver band I still wear on my right wrist. I’ve never taken it off.

Walking back to the house, I wave to my father, who’s gutting a doe he caught near dawn at the edge of the wood. He’s turned his focus on building up our stores for winter, and I’m glad. Not only for the food and security, but because Papa seems to be the most himself when he’s working with his hands.