An Enchantment of Ravens(55)
I froze on top of a boulder to look back. My nose spasmed with the effort of getting enough air, flaring red. Heat evaporated from my ears. The pursuer had stopped to look under a log. Mightily, it flipped the log with its upper appendages. Even from a distance I heard soft bark crumbling, tender ferns uprooting and tearing. One of my ears rotated of its own accord to better take in the sounds. Then the pursuer straightened. Danger! I dove from the boulder and streaked across the clearing. One of the stumps in the clearing seemed familiar to me: it had fabric draped over it, and teacups beside it. I was unsettled by the sight, as I might be by seeing a hawk’s shadow pass over the ground.
And then, from an angle I did not expect, a predator descended.
No! No! No!
I was caught!
I kicked my feet and twisted, screaming, showing my teeth. Giant hands had seized me, and now lifted me. The sun flashed in my eyes—the world soared dizzyingly—and the grip that held me was too firm for escape. I drummed my feet against the creature’s chest, but he cradled me so close I couldn’t move my legs, and lifted some of his clothes to press my face inside.
Enclosed darkness. Muffled sounds. I stopped struggling, thinking that perhaps the peril had ended. In the sudden quiet only my heart galloped on. The sound of it filled my ears and shook my body in swift, rhythmic pulses.
“Lark,” the creature said. He didn’t shout. I sensed he didn’t have to. His voice was like a cruel wind, stripping everything in its path to the marrow. “What have you done?”
A petulant voice answered. “You don’t play with me anymore, Rook! No one pays attention to me except for her! And you’re trying to keep her all to yourself—it isn’t fair!”
Nose twitching anxiously, I burrowed farther into my captive’s garments. That voice was Danger! But the smell of the creature that held me, a crisp leaf-smell, a night-air smell, was safe.
“You little fool. Did you ever pause to consider what would happen if she escaped from you? Look.” One of the warm hands left my back. I trembled. “She’s already forgotten what she is. She would have lived out the rest of her short years as a common hare.”
A foot stomped. “I wouldn’t have lost her! I take care of my things! Rook, why are you being like this? You’re being awful, just awful. I’m going to tell Gadfly how awful you are.”
“Tell Gadfly if you like,” my captor said, “but I don’t think he’ll be pleased to discover how impolitely you’ve treated his guest.”
“Fine!” But the voice sounded uncertain. “I’m going right now!”
“See that you do,” my captor said, coldly.
Footsteps charged away across the grass. With my ears flattened against my back, I couldn’t hear well enough to determine whether the predator had left for certain. Even so, I wasn’t afraid. I trusted my captor wouldn’t expose me until the harm had passed.
He lifted me from the darkness and held me up at face level. I regarded him calmly with my hind feet dangling. I detected no one else in the clearing, no hawk-shadows, no fox-smell.
“Isobel, do you recognize me?” he demanded. A shadow had fallen over his face, and his smell acquired a bitter edge. He was angry. Even then I still thought to myself, Safe.
I wiggled my nose.
He sighed and cradled me against his chest again. “I’m going to turn you back. Try not to struggle, as I haven’t had a great deal of practice with this sort of magic. That is to say,” he added quickly, “I’m perfectly capable of doing it—I am sure you’ve noticed I excel at all enchantments—but it would be best if you remained still. So, please try.”
I sat obligingly in his arms, wiggling my nose.
At first, nothing happened. Then, just as I thought it might be a good idea to settle down for a nap, the world turned inside out, flipped over, and threw me down again as though I’d just spent a few seconds as a toddler’s spinning top. Everything shrank. My body became heavy and fleshy and slow. I blinked in a daze, orienting myself. Red leaves whirled across the clearing, and the trees swayed in a subsiding wind. When the wind gusted its last breath the autumn tree stood naked, bare-branched, without a single leaf left.
I wasn’t touching the ground. My feet hung in the air, and warm arms supported my shoulders and the insides of my knees. Rook. That was Rook, holding me.
I wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Before I could find my voice and ask him to set me down, he dropped me like a hot coal. I landed in the wildflowers with an undignified whump. Horrified, I squashed my legs together, hunched inward with my arms clamped over my chest, and stared up at him. He looked as aghast as I did.
“Why did you just—” I began, at the same moment he blurted out:
“You stopped being in peril, and I couldn’t touch you any longer! Are you all right?”
“No.” I’d just been turned into a rabbit! “But I will be. Thank you for coming to my rescue. Couldn’t you have set me down a bit sooner?”
He averted his eyes. “I was distracted,” he replied with dignity.
Oh—right.
When he started shrugging off his coat, I forestalled him by speaking. “I’m going to put my dress back on. Just . . . don’t look.” I stood and skulked over to the stump, conscious that lately I was doing an awful lot of sneaking about in the forest nude. Sporting a blush that spread all the way down my neck, I slipped back into my underthings, today’s Firth & Maester’s, and finally my stockings and boots and hidden ring, while Rook waited for me, gazing determinedly at a fixed spot away to the side. “Are they going to miss you back at the court?” I asked, hoping to dispel the tension, or at least refocus it to a more pressing topic.