More rustling, indicating more than one something. Shay tries to remember how she came to be here. Here in … Warped wilderness swirls into focus. She's in Al-Ghaba Mayita. Deeper than she's ever been. But how did she get here? The last thing she remembers is sliding Hind's ring onto her finger. It was supposed to lend her magic, not knock her out.
What did her mother do?
Even now, Shay's panic stays a subtle buzz below her skin, as if her emotions are wrapped in the fluff of poof flowers. The rustling moves closer. Pads of small feet press against her skin, followed by the heft of a plump animal, the skitter of tiny nails up her arm. A flash of fur comes into view. A squirrel. Except, like the forest itself, the creature is all wrong.
For one thing, it outweighs most cats she's encountered. Its beady eyes glow red, patches of dried pus mat its red-brown fur, and it smells awful, which solves one mystery. The creature sits on her chest and stares at her, its mouth so overrun with pointy teeth that its jaws can't neatly close.
Louder movement, from bigger things that ramble and smash around the forest. Before Shay can ponder their nature, the squirrel unleashes a high-pitched squeal.
Shay closes her eyes as if that will mute the horrid sound. When it doesn't, she wills her body to roll, her arm to lift, any part of her to engage in somemotion with the capacity to shake the squirrel off. Something about the animal's sickly appearance reminds her of her connection with the wounded cat, how Hind said it understood her. Unable to talk, she makes desperate eye contact with the squealing creature.
Please stop.
The animal quiets, and Shay breathes a sigh of relief, pleased to discover shecanbreathe. But her mind quickly races again, fueled by thoughts of being attacked, if not by the squirrel, then the other animals she heard. Their lingering presence prickles her periphery. Lacking options, she doesn't take time to dwell on how little she knows about the way her hizoura powers work.
She maintains eye contact with the squirrel and envisions the animal using its dexterous paws and little thumbs to remove the ring. The squirrel flicks its mangy tail, then scrabbles off her chest. She feels the ring wiggle back and forth on her finger a few times before the creature slips it off.
Pain hits her like a landslide. Her limbs are sore, her ribs feel bruised, and her back is stiff, as if she's been run down by a herd of donkeys. The squirrel squeaks and chirps, and the timbre of these sounds is blessedly softer and less offensive than its previous vocalizations.
Shay slowly raises her body upright. Her headache makes her dizzy, which makes her nauseous, but she takes it as more evidence that she's alive. She draws a few deep breaths. The squirrel holds the ring out in its strangely handlike paws, waiting. She accepts it and hopes the creature will leave her be.
The crystal's surface has returned to smooth-faced silver, leaving no trace of the primordial darkness she glimpsed. With her attention on the hjabat, it takes a few moments for Shay to realize the other animals—if you can call them that—have formed a circle around her.
There are deer with eyes clouded white. Chunks of their flesh have fallen away, exposing warped bone and broken ribs. Bony spikes line the backs of wolves with empty eye sockets. Foxes, rabbits, and one large bear are covered in seeping lesions, half-healed scabs, and bulbous tumors. What may be an owl peers down from the branch of a nearby tree, half its feathers stripped away and a fat worm dangling from its cheek.
Shay wobbles to her feet and fans her arm in a wide shooing motion. “What are you all staring at? I don't want any trouble. Go on now! Leave me be.”
The monstrosities slowly back away, slinking into the leafy folds of the forest undergrowth.
“Hello? Hind?
“Are you there? Is anyone there?”
When no one answers, Shay gazes at the ring. She wonders if the strange voices she heard are somehow trapped inside it, but that makes no sense. In any case, she's not willing to risk deathlike paralysis by putting it back on her finger to find out.
Shay secures the hjabat in her waist satchel and hugs herself. She can't be alone. Not when she's finally found her mother. Their situation may not be ideal, but they can work on things …
Or so she thought.
The panic that's hung back rushes in like an angry mob.
No. No. No.
Tears sting the bottom of her throat. She turns a circle, tall cedars spinning with her, a majestic sprawl of shaggy fronds. Ghastly faces seem to peer from their fat scales of bark, with gnarls for eyes, mouths twisted in hollow screams. There are plants she's never seen: mushrooms that look like spindly fingers clawing up from the ground and vines of white flowers in the shape of tiny skulls.
How did she even get here?
On her second spin, the shallow ruts of wheel marks jump out at her.
They stretch out to form a long path through the grass. One that looks fresh.
Her heart wrenches.
There's no break in the line, no sign that whoever dropped her here turned around and went back the way they came. What business would Hind have this far inside the forest? Or in the land of Ard Al-Ghul that lies beyond?
She peers as far as her eyes can see in one direction and then the other, tracking the grooves to where they disappear in the thick of the woods. The stars might provide a point of reference to orient her, but the dense forestcanopy blots any bright enough to cut through the moon's red veil. Shay squats to study the dirt trail. She dips her finger into a crescent-shaped imprint, the kind a horse pulling a carriage would leave behind.
Did her mother—no, she doesn't deserve that title—didHindhaul Shay's unconscious body out here and dump her? Her aching bones support that theory while also suggesting the deed was done ungently. But she couldn't have done it alone. It has the man in the alley's suspicious scent all over it, except Shay can't imagine what part of leaving her stranded could possibly decrease the touched one's debts.
