I gathered a few belongings scattered around the chamber—the notebook, the set of stained colors, a handful of garments—and stuffed them without care into my satchel. I was no longer welcome in this house. I felt it in the stiffness of the air. I dared not imagine what the spirits of the home might do to me if I upset them further. I did not have to linger long. Just until Adrik returned from the forest with the blue-tinged corpse of the smith. Just long enough to demand the favor.
From the satchel I drew the light pouch of coins. As the shadows on the floorboards thickened, I counted them—once, twice, a dozen times. Just enough to rent a room in the tavern. Just enough to last me until the thaw unfroze the path to the mountain pass. Just enough, if I asked for the cheapest room, if I helped with dishes and cleaning, if I bought only the scraps from the butcher.
I had survived worse hungers and worse odds.
At the bottom of the satchel, crinkled and half-torn, was the useless map. I had no trouble finding Mount Briarfell in the dim candlelight. It loomed like a sharp-toothed predator over the edge of the waste. But there was no town, far and wide, called Wildemire. On the cluttered desk I found a quill and ink andplaced a stain where I imagined the town. I scribbled its name carelessly beneath.
The torchlight returned before the ink had dried. I caught only a glimpse of the riders in the street—four on horses and Adrik on his white stag—before I hurried into the parlor.
“They are back,” I said quietly to Lorell.
He’d not moved from his place huddled against the window since I’d last seen him, and he continued to stare blindly at the dark edge of the woods, gnarled fingers rigid as roots in his beard. Hurried steps disturbed the quiet. The door swung open. In with the snow came a man who was barely a man and one who looked just slightly older—Yavor’s younger brothers judging by their black curls, bronze skin and grime-caked hands. Behind them came Yavor, then Adrik. He carried a large bundle of pelt.
“Quick,” he said sharply. “To the study.”
I smelled, as he swept wordlessly past, a crispness of ice and frozen earth. From the bundle of pelt slipped a hand, blue with death. I recoiled, catching a shriek between pinched lips. Lorell shuffled swiftly after them. I watched, from where I’d grown roots on the floor, as they spread a white sheet over the bed I’d called my own for a fleeting moment, and placed the frost-adorned corpse of the blacksmith on top.
A whisper of wind stirred the air. I shuddered as it grazed my jaw as if to beckon me forth.
Let me see you, it hissed tenderly.Let me taste you.
The corpse stirred in the wind, rolling rigidly to the side. Its white, lifeless gaze sank into mine.
It blinked.
“Let me see you,” whispered the blacksmith. “Let me taste you.”
I screeched, tumbling against the table and knocking our abandoned plates with a clatter to the floor. The bloodless lips had moved. I’d seen it. I’d seen it—
Let me see you!
His wail, wild and feral, echoed violently through my flesh. Adrik moved like a shadow to the chamber door, stealing my view. In his eyes was only darkness.
“There is a bed in the attic. Do not disturb us.”
He closed the door on me.
The bitterness of the wind and the blacksmith’s wails followed me as I stumbled up a winding staircase and another. I heard them still from the straw bed in the cold, wind-lashed attic. I huddled in its furthest corner, draped in moth-eaten blankets, hands pressed to my ears to drown out the horror.
I stared and I stared from the round window in the roof, mind numb with terror, until a sliver of blue brightened the skies.
I fainted.
FOURTEEN
Spring will come soon.
Istirred feebly awake in the afternoon hours.
The house was stone-quiet, but my ears rang sharply with echoes of the blacksmith’s torment. The horror of the night clung like rotten flesh to my bones.
I tiptoed down the stairs, straining my ears before I stepped onto each landing to ensure there was not a whisper, not a breath. From the fireside armchair came quiet snoring. I glimpsed a head of black curls and a soot-stained hand as I slipped past.
There was no trace of Adrik nor of Lorell. The door to the chamber was firmly closed. Adrik was not in the kitchen, not in the workshop, not cutting wood. I was restless to find him. To redeem the favor. I wandered aimlessly through the streets, past locked doors and sealed shutters, hoping and dreading to catch a glimpse of golden locks and a hateful sneer, well-deserved. The cold had grown teeth in the night, and it prowled the town like a hungering beast. A thick, brownish veil of woodsmoke shrouded the skies.
This winter…
What a strange, brutal thing. What a horrible, haunted forest.
