The little fox… The whispers in the wind. The visions. I had felt its anguish. I had heard its pleas. “Forgive me. It took me long to understand.”
Be free of guilt, it sang.
I wavered a moment, afraid to ask. “Was it you, who granted me this power? Was it you, who heeded my mother that night?”
I remember a scared girl beneath an old elm. In another life, perhaps, I granted her a sliver of my power to save her. In another life, beyond another veil. Time flows differently here.
A wisp drifted close to its bushy green brow, another near the ribcage woven from branches. There floated wisps in the wind and above the pond; glowing things that hid within blossoms, in the moss, behind rocks.
A world unseen and full of life.
The spirit of the wild groaned.The uncursed king has called for aid, witch. He comes. A shudder—one so deep, it rustled the trees far and wide.He comes.
There came a breath of darkness. Stillness fell over this strange, blurred world. In the midst of the meadow, Adrik knelt amid remnants of ice and snow. His gaze was black as the moonless night and his lips moved frantically. I did not see to whom he spoke; there was a stain on the world a few paces from where he was kneeling. I squinted fiercely at that stain, but whenever I caught a glimpse of a black-cloaked thing, my eyes skipped over it and settled on the oak-throne instead.
The spirit of the wild laughed softly.He does not like to be seen.
No, he did not. Still, I knew this dark spirit, too. I remembered it like looking through that misted glass again. I bore its mark now thrice on my palm. The spirit who adored barter. Who loved all things balanced. Who delighted in the art of trading.
Adrik bowed amid the thaw.
I caught a sliver of a smile on his lips before darkness fell over my vision.
I returned, with a frantic gasp, to our side of the veil. Adrik’s arms were around me again, as if we had never left our deathbed upon the roots. Our hands were no longer fused. I felt desperately for his palm, fearing the worst. It was healed, not a scar in sight. I gaped at my own, unmarred but for the knotted thing I’d worn since I was eleven. There was not a trace left of the strange bark that had taken us.
“What did you do?” I asked with no small amount of fright.
Adrik laughed as he plucked a near wildflower to tuck behind my ear. “A bargain, Ana. The spirit of barter felt mirthful and generous with spring. I am, after all, its prince. It was glad, for a small price, to bestow two favors upon me. Our lives.”
“What was the price?”
“That I should never speak to him or hear him again. Neither his many, many siblings. He does not like to be seen. Two lives in exchange for my magic. It was a fair trade.” A small sob burst from me. “Ah,” said Adrik brightly. “I do not need this magic anymore, Ana. I spent much of these past five years basking in the good memories of others. I am quite overdue to start basking in my own.”
I kissed him tenderly on the cheek, ice against ice. The earth sang with spring but thaw would take its time. We huddled beneath that ancient oak, sharing the last slivers of warmth. Mymind was feeble from the strain of such curious magics, from balancing the line between life and death.
Perhaps that oak would become our tomb after all. Suchcold—
In the distance came the thunder of hooves. A head of stark-white curls emerged from the trees.
“I found them.”
THIRTY-FIVE
We lived in gardens of everbloom.
Icame back to myself as we passed through the gate, as if roused by an urgent call.
I sat against Adrik’s chest, caged in his arms, fingers tangled in the silken coat of his stag. Yavor rode at the spear, head high with pride and jubilee.
The thaw had come.
The river rushed with meltwater and already the hoofbeats turned into squelching steps. The trees glistened as if decked with diamonds.
“Rest,” Adrik whispered against my ear when I stirred.
I could not. There was a whisper in the wind. It spoke, with new aliveness, of a cat-shaped hill and a pink-blossomed tree, of a wild witch who had carried for five winters the weight of a storm. The wild witch who had lived, against all odds, to witness the dawn of another spring.
“Almira.”
