The valley pathwas quieter than the main road, the canopy lower, the birdsong different. We had been walking perhaps anhour when a sound from deep in the bracken made me slow my stride without thinking.
Sammy appeared at my elbow. “What is it?”
“A warbler.” I tilted my head toward the sound. “I haven’t heard one in some time. They prefer deep wood. Don't like noise or disturbance.” I listened until the call came again, clearer. “My mother used to say if you heard one, the forest was at peace.”
Sammy was quiet at my side. Then her notebook opened.
“Don't.” I gently placed my hand over hers.
She looked up with perfect innocence. “I'm not writing about the warbler.”
I cocked a brow. “You are writing about the warbler.”
Shaking her pen free and making quick flicks in her notebook, she said, “I'm writing about you talking about the warbler.” She tucked the pen behind her ear, satisfied. “Entirely different.”
I groaned and kept walking, which made her laugh. That warm, unguarded sound still caught me without warning, no matter how many times I heard it.
Berry rode my shoulder for the first hour, then Sammy’s back, then my shoulder again. The florin was restless in a way I had been quietly watching since we left home. Not distressed.Alert.Their tails moved in small, continuous rotations instead of the loose sway of contentment. I filed it away and turned my attention back to Sammy, where it was considerably more pleasant to keep it.
She was cataloging the valley with the same intensity she brought to everything, crouching at a banded stone, sketchingan unfamiliar leaf, holding up a cluster of small orange berries on a stem.
“What do you call these?”
“Autumn bells.”
“Edible?”
My eyes widened at the thought of her being sickened by the berries. “No.”
She wrote it down anyway. I caught a glimpse:Autumn bells. Do not eat. Investigate further.As if the berries might reconsider their position if studied long enough. I loved her without qualification, and I thought the autumn bells fortunate to receive her attention.
It was while she crouched over a patch of moss, debating its taxonomy aloud to Berry, that the prickling came. An acute awareness hit me like ants under my skin. The woods to our left were quieter than a windless afternoon warranted. The bracken was too still.
I did not stop walking, nor did I change my pace. I let my eyes move without shifting my head.
Nothing.
And then something. A shift in the shadows thirty feet back, and a creature low to the ground. Small. Fast. Gone before I could fix it in my sight.
A fox, perhaps. A stone marten.
I adjusted the packs on my back and kept walking. I also, without appearing to do so, put myself between Sammy and the bracken, letting the path’s curve do most of the work.
“Are you listening?” she asked.
“I am always listening to you,” I said, which was entirely true. “The moss, a titania variety, if I am not mistaken.”
She pointed her pen at me. "See, this is why I keep you around."
“And here I thought it was my handsome face.” I wiggled my tusks at her.
Sammy laughed again. “Well, that too.”
The tension in my neck eased, just slightly. I chose to believe the shadow had been a fox and kept the decision where I could examine it later.
By late afternoon,the gnome settlement appeared out of the brush. A quaint village with all the sights and sounds, and most importantly, the scents of home. Wood smoke and something sweet, a resin I recognized from the craftspeople who occasionally brought goods to the village market, tickled my nose. Then the sounds of a wheel turning, a hammer tapping its patient rhythm, and voices pitched low.
Sammy slowed and motioned toward the village gates. “Travelers?”
