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She threw the spider away again.
“Let her go,” said Jacob. “Please. Spieler is angry with me, not her.”
Fox clawed her fingers into his arm so hard it hurt.
“He’s lying,” she said to Sixteen. “Before you can even touch him, I will shift and tear out your throat.”
Sixteen flexed her fingers like a cat looking forward to the hunt.
“You won’t be fast enough, fox-sister,” she said.
Sixteen’s features became human. And again Jacob recognized the face. It was his mother’s, young, the one he knew only from photographs. The sight paralyzed him.
Fox yanked him away.
She screamed at him, pulled him along. They stumbled over roots and dead trees, ran side by side through the high grass that smelled of apples, their eyes desperately looking for the one thing that could protect them.
Damp earth. Water.
Sixteen was in no rush. She was obviously enjoying her quarry’s fear.
Damp earth. Water. But all Jacob saw was rotting leaves. He wanted to stop, kiss Fox one last time.
Sixteen walked faster.
Jacob stumbled over a branch. Fox dragged him back to his feet. Shift! he wanted to shout. The vixen can escape. But what for? She would never flee without him. Together. Even in death. His fingers tightened their grip around her hand. A double statue of silver. Romantic. What would their faces show? Fear? Or love?
Jacob took a swarm of mosquitoes to be a figment of his desperate mind, but Fox pulled him toward them. A pond! Barely visible under the rotting leaves floating on its brackish surface. Jacob covered Fox as she slipped on the muddy bank. She waded into the water, and he dug his fingers into the damp earth, threw a handful into Sixteen’s face, which was still that of his mother. The glass fingers quickly wiped the mud off, but the skin beneath had already turned to bark.
The pond wasn’t very deep, the water barely reaching to their chests. But Sixteen stopped one step away from the bank, her eyes a kaleidoscope of a hundred stolen lives. Jacob wrapped his arms around Fox. The water was warm, and the rotting foliage surrounded them like a blanket. Would this be their end? In a muddy pond?
Sixteen’s feet were growing roots. She stared at them. But then her head turned.
The muddy water rippled.
The wind, the wind, the heaven-born wind...
Sixteen smiled.
Maybe it was whispering to her.
“It’s over,” she said. “Your brother has found her!”
She briefly seemed torn whether or not to finish the hunt.
But then she turned to glass and was gone.
So Weak
The stag’s head rose above the grass. He had no memory of ever not having carried the proud antlers. It was back, the melody that had been missing from the music of the world. But its song was weaker than usual.
The stag followed it, the one sound that contained everything he’d once been. And there she was, her dress covered in cobwebs. Only the thread in her hand was golden.
The stag went to her side, and the Fairy buried her face in his neck.
And Everything Will Be Just as It was Meant to Be
The leaves and blossoms growing on the carriage would have made good camouflage in any forest, but here, among the blue mountains and the yellow grass, they just announced from how far they’d come.
