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“He’s gone,” I said. My thoughts came more rapidly now. “Benedict, secure the clearing and gather our forces. Mr. Penn will assist you.”
“We’ll take care of Lirr,” Athe stated, unfaltering, and set off after her ghisting.
Benedict eyed Penn, who had already freed a good number of our folk and armed them. He nodded. “Very well. I assume you will find the Stormsinger?”
I hesitated. Benedict was here, Athe was unharmed, but could I trust him?
My brother’s eyes were expressionless, but as I examined him, he cracked a smile.
“I know where my interests are best served, brother,” he chided, flicking blood from the end of his cutlass. “Go find your witch.”
I had no time to linger on his use of ‘your.’ I returned to the remains of the bonfire at the same time as Anne Firth. She threw her mask aside, along with a glittering key, and stood panting over the empty coals, searching for any sign of her daughter.
I forced myself to do the same. The smoke had cleared and my eyes had readjusted to the darkness by now, and I feared I would finally make out her charred, shriveled form.
But instead of death, I saw life. There, where Mary had fallen, a sapling uncoiled from the earth. It was barely knee-high, but as I watched it shook and stretched, extending new branches. Another larch. A new ghisten tree.
And beyond it, footprints in ash. There were only two, and then they vanished in the midst of astride—assurely as if Mary had stepped from one world, into the Other.
Gooseflesh prickled up my arms.
“She’ll have gone after Lirr. Give me that. Are you with me, Mr. Rosser?” Anne raked frozen hands over eyes red with exhaustion and cold. She held out her hand, and I realized she wanted my cutlass.
I handed it over and she took it in a sure, steady grip.
“I am, Ms. Firth. Lead the way.”
FORTY-SIX
The Woman in the Wold
MARY
My world was fire and heat, pain and terror. My thoughts skipped and jumped, every thought fragmented, every feeling a spark in the maelstrom.
In that blazing moment, I saw Tane separate from my skin. Still tethered to me by the touch of one hand, she reformed into my reflection, then someone else. She touched my face and poured over my flesh like fog on a sea breeze.
Then my world was cool water and a forest with its roots in the sky.I—TaneandI—ranthrough ankle-deep pools with a vanguard of a thousand dragonflies, gold and purple. Morgories stuck their heads from the water and unfurled their deadly plumes, rattling as we passed. A creature with the head of a horse and the body of a mangy dog crept through the shadows, head lowered and twisted body radiating pale orange light. A huden.
And though I had never been in this place before, I knew the feel of it in my bones, and understood what it was with a dreamer’s certainty.
The Dark Water. I had stepped bodily out of the fire into the Dark Water.
Before the awe and panic and impossibility of that thought could take root, my world shifted a third time.
I stumbled into a summer Wold of soft wind and cool moss. I knew what had happened with the same surety as I’d recognized the Dark Water.
Tane had awoken the arctic Wold.
“Tane.” I coughed her name, clutching at my seared clothes. They were mostly intact but my boots were burned through, and I nearly twisted an ankle as I tried to find my balance. “Tane!”
I’m here, her voice returned. She manifested before me, taking on the same form she’d worn in thefire—amixture of me, my mother, and someone else. Her expression was calm but urgent, and she kept one tendril of her spectral flesh tied between us, chest-to-chest.
My mother’s voice rang in my head, distant with memory.So long as Tane is within you, neither of you can come to harm.
That’s what this tether was. Tane, ensuring our connection remained, protecting me fromdeath—andin doing so, guarding herself.
Tane spoke again.We’ve passed through the Dark Water, Mary. We’re safe.
