The pig slowed, stumbled. Blood spurted from her back. Her hind feet pedaled faster than her front as her body rolled to the side, her snout thrashing, seeking meat for her tusks to impale.
Nick took another step backward. “Will . . . will she die?” He didn’t want to watch life leak from her eyes. He couldn’t look away.
Chills racked his body from toe to brow and back again. His once warm robe now felt damp and no longer protective.
“Doubtful,” Robin replied. Deftly, he placed one foot against Mammoch’s spine. She screamed. He ignored her and yanked the arrow free with both hands on the shaft. It came away with a squelching sound, coated in blood. He let the gore drip to the ground as he inspected the flint for damage.
Mammoch sagged into unconsciousness.
“She is not mortal as you and I are. I could only kill her if my arrow struck her directly in her heart.”
“How long?” Hilde scrambled down from her nest among the interwoven branches of her tree. She pressed her back against the trunk, ready to flee or climb, whichever seemed more prudent.
Robin shrugged. “Long enough for us to get away, if we hurry.” He turned in a full circle, shading his eyes from the rippling patterns of light and shadow, then pointed ahead and to their right. “The road is there. Best you lot get on home.”
“What about Hilde?” Nick asked. “If she is here and not in her convent, then she has no home to go to.”
“We can’t take her back to the abbey, or even the village,” Henry said. His eyes remained fixed on the girl.
“You promised to find shelter for me among the Woodwose,” Hilde said, lifting her chin.
In that moment with her dark hair curling across her forehead from beneath her cowl, she looked so much like Dom that Nick had to gasp.
He reminded himself that he’d promised his friend, as well as the little goddess, to help Hilde. Only then did Dom allow Elena to escort his spirit into the light. Nick had watched him depart this world without regret. But only if Nick helped Hilde.
A blink, and then another, and he saw the softer features of Hilde’s face, the same way Dom had looked a year ago when he’d first come to the abbey, before he’d begun to mature with a dark fuzz on his upper lip.
He rubbed his own face, surprised at the thick but soft fuzz forming.
Robin and Nick both looked at Mammoch, who still worked her legs as if running rather than lying on her side.
“You don’t have enough time to take the girl to the village and then get back to the safety of the road. Mammoch is going to be one mighty angry sow when she gets her feet under her, and with Little John asleep in his tree . . .” Robin said.
“Can you escort Hilde to the village?” Nick asked.
Hilde sidled around to the side of her tree, trying to ease away from the handsome archer.
“You can trust him,” Nick said.
Henry was already shifting toward the road. His need to return to the abbey and safety showed in his twitching hands, anxious eyes, and steady progress away from the forest.
“My lady, I vow by my knightly honor to protect you and leave you unharmed.” Robin bowed deeply, right arm across his middle. He still clutched the dripping arrow in his left hand.
Hilde’s gaze darted toward Nick.
“Believe him, Hilde. He is an honorable man and abides by his promises. But you must go quickly.”
Mammoch heaved as she tried to regain her feet.
Still hesitant in step and carefully walking around Mammoch, Hilde separated herself from the tree. “There is a trick Dom used to do with the animals at home,” she said quietly. A hum began in the back of her throat.
Nick’s heartbeat slowed toward normal. Henry paused in his flight. Robin stood straighter and watched the girl with wary eyes as she knelt in front of the pig and grabbed a tusk in each hand, forcing Mammoch to look her in the eye.
The hum grew stronger. The sow’s feet moved more slowly.
“Stay here and rest while you heal,” Hilde chanted. Her humming took on the cadence of a lullaby.
Nick fought to keep his eyes open.
Henry sighed, and his knees bent as if ready to drop to the ground for a nap.
Only Robin remained upright and unaffected by the girl’s tune. Then he shook himself all over, replaced his arrow in its quiver, and unstrung his longbow.
“Come, my lady. We must go.” He turned on his heel, seeking an almost invisible path along an old game trail.
Hilde stood from her crouch, keeping her gaze locked on Mammoch. “Are you certain I can trust him? I was taught . . . Never mind. If you say I should go with him, I will.”
“Go with him. He has promised your safety. I believe him. If he does anything to frighten you, he must answer to the Green Man.”
She raised her eyebrows almost to her hairline. Nick nodded, hoping she’d accept his affirmation. Then she kilted up the long skirts of her robe and followed the archer, who retained his human form.
Nick saw nothing of the gnome beneath his guise.
Because he started his adventure as a human. The gnome is an added enchantment, Elena informed him.
Twenty-Seven
Jane stayed with the now-exiled butterfly faery, renewing the cold water to press against his wounded cheek.
The beautiful man sat on the floor slumped in on himself with his back to the doorway. “This is never going to heal. I will be scarred forever!” he wailed. Tears leaked from his eyes.
“I did not know faeries could cry,” Jane said.
Butterfly man placed one hand against his face, mouth agape in surprise. He pulled his palm away and stared at the moisture trickling down his fingers. “I didn’t think we could either. It is such a . . . a human response.”
Strangely, his youthful appearance did not slip as Mab’s did. Perhaps he wasn’t truly as ancient as the queen. Or had the queen’s innate evil poisoned her appearance?
Or perhaps he was not fully a faery.
Jane looked at the wet towel. It had taken on a yellowish tinge—similar to his skin and clothing color. Did the wound bleed? Another thing she had never seen among her captors. Not a drop of blood ever blemished their skin–—probably because their tears, like their blood, blended so well with their skin. She had pricked her fingers and bled numerous times while mending their clothing. Though she’d not had a single monthly bleed since coming here. Bleeding fingers must mean she was at least partially human still.
Perhaps once she escaped she would revert to what she was before.
And she planned to escape. She just hadn’t figured out how yet.
“Butterfly, do the faeries keep any healing herbs or special cooking ingredients?” Her mind ran through her knowledge of common plants that both flavored food and helped the body heal.
“Why would we do that? We never ail, and our magic turns whatever our minions gather into whatever tastes we want to eat at that moment.”
“I have eaten meals that look like filling porridge and stews with bits of chicken . . .”
“Illusions, my child. We survive on illusions.”
“Then why can’t you cast an illusion over that gouge so no one sees the scar?”
“Because the wound was inflicted by our queen. Her spells are not subject to illusion.”
“Meaning all of your people can see through the illusion.”
He looked confused. “She gave it to me. It must remain.”
“I can make it hurt less if I can gather some willow bark.”
“That is forbidden! If the queen gave me pain, I must endure it. Otherwise, I diminish her authority over me and all the others!” He fluttered his wings and rose to his feet.
“But . . .”
Butterfly flew upward and then dashed toward the door and slumped back onto the floor.
“Why do you r
emain here with me, the lowly slave, when you could mingle with your friends?”
“Queen Mab has exiled me. Never again—until she changes her mind—will I be able to enter the same room as my sovereign. I have no friends. Never again will I be allowed to join my fellows in the great hall. No more will I laugh at the unchanging jokes and games that fill endless hours of idleness.”
Unchanging.
Jane pressed her back against the wall of this small chamber and sank to the floor. Sitting with her legs crossed, she stared into the distance of her mind, thinking about how to upset the routine in order to force change.
* * *
Brother Theo looked up at the afternoon sky through the wide windows of the scriptorium. “Another hour of good light through the windows,” he said, turning back to his own desk and bending his head to copy a faded and worn scroll.
Nick suppressed a sigh, taking a moment to raise his arms and arch his back. He welcomed the warmer weather of the season. At the same time he was forced to spend longer hours hunched over his station applying decorative designs to initial letters of the manuscripts.
He loosed a long breath as he stretched. Brother Theo looked up sharply and frowned. “Discipline, young Nicholas. You must learn to discipline your body,” he intoned.
With a last fleeting glance at the sun shining down on the gardens, he returned to his work.
He’d been home a day. One day and already he longed for another adventure. He’d heard nothing from Father Tuck or any of the Wild Folk. The familiar routine of the abbey absorbed him easily, almost as if he’d not faced Mammoch, a pit trap, and a rogue tree trying to swallow him.
But thoughts of Mammoch made him think about Hilde. He’d promised his friend that he’d ensure her well-being.
Tightness in his belly told him something important awaited him. He needed to be ready. Tonight after supper, while it was still light enough to travel, he’d sneak out and find her.
The next manuscript he needed to illuminate with curls and swirls that dissolved into leafy vistas looked empty, plain, boring. He needed to add something. Something that might tell him what was coming.
Another scowl from Brother Theo made him jerk his quill away from the drawing before he connected lines to show Mammoch, Goddess of the Hunted, prowling through the greenery, and Hilde hiding in a giant oak.
“We will recite a funeral mass for Brother Luke tonight,” Brother Theo said. “I can see by the shape of some of those plants in your drawings that you miss your time compiling his knowledge of healing herbs. Perhaps when you have properly mourned his passing, you can move onto other things without his plants intruding into everything you do.”
“Brother Luke has only been gone a day. He might . . .” Though Nick knew the elderly monk had died and been buried in the forest, he needed to pretend he hadn’t found him.
“I have heard from a reliable source that Brother Luke has passed. Considering how weak and ill he was, I am not surprised. Brother Luke ranged far and often as a younger man. I thought he’d found peace and grown beyond his restlessness here in the abbey. I can only presume that in death he succumbed to the never-ending urge to be elsewhere, never satisfied with any one place.”
Father Tuck must be the reliable source.
Nick swallowed a smile. Not everyone was ignorant of the abbot’s hiding place.
“Knowing how frail and weak he was, I guess I have to accept that Brother Luke is truly dead, then. A single night alone in the wild is a long time for one in his condition,” Nick replied. The image of Mammoch still tugged at his quill. He needed to draw her and her chosen prey to give her reality. He stared out the window at the stone walls that confined him, protected him, limited him.
Any image of the giant wild sow also brought thoughts of Hilde. He needed to know how she fared in the village with the Woodwose. He needed to see her again, to know that she was happy away from the security of her convent.
“Go work in Brother Luke’s garden for a time. I can see that you are useless here until you cure yourself of mourning him. Consider that, in keeping his plants thriving, you honor his memory.” Brother Theo removed the quill from Nick’s clutch and dusted the wet ink on the parchment with sand.
“Thank you, Brother.” Nick stood and bowed his head, folding his hands into his wide sleeves.
He walked sedately toward the infirmary and the adjacent garden, as any proper monk would. As soon as he was free of observation, he lengthened his stride and aimed for the apple tree overhanging the wall.
If he ran all the way to the village and back, he’d return in time for Sext near sundown.
* * *
“You don’t have a well,” Hilde said looking at the brace of leather buckets connected by a wooden yoke. If she listened closely, she could hear the nearest creek chuckling along its bed two hundred paces toward the sunset.
“We rarely stay in one place long enough to dig a well. And if we did, it would betray our presence to the sheriff,” replied the old man. Tuck. Robin, the courtly archer, had introduced him when she first arrived.
Something about his kindly manner prompted her to trust him. He made her feel welcome. Too many of the Woodwose watched her as closely as Sister Marie Josef, as if they waited for her to trespass so they could reject her, forbid her the refuge of the village.
“Carry the buckets, and I’ll show you a safe place to collect water,” Tuck said, pointing at the contraption. He slung another brace of buckets across his own scrawny shoulders. He looked far too ancient and frail to carry heavy water as far as he must.
Hilde shrugged. Why had she expected a life of ease, only working when she felt like it? Life here was little different than at the convent. Here, however, she had no walls. She could walk away whenever she liked. If she had a place to go.
She did not have Sister Marie Josef’s hate and need to punish the world instead of herself.
When she thought about it, the Woodwose were merely suspicious as they would be of any stranger. She hadn’t earned their trust yet. Helping Tuck carry water would help her build that fragile acceptance.
“We all work so that we may all enjoy the fruits of our labors,” Tuck said, watching her shoulder the yoke.
“You sound like Sister Mary Margaret,” she said quietly.
He heard her anyway. “Why, thank you. I admire the good sister for her gentleness and her piety. She manages the convent admirably in the Mother Abbess’ absence.”
“You know the sisters?” Intrigued, Hilde followed him along the faint trail, matching his spritely pace.
“I have dealt with them many times.” He bit the insides of his cheeks as if he was trying to suppress laughter.
“Sister Marie Josef doesn’t deal with men. I think she hates all men.”
“Yes. The sister has enough anger for a dozen women.”
“Yes,” Hilde agreed.
“I suspect you were on the receiving end of her disciplinary rod.”
“Yes.” Hilde squirmed under the cumbersome yoke. She didn’t want to talk about her time at the convent. She’d been unhappy there since the day her mother announced that Hilde and her twin must separate and trust the Church to take care of them henceforth.
She and Dom had not been separated since birth, within minutes of each other according to village lore.
And now Dom had died.
Would he still be alive if they’d run away to the forest together without having to endure separate lives for over a year?
“This is what we use as a well,” Tuck said, pointing to a half circular inlet in the stream.
Hilde could see the depth of the quiet water by the ripples of tiny fish hiding in the shadows of overhanging ferns.
Tuck gestured for her to fill her buckets first. She laid each one on its side as far out in the stream as she could safely reach. She drew them back, spilling on
ly a little water on the hem of her robe. Sister Marie Josef would have slapped her cane across Hilde’s shoulders for sloppiness.
Tuck tugged off his soft boots and waded into the creek, sighing in relief as the water soothed his feet.
Hilde stared at him, amazed.
“This is the forest, child. Here we live wild. Strict rules and regulations don’t work out here.” From the center of the inlet, with water lapping at his knees, Tuck filled his own buckets and sloshed up to the bank. He looked askance at his boots discarded nearby. “I’ll come back for them.” He led the way back to the forest, barefoot and whistling a spritely tune Hilde remembered from youthful village fetes.
She found herself singing along, the first true song that had crossed her lips since she entered the convent. Sister Marie Josef did not approve of singing, even the plainsong of a Mass, and especially the tuneless humming Hilde could use to calm animals. That kind of music came too close to magic for the sister’s taste.
Hilde was convinced that Sister Marie Josef had willed the lock on the postern gate into invisibility without knowing she used magic herself. What depths of depravity would that knowledge drive her to?
Back in the village, Tuck accepted the help of one of the strong young men who lifted the yoke off of the old man’s shoulders. Tuck sighed in relief and rotated his joints.
Hilde put her own buckets on the ground beside Tuck’s without help. But then she wasn’t anywhere near as old or frail as the man with the same green eyes as Nick.
As she ducked out from under the yoke, a series of bird calls circled the village. The women working around the cauldron suspended over the central fire paused and looked up. Then, without seeming to move, they drifted silently away.
“Hoi! It’s me. Nick.” His voice announced him before he was visible from the compound.
How had the villagers known that someone came?
A sharp whistle followed Nick into the center of the circle of huts. A lookout, of course. She hadn’t seen anyone, but she didn’t know the villagers well enough to know who was missing or how far they ranged in the endless quest for food.
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