Huntress

by Malinda Lo

  “All right.”

  The bow, made of a springy, yellowish-brown wood, was as tall as she was. Pol took off his shooting glove—an odd, three-fingered leather glove with a bulging, padded thumb—and showed her how to strap it onto her right hand. The first time she tried to pull back on the string, she could feel the muscles of her neck and shoulder straining at the effort. The arrow she had nocked slipped and fell, flailing like a downed bird, to the ground at her feet. It was not, she realized quickly, like throwing a knife. Pol seemed amused by her attempt, but said kindly, “My father gave me my first bow when I was a boy of six. It’ll take some time before you get the hang of it.”

  He corrected her stance and told her to breathe in as she raised the bow; to press that breath down within herself as she stretched the string; to allow the arrow and her breath to loosen simultaneously. But the more she tried, the less she succeeded, and she began to sweat from the effort.

  “You are too willful,” Pol said, observing her latest failed attempt. She reminded him of a young bird flapping her wings, unable to gain the lift needed to take off.

  “What do you mean?” Kaede’s arm and shoulder ached, and the bowstring had snapped loudly and painfully against her left forearm enough times that she was sure it would leave a red welt there.

  “If you think about it too closely, you will choke the energy of the arrow. Your body—and your thoughts—are getting in the way. Try to let go of your thoughts when you shoot. You do not have to force the arrow to fly; it wants to fly.”

  His words reminded Kaede of her teachers’ instructions at the Academy, but hearing them applied to archery was like hearing those lessons in a different language—one that was maddeningly familiar but as elusive as a slippery fish.

  Pol saw the growing frustration on her face, and he took the bow from her and showed her, again, the smooth rhythm of the draw, the arrow in flight, his hand in the air. “Stand like this,” he told her, spreading his feet wider. “Put your hand here.” He moved her left hand down on the grip.

  Bit by bit, the bow began to seem less foreign to her, though she knew she was far from being as skilled as Pol was. By the time Tali came out to the stable yard to fetch their breakfast supplies, Kaede was sweating and famished, her right shoulder aching, and still the arrow had not struck the target.

  Pol said, “We’ll practice every morning—how about that?” He seemed excited by the prospect.

  “Delightful,” she said, smiling weakly, and he laughed at her. But she handed the bow back to him with some reluctance.

  Before she left the stable yard, she couldn’t resist unsheathing her dagger and tossing it at the tree, just to remind herself that she wasn’t completely inept. It flew out of her hand so easily—she didn’t have to think about it—and struck the tree with a solid thunk. She flexed her fingers thoughtfully. Her hand knew what it was doing. Perhaps it was her body that needed to learn this new language, not her mind.

  She went to retrieve the dagger from the scarred tree trunk and went inside for breakfast.

  Chapter X

  Two days after they left Cathair, the road curved east as it followed the bend in the river Nir. In better times, fishing vessels trawled the river, but now there was little to catch, and what could be caught was better left uneaten. Word had spread through the roadside hostels of a fisherman who had brought in a giant carp—a rarity in any season, but especially abnormal now—only to discover that the fish’s belly housed hundreds of tiny stinging eels.

  There were other rumors, too. One traveler, a thin man with a nervous black horse, told them he had seen a strange creature lurking behind one of the riverside taverns: half woman, half animal, with a fox’s red-gold tail and sharp teeth. A young man had been found dead nearby, his body bruised and bitten.

  “All of this trouble comes from upriver,” the thin man said, jerking his thumb toward the Nir. He ran his eyes over the group of travelers and their gear—their wagon still full of supplies, the fine workmanship on their horses’ saddles—and suspicion flickered over his face. He glanced at the burly, gray-haired man, who was clearly their leader, and asked, “Where are you headed?”

  “To Jilin,” Tali answered, his tone not inviting further questions. Jilin was at the southwestern edge of the Great Wood, where the Nir originated.

  The thin man eyed the group’s wagon; the wheels were especially well made. There weren’t many travelers heading north, and even fewer who were so well outfitted. But a kind of unspoken camaraderie had developed among travelers on the King’s Highway in the last two years, for dark times gave cover to dark deeds, and it was better to pass on one’s news without learning too much about anyone else. So the thin man said only, “I’ve heard that something’s not quite right at Ento. I haven’t been there recently, but as you’re headed in that direction, you might ask about it.”

  Tali said, “We will.”

  Two nights later, they lodged in a tiny village perched on the banks of the Nir, and Ento was the only subject of conversation in the village’s lone tavern. Crowded with out-of-work fishermen, the dark, low-ceilinged room smelled of river water and spirits. The locals had glanced at the six travelers when they first entered, but made no effort to lower their voices to keep their gossip private.

  “A man came through the other day,” a fisherman was saying. “He told me people are deserting the place as quick as they can.”

  Built on an old crossroads, Ento had once been home to a major marketplace. But now there was little to sell, and the town had fallen on hard times.

  “That family who was here last week said the same thing,” said another man.

  “I hope whatever’s happened in Ento doesn’t move south to us.”

  “Not likely to be so lucky,” said one man bitterly. “Wind blows south from the Great Wood—we’re right in the line of it.”

  Tali turned in his seat and said casually, “We’re headed in that direction. What happened?”

  Taisin kept her eyes down, but she was curious, too. The more they heard about Ento, the more she was convinced there was something there that she should see. Her instincts were tugging on her in a way she had never experienced before. She turned slightly toward Tali, hoping he would ask the right questions. Earlier in the day, he had told them he would find out as much as he could about what was going on in Ento, and Taisin twitched with impatience.

  The fishermen all swiveled around to stare at Tali, and one of them—a man with a long, scraggly gray beard—said, “You’d be better off avoiding that place.”

  “Why?”

  The fishermen looked at one another uneasily before one of them spoke, his missing front tooth flashing like a dark eye. “It was little things at first—goats gone dry, wells turning bad.”

  “Same things have been happening all over the Kingdom,” said the gray-bearded man.

  “That was bad enough, but now folks are saying that the Xi are taking our children,” said the man with the missing tooth. His voice was harsh and loud, and the common room fell silent.

  Taisin glanced up in surprise; she had never heard of the Xi having much interest in human children before. Across the table, Tali just barely shook his head at her, and she swallowed her question.

  “It’s only one child, and no one knows if it’s true,” objected a man from across the room.

  “Has a child been taken or not?” Tali asked bluntly.

  The man with the missing tooth scowled. “The mother says it’s still her babe, but the father came through here just yesterday. Looked as though he’d lost everything. He said the child is a monster, and his wife has gone mad.”

  “It’s dark magic,” said the graybeard. “If you can avoid Ento, you should. Take an alternate route.”

  The room erupted with men arguing whether the town was safe to travel through. “Thank you for the information,” Tali said, his voice nearly drowned by the din.

  Taisin tried to focus on her meal, but the fisherman’s words rang in her
mind. What kind of dark magic? Her pulse raced. She wanted to know.

  The rumors came more quickly as they approached Ento. The child was one of the Xi, cursed to inhabit the body of a human to atone for a crime; the child was the reincarnation of a legendary sorcerer; the child was a demon who had eaten the human child. After hearing the tale of the demon, Tali suggested, “Perhaps we should bypass Ento altogether.” They were in the stable yard of another inn in another fishing village, unpacking their gear for the night.

  “It will lengthen our journey by several days,” Pol said.

  Taisin, who had just finished feeding the horses, came around the corner of the wagon. “I think…” She hesitated as they all turned to look at her. She took a breath and said: “I think we should continue the way we planned. The rumors are… they’re just rumors.”

  “They’re rumors, yes,” Con said, “but, Taisin, I traveled north with Tali last fall, before the worst of the winter storms. The things we saw there were—well, they make me inclined to believe these rumors.”

  “Nobody seems to have been hurt by this child,” she said with studied nonchalance.

  “That’s true,” Tali agreed.

  “Then we might as well travel through Ento,” Taisin said. “It will be inconvenient to avoid it, and there is no guaranteed benefit.” She saw Kaede watching her with interest. She could tell that Kaede wondered why she was so adamant about this, for she had never indicated her opinion on their route before. She still couldn’t explain it; she only knew that she needed to see this creature, whatever it was. She lowered her eyes, trying to hide her excitement. Tali would be suspicious if she appeared too eager.

  Shae said: “She has a point, Tali. And we’ll only be there one night.”

  He relented. “All right. Ento it is.”

  A little over two weeks into the journey, the rhythms of travel had settled into Kaede’s body. She woke early, met Pol in a stable yard or at an empty patch of dirt near their hostel, raised the bow, and loosed arrows until breakfast. Her arms and shoulders grew stronger, but still she could not strike the target. They rode all day, stopping only for a noon meal at the side of the road, eaten cold. She came to know her horse, Maila, who was both sweet-tempered and energetic. She grew accustomed to falling asleep with the sound of others breathing nearby, and at times she wondered how she had ever lived another way. She thought of her small chamber in that great stony Academy, and her parents’ luxurious Cathair home, where she had entire assortments of rooms to herself, but she did not miss them. She realized that she loved the road: Every day was new and unexplored.

  Kaede especially enjoyed talking to Shae, who told stories about her training as a guard; about learning to fight and to ride with a sword. Her life was so different from Kaede’s years at the Academy that she was always eager to hear more. She began to wonder if she could join the King’s Guard when she returned from this journey. Then she would never have to face the dreary politics of court life; she could be on a horse all day, going to places she had never been before.

  Shae always included Taisin when she told her tales, even if Taisin was pretending to study, as she often did. It was noticing Shae’s kindness that caused Kaede to gradually become aware that Taisin watched her, often, with hooded eyes. She would look away as soon as Kaede glanced at her, so initially Kaede wondered if she were imagining things. But as the days passed, she began to watch Taisin, too. Her classmate was quiet, reserved; she spoke when spoken to, but rarely entered into any conversations on her own. Con tried to draw her out by joking with her, and sometimes Taisin seemed to appreciate it, but she quickly retreated back into a state that seemed to hover between anxiety and frustration. Once, when Kaede caught Taisin looking at her, she had the odd impression that Taisin thought of her as a problem to solve, but she did not know how to do it.

  The day they were due to reach Ento, Kaede spent nearly the whole afternoon puzzling over the enigma of her classmate. She had just resolved to speak to Taisin about it directly when they caught sight of the town gates in the distance. They hung open as though abandoned, and as they approached they saw there was no one in the gatehouse.

  “You’re sure you want to stay here tonight?” Pol said from his perch on the wagon seat.

  Tali said: “We’ll just sleep here and make an early start in the morning. Let’s go.”

  They were the only guests at the hostel that night, which meant that, for once, there were enough vacant rooms for each of them to sleep alone. After supper, Tali, Con, Pol, and Shae went upstairs, but Kaede lingered behind in the common room waiting for Taisin, who had taken their empty bowls to the innkeeper in the kitchen. When Taisin returned several minutes later, she was startled to see Kaede still there.

  “I thought you went upstairs,” Taisin said, picking up her cloak from where she had left it, slung over a chair.

  “I wanted to talk to you.” Kaede stood up, but hesitated. What should she say? All her words seemed to flee from her; she felt awkward.

  Taisin suddenly looked nervous. “Now? Now is not—I can’t talk now.”

  “Why?” Kaede eyed Taisin’s cloak. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to see the child.”

  A chill rushed through her as Kaede realized which child Taisin meant. “The child—the one they say is a monster?”

  Taisin began to move toward the door, pulling the cloak over her shoulders. “The innkeeper told me where the mother lives.”

  “You’re going now?”

  “Yes.”

  Fear prickled across Kaede’s skin. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Tali wouldn’t like it.”

  Taisin stopped and looked back at Kaede. “I haven’t yet seen any of these strange creatures that people keep telling us about. Don’t you want to see what we’re dealing with?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what we’re dealing with’? Why are you so eager to go?”

  “It’s all related,” Taisin insisted. “The weather. The rumors we’ve been hearing about these… creatures. The Fairy Queen’s invitation.”

  Kaede remembered Maire Morighan’s theory that these disparate events were all connected, but Taisin spoke with an assurance that was surprising. “How do you know?” Kaede asked.

  “I can feel it. Every day on the road—I feel something pulling me. I don’t know what it is, but I have to find out. I know it’s important.”

  Kaede was doubtful. “I don’t think you should go alone. Let me get Tali, or Pol—”

  “They won’t let me go,” Taisin objected. “They barely even agreed to stay in Ento for one night. They certainly won’t let me go look for the child. You can’t tell them.”

  “But—”

  “I have to go. Now.” Taisin’s hand was on the doorknob as she added, “Do you want to come with me?”

  Kaede glanced at the empty stairs uneasily. She knew she should tell the others, but Taisin was right. Tali would never allow her—or Kaede—to go, and Taisin’s urgency had sparked Kaede’s own curiosity. She wanted an adventure. Perhaps now was the time to get it.

  Just as Taisin was pulling the door open Kaede said, “Wait. All right. I’m coming with you.” She ran back to grab her own cloak from where she had left it at the table, and pulled it on as they left the hostel.

  Chapter XI

  They took the lantern hanging at the entrance to the hostel courtyard, and it shed a small pool of light as they went down the road. “The innkeeper told me that she lives in a house on the edge of town,” Taisin said, but beneath her briskness was a note of trepidation.

  The buildings they passed on either side were dark, and some of their courtyard gates were wide open. There would be nothing inside to tempt any thieves; Ento had been deserted as if it were the host of a plague. At the end of the paved road they turned left down a rutted dirt lane; only the last house seemed to be occupied. A dim glow emanated from a curtained window, and from within they heard a baby crying.

  Taisin strode up to the front d
oor and raised her hand to knock, her knuckles ringing on the wood. The door was pulled open by a woman with haunted eyes and thin, oily black hair. “What do you want?” she asked defensively.

  “May I see your child?” Taisin asked.

  The woman’s eyes flicked back to Kaede, who was standing behind Taisin. “Who are you?”

  “I may be able to help,” Taisin said. “Please, let me see your child.”

  “I won’t let you take him away from me,” the woman warned her.

  “We are not here to take him,” Taisin reassured her.

  “What can you do? You’re only a girl.”

  For a moment Taisin wavered. What exactly was she planning to do, anyway? The baby cried again, and the sound of it jerked at her gut. She forced down her self-doubt and said: “I am training to be a sage. Please—I’ve come a long way, and I want to help you.”

  The woman eyed the two girls on her doorstep. They were both young and obviously inexperienced. The girl who had spoken was so eager to prove herself, while her silent companion seemed reluctant to be there at all. These days, the woman was suspicious of almost everyone who came to her door, but these two girls, with their artless faces, made her feel hopeful for the first time in weeks. Perhaps this girl really was a sage in training, but even if she was lying, what harm could a couple of girls do? She stepped back and allowed them to come inside.

  The house, consisting of one room, was small but clean. A fire burned on the stone hearth, and nearby was a rocking chair and a cradle. There was a platform bed against the far wall, its blankets mussed as though someone had slept there recently. A little shrine was built into the corner; Taisin saw the scroll listing ancestors’ names, a spray of dried flowers, a small pot of incense. It did not look like the house of a madwoman.

  “When was your baby born?” Taisin asked.