“Friend or foe?” McKenna asked.
“Changes as often as the weather,” an impossibly familiar voice called out, seeming to originate from inside the horse’s body. The darkness thickened and in it there was a shifting and cracking of bone, and when the veil lifted again, McKenna’s skin went cold.
The bard—Taliesin, his name had been—strode into her light, his eyes the same vibrant gold as the horse’s, his tunic fine and velvety black, and his face as handsome as ever. She could not help but notice the horse ears poking out from under his fine cap, and how his belt seemed to be made of horsehair. He clicked his teeth and smiled. “But on a night like this, alone with a pretty girl? Let’s say friend.”
An ash tree fell in two under the giant’s razor-sharp finger. Tiwa swung from a low branch and flew under the beast’s dipped shoulder, then pivoted above its lunging body already chipped and cracked from a dozen wounds.
Tiwa was battered, certainly, and he guessed his right eye would be swollen shut soon and probably his left ankle wouldn’t want to support his weight for a while, but these concerns were small compared to the thrill in his heart as he landed behind the beast and skidded through the mud, sunlight spear whipping into position like a raptor’s open talon.
He watched the giant realize its mistake, groan and start to turn, but it was too late: Tiwa pivoted his hip, pushed his shoulder forward and drove Summer through the back of the thing’s elbow and out through the palm of its left hand.
It coughed, once, a tremendous rumbling wetness, and fell to the earth with an impact that shook the branches.
Tiwa tried to catch his breath. His cheeks hurt, and only after he touched them with shaking hands did he realize he was smiling. He yanked Summer free, flicked foul-smelling blood away into the darkness, and, wincing with every other step, limped after McKenna.
“Hold, child,” a wheezing, earth-deep voice called, so like Tiwa’s grandmother that he couldn’t help flinching.
Tiwa turned to find the giant lying on its side, its single good eye dimming as more and more reeking blood pooled around it. His gut screamed to put the creature down for good, but his heart told him that if it was capable of speech then, being helpless, it probably deserved certain honors.
What those were, he couldn’t say, but he imagined that last words were probably important. He made a show of leaning against Summer and motioned for the creature to continue, and to his surprise it actually laughed.
“My heart,” the creature muttered. It lifted its mangled left hand. “My heart...how did you...?”
“The one in your palm?” Tiwa said. “Every child has heard of you, Spearfinger.”
“As you say,” the giant said. “Still. You have...proven yourself...a worthy warrior,” it rumbled. “And...honorable enough at least...to hear me out. I keep...medicine...in my home. Not...too...far. Retrieve it...and I can...grant you any boon...in my power.”
“What kind of boon?” Tiwa said.
“Medicine to...make you...stronger. Faster. Larger. Medicine to...change your shape.”
Tiwa’s eyes widened.
“Change my shape how, wretched creature?”
The stone woman’s eye flared and it smiled weakly.
“I have...seen...your heart...boy. I know...what you...want. I can...make you...a man.”
Farther down the trail, the bard Taliesin stroked McKenna’s hair as he led her to a rusted bench in the shallow darkness by the trail. McKenna leaned into the touch and sniffled, fear and confusion and heartbreak mingling on her young face.
“You are not Taliesin,” she said as she sat. He looked down at her and smiled. She felt her cheeks flush despite her fear, despair and exhaustion. “You are a púca. A shapeshifter.”
“What’s the difference?” Taliesin said. He knelt before her and took her right hand in both of his.
McKenna’s heart remembered those calluses and the smell of resin, pine and a hint of road dust on his clothes. Tears flowed more freely than ever as she sat helpless, caught between the urge to run and the urge to leap into his arms.
“Perhaps I kept my ears tied back,” Taliesin said. “Did you check?”
Had she checked? She couldn’t remember, and she was so tired, and her thoughts felt slow like fingers in winter. Her shoulders sagged, her breathing slowed and her pupils dilated in the soft light. Taliesin’s smile widened at this.
“Where were you?” McKenna said. She hung her head to hide behind her hair.
Taliesin wiped a tear from her cheek and stroked the nape of her neck.
“Everything got so bad,” she said. “My voice dropped and now the other girls avoid me, and they sent me into the woods to die, and after you left, my family—”
Taliesin placed a finger over her lips, shushed her, and winked.
“I was out searching, beautiful.”
“Searching for what?” McKenna said, her head so full of grief she sounded as if she had a cold.
“For a way to fix you,” he said.
Her eyes went wide and the tears nearly stopped.
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case the search was fruitless, and I couldn’t stand to see your face when I told you I was leaving.”
“Fix me?” McKenna said.
“Make you a woman,” he said. “In flesh as well as spirit.”
“Is that possible?”
“Only a matter of technique,” Taliesin said. He rolled back onto his heels and unslung a black guitar from his shoulder. “With the right song, the right rhyme? Even human bards can change the winds of fate or curse a king’s skin with boils. Honestly, when I found the trick to it, I felt a fool for not already knowing.”
McKenna’s tears were dry now, and her eyes distant. She sniffled and giggled, there in the dark on the cusp of winter.
“I prayed you’d come back,” she whispered. “I was so sad, but I never gave up. Never. And now you’re here, and...is it true? Your song can really...?”
He nodded.
“So I...won’t grow a beard? And I can have a baby of my own someday?”
“With me, if you’d like.”
Taliesin favored her with a rakish grin. Her cheeks darkened and her gaze darted away.
“There’s only one problem,” he said. “The magic won’t work here, but there’s a standing stone a ways south that should do the trick. We’ll need to leave now if we wish to get there before the season ends.”
“But...” She shook her head and swayed like a drunk, her eyes momentarily coming into focus. “But Tiwa is back there, fighting for his life.”
“Against the giant I saw when I caught up to you? Dearest, he’s already dead, and if we don’t leave soon, we will be too.”
“If he’s dead, he needs a burial,” McKenna muttered.
“Does he?” Taliesin said, his tone incredulous. “This is the same Tiwa you told me of, yes? The ‘dreadful little monster’?”
“Well, yes, but...” Had she told Taliesin about him? It was hard to think, but she remembered he’d done most of the talking, and she hadn’t wanted to make a fuss about herself. “I have responsibilities to the village. I can’t just leave.”
“Right, the curse,” Taliesin said. He scratched his chin and shrugged. “Have they earned a sacrifice like this from you though?”
“I. Well. I think. I mean. Brandan said it’s possible that I won’t die. So...but...” The fog returned to her eyes. She glanced down the trail and sucked her lip, distantly remembering the teasing, and the alienation, and the beatings. Her slack expression hardened. “No. I suppose not.”
“The answer seems obvious then.”
Tiwa heard distant voices and limped faster, bracing himself on Summer’s haft. A few steps farther and one of the voices resolved into McKenna’s, so he gritted his teeth and hustled with Summer raised, only to halt when he
rounded a bend and saw her talking with a man dressed all in black.
Tiwa thought about calling out, but then the man’s face tilted in his direction and he saw the otherworldly golden flash of his eyes. Tiwa hid behind the low branches of a yew tree, concealing Summer’s glow in his cloak and testing his injuries with his fingers.
His breath froze as the light from McKenna’s torch caught a black guitar Tiwa remembered from the previous summer—so not a stranger at all then, though certainly strange enough. Tiwa ground his teeth as he wrapped shaking hands around Summer and twisted as if strangling an imagined foe.
“Come on, love,” Taliesin said. He took McKenna’s hand and she rose slowly, almost as if she were in a dream. “I swear to you, you’re going to be the most beautiful woman this side of the mountains.”
“I’m so glad,” McKenna said.
“Wait!” Tiwa said. He limped out from behind his tree and brandished Summer’s full brilliance, bathing the path in summer light.
Taliesin’s eyes flared and his expression shifted to an almost animal fury as he moved McKenna behind him. She craned her neck and gasped to see Tiwa, clothes torn, face bruised, hair matted with blood, and yet with his shoulders wide and feet planted apart like a proper warrior. Tiwa spun Summer and took a purposeful step forward, his good eye twitching at the pain in his ankle.
“Tiwa!” McKenna said. The light caught in her eyes and they went wide. “You’re alive? And the spear...!”
“Tell him no,” Tiwa said.
“What?”
“Leave, boy,” Taliesin said, and behind his words was a braying as of a furious animal.
“Or what?” Tiwa said. He took another step forward. McKenna tried to run to him, but Taliesin held an arm out. Tiwa growled. “You’ll kill me? Friend, I just sent an eight-foot tall stone woman with a sword for a hand back to her maker. What can you do? I’ll warn you, I don’t like music, and I’m not in the habit of letting old perverts sweep me off my feet.”
“I wield powers you can’t imagine,” Taliesin said. His mask of fury twisted into a smile. “The girl’s affection among them. Come, McKenna. We’re leaving.”
McKenna looked from Taliesin to Tiwa, her breath speeding up again.
“Tell him no,” Tiwa said. Another step. Taliesin narrowed his eyes. McKenna bit her thumbnail.
“He said he can make me how I’m supposed to be,” McKenna said. “And...and maybe if you put your weapon away, Taliesin will—”
“The spearfinger offered the same thing,” Tiwa said. Another step, and he was almost close enough to throw Summer. He spit into the mud. “I put out her eye with my spear. We are the way we’re supposed to be.”
“Idiot,” Taliesin sneered. “You could have had everything you ever wanted.”
“A body doesn’t make a man!” Tiwa bellowed, and Summer shined brighter. “Choices make a man. Whatever shape I might take, if I run from this challenge, I am no man worth the name.” He let out a long breath, eyes closing against the pain in his ribs. Summer fell at his side and he held out his empty hands, his face hard yet pleading. “McKenna, don’t you see? We already are what we’re supposed to be in the way that matters. Is a woman her body, or is she her heart? If you run now, I promise you one day you will look back on our frozen home and hate yourself.”
“Tiwa...”
“Come with me when this is over,” Tiwa said. Two steps now. His shaking hands belied the steel in his voice. “When we live, because we will. We can find a new home. We can get to know one another properly. And...and if one day you decide I deserve you, I would be happy to call you my wife, no matter your shape. You probably want a baby as much as I dread the thought, but there are enough forsaken children who might need us that we could—”
The word wife hit McKenna as if she’d fallen into a warm bath on a frigid day. She blinked and swore under her breath. Then Tiwa brought up children and McKenna shook herself awake. She wrenched her arm free from Taliesin’s grip and leapt aside before he could grab her again, then ran into Tiwa’s arms.
There was a sound of hoofbeats, and when they turned their attention back to the path, they found Taliesin gone. Tiwa retrieved Summer, its glow now dimmed, and despite the wounds to his body and McKenna’s heart, they clasped hands and resumed their journey.
“Was that really him?” Tiwa said.
McKenna shrugged and cast a last, anxious gaze in the direction she thought he might have gone.
“What was he?”
“A púca,” she said. “A faerie who likes to take on the shapes of animals and cause mischief.”
“So...not terribly dangerous, then?”
She cast him a withering look.
“In the physical sense, I mean?” He made a show of limping and wiped blood from his forehead. “Because if he finds his courage and a weapon deadlier than a guitar, I’m not really in any shape to fight him off.”
“We should be fine,” McKenna said in a low voice, “so long as we don’t sleep.”
They grew quiet as the forest closed in around them. Occasionally one would open their mouth or take a breath as if to speak, but the other’s gaze would shift to them and they would wilt. The night wore on. Miles passed beneath their feet. The air grew chill, and a mist thick as milk rolled in through the trees, until all they could be sure of was the next step and the other’s fingers laced in their own.
A wild dog howled somewhere, the sound lonely and soft in the muffled air. Time slipped into a blur and worry troubled their faces as their walk seemed to stretch forever.
Then the path widened into a clearing. The mist lifted and the moon shone its silver light, slowly unveiling the crumbling metal and glass walls of a building they had heard of only in stories.
A vine-choked sign near the entrance named the place in the old dialect, though even if they’d known how to read the words neither child would have understood what a “university center” was. To them it was simply the secluded temple, the place of sacrifice, and they felt the footprints of their forebears as they took their first steps toward it.
They approached with the slow caution of lowborn petitioners to a royal court, shoulders tense and hoods pulled forward. Cracked glass doors slid open when they neared, and moonlight poured into the great, white tiled hall through fissures in the ceiling, somehow even brighter than outside.
Two thrones stood at the end of the hall, pristine and shining silver despite their surroundings. The crest of the right throne bore the likeness of a man in golden filament, while the crest of the left bore a woman in silver. The king and queen stared at the thrones for a long moment, their heartbeats nearly audible.
“Where are the two from last time?” Tiwa said. A bird alighted from some distant corner and both of them flinched. “Even if animals made off with their bones there should be stains or something.”
McKenna frowned and shrugged. All that sat on either throne was a slim diadem.
“Perhaps the gods took them,” McKenna said eventually. She pulled her cloak tight and stood up straight, chin high. “But...suppose nothing happened and they ran off?”
“No,” Tiwa said. He squeezed her hand and smiled ruefully. “In all the long years one of them would have come back to the village or at least been spotted nearby. I doubt we’ll be so lucky. Though...” He pulled her gently over the treacherous fallen pipes and support beams of the hall, holding Summer up to light the darker recesses.
“What?”
“Seems odd,” Tiwa said, “that a monster and a spirit should appear together and offer us the same thing.”
McKenna remembered her prayers and glanced at the sky through one of the bigger cracks, then back to the thrones with a thoughtful expression.
“Tiwa?” McKenna said.
“Hmm?” Tiwa shoved a moss-covered stone away and tested the floor with a hop.
“Which t
hrone should I take?”
“The queen’s,” he grunted as he vaulted over an upturned feast table. He turned to help her with an impatient look. “Obviously. In the ways that count most—put your foot there—you’re already a woman and I’m already a man.”
“Yes,” McKenna said as she landed on the other side of the table, “but does the curse know that?”
There was nothing but dirty tile floor between them and the thrones. They paused again to stare.
“Bit of an oversight,” Tiwa said with a laugh.
McKenna’s eyes went wide and she touched her lip.
“What?” Tiwa said. He squeezed her hand tighter than before, until she winced and slapped him away.
“Ow! Oaf.” She rubbed her hand, frowned, and then laughed despite herself. “I just realized why Brandan picked us.” She strode up to the king’s throne and placed her hand on the armrest, its subtle radiance rippling in her eyes. She held out a hand. “Give me Summer.”
“Why?”
“It’s a symbol of office,” she said with a note of impatience. “The king has to hold it.”
Tiwa held the weapon out to her, but when she grasped it, he found he didn’t want to let go. She pulled, once, then gave him a tender look and placed her other hand over his.
“I understand,” she said. “I hate holding it as much as you hate giving it up. Just for a moment, all right? Then you can have it back.”
“If we’re still alive,” Tiwa muttered, though he did let go.
“If we’re still alive,” McKenna agreed.
She blew out a breath, took the diadem in her free hand, and climbed the dais to sit on the king’s throne. Tiwa closed one eye and hunched his shoulders, then relaxed when nothing happened.
“It has to be both of us I think,” McKenna said. Her voice shook like an autumn leaf and her face had gone pale. “And we need to wear the crowns.”
Tiwa mounted the dais and made his way to the queen’s throne, his stomach churning every time his eyes fell on the feminine figure atop it. He sat easily enough, but his hands shook more than exhaustion could explain once he held the diadem.
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