The Winged Hunter

by F. T. McKinstry

  Ironic, that Maetor would annoy her so—a Keeper, no less, who had vowed to serve the forces of balance—when no village suitor, passing sailor or ruffian had ever so much as bid her a fond g’day. It caused her to wonder at the power of pity. Such a lonely thing.

  She walked into a meadow of grasses and wildflowers alive with fluttering, chirruping finches and flycatchers, buzzing bees, and airborne dandelion tufts. In the distance, beyond the shimmering poplars on the far side of the meadow, stood a towering dwelling of moss brown stone with ornate iron castings on the doors and windows. The long, wine-colored pennons of Muin snaked in the wind.

  How dare he cut my roses and plant a—

  “Tansy!” said a male voice.

  Maetor stepped from the trees in front of her. He had fine, sharp features like those of a greyhound and straight blond hair that hung in lazy wisps around his cheeks. He wore a burgundy cloak with a silver pin at his throat in the shape of an eagle. His brown eyes danced as he lifted the other half of her rose bush in his gloved hand, as if to offer it to her.

  “My name is Tansel,” she said coldly. “Not Tansy. You have trespassed in my garden.”

  He leaned casually against a tree. “I wanted a token,” he pouted, studying the roses in his hand. “You will not see me, so I need something to remind me of you.”

  “You put tansy in my garden,” she accused.

  His brow creased in reproach. “That, I did not. I hardly know the plant.”

  Tansel brushed past him and headed for the hall.

  “He’s not there,” Maetor informed her. “He left me in charge, in his absence.”

  She slowed and spun around. “You lie.”

  “I swear on the Raven’s name, I do not.”

  Tansel’s heart sank. No one knew the old wizard of Muin’s name; to swear on it was binding.

  “Come, Tansy,” Maetor soothed. “Give me a chance. By the river, tomorrow. Have tea with me.”

  She looked at him as she might a big, busy hornworm on a tomato plant. “In your visions. Stay out of my garden.” She moved close enough to snatch the roses from his hand. A thorn caught on his glove and snagged it. Tansel kept walking.

  As she entered the cool, dark silence of the forest, she heard the wizard utter something in an arcane tongue that sounded like the rustling of a bush when an animal moves through it.

  *

  An overcast dusk filled the forest when Tansel reached her cottage. Shadows cloaked the garden, and the Sioros Mountains loomed like a black presence above her. When she opened the door and went inside, a cat slipped in past her feet. “Hai, Mushroom,” she said with a yawn. The cat yowled as she lit a candle. She set her basket on the chair, plucked out the rose bush she had taken from Maetor and tossed it aside. Then she rummaged for the scraps she had gotten in the village. “I brought you some dinner.”

  A short time later, she lay on her pallet by a crackling fire, thinking about Maetor. While he had cut her rose bush, he might not have planted the tansy; that could have appeared on its own. No telling how long her aunt’s spell would hold. Tansel may have accused him falsely.

  At last, she fell to sleep and dreams of impatient roses and running roots.

  When she awoke the next morning and went outside, tansy grew everywhere.

  It towered in the garden, reaching and stretching into everything, shadowing and choking it. It grew in the paths, on the edge of the forest, by the door, up to the roof. It stank. Tansel gaped in horror. She wanted to throw up. So much for giving Maetor the benefit of the doubt! Worse, by accusing him, she had given him the idea. Only magic could have accomplished this.

  With shaking hands and weak knees, she went inside, grabbed her patchy cloak from the oak-branch hook by the door and fled into the forest. Maetor had gone too far, this time. Her mother had told her about other powers in the world besides those of wizards. Darker powers. She would call upon them.

  Tansel ran all the way to her aunt’s house, a desperate act she had braved only one other time in her life before asking for the tansy spell. She had come here, lost as an abandoned kitten, when her mother had left and not returned.

  The crone hadn’t acted particularly surprised by her sister’s disappearance. She had waddled into her mossy root of a house, then returned and pressed something into Tansel’s hand: a smooth stone of greenish black that looked like a long, thick fang. You must keep this hidden, she had croaked softly; until you are ready to know the darkness. The witch hadn’t explained what the stone was or where it had come from, let alone why she would give it to her orphaned niece. Tansel had hurried home that day and buried the stone beneath a big, flat rock on the northern side of her garden. To this day, she didn’t think she would ever be ready to know the darkness she had felt when touching it.

  When Tansel reached her aunt’s house, she stopped and put her hand on her chest to catch her breath and calm her heart. The house stood there like a squatting toad, right where she expected it to be, though not as she remembered it. She would not have been surprised to see it hop away.

  “You’re a woman, now,” rasped a voice from somewhere above her. In a huge willow tree, a shadowy form perched. It changed into a cat, which appeared to wear a cloak, or to sit with a leg hanging down. Under Tansel’s frightened gaze, it changed into something more akin to an old woman.

  Tansel lowered herself into a curtsy. “Aunt,” she said carefully. “I need your help.”

  “Is the voidstone hidden?” rasped the crone from the willow bough.

  Voidstone. She hadn’t called it that before, but Tansel knew what she meant. Until you are ready to know the darkness. She nodded quickly.

  The witch turned watery, swirled down around the trunk like a snake and coiled on the ground as a hovering shadow. In a voice like wind over a grave, she chanted:

  “These things three, your garden needs

  “To make the dark and light the same.

  “Slis, a frog,

  “Gea, the spring and

  “Retch, the oldest wizard’s name.”

  The shadow dissolved. So did the house. Sort of.

  Tansel turned for home. She didn’t run, this time. There was no point; she hadn’t solved her problem. As she trudged through the forest, she considered all the tansy and how she would pull it up. Hopefully, there still remained a drop of potion in the yellow-dotted phial, which she had put into a small felt bag and stuffed into a crack in the wall by the pantry.

  As Tansel neared her cottage later that morning, it grew cold, so cold that her hands and toes began to hurt and she couldn’t calm her shivering. Lady slippers, trout lilies and columbines withered, bushes grew silent and ice formed on the edges of pools.

  Now, she ran.

  When she stumbled from the silent eaves of the forest by her cottage, her confusion shattered into a howling gale of fear.

  Winter cloaked the early summer wood. The entire clearing had frozen, every flower, vine and bulb held in the grip of the dark season. Tansel ran over the fallen tansy to the shiny sheet of the scrying pool. The toad lay there in the frosty phlox, on its back, limbs clenched and belly caved. Tansel touched it, turned it over. She picked up the bark house and brought it to her chest.

  She ran into her cottage, set the dead toad’s house on the hearth and began to rifle through the drooped and blackened plants on the windowsills in a panicked whirl that left shattered pots, dirt and leaves everywhere. She rescued some sage and rue, which still lived. The cut rose bush she had taken from Maetor lay on the floor where she had thrown it the night before. She picked it up and hurled it into the crow-black maw of the fireplace as hard as she could.

  Then she dropped to her knees and wept.

  When she could no longer bear the silence, she left and stumbled into the forest, found a place in the sun and sat. She leaned over and put her head in her hands. The witch’s riddle repeated in her mind.

  These things three, your garden needs, to make the dark and light the same.

&
nbsp; Her mother had said, Gardens are made of darkness and light entwined.

  Maetor had violated the balance. With this realization, Tansel sat up and said, “Slis.”

  Almost at once, a big frog with bright green, glistening skin hopped out from under a rotting log. It sat near her hand, its throat pulsing rhythmically. Tansel had never seen such a beautiful frog. She picked it up, wrapped it in the hem of her cloak and returned to the cottage.

  Later, once she had built a fire and warmed the room, she set the toad house between the sage and rue and put the green frog in it. Strangely, the creature stayed there.

  When Tansel lay down to sleep, Mushroom came and curled up in the curve of her belly and thighs. His purring drew her into the darkness.

  *

  The following morning, Tansel went outside. Nothing had changed; the cold had left everything dry as bones and dead as ash. Her livelihood was gone. She looked sadly over the tangled mess of dead tansy choking the ground. Normally, enough things would be growing to ensure her survival over the coming winter. Now, she would have to start over. Even if the warmth did return, she wouldn’t have enough time. She would starve.

  She brought the toad house and the frog out into the garden and set them down, thinking the frog might magically bring it all back to life. Nothing happened. Cold sunlight shone upon the twigs and brush. Mushroom lounged on a stone over which water from a spring had previously flowed.

  She wandered around her garden for some time, pulling up this and that, throwing things into piles, searching for life. When despair had wearied her, she lowered herself to the ground, put her arms over her knees and bowed her head.

  She looked up as Mushroom spat a hiss and shot into the woods.

  Maetor stepped from the quiet shadows of the forest. He walked into the garden with a cavalier gait and stopped by the impatient lover’s rose bush. Half of it. Dead.

  Tansel gazed down at the hard dirt. “What do you want?”

  “Tea by the river,” he replied, approaching the frozen pool. “I shall bring your garden back to life, if you appease me.”

  Tansel looked up and glowered at him from beneath the curls of her hair. Something dark rose inside of her that she had never felt before; not when her mother had gone, not when she had fought the tansy, not ever. It centered in her womb like a cramp.

  In an explosion of wrath she cried, “Gea!”

  Not a dead leaf stirred.

  Maetor’s brown eyes sparkled with laughter. “You think you can change the seasons? You do not have that power.” He blinked as if bored and added, “The Shapeshiftress doesn’t have it, either.”

  My aunt is insane, Tansel thought.

  Just then, the green frog hopped out of the toad house, tumbling it aside. Maetor set his gaze upon the frog. Tansel stiffened as the wizard knelt and picked it up, one hand over the other around it. “Winter is no place for a frog,” he said with specious care.

  Tansel jumped up and ran to him. “Give him to me. Now!”

  Maetor moved his arms to pull the frog away. “Tea by the river—and I will spare him.” He turned the toad house upright with the tip of his boot, knelt and put the frog into it, and then stuffed a clump of dead tansy into the opening so the creature couldn’t hop out. He rose slowly, raising his boot above the house as if to stomp on it. His eyes glittered in challenge.

  Tansel fought tears; her heart raced and she feared to move or speak, lest the wizard smash the house and kill the frog. But she would not, by all the ice, tansy and dead frogs in the land, agree to his demand. She would see him drowned in a river of tea.

  “Retch!” she screamed, her voice cracking into the forest. She had nothing left to try; the first two things in the witch’s riddle had failed her.

  What happened next astonished everyone but the frog.

  Wind tore the trees into a whirlwind of leaves and boughs as a cyclone of earth, air, water and fire swirled down from the sky and into the center of the garden. The toad house blew over and scattered. The frog sat there, unmoved.

  Maetor, on the other hand, dropped to his knees as a terrible figure appeared before him, tall and gaunt in a coal-black cloak, with pure white hair and eyes the color of a summer storm cloud.

  “Master,” Maetor choked.

  The Raven of Muin. The blood left Tansel’s face.

  The mage bore no discussion, no excuses, no explanations and no mercy. He simply curled his fingers into an alarming shape and spoke a word, causing Maetor to vanish in a poof that left behind a grasshopper of blond, brown and green perched upon the silver eagle pin.

  The grasshopper moved slightly—then suddenly flew into the air as the green frog slammed its tongue out and back, snatched the prize into its mouth and sloppily swallowed it.

  The Raven of Muin leaned down, picked up the eagle pin and slipped it into his cloak. Then he turned to Tansel.

  She dropped to her knees.

  “Rise, child,” he said gently. “I’ll not harm you.”

  She stood, and smoothed her hair with little more dignity than one of the ravaged plants in her garden.

  The wizard folded his arms over his chest and regarded her with a strange, unlikely expression of wonder and care. “Why did you not call me sooner?”

  Her voice cracked. “I didn’t know you would come. I don’t know your name.”

  “You just spoke it.”

  “‘Retch?’”

  He appeared amused, if not embarrassed. “Well. That’s only a nickname, given to me as a child by the other wizards, who teased me because I had a sensitive stomach.” He placed his hand over his belly and smiled, causing the lines around his eyes to spread out like the rays of a sun. “I only responded because I couldn’t imagine who would be using it.”

  “My name is Tansel,” she said quickly. “My aunt told me your name. She said you’re the oldest wizard.”

  He pursed his lips. “Possibly.” He nodded, and his expression grew distant, almost pained. “I knew your aunt’s grandmother—your great grandmother. A long time ago.”

  When his violet-gray eyes rested upon her, it occurred to Tansel that the Raven of Muin knew many things.

  She lifted her brow hopefully. “I have some chamomile flowers and applemint inside, dried from last year. It makes good tea, for sensitive stomachs.”

  With a faint smile, the old wizard brushed his hand near her face. “I would love some, Tansel.” She nodded and let her gaze move over the wasteland of her heart’s desire. “Your garden will come back,” the wizard reassured her.

  “It’s all dead. My aunt’s spell didn’t work and Maetor said it was because I don’t have the power to invoke spring.”

  “Nonsense,” he huffed. “The forces of the seasons live in all things, including you. Spring comes from the darkness.”

  Until you are ready to know the darkness. For some reason, his words, her aunt’s words—neither of which she understood—caused her heart to rain. As she turned for the cottage, she looked around the broken toad hut for the pretty green frog. She didn’t see it.

  The wizard walked by her side and said nothing. His steps made no sound. When they entered, she pulled out her chair for him. He sat and gazed serenely out the window as Tansel went to the pantry to get the dried plants and her best cup, a wooden mug with green ivy painted on it. She moved to the hearth, where she had earlier boiled water, and tipped the pot slowly over the fragrant white flowers and bits of gray-green mint leaves. “Will the tansy grow back too?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Ah, tansy. A fine plant. It repels borers, striped beetles and ants.” Tansel straightened her back and turned around. Her alarm must have been evident; he smiled and added, “Hard to control, I own. Tansy will obey you, if you know the words.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She held out the wooden ivy cup with both hands. “Tea?”

  The wizard leaned forward with a paternal air and took the cup. “You live here with your mother
?” He sipped his tea, his twilight gaze unmoving over the rim of the cup.

  Tansel looked at the floor. “Did. She left.”

  The wizard lowered his cup. “Left?”

  Tansel started to nod, but only managed a shrug. Tears welled up in her eyes. Strange, she had never cried over this.

  “Where did she go?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. She went out one day and never came back. No one in the village saw her. My aunt, she...” Several minutes passed as she fumbled through the carnage of loneliness and neglect. She forced back her tears; all but one, which she quickly brushed away.

  No longer interested in his tea, the wizard gazed at her as if she were an arcane scroll.

  “My aunt gave me something,” Tansel blurted finally. “A stone. Must have been my mother’s.”

  The tense moment broke as a tepid breeze blew the door ajar. Mushroom sauntered in and curled his tail around the wizard’s leg. The old man set his tea aside, leaned down and stroked the cat. Tansel began to move around the cottage to tidy up. When the distraction failed to soothe the ache, she went outside and gazed into the northern shadows of her garden where, beneath a flat rock nestled in a bed of periwinkle, she had hidden the fang stone seven years ago.

  The Raven of Muin came to her side without a sound. “What sort of stone?”

  Tansel had once heard wizards could walk in the minds of others and that thoughts couldn’t be hidden from them. She hadn’t really believed that—but this day had stretched many of her beliefs out of shape. She decided not to test it. “It was black. She told me to hide it.”

  “Did you?” he asked quietly.

  It could have been her mother, buried there. “Aye. It frightened me.”