by Zoe Chant
They walked along a little further down the path, and when Poppy stopped again, Tristan stopped with her. They stood at the spot where a faint impression in the grass showed that there had once been a well-worn track up to one of the cottages.
Two gnarled apple trees grew at the near corners of the little stone house, and its door, though faded, had been painted red. It seemed in good repair, its roof intact and the walls solid. More than that, Poppy thought it looked particularly welcoming, somehow.
“Yes,” Tristan agreed, though she hadn’t said anything, only stood and looked. He kissed the top of her head, and added, “But not quite yet, my own.”
Poppy nodded and thought again, We’re coming home.
Then she turned with Tristan and continued down the path to the woman who awaited them at its end.
*~*~*
Chapter 13 - Tristan
Tristan hadn’t seen the village where he grew up in years; as a guardsman he hadn’t often had reason to venture up into the mountains, and the Captain of the Guard, Magnus, had spared him the difficulty of going back to the place where he was born. Men of the Royal Guard set aside all their old connections, but there was no reason to test that unnecessarily.
He had expected to feel a sense of loss, looking across the distance between mountains to that place, but mostly what he had felt was Poppy at his side, tucked under his arm. He had felt certain that the past was in the past, and he could leave it behind.
And then they had entered the Home of the Guardians, and he had felt as though he had stepped into his home village again—without all the burden of his father’s unyielding expectations, the rigid adherence to rules he had never agreed with or entirely understood.
This was a different home, welcoming and kind, and though he had never seen it before he felt as if he had always known it, as though his feet knew the path already. He understood the stair as soon as Poppy took that dreamy-eyed step toward it, and he knew that the house with the apple trees would be his home as soon as he saw it.
His and Poppy’s, and, perhaps soon, the family that they would make.
But there was no ignoring the quiet of the place, the signs of damage and the emptiness all around them. What should have been a small but bustling village stood almost entirely deserted. There were no children here.
The path curved around to the house with the blue door, and the woman who had waved to them was waiting on the grass beside it, with an equally aged man at her side. Both of them were dressed sensibly in sturdy trousers and soft shirts, hiking boots on their feet. They stood together in such a way that it was clear, without them touching or looking at each other, that they were mates, and had been for longer than Tristan had been alive. They were two halves of one whole together.
“Welcome,” the woman called out. “Come closer, my dear, let me see—” Then she stopped short, her hand going to her heart.
Her mate quickly wrapped his arm around her, supporting her as her ruddy cheeks went pale.
Poppy slipped out from under Tristan’s arm and hurried to her, and Tristan stayed right at her side. There was no danger here, he knew, but there was an urgency. Even though Poppy was no longer lost in the strange delirium that had gripped her until they reached the mountain, he knew it still pulled at her—and that it pulled at this guardian as well.
Poppy dropped to her knees in the dust of the path, and the woman—the Senior Guardian, surely—knelt as well, with her mate’s arm supporting her all the way down. Then Poppy drew out the wrapped bundles she had carried like they were her own children, and the woman gasped, tears springing to her eyes.
“Oh, the tiger and lion, both! Two of our cats are come home together—” The woman stopped short as Poppy hesitantly drew out the third stone. The bear, the one she had treated so casually.
“I... I don’t know about this one,” Poppy said. “I thought... maybe it’s just that I can’t hear it, or...”
The woman took the little wrapped shape from Poppy with shaking hands, unwrapping it to reveal the white bear. She let out a rough breath, and her mate dropped to his knees beside her as she raised the stone to her lips, kissing the top of the bear’s head, right between its ears.
“The bear stone.” Myrthild nodded sad confirmation. “When the stones were betrayed, the bear stone was not only taken away from us into exile. It was... unmade, most cruelly. I was its special guardian, left alive to long for it, and you have brought it home in time. Oh, my dear, you are not too late.”
She leaned in to hug Poppy, who, with her hands occupied by the stones, could only lean into the embrace, tucking her head down onto the woman’s shoulder while the woman and her mate each wrapped an arm around Poppy.
“Thank you, thank you,” the woman whispered. “Thank you, my dear. You have brought them home. It has been so quiet here for so long, and I began to think that we would crumble down to the sea before we could bring back any life at all. But I have lived to see this.”
Poppy drew back, her eyes darting from the house with the blue door to the one beside it. “Are there no other guardians left? Only you?”
“Only I, of the guardians who were here before the stones were betrayed. My name is Myrthild, and this is my mate, Fredrik. My granddaughter, Estella, lives in the next house. I think in the proper way of things she would have been my successor as the bear’s guardian—well. Now perhaps she yet will be. Perhaps it will help her to know there is hope.”
“I’ll go and tell her,” Fredrik said, pressing a quick kiss to his mate’s cheek before he stood. Myrthild stood with him, the bear stone tucked against her heart, and Tristan helped Poppy to her feet as well.
“Come, come and sit comfortably, not in the dust of the road. You must have come a long way, my dear. Tell me your name?”
“Poppy Zlotsky,” she said. “I was born in America, but... I came the long way around, this year. The tiger seems to have taught me Valtyran overnight. And,” she glanced up at Tristan as they walked over to a worn wooden bench set in the sunniest spot by Myrthild’s cottage. “This is my mate, Tristan.”
Tristan couldn’t help beaming at Poppy when she said that, and Myrthild laughed as she sat down. “Newly mated, then?”
“Very,” Tristan said. “Not... quite formally, in fact.”
“Mm,” Myrthild said, frowning slightly. “Well, as long as you’re sure of each other, that’s bound to sort itself out.”
Tristan nodded to himself at that. He could be sure of it; he had the king’s decree in his suitcase, declaring his release from the Royal Guard effective as soon as he set foot in Valtyra. He had belonged only to Poppy for, oh, nearly an hour now.
Tristan looked to Myrthild, meaning to ask her whether it mattered, especially, that a guardian and her mate had formalized their bond. But she was looking past him, and her shoulders sagged with some disappointment. Tristan looked over his shoulder and saw Fredrik returning alone.
“Estella has not been well,” Myrthild explained. “But with two of the stones returned... I had hoped the sight of them might help her, but I think nothing will be better until they are truly back where they belong.”
Poppy stiffened beside him, her grip on the stones tightening, and then she twisted to look back toward that narrow stair up into the mountain. He could feel that tension in her body again, the pull of her duty to the stones. For a moment, when they reached this valley, it had seemed that she was finished, or as good as, but it was obvious that there was more to do.
“Ma’am,” Tristan said. “Should we go now?”
Myrthild gave a sad smile as Fredrik came around to stand behind her. “I think that will be best, much as I wish I could offer you proper hospitality first. I can feel the... the gap, between where they are and where they ought to be, and I expect Estella can feel it, and Poppy...”
“I feel it,” Poppy said quietly. Her eyes were fixed on that crack in the stone. “I don’t know why they’re being so quiet now, but I need to take them the rest of the way
home.”
She looked up at him then, and her expression turned almost pleading. “Tristan, will you come with me? I don’t want to try this one without backup.”
Tristan smiled, wide and automatic, cupping one hand to her cheek, his heart soaring at the knowledge that she asked, that she wanted him there even for this most secret and sacred of tasks.
“Of course, my own. I’ll go anywhere with you, you need not ask.”
Fredrik cleared his throat rather ominously, drawing Tristan’s attention. “No man is a Guardian,” Fredrik said firmly. “And no man may walk the Guardian’s path.”
Tristan felt his tiger growling at that. He wouldn’t let Poppy go alone again. He couldn’t.
“Tristan,” she said softly, leaning into his grip, though he could still feel the way the stones tried to pull her away. “Please. I have to do this, and clearly, the sooner the better. You’re the one who told me I was meant for this. You know I can do it, don’t you?”
Tristan closed his eyes and turned, hugging Poppy close with the stones between them. “You can do anything, my own. But I hate not being there to help.”
“Walk me over there,” Poppy said softly. “I won’t leave you until I have to. But I have to do this, so I can come back to you.”
Tristan nodded against her hair. He shrugged his makeshift pack off, and helped Poppy shed her big pack without having to let go of the stones cradled against her chest.
“Is there anything I should know?” She looked over at Myrthild, who still held the bear stone and showed no sign of giving it up soon. Clearly, if the bear was going to be returned to the mountain, Myrthild would carry it. “Anything I should do, or not do?”
Tristan began searching the pockets of her pack, pulling out a flashlight, a multi-tool, a small length of parachute cord. He tucked the useful items into her pockets as Myrthild spoke.
“You’ll know, I think. I... don’t know exactly what it will be like, to tell the truth. I have not ventured in there in many years, and I do not know how the heart of the mountain will react to the one who brings the stones home. It has been unsettled, and unhappy, since they were taken.”
“Unsettled?” But before Poppy had even finished the word, the mountain itself seemed to answer: the ground underneath them shifted and then shook. Tristan caught hold of Poppy, dropping to his knees before he could fall and curling himself protectively around her.
He couldn’t let her come to harm again today, not while he was still with her, not when there was anything at all he could to do help.
A rising howl came from the second cottage, and a woman in a nightdress, her hair dark and wild, ran out and fell to the ground. She spread her arms wide and pressed her face to the earth, wailing like a siren all the time.
The earth shook and shook, and Tristan looked up warily at the rock face that curled around the little valley. Small rocks tumbled down here and there, but there was no loud crack or roar to warn of a coming avalanche. Not yet.
As soon as the shaking stopped, he jumped up, and Poppy moved with him. Without further speech, they both ran toward the crack in the rock while Fredrik and Myrthild ran to Estella, still wailing even though the earth was now still.
Tristan was afraid that the narrow passage would be blocked, but he could see, when he came even with it, that it remained clear.
For now. If the earth should shake again—if Poppy should encounter something in the heart of the mountain that tried to prevent her, some test or obstacle—she was a guardian, but not a Valtyran. She was human—strong for her size, capable and smart, but breakable and so slim and small in his arms. He held her for a last second, kissed her forehead beside the bandage and then kissed her lips one more time.
“I have to,” she whispered.
“I know,” he replied. “Go with my love, my own.”
Poppy kissed him again, and then she turned and charged up the ancient carved steps, disappearing into gloom as Tristan watched. He stepped closer, trying to keep his eyes on her for as long as he could without offending whatever spirits might shake the earth while she was inside.
When she was entirely out of sight, his gaze dropped to the steps, and he noticed something. The steps were old, worn down by the passage of feet over the centuries, but here and there he could see claw marks scraped into the stone.
He looked back over his shoulder. Myrthild was kneeling, cradling Estella in her arms, but Fredrik was on his feet, watching.
The old man—the mate of the Senior Guardian—nodded to him, and Tristan was sure. He didn’t bother stripping out of his clothes, just kicked off his shoes and shifted, letting the tatters fall away as he settled into his tiger shape.
No man could walk the Guardian’s path. But the guardian’s mate was not only a man. He had lived for so long hiding his true face, his true form, controlling himself and behaving more human than humans—but Poppy had taught him to let go, to show himself to her, and he knew she would not fear him.
Tristan raced up the stairs, claws digging into the stone, ears tilted forward to listen for any sign of his mate, any warning rumbling of the stone around him. All was quiet. So far.
*~*~*
Chapter 14 - Poppy
Poppy charged straight up the stairs, not letting herself think beyond what she had to do. She didn’t dare look back at Tristan or she would be trying to find some way to bring him along; it hurt to be separated from him, and she...
She really didn’t want to have to figure things out all alone, once again. That was what it was supposed to mean that they were mates, wasn’t it? She was supposed to have him with her, on her side.
The stairs entered a tunnel mouth, and the dimness of the shaded stairs became real darkness. Poppy closed her eyes in gratitude for Tristan and pulled her small flashlight out of her pocket. She shone it around and discovered five openings from where she stood.
She reached into the makeshift sling and unwrapped the stones, knowing that she needed to listen to their presences now. They knew where they belonged—they had brought her this far.
What she heard, when she waited there in silence, was a soft padding of feet behind her. She turned just as a tiger—Tristan—bounded into view.
Poppy grinned, understanding immediately. “You are no man, ha! Oh, Tristan, thank you, I’m so glad—”
She wrapped her arms around his enormous furry neck, only having to bend her knees to do it. She heard a huge low rumble, like a diesel engine trying to purr, and one enormous paw touched lightly on her hip.
Poppy?
She jerked back at the sound of Tristan’s voice, looking at him. She heard him, and yet he clearly wasn’t speaking in any ordinary way. “Tristan?”
Yes. I wasn’t sure if this would work, but if you can hear me, I might be able to help beyond just... He bared his teeth in demonstration of what he would most easily be able to help with, in this shape.
“Thank you,” Poppy whispered, hugging him again, and then she turned to look at the five tunnels again. This time, with her tiger beside her and the tiger and lion stones against her chest, it seemed obvious which way she needed to go.
Poppy strode confidently toward the second opening from the right.
As soon as she stepped into that tunnel, her flashlight flickered and went out. Poppy froze, feeling an instant of unreasoning terror in the darkness. She clicked the button for the flashlight a few times, but nothing happened.
Shh. Close your eyes and be still, Tristan told her. Put the flashlight back in your pocket. Don’t you know cats can see in the dark?
“Ha,” Poppy said, but she shoved the flashlight into her pocket, setting her hand on Tristan’s furry shoulder instead. His warmth and the solid weight of him beside her were a comfort, even if not quite the way she would have imagined if he could stand beside her and hold her hand.
When she opened her eyes, she still couldn’t see anything at all. Her hand tightened on Tristan, her heart beating faster.
Shh. I can see.
It’s level here. Come with me. Trust me. Keep your eyes closed.
Poppy closed her eyes again, for the illusion that there would be anything she could see if she only opened her eyes. She kept a firm grip on Tristan and moved with him, one step at a time. She didn’t know how long she walked beside her mate in the darkness, trusting him to guide her, but after a time he stopped.
Poppy?
Poppy risked opening her eyes. The darkness was still absolute. “What is it?”
Her voice didn’t echo, but seemed to be strangely swallowed up by the weight of stone around them. There was no sound at all but their breathing, Tristan’s louder than her own. She knelt and leaned against his broad, warm side to feel his breathing, her hand still clinging to the fur over his shoulder.
I can’t see now either, he admitted after a moment.
She could feel his frustration at being unable to simply solve the problem for her, and she pressed her forehead against his ribs, thankful that he was still there with her, even when the darkness was too great for either of them.
“There has to be a way,” Poppy said, making herself think it through.
Myrthild had said she would know. What did she know? What did any guardian know?
She knew how to listen to the stones.
Poppy forced herself to let go of Tristan, still leaning against him, as she quickly unwrapped the two stones she held against her chest, setting down first the lion and then the tiger on the ground before her.
Tristan still stood completely motionless, still deaf to the presences in the stones. Poppy knew that she had to let go of him to really hear them, but in the darkness she felt as if she might never find Tristan again if she lost contact with him now.
“I have to listen to them,” Poppy said, her voice shaking, her cheek pressed against Tristan’s fur to hear his great tiger heart beating. “I have to—I have to let you go.”
I won’t leave you, Tristan promised. I’ll be right here. I won’t ever leave you alone.
