Foxheart

by Claire Legrand

  The woman nodded. “Right on both counts.”

  “But that’s impossible,” said Quicksilver.

  “Not so. This is where the shadows of witches and monsters go after they die—the Shadow Fields, a land just beyond the world of the living.”

  Fox touched noses with the older Fox and then sneezed, sending tiny curls of shadow flying.

  Quicksilver stared at the ground, her arms folded tightly across her middle. “And what if I don’t believe you?”

  “You do believe me,” said Anastazia crisply. “You just don’t want to. Those creatures attacking you . . . please don’t think too unkindly of them. They are the shadows of monsters who have died, and they simply want a living witch to belong to again. The urge to survive is a powerful thing, as you well know.”

  Quicksilver glared up at her. If this shadow woman was trying to befriend her, she would have a difficult time of it. Quicksilver was a girl of ice and stone. She lived in a gray cocoon, where everything was soft and safe, and she had no heart left to give anyone, least of all an echo of a person she had once known, a person she had once—

  Quicksilver swallowed hard against the tight ache in her throat.

  Anastazia sighed, her form shifting. “There are still so many things about the witch world that you don’t know. Things I was supposed to teach you, and never got the chance to.” She lowered her head. “I’m sorry for that, child. I never wanted to leave you so soon.”

  Not ever in her entire life had Quicksilver felt more alone than she did at that moment. The loneliness built up inside her like a cresting wave, ready to break.

  “And just how many things will I have to teach myself?” she snapped. “How will I defeat the Wolf King on my own?”

  Anastazia knelt, grayness and blackness softly swirling about her like a cloud of dust. “Quicksilver—”

  “Wait, I know the answer—I can’t defeat him on my own!” She turned away, threw her hands into the air. “I haven’t even learned how to use Fox to cast spells beyond shifting and glamours, or how to guide Fox to read runes, and I certainly have no idea how to teach myself time-traveling magic, or how to extend my life when the time comes so I can grow old and grumpy like you, and find my younger self. . . .”

  She fell silent. The thoughts running through her head were too terrible and hopeless to say out loud.

  Anastazia said gently, “I know you’re afraid—”

  “I’m not,” Quicksilver said again, but a cold finger lifted her chin so she was forced to meet Anastazia’s eyeless face.

  “You are, and that’s all right. It’s good to be afraid, for when we are forced to feel that fear—the shape and taste of it, how it sits in our hearts—and must continue living even so, we discover how brave we truly are. And Quicksilver, my darling girl, you are the bravest me I’ve ever known.”

  Quicksilver’s eyes spilled over. She didn’t even try to brush away her tears this time. “Can’t someone else do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Find the First Monsters’ skeletons. Defeat the Wolf King. Someone older, someone who knows more than I do.” Quicksilver thought of Sly Boots, of his parents rotting away back at home. She thought of the Wolf King, and how five shadows now hovered around him instead of only two. She hung her head and whispered, “I can’t do anything right. The only thing I’ve ever been good at is stealing things, and playing tricks, and that’s . . . silly.”

  The shadow of Anastazia was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “Someone else could defeat the Wolf King, perhaps. No one has, in all the lifetimes I’ve experienced. No one’s even tried. You know this. We talked about it before.”

  “But maybe you’re wrong!” Quicksilver cried. “Maybe the reason why no one’s tried is because we’ve been doing it for them. Maybe because of us they’ve been able to run away and hide like a bunch of stinking cowards—”

  “Maybe,” said Anastazia firmly. “We can travel through time, but we can’t understand it. Who knows what may or may not happen sometime in the future, if we do or don’t do a particular thing? There are a thousand possibilities, a thousand different futures. But we can’t worry about that, Quicksilver. We can only worry about now, about what we can do. About what we should do. Because we are not people to sit idly by and let others determine our fates, are we?”

  Quicksilver bit down on her tongue and stared at the ground.

  Anastazia cupped Quicksilver’s face in her hands. A chill ran through Quicksilver, head to knees to feet.

  “Are we?” Anastazia urged.

  “No,” Quicksilver said, low. “We’re not.”

  “We determine the fate of our world. Say it.”

  “We determine the fate of our world,” Quicksilver mumbled.

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “We determine the fate of our world,” Quicksilver repeated, a little more loudly.

  “Louder!” Anastazia bellowed, stretching to her full height.

  “We determine the fate of our world!” Quicksilver shouted, her face streaked with tears and her fists clenched at her sides. Even though it made her body shudder with cold, she moved into Anastazia’s embrace and buried her face in arms that were not really there. A frigid sensation brushed against her scalp—Anastazia’s fingers, stroking softly. Fox leaned against Quicksilver’s leg and whined. The older Fox pressed his cold, shadowy nose against Quicksilver’s other leg, with a comforting whuff.

  “Sometimes,” Anastazia said, “it isn’t about being the most powerful person or the person who has the most knowledge. It isn’t about being the oldest person, or the strongest person, or the person who makes all the right decisions. Sometimes it’s about being the person who decides to stand up and fight.”

  Anastazia took a step back and wiped Quicksilver’s cheeks. The gesture was completely ineffective and did nothing but make Quicksilver’s teeth chatter, but she leaned into the touch anyway.

  “And that’s me?” she whispered.

  “I have never been one to let something scare me away from what’s important,” Anastazia answered. “And neither have you. I love you, Quicksilver. I believe in your strength. My greatest hope is that someday you will learn to do the same.”

  Never in Quicksilver’s life had anyone said those words to her. She had heard about love, and seen it in the way some of the sisters at the convent had treated the other girls—but she had long ago decided such things were simply not meant for her, and so there was no reason to fret about it. Fretting would only distract her from becoming the best thief in the Star Lands.

  But now the words had been said, and her hungry heart grabbed hold of them. She felt a warm thrill at the realization that she, Quicksilver, parentless and squash nosed—could receive love . . . and that she could, possibly, give it in return?

  I love you. She formed the words in her mind first, and then on her tongue. They felt uncomfortable there, clumsy and too big for her. But she was not one to run away from things that frightened her.

  “I love you,” she told Anastazia, in a mumbled rush. A rush of warmth flooded through her, somehow leaving her feeling both lighter and more frightened. “I love you. I really do.”

  At the same time, both Foxes barked and wagged their tails—and then looked at each other suspiciously.

  “I know how hard that was for you,” Anastazia told Quicksilver, the sound of a smile buried in her strange, muffled voice. “And so I thank you. Shadows, I think, do not get many such gifts.”

  Quicksilver tried and failed to tighten her fingers around Anastazia’s drifting black cloak. “Do you have to stay here? You could come with me, you know. I wouldn’t mind having two shadows. We could spook people, play tricks on them!”

  Anastazia laughed softly. “Your world is no longer my world. I’m afraid I will have to stay here. But . . .” She looked at the older Fox, and a ripple of excitement seemed to pass between them.

  “I’ve found something for you that might make leaving easier,” said the
older Fox, his tail wagging even harder now. “Wait here. I promise we’ll be back.” Then he and Anastazia drifted off into the darkness.

  Quicksilver waited, trying to hide her disappointment, hoping the new holes in her heart did not show on her face. She thought her Fox into his mouse form and held him close, stroking his silken ears.

  Fox?

  Yes, Quicksilver?

  I . . .

  She stopped. She had thought she could say the words twice, but . . .

  Fox nuzzled her palm. It’s all right. I know.

  When Anastazia and the older Fox reappeared, their dark forms peeling away from a nearby tree, Anastazia’s hands were behind her back. “We shadows have two tricks that make existence bearable,” she said. “One is that we can travel great distances across our realm in a very short time. Shadows, you see, are all made of the same stuff, no matter what they are shadows of. And the second is that we are drawn, inexorably, to things that find their way into the Fields from the world of the living—whether they come here by accident or because they’re looking for a place to hide. For things from the living world create their own light, and shadows have none of our own left to enjoy.”

  And with that, Anastazia held out her hands, in which rested a tiny handful of slender bones, glowing faintly, warmly red—the skeleton of a starling.

  .39.

  SHARP EDGES AND BRIGHT SKIES

  As Quicksilver gazed at the bones, she felt a pulse of recognition deep in her chest. The memories they had stolen from the Wolf King came back to her in dim echoes of light and sound:

  A blood-splattered young boy.

  The same young boy chasing a deer through a forest.

  A figure in hooded white robes, a brilliant red starling perched on its shoulder.

  “It’s one of them,” she whispered. “One of the First Monsters!” A tiny ray of light worked its way through her stormy thoughts. She reached out for the bones. At her touch, they rattled and hissed. A ghostly beak manifested out of thin air and pecked her hand.

  Quicksilver grinned.

  “So,” said Anastazia’s shadow, “you have one skeleton now, instead of none, and can return to your world with something good in your pocket.”

  “How did it get here?”

  The older Fox stretched and yawned. “It probably thought it would be safe in the Shadow Fields, that no one would ever find it. Perhaps it comes and goes, and we were lucky enough to be here at the right time.”

  Anastazia put a cool hand beneath Quicksilver’s chin. “However it came to be here, I hope, child, that you’ll never find yourself here again.”

  Quicksilver opened her cloak to reveal its inner pockets, and Anastazia carefully poured the bones into the largest one.

  “You’ll want to get a proper pack for those soon,” she suggested.

  Trying not to think of what had happened to her last pack, Quicksilver nodded. “Of course.”

  “And don’t forget to keep them interested and happy, or they’ll disappear on you.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Quicksilver’s Fox. “I’m quite the bone nanny at this point.”

  The older Fox made a delicate scoffing sound. “Bone nanny?”

  Quicksilver’s Fox haughtily turned up his nose.

  “Does this mean we have to leave you now?” asked Quicksilver.

  “You don’t have to do anything of the sort,” Anastazia said, “unless you’d prefer to stay here and waste away, with no food or water, while a horde of shadow monsters slowly pick away at what’s left of your light.”

  At the mention of water, Quicksilver realized how parched her throat was, how difficult it was to swallow. She tried not to think about leaving Anastazia forever and stood as straight and tall as she could.

  “How do we leave, then?” she asked.

  “Well, I could send you out right where you came in,” the shadow of Anastazia replied. “Or I could send you out somewhere more advantageous. Somewhere, perhaps, closer to another skeleton.”

  “The Wolf King has five,” said Fox, “and we have one. There should just be one left.”

  “And do you know where it might be hidden?” asked the older Fox.

  Quicksilver shook her head. “We haven’t tried to find it yet. Fox? Shall we?”

  Quicksilver sat on the ground, settling Fox on her lap. It was easier, she had found, to sort through the Wolf King’s memories with Fox in his true form.

  For how long they sat there, speaking to each other along the connection between their hearts, Quicksilver was not certain. Without sunlight to mark the passage of time, it could have been minutes or hours. When she finally opened her eyes, she felt like she had been swimming for miles. She heard the ghostly echo of tiny clawed paws against stone, felt the soft press of pure white fur.

  “The last skeleton is the ermine,” she said, her voice faint with exhaustion. She remembered looking up at the White Bear and its blue eye, how Sly Boots had drawn the bear’s shape across the stars for her. “We must go north to find it, to Valteya.”

  “The winter kingdom,” murmured the older Fox.

  “You must be careful there, child,” said Anastazia. “They say that land has been haunted, ever since Ari Tarkalia murdered his family, and I don’t disagree. Winter can sow malice into even the kindest hearts. And Valteya borders the Far North—”

  “And the Far North is where the Wolf King’s castle is, yes, I know,” Quicksilver snapped, to cover her nervousness. “Can you tell us where to go or not?”

  Anastazia seemed pleased. “You are starting to sound more like yourself.”

  “Someone’s got to be the grump, now that you’re not around to do it.”

  “Am I doomed to be the only pleasant person left on this trip?” asked Fox.

  Quicksilver scratched behind his ears. “It’s a great burden, but I appreciate your sacrifice, Fox.”

  “Hold on to each other,” Anastazia instructed, wrapping them in her arms, “and try not to move too much. Walking by shadow is the quickest way north, but it might feel a bit . . . jarring.”

  Quicksilver obeyed, grabbing Fox just before Anastazia and the older Fox yanked them into a cloud of darkness. Quicksilver caught glimpses of shapes as they moved—trees and black rivers, hills and shadow creatures. They hopped from patch of darkness to patch of darkness. Each time they burst into light and then back into shadow, a heavy, cold feeling sucked at Quicksilver’s skin, like she was being squeezed into a too-small space.

  When they at last stopped moving, they were still in the Shadow Fields, but no longer in a forest. Two black snow-capped peaks towered ahead of them, one on each side of a twisting mountain pass that climbed gently upward until it disappeared. Black snow fell from the sky in gusting flurries.

  Anastazia’s shadow lowered Quicksilver and Fox to the ground. “Sorry about the rough passage but you must understand you’re not meant to shadow walk. For us it feels like nothing, like gliding through air.”

  Quicksilver held her spinning, aching head. “It wasn’t too bad.”

  Fox swayed in place, his legs splayed like a newborn colt’s. “Speak for yourself.”

  The older Fox snorted, but not unkindly. “Amateur,” he said, and then licked the young Fox’s cheek.

  Anastazia knelt between Quicksilver and Fox, and pointed at the range of mountains to the north. “To leave the Fields, you must think about things shadows do not have—hope, and light, and joy. You must imagine yourself weightless, flying out of the heaviness of the Fields and into the brighter world beyond.”

  Quicksilver clutched the cold nothingness of Anastazia’s arm. “I don’t want either of you to live here like that.”

  “We don’t have a choice.” Anastazia’s voice held a gentle smile. “We are the shadows of a witch and a monster who no longer live, so we are bound to this place. But you are not. And besides, we’ll have each other, Fox and I.”

  Quicksilver took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Will it hurt me, to
leave?”

  “It always hurts a little, to leave the darkness, for in shadows lies a certain safety.”

  A soft, gray cocoon of shadows. Quicksilver imagined herself staying in such a place for the rest of her life, not feeling anything, not seeing or even moving. The thought of that place—where no one could hurt her, where she would be safe from her own mistakes—had brought her here in the first place.

  To leave, then, she must think of something else . . . of feeling everything, even the things that hurt. She must think of sharp edges and bright skies, warmth and summer and living a life even with thorns of grief in your chest—the grief of never knowing one’s parents, of making terrible mistakes that hurt others, of losing, forever, the people you love.

  She had bones in her pocket and Fox at her side. Somewhere out there lay one last skeleton, and somehow they would find it. What came after that, she could not say, but no matter what, Anastazia had loved her, and Quicksilver had loved her back, and she would carry that feeling inside her, forever.

  Quicksilver’s arms and legs tingled with a floating warmth, like she was swaying on the blissful edge of sleep. The cold heaviness in her chest felt lighter; the hot, hard lump in her throat melted away.

  She weighed nothing at all. If she pushed off the ground, she would drift up into the air and fly.

  So she did.

  She kept her eyes closed, kicked her legs and pushed her arms through something that felt like thick black water. The harder she kicked, the higher she rose. The water warmed and lightened. Beyond her closed eyelids shone a brighter and brighter sun. Heat soaked through her skin right down to her bones.

  “Travel safely,” called the older Fox, “and swiftly!”

  “Good-bye,” whispered Anastazia. She sounded so far away that Quicksilver felt a jolt of shock and turned to find her—but the Shadow Fields were no longer there. Instead, Quicksilver saw the slope of a snowy mountain passage, and tall, shivering stands of green fir trees, and a vast spread of forest, far below her, stretching to the southern horizon. The setting sun painted the snow-capped mountains in vivid shades of pink, violet, and orange, bright as fire. The north wind stung her nose. She could breathe again, her mind clear of shadows.