I whistled, and the spent arrow flew back into my hand. I tucked it into my quiver, then packed up my school bag and reset my wards to inform me if anyone tried to swipe our stuff while we were out hunting. Mr. Mac rummaged in his golf bag, moved a few things into his fanny pack—sorry, sporran—and left the rest of his stuff by mine. I slung my quiver over my back, reached a hand up absently to count the arrows in it, and nodded to Mr. Mac.
He turned and headed off towards the trail, dropping his glamour as we walked so that I could more easily follow the gleam of starlight on padded plate mail. I dropped mine too, using the energy I’d been spending to hold it up to enhance my night vision instead, until I could just make out the subtle embroidery pattern on my soft leather leggings and shirt.
Portlandians think that Forest Park is a conveniently tree-lined destination for hikes and bike rides on weekends, after brunch and yoga. They put the emphasis on “Park,” as though “Forest” is just a modifier, like “Laurelhurst” or “Sellwood.” They think it’s safe and tame.
They’re right about the safe part—but only because we keep it that way.
They’re definitely wrong about the tame part.
I was itching to get to the goblin nest, and I almost suggested we cut off part of our winding circuit. I kept silent, though. I know how Mr. Mac feels about shortcuts, especially when it comes to a popular trail like Wildwood. It wouldn’t do at all to let a small band slip past us, ready to ambush some cheerful, clueless tourists out for a stroll. I contained my excitement to fiddling with my spare bowstrings.
It was good I hadn’t tried to wiggle out of walking the whole trail. Because eventually—after amusing myself at the Archery Range by shooting all my arrows with my eyes closed, being admonished by Mr. Mac for frolicking, making a face at him, and continuing down the trail for another half-mile or so—I spotted a grey flash of motion.
My bow was drawn and my arrow singing towards my target before Mr. Mac even noticed. The scouting goblin didn’t notice either. It just disappeared into a poof of dust as the copper arrowhead pierced it. Little flakes floated silently down.
Mr. Mac turned to raise his eyebrows at me. “Nice shot.”
I just smiled, listening to the battlesong in my veins. Tonight would be a good night for hunting, I could tell.
Mr. Mac gestured, soft words rippling off his tongue as he wove his binding magic. Compelled, plants reached towards the goblin dust, or sprouted under it, weaving through it, capturing it and keeping it down. Tiny white flowers sprouted from a nearby saxifrage, drawn to Mr. Mac’s song.
I listened to the familiar words. They’re not in English, of course, but one motif that runs through it always catches my attention. Roughly translated, it would go something like this:
Dance the slow steps of reality,
Bright starshine kisses treetops.
Things as they should be, things as they are,
Woven in place, endlessly be—
True life’s curve defined by a square knot.
Hey, I already said I’m no poet. I always wondered about that middle line, though. Was it calling the broken things back into place, erasing wounds seamlessly, so you could never tell they had even been there? Or was it talking about adjusting to a new reality in some way, a sense that events are playing out correctly, according to some sort of plan?
I snorted at myself. I’m sure my English teacher would have plenty to say on the matter. Besides, I was supposed to be concentrating on the magic, not the words.
Mr. Mac finished singing, tied off the end of the spell, and nodded in satisfaction.
“That should keep for at least a month, if not longer. There’s good magic in the air tonight.”
“I feel it,” I said, following him back down the trail.
By mutual, silent agreement, we picked up the pace.
Pittock Mansion was quiet that night. Occasionally some dumb goblin gang thinks they can set up shop there. I can’t really blame them—I wouldn’t mind living there myself—but obviously they’ve never been there during the day. The tourists would never allow them to move in, to say nothing of the docents.
Witches Castle was a little louder than normal for a Tuesday, with giggling and shrieking coming from the graffiti-ed structure.
Mr. Mac arched an eyebrow at me. I rolled my eyes and made an after-you gesture. He grinned and went to chase the teenagers out.
“The guys were wearing Beaverton jerseys,” he told me after the kids had hustled off in the other direction. “You wouldn’t have blown your cover, even if they hadn’t been awkwardly trying to convince each other to start an orgy.”
I snorted. “I’m not worrying about blowing my cover, Mr. Mac. That’s what a glamour is for. But there are just some things you can’t unsee. And the one time I go in there, it’s sure to be Tim and Alexa and their posse awkwardly trying to convince each other to start an orgy. Which would be…”
“Awkward?” Mr. Mac suggested.
I scooped up a rock and threw it at him. He didn’t duck, so it just clanged softly off his plate armor. Then he grinned and started down the trail again.
At the intersection with Holman Lane, we cut off the trail to the left, pushing through brush and dodging trees until we got to an area dotted with small white flowers. Mr. Mac drew his sword, leveled it at the small clearing, and sang again, the words and the notes, like hunting horns belling in the distance, stirring the undergrowth and dancing off the tree leaves and shivering down the steel of his sword. The last word of his spell faded into the night and he turned to me.
“Lucky you. Time to practice your bindings.”
I grimaced but drew an arrow from my quiver, pointing it towards the clearing as Mr. Mac had. Then I sang.
At first, I was shy, the notes sounding awkward after the clarity of Mr. Mac’s voice. As I began the intricate weavings of the spells, though, I didn’t have the energy to spare on embarrassment.
Mr. Mac and I had taken out twenty-seven goblins here, nearly three weeks before. Up until that night, it was the biggest nest we’d faced together. Fifty tonight, sang the battlefire in my veins. I twisted it, channeling the energy into my spell. I tied down goblin dust that had worked its way loose, creeping towards a center point, reforming into a new menace. I strengthened the bonds that were still holding. I enticed more plants to weave into the area, disrupting the respawning process. What I couldn’t do with finesse, I did with brute force, lifting rocks and fallen tree branches with my magic and placing them—none too gently—in the spots where the dust was the thickest.
I tied off the ends of my spell and leaned over, hands on my knees, catching my breath.
Mr. Mac sang two words into the night. Once they had shivered out of range of hearing, he clapped me on the back. “I’ll give you a B, but only for that particularly tricky spot on the outside edge.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
He passed me a chocolate bar.
I stopped glaring so I could refuel. By the time I finished, he was already striding down the path. I made a face, tucked the wrapper carefully into my pocket, and hurried after him.
Things were quiet for another thirty minutes or so, but it didn’t take Mr. Mac’s military-style halt gesture—I made a mental note to tease him for that later—for me to take a deep breath, widen my eyes, balance myself on the balls of my feet. I could sense the goblins nearby, feel their slow, damp, dark murk like clammy cave mud on my skin. Our footsteps melted into silence as we inched sideways, wrapping the glamour of the forest around us. We left the path, headed uphill, ghosted towards them—and then, with a spine-chilling shrill of alarm, they sensed us in turn.
I got in three shots before they closed on us, my arrows flying straight and true. Battlefire blazed through me as Mr. Mac yelled something old and guttural, and I had to force myself not to charge towards the enemy alongside him. Instead—like a good trainee, sigh—I retreated, furling a new glamour around me and starting to pick them off, one by one.
On slower evenings, I’d make things more interesting by taking my shots through stands of trees or threading my arrows around obstacles. That night, I had no time for that. Mr. Mac’s count of fifty goblins seemed completely believable, and my world narrowed into four flowing movements, nock-draw-aim-loose, nock-draw-aim-loose. The creak of the bowstring and the thrum of its release blended with my near-constant low whistles to call my arrows back and the sounds of battle below to make the world’s most compelling soundtrack. I nearly laughed aloud, just to blend those notes into the music.
Below me, Mr. Mac laid about him with his sword, making it seem from a distance that he was inside his own dust storm.
Then a goblin stabbed him in his sword arm. He grunted and I winced, flying back down the slope towards him.
Mr. Mac wasn’t a fan of our deal, but I didn’t care. I would play sniper until his first injury. Then I would join the melee. End of story.
I slid into place, pushing my small back against his broad, armor-plated one, and called up my wards. Based on Mr. Mac’s rate of breathing, it was getting time to cover him anyway. He instantly switched to a more sedentary style of sparring—though only someone who’d seen him a moment before could think it was remotely slow or contained. His sword whipped out, sliced two goblins into dust, and then rapidly reversed course to slither through the brief opening of my bow arm drawing back to flick through a goblin who had gotten a little too close. I grinned wildly, continued my draw without hesitation, and kept firing short shots into the mass of goblins. It was hardly archery at this range, but the teamwork, the dance between Mr. Mac and me, kept things from ever getting boring.
And, just like that, he hacked his last few goblins, I literally stabbed an arrow into mine, and it was over. We leaned back against each other, panting.
“Very nice,” he said once he’d caught his breath.
“Not too shabby yourself,” I assured him. “Thanks for getting those two in sequence, a minute ago.”
I could feel his big shoulders move in a shrug against mine. “Least I could do after your ricochet shot that took out those three moving towards me.” He straightened and so did I. “But if you really want to thank me,” he said, turning to grin at me, “you can do the primary bindings here.”
I raised my eyebrows. Mr. Mac had had me do the first round of bindings a few times before, but never on such a scale…
I narrowed my eyes. “Is this some sort of Tom Sawyer-whitewashing-the-fence thing? Because I’m not going to fall for it.”
He looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. “Fine. Your loss.” He lifted his sword, pointed it at the dust all around us—
“Wait,” I said. “Wait. Fine. I’ll do it.”
He didn’t smirk, but it was a near thing. I drew an arrow, pointed it towards the dust, and started singing.
Primary bindings are tricky no matter the size of the skirmish they follow, but I was intrigued to discover that in some ways, they’re easier when you’re covering more ground. For one thing, you really can’t be subtle and perfectionistic—you’ve got to cover the whole area with greenery and magic on a limited budget of energy, so straightforward and ugly works just fine. For another thing, stretching my magic to that distance, to cover the first few goblins I’d picked off, had some side effects.
Like noticing orcs before they noticed us.
I tied a hasty knot in my half-finished binding spell, and crept forward.
“Katie—” Mr. Mac started, but it was my turn to whirl and give him hand signs, even if they were decidedly less military. A finger to my lips. A point in the correct direction. An uncontrollably large grin on my face.
Mr. Mac shifted his weight over his center, adjusted his grip on his sword, and inched forward.
“More?” he breathed.
I shook my head. “Orcs.”
“Stay,” he told me in the barest whisper.
“No,” I told him at the same volume.
He turned a stubborn glare on me.
I returned it right back to him.
“If you think,” I hissed, “that I’m letting you walk into battle with orcs after facing goblins, after your wound last night, with zero backup, you’re crazy. Mrs. Mac would skin me alive if she found out. And she knows where I live.”
He kept glaring.
I didn’t back down.
“Fine,” he snapped. “But we track only. No battle. Neither of us is fresh enough for it tonight. We see what’s going on and we come back tomorrow.”
It wasn’t fair, of course, but I was mollified by that we in we come back tomorrow, and he knew it. I nodded grudging assent.
Then we turned and moved silently through the forest, off the path, up a hill into the wild wood. My fingers counted my arrows, over and over, mindlessly, as we rounded a stand of big pines and edged our way down towards a river flowing beneath us.
Orcs.
Seven of them, milling around on the opposite side of the river, sharpening wicked swords and roasting something over an open fire. I didn’t really think it was prime rib from the supermarket. If goblins felt like cave mud, these creatures felt like a cave-in. They were huge and muscular, with grey skin and lank hair, clothed only in various scraps of fabric.
I could feel Mr. Mac reach out his magic, hunting for other members of their band that weren’t in view. I just stared, wondering how I could convince Mr. Mac to let us fight them. After all, there were only seven…
Right then, as one, they turned and roared in our direction. I jumped, both from surprise and from the rage behind the sound, and automatically reached for an arrow from my quiver—
Something hit me. It felt like a truck—suddenly I was flying backwards through the air to land hard on my back—but I hadn’t seen a truck. I hadn’t seen anything.
I blinked, wondering why it was so hard to move.
“Katie!” yelled Mr. Mac.
No, no, I tried to say. Go have fun battle playtime with the orcs. I’ll be right there. I just need a little nap.
Even speaking the words seemed too difficult right at the moment, though. I closed my eyes, wrapped myself around the pain.
“Katie!” Mr. Mac yelled again, this time from about two inches away from my ear. I managed to slit my eyes open, trying to give him the most efficient, least strenuous ironic glare possible.
I’ve seen Mr. Mac’s face contorted into a lot of expressions. Grimly pleased, in battle. Quietly, despairingly frustrated, at some of the other kids in my chemistry class. Incredulous and annoyed, in all different flavors, at me, pretty much constantly.
I’d never seen his face look so white.
Suddenly worried, I exerted myself to look him over, looking for his wounds.
He was fine. It was me who was wounded.
“Oh,” I wheezed as I spotted two heavy quarrels sticking out of my left side, one up near my shoulder, one closer to my hip. I had a sudden feeling there were eight orcs out there. At least.
While I’d fired plenty of them, I’d never been on the receiving end of an arrow. The sensations were interesting in a vague, nauseating way.
Mr. Mac started chanting, weaving magic through the night. I wanted to tell him I was too tired to practice my bindings, and he could wake me up when he was done, but I didn’t have the energy for that. Instead I drifted, for a minute, for a millennium, in a colored haze. In a weird slow motion, grey shapes moved towards us, across the riverbed and up our bank. The brilliant, emerald green trees danced and swayed in the starlight, the water shone silver on its running course. Mr. Mac flared next to me, bright and ruby-red, his sword shining a counterpoint in gold. His magic popped and scattered through the air, through me, sapphire and amethyst and jade.
Is this what it feels like to be high? I wondered.
Mr. Mac shoved something at me. “Take it,” he demanded. “Do not let go.”
Then he turned and moved towards the grey shapes, his copper flame flickering behind him like a trailing cape.
Annoyed, I looked at the thing in my hands, and found myself holding part of his spell. It looked complicated and golden and warm. I thought about laying it aside so I could rest, but some smidge of self-preservation piped up, He’ll kill you if you let yourself die.
I sighed—the things I do for that man—and kept the spell going, through the shivering pain and the crushing fatigue.
Part of me watched Mr. Mac meet the enemy, watched him slice and slide and duck and parry, watched him hew and stab and slash, watched him dance between and among the grey shapes. Somewhere in my mind, I knew he was fighting harder than I’d ever seen him fight. In my floating, detached world, though, it just looked slow and silent and beautiful. The silver river trickled on, heedless.
Eventually, Mr. Mac ran out of dancing partners and headed back towards me, his steps light and quick, like sparks from a campfire running off into the night.
I couldn’t muster a snarky remark when he took the spell from me. I just shuddered and let go.
His eyes looked strained then, his jaw tight as he glanced at my face. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the blood sheeting down his cheek or the ragged hole in his thigh. I wished I could help him, but that didn’t seem likely.
I watched, a twinge of curiosity breaking through my detachment, as he took the neck of my t-shirt in his big hands and tore it in two, baring my flesh. Part of me objected to him ruining a perfectly nice shirt. Part of me wondered if I should be embarrassed to lie there in my sports bra in front of him. Most of me just stayed still, too tired to move. Those hands, big and hot, licked like flames to my two wounds, wrapped around the quarrels there, and tugged.
Detachment or no detachment, I certainly felt that. And I felt a lot more, too, as he pressed his palms flat against my wounds and poured his magic into me.
Look, there’s no easy way to say this. I’m a virgin. Between my schoolwork and my patrolling with Mr. Mac, I’ve had no time to get hot and heavy with anyone, even if any of the guys in my class were remotely appealing. Besides, who cares about sex when there’s battle to be had?
Saxifrage & Starshine Page 2
