by Leigh Evans
I couldn’t do the ditch. I was down to one thumb; I had magic streaming from my fingertips and tethers leading from my hands. There was no way I could hang on to the pommel in an effort to keep myself in the saddle.
Maybe the ditch would shallow out around the next bend.
Goddess, I hope so.
“There is no village named Creemore,” pursued Mouse.
Worried, I said sharply, “Well, that’s where I come from.”
At this, the Gatekeeper turned, and paused to look back at me, her eyes narrowed into unappealing squints.
“Keep walking.” I gave her all my teeth.
* * *
See? My Goddess heard me again.
I saw it the moment we completed the fourth bend in the road: one very old ash whose limbs were spread out in an expansive welcome. Hell, I wouldn’t even have to slide off the saddle to reach the thick, knotted branch that arched low over our chosen road. Feeding Merry and Ralph was going to be as complicated as saying, “Whoah, horsie.”
“Buck up, Merry. I see lunch,” I murmured in English.
Switching languages, I told the others to slow down, which earned me a quick, dark glance from the Fae. I waited until the baleful Gatekeeper was a few feet past Merry’s dinner before bringing my mount to a stop more or less underneath its heavy branch.
Mouse said, “I need to piss.”
At which point the diminutive Fae swung completely around, her features twisted into a full, foul glare. “Why are we stopping here?” she demanded.
“Turn around and face forward,” I growled.
“I have done what was required of me. Release me or—”
“Turn. Around.”
Her eyes warred with mine for three very long “Mississippis” before she complied. I studied her rigid back for a tick before I tilted my head back to gaze upward.
Crap.
Perspective had made me believe the tree limb would be horizontal to my current elevation astride old Seabiscuit once we caught up to it. And if that had been the case, feeding Merry and Ralph would have been dead easy. But now, sitting under the tree, I realized that I’d need to stretch and stand on my stirrups to pass Merry up to it.
A problem, as both of my hands were tethered to my reluctant tour-guides.
I turned to consider the ditch again.
Double crap.
Merry crawled up the slope of my breast in order to take a better look at lunch. There was none of her usual vigor on display as she attempted to heave herself into a vertical position. She noticeably wobbled, I noted with increasing glumness.
“Use my hair,” I said, hardly moving my mouth.
She didn’t sass me for my suggestion, and I didn’t grimace when the sharp edges of her ivy leaves raked my skull as she reached for a hank of my hair. Holding on to it gave her the support she required to stand, and now, more or less upright, she unfurled another tendril of ivy from the nest surrounding her dull stone.
Without any real conviction, she stretched it upward toward her meal.
I straightened tall in my seat.
We both gave it our best, but Fae gold and semi-mortal spines can only thin so far. After we proved the point in a manner that we both found painful, her arm fell.
“It would be better if I didn’t dismount,” I whispered. “Maybe we’ll find another tree up ahead. Or if you’re really hungry, we can try the—” I was going to say “fir trees,” but she suddenly slumped, turning herself from an upright stick figure to a legless pendant in one sudden and swift collapse. Her chain made a burring noise as she dropped to the very end of it—a zip line deployed without brakes. She bounced twice and then swung there.
Seemingly lifeless.
“Merry?”
Chapter Nine
I could feel the chill of her stone right through the cotton of my shirt.
“Merry?” I said louder.
She didn’t respond. I had fear then, equal to that I felt when I swung out over the falls. But unlike that moment when the ground had fallen away from my feet, this terror wasn’t set with anticipation—dear Goddess, please take care of me because I’m going to fall—this was already happening. I was in free fall.
I could lose Merry. Right here. Under the ash tree that could fix her.
I swayed, the realization so sharp and sickening, it overwhelmed me. Spots formed, and the edges of my vision started to soften again.
“Wake up!” I told her.
One of those limp hanging vines gave a twitch.
“Come on!” I said, blinking fiercely. “You don’t go to sleep. You don’t slip away. We stay. We fight. We don’t bail on each other. Come on!”
As the edges of my vision sharpened, the light that had so briefly extinguished inside her amber belly flickered. Then, with a shudder, those limp arms and legs retracted, shifting back into the nest of gold surrounding her stone.
“You scared me.” My whisper was an accusation. Her belly was still chill. She was edging closer to a sleep from which I wouldn’t be able to wake her.
She lifted a weary arm in assent.
I could see again. Her. Me. Everything.
If we stayed this course, moving forward without stopping for necessary repairs, we were finished. Sooner or later—probably sooner—we’d both pass out. And then, neither of us would be able to wake the other.
I knew it; Merry knew it.
She was spent, having depleted her reserves last night.
And though I’d tried to fight it, I was ready to slide off the saddle, likely as a result of what my body had suffered last night and this morning: copious loss of blood (it lay in pools), dehydration (panting does that), and shock (we’re talking pools).
I gazed upward with frustration. The tree hadn’t moved. The limb was still there. Just out of reach. If I fed Merry, she’d be well again. And then, with her reserves topped up, she could help me stay alert enough not to slide off the saddle. One hand washes the other.
Except, before all that necessary sudsing took place, I needed a free hand.
Dammit.
One of my tethers spoke up.
“Do you have any objections to me taking a piss?” Mouse moved closer.
I stared down at his upturned face, thinking how tired I was and how little time it would take to hoist Merry to her meal. I was already positioned under Merry’s buffet. All I had to do was stand and stretch.
Why not cut the ties that bound me to him? Just for a second?
I’d used my magic as an independent restraint back at the cave. The donut had worked: the Gatekeeper hadn’t summoned up any magic to defeat mine; Mouse hadn’t been able to slip free of it.
Why not try it again? Except this time, fashion an individualized one, because I only need one hand free and I only required the use of it for less than a minute. I could tell my magic to squeeze the crap out of him if he tried anything …
I teetered on the edge of common sense.
“I really need to go,” he said again, shifting on his feet.
At the word, “go,” I got a vivid image of Mouse flashing me a cheery “gotcha” grin before haring off for points unknown. Back at the cave, he’d been the one making the concentrated effort to escape. If he decided that this was his last chance, and he made a sprint for freedom, running even as my magic crushed his ribs, he’d be utterly useless to me. Without his muscle, I couldn’t remount Seabiscuit.
His brow pleated under my fierce scowl. “A man’s got to piss. It’s just a fact of nature.”
My gaze moved to the Gatekeeper. I studied the fuzzy ball of her topknot, then her hunched shoulders, then the circle of magic pinioning her arms to her sides, and finally, the ends of her short little legs.
With those itty-bitty feet, she couldn’t make significant tracks in the two seconds it would take me to plop Merry and Ralph on the tree. And with her arms pinned, her balance was definitely compromised. I’d watched her lurch like a drunkard over some of the rougher portions of road we’d trav
eled and been mildly amused at her clumsiness.
Slide off your horse and she’ll be on you.
Okay, so I won’t get off the horse. I’ll do what I need to do—stand up on one stirrup, lift and place the amulets on the branch—then I’ll sink back to the saddle, thighs weakly hugging Seabiscuit’s fat sides, while they feed. I can stay alert until Merry’s topped up her reserves. And here’s the bonus: once filled, she could share some of that reserve with me, and this muzzy, light-headed feeling, which made thinking in a straight line so difficult, would go away.
Merry’s body was exuding waves of cold again. The chill puckered my nipples and spread goose bumps around my ribs.
Yes. It was donut time.
Like the smart person I vaguely sensed I wasn’t being, I went over the plan in careful detail with my Fae, visualizing the sequence—cut, donut, stay, and retether. And then, because I didn’t want to give the Gatekeeper a heads-up, I thought, rather than said, my command.
I was being wily.
Cut, I mentally commanded magic-mine.
She splintered and a hundred or more particles of florescence glittered, separate and lively, unattached lights. They hovered indecisively, then opted to float over to the loop of magic around the woman’s waist. They sank down onto it, joining the band of bright green wrapped around the woman’s torso.
I saw the Gatekeeper’s back stiffen. As the coil swelled, her shoulders tightened, moving higher to grace her ears. Slowly, she turned her head on the short stem of her neck. One brown eye stared at me for a long moment.
She knows, I thought.
I stared back at her, keeping my face blank the way I used to when my aunt Lou gave me the squint-eyes. However much the Gatekeeper may have wanted to test the limits of her new situation, she must have come to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth it, for she turned back to face the road.
Good. Stay there.
I flexed my aching, swollen left hand, enjoying the release from the constant tugging weight of magic. Then quickly I opened my palm, holding it like a platform in front of Merry. “Hop on,” I whispered. “I’ll give you a hoist.”
She scuttled over my life line.
“Eat as much as you can,” I whispered in English, tipping my neck sideways to ease her chain over my head. “I need you strong.” The necklace’s smooth links slid up my sweating neck, gathering my tangled hair with it.
Since then, I’ve had time to think about all those muzzy decisions. And it has occurred to me that if anyone had chosen to take my picture right then—freezing me in that position—the pre-photoshopped elements would have amounted to one of those romanticized female studies. It was all there: the gently curved and upraised arm, the tilted head, the hair messily bundled, the eyes slanted downward …
Given what happened next, the last detail was the important one.
My gaze, for want of any other focal point, landed on Seabiscuit’s ears. And so, I had a perfect, if somewhat blurry, view of them as they pricked forward in sudden interest.
Uh-oh.
Slow as a submarine’s periscope being operated by a methodical man, the pony’s ear pivoted until it faced the hills to our right. I twisted at the waist, breath freezing in my windpipe. I saw boulders, strewn on the hill as if they were a giant’s abandoned toys. Beyond them, I saw the first line of the forest’s firs—scabby, fat spruce trunks, needled branches sloping upward like they were a kid’s rendering of Christmas trees.
Rocks, trees, more rocks, more trees …
Then, amid all that nature, the glint of silver.
* * *
Bob the blind bookseller had a metronome in his shop. Growing up, I never asked him why he’d accepted it along with the carton of battered James Patterson thrillers. Bob was an odd duck; he was the purveyor of used goods, and if he chose to sell a musical device that counted time then he did. It was no more unfathomable than the lariat of cowboy rope he’d tacked on the wall behind his cash register.
Often, after Bob had put the shop to bed and left for the evening, I’d sneak downstairs and use his hidden key to let myself in. While wandering the store choosing my next novel, I would occasionally detour to lift the metronome off the shelf. I’d turn the pyramid over in my hand, to wind the key; then I’d flip it around and push the metal weight clamped on the pendulum’s arm all the way down the stick.
The lower the weight, the faster the pendulum would swing. I’d slide that thing down till it rested on the fulcrum. Then, I’d release the spring that held the arm in check.
And now, staring at that glint of metal shining intermittently through the trees, I felt like I was the kid I once was. Standing where I shouldn’t be, having just sprung the spring.
There’s a moment before that first tick—a split second of frozen anticipation before the thing started counting time.
I used to enjoy it: the hitched breath, the instant before.
I don’t like it anymore.
* * *
Time stalled, like the bile that wanted to climb up my throat, as I stared at the source of the flashing glint of something shiny. That was a fortuitous thing because it gave my brain the much-needed space it needed to figure out what I gaping at.
Goddess.
Not a mirror, as I’d hoped, but a silver-toned sword held by a horseman wearing a familiar jacket. I recognized it at once, having seen only one uniform of the same shade of bottle blue since arriving in Merenwyn. The rider who’d accompanied Qae had worn it.
I looked past the rider. He was alone.
Qae was not with him.
Neither was Trowbridge.
You see? In the instant before, when time made no difference, I was able to process that Trowbridge was not there, which meant maybe he was still free, leading Qae on some wild chase on the lee side of K2. But on the heels of that happy thought, my inner voice sneered, Idiot. He’s already been captured. He’s on his way to Wryal’s Island in chains.
I stopped that dialogue right there, not letting the awful possibility travel to where my emotions lived. Because I was here, in the instant before: when decisions, both good and poor, were made.
I dropped my arm, letting the hand that had grown into a fist around Merry slide down the back of my neck. I released her chain. Felt, rather than saw, her slide down the knobs of my spine.
From his seat at the top of the second hill, the rider studied me as I studied him. He’d already come to his conclusion. His curved blade was raised, ready to swing, or swipe or chop. His reins were gathered, and there was something about the position of his hips that told me his knees had just communicated to his mount.
Charge. That’s what I got from those knees.
My sluggish brain started firing faster than the pistons on a Porsche. It calculated the distance, not in miles or kilometers or feet or yards—but in time. How long? There were two hills between us. Those slopes were babies compared to K2’s. But still, he had one hill to gallop down and another to canter up and, once clear of them, shoulder-high boulders to avoid.
It sounds like a lot.
But at cavalry speed, it meant I had fifteen seconds or less before his charge became my capture. Which is when my brain leaped to the next thought—
I can’t ride worth shit.
The ditch now looked like a great option, dismounting the only choice.
Tick. The instant before broke and the pendulum started wildly counting off the quarter seconds when the man on the horse kicked his mount and opened his mouth to utter a chilling hoot.
The horse erupted into a canter.
From that instant on, the pendulum’s stick started swinging at top speed.
Tick, tick, tick. I shook off my pony’s reins and lunged forward fast, flattening myself over Seabiscuit’s startled neck. That gave me the leverage to jerk my bad leg over her wretched rump and roll off her. As I threw myself off her Seabiscuit neighed, then performed an agitated equine two-step in an effort not to step on me.
I was all for her two-s
tep, doing my part by performing an evasive roll in an effort to avoid being flattened.
Tick, tick, tick.
In all my panic, I forgot I still had one cable of magic streaming from my right hand, and that line of green hadn’t been given verbal leave to cut the connection before my hasty dismount. My Fae talent held on to her prize, and thus, when I went tallyho to the ditch on the left, Mouse did too.
Up and over Seabiscuit, he went.
Showing distinct promise as a trick pony rider, Mouse climbed over Seabiscuit’s dancing back, still on his feet, both of his hands gripped around the cable of magic, his teeth clenched in determination. He never lost his balance; he simply walked over Seabiscuit.
Then, he had to ruin all that athleticism by falling on me. I’d only just landed and was processing the fact, lying flat on my back.
Seabiscuit reared, showing her rounded belly, before she galloped away.
The next part was kind of a visual montage of quick-sliding snippets, coupled with an audio of drumming hooves. Momentum carrying him, Mouse stepped on my stomach. I rolled again, his feet tangled, and then he was half on me and half off, his weight pinning me.
We were still tethered!
“Cut!” I shouted.
My Fae talent exploded in a starburst of green sparkles. The boy gasped, choking on inhaled particles he couldn’t see. I held on to Mouse’s arm with an iron grip as he choked up that and my magic. It didn’t take long—only two hacking coughs—before his breath was clean of anything except the sour smell of his fear.
The rider was close, my ears informed me.
In and out Mouse’s breath rasped—a challenge to the cacophony of yips and hoofbeats thundering toward us. He scratched at my fingers, trying to tear them loose.
He had no magic.
“Go!” I opened my claws and gave him a shove toward the ditch. “Get into those trees and keep going!”
I didn’t wait to watch him run off. Before he’d cleared the ditch, I was rolling to my feet. The horseman had disappeared, but I could hear him. The sound of his mount’s drumming hooves echoed through the field of rock.
