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  Heat filled her mouth at that thought. “He was weak,” she said aloud, her words burning the air. “He was weak, or he would never have succumbed to Cren Cru. I didn’t! It took more than that parasite to bring me down.”

  It took only my fire.

  The trembling of Hri Sora’s limbs ceased in frozen horror. Then she turned to the pit, the black and gaping hole in the ground where Itonatiu Tower had once risen to the sun. She strode to the edge and, though the emptiness falling away below made her sick inside, she opened her mouth and spat fire into the darkness. The flame fell in a ball down and down, deeper and deeper. At last it was nothing put a pinprick of light. Then it was gone.

  A moment of stillness. Then screams.

  They were so far away that Hri Sora almost missed them. If Etalpalli itself was not so deathly silent, she never would have heard them. But they rose from the darkness and pierced her ears. She hissed and stepped back quickly.

  The Dark Father spoke again in her head: Are you ready to come home to me?

  “No!” she snarled. “I will have vengeance first.”

  Vengeance upon whom?

  “None of your business. Give me my wings.”

  Give me the Flowing Gold of Rudiobus.

  Hri Sora gnashed her teeth. She remembered now the iron cage up in Omeztli, where her Faerie captive waited. Curses upon this raging fire that kept consuming her mind! Curses upon this frail body that could not support such flame! But she must not let herself grow angry. She must not allow the fire to take her again. How much time had she wasted already? Not that there was any need for haste. Gleamdren was immortal. Etalpalli was unassailable.

  And Amarok was going nowhere.

  This thought made her smile. No, Amarok never dared leave his self-styled demesne. Not with his children on the loose.

  What is that smile for, daughter? Why do you keep secrets from me?

  Warmth filled Hri Sora now, a pleasant warmth of anticipation. “Don’t you wish you knew?” she crowed to the empty air. “Don’t you wish you could read my mind?”

  I don’t have to read your mind. I can predict your every thought!

  “But this you don’t know,” she laughed. “And you won’t. It’s my business, not yours.”

  Well, child, my business is your wings. Which you will never have if you fail to give me what I ask.

  “All in good time, Father, all in—”

  Etalpalli shuddered.

  Hri Sora broke off with a gasp and fell to her hands and knees, feeling the ground with her fingers, tearing the rocks with her talons. Her demesne had been linked to her spirit the moment she was crowned queen. Though she’d burned the city, this link was unbroken. She felt every shudder, every change.

  She felt now the intruder nosing along the edge of her borders. Beyond her world, out in the Between, but so close.

  “You want it, don’t you, my Etalpalli?” she whispered, stroking the trembling stones like a pet. “You are hungry for more deaths. Were not all my people enough to satisfy this newly awakened appetite?”

  What a crude animal your demesne has become. I’ll leave you to your games, daughter. But don’t forget our bargain.

  The Dark Father’s voice receded into the pit. Hri Sora hardly cared. Rising, she sped her gaze to the far reaches of her land and on into the Wood Between. There he was, one of the Merry Folk, testing the strength of her gate. He’d never get through on his own, selfish little beast that he was. Ttlanextu had been weak, but he was no fool when he set those boundaries in place!

  Yet just as the king could make the rules, so the queen could break them. Hri Sora raised a hand and, with a twist of her wrist, opened the Cozamaloti Gate.

  “Light of Lumé be doused forever, look what you’ve gone and done!”

  It was unclear if Eanrin spoke to the serpent, the girl, or even the bullfrog as he scrambled up from the muddy water, rubbing his middle where he’d been viciously kicked a moment before. He was soaked through, his hair plastered to his head, his cloak clinging to his body. But he darted forward to lift the fainted girl from the murk and thump her back to be certain she hadn’t swallowed more water. She lay limp as the dead against him, and he muttered a stream of curses.

  A shadow fell across them both, and Eanrin looked up into the face of the bullfrog. Only it was no bullfrog now. It was a prince.

  “Dragon’s teeth,” Eanrin snarled.

  The prince was tall, dark, and perhaps what mortals considered handsome. His clothing, though slimy as a frog’s hide, was of fine weave, all blue and silver. In that hasty first glance, Eanrin decided he was probably not from the same Time as the girl in her skins. Time being unpredictable, it was possible for princes and princesses of different eras to meet when once they entered the Wood Between. Eanrin (though he paid little attention to mortal history) estimated a good thousand mortal years between girl and prince.

  The prince swept a bow both to the poet and the fainted maid, saying, “Fair creature of untold beauty! How long have I awaited the deliverance brought by your sweet kiss?”

  “Enough blathering,” snapped Eanrin, adjusting his hold on the girl, trying to brace her so he could stand. “She’s unconscious and cannot hear you. Just as well if you plan to speak in clichés.” He gave the girl a shake. “Come, this is ridiculous. One doesn’t faint upon waking from an enchanted sleep! Rise and meet your rescuer; there’s a good girl.”

  Though her skin was dark, it wore a chalky pallor. Eanrin feared she had died from her fright, but when he put an ear to her mouth, he found she still breathed.

  “Spitfire!” the poet swore in relief. With more sloshing and wallowing, he managed to get himself upright, the girl in his arms. Her neck was limp, and her mass of hair trailed over his arm. “Here,” he said to the prince. “Take her. I’ve had quite enough of this heroics nonsense. And have I mentioned that it’s none of my business?”

  The prince blinked at him. “She isn’t mine.”

  “She is now. She kissed you out of your froggishness, didn’t she? Take her and deliver her kingdom like a man, then marry her, why don’t you?”

  The poet staggered a step forward, intending to drop the girl in the prince’s arms. But the prince stepped back. “M-marry?” he said. “Oh, now, Sacred Lights!”

  Eanrin offered the prince the coldest possible of stares. “Don’t tell me you have any complaints?”

  Thunder rumbled in the heavy sky above. Prince and poet startled and hunched their shoulders, as though afraid the heavens would drop on them. “Oh, I’m certainly not complaining,” said the prince. “Much obliged for the rescue, of course. But—”

  “But what?”

  “Well, marriage . . . I am expected to marry well.”

  “To a princess, I would imagine?” Eanrin shrugged the girl in his arms. “This one is as much a princess as you’ll ever find. She drank from an enchanted River. Who but a princess does that? True, she’s not much to look on right now”—She wasn’t. The wet skins she wore stank of swamp and clung to her limbs. Her hair stuck to her face and neck and sagged in a heavy, tangled lump down to the swamp water. Mud covered every visible inch of skin yet failed to disguise the sickly color of her cheeks—“but she’ll clean up well enough. And she rescued you, by Lumé, from a fate amphibian! Just the girl to bring home to mum and dad.”

  The prince rubbed the back of his neck. A drop of rain landed on his nose. More drops began to fall, dimpling the pools around them. The poet began to growl.

  “The thing is,” said the prince, “I need to find myself a bride with a certain amount of dowry. Never mind why. But this girl . . . I mean, look at her. Princess or not, one must wonder if she’d recognize the value of a gold coin if it hit her in the eye!”

  Eanrin felt the dampness of ChuMana’s realm seeping into his bones. Even his smile had been soaked from his face. “You won’t take the creature because she has no riches?”

  “It’s a sad business, I know,” said the prince with a sigh. “But w
hat is a man to do? So, I’ll just be moving along, then. When she comes to herself, give her my thanks. It has been a pleasure, and her kiss was nothing to frown upon, take my expert word for it. Farewell, princess! Farewell, stranger! I must take my leave—” He turned.

  And found himself eye to eye with ChuMana.

  The serpent looked mostly like a woman just then, but she smiled like a snake. “And where do you think you are going?”

  “Oh, dragon’s—”

  Her bite was swift, sinking with deadly accuracy into his shoulder. The prince had just enough time to give a startled yell. The next moment, a bullfrog sat once more in the water. It gave a mournful “GRAAAAP!” and hopped away with a splash, disappearing among the reeds. Its bellowing voice joined those of its countless brothers while the rain continued to fall.

  “I like him better that way,” Eanrin said, looking down his nose at the frogs. “Some men are more natural for a little slime.”

  ChuMana, hissing still, turned to the poet. “So, Eanrin of Rudiobus,” said she, “my debt is now paid.”

  “Aye, that it is,” agreed Eanrin with something that was probably meant to be a smile but was much too soggy by now to count. “Always a great feeling, isn’t it, paying off one’s—”

  “Away from my demesne!”

  Eanrin needed no convincing. The laws of Faerie satisfied, nothing but quick feet would save him now. Without a thought, he slung the mortal girl over his shoulder and fled the swamp, avoiding the serpent’s parting kiss by no more than a hair’s breadth.

  Thunder growled. Rain, free at last, beat down. ChuMana, the equilibrium of her realm restored, slithered into the darker reaches of her swamp, frogs scattering before her.

  10

  FIRST TO RETURN were sounds, though from such a great distance, she could not be certain she even heard them. At least they were gentle sounds: the rustling of leaves, the sighing of wind. More faintly still, she thought she heard soft breathing, but that was most likely her imagination.

  Next came a sensation of light that slowly pushed the darkness back into a hazy tunnel. Sparks burst on the edges like exploding fireflies. But soon things began to take more solid shape and color. She saw leaves, brilliant green on dark branches against a vibrant blue sky. She lay in a forest, she realized, though she couldn’t remember how she had come there.

  Oh, beasts and devils! Was that her head hurting so badly?

  With a groan, she struggled to repossess her own limbs. How had she— No! She wouldn’t think about that, not with her head throbbing so. But what was this place—no, no! No thinking!

  Grinding her teeth and drawing deep breaths, she sat up. Almost immediately she curled forward, her elbows digging into the dirt, her palms pressing into her eyes, and wished to die. People should not be obliged to live with heads in such a state. But after another lungful or two, she felt better and was able to look about again.

  She sat in a small clearing of pure green grass. Sunlight broke through the otherwise intensely heavy foliage to fall just here, making the green brighter still (and not helping her head). Beyond this circle of light lay the Wood, as black and ominous as any wood has ever dared be. The trees whispered to each other, gossiping with the wind. Otherwise, she was alone.

  “So, you are awake at last.”

  Not quite alone.

  The girl peered into the shadows of the trees just beyond the clearing. A form sat in the darkness, but she could discern no details. The voice was a man’s. Not a warrior’s voice, she thought. It wasn’t deep but smooth with a golden timbre. Coming from the shadows, however, it was ominous. Her heart began to race, and she stood and took a step back. This wasn’t her world. She felt the strangeness in the ground beneath her feet, in the air she breathed. And this stranger, whether man or monster, could not be her friend, not in this place.

  The form slinked from shadow to shadow with barely a flicker she could follow. But her eyes were quick and her ears quicker still. She turned as it moved, making certain she faced it.

  “You have been wasting my Time, mortal woman,” the stranger said. “With every breath you take, my rival draws nearer to stealing from me what I desire most. Do you see your crime, creature of dust?”

  She stepped back slowly, setting her feet so gently that they scarcely made a sound. How odd was the speech of the stranger! She thought, somehow, that she should not be able to understand, should not know his language. But the words he spoke shifted in her mind even as he spoke them, and she understood as clearly as though he spoke the tongue of her people. His voice was not unfriendly, but the meaning contained a possible threat. Her eyes darting even as her head remained still, she cast about for a stout stick. But in this otherworldly forest all the trees grew straight and never dropped a dead branch.

  The figure in the darkness moved again, sidling around as though to get closer to her. “It’s my own fault,” he said, “for allowing myself to become involved. I am more than ready to take responsibility for my foolishness!”

  She stepped sideways, one foot crossing delicately behind the other as she moved. The grass was soft beneath her feet, but she did not like it. It was deceptively comforting. How could one trust a forest such as this?

  “But for my pains, I think I deserve an explanation or two,” the stranger continued, slipping behind a tree so that she lost sight of him altogether. Her knees bent and her hands spread to lend her balance should she need to run suddenly.

  “Tell me, girl, what were you thinking, drinking from the River?”

  The voice was directly behind her. She whirled about. How could he have moved so fast? Her eyes searched the dark deeps, struggling to see through the glare of light around her. She spun in place, her gaze darting. Where was he? Where was—

  “Speak up, if you please.”

  She looked down. An orange cat sat at her feet, tail lashing. He grinned a feline grin at her. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Cat got your tongue?”

  She ran.

  Sparks exploded in her peripheral vision as her body screamed for her to stop. She did not care. She’d had enough of this place. Enough of animals who spoke with the tongues of men and men who were worse than animals. She sped through the trees, pushing branches from her face. Why did they reach like snatching hands to stop her? Her head pounded, her stomach roiled, her damaged feet pleaded for ease.

  How long had she been running now? Ever since the moon vanished behind the clouds on that night so far past, which also seemed but a few hours ago. She could never have passed through the mountains in so short a time. She should have died from exhaustion! Perhaps she had. Perhaps this was the world after death. This hell where she must keep running, running, and never know a moment’s peace.

  She fled the clearing, fled the nightmare, fled that cat. But in her mind, it was the wolf she heard howling at her heels.

  The trees shifted from her way so that she ran in a straight line. But their shadows became longer and darker, like thick curtains falling. The only light she saw came from the flowers on the vines twining everywhere in this wood, gleaming little stars. She thought she heard them speaking to her in voices not human, pleading with her to go back, to turn around.

  But there was no going back now. They would kill her if she returned. They would bind her to the stone and leave her to be devoured. No, she had fled, and she must never return!

  Oh, Fairbird! Her mind cried out in desperate silence. How could I have left you?

  There had been no choice then; there was no choice now. She must run, she must lose herself in this forest so deeply that she would never be found.

  The Wood put out its grasping arms, ready to swallow her whole. Its shadows fed into her fear, and without knowing what she did, her feet fell upon a dark Path that made promises she understood without knowing she heard them. Promises of safety, of hiding, of dark holes where no one could pursue.

  How cold the air had become! Her breath frosted, her fingertips were blue, and her lungs begged for r
elief. The harsh cords on her wrists cut more sharply, the dangling ends lashing at her bare legs. But she could not stop.

  A pit opened before her.

  Her arms swung wide, grasping at empty air, for the trees had pulled back to give her no handhold. A gaping hole from which rose a fetid stink ate away the ground at her feet. She scrambled on the edge, struggling in vain to throw herself back. She saw the face of the devil in the dark, saw its hands reaching for her throat.

  “This one isn’t for you, Guta!”

  The golden voice of the stranger rang in her ears, as horrible to her as the face of the devil. But she felt strong hands grasp beneath her arms and haul her away from the pit. She staggered and fell, scraping her legs against hard soil, but two arms wrapped about her and held tight. She closed her eyes, bracing herself . . .

  . . . and opened them in a flood of warm sunshine.

  The pit was gone. She lay on a soft patch of earth once more in a bright part of the Wood. Did this mean she was safe? Moaning, she closed her eyes and shook her head, desperate to clear her thoughts. Then she looked at the man kneeling beside her.

  “I must say, you mortals are a flighty lot.”

  His features were human enough, but there was something feline about the rest of him. Not his appearance but the essence of him. He clucked and shook his head at her disapprovingly. His voice was that of the cat.

  “I really should have left you in the first place,” he said. “Or the second place! But after all that nonsense—giving up my favor from ChuMana, Lumé love me—I feel I’m owed an explanation. Curiosity always was my chief fault, and now look where it’s gotten me! Ah, well. What’s a man to do?”

  She should be afraid. But just then she was too spent to be frightened anymore. She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. Otherwise, she could not move.

  “That part of the Wood is dangerous, you know,” the cat-man continued. “It’ll draw you into darker places with folks you don’t want to meet. Guta is a foul-tempered demon, to say the least. A beater. He would beat you to death upon sight, believe me! He’s done it to many stronger than you. It’s a good thing I caught up when I did. I don’t know if I’d have been able to pull you back out once you’d fallen into Guta’s pit!”