Aradia had learned that the crowharrow couldn’t tell the difference between a real creature and a shapeshifted one. He wouldn’t know she had taken Nasturtium’s form provided she remained that way long enough to trick him. She might be safe, as he had undoubtedly seen the cat. However, the crowharrow knew the ways of animals. He could spot even the subtlest movement out of character, and he would be looking for it. Aradia had only escaped him at the gate because his mind was bent on Tansel in the garden. Now, he would be bent on Aradia too—with an altogether different intention—and she planned to use that to her advantage.
She had to assume the crowharrow knew she crouched in sight of the hawthorn tree. But she dared not assume, even though he hadn’t come after her, that her ruse was working. If she changed, he would get her. If she tried to sneak to the tree and climb it, he would get her.
If she sat here too long thinking about it, he would get her.
She sat up and licked her paw. She needed to bore him with something ordinary and cat-like. Why would Nasturtium come here, except to woo another cat?
Prey.
Aradia lowered her paw and sauntered through the brush. She made herself forget about the hawthorn tree, the wall and the pain in her body. She crept through the shadows until her feline senses picked up movement. With instinctual skill, she stalked and pounced on a mouse. Its tiny strident screams went unheard as she tossed it about. She watched it fall, recover, and try to run. Eventually, it headed for the hawthorn tree. Aradia followed it in a rustle of pursuit.
But mice know the safe places in the world. When the mouse reached the wall, it wriggled into a low crack made by the roots of the tree. Caught in the thrill of the hunt, Aradia went to shove her paw into the hole—and then pulled back at the last moment to avoid getting blasted by the wizard’s spell.
Behind her, high in the rocks and trees of the forest, the crowharrow moved.
She froze, her heart pounding wildly and the fur on her back rising up into a bristling ridge. She backed away with a hiss as he appeared before her, towering and fell, his teeth baring a black smile and his wings slamming the sticky air.
“Foolish mortal,” he breathed. With impossible speed, he reached down and closed his clawed hands around her body.
She slipped from his grasp as a squirming trout. As she hit the ground, his foot came down; she flipped out from under it. He caught her in mid-air. She changed from one form to the next, every living thing she knew that was slimy, swift and difficult to catch or hold—snake, weasel, hummingbird, fisher, dragonfly, bat—she moved between focuses with such agility that he couldn’t stay ahead of her, even beyond time. Enraged, he grappled for her in the air, on the ground, in his hands; she climbed his mossy garb, caught in his wings, scratched his neck and arms and bit his fingers until at last, as a flea, she leapt to the hawthorn tree.
She perched there, unmoving as the immortal hunter slammed the brush on the forest floor, trying to flush her out. She wouldn’t be able to endure this much longer. She wished she knew how to change into air or fire. Instead, beneath the shadow of a leaf, she changed into a mouse. Each time the crowharrow turned his back or cried out in wrath, Aradia moved a little higher, until she neared the top of the wall. There, she released her mind.
She gasped with a human breath as she found herself clinging to the flimsy branches of the tree. The air stretched with a shriek as the crowharrow discovered her. With all of her strength, Aradia threw herself over the wall. She screamed as something tore into her leg. But as the weight of her body pulled the crowharrow’s hand into the magic barrier, he howled with pain and released her. Aradia landed with a whump into a thick bed of periwinkle.
She rolled over, coughing and gasping as the slick, cooling heat of blood spread over her ankle and calf. In the sky above the wall, the winged hunter hung, his great wings flapping slowly as he stared down, his eyes glowing with white fire.
Aradia pushed herself up and wheezed a mocking laugh at him. “Lust-weakened seed of the Old Black Whore!” she croaked. “You’ll never catch me.”
The crowharrow flexed his breast and let loose a roar that shook the earth, tore the trees and caused the moon to flee behind an iron cloud.
In the Blood
Tansel awoke in a rush of cold water as the crowharrow’s roar shook the windows of her room. As she came to her senses, she wondered if the sound had been real or in a dream. Since the beast had begun haunting the woods beyond the garden, she hadn’t slept deeply for such dreams, a river of lust and carnage that left her each morning tangled in a damp sweat in the linens of her bed.
She curled into a fetal position. Her mother’s death lurked in the darkness of still moments with the persistence of trauma. It gazed with lidded eyes into the ache in Tansel’s heart growing daily under the crowharrow’s song, so beautiful, so perfectly male, his potion stirred and warmed her blood beneath the surface of comprehension. The grief she had never let herself feel, having spent most of her life alone in one way or another, simply didn’t overcome it. Death and desire had become the same thing.
She lay there until an overcast dawn touched the garden outside. She listened intently for the crowharrow’s call. She listened for the sound of the wizard at her door. And she listened for Mushroom, who had gone missing. But only birds greeted her, as the daylight grew.
When she rose from her bed, she decided to venture into the garden to look for the cat. So she told herself. Fantasies crowded her mind; absurd, unlikely images of taking the crowharrow’s hand, seeing him smile, feeling the wind in her hair as he flew with her into the sky; she imagined what his home looked like, if he had a bed, how soft it would be; she conjured up images of what he might bring her to eat and how softly, in the night, he would speak to her. Tansel knew these things were not likely to happen. But she could no more halt the flow of her thoughts than stop a spring-swollen river in its course. She didn’t want to hear his voice in her body and yet she would choose death over not hearing it again.
She slipped through the door, wincing as her bare feet touched the cold stones. The garden path opened up to the fruits of her labors over the past quarter moon: freshly dug beds, piles of weeds and cuttings, pots stacked here and there. Parts of the garden looked sparse as compared to the tangle that had grown there before. To prepare for her great grandfather’s lessons, she had cleared around the focusing stones wherever she found them.
Beneath the old wizard’s oak-tree shelter, Tansel had begun to learn about angles in light, positive and negative energy, flow, frequency, color and perception. Such knowledge stood in painful relief to the darkness awakening in her. The crowharrow vanished whenever the Raven of Muin came around. Tansel often wondered if the wizard knew what the winged beast was doing to her—but she couldn’t tell him. It had become too intimate, a private desire that didn’t suffer the light of day.
She stopped as she passed by a spot in the garden where Mushroom had pawed a hole into the dirt to relieve himself. She looked around. It could have been there already. She kept walking. “Mushroom,” she whispered, low enough that only a cat would hear.
A cat...or a crowharrow.
Mushroom, please come back. Perhaps the cat could hear her thoughts.
The crowharrow probably could.
“Graemalkin,” she breathed, using the magic cat-word Sigen had taught her.
Something moved in the corner of her eye. Her command had worked; only it hadn’t brought Mushroom, but a scruffy orange cat she had seen around. It moved beneath a trimmed rose bush. Tansel knelt and held out her hand. “Here, kitty.”
It meowed, then turned and slipped into the brush. As Tansel paused, an orange streak fled across the path towards the eastern wall where the crowharrow prowled.
Tansel took a deep breath and followed the cat. Every muscle in her body trembled as she tiptoed through the garden. Her heart beat in her throat and her palms were damp. Unable to help it, she scanned the tops of the trees...
He was there.
Tansel froze in her tracks. The crowharrow sat gracefully in the place she had first seen him, on a crag that offered a view of the northeastern corner of the garden. He watched her with the ephemeral calm of a vision. Her entire body responded with terror and joy; a cool rush flooded her face and her knees weakened. His beauty was stunning, impossible, and so unattainable that all her fantasies blew away like dandelion fluffs on the wind. Her eyes filled with tears. His wintry gaze, the way he didn’t stir, or sing, frightened the sense out of her.
She started at a strange sound. A voice, raspy and anguished, groaned nearby. The orange cat emerged from behind a weed-choked bed of winterberry and released a plaintive cry.
Tansel looked again at the crag. The crowharrow was gone.
She released a breath, rubbed her eyes and walked towards the cat. Something lay in a heap on the far side of the bushes. Tansel ran through the brush to the periwinkle patch, where she knelt in a panicked whirl. “Aunt!” Barely recognizable, the woman looked like a pile of moldy, mossy rags, her clothes torn and filthy and her body covered with scratches and bruises. She had a row of nasty, bleeding gashes on her leg, near the ankle.
“Tansel,” she breathed, clutching at the hem of her gown.
“What happened to you?”
“Help...”
Tansel gathered her aunt into her arms and stood—the woman weighed no more than a child—and walked unsteadily back to the path in the direction of her room. The orange cat ran out in front of her as if glad to be going to a safer place.
Tansel cast a glance over her shoulder as she moved beyond the view of the crowharrow’s perch. Thunder rumbled in the distance, carrying his laughter. A bleak cloud settled over her heart as she remembered that Mushroom was still missing.
*
Later, after she had made her aunt comfortable in her bed and fed her most of the breakfast Sigen had left by the hearth, Tansel dressed and hurried from the room. She headed for the kitchens, to a chamber full of jars containing the leaves, flowers, roots and bark of medicinal plants. A tall, quiet healer named Geira had showed her the place. Though Tansel was no healer, she knew how to wash a wound and make a poultice or a salve. She certainly knew the properties of plants used for such things.
She crept into the room, looking furtively about. For some reason Tansel hadn’t bothered to question, her aunt had been adamant about staying hidden. Tansel kindled a fire in the hearth and began to gather bowls, a mortar and pestle, cloths and fistfuls of plants that would ease pain, close wounds and calm the mind. When the worn oak block by the hearth was crowded with the things she needed, she got to work.
Tansel worked undisturbed for a time, until someone entered. She looked up with her hands buried in a warm rag soaked in lavender, violet and marigold. Sigen’s woman approached. Difficult, with a stout frame and red-blond curly hair, she rapidly surveyed the table Tansel worked on.
“Sky,” Tansel greeted her.
“What’re you about?” Sky asked, her brown eyes dark.
Tansel removed her hands from the bowl and wiped them on her skirt. “I’m practicing,” she lied. Mostly, she had been practicing that excuse in the event someone came in here.
“Practicing what? Being ill—or makin’ a mess?”
Tansel blushed as she returned her hands to the bowl and wrung out the rag. She needed to finish this without being questioned, discovered or worse, delayed. “The Master asked me to learn how to do this,” she said. “He wants to begin training me in the use of herbs for magic.” That’s some rubbish, she cringed inwardly, but given the look on Sky’s face, a good enough tale in a pinch.
The older woman put a hand on her breast. “You might have asked me. I know how to make healing brews. And Geira, well she is a Keeper, Order of Wren.”
“I need to try on my own. Master wants to see if I can do it.”
Sky lifted her chin with a breath, not missing the fact that Tansel had hung the Master out in front of her face. The unintentional maneuver painfully reminded Tansel that her lonely existence in the forest had taught her nothing about dealing with people.
“Well,” Sky said with a sniff, “I don’t suppose the Master bade you to leave this mess for me to clean, did he?”
Tansel concluded that Sigen’s woman didn’t share his mysterious, newfound respect for her. She flashed a halfhearted smile. “I’ll return and clean it later.”
“I should say so!”
Tansel picked up her bowl of poultices, a jar of salve and a bucket of hot water and fled in a splashing clutter into the hall. She finally reached her room and found her aunt asleep. Tansel set down her things and went to the bed. She sat and touched the crone’s shoulder, causing her to awake with a start.
“It’s me,” Tansel soothed. “I brought you some things to clean and care for your hurts.”
“I’ll do it,” the crone rasped.
“You want me to leave you alone?”
“Aye.”
Tansel let out her breath and stood up. Now might be a good time to return and clean up her mess as she had promised Sky. But the scary garden gave her another notion. “I’m going to look for Mushroom,” she said, striding across the room. She grabbed her cloak from a stand.
Her aunt’s gravelly voice slowed her. “Do stay away from that wall.”
Tansel nodded and slipped through the tall glass door. Light rain caressed her face as she stepped onto the path. She did look for Mushroom on her way to the northeastern corner of the garden. She called him in every way she knew that usually brought him. But he didn’t come.
Nor did the crowharrow. Tansel reached the white roses in view of the crag. The rock was empty and shrouded in rain. Her heart sank. She stood there for a time as if to bring the crowharrow with the sheer force of her will. Finally, the cold nudged her towards the path.
Instead of returning to her room—or to the kitchens to clean her mess—she left the garden by the northern gate, where the wizard usually entered when he came to see her. She walked towards the center of the hall until she entered a corridor lined with narrow tapestries. They contained pictures of landscapes, plants, animals, and trees arranged in geometric patterns: raptors flying through boughs in the wind, the moon and sun opposing each other on a purplish void, and roots woven around with stars. Strange pictures, contrasts, abstractions. Wizards’ notions.
When Tansel reached the last tapestry, her breath caught. It showed a moonlit forest with threads of gray, white, and black woven with such intricacy that it appeared to have been painted. A man, white as the moon with glistening black hair and towering wings, sat on a crag. He watched in perfect silence from the only color in the work, eyes of pale sky blue.
Impossibly, it was the exact scene above the wall on the northeastern corner of the garden, right down to the birch trees surrounding the crag. Even the crowharrow’s cold, patient expression was the same.
“There you are,” rumbled a voice behind her.
Tansel spun around like a thief as her great grandfather approached. “Master.” Even after learning their relation, she still had trouble using his name in difficult circumstances.
He smiled. “I hope you didn’t think I had abandoned you. I had business.” He looked her up and down with a quizzical lift in his brow. “Why, you are soaking wet! Have you been working in the rain?”
Tansel opened her mouth to speak—then closed it. She shrugged.
Nodding hesitantly, he gestured to the tapestry above her with his chin. “I see you’re admiring the needlework. They were made by the weavers who make cloaks for the Keepers of the Eye, and have been in my family for centuries. This one is my favorite.”
Tansel tore her gaze from his face and looked again at the tapestry. Now, only a raven perched on a rock in the forest. Tansel’s lips parted in disbelief as a chill clutched her spine.
“Do you like it?” the old wizard inquired.
“Um—” She stepped away from the tapestry. “Aye.” Ridiculous—what else cou
ld she say? “Actually, I wanted to know if you could give me a few days alone.”
He dropped his head into a firm, unquestioning nod. “Very well. When you are ready, call me.”
“How?”
He touched her forehead. “You know my name. Use it.”
She nodded and unsuccessfully attempted a smile. After glancing once more at the raven tapestry to make sure it hadn’t changed again, she walked from the passage. Once out of her great grandfather’s sight, she quickened her pace. As she moved through the honeysuckle arch into the garden, she remembered Mushroom. She had forgotten to ask the wizard about it. But she couldn’t call him here with her aunt in her room—and she dared not return to the corridor with the enchanted tapestries.
Her mess in the kitchen still awaited her. A vision of Sky’s imperious expression prompted her to head for the corner of the garden instead. “Mushroom!” she called out, flinging aside bushes as she passed. No cat, nothing but rain. Once more, she reached the white rose patch. Slowly, terrified to look, she raised her eyes to the crag. Empty.
Maybe he dislikes the rain, she thought miserably.
She turned and trudged to the path, as empty as a broken jar, hungry and damp from standing in the rain. She reached her room and found the bed empty and unmade. Her aunt had gone. Scattered around on the floor lay used dressings, puddles of herb-infused water, and ratty clothes. The breakfast tray was stacked with empty, sloppy plates. Gnawed ham fat littered the hearth; the orange cat had eaten and departed, too.
Tansel moved to the bed, picked up a bloody rag and tossed it aside. One more mess to clean, she thought. Chilled, she removed her wet clothes and grabbed a plain gray dress she had left hanging near the hearth. She sat on the bed with a huff, fighting the emptiness. Gardening, wizards’ mysteries, herbs, responsibilities. The void of the crowharrow’s presence had devoured her interest in everything.
Tansel shoved the covers aside and curled up with her arms over her head. Time slowed to a ponderous weight as she lay there, sad in every stitch of her being. The room bled cold, the rain unceasing. Her stomach growled with hunger.
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