by Dawn Metcalf
She laughed, her voice pitched low.
“Joy?”
Ink’s voice held a hint of warning, but not enough to call her back from exploring the roots of a tree that seemed to recognize the shape of Stef’s passing, some odd tidbit of hair or skin or blood. It chilled her and fascinated her and the scent of him was almost within reach...
“Joy!”
She blinked. Trapped, she looked down. She was thigh-deep in earth; a rough hillock had formed around her like an anthill, an avalanche in reverse. Rocks and stones and clods of dirt had gathered to cluster at her feet, surrounding her ankles, pushing together, climbing over one another to worship at her knees. A dry crust had formed, riddled with cracks, protecting her in the center of the moist, brown soil. It was warm and rich and brown and alive. Joy fell backward, kicking hastily at the dirt and landing hard on her hip. She extricated herself, flailing and clawing. The connection—if there was one—snapped, broke, gone.
Joy lay on the ground, panting. Ink wound a hand around her forearm and hauled her to her feet. She clung to him, pulling him hard against her, grasping him with both hands and gasping.
“What happened?”
“You called Earth to you,” Ink said. “And it answered.”
“I—” She faltered and slid her hands down her arms, over her stomach, touching her legs. “I didn’t—?”
“Change? No,” Ink said. “It stopped. You stopped.” He weighed his words carefully. “I waited to be sure.”
Joy stared at his eyes, endless pools of fathomless black flecked with flashes of neon light. Would he have killed her if she’d changed? Become an Elemental? Broken her promise? What would he have done to protect the Folk from the Destroyer of Worlds?
His eyes begged her not to ask questions she didn’t want answered.
“Did you find—?” he asked.
“No,” she said, looking toward the Grove. “I sensed him, but I would have thought we’d be greeted by now.”
Something stirred beyond a distant tree, rippling the leaves. Joy pulled on her shoes and held her scalpel. Ink raised his blade likewise, eyes on the approaching slither of movement. Joy felt the familiar patter along the top of the earth a moment before it reached them in a burst of branches.
Two spears hit the ground with a meaty chunk-chunk! Ink whirled around, dropping a ward with a sweep of his razor, golden glitter sparkling as the satyrs came to bear.
Last time she’d seen the troop, they had been alarmed, but Joy had never seen them livid; she had no doubt from their faces that the keepers of the Grove would have gladly stabbed her first and asked questions later. They glared at her through the sparkling ward, their serrated spears and yellow teeth bared and glinting.
Joy turned slowly, squinting through the ward’s golden veil, taking in the many spears, bows and machete knives pointed straight at her. The satyrs seemed to have materialized from the woods themselves. It made sense, in a way, as they were the keepers of the Grove.
Ink held out his straight razor like a warning between them, staring around the troop through the curtain of his long, black bangs. “What is this?” he asked simply, his voice slicing smoothly through magic and malice. “Why are we greeted in this manner? We mean you no harm.”
Breathing heavily, angrily, and shifting their weapons, the Grove’s keepers did not seem inclined to talk. They’d steeled themselves for silence. Most of their faces were wretched. A few bearded faces held back tears. One auburn-haired satyr, younger than the rest, scrubbed a grubby fist against his eyes, leaving a childish smear of grime across his nose and one cheek. Joy hesitated, empathy softening her confusion.
“Please—”
Snarling, the young satyr flung himself at her and was physically restrained by two of his comrades from rushing the ward. His bare chest strained at their heavy arms, his hooves pawing at the ground, his screams drawing spittle.
“She did it! She took it! You did this! You!” He lunged in impotent anger. “Where is it? Tell us! Where?”
Joy was too surprised to feel anything besides shock. She was more confused than afraid. “What?”
“Tell us where it is,” another voice barked. “Now!”
Joy squeezed the scalpel and tried to keep the quaver out of her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll kill you!”
There was an angry surge of assent.
A sharp, humming drone split sound lengthwise, rendering them silent. A buzz saw whine sliced the air as Ink dragged a long gash in the world, jagged and raw, his arms fighting the air itself, thick and resistant to his blade. He finished his glyph with a wrenching twist, yanking the razor free from the gutted wound. The sigil hung in midair, ominous and powerful.
“She is under my protection,” Ink said quietly. “As all that which lives here is yours. We should respect one another in this.” His gaze shifted to touch each of the satyrs in turn. “Your loyalty is admirable. Therefore, I will forgive you your fervor if you can forgive me mine.” The terrible rent in the air fizzed with unspent energy. Joy felt a coolness leaking from it, frosty and fine. She had the unsettling sensation that when she looked at it, it was looking back at her. Ink’s voice was calm, yet severe, promising many bad things might happen should his reasonable request be denied. “Now will someone please explain what has happened here?”
The troop leader shouldered his way through the band to stand at the ward’s edge. The gold light played off his graying hair and the puckered scars on his chest. He flicked his eyes to the malevolent sigil and back at Joy and Ink.
“Do you claim ignorance?” he asked.
“Yes,” Joy said quickly, trying to ease the tension. “I came here looking for my brother. We just arrived moments ago.”
The crags of the elder’s face deepened and parted with a sneer. “Uninvited.”
Joy nodded. “True,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was worried.”
The old satyr exhaled through his nose, tickling the whiskers of his mustache. “Worry not,” he said darkly. “We have him.”
“Joy!”
Stef was running through the underbrush, Dmitri hot on his heels, joined by at least four other satyrs with staves and seed bags slung over their shoulders, accompanying them down the winding paths between trees. Ink straightened slowly and with a sharp swipe, collapsed the jagged sigil upon itself. The world swelled back to normal, perfumed in kinder scents of pollen and young wood. Another deft gesture and the ward disappeared, just in time for Stef to grab her in a slam-grateful hug.
“Oh my God,” she said into the weird texture of his skin. Shirtless, her brother looked scrawny and pale. “Stef! I thought you’d been killed!”
He squeezed her, rocking back and forth. “I have never been so glad to be out of that room in my life,” he said. “It happened just after you left. When I saw what was happening, I freaked out and we bailed, but I forgot the doppelganger spell resets automatically when I leave my own bed. Once we got here, I had no way to warn you and they wouldn’t let me leave—they thought I was a decoy and the golem attack, a distraction.”
Joy pushed away enough to glare at Dmitri and the troop leader behind him. “A distraction?” she snapped. “Are you kidding? What’s going on?”
The elder scowled. “We are keepers of the Grove, its caretakers and protectors—it is on our lives to guard the graftlings. Our collective auspice is to keep alive the First Forest and its kin.” The troop leader spoke low, strained and tight. His voice cracked like ancient stones. “It is our sacred trust.”
There was a scuffle near the back, and the auburn-haired satyr gave a wordless, choking scream before being cuffed hard across the face and sent sprawling to the ground. He landed hard, heaving and sobbing. Joy twisted her fingers in her shirt.
The troop leader sighed. “You s
aw the guardian.”
Joy tried not to grin. The fire-eyed golem was nothing but a mound of clumped dirt. “It was hers, wasn’t it?” Joy said. “The one Aniseed left to her heir.”
“It was bequeathed to the graftling, yes,” the satyr said. “In order to guard it from harm.”
His eyebrows drew down. His ears lay flat. Joy squirmed, not understanding why all of them were glaring at her. Then it clicked.
“Wait. You think I—?”
“The graftling is gone,” Dmitri said quietly. The rest of the troop ground their teeth in unison.
A chill of fear twisted in her gut and bloomed, squeezing the air out of her lungs. “What?” She imagined the tiny, wrinkled thing tearing itself from the moss-packed wound, falling from the willow stump to crawl hand over hand, dragging its bloated brown belly though the dirt, its veined eyes spinning madly in its bald baby head. Dread burned like bile in the back of her throat. “She’s loose?” Joy screamed. “She’s free?” Ink’s hand was on her arm. Her brother was at her back. She spun around and grabbed them both, hyperventilating. “She’s coming! She sent it to kill you! To kill me! Ink, she’s back!”
Ink held her arms if it that could quell the panic. “Joy!”
“No. It’s too young,” the troop leader said, shaking his horned head. “It will not survive long outside its surrogate stump.” He growled. “The last of the sobto-dryads will wither and die, and then they will truly be lost.”
Drooping, limbs buzzing, Joy said nothing. She could not say she was sorry because it would be a lie. She wanted to believe it, but she didn’t. Aniseed was alive!
“Extinction of any one species depletes us all,” the troop leader said darkly. “The world suffers and knows remorse.” A murmur rustled through the troop, acknowledging their shame. The troop leader rested the butt of his spear against the ground by his hoof. “Now perhaps you understand the gravity of the crime,” he said. “Please take us to wherever you’ve hidden the graftling before it is too late.”
“What?” Joy said. “I didn’t take it!”
A voice snapped, “She’s lying!”
Ink faced the troop calmly. “She cannot lie.”
A satyr slammed the end of his spear. “He could have!” he said, pointing at Stef.
Stef shot back angrily. “Why would I take it?”
“To save your sister,” the satyr said. “To save your people.”
Angry voices joined the throng. Joy’s voice, hitched high, shouted over them all.
“It’s Aniseed!” Joy insisted, pleading to deaf goat ears. “She’s behind this! She’s up to something! She’s not dead!”
The troop leader leaped forward. “Is that a confession?” Wild animal scent poured off him, pushing her back.
“No!” Joy said. “She’s escaped—”
“Ridiculous!”
“You don’t know Aniseed.”
Dmitri spoke up timidly. “It’s not Aniseed—”
“It is.” Joy said sharply. “It remembers. It’s her.”
The troop leader didn’t flinch. “And you wanted to kill it,” he said.
“Of course I did!” Joy screamed. “Aniseed tried to kill me—to kill off most of humanity—by sending her disease through signaturae, using everyone the Scribes had ever touched.” Her voice broke off as hopelessness seeped in, returning her to the here and now. She shook her head. “But you said it yourself—the Council sentenced her, tried her and found her guilty. Her sentence was carried out. She was killed on the battlefield. I saw her fall.”
Of course, she’d also seen Kurt kill Aniseed and then fall under a pack of feathered bears, so maybe Joy should not have been surprised to find that the segulah had also managed to cheat death by cloning herself before the final showdown on the warehouse floor. Aniseed wasn’t stupid; she was smart, patient, manipulative, insidious and evil. Unfortunately, she also was a master at twisting the rules that bound the Twixt.
“The rules state that a graftling, even if it retained any memories, cannot be held accountable for the actions of its parent. It was under your protection and the rules of the Twixt,” Joy said, glaring at the grizzled satyr. “I respected that, and you, and your rules. And I walked away.”
“So you sent your brother instead?”
Joy’s “I did not!” chorused with Stef’s “She did not!” Their leader did not look impressed. He pointed the spear at each of them. The troop held up arms. Joy tensed in her shoes.
“One of you knows where the graftling is,” the elder said gruffly. “The golem must have followed it to your abode. We cannot waste time tearing your house down to its bones. You must return it now!”
Joy shouted. “We don’t have it!”
“The golem was bequeathed to the graftling,” Ink said solemnly, crisp with reason. “If the graftling gave it orders, would it be bound to obey them?”
The elder paused and many grumbles rose behind him. “The graftling is not old enough to give commands,” he said. “But once it reaches maturity and cleaves from the stump, then, yes, the golem guardian would be beholden to it. That is its inheritance.”
Ink raised the razor. “And what if the golem was ordered to raid Joy’s domicile?”
The troop leader strode forward and hovered as close as he dared with Ink’s blade drawn. He showed no fear, the cords of his neck tight as a bow. He was a warrior and a leader and an elder of the Folk who had seen too much; it was painted on his face. He loomed over them, cracking his neck to either side as if sharpening the curling horns on his head.
“That is a lot of ‘ifs,’ Master Scribe,” he said. “Far more likely this girl hungers for revenge.”
Joy cringed. It was true. But not the way he meant it.
He spun on Joy. “You—you must tell the truth, and I must believe you, but this one—” He pivoted slowly, eying Stef. “This wizard,” he spat. “He can lie.” It was an insult, the worst of all the Folk’s Deadly Sins.
“No,” Dmitri said, stepping forward. “He’s telling the truth. He’s been with me the whole time. On my honor.”
“And what worth is that? Your honor?” the old satyr said over his shoulder without looking directly at the young buck. The other satyrs similarly avoided Dmitri’s gaze. A couple of them shifted aside. “Why do you think your post is on the Hill and not here in the heart of the Grove where we belong?” He sniffed. “You lost your place among us long ago.” The old satyr’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “You lost your faith and you lost your way.”
Dmitri lifted his bearded chin, spots of color on his cheeks and chest. “I am not lost,” he said. “I chose this.”
“You ‘chose’ it?” The troop leader snorted. “You have been among humans too long.” He stepped nearer to Stef, glaring at his glyphed rectangular lenses. “Especially this one.” Her brother didn’t speak a word, glaring hotly back.
“He has a name,” Dmitri said.
The troop leader snarled, “I know his name.”
The threat hung in the air like smoke.
Joy held her breath. Stef hadn’t locked his True Name into a sigil, a signatura, so he was vulnerable to anyone to whom he’d willingly given his name—every time he’d introduced himself, he’d offered up the chance to be enslaved to their will. He didn’t know. He’s still human. Joy glanced at Ink.
But if this was his chance, the troop leader did not abuse it.
“I’m sorry,” Ink said. “None of us know what has happened to the graftling, Grove Elder. If it is as you say, then the graftling is gone. She is dead. I am sorry for your loss.”
The leader of the troop chewed furiously on his tongue, words clearly aching to be spat out roiled behind his teeth and the spear trembled in his grip. Finally he signaled to the others to lower their weapons.
“It is not safe f
or you here,” he said. “None of you can stay. Go back from whence you came and do not return!”
Stef sighed, deflating his chest, raising his hands palm-up. “I’m all for leaving,” he said. “Consider me gone.”
“What?” Dmitri asked, ignoring the black look from his superior. “Where’re you going?”
“Pennsylvania,” he said. “I’m going back to U Penn.”
“You can’t go back to college!” Joy said. “It’s not safe—!”
“I’ll go with him.” Everyone stared at Dmitri, who looked surprised himself. “I’ll go,” he said again. “To Pennsylvania. I’ll keep him safe.”
Joy gaped at Dmitri. “Are you crazy?” she said, and turned to her brother. “You can’t do this.”
The troop leader inhaled, ready to roar, “You cannot—!”
“I swear it. I’ll swear on anything—by rowan and ash and be ironwood bound—I will stay with him.” Dmitri looked over at Stef. “As long as he’ll have me, I’ll stay with him. I’ll be there.”
“Madness!” The troop leader snarled and stamped his hooves into the earth. “You’d chain yourself to a human just as surely as if you’d given him your True Name! Have you learned nothing? Have we taught you nothing?” He spat in disgust.
“Oh, I have learned many, many things, Pappoús,” Dmitri said. “Enough to know that I’m done. I’m out. I have to live my own life.”
“Your life is not yours to give like coins or riddles or promises in the dark!” the graying satyr growled. “You, the young, are all we have left—you are the last of our years, our final hope for the future—your life is your bond.” He tried to impress his words upon the young buck. “The King and Queen are due to Return and we will show them our loyalties have stayed true—that we did not shirk our responsibilities. You owe us that much, at least!”