by Resa Nelson
Astrid's anger quickened. "You break down my door, you attack unarmed women..."
The moaning brigand rose and grabbed Astrid, pulling her hands behind her back.
Astrid squirmed as he bound her wrists together.
A thin line of blood soaked through the cut in Mauri's dress.
Astrid looked at the flagstones where the rest of her tools had scattered. It would be easy enough for Mauri to pick up—
Drageen scooped up Astrid's tools from the floor and flung them into the ashes of the cooking hearth in the center of the room.
He then pulled a pair of iron shackles from a leather pouch hanging from his belt. He pulled Mauri's hands behind her back, locking them in the irons.
The brigands led Astrid and Mauri out of the cottage.
The air hung thick with the smell of smoke and burning flesh. Cottages smoldered ahead in Guell. Screams and shouts pierced the air.
Mauri doubled over, gagging.
Drageen hauled Mauri up onto the saddle of his horse. He swung himself up to sit behind her.
As Drageen and Mauri rode into Guell, Astrid followed on foot, the brigands trailing behind with ax and dagger in hand.
With every step, she realized what had happened.
Dozens of armored brigands raided the burning cottages of Guell, loading anything worth stealing onto carts that belonged to townspeople. One brigand led a few farm horses toward the carts, their hooves caked with freshly turned dirt from the fields.
Bodies of slain townspeople sprawled across doorsteps.
The brigands were killing everyone. Destroying every home.
Astrid choked on air thick with smoke from burning cottages.
Astrid wished it had been a dragon attacking Guell. At least, when a dragon attacked, it killed what it wanted to eat. She'd never heard of a dragon killing more than two or three people at a time.
But then, all dragons cared about was surviving.
Brigands shouted to each other while townspeople screamed.
Astrid walked through the town center.
There lay Skye, the stench of her blood mixing with the smell of freshly baked bread. There was Hammit sprawled in the road, his mouth and eyes open, both empty and vacant.
And there was Beamon, the jeweler, fallen with a handful of flowers strewn near his body.
The flowers. He must have picked them for Kamella.
Astrid stared at his shock of red hair poking from beneath his leather cap.
His chest rose in a soft breath.
His eyes fluttered open long enough for his gaze to meet hers. He shut his eyes and kept still again.
He's alive. Maybe he can stay alive as long as he pretends to be dead.
A screaming woman ran through the town, chased by a single brigand. She was gaining ground, outrunning him. She was—
"Lenore!” Hope filled Astrid as she called out without thinking.
Lenore slowed, looking for Astrid.
Astrid watched in horror, wishing she could take it back when she realized she'd just given the brigand enough time to catch up. He struck Lenore.
She fell.
"Don't touch her!” Astrid ran toward Lenore, hands still bound behind her back.
Brigands jerked Astrid back, shoving her to keep pace with Drageen's horse.
My fault.
If she'd kept quiet as she'd had the sense to do with Beamon, Lenore would have escaped, running on her spirit feet. Lenore was fast. She would have escaped.
But now, thanks to Astrid's carelessness, Lenore was going to be murdered, just like everyone else in Guell.
I have to get free from the brigands. I'll take Mauri to a safe place.
We have to find DiStephan.
CHAPTER 11
The brigands took Astrid and Mauri out of Guell and through the forest for the rest of the day. They settled into camp in the woods that night.
The carts were loaded with stolen goods: butchers' knives, Beamon's jewelry, farming tools, and almost everything from Astrid's smithery. Now, the brigands looked like ordinary men: butchers or jewelers or farmers.
The brigands set up camp, built a large fire, and retrieved baskets of stolen food. They positioned the carts around the outside of their camp like a protective wall.
Astrid counted heads. There looked to be about 30 brigands in camp.
Funny. Back in Guell there seemed to be twice as many.
It was damp and cool in the woods. A night bird cried out mournfully from the tree canopy.
Astrid found herself thinking about Lenore and her spirit feet. Astrid thought about what Lenore had told her earlier that day, before the world turned inside out.
Astrid wondered if what she'd seen was real or just her imagination. Did Lenore's legs end in stumps at her ankles, crisscrossed with scars, or had Astrid imagined the whole thing, wishing Lenore's story was true?
It was real, Astrid decided.
After all, she'd watched Lenore walk away, barefoot, but leaving no footprints in the dirt road.
It had to be real.
Astrid thought about what it must have taken for Lenore to create such real feet out of nothing. It was one thing to shift shape, but what Lenore had done was something wholly different.
Lenore said her feet were real because she believed in them. She walked on them. They held her up. And yet, as Lenore had shown her, nothing existed below her ankles.
Nothing except the strength of Lenore's belief in herself.
If Lenore can do it, then I can, too.
Drageen led Mauri to one of the carts. He released the shackles binding her wrists just long enough to position her hands between the spokes of a cart wheel. He shackled her to the iron spoke.
Astrid watched in horror. The horse was still attached to that cart. If anything spooked the horse, the cart would roll forward or backwards—either way, it would twist Mauri's arms right out of their sockets.
Drageen flagged down one of his men. "Tie up the horses."
Astrid didn't realize she held her breath until she sighed in relief when the brigand released the horse from Mauri's cart.
She'd been walking or standing all day. She sank to the ground in exhaustion.
Drageen removed the leather belt from his waist. "Get up."
Hands still bound behind her back, Astrid struggled to her feet.
He slipped his belt around one of her arms and pulled, walking toward Mauri.
Huddled by the wheel, Mauri's face was pale and drawn, her eyes nearly swollen shut from crying. She didn't look up when Drageen pushed Astrid to the ground, belting her arm to another spoke on Mauri's wheel.
He walked away without a word.
Astrid shifted her weight, leaning back against the wheel, trying to find a more comfortable position. She whispered, "Are you all right?"
Mauri's shackled wrists forced her to face the same wheel that Astrid leaned back against. Mauri didn't answer. She looked at the wheel spokes, not at Astrid.
"I'm going to get us out of here," Astrid whispered.
"That's impossible.” Mauri's voice sounded stronger than Astrid expected.
Here, on the outskirts of camp, darkness would be on their side. The camp fire burned brightly, and all the brigands focused on nothing but drinking ale and eating.
Astrid knew the woods of Guell. She knew the caves, the ravines, every fallen log and every tree worth climbing.
These brigands didn't.
If Astrid and Mauri could slip away while the brigands were busy getting warm and fed and drunk, it would be easy to hide in the woods. Maybe even walk to the next town and seek refuge.
Astrid closed her eyes, thinking about her wrists and her hands. She wriggled them, focusing on the way her skin felt, her muscles, and her bones.
Small. Narrow.
Nothing happened. The cloth still bit into her skin.
I have to change. I need to change.
She remembered what had happened with Taddeo, the way he'd changed her bod
y, and how she'd felt stuck, unable to change herself back, no matter how hard she tried.
I'm trying too hard.
She'd changed when she'd fought the dragon that had crashed into the smithery. No—she hadn't changed while fighting. She'd changed when talking to the dragon. That's what Taddeo had told her afterwards.
Talking to the dragon, not fighting it.
So what do I do? Talk to the cloth around my wrists? Reason with it? Tell it I understand why it's biting into my skin?
The dragon, the dragon, the dragon. What was it about the dragon that changed her back?
It wasn't the dragon. It was me. I forgot to be afraid.
Astrid let fear wash through her like water through loosely woven cloth. She tapped into the same focus she used in the smithery every day to hammer iron.
Small, she told her wrists and hands, tucking her thumbs into her palms, squeezing her fingers tight together. Narrow, she told her wrist bones, willing them to become tiny, to shift out of alignment.
Astrid ground her teeth together against the sudden pain in her wrists.
It was working! She felt bone and muscle twisting inside, changing her hands and wrists.
The cloth felt loose, and she pulled her hands free.
"Change back," she whispered to her hands, sighing with relief as she felt bone and muscle slide back into place. She pulled her hands into her lap, keeping a close eye on the camp to make sure no one was watching.
She checked to make sure her hands were all right. One quick glance made her happy. Her hands looked fine.
Mauri gazed at Astrid's hands in amazement. "How did you do that?” Mauri spoke too loudly, seeming to forget the danger they were in.
"Quiet," Astrid said, watching the camp, where all the men acted boisterous and self-absorbed. No one had heard Mauri. "You're next."
"What?"
"Concentrate," Astrid whispered. "Make your hands small. Change them, make them narrow."
Mauri stared at Astrid as if she'd gone mad. "I've never been good at this. I can't do it."
Astrid watched the camp as she tried to convince Mauri. "If we escape now, you can take us to DiStephan."
Mauri knitted her eyebrows in puzzlement. "DiStephan?"
"You told me you saw him. You must know where he is."
"Of course," Mauri said, blinking hard, as if making herself remember. "DiStephan."
"We'll find Taddeo, too. We'll be safe with the dragonslayers."
Mauri tried to pull her hands out of the shackles around her wrists. She gave up. "I can't change. Not enough to make any difference."
"Try harder," Astrid said, still keeping lookout. "This could be the best chance we get. We have to take it."
Mauri sniffled, on the verge of tears. "Go without me."
"No. We escape together or we don't escape at all."
Astrid saw pain flicker in Mauri's eyes, her eyebrows contorting.
"Then we don't escape," Mauri said. "Because I can't change."
Astrid looked back at the camp. The men were still eating and drinking, several of them singing loudly, oblivious to the world outside their circle.
There wouldn't be a more perfect time to leave.
Astrid remembered Temple the blacksmith and the lessons he'd taught her.
You can change yourself, Temple had told her when she was a child. But it's wrong for me or anyone else to change you. What if I changed you in some way you didn't like? What if I changed you into something I wanted you to look like—instead of changing you into what you want? Then would you care what's right?
Remembering his words gave her pause, but Astrid couldn't see any other way out.
Even Temple would understand what she had to do now.
She turned, scooting closer to Mauri, wrapping her hands around Mauri's shackled wrists. "Please forgive me."
It was something Astrid had never done before. As a child, she would have been punished for it. As an adult, it would have been grounds for being outcast from the town. She'd always been too afraid to try anything like this, because the consequences seemed unbearable.
But desperate times called for desperate actions.
Not knowing if it would work, Astrid squeezed Mauri's hands, willing them to become like a child's hands.
"What are you doing?” Mauri said, her voice high and strained and scared.
"Quiet," Astrid whispered.
She remembered what her own hands had looked like when she was little. Small and thin. Easily small enough to slip out of those shackles. She imagined pouring those memories into Mauri's hands, like pouring a handful of water for her to drink.
When Mauri cried out, Astrid clamped one hand over her friend’s mouth.
Astrid pulled Mauri's newly child-like hands out of the shackles.
Still, no men in the camp noticed them.
Keeping one hand over Mauri's mouth, Astrid pulled her into the darkness of the forest.
There would be plenty of time later to change Mauri back to who she really was.
* * *
They'd trudged through the pitch black forest for hours.
"Change me back," Mauri moaned, keeping pace behind Astrid. "Please."
"What if stopping to change you back means they catch up with us and we get captured again?" Astrid kept putting one foot in front of the other, groping in the dark to touch trees before she walked into them head-first.
"I don't care if changing me back brings eternal darkness and a thousand years of plague," Mauri said. "You have no idea how much my hands hurt!"
Astrid knew exactly how much Mauri's hands hurt. Astrid remembered the unnatural pain of bone and muscle twisting inside her own skin when she had changed her own hands.
"Of course," Astrid said, stopping. "I'm sorry."
"Ow!” Mauri walked head-first into Astrid, not realizing she'd come to a sudden stop.
"Sorry," Astrid said. "Give me your hands. I'll take care of them."
Unable to see anything in the dark, Astrid searched until she found Mauri's tiny child hands. She took them in hers. They felt as strange as they'd looked. Small little hands stuck on the ends of thick adult wrists. Astrid tried to remember what Mauri's adult hands looked like. She tried for several long minutes, but couldn't get a clear image in her head.
Mauri's child hands stayed the same.
"Astrid?” Mauri said, her voice trembling.
"It's harder changing them back.” Astrid held Mauri's child hands firmer, still struggling to remember.
"Oh, Astrid.” Mauri sounded terrified. "Oh, no."
"I didn't know this would happen," Astrid said, scared and guilty. "I've never done this before, and it wasn't difficult to change my own hands back."
Mauri stayed silent, but her breathing became uneven and labored, a sure sign she was on the verge of panic.
"What do your hands look like?" Astrid said.
Disbelief laced Mauri's voice. "You've known me your entire life, and you don't know what my hands look like?"
"I never noticed."
"Astrid, I'm a potter. You've seen me at the wheel a thousand times, and you never noticed my hands?” Mauri said angrily.
Good. That was an improvement. Being angry would make her stronger, and Astrid needed Mauri to be strong right now.
"I never notice anybody's hands but my own."
"Then make my hands look like yours! It doesn't matter. Just make everything stop hurting. Please."
Astrid focused again for several long minutes.
"Why isn't it working?” Mauri said.
"I can't remember what my hands look like."
Suddenly, a soft silvery light poured down. They saw themselves in a small clearing.
Astrid let go of Mauri, looking for the source of light.
"It's the moon.” Mauri pointed up.
Dark clouds separated, letting light from the full moon escape.
Relaxing, Astrid took Mauri's child hands in hers again, this time concentrating on her own a
dult hands, focusing on transforming Mauri's to their right size.
Mauri's hands shifted. She sighed in relief. "That's better. Much better."
Mauri's hands stopped moving. They'd shifted and changed, but they weren't right. They looked twisted and misshapen, slightly larger than her previous child hands.
Mauri looked up at Astrid, frowning in confusion. "What happened?"
Astrid stared at Mauri's hands in horror, sickened by what she'd done to her friend. "I don't know. I don't understand."
Mauri was a potter. She needed her hands just as much as Astrid needed her own to work.
But Mauri shrugged it off. "They feel fine now. That's all I care about. Maybe you can try again tomorrow."
A rustling in the undergrowth startled them.
They both saw it at once: large round eyes, reflecting the moonlight, peering through tall grass, ankle high. The women stood still as a curious wedge-shaped head with long wispy whiskers and tiny ears emerged through the grass, followed by a sleek brown-and-cream spotted body with a long tail. Its tiny clawed paws scratched at the ground.
Mauri clung to Astrid's arm with her twisted hands.
"Don't worry," Astrid said. "It's just a shore cat."
"Then what's it doing in the forest?"
"Maybe looking for food. They're inquisitive little things, but they're harmless."
"You know what else they're called? Dragon's Sight. They're lookouts for dragons. It's looking for food, all right, and we're it. We're the food."
"That's nothing but legend. There's no such thing as Dragon's Sight. It's just a shore cat, nothing more."
The cat looked up at them, sniffing, its eyes hauntingly silver in the moonlight.
As quickly as it had appeared, it vanished back into the tall grass.
"I wish they'd find us," Mauri said.
"We'll find them soon," Astrid said. "Either DiStephan or Taddeo or both. They have to be here somewhere."
"Not them."
Astrid took a long look at Mauri in the moonlight. Her hair appeared tangled and matted. Dirt streaked her face, and her eyes were still swollen from crying. "Then who?"
Mauri's face scrunched into a doughy ball for a moment, and then hardened into something tired. "I can't live without a roof over my head, without food on the table. I can't be poor again."
None of it made any sense. Maybe it was the shock of witnessing a massacre. Maybe it was because they hadn't had anything to eat or drink since they'd been captured. Astrid spoke calmly, wanting to help Mauri. "You've never been poor. You've always had a roof and food and a safe place to sleep. You've always been—"