A crow had landed on Dafydd, and I drove it off. In response to my growl, the fae woman made a faint, pained noise.
I’d forgotten about her. I knew nothing of her but the taste of her blood in my mouth. I had not seen her face or heard her voice. She was nothing to me.
Nothing but my victim.
I did not know how long my freedom from the witch would last. Maybe if Da and I ran fast enough, we’d escape her entirely. I didn’t believe that, but it was a faint possibility. But Da had to heal—and maybe in the meantime I could be of use to someone.
There was a fae creature of a kind I’d never seen beside the woman’s body. She was maybe half the size of a human woman, no taller than my waist. Where her dress, which was silvery blue of a fine weave, did not cover, her body was covered with a coarse green-and-gray hair that thickened on the top of her head. She should have looked grotesque, but there was a rightness, a naturalness to her form that made her oddly beautiful. She smelled female with a strong hint of power and growing things.
Her face was human enough for me to find expression on it, but it reminded me more of a fox’s than a woman’s, an impression not dispelled by triangular ears, now half-flattened along her skull. Her eyes were overly large, and she squinted like a being more used to shadows than light, wrinkling her nose and panting half in fear and half in desperation as I approached.
She hissed and bared sharp, weasel-like teeth and put herself between the wounded woman and me.
“I mean no harm, little one,” I told her. “I have some training. Let me help.”
“You would help my lady? You who hurt her?” The words were clear, if oddly accented.
“Before I was a monster, I was a healer,” I told her. “This hurt I and my—” My what? Fellow monsters? It had been a long, long time since I’d talked to anyone but my da. It felt odd to put my thoughts into words, especially as I was distracted. “My pack. We were under duress and would not have hurt her otherwise.” A lie. I did not lie. Once, it had been a matter of pride to me. So I amended my statement to make it truth. “I would not have hurt her otherwise.”
She looked at me. Glanced over at my da, whose hip was scabbed over. I noticed that he was changing to human himself, and I stepped a little sideways, between her and Da. He was less able to protect himself effectively when changing.
She settled a little, as if my action had reassured her, and stepped aside.
I stripped the fae woman’s body free of the rags of clothing our attack had left her. Her skin was darker than anything I’d seen on a human, a warm shade like a doe’s summer coat. But the ridged scars that crossed and recrossed themselves like a macabre braid were white. Some looked as though they were put on her body with a whip, but more were the result of wounds very similar to the freshly open ones we’d given her.
In addition to the wounds from this day, there were a number of healing wounds. Bite wounds. Doubtless from the hounds that the forest lord had lost control of.
“Will she live?” The little creature crouched beside me and reached out to pet the wounded woman’s arm.
“I don’t know fae,” I told her. “But she’s lived through worse.”
“She should be healing faster than this,” the little creature said. “She always has before.”
I thought of Adda and his festering wounds, and said nothing. The forest lord’s body had gone to earth, but his clothing remained. I went to where he had died and appropriated his fine cloak, a bronze eating knife, and a flask filled with bracata—wort fermented with honey. I had found such alcohol good for cleaning wounds.
Returning to the woman, I cut the cloak into strips and used them to bind up the worst of the wounds.
“These should properly be stitched,” I told the little creature. “But I don’t have needles or thread. Without that, they will leave scars behind—like the other wounds have.” I frowned at a nasty mass of scars on her ribs. “Why did he do this?” I asked.
She bowed her head. “She is two-natured, like you and her father, though not two-formed. This aspect, her sidhe aspect, is impervious to her father’s commands. But her other self is closer to the natural world and must obey him. It rises to protect her from danger or harm. Her father needed her obedience to build a thing—a powerful and bad thing. She would not do it, so he tortured her with fear and pain until the other part of her rose.”
“He was her father?” I asked.
She nodded.
The fae woman looked fragile and broken on the forest floor. But to resist such treatment, to have risen again, over and over—such a one was tougher than she looked.
“I can’t do much,” I told the fae creature. “I don’t have the supplies. I can clean the wounds and stop the bleeding and give her the chance to heal. She needs to be somewhere out of the weather. There is snow coming.”
“There is shelter.” She bobbed her head. “And we have needles and thread. What else do you need?”
“Honey,” I told her. “Willow bark. Water. How far away is the shelter?”
“Shelter is not far,” she said. “Twenty minutes’ walk. If you can bring her, I can take you. And also there might other items you mention be found, an Underhill wills it to be so.” She sounded doubtful. “What is not there I can steal.”
Promise of a shelter and supplies changed my to-do list. I finished stanching the bleeding. If the little creature could run, we could turn her twenty minutes to half that.
“Samuel.” My da sounded tired. I looked at him, and his face was drawn and gray. The mark on his hip was still an angry red. “I’ll find you after I dispose of the bodies.”
I nodded and wrapped the remnants of the forest lord’s cloak around myself, using the fabric to secure the flask of bracata and the knife and sheath. I picked up the woman. She was light in my arms, lighter than my wife had been, though she was taller.
I could remember the feel of my wife’s weight in my arms, but I could not see her face. I staggered a step as my mind went blank in panic because I couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember her face or her name, just glimpses of a lifetime. My breath caught in my throat with the terrible grief of loss. It had mattered a lot less while my grandmother had me on her leash. I’d lost more than my humanity while in my grandmother’s hands—I’d lost my wife and my children and I had not recognized how terrible the loss was. I could not remember them, not their faces or their names.
“You are hurt?” asked the little fae creature tentatively.
“Yes,” I said because I would not lie. “But not in the way that you mean.”
My father said a name that slid off my ears. He waited a moment, then said, “Samuel?”
I must have looked a little wild-eyed when I turned to him. “She stole my memories. Stole my name.”
He nodded once. “There will be a reckoning.”
“Do you remember them? My wife and children?” I asked. When he nodded again, my panic eased. “As long as someone does, they aren’t lost.”
“They are not lost as long as I live,” my father agreed. “I’ll remember them for you. Go ahead, Samuel. I’ll come by and by.”
I nodded. I turned to the little fae creature. “I can run with her. Lead me as quickly as you can, and I will follow.”
The fae creature ran. She stumbled a little here and there, and I had the impression that she was very, very tired. But she was quick, so it didn’t take us long before we came upon a small hut that was less inviting than my grandmother’s and looked as though no one had lived in it for years. She reached over her head and pulled a chain to release the latch. When she opened the door, I knew it for a fae residence because it was larger on the inside than on the outside.
As soon as I stepped into it, I felt an odd, hostile personality brush up against me. Letting my lips curl in a snarl, I pulled my patient closer to me in a futile effort to protect her from something I could not detect with any of my usual senses. The odd entity paused, then slid over my wolf in an exuberant and laughing run, and I smelled, for a very brief moment, the rich scent of summer flowers.