He gave up, falling back to the grass. “You’re the nurse.”
I pushed up the tattered remnant of his cuff. The punctures weren’t insignificant; my dragon teeth were very sharp. But neither were they as deep as I’d feared they’d be. Some were more like scratches. If I had a chance to clean them and wrap them, they likely wouldn’t require stitches.
I thought. I hoped. I’d gladly take on another round of soldiers before I’d shove a needle and thread through Armand’s flesh.
I was categorically not, not, anyone’s nurse.
“We need cover,” I announced, looking around. Trees everywhere, as far as the eye could see. No people. No horses. Only trunk after trunk ringed with manure and scraggly, uncropped grass. A misty, silvery haze wafting through, making a phantom wall of the distance.
Furrows from my claws scored long lines through the dirt that led straight to us, ending at our feet.
“Thought I saw a lake when we were coming down.” Armand was staring directly up at the sky. “Perhaps a house beside it.”
“Really?”
“It was quick. I might be wrong. The orchard ended and the area seemed more like a forest. I think it was in that direction.” He pointed to the left.
“I’ll investigate. Hold on.”
I Turned to smoke.
Except I didn’t. Nothing happened.
I released a breath, frowned. Tried again.
Nothing.
Armand’s gaze cut to mine, then swiftly away.
“Are you going?”
“I’m trying! It’s not … it’s not working for some reason. I’m so …”
Exhausted. Hungry. Scared.
I scowled up at the sky, my fists on my hips. I had to do this. We were in danger out here in the open, in daylight. So I had to.
Come on. Smoke. Smoke …
“Eleanore.”
Smoke!
“Lora.”
“What?” I snarled.
“We need to eat,” he said. “Both of us. Hand me the knapsack, will you?”
I pressed a hand to my forehead, then flung it away. The knapsack had torn off him before we’d landed, but it hadn’t gone far, stuck in some lower branches of a tree nearby. I stomped off and jumped for it until I could grab it, then jerked at the straps.
It broke free. Twigs and leaves bombarded me. A few more apples plunked to the ground.
“No need to kill the tree,” Armand called.
“Shut it,” I replied, but under my breath.
He was right. I needed food and clothing and rest, but as I walked back to him I realized he probably needed all those things even more. Well, not clothing. But he looked as if he might go down under a good stiff breeze.
I set the sack before him. My shirt was still on top, so I tugged it free. The buttons felt fat and unyielding; my fingers groped at them clumsily. By the time I’d managed the trousers and boots, Armand was sitting up, an array of tins before him. The knife in his hand stole the weak daylight, condensing it into a stab of silver along its blade.
He speared a tin and sawed it open, then lifted it to his nose.
“Minced peaches. There should be some hardtack, too.”
I searched for the hardtack while he lifted each tin and examined the labels.
“What are you looking for?”
“The caviar,” he said. “But it’s not here. It must have gone to the girls.”
“Thank heavens,” I said feelingly, then paused. “You brought caviar on our rescue mission?”
“It was in a tin.” He sounded defensive. “A perfectly logical choice.”
“Too bad. It’s peaches for you instead.”
I handed him one of the flat hardtack crackers. He dipped it in the open tin, then took a huge bite.
“Delicious. Much better than caviar.”
It was. So was the next tin of beef stew, and the next of poached salmon, and the next of lobster. We washed it all down with one of the flasks of water, sharing sips. I wanted to open another tin but was growing more and more uncomfortable sitting there so exposed, plus I knew we’d need to save something for later.
I took up the empty tins and chucked them as far from us as I could. Then I gathered up handfuls of apples and stuffed them into the knapsack.
The day was darkening. Wind began a long, slow whistle through the trees, a strange and melancholy sound.
“I’m going to try to Turn again,” I told Armand. “Stay here.”
“Not a problem.”
I wiped my hands down my thighs. I lifted my face to the clouds and the wind took my hair in a wild dancing swirl and I thought, Smoke!
I remained stubbornly, unmistakably, a girl.
“I can smell the lake,” Armand said. “On the wind. It can’t be that far. We can walk it.”
I sighed. “Can you? On that leg?”
He rose to his feet. “Let’s find out.”
It wasn’t a house, after all. It was a hunting lodge by the lake, a rustic and gloomy and conveniently unoccupied one. It took us nearly three hours to get there, Armand’s arm slung about my shoulders, both of us lurching along through the mist. I’d rewrapped his head with a bandage and done what I could for the bite marks, but truly what we needed was a place to bed down.
The lodge was certainly that. It was two stories of stacked logs and glass, a fringe of moss clinging to the northern slope of its roof. We watched it for a while before venturing too close, but there were no lights glowing inside, no movement. No scent of people or meals cooking or anything but wood and water. I supposed it wasn’t hunting season yet.
We stole forward, ducking from pine to pine, just in case. I dashed up to the nearest window and pressed my palms against its frame, but it didn’t budge.
I’d scarcely discovered a good-sized rock to break the glass when Armand murmured my name.
I looked over. He was standing at the front door, which had swung wide open.
“Sometimes the simplest solution is the actual solution,” he said.
I dropped my rock to the dirt and followed him in.
It was far more elegant inside than I would have expected. The walls were still obviously rough-hewn logs, but the ceiling had been plastered, and the furniture was ornately carved and padded and polished. Green foggy light from the windows revealed a collection of crystal goblets glinting in a hutch. A medieval-looking shield hung above the hearth had been painted with heraldry, two peacocks and a knight’s grim, gray visor. A rusted sword hung above that, fixed with hooks into the stone.
Glass eyes gleamed from every wall. There were mounted animal heads wherever I looked. Deer, boars, rams. Bears and birds.
A single cobweb, delicate as elfin lace, stretched between the antlers of a buck.
“Enchanting décor,” I whispered, because beneath my sarcasm, I couldn’t shake the chill of those dead, watching eyes.
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Armand had limped over to a bookcase, studying the titles.
“That the person who owns this place is rather too fond of murdering innocent animals and chopping off their heads?”
“That without these human masks we wear, it might easily be our heads on those plaques.”
I shivered, enveloped in a sliver of that cool, greenish light.
“Let’s find a bedroom,” I urged. “Someplace soft.”
“Lora.” He ran a finger down the side of the case. “All of these books are in German. I think we’ve crossed the border.”
German books in a German lodge, in a hushed German wood. It felt awfully real to me then, even more real than bullets or cannons. Odd, I know. But standing there in that room, in the home of someone who no doubt would happily see me dead or, at the very least, subjugated, it made me realize how very far from my own home I was now. How far we both were.