Maekallus is where I left him. “Has anyone seen you?” I ask.
“If they did”—he wheezes—“they failed to introduce themselves.”
I drop my basket of supplies at his shoulder and ready a bottle of antiseptic, a jar of salve, and my father’s thread and needle. I’ve never stitched skin before, but having recently watched my father do so, I have some confidence that I can manage.
Though this wound is more serious than a surface cut.
Except it’s not quite as bad as I recall—perhaps Maekallus is healing. Either way, it’s a terrible sight, illuminated by that blasted spell. I pour on antiseptic, and Maekallus seizes like I’ve dropped a cannonball on his gut. New blood spurts from the wound.
“Lie down!” I push his shoulders back. “Gods, it will help you heal faster!” Or perhaps I’m wrong. What little knowledge I have about healing is specific to humans. Although it won’t help him to say so. If my own life weren’t inextricably tied to his, I might jump at the chance to learn more of mysting physiology.
Maekallus lies down, but his limbs remain taut and strained, and vile-sounding words from what I assume to be the tongue of monsters sputter from his lips. I’m somewhere outside myself when I stitch him closed and smear on green-tinted salve. The sun is beginning to set, and a well-trained part of my mind reminds me that it’s not safe to be in the wildwood after dark.
If only I’d avoided it entirely.
He sits up of his own accord, and I press gauze to the wound—I’ll need to buy more after this—and wrap it. I have to get very close to him to do this, and loop my arms around his chest. He watches me as I do, silent. Perhaps, were he a man, this moment might possess a flare of intimacy. But he is not, and so it doesn’t.
I tuck the end of the bandage in. My hands and fingers are stained red. Blood coagulates under my nails. My bandage is wet, but I don’t know if it’s from my blood or his.
I am a sight, and so I wait until the sun barely peeks above the horizon to return home, all the while clutching the Telling Stone in my hand, my book under my arm, and my father’s sword to my chest. The stone whispers of mystings at the perimeter of its reach, but none come searching for me.
Perhaps the greatest deterrent to them is the blood of their own.
CHAPTER 9
Grinlers are carnivorous pack hunters. Despite their small size and lack of speech, they are quick on their feet and manage to communicate hunting plans through grunts, snorts, and body language.
This is wrong. It isn’t fading.
Maekallus sits between the thick roots of an oak, his back pressed against the trunk, his hands touching the bandage wrapped around his middle. The wound hurts more than it should. Too slow to heal. But that isn’t what bothers him.
It’s the fire. The feeling. The soul.
Not even a soul. A sliver of a soul. But it continues to swirl inside him, every bit as alive as when he first consumed it.
It isn’t right. When he takes a soul, it burns inside him for a few hours, then fades into nothing. Dead weight. A too-big breath of hot air. Once he returns to the monster realm, his body digests it, and that is that. But more than a day has passed since Enna parted with this fragment of herself.
A soul’s vigor never lasts so long. Not for anyone.
His mind tries to piece it together. Is this slice of soul alive because the rest of it still lives inside its original host? Is it affected by the gobler’s damnable spell? Whatever it is, the bits and pieces of human feeling, that bizarre inner awareness they have, live within him. Perhaps that is what makes his chest hurt.
Or perhaps that is why, when a splotch of black begins to form on his shoulder, Maekallus feels a tendril of fear.
CHAPTER 10
Some mystings cannot be killed by standard metal-worked weapons. All, however, are susceptible to sharpened silver.
The cut on my hand is worse in the morning. There’s no trace of black in it, but the skin around the fissure is red and sore. I wrap it best I can before I set off for the wildwood. I have little hope when I wander to Maekallus’s glade. Although I skimmed both my and my grandmother’s notes late into the night, I found nothing that might save us.
He leans against the base of a tree, nestled between two thick roots, his eyes closed. It surprises me how peaceful he looks, almost as much as it surprises me that he’s asleep. I don’t know what I expected. I never put much thought to the question of whether or not mystings slept. I’ll note it in my book later.
I let myself stare at him, the way I never would were he able to witness it, all while trying to look away from the blots of blood staining his bandages. He does not know his age, but physically he looks to be in his mid to late twenties. If I put my bias aside, I can admit that his is a handsome face. A different one—no one in Fendell looks quite like he does, and I’ve never met a man or woman with red hair. His pants, layered like armor, are dirty and speckled with blood. The hem skims the top of his hoof feet. I wonder, beneath his clothes, how much of him is equine. His knees, bent slightly in rest, look entirely human. Somewhere between ankle and knee, he changes, then.
I wonder again at my grandmother’s words, the blood of bastards, as I near. I notice that his breathing is not smooth, like there’s phlegm in his lungs. I don’t get much closer before he opens his eyes, and their vivid canary-colored irises remind me of what he is.
My wound throbs. “You haven’t healed.”
He shifts. Something pops loud enough for me to hear. “This world . . . this spell. It’s weakened me.”
Even his voice has lost strength.
I roll my lips together and approach him, kneeling down by his knees. I don’t ask permission—it seems strange to be polite to a mysting—and gently pull at the edge of his bandage to peek at the wound inside. The poultice I applied has kept the scabs from sticking to the bandage, and a lot of the injury has clotted over. Good.
What is not good is the black ooze seeping between the stitches—the infection of the mortal realm.
And the smell. I pull back, and press the bandage back down. “The corruption didn’t happen this quickly last time, did it?”
He shrugs. “Last time I didn’t have an open wound on my chest.”
“Don’t talk like it was my doing.” I pick up a different poultice from my basket, but instinctively I know it will do no good. The mystical parts of Maekallus have kept him alive where a mortal would have died, but nothing monster or man will save him from destruction if he cannot descend to his own realm.
At least, nothing I possess.
I massage my fingers, thinking. “I’m going to go into the village. See what I can find there, unless there’s more you’re not telling me.”
He scoffs. “Unless you have a sorcerer on hand who can find the gobler, I fear we’re at an impasse.”
I don’t, of course. Sorcery is a dying craft, thanks to growing laws regarding mystings. Sorcery is enormously the conjuring and brewing of magical ingredients, many of which stem from the monster realm. Even if sorcery were still a viable profession, a sorcerer would never waste his talents on a wayward place like Fendell.
Maekallus perks up. “You could lure the gobler here. With whatever he wanted the first time. What did he want?”