I reach him and move his bloody fist from the tree. Coax his fingers open—are they warmer?—and examine the cut that mirrors mine. No mystic corruption yet, only a bit of debris at the heel. I brush it off and bandage the wound.
“Does yours not bleed?” he asks, low and petulant.
“I have more of this at home.” I tie a small knot at the back of his hand. Look up at him. I didn’t realize how close I’d gotten. Close enough to kiss.
But the blackness has only begun to spot him, and I wish to keep as much of my soul with me as I can. I turn away. Glimpse the descent circle.
“Maekallus,” I say, quieter, “you say you can’t descend, but could we coax the gobler to ascend? He was in this very glade. Is there some sort of . . . trace, we could use? Mystical . . . residue?”
Maekallus snorts at my lack of knowledge, but he studies the circle as well. “I don’t . . . perhaps. I don’t know the methods of goblers. But he will return, or his like will.” He shifts his gaze to me. “As for bait . . . reckon they want whatever it is you’re hiding.”
His words shoot through me like lightning. I step back from the trees, away from his aura.
He looks me up and down, as though searching for my secret. “But where will you get the blood to summon him, Enna? What human would you dare to torture?”
“Not human,” I whisper. I clear my throat. “Not human. But I can find a young boar or a hare in the wildwood. Perhaps one will trespass here, and you can collect the blood in that canteen.”
He smiles—a wicked grin that at once reminds me of what he is. “Oh, Enna. The animals here have learned not to pass by. Or haven’t you heard the silence?”
I stiffen, hold my breath. Listen. I never noticed it before, the lack of birdsong, the absence of buzzing and chirping of myriad insects. When did the creatures of my realm abandon this place?
The silence is a reprimand. He is a mysting. A mysting, Enna.
As though I need the reminder.
Grabbing my basket with my uninjured hand, I turn it away, concealing the Telling Stone. “I’ll find something. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Truly?” A smirk, not one of humor, tugs on his mouth, showing a pronounced canine. It isn’t so much animalistic as it is roguish. I chide myself for staring. “Even in the dead of night?”
I hold his gaze. “That depends. Are you frightful enough to scare away the demons who linger in this wood, or only the birds and the flies?”
He raises an eyebrow, and I feel as though he’s almost congratulating me. I leave, taking my basket with me. Back to the house. Slow, so as not to tire. As for blood, I will set snares, but they can take days to catch prey, and I dare not wait days. My soul aches at the thought of it. I wish not to waste money in the market for something I can hunt myself, but I’m poor with a bow and arrow, and if I ask my father to help me, he’ll wonder where the meat has gone. In the end, I’d rather be penniless and alive than dead and soulless.
As I step over a brook and navigate an unseen path becoming increasingly familiar to me, I ponder on the exchange with Maekallus. What if he was human once, Grandmother? I think, wishing she were here to answer my questions. He’s of human make, isn’t he?
The thoughts turn on me. And what does it matter? What would I think of him if he was human?
My chest hurts. From the walk. I slow my pace even more and clutch the Telling Stone.
When I arrive at my home too soon, I realize I missed a piece of my journey—my mind blanked again. Yet one thought burns strong.
I must find that gobler.
CHAPTER 14
The only thing that can break the binding spell made by a vuldor-tusk knife is the knife itself, the death of its wielder, or the blood of a mystium.
There is a hierarchy of animals in the wildwood. Insects and crawling things are at the bottom, followed by mice and birds. Then there are larger animals, like harts, and more vicious ones, such as boars. Wildcats and wolves dominate unclaimed land, but more often than not forfeit it to humans, who ultimately surrender to mystings.
I do not understand the magic that loops my world and the monster realm together, and every question I have seems to beget ten more. I will not use human blood to awaken the summoning circle, even at the peril of my own life, but do the unseen mystics prefer fowl over fawn, or hart over hare? Will the circle heed my desire to find a specific mysting, or will it merely let out whatever is closest, as it seems to have done with Maekallus? Something even more dangerous . . .
I do my best given the circumstances. In the evening, when the sun begins to paint the sky, I trek again through the wildwood with my basket in hand. I have to stop once to rest, for the unplucked pheasant I carry with me is heavy, and I am weary. I stop on a hunting trail carved with the intent to avoid mystings and listen to the distant whispers of the stone. When I arrive at the glade, Maekallus is waiting for me—I see him standing between the trees at the very end of his leash, his yellow eyes brighter than the rest of the forest, his arms folded across his bare chest. I pretend not to see the black spot growing like a bruise on the side of his jaw, or the one that darkens his ear, or the dozen others that were not there this morning. His magnificent horn is pure, as is his right hand. I know the latter, for when I arrive, he reaches for my basket and takes the load from my arms, silently leading the way back into the glade. I pause for a moment, surprised. A simple action, yes, but Maekallus has never done anything to aid me. I wonder if he’s grown so desperate that even kindness is beginning to eat away at him.
He’s already drawn the summoning circle. The circle I drew earlier has been stamped out, and the new one etches the northernmost part of the clearing. Maekallus sets my basket down several strides away from it and picks up the pheasant by its neck. He examines it, then glances to me.
“What? We can always try again with a larger animal.”
He smirks and lifts his tail to slice open the fowl, only to notice—remember?—that it’s lost its sharp edge. His frown confirms my own observation. I lift my silver dagger from the basket and offer it to him, hilt first. He takes it and beheads the pheasant.
I accept the bloodied knife back. “Do you think it will work?”
“No.” At least he’s honest. “But I hope it does.”
I cock my head slightly to the left. His words pull on me. Maybe because they don’t feel like the words of a mysting. “Do you hope often?”
The question causes him to hesitate in the grisly work of painting the summoning circle with the pheasant’s lifeblood. He looks at me like I’ve said something profound, and it’s a gaze that makes my skin ripple with gooseflesh, though the summer evening is warm.
He straightens, the point of his horn slicing through a low-hanging leaf on a nearby oak. “I don’t . . . think I have.”
And it strikes me suddenly, like a snowstorm in the late spring, and I don’t know why I didn’t consider it before.
What happens to a mysting if he receives a soul?
Maekallus has only a partial soul. My soul. I can feel it inside him as though I’m peering into a faded mirror, where I can only make out shapes and nothing more substantial. But it lives inside him. He hasn’t eaten it. He did promise, though it remains to be seen whether I can trust his word. Could it be the fragments of my soul that cause him to hope?