Bones of Faerie - Janni Lee Simner [6]
I kept to the center of the path, barely out of reach of the ragweed along its edges, but it wasn't the ragweed that worried me most. Father had taught me well—I knew I was being followed. My pursuer had been with me the past mile, maybe longer. Ferns and brambles rustled as they shied away from distant footfalls. Ash and redbud and oak whispered softly as those footfalls passed by. And I felt something watching me from within the deepening shadows, felt it with a certainty that made cold sweat trickle down my neck.
Don't venture out alone into the dark, or the darkness will swallow you whole. Even when the sun shone, a tree could take a grown man down if it had taste enough for blood. When the sun set, shadows gathered around the trees and around the other plants, too, not always, but often enough. Not just the ordinary shadows that gather everywhere as the sun gets low—these were darker, with a slow thickness like tree sap, and they didn't go away once the sun set. Even in the dark, shadow vines crept along the ground and shadow branches slashed at the air. Those tree shadows cut deeper than ordinary branches and brambles. Jayce still walked with a limp because a pokeweed shadow had cut him to the bone when he stayed out too late on a hunt.
Yet I thought what hunted me now was human. Someone from my town, sent to find me. I thought—but couldn't be sure. I shivered in the fading light. If plants and animals could smell fear, mine left them an easy trail. A few wild grapevines crept tentatively toward the path. If I called them the way Cam had called, would they sense my magic and come to me? I walked faster, beyond their reach.
Something moved among the trees, closer than before. Tallow's ears perked forward. The something rustled through the brush, veering toward the river. Toward me. Its steps were faster, more sure than they'd been before.
I ran once more. The rustling thing ran, too, matching my pace. The path between forest and river narrowed. If only I could leap above water and wood into the evening sky, the way the airplanes did Before—but I could merely run harder as the water grew near.
Mom sang stories from Before sometimes, faerie songs from a time when only a very few people knew the faerie folk were real. In some of those songs running water stopped magic, just as cold iron did. Iron hadn't helped the airplanes—magic brought them down long ago. But water was different. If the water flowed swiftly enough, neither plants nor magic could get a hold in its depths. I turned and ran off the trail, through a small hickory grove, and down the rocky bank into the river. I gasped as icy water washed over my boots and soaked through my wool socks, but kept moving into deeper water. Mud sucked at my feet and I stumbled, struggling to right myself against the current.
Even as I did, the water around me went abruptly still. That water had risen nearly to my waist. It soaked through my clothes and chilled my skin. I stumbled again and stared. The air had gone very quiet. Near the far shore the river flowed on, but around me nothing moved. Even my pursuer was silent. Tallow stared at me from the near bank, silent as well.
A flash of light drew my gaze downward. The water around me began to shine like a giant mirror. I fled that magic the only way I could, by shutting my eyes and diving beneath the surface. Perhaps if I didn't look, the magic would pass me by and seek someone else to root in instead.
Or I could stay beneath the surface. I could let myself drown and hope the magic died with me—but even as I thought that, I burst into the air, coughing and gasping for breath. My boots were heavy with water, and my wet clothes clung to my cold skin. The river around me had stopped glowing. I swam for shore and as I did the current started up again, pulling at my clothes and dragging me down. I swam harder, then stood