The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [90]
The mist was quicksilver, changeable with each breath of air, yet I looked not at the figures hidden in its chill embrace but past them, like glimpsing a faint star from the corner of the eye.
Bit by bit, I began to see eyes and faces, lips and teeth and skin in the mist. “I see you,” I chattered. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“What are we, child. And who. Who do we want. If you so choose, step closer. See the answers.”
The voice spoke as a ghost on my shoulder. It caressed me with a lilting accent, mercury sliding over glass.
“If I come to you,” I said, watching the figures drift through the mist, “you’ll let me out of this fog. Fair?” I didn’t know if bargaining would be my final sentence or a sign that I wasn’t some terrified, pliable girl, but it was what Dean and Conrad would do. “Either let me out or I’m going home,” I stated. “I don’t have all day.”
Another gust whipped my hair and my skirt like flags at sea.
“So be it.” The mist rolled back, quick and quiet as a velvet-footed animal fleeing a hunter. The figures and faces retreated with it, a rushing of leaves and the scent of briarwood smoke in their wake.
All around, the world came back into view. But it wasn’t my world.
The grass was rust red, the color of rotten iron or old blood. The sky hung overhead, charcoal clouds scudding before a wind that brought a faint scent of night flowers and turned earth.
A line of humped black toadstools crookedly spread in a wide circle around my feet, as if cast by nature’s hand.
“You can leave the hexenring now, child.”
I shrieked as the owner of the voice appeared at my back. Spinning too fast, I tangled my feet and fell to the ground. The spongy peat squashed and sighed like it was alive under me. Damp crept through my skirt and stockings, crawled over my skin and into my bones.
A form stepped into my sight, backlit by the faint white sunlight flashbulbing through the cloud layer. “Human child. Like a fawn. Fragile-limbed and limpid-eyed.”
I swallowed hard, to push down the tangle of wordless screams in my throat. I couldn’t run—he was right on top of me. I kept my face calm. I’d survived for fifteen years by learning how to make my face a blank slate, and I did so now. I kept my hands clamped in fists. It was either that or shake apart, and I wouldn’t show weakness.
My companion, for his part, crouched and folded his hands over his knee. “You have no need to fear me, Aoife Grayson. Not at this precise moment, and not in this place.”
“Are you …” I eased myself up and away from him, across the damp moss. “Are you reading my thoughts?”
“Hardly.” The figure snorted. “It’s written on your face, plain as ink on paper.”
He leaned toward me, blocking the sun, and I beheld his face. It was thin, pale, with cheekbones and chin square as if they’d been cut from stone. Spidery gray fatigue lines crawled away from the corners of his eyes and a smile formed on his lips, amused and razor-thin. He wore a long green coat and heavy pants, a style decades or centuries out of date. His high boots were bound in brass, and when he moved his arm toward me, gauntlets made of the same caramel hide and sun-drenched metal creaked. “Get up, child. We’ve much to talk about.”
I scooted farther away from him instead, feeling a few of the toadstools break under my hands. His smile lengthened and sharpened.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that. It’s terrible bad luck, don’t you know? To break a fairy ring.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about fairies. I’m an engineer.” My voice came out high and childish, and I couldn’t have sounded more cowed if I’d tried. The pale creature laughed—laughed until his face crinkled up and he could have passed for human.
“Is that so.”
“It’s the truth,” I said hotly. “Fact.” I got to my feet, still keeping my distance, and took my moment on