Deep within the Ashen Ravine, in a clearing isolated from prying eyes, hidden inside a house without walls, the girl with no identity drifted in and out of consciousness. Time passed immeasurably. The gray, hazy light that filtered through the leafy canopy overhead never seemed to wane and fever racked her body with shivering shudders.
At one point upon waking, she tried to peer out from heavy eyelids, but it was like looking through hedges of white thistledown. She realized the fringe grew from her own skin . . . that it was her lashes blinding her. Reaching up, she plucked several free. An excruciating pain reached all the way into the pit of her stomach, as if the hairs were rooted to the very core of her being and scored her insides on their way out. She dropped the long hairs and doubled over on her pallet in agony. On the blankets beside her, the discarded lashes became liquid, forming a pool of moonlight. Just as the gutting pain began to ease, a fresh crop of lashes sprang from her eyelids.
She slapped a hand over her mouth. Not only did she not know where or who she was . . . she didn’t know what she was.
Too exhausted and confused for an escape attempt, she trembled in silence as the witch with a mud-pie gaze opened the patchwork curtains around her pallet to tip her horned head inside. Stain—as Luce the beautiful sylph had dubbed her—choked on silent yelps when the witch plied a diluted minty soup of meadowsweet down her throat, put comfrey ointment on her skin, or wrapped bandages over her throbbing wounds. Stain kept waking again and again to find herself trapped in this unsettling reality that both consoled and mortified in the same breath.
On some level, she considered that her warden, who introduced herself as Crony, must be trying to help, for why else would she feed and minister to her? Unless they needed her alive for some ill purpose. Or were those of magic-kind capable of kindness? Speaking of “kinds,” did Stain belong to this place, among these otherworldly creatures? Why couldn’t she remember?
Unfortunately, it was just as impossible for her to ask these questions as it was to communicate pain and fear. Without working vocal cords, all of her bottled emotions compressed tight within . . . a swelling, hot pressure that threatened to explode.
Until at last, that’s precisely what it did.
Stain awoke in semidarkness. Her wardens . . . or captors . . . spoke in hushed tones on the other side of the drapes that muted her surroundings.
“The Pegasus has been sniffing about again.” The sylph man’s voice drizzled sweet like satiny honey despite the underlying acidity of the words. “There are char marks on the trunks surrounding the house.”
“May-let we should let him see her.” Crony’s voice was the opposite of Luce’s, like bowed, barren branches scritchity-scratching together in the wind. “May-let he’d be the medicine she need.”
“How’s that to work?”
“A creature that breathes fire and outlived the extinction of its own be a worthy guardian, wouldn’t ye think?”
“He almost killed her in the moon-bog. I saw him aim to strike her skull with my own eyes. He’s feral. Unpredictable. Extend the wards beyond the house’s frame. The trees that surround us . . . plant your nightmares there to keep him at bay.”
Scorch was only warning me. Stain wanted to shout his defense. Her muscles tensed atop her thin, lumpy pallet at the mention of nightmare wards. She wasn’t sure what such things were, but they sounded horrific. She thought back on the moment the Pegasus’s hooves came down inches from her head. She’d sensed his unspoken message: that he owed her nothing, for he had saved her from the bog just as she had saved him. He was showing her he didn’t belong to her, that he wasn’t to be tamed.
But she didn’t wish to tame him. She wished to be heard . . . to be understood. The Pegasus was the one beast that seemed to have that ability. That made him the only prospect of a friend in this place she couldn’t remember. She wouldn’t allow anything to happen to him.
Stain forced out a screech that erupted as little more than a gusty breath—unheard by any ear. Clenching her useless throat, she noticed the strange necklace again . . . a pendant of braided hair at her collarbone. A witch’s trinket. That must be what was silencing her. They’d rendered her unable to speak to keep her helpless and at their mercy.
A nicker shook the leaves in the distance, and she realized her silent screech had been heard after all. Luce cursed from the other side of the drapes. “Our house is but a tinderbox, woman. With only a sneeze he could set us to flame. Cast your spell!”
Before Crony could respond, Stain mustered all her strength to rip off the necklace and tuck it under her pallet. She plunged out from her sanctuary. Her vision blurred with feverish sights. The house loomed like a skeleton, a dizzying disarray of boards, nails, and discarded, unwanted things.
Gooseflesh prickled along her body—beneath a tunic two sizes too big that hung to her knees—as she teetered between chills and feverish flashes. She scrabbled over the stony floor through a layer of ash, pushing beyond the torment of torn flesh to thrust her torso over the threshold before Crony and Luce could catch up.
Something jolted through her the moment she crossed and hit the powdery terrain outside. A startling hiss filled her ears, though it didn’t come from either of her captors. It was locked within her head. Her vision faded; her body curled to fetal position and spasmed as her entire being funneled down into a malevolent darkness that scraped her hollow with claws and teeth. She sensed rather than saw the ground soften and swallow her whole. Underneath, in a suffocating earthen tunnel, formless creatures reached for her . . . things made of bone and shade that craved human flesh. She raised her hands to protect herself. Her fingertips lit to a brilliant gold—a light that scalded her skin and eyes.
“She’s locked in a nightmare.” Luce’s panicked remark carried across a great distance, through the soil and ash spanning between them. “What is happening with her fingers? They’re lit up like lanterns! Stop thrashing, Stain. You’ll only tear your skin more!”
“Where be her talisman?” Crony asked, sounding as far away as Luce. “Find it while I bind her to reality.”
Stain burrowed through the dirt, subterranean like a worm, to escape the creatures she sensed gaining on her from behind. If she didn’t dig her way out, it would be her death. The light radiating from her fingers illuminated dormant seedlings cradled in pockets of soil that screamed to be renewed. Instinctively, her fingers burned brighter, hotter, as if all the fever in her body gathered at their tips. The seeds sprouted in answer, roots spreading and blossoms blooming, pushing upward toward the surface. Stain grabbed on and held tight—a flower’s roots wrapped around each wrist—springing out from the dirt and choking for breath against a heavy cloud of smoke and heat. Her eyes refused to open.
“Stay back, rabid donkey.” Luce’s harsh warning broke through in the same moment Stain felt a string drop into place around her neck.
Her eyes opened then, and the nightmare faded away to a scene of fire and flowers in the witch’s front yard. Stain had never been underground. It had all been in her mind. Scorch whinnied, prancing through the small clearing, nibbling on petals and leaving sparks in his wake.
“There now, wee one, ye be back with us.” Crony caressed her fuzzy head. “No more crossin’ the threshold without yer necklace, aye? That be yer protection again’ the wards.”
“How did you do that?” Luce asked Stain, barely allowing the witch to finish her instructions. “How did you call up the flowers?”
She had no answer. Only then did she notice her hands were embedded in the soil, and with each painful pulse of her fingertips, the ground lit up and other blossoms sprouted: reds, oranges, golds, and purples. A rainbow giving life to the ash alongside Scorch’s trail of embers.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” Luce said. He helped Stain stand and led her aching body over the threshold. Crony was already inside the cadaverous framework, tidying the mess Stain had left in the wake of escape.
Stain stalled at the door, wavering on weak legs, catching Scorch’s fiery gaze. You came to find me.
His gruff voice tapped her thoughts: I came to torment the fox-man.
She grinned. You will return. We need each other.
What use is a pesky little child to a steed of wings and flame? He stood on a path close to the doorway—yet too far to touch or be touched.
Luce snarled for the Pegasus to leave but Crony intervened. “Let the wee one see the sky . . . it be twilight’s blink.”