And it saw her.
It was the only appropriate word; no human pronouns could encompass the vast swirl of destruction that filled her vision. The dust spiraled around and around as it sank into the center, down and down toward . . . nothing. That was what made her heart hammer, her chest feel like it was paper wrapped over a despairing void. She knew this thing—the Devourer—had forsaken itself to plunge into deeper and deeper nothing, seeking the final abnegation where it would be utterly alone and therefore omnipotent. All its bloodbound and forestborn and vessels, all its mastery and devouring, the power at the heart of the Great Forest, the stomach that swallowed the sun and moon—they all were no more than foam in the wake of its hurtling ruin.
She saw a human figure floating upside down in the center of the whirlpool. She knew that was an illusion, something her feeble human mind had created to shield her from the nub of this vast destruction.
And as soon as she saw it, she could hear it: a great howling wind—no, a voice, screaming and singing at once. It sang pain-hate-loss-fear, but most of all it sang hunger, the vast and devouring emptiness of a creature who once tasted bliss beyond what any mortal mind could comprehend, and now must keen unbearable loss forever after.
It sang, and she sang with it. Her throat ached and burned from the sounds that ripped out, but she couldn’t stop. She felt that this sight had unlocked every secret of her life and made sense of them all. Surely she had always been singing this song in her heart. Surely this was her home. This, her inheritance.
Erec slammed her to the ground. “You belong to me, lady,” he snarled, “not that thing.” And he kissed her ferociously, biting her lip.
Rachelle bucked against him. “What—”
“You are made of that creature. That’s why you can’t fight it.”
She realized there were a thousand red strings running through the white dust all around them, down into the maw of the Devourer. As she watched, the strings slowly slid forward. She felt a tug on her own hand.
“Yes,” said Erec. “Inch by inch, he eats us all.”
There was no escape. Rachelle was no longer looking at the vast swirl of the Devourer, but she could feel the icy despair starting to rise again in her heart. She was eaten. Finished. Done. There was no way she could turn and face that creature with Durendal. She doubted that it would matter even if she could. Swords were made for killing, and having seen the Devourer, she did not think that death was a concept that even applied to it.
Suddenly she remembered Aunt Léonie’s fingers weaving a charm as she said, The path of needles or the path of pins.
Durendal’s other form was a needle.
There were threads all around her.
Rachelle’s heart thudded with sudden hope. She hadn’t had to kill the lindenworm, only beguile it. Maybe it would be enough if she didn’t kill the Devourer, but only bound it. Maybe the simple, boring charms that Aunt Léonie had taught her years ago had always been enough.
“Rachelle,” Erec breathed into her ear, “come with me. Please.”
And she realized that he did love her. With all that remained of his heart, he loved her. And she pitied him.
“Erec,” she said, “I came here to destroy the Devourer. If you do not let me try, I will look at him and lose myself. You won’t be able to stop me, I swear it. The only way you’ll have a chance to take me home is if you let me fight him now.”
His face tightened. “What do you think you can do?”
“A little woodwife charm. That’s all.”
“You think that can stop our master?”
“So let me try and fail, and then we’ll go home together.”
He stared at her a moment longer, then laughed softly. “I wouldn’t love you if you were any weaker,” he said, and let go of her.
Rachelle sat up, grasped Durendal, and willed it back into the form of a needle. Then she gathered up a great loop of the string tied to her finger, and she started to knot it around the needle.
The most terrible charms, Margot had said, or the most simple.
And it was a very simple charm that Rachelle started to weave—one of the first she’d ever learned, a little knot pattern that would soothe and bind the things beneath it. Usually it was just one step in a larger charm, something to keep the barn doors shut against woodspawn or the wrong seeds from sprouting. Now she knotted it over and over, twisting in upon itself. She picked up other strings and knotted them into it as well.
She was doomed to be devoured, was she? Then she would make of herself—of all the bloodbound and all the forestborn—such a morsel as would choke the Devourer forever.
The roaring grew louder. The dust shook at her feet.