Until one day she was walking home from Aunt Léonie’s cottage and she realized that something had changed. The shadows had grown deeper; the blue flowers by the side of the path had begun to glow. The wind felt like fingertips tracing her neck. Shadowy, phantom mushrooms studded the ground; a deer made out of black cloud peered at her from between the trees, its eyes glowing red.
She blinked and it was gone, but her heart was thudding and her veins buzzing. She had seen the Forest. Not just the woods around her village—she had seen a glimpse of the Great Forest, the Wood Behind the Wood. You could wander for days beneath the trees and never see it, because it was not part of the human world; it was a secret, hidden place that sat just a little to the side. Sometimes its power trickled and oozed out through the shadows of tree leaves or the hollows carved by tree roots.
Usually it could only be seen on solstice nights. Aunt Léonie had told her that. But maybe all those rules were wearing down.
And then she heard a voice, like butter and burned honey: “Good afternoon, little girl.”
She turned around.
Between two trees stood a man, shadowed against the glow of the setting sun behind him.
Then he took a step forward, and she realized that he was not a man. He had a human face, pale and narrow. He wore a dark, rough cloak like any villager might wear. But she could sense the predatory, inhuman power beneath his skin. When she glanced away from him, she couldn’t remember anything about his face except that it was lovely.
She looked back, and his eyes met hers, glittering and alien. He was a forestborn: one of the humans who pleased the Devourer, accepted him as their lord, and were remade by his power into something not quite human anymore.
“Little girl,” he said, “where are you going?”
Her heart was making desperate spasms, but Zisa hadn’t been afraid, or at any rate hadn’t let it stop her. They said Zisa had learned from the forestborn themselves how to defeat the Devourer.
Maybe Rachelle could do the same thing.
He was only a pace away from the path now, the path that was lined in little white stones to protect it.
“Little girl,” he said, “what path are you taking?”
“The path of needles,” she whispered. “Not the path of pins.”
And she stepped toward him off the path. Her mind was a white-hot blur. She couldn’t even tell anymore if she was afraid. She only knew that he was part of the shadow that had lain across her world all her life, and she wouldn’t run from him, she wouldn’t. So she stared into fathomless, inhuman eyes and said, “You can kill me, but you can’t hunt me.”
He laughed. “Maybe I won’t. What’s your name, little girl?”
“Rachelle,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Nothing human anymore.” He circled her slowly, examining her, and Rachelle’s spine straightened, even though her skin prickled with fear.
“They say you were human, once,” she said.
“Then why do you dare speak to me, when you are human still?”
“I’m the woodwife’s apprentice,” she said. “I was born to protect people from the Forest.”
Again he laughed. “Oh, little girl. You were born to be prey for my kind. You were trained to sit plaiting charms against fever until you become a half-wit old woman. What you choose—is up to you.”
“Why are you here?” she asked, but there was a sudden emptiness in the air, and she knew before she turned around that he was gone.
Rachelle wondered if he had come to hunt her. But when he found her on the path the next day, he still didn’t even try to touch her.
She met him again and again, and every time she stepped off the path. Always she kept a pace between them. Always she wore the charms embroidered on her cloak and woven into her belt.
She could never remember his face. But she could remember that he answered her questions and never tried to hurt her.
“Tell me about the Devourer,” she said. “What is he, really?”
“The breath in our mouths and the hunger in our hearts,” said the forestborn. “Be patient, little girl. You’ll meet him yourself someday.”
“Have you met him? Is that how you became a forestborn?”
“What did your aunt tell you?” he asked.
“A forestborn puts a mark on a human,” she said. “The human must kill somebody in three days or die. If he kills somebody, he becomes a bloodbound, which means the power of the Forest is growing in him, until finally he gives up the last of his human heart and becomes a forestborn.”
“That’s true enough,” said the forestborn. “Would you like to try it?”
“No,” said Rachelle, and tensed, wondering if he would finally kill her.
But he only chuckled. “Then answer my question. What did you mean when you said the path of needles, not the path of pins?”
He remembers what I said. The realization slid through her, terrifying and sweet at once. He thinks of me when we are apart.