Sam and Shaggy caught up with me. “Wise.”
“Just what Li insisted every time I said I hated her.” Maybe he wasn’t like Li, but he certainly wasn’t like me. Then again, no one was. I was alone. “She said I shouldn’t waste my time hating her, or Menehem, or anyone else. That’s her wisdom. I just happen to agree.”
He hesitated, and his voice lowered like he didn’t want the wind to hear. “The last time I felt like this much of a jerk was when I told Moriah his idea for keeping time by using gears rather than sun on a slab of stone was stupid. And then I found out he’d built a huge clock in the Councilhouse and was unveiling it later.”
Okay. I could forgive him. A little. “Don’t worry about it.”
He sounded more cautious when he spoke again. “Does it scare you, knowing you might not come back?”
“Not especially. Death seems so far away.” Last night notwithstanding.
I climbed onto a snow-covered stump, careful of the slickness beneath my boots. That was where I spotted my backpack, a brown and gray thing trapped in a tangle of pine boughs. I hopped off the stump, trotted into the brush, and retrieved my bag. Before I could put it on, though, Sam loaded it onto Shaggy, like he didn’t think I was strong enough to carry my belongings.
Or maybe he was just being nice, because I did ache after my leap into the lake. “Thanks,” I muttered. “So, would you be scared if you knew this was your last time?”
We walked in silence while he pondered and the sun reached its zenith. I hummed, echoing melodies made by shrikes and wrens. The sky was a perfect, clear blue over the mountains, hardly a cloud in sight. Last night might have been only a bad dream, except for the presence of Sam, who kept eyeing me like I might do something crazy.
After we crossed a river bridge and shadows stretched away from the lowering sun, Sam said, “I’d live differently, I suppose.”
It took me a second to realize he was answering my question. “How?” I liked it better when I could make him uncomfortable, rather than the other way around.
“If I knew there wasn’t much time left, I’d get things done more quickly. See more places, finish all my projects. I wouldn’t waste time daydreaming or starting new things. Seventy years isn’t that long.”
Seventy years sounded like eternity to me. I couldn’t imagine being seventy years old. “But that’s not being afraid.”
“I’d be afraid of what would happen after. Where would I go? What would I do? I don’t want to stop existing.” He didn’t move, just halted on the path, his back toward a clearing and an iron-fenced yard of stones. His gaze stayed on mine, like there was something I was supposed to read in his expression, but he just looked tired to me. “That’s probably the most frightening thing I can imagine.”
My hood slipped back when I shifted my weight, my face still turned up to his. “At least you’ll never have to worry about that.” I shivered against chill and the thought of having only one lifetime. The sylph burn on my cheek stung.
Thought made a crease between his eyes. He looked ready to say something when a stray shadow in the clearing caught my attention.
I stepped back, the word like an avalanche. “Sylph.”
Had he brought me here to feed me to it?
“What?” His voice dripped with confusion.
A surprise to him, too. Okay.
I peeled off my mittens and dragged the sylph egg from my coat pocket. I felt like a girl made of ice as I shoved past him, into the clearing. “Move.” I would have revenge for the mark one left on my cheek last night.
The sylph moaned, a shadow twice my height and blacker for the white all around it. Steam hissed beneath it where its fires had melted snow. I twisted the sylph egg and thrust it at the shadow.
“Stop!” Sam cried, at the same time as hooves pounded the ground and a tendril of shadow shot out of the sylph. The egg flew from my hands, and I screamed at the heat on my fingers. I stumbled backward as the sylph loomed over me like burning night.
I was on the ground before I realized, Sam rolling with me—away from the sylph. Our knees and elbows jabbed each other, only somewhat dulled by cloth. I sat up and lifted my red, peeling hands.
Soon I would die.
“Watch out!” Sam shoved me off him as the sylph lunged again, shrieking.
I caught myself, but swayed with pain too sharp to comprehend. Then I jerked back into reality when Sam shouted.
“Get behind the fence!” He scrambled out of the sylph’s way.
Iron. Right. I sprinted toward the graveyard, but Sam was still near a copse of snow-smothered trees. He’d saved me and I couldn’t just let him—
The sylph grew thicker, darker than midnight, and a giant, dragonish head pushed out from one side like it was trying to escape a bubble. It snapped at him, and Sam became expressionless. As if he was somewhere else. Somewhen else, like I’d felt when I saw the lake again last night.