The story of his life.
The sun traveled swiftly across the sky and plummeted beyond the horizon. Those who’d stayed behind built up the fire, glad for some task at which to busy themselves. But they shook their heads and motioned Foxbrush away when he offered to help. So he stood now alone, his arms crossed against a cold that seeped from the inside out.
It was his fault. But how could he have helped it? He should never have shot the monkey. But how could he have known it was Crookjaw?
It didn’t matter. Lark would suffer for his mistake.
To Foxbrush’s horror, he found tears on his face, running through his beard. He cursed and dashed them away, turning from the bonfire back to the jungle. Hours ago he’d ceased to watch for any sign of return. The warriors would stay out searching for days. Then, like all those who had lost their firstborn over the last many months, they would return, heartbroken, spirit broken.
“Your red lady is stealing the blood of the South Land.”
He started walking. He hardly knew why or where he thought to go. He merely started walking, away from the light, into the darkness. Perhaps some path opened at his feet and compelled him to follow. He could not say and really didn’t care. That was Redman’s way of thinking, not his own. So he simply walked, and as he walked, he whispered:
“Just at the mirk and midnight hour
Of thirteen nights but one,
The warriors bear their bronzen stones
Where crooked stands the Mound alone.
There you must win your Fiery One
Or see her then devoured.”
Since coming to this place, his eyes had grown more used to seeing in the dark, and he was familiar enough with the trail he now sought to follow even in the night. He walked close to the jungle but did not enter, making for the orchard. Things shifted in the heavy foliage. He turned and thought he glimpsed eyes . . . many eyes, red and gold and silver and green, that gleamed in the blackness, then flickered out, only to gleam again briefly, like fireflies.
He knew them for what they were. But for some reason he did not fear them. “Have you come for tribute?” he asked.
One pair of eyes blinked. Then, for a moment, he thought he saw a face that was nearly human, save for the long, sharp beak. It vanished after only a brief glimpse, but then a voice came.
“We will fight.”
It was not a human voice, nor did it speak in any language Foxbrush knew. But he understood it deep in his mind.
“We will fight. We will help.”
“Who?” Foxbrush asked. “Whom will you fight? Who is our enemy?”
The response came in another voice, hoarse and rasping as a water bird’s. It said, “The Mound! The evil Mound.”
More creatures, Faerie beasts all, gathered in the shadows beyond his vision; small and unthreatening, large and intimidating, and everything in between. They gathered, and their eyes blinked and stared at Foxbrush. He knew he should be frightened. Somehow, he couldn’t work up the energy for it.
“Well, good,” he said, shrugging at the jungle and moving on his way toward the orchard. “I’m glad to hear it. Fight away, and let us know how it goes, won’t you?”
“You must lead us.”
Foxbrush snorted and did not deign to answer. The skittering, flapping, shuffling, stomping, slithering of many unseen creatures followed him, and the jungle on his right writhed with the movements. But they did not step beyond its fringes, and he did not go near enough to see or touch.
“You must lead us!” they all called in their bizarre tongues. “Lead us into battle!”
But he stopped up his ears to their pleas. In the orchard, their voices died away into whispers and then to nothing. Real fireflies glinted now, like small pixies themselves. Night birds and nimble-fingered lemurs had their way with the fig trees’ bounty, for no one had been posted to chase them away.
And somewhere among the trees, someone was crying.
Foxbrush made his way through the orchard, slipping between twisted trunks and stepping over gnarled, grasping roots. He parted the curtains of heavy leaves until at last he found the one who wept.
“Nidawi?”
He had not seen her in months, not since that dreadful night when Daylily had come upon them in this very orchard, before the elder figs ripened. But here sat the Everblooming, surrounded by fireflies whose gentle glow illuminated her tear-stained face and the white body of Lioness cradled in her arms. She wore the form of an old woman, a woman who is the last of all her friends, alone in a strange world where people no longer recall the life she knew, the family she loved, the places she held dear. Her tears were the awful tears of memories slowly slipping, and they gleamed as they fell like little fireflies themselves and caught and sparkled in Lioness’s fur.