“She would rend him to pieces,” said the she-wolf. “I would rend him to pieces.”
Now the stream was dry, the bed cracked with dust. Wasteland crept up and overwhelmed the greenery until all was gone, and that place of scenic serenity could not be told from the rest of the ruin.
“All the once living places of her mind vanish one by one,” said the she-wolf. “Soon there will be nothing left but me. And I am as you see me: trapped.”
The thing in Sun Eagle looked down at the wolf, considering. Does she want to free you? it asked.
“No!” The she-wolf snarled bitterly. “No, she wants to suppress me forever!”
We want her for one of ours. We have use for her.
At that, the wolf struggled to surge to her feet. She strained against the chains so hard that the ground shook, and the thing that was Sun Eagle staggered and nearly lost its balance. But the chains were fast to the ground, the links too short to allow any freedom of motion. The wolf fell back, and her four legs bled where the manacles bit.
Still she growled, spitting blood. “You’ll take her over my dead body!”
No.
The hand of Sun Eagle moved to his throat, touching the bronze stone on the cord around his neck. For a moment, one finger brushed the other stone, the blue one painted with a white flower. The body responded to this against the will of that inside it, shivering with a sudden thrill of passion and resistance. But the hand moved on and untied the cord on which the bronze stone was strung.
The creature within Sun Eagle knelt before the wolf and fastened the bronze stone around her neck.
No, it said. Over your bound body.
As though weighed down by a chain far stronger than the four upon her limbs, the wolf collapsed flat against the ruined soil. And she did not move, not even to breathe.
Now. You are theirs—its—
Mine!
———
Daylily gasped. She came awake kneeling in the Wood Between, shuddering, her arms wrapped about herself against a cold that pierced her from the inside out.
Sun Eagle crouched before her, a hand on her shoulder. “There,” he said. “There, it’s over. You’re safe now.”
Daylily, her chin drawn to her chest, saw something gleaming. Struggling still to breathe, she grasped the gleam and held it steady. It was like a shard of ice in the palm of her hand and she winced. When her vision stopped swimming, she looked at what she held.
It was a charm, a bronze stone of no particular shape strung on a cord of animal gut.
Her breath came easier with each gasp. Soon she was able to sit upright. The spasm passed; the cold, though present, was bearable. And suddenly she felt stronger than she had in . . . in she could not remember how long!
“What has happened?” she asked the warrior, turning to him as a child to an older brother. Though he was a stranger, she felt somehow that she knew him. She felt that she was—in some odd way—part of him. “What did you do to me?”
“I?” said he. His voice was strangely gentle. “I have done nothing. But you have taken the Bronze. You are now one of my brethren.”
He stood then and helped her to her feet. He did not release her hand, and she found that she did not want him to.
“Come. Walk with me,” said Sun Eagle. “Let us find your world.”
9
ONCE UPON A TIME.”
No phrase is more intriguing to those who know nothing of Time.
Immortals understand Time in the same way they understand air. It is there. It always has been and always will be. They live in it, but it isn’t something to be concerned about unless it is unduly removed. Otherwise, who’s to bother?
Mortals are different. Time matters to them, for they experience it in such limited quantity. Like a man plunged into the ocean who gasps for each breath with desperate urgency, so mortals, trapped as they are by their mortality, put out their hands and try to grasp Time even as it slips through their fingers.
And it’s all so fascinating to watch!
This was precisely why sylphs—which are neither immortal nor mortal but simply are in the same way that the wind simply is—find mortals irresistible. Time-bound creatures existing in a world so other to that which sylphs know are beautiful and beguiling and utterly impossible to pass up.
Once upon a Time . . . and here are creatures, oddly ugly, intriguing mortal beasts, that actually live upon a Time like it is the most natural thing in the worlds!
But one sylph did not find the prospect so enticing.