“I can’t make you love me, but I can certainly make you obey me!” she snarled, and her voice was deep and dreadful, and it struck him in the gut. “You’re going to the mortal realm, and you’ll think about what I’ve told you. And when I come to you again, I hope you’ll have a different song to sing into my ear!”
Foxbrush opened his mouth to speak but did not have a chance. For Nidawi the Everblooming pushed him violently. For a moment, he glimpsed silver branches overhead as he flew and he fell . . .
. . . and he lay stunned.
Several moments passed before he realized that he did not lie upon crushed ferns. Nor did the canopy of the Wood’s branches and leaves close above his head but rather, blue sky, open and clear.
No sign anywhere of Nidawi or the lioness.
Foxbrush sat up, frowning, and looked about. He still clutched the scroll in one hand, and it comforted him, though he could not say why. Not many yards away stood the Wilderlands, casting long shadows that could not quite reach him. But he himself lay beyond its borders on rocks like the floor of a long-dry river. The gorge wall rose steeply behind him.
Frowning, Foxbrush got to his feet and brushed himself off. How he had come to be here, he could not guess. Had everything in recent memory been no more than a dream?
“Hullo?” No one answered, neither the specters of his imagination nor even Lionheart, whom he thought might still be near. His head hurt where he’d struck it, and he rubbed it uneasily, groaning.
“I know,” he muttered. “I know what happened. You hit your head when you slid down the trail. When Leo chased you. You must have knocked yourself out, and it’s all been a crazed dream . . . the sylphs, the woman, the lion . . . all a dream.”
But what a dream! Especially for a man who usually dreamed in numbers.
He shook himself out, noticing with dismay the tears in his shirt, the state of his shoes—both buckles missing—and the rents in his trousers.
He should have known better. He should have known better than to think he could find Daylily. Hero-ing was not for the likes of him.
Moving stiffly, too dizzy to make the climb, he started up the path, clutching the wall as he went. His sneezes were fading, so that was a mercy at least. He could draw a complete breath and his eyes were clearer. The sun was high and very hot overhead. He did not seem to have been unconscious very long, which was just as well. Strange that no one had come searching for him yet. They were probably all in a clamor at the Eldest’s House, and when he returned and told his tale, they would nod solemnly, then laugh to themselves as soon as his back was turned.
Maybe he could sneak in unnoticed?
He flushed angrily. Oh, how the rumors would fly, and the jokes as well once it became public knowledge that Daylily had fled her own wedding. Was it evil for him to hope that she may have been abducted, not run off on her own?
Shaking his head at his own folly, he scrambled up the last of the path and slipped at the end, nearly vomiting his heart out in a moment of terror on the edge of the gorge. Then he gained the upper country and stood in the Eldest’s grounds.
Only, they weren’t the Eldest’s grounds. They couldn’t be.
For where the stump of the old fig should be stood a great, spreading, fruit-laden tree. And beyond, all was wild, dark, teeming jungle.
“Dragon’s teeth,” Foxbrush whispered, his hands turning cold. “Where am I?”
13
THE BEATING OF A HEART. The thrilling sickness of a gut. The rush, rush, rush of adrenaline coursing through veins.
How strange are these things called emotions, and how exhilarating. How could one ever become accustomed to such sensations?
The utter, ecstatic delight of terror!
She must be mad. Why else did she run from the shelter of the jungle? Why else did she plunge through the screaming throng of women, pushing them aside like so many frail dolls?
She must be mad. Why else was her voice upraised in something like a scream or battle cry?
Daylily’s feet beat the ground with painful insistency. She did not know what she would do when she reached the well. Could a hero be taught to slay a dragon before the dragon descended? Could a maid outsmart an ogre whom she had never met? As the challenge came, so must it be overcome.
She covered the distance to the well in mere moments. Only when she reached the lip of that churning water did she pause, and the wind caught at her hair and her gown so that to those watching she looked like some fiery angel poised on the brink of the Dark Water.
The well was green and black, a witch’s caldron of bubbling evil.
The child can’t live, some piece of her mind argued. Not in that. He’s drowned already. You cannot help.
Dive! Dive!
Or die!
Daylily bared her teeth and plunged feetfirst into the water.
The surging froth and closing darkness was full of malevolence. Daylily felt it immediately, as thoroughly as she felt the cold. Water filled her nose, for she had not thought to take a proper breath, and she struggled upward for air. Her skirts closed around her legs, binding them. But she broke the surface and gasped a half breath.