“You have a few twigs left in your hair,” he said, and reached toward me again.
I intercepted his hand with my own ring-wearing one, or at least tried to, because he was up like a shot before I managed it, glaring down at me.
“Rook,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “before I get up, you have to promise to never touch me again without my permission.”
“I can touch whomever I please.”
“Have you ever stopped to think that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should?”
His eyes narrowed. “No,” he said.
“Well, this is one of those things.” I saw he didn’t understand. “Among humans it’s considered polite,” I added firmly.
A muscle jumped in his cheek, and his smile had faded. “Well, that doesn’t sound in the least reasonable. What if you were being attacked, and I had to touch you to save your life, but I couldn’t because I needed to request your permission first? Letting you die wouldn’t be polite.”
“Fine. You can touch me in that case, but every other time you need to ask.”
“And why do you suppose I shall agree to your absurd mortal demands?” Peevishly, he snatched his coat from me and flung it back on himself without bothering to put his arms through the sleeves.
“Because I can make your life miserable all the way to the autumn court, and you know it,” I replied.
He stalked off across the glade. I got the feeling he needed to throw a tantrum before giving in. Sure enough, he soon returned with a stormy expression as the land changed all around him. The moss wilted brown while thorny brambles erupted forth at his heels, grasping like fingers until they grew into an eldritch-looking tangle as high as my waist. I hadn’t expected something quite so dramatic: each thorn was as long as my finger, so sharp it glistened in the morning light. All my instincts shrieked at me to get up and run before they reached me. But that was the reaction Rook wanted, so I remained where I sat.
The brambles writhed up all around my body, stretching crooked, twitching tendrils toward my clothes. Their thorns rattled together threateningly. I gave them a stern look. I knew a bluff when I saw one. Eventually the brambles subsided, rather sulkily, and froze in place. Rook stood over me encased within his bramble sea in a white-lipped state of high dudgeon, the final proof that I had won.
“Well?” I asked.
“I give my word that I will never touch you without your permission, except if I need to spare you from harm,” he declared. To his credit he said it in a regal tone, with none of the petulance I expected.
I sighed in relief. “Thank you, Rook.”
“You’re welcome,” he said automatically, and frowned. This was like bowing; he had to respond to common courtesies whether he liked it or not. He recovered from the indignity by flinging his arm out theatrically. Two of the trees hiked up their roots and shuffled aside, in a rather hasty, anxious way, as though they were a pair of bewildered matrons at whom he’d just hurled a billiard ball. Their bent trunks formed a new archway to the forest beyond.
“Hurry along, then.” He swept toward the archway. A leftover root whisked solicitously out of his path. “Not only do I expect your little mortal legs will cover a disappointing amount of ground, we’re already an hour delayed.”
And whose fault is that? I thought.
However, as I crunched after him through the brambles, which disintegrated at a touch, my eyes fell on the neat pile of twigs and leaves he had taken from my hair—and despite myself I smiled.
We passed slender, white-barked birches, their yellow leaves shimmering and clattering like gold coins in the breeze. We passed stony brooks that wended between hillocks of moss, their water the color of milk with snowmelt. We passed ash trees that had shed half their foliage at once, pooled about their roots as a maiden might drop a shift. A stag and doe paused to watch us go by before they leapt away through the light-filled mist, casting their shadows against the air like a paper screen.
The first unpleasant landmark we came to was a riven oak. It had been struck by lightning sometime long ago, and sections of its trunk were charred black, the bark raised and glittering with beads of hardened sap. A few brown leaves still clung to its lower branches. Rook stopped to examine it. It looked out of place among the birches, watchful, malevolent. A prickle of unease warned me to keep my distance.
“Is that an entrance to a fairy path?” I asked, crunching along parallel to it.
He spared me a glance and resumed walking. “Yes. But we won’t travel that way.”
“You can’t bring humans on them?”
“Oh, we certainly can. I merely find it inadvisable.”
By that he could mean anything. Perhaps the effort would be a drain on his power, or it would alert the wrong fair folk to our presence. He didn’t seem open to further questions, and I didn’t see how learning more might help my cause, so I didn’t bother asking.
Midday came and went. The sun shimmered through the leaves, freckling the ground in dappled patterns I would have found captivating if I’d been less preoccupied by my growing discomfort. My thighs and buttocks ached from last night’s ride. I was dirty; I had mud all over my legs, and my skirts were stiff with burs and dried horse sweat. I knew for a fact I smelled abominable. And god, I was starving.
Meanwhile Rook looked exactly as he had when he’d come to fetch me the night before. His boots shone and not a single wrinkle marred his coat. The only thing disheveled was his hair, but that didn’t count, since it always looked that way.
We arrived at a long embankment descending into a ravine. Rook descended gracefully as I shuffled and skidded through the leaf litter until I finally considered the possibility of giving up and sliding down on my rear. While I frowned at the ground, Rook’s hand extended into my field of vision. I didn’t want his help, but it was better than making a fool of myself, so I placed my fingers in his. We seemed able to touch each other without a word as long as I was the one who initiated it.
His skin was cool and his grip deceptively light. He helped me down the embankment and back up the hill on the other side as though I weighed no more than a feather. My stomach rumbled when we crested the top. To my dismay it wasn’t an ordinary rumble, either: my innards summoned forth a booming growl, followed by a series of long, drawn-out squeals.
Rook started back in alarm. Then, catching on to my condition, he gave me a knowing smile. Which was interesting—most fair folk didn’t understand the concept of human hunger, not truly. And earlier, he’d spoken as if he’d already tried taking a human on the fairy paths himself. Had he traveled with a human before?
Honestly, I should have suspected even earlier. He had human sorrow in his eyes, after all, and there was only one way he could have learned it.
“I haven’t eaten since supper yesterday,” I said when my stomach finally, mercifully went quiet. “I don’t think I can go on much longer without food.”