That meant she was alive. But it still wasn’t exactly comforting.
The mirror’s breaking had broken something in her, too—she’d passed out in the tower, and not awoken until deep night seeped around the windows. It’d delayed their trip to the Edge until this morning, bright and early. Pale yellow sunlight filtered through the autumn colors of the leaves, dappling everything in crimson and ocher and gold, a precursor of the fall rapidly approaching outside the Wilderwood.
“How do you keep the forest from turning?” Kayu jogged up to them, slightly out of breath. Her black hair shone in the autumn light as she gestured to the trees. “Turning with the seasons, I mean. I asked Fife, and he said to ask you.”
Red doubted he’d said it so politely. “It’s not conscious. It just…” She trailed off, looked to Eammon, who gave an inexpressive shrug. “It follows our lead, I guess. Takes on our aspects. It was early autumn when we… when we did what we did.” Even now, she didn’t quite know how to articulate it. The nature of what she was—woman and Wolf and wood—eluded easy language. “So it’s frozen there. We stopped changing, so it did, too.”
Kayu nodded, her eyes tracking between them. “Because you are the Wilderwood.”
“Exactly.” Red tried to sound sure of herself. Eammon shifted uncomfortably on his feet, the movement sending black hair feathering over the tiny points of his antlers.
“And because you are the Wilderwood,” Kayu said slowly, “it won’t call any more Second Daughters.”
Something about the question prickled Red’s skin, that damn Wilderwood intuition sparking enough to make her wary, but not enough to give her its reason. She slid a look to Eammon as she nodded. “Right. No more Second Daughters.”
Kayu looked thoughtful but didn’t ask anything further. She drifted back toward Raffe and the others, picking up a fallen leaf from the ground and twirling it between her fingers.
“That was strange,” Eammon muttered under his breath as she walked away. “We can both agree that was strange, right?”
“It makes sense for her to be curious.” Tugging absently at one of the ivy tendrils growing in her hair, Red flipped him a wry smile. “We are a bit of an enigma, after all.”
“Still.” A slight shake of his head. Eammon rubbed at one of the bark-vambraces growing over the skin of his forearms. “I think we should be cautious.”
“When are we not cautious?” A joke, but a weary one. “And it’s not like we have much choice. She knows Neve is gone. Like Raffe said, it makes more sense to keep her close.” Red glanced at Raffe again. Kayu was telling him a story, shaping it in the air with her hands. He smiled at her, small but genuine.
Eammon made a gruff noise, somewhere between challenge and agreement. He looked at the pair over his shoulder, then turned curious eyes to Red. He didn’t give voice to his question, but she could read it there.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know how he and Neve… left things.”
He squeezed her hand. “We bring her back,” he said decisively, “and then she can figure out her own damn love life.”
Ahead, the forest thinned, the golden autumn trees giving way to green moss and unencumbered sunlight. Red could just glimpse the Edge’s outer wall, though even squinting, she couldn’t quite make out any shapes in the arabesques carved there, key-groves or otherwise. Her own key was in the pocket of her tunic, beneath her bridal cloak. She slid in her hand, brushed a finger over one of its teeth.
Eammon picked up his pace as soon as he crossed the tree line, his much longer stride making it so the others would have to jog to match. Red was the only one who did, though—Lyra and Fife kept to a leisurely walk, and Raffe and Kayu seemed content enough to stay with them. Eammon stalked quickly to the gate, rapped once on the wooden wall, then stepped back to peer through narrowed eyes at the carvings.
Red reached him and leaned against the wall, out of breath from trying to keep up. “Your legs,” she panted, “are entirely too long.”
“Blame the forest.” Eammon put a hand on her shoulder, moved her gently aside to look at the carvings her back had hidden. The markings didn’t seem to follow any sort of pattern Red could make out—some were curved and flowing, others spiky and nearly runic. None of them looked like keys.
The others reached them, squinting against bright sunlight after the shade of the Wilderwood. Raffe’s eyes tracked over the marks, a frown turning down his mouth. “Where was this carving you spoke of again?”
“I don’t remember.” Barely leashed irritation in Eammon’s voice—all of them lived on a shatterpoint. “We’ll ask Valdrek. If I can describe it, he’ll know where it is. He can read the wall.”
“Read the wall?” A new concept to Red. Her brow arched.
Eammon cut his hand toward the wall in question. “The marks are a map, sort of. A history. When the explorers ran out of paper, before they figured out how to make their own, they started carving things they wanted to remember on the walls of the Edge instead. It’s a complex pattern, a language all its own. I can make out parts of it, but I’m not fluent.”
Red’s eyes widened. She looked back to the strange carvings with renewed interest, trying to find meaning in all those waving lines. She’d only ever thought of the carvings as decorative, but it made sense that they’d be more than that—those in the Edge made do with what they had, and resources like paper were prohibitively expensive even on the rest of the continent.
Kayu traced one curving line with a manicured finger. “Doesn’t look like anything but shapes to me.” She shrugged at Eammon. “But you’re the forest god, so I trust you. Though trusting gods seems to be a fraught thing, of late.”
“Gods who show their true selves are fine by me,” Raffe muttered. “It’s the ones who try to hide you have to look out for. On all the shadows, it seems like I can’t walk two feet without running into something out of a story anymore.”
“I think I’m at least three feet away,” Lyra said.
Raffe blanched, swallowed. “I mean… of course, it’s not… I didn’t…”
“Need a shovel?” Lyra jostled his shoulder playfully as she stepped forward, joining Fife by the door. “Don’t worry, Raffe. Just because you prayed to me doesn’t really make me a god.”
“What does make one a god?” Kayu mused, like it was an intellectual exercise.
Lyra tapped a thoughtful finger against her collarbone. “You have to believe you’re one, first,” she said finally. “At least, that’s what I think. Magic and prayers aren’t enough if you don’t decide your own divinity.”
“When this is over,” Raffe murmured, “I’m never discussing religion ever again.”
Fife snorted. “I’d also prefer to avoid it.”
“Sorry, dear,” Lyra said, ruffling his reddish hair.