He shrugged, stiff and stilted. “Can’t feel anything.”
There was a current of wariness running beneath his words, one that made her chew her lip. The Wilderwood had lived in him so much longer than it’d lived in her. Her own relationship to the forest they anchored was a mostly amiable one, wrongs forgiven. Eammon’s was more complicated, and she still didn’t quite know how to ask him about it. If he’d even have the words to answer if she did.
She squared her shoulders. Stepped forward. And though Eammon’s hand reflexively spasmed around hers, like he’d try to haul her back, he didn’t. His breath pulled in sharp, and he didn’t let it out as Red approached the trees.
One more pause. Then she stepped between the trunks.
And nothing happened.
The wind teased her ivy-threaded hair, scented with distant smoke, the acrid tang of livestock and many people living in one place. A slight hitch in the Wilderwood within her, like the deep breath of someone slipping into icy water—but no pain, no consequences.
Instead, a feeling of satisfaction, almost. A step taken in the right direction.
She held out her hand to Eammon, still in the shadows of the trees.
A heartbeat, and Eammon laid his palm in hers. He stepped out of the forest, the gold of a new-dawning day burnishing his hair. His eyes widened, then closed as he tipped his head back up to the sky.
“Welcome to the world, Wolf,” Red murmured.
Behind them, Fife and Lyra followed, Fife with a fractioned second of hesitation. The four of them stood on the edge of the world they’d known for so long and were silent.
Fife broke the quiet, crossing his arms. “It smells better in the Wilderwood, I’ll give it that. It’s a revelation every time.”
“You’d better get used to that animal smell.” Lyra gestured toward the road winding back to the village. A small carriage approached, pulled by nondescript horses, the driver with a telltale flick of long black hair. “Looks like our ride to the coast is here.”
Eammon’s back heaved, rippling beneath his dark shirt as he hung over the side of the ship. Usually, the work of his shoulders was something Red enjoyed watching, but today her nose wrinkled and her hand on his neck was tentative.
“I take it back.” He pushed up, scraping his wrist over his mouth. The green around his face wasn’t due only to the Wilderwood in him. “I hate the ocean.”
The trip to the Florish coast, while exceedingly strange, was uneventful. The carriage pulled up to the end of the road before the Wilderwood, Kayu grinning at them from the driver’s seat, wearing a tunic and trousers, with a cap pulled down over the waterfall of her hair.
Red had arched a brow. “So you drive, too?”
“I’m a woman of many talents.”
“Debatable.” Raffe’s voice, somewhat shaky from his seat next to Kayu, his head tipped back against the carriage. “Reckless doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“Hush,” Kayu said. “I might be slightly out of practice, but we got here with no injury to beast or man, so I count that a success.”
“Maybe wait to tally the injuries until we get there,” Raffe muttered.
The nerves of passing the Wilderwood’s border wore off slowly, replaced by nerves of a different kind. Red twitched at her dark cloak—her scarlet bridal one was packed into her bag, since she and Eammon had decided the more nondescript they could look, the better. “And the crew you hired? They’ll be… discreet?”
“I told them you and Eammon were cousins of mine stricken with an odd strain of gangrene,” Kayu replied. “I don’t think they’ll want to get close enough to see the veins or the eyes, but if they do, that will be our explanation.”
“Delightful,” Eammon muttered.
Kayu flicked the reins. “Come on, we want to make sure we get to the harbor before it gets busy.”
Two hours’ hard traveling after that, the four of them packed into the back of Kayu’s coach like fruit in a market box. Lyra just watched the window, but Eammon gripped Red’s hand, and Fife kept his eyes tightly closed.
“I didn’t miss this,” he said weakly, scrubbing a hand through his sandy-red curls. “I’d much rather travel on my own two feet.”
But then they stopped. And then there was the sea.
When they first disembarked, they’d just stood there, blinking in the early-morning light. Kayu and Raffe went to the dock, where a small ship listed back and forth in the tide, a handful of rough-looking figures preparing it for departure. Lyra followed after a moment, Fife trailing behind her, though his eyes kept sweeping over the ocean like he couldn’t quite fathom its size.
Red had never seen Eammon’s eyes so wide. He stared out over the water as if he was looking for its end, trying to trace it all the way to the horizon line. “It’s… huge,” he murmured. “I mean, I knew it was, but… I’ve never seen anything…”
He didn’t have to finish. Even in the brief years when he could leave it, before he was the Wolf, Eammon had never seen anything larger than his forest, never bothered to go so far as the coast.
“We’ll see how much you like it once you’re on a boat,” she’d said, pulling him toward the harbor and Kayu’s waiting galley. When they stepped on the gangplank, the sailors working over the ropes gave them a wide berth. Red bit back a bitter smile.
Now the coast was long gone behind them and the sun blazed noon-high, painting the ocean in shades of green and blue. The rocking of the ship proved not to settle well with someone who’d only ever known the solidness of forest floor.
The sailor working the sail at the stern glanced over their shoulder at Eammon. “Will he make it?”
“No,” Eammon muttered.
“He’ll be fine,” Red called, waving a hand in the sailor’s direction, hoping they wouldn’t come any closer. She still had her hood up, but Eammon’s was off. “Just not used to sailing.”
“Water with a squeeze of lemon,” the sailor said, turning back to the ropes. “Always helped me. Though it could be different with his… condition.”
Eammon swiped his wrist over his mouth again. “You have no idea.”
Red grimaced and pushed his sweaty hair from his eyes.
He leaned briefly into her hand, then waved her off, sinking to sit with his back against the ship wall and his chin tipped up. “Let me know when we’re close.”
She glanced out at the open water. “It’s a three-day voyage, remember?”
Eammon groaned.
“Go below and try to sleep. I’ll wake you for dinner.”
“I don’t think I can move, to be honest.” He cracked one eye open. “And please don’t mention food until we’re off this shadow-damned thing.”