The man at her side stood like a palace guard. He had the same erect posture, the same air of watchfulness. Marra wanted to ask him how he came to be a prisoner in the goblin market and what a fairy fort was, but surely this was not the time, not when they were surrounded by creatures alert for weakness … She poked her tongue at the hole again.
The glamour seller took a ball of twine and a handful of snail shells and began measuring Bonedog and muttering.
“Are you all right?” whispered Marra, when she couldn’t stand it any longer.
The man looked down at her. “I don’t know. Are you planning on killing me?” he asked. He sounded as if he were commenting on the weather.
“No! I need your help, but I wouldn’t…” It occurred to her suddenly that killing a prince was a very dangerous thing to do, and perhaps the moth had landed on him because someone was going to have to die, and that was what she had needed after all. Oh gods! That can’t be it, can it? “That is, I don’t know if I … I…” She stared up at him, having run out of words and wanting very much to not have said anything.
One corner of his mouth crooked just slightly. Marra stared at it wonderingly, that anyone could maintain a sense of humor in this dreadful place. He bent his head toward hers. “This is not the time or the place,” he murmured. “We can sort everything else later.”
“Right,” mumbled Marra. “Right. Yes.”
“Twine and snail shells, wires and bones,” sang the glamour seller, half to themself, while their ears flicked and swiveled. “There!” The twine was a grid, then a net, then they flung it over Bonedog, who bounced on his feet as if he were being given a treat.
The glamour settled around him and left a smell like burning dust. Marra saw the outlines of flesh, a shadow of fur, and then Bonedog shook himself and he was a great gray dog with a skull like a battering ram and a blaze of white across his chest. His tail was still a narrow, bony whip but there was fur across it. He had immense jowls and when he looked up at Marra, they all sagged into a gigantic smile.
“Oh, Bonedog,” she said. He licked her hand and she could feel his tongue, not quite substantial but more than it had been.
“Enough of this place,” said the dust-wife. “Everyone have their souls still? Shadows still attached? Then let’s go before that changes.”
They went up the stairs very slowly. The staircase seemed much longer going up than coming down. Perhaps that was always the way in a fairy world. The man she had ransomed, the man she needed, had his arm locked around hers. They leaned against each other, shoulder against shoulder, two humans in a place where no humans should ever have come. When Marra looked over at him in the sickly firefly light, she could see a silvery terror in his eyes, mastered but very much alive. Bonedog walked beside them, Marra’s hand wrapped around the rope collar. She felt the illusion of fur against her fingers, except when she didn’t and he briefly felt like bones.
The square at the top of the stairs became deep blue instead of black. It grew closer one agonized step at a time, bisected by the dark figure of the dust-wife. Stars began to appear in it, but the outline seemed restless, as if there were a shadow laid across it that should not have fallen just there.
There is something waiting at the top, Marra thought. How many teeth will it take to get past? How many years off my life to buy our way free? She exhaled on a long, shuddery breath and the man beside her half carried her up the next step, until she found her strength again.
It will take as many as it takes.
There was something at the top. She never saw what it was. The dust-wife reached the opening first and a shadow reared up, but the hen threw back her head and crowed like a rooster at dawn.
The shadow fled. The hen settled, making an indignant errrk. “I know,” said the dust-wife soothingly, “I know. Crowing is always so embarrassing for a lady.”
Rrr-rr-rrrk, muttered the hen, shaking out her neck feathers.
They emerged, stumbling, into the starlight. The man at Marra’s side gasped in air as if he had never breathed before. “Free,” he said. “Am I free of that place?”
“Almost,” said the dust-wife. “Not quite yet. We’ve got one foot in the other world, and it isn’t safe to linger.” She led them back along the river, toward the tree root. The man still held Marra’s elbow. She did not know whether to feel trapped or to be glad of the touch.
The drowned boy was waiting on the other side of the roots, chin-deep in the water. He gargled at them and the dust-wife made a noise of annoyance and gestured at him, swift and rude and backed by magic. The drowned boy sank down into the water and swam away, fast as an otter. “Now,” said the dust-wife, leaning on her staff. “Now we’re all the way back. Now you’re free.”