And beyond it, footprints in ash. There were only two, and then they vanished in the midst of a stride—as surely as if Mary had stepped from one world, into the Other.
Gooseflesh prickled up my arms.
“She’ll have gone after Lirr. Give me that. Are you with me, Mr. Rosser?” Anne raked frozen hands over eyes red with exhaustion and cold. She held out her hand, and I realized she wanted my cutlass.
I handed it over and she took it in a sure, steady grip.
“I am, Ms. Firth. Lead the way.”
FORTY-SIX
The Woman in the Wold
MARY
My world was fire and heat, pain and terror. My thoughts skipped and jumped, every thought fragmented, every feeling a spark in the maelstrom.
In that blazing moment, I saw Tane separate from my skin. Still tethered to me by the touch of one hand, she reformed into my reflection, then someone else. She touched my face and poured over my flesh like fog on a sea breeze.
Then my world was cool water and a forest with its roots in the sky. I—Tane and I—ran through ankle-deep pools with a vanguard of a thousand dragonflies, gold and purple. Morgories stuck their heads from the water and unfurled their deadly plumes, rattling as we passed. A creature with the head of a horse and the body of a mangy dog crept through the shadows, head lowered and twisted body radiating pale orange light. A huden.
And though I had never been in this place before, I knew the feel of it in my bones, and understood what it was with a dreamer’s certainty.
The Dark Water. I had stepped bodily out of the fire into the Dark Water.
Before the awe and panic and impossibility of that thought could take root, my world shifted a third time.
I stumbled into a summer Wold of soft wind and cool moss. I knew what had happened with the same surety as I’d recognized the Dark Water.
Tane had awoken the arctic Wold.
“Tane.” I coughed her name, clutching at my seared clothes. They were mostly intact but my boots were burned through, and I nearly twisted an ankle as I tried to find my balance. “Tane!”
I’m here, her voice returned. She manifested before me, taking on the same form she’d worn in the fire—a mixture of me, my mother, and someone else. Her expression was calm but urgent, and she kept one tendril of her spectral flesh tied between us, chest-to-chest.
My mother’s voice rang in my head, distant with memory. So long as Tane is within you, neither of you can come to harm.
That’s what this tether was. Tane, ensuring our connection remained, protecting me from death—and in doing so, guarding herself.
Tane spoke again. We’ve passed through the Dark Water, Mary. We’re safe.
“How?” I wheezed.
“We’re one flesh, you and I,” Tane said. “Entwined from the womb, in a way that Lirr and the others can never be. And I am a Mother Tree. Much is possible for us, but now is not the time for such things. Lirr is on the move.”
I straightened, terror still fluttering through me with every beat of my heart. The heat. The flames. The scent of smoke that still clung to me, so thickly that I felt I couldn’t breathe. I remembered Lirr’s hands on my back and the force of his power, driving me up the ridge to the larch and my certain death.
I shouldn’t be alive. I shouldn’t have been able to flee through the Dark Water, body and soul. But I already existed in a world of impossibilities.
I myself was one of them.
“He won’t escape,” I said, strengthening myself with the words. With that strength came a little more clarity, and with that clarity, anger. Lirr had tried to burn me alive. He had ensorcelled me and submerged me in a terror so fierce, so smothering, I still could not find its edges.
I did not take well to being terrified.
Lirr intended to maim and murder every creature in this strange, misplaced Wold, human and ghisting. He had stolen my mother and left her a shadow of herself. He had killed Grant—or transformed him. He had destroyed uncountable lives, tortured and tormented for decades.
No longer.
Yes. The force of Tane’s power and determination roared through me. She slipped closer, more tendrils of her spectral flesh drawing towards me like smoke towards an open window.
“Where is he?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. Lirr was still in the Wold, regrouping, skulking, plotting, hunting. But Tane was the Wold. I doubted I could kill him alone, but I could slow him down until my mother and Demery caught up.
Follow me.
My senses flowed together with the ghistings as I kicked off my destroyed boots and ran. I knew each tree, each root, each step I needed to take to find Lirr. My bare feet carried me there, and somewhere along the way, Tane slipped fully back into my flesh. There was no strangeness, in the joining. She was simply a drink of water on a hot day, and I welcomed her.
We ran. We hunted. We slipped through the shadows and ran across the decks of derelict, moss-covered ships. Other ghistings emerged, varied forms and shapes joining us until we passed the reaches of their roots, and they stopped, watching us go. They spoke to us, whispers and welcomes and encouragements and warnings.
Only three ghistings kept pace. One was a mighty bear, flanking me. The second and third flitted through the canopy above on silent wings: a white crow, and a winged harpy.
Demery’s, Athe’s and Widderow’s ghistings. I felt a moment of elation, encouraged by their presence, then a swell of dread.
“They’ve left themselves vulnerable,” I panted to Tane as we topped a ridge that proved to be a forgotten hull, latticed with ivy.
They do as they must, Tane replied.
The bear roared. Tane understood it a fraction before I did. I felt her face turn, separating from my skin so that I saw, for an instant, in two directions.
My eyes still took in the summer Wold ahead and a spattering of pointing, clamoring ghistings, all straining at their tethers. I glimpsed the panic in their eyes, and heard their warnings from a distance.
Tane’s eyes saw Hoten part from the vine-choked wood beneath us and drive a wooden dagger towards my chest.
I diverted on light feet, ducking around him and half leaping, half tumbling off the shipwreck. The dagger flashed past my shoulder and I hit the moss in a roll, twigs cracking and ferns rustling.
I lunged back to my feet just as Lirr stepped from the shadows of the wreck, leveling a pistol.
“I gave you freedom!” he roared.
I did not stop moving—if I did, I’d freeze.
Tane separated partially, just in time to block another downward stab of Hoten’s knife. She knocked it from his grasp, snatched it from the air, and slipped back into my frame in the same breath.
Impossibly, the knife appeared in my hand—just as the shard had when I faced the Mereish captain.
The pistol went off. I felt something bite into my side but momentum carried me forward into a low twist, knife punching out.
The pirate, rather than turn away from my blade, threw out his hand. The knife stabbed right through his palm and he discarded his pistol, grabbed my wrist and jerked me off-balance.
I hit the moss again. The knife tore free in a crack and splatter of blood but Lirr didn’t care. He grabbed my throat and slammed me into the earth. I stabbed again, this time taking him in the chest. My vision clouded but I bucked my hips and twisted the knife deeper. He grunted in pain, slipped, and I shoved him aside.