Chapter 31 – Chasing Shadows

After everything that had happened, after all the trials and hardships the two had endured, it was good for my heart to watch the two men celebrate one thing gone right in what had been a cruel and difficult life for them both.

Two days later, I was mostly annoyed by the ‘celebrating’. As far as I was concerned, it had gone on long enough.

I rapped on the small door to the back medical room, impatiently. I was three seconds away from tapping my foot, but honestly, that was almost too comical for my current mood.

“Would y’jes leave us alone, cat?” The coyote grumbled from the other side of the door, his voice muffled by the thick wood.

“No!” I snapped. “I have left you two alone for two days, now. I don’t know how you apparently seem to have forgotten this, but we’re at war! Johannes needs you in the next scouting detail, and I am sick to death of playing messenger and making excuses for you!” I sighed, then remembering, continued, “Oh, and Forrest wants the room back. There are actual sick people who need it.”

There were another few moments of silence, before the fox spoke up, sounding at least somewhere near as embarrassed as he ought to have been. “I could still catch an infection,” he protested weakly. “Besides, until we get my spectacles, I’m as blind as I was before. The out-of-focus everything is almost more distracting-“

“Then cover your eyes,” I growled. “Forrest wants you in one of the beds in the common area now, you don’t need a private room anymore.”

Another pause. Then Ransom spoke again.

“. . . ah don’t think the good Physician would want us doin’ out there what we been doin’ in here.”

“First off Ransom, shut up,” I muttered, putting a hand to my brow and pressing as hard as I could, “second off, more information than I needed. And I say that both because I know from memories I will never be able to scrub from my mind exactly what it is you two were doing, and because it’s obvious! How it is you’ve kept your relationship a secret so long, I cannot wrap my head around. You’re miserable at it.”

“Well, we only used t’go at it in a tent, in th’middle of the wilderness,” Ransom, needlessly, reminded me. “And the fox and I didn’rut none when we was in town.”

“Maybe go back to that for however little time we have left in this settlement,” I said. “For my sanity, if not your own reputation.”

“What do I care what a buncha’ stuff-shirts from Amuresca think o’me?”

I slammed on the door again. “Dress, and get the hell out of there!” I demanded. “Puck can keep resting in the commons if he wants, but Ransom, you are meeting me outside, then reporting for duty! Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the coyote snidely replied, and I sighed angrily and stormed off.

Half an hour later, I was about ready to go back inside and separate the two men by force if need be, when I heard the distinct gait of the coyote, his paws crunching in the loose, dry earth outside the triage unit as he made his way towards me. The sky rumbled overhead, forewarning a rare storm during this ‘dry season’ here on the Dark Continent. It had rained on and off a few times over the last few days, but the storms were always brief and failed to nourish the earth in any real way.

Ransom lit a cigarette as he approached and blew the smoke out through his nostrils with a long sigh. “Goddamn,” he muttered, “don’t think ah’ve ever gone two days without a smoke since I was. . .” he paused, scrunching up his muzzle, “. . . seven?”

I arched an eyebrow. “Spirits forbid.”

“Right?” The coyote replied, either missing my sarcasm or deliberately ignoring it. “Awful cruel’o Forrest not t’let me light up when we was in a back room’n all-“

“Ransom-“

“Ah mean, it ain’t like Puck’s not used to it or nothin’-“

“Ransom,” I persisted.

He blew out another trail of smoke. “. . . y’reckon tobacco smoke kin give you an infection?”

“I don’t know, but the risk probably outweighs your need to feed a bad habit,” I growled out, then reached forward and grabbed him by the collar, tugging him down a few inches and surprising him.

“What’n the hell, cat-“ He stammered.

“I just,” I grated out, “came back . . . from the Optician.”

That got the coyote’s attention, his ears tipping forward. “And . . . ?” he asked, expectantly.

“He said it was an uneven trade, but I think he knows we’re abandoning ship soon, and he was willing to take coin.” I sighed. “So. . . I sold it.”

Ransom looked hesitantly happy for a moment, then his posture drooped with some regret. “Shivah,” he murmured, “ah’m sorry. I should’ve found a way t’do this myself. I know it was one of the last pieces o’him you had left.”

I put out a hand, stopping him. “It was a pistol, Ransom. That’s all. I don’t need it to remember him, and I had no plans to use it. Besides,” I found myself staring down at the ground, mostly so the coyote wouldn’t notice I was blinking rapidly, “he would have wanted me to use it in the way that did the most good. I think this is probably the best possible way to re-purpose a weapon in a positive way. I like to think . . . he would have been proud of my decision.”

The coyote gave a silent, sorrowful nod.

“So, does he need t’see the fox again?” He asked, at length.

I shook my head. “No, he said the one visit was enough. Besides, he said it’s a fairly common prescription. More people have had this surgery than you think.”

“It’s a bloody travesty the tribes don’t s’much as know about it,” the coyote muttered. “Even Puck didn’t. He said one’a the first things he’s gonna have Forrest teach him once his eyes is fixed is how t’do this surgery.”

I smiled softly. “He’ll be able to help a lot of people, when he returns home.”

“If,” Ransom reminded me darkly, his eyes sweeping the skies. “We still gotta get outta this hell-hole.” He spat what remained of his cigarette onto the ground and stomped it out, then fished about in his pocket for another. “So, how long ‘til the damned things is done, then? I already gave him my part.”

“I have them in my bag.”

Ransom’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you-“

“I thought maybe it might be best if you both at least got dressed, first.”

“It’s. . . bright. . . out here. . . .” A still somewhat sleepy voice mumbled from behind us. Shocked, I turned to see the fox warily inching his way out into the cloud-diffused daylight, blinking his dark brown eyes slowly and holding a hand up over them partially to shield them.

I still couldn’t get over seeing his eyes like that. It took me a moment to gather myself. When I was able to think straight again, I reached down and tugged the fox’s hood up.

“Not just for the light,” I explained, “it’s going to rain soon.”

“I know,” he said, dragging in a slow breath through his nose with a small smile, “I can smell it.”

“Think yer nose’s super-powers is gonna fade now’at you can see?” Ransom asked, curiously.

The fox wrinkled his nose. “I don’t see how that’s possible. My sense of smell never really improved, I just paid a lot more attention and built a mental library of what everything smelled like. I don’t see why that knowledge would leave me, now.”

“What’n the hell’s a ‘library’?” the coyote muttered.

The fox rolled his eyes at me, as if I’d join in his amusement. I just stared at him blankly, and shrugged, “I’m with him.”

Puck sighed. “I’ve gotten too used to being around intellectuals. . . .”

“What’s an-“

“I swear to- if you’re about to say ‘what’s an intellectual’, Ransom-“

“Well, I wouldn’t’a said it like that exact. S’a long word.”

“I think I got that one,” I said with a frown, then arched my eyebrow at the coyote, “I’m fairly certain he’s calling us stupid, Ransom.”

“I am not!”

“Well,” the coyote snorted, and marched purposefully up to the fox, holding out a hand to me. I fished around in my bag for what I knew he wanted, and handed them to him. He toyed with them for a moment before figuring out how they worked, then leaned down carefully over Puck. “Yer stupid friends brought you somethin’.”

The fox seemed wary for a moment, until Ransom carefully placed the spectacles over the bridge of his nose. Puck blinked behind the lenses, looking at the both of us, agape. He was silent for so long, I began to worry.

“. . . please tell me they work,” the coyote sighed.

“They do,” the fox choked, giving a trembling smile. “How on earth did you afford these?”

Ransom’s expression dropped some, and he replied, “Ah’m sorry, fox, but. . . I had t’sell the rings. What little coin I had weren’t near enough.”

Puck actually laughed and leaned forward against the coyote’s chest, nuzzling into his suspenders. “They didn’t fit, anyway,” he chuckled, swiping a few fingers underneath the lenses of his new spectacles to wipe away a tear or two. “Besides,” he looked up at the coyote, “this . . . is a far better engagement gift.”

Ransom smiled back for a few moments, before he inclined his muzzle towards me. “It wasn’t all me, fox.”

Puck looked to me, and I forced a soft smile. “I. . . sold Grant’s pistol.”

The fox’s ears fell. “Shivah, you didn’t-“

“Don’t you start,” I sighed. “It was just a thing, Puck. A weapon. If Grant was still here, you know for a fact he would have sold it himself if it meant you could see again.”

Our conversation was interrupted by another low rumble of thunder. I’d been feeling the occasional cold pinprick on my fur since we’d stepped outside, but now they were coming faster.

“Storm’s moving in,” I said with a sigh. “You should get inside, Puck. Are those things safe to get wet?”

“They’d better be for what we paid for them,” Ransom muttered.

“We need the rain,” Puck said with a soft smile, pulling back his hood and closing his eyes, tipping his muzzle into the drizzling water. “The land is parched, and I haven’t felt rain on my fur in so long.”

Neither of us had the heart to interrupt the fox, as he stood in the lazy drizzle of rain and slowly swept his eyes across the street, the buildings, and the far more distant sights beyond . . . the mountain range that surrounded us, the clouds, the ancient trees that grew up around us like a green womb.

“This place is incredible,” the fox said in quiet awe. “It reminds me of the forests of old, in the legends. When the world belonged to the Gods, and everything grew as tall as the sky.”

I nodded slowly, really taking in the sight of the land surrounding Serwich, perhaps for the first time. I’d marveled, of course, at this place when we’d first arrived, but even then that awe had been dampened by the knowledge of the threats lurking in the rainforests, tainted with fear. I’d never really just taken it in, in all its beauty.

“You two gonna be alright?” the coyote asked sardonically.

“I’m fine,” the fox replied, still smiling. “Although, I think I might want to walk a little. I don’t want to go back to bed just yet.”

“It’s rainin’,” the coyote said with an arched eyebrow.

I took Puck’s arm. “I’ll accompany him,” I promised. “You need to report to your post, or Johannes is going to make you work the night shift.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the coyote muttered, hefting his rifle up over his shoulder. “Y’all don’t stay out here in this weather too long, y’hear? Especially you, fox. Yer still s’posed t’be laid-up. Ah get that y’want to gush about mountains or whatever, but just make it quick, a’ight?”

Puck nodded, but I don’t know how much of the coyote’s warning he actually heeded, because he was soon tugging me down the road, looking on the world like a child. As much as I knew Ransom was right, I couldn’t bring myself to put a stop to the little fox’s journey. I couldn’t even imagine how much this must have all meant to him. Even though he’d had his sight back for a few days now, this was the first time he’d been able to really see in focus, and the first time he’d seen the world outside the small medical room in . . . over a decade?

So I smiled despite myself, and just made sure to walk with him. He wasn’t exactly as oriented to sight as most people, after so long without it, and he made simple mistakes often, like forgetting to look down at the ground he was walking on.

“I know you said ‘burn it’,” I sighed at the fox, as he once again tripped and I stabilized him by the arm, “but maybe you ought to consider carrying your walking stick for a while longer.”

“It’s just,” he attempted to explain, stubbornly, “this city. It’s built Amurescan style. I’m not used to cobbled roads, or these raised platforms in front of buildings.”

“They have to build it that way for the rainy season,” I sighed. “Johannes explained it to me once. The streets flood. The wet season here is very wet. Speaking of- it’s really coming down now, Puck. We should get inside.”

The fox dipped his paw into a forming puddle, and giggled, of all things. I arched an eyebrow at him, confused. He looked up at me apologetically. “I’d . . . forgotten what ripples looked like,” he explained. “Sorry. I don’t know why I found it so funny.”

I reached down to tug up his cloak hood, doing the same for myself. It wouldn’t help much at this point, honestly, I was already quickly becoming soaked, and so was he. I was about to remind the fox that we needed to get inside, when I noticed he’d gone still and was staring down an alleyway towards a field behind the buildings that lined this street. I saw what he was looking at, and went cold.

“That’s the city graveyard,” I murmured. Hesitantly, I reached for his shoulder and squeezed, not sure exactly what was going through his mind, but hoping I could offer some comfort. It was only a few days ago that he’d been facing his own mortality, after all.

When I looked down into his face, though, it was only curiosity I saw. Curiosity, and the look I’d often equated to Puck thinking about something, working something out in his head. I tilted my head, and leaned down to query, “Puck?”

He was silent a further few moments, his gaze dropping to his feet, standing in the small puddle. He didn’t reply to me at all at first, which worried me. Only tugged free of my hold and began walking down the alleyway, towards the graveyard. I followed because I was worried about him, increasingly so with his mystifying behavior.

“Puck!” I called out, when he’d gotten a fair distance ahead of me. I jogged to keep up, nearly running into his back when he stopped at the end of the narrow alley. He was on the edge of the vast graveyard, which took up nearly the entire back meadow behind the buildings on this side of the city, wedged up against the river. It was near to the triage unit for obvious reasons, so I’d unfortunately seen it many times.

Puck was staring at his feet, intently. Or, more specifically, I realized as I made my way to him, he was staring at what he was standing in. It took me a few moments to realize he hadn’t been walking a random path to bring him to where he was. There was a small drainage ditch dug into the side of one of the buildings near the alleyway, so shallow it was barely noticeable.

I swept my gaze back towards where we’d been standing in the road. Puck had walked the path of the water to where he was standing now. The rain was coming down hard enough that a small, sparkling line was draining down towards the thick, grassy meadow of the graveyard, where it disappeared into the earth.

Puck’s eyes were wide, and in an instant, as though he’d been struck by the distant lightning of the storm, he sucked in a breath and spoke, with certainty.

“Ground water.”

I stared at him, merely confused by his words, but knowing something very profound was happening.

Puquanah turned to look up at me, gripping my sleeve. “I know how it’s spreading!” he exclaimed.

“Ground water?” I repeated, sitting gently on the cot beside the fox as he buzzed beside me, pushing his new spectacles up a bit as they slipped down his nose in his excitement.

“Water that seeps through the ground,” he attempted to explain. “Rain water,” he gestured with one hand, in a trickling motion, “when it hits the earth, it drains down through the dirt. Some of it makes it deep underground, which is how wells draw up water. But a lot of it just moves along the surface, or close to the surface, and drains into nearby bodies of water. Like rivers.”

I nodded. “Alright. So . . . it’s coming from the ground somehow?”

“No,” the fox sighed. “Look. We always knew there was a water link. It’s no coincidence that so many towns along the rivers were being hit. You could say that’s just more likely because there’s so much trade along rivers, so many people who could potentially be spreading it, but the frequency was so great back home, I always assumed it had to be more than that. Rourke’s men were traveling along that river, slaughtering and burning the bodies of infected people, which should have kept the contagion from spreading. Dead people can’t travel, can’t go to the river for water, can’t spread their waste in the river.”

“So then how?” I asked, baffled.

“The disease isn’t being spread by the living,” the fox said, the certainty in his voice burning with passion, “It’s being spread by the dead. Graves, especially mass graves, full of infected people. I’m willing to bet you’d have to burn a body to ashes to completely destroy the illness inside it, and they were hardly cremating those people. I never saw them, but I’m fairly certain there was plenty of flesh left on those bodies, judging by what I smelled-“

I held out a hand, my stomach turning at the memories. “Puck,” I said quietly, “please.”

“Anyone infected who dies near the water,” he said intensely, “whether by the hand of Rourke’s men, a traveler, or a villager buried by their own people, is a source of the contagion. Rain water washing down through graves into a river would spread the disease like wildfire. And mass graves, like the sort Rourke’s men were creating, would create enormous blooms of it. That’s why so many villages were affected along our river, one after another.” He paused for a moment, and then his expression darkened. “. . . and that’s why it hit Otter tribes and those around them so hard.”

“Because they live on rivers?” I asked. “A lot of people live along rivers, in Carvecia. Most of the tribes are at least near one.”

Puck shook his head. “No,” he said softly, “because Otters always bury their dead near running water. It’s tradition. They believe it’s the path to the afterlife.”

I looked down. “Rourke’s people. . . .”

Puck’s gaze also fell. “Every burn pile we found was on the outskirts of town. Near the river. I have no doubt he did so intentionally. The man might have been mad, but I think in his own mind, he was honestly trying to help those people. He wanted them to pass on in the way his people believed was best.”

I shook my head, pushing a hand up through my increasingly frayed mane. “Connal’s bloody plan,” I said bitterly. “All this time, they were only making it worse.”

“No one was taking the time to understand this disease,” Puck said. “It’s like a living thing. You have to understand how it lives and moves before you can hunt it, before you can find the best way to eradicate it. And that takes a lot of minds. A lot of information. They wanted an easy solution. But you can’t batter down a plague with brute force.”

“Can we beat it?” I asked. “Now that we know this?”

“I don’t know that we’ll ever beat it,” Puck replied. “It will probably always exist in the world. But so long as we can convince the tribes and the settlements to stop burying people near sources of water, and to steer clear of wells near rivers where water carrying the illness could penetrate-“

“Like Serahaven,” I said in sudden realization.

Puck nodded somberly. “It also entirely explains why Amuresca’s outbreaks have been small and isolated.” When I only tilted my head at his words, he explained, “This disease is new. It came from here – from the Dark Continent – so it hasn’t been on other continents for very long. Amuresca is over-populated, and their settlements are old, especially along their rivers. They’ve killed all their fish, and ruined their water . . . no one uses the rivers there for anything other than transit and washing. They drain their waste into them. No one drinks from them anymore.”

“That’s disgusting,” I muttered, wrinkling my nose.

“Even if an infected person got their waste into those rivers, they aren’t a source of sustenance for their people anymore,” Puck said. “And I’m willing to bet any graveyards they have along the rivers have either been buried by cities, or are too old and too crowded for any new bodies. They’ve unintentionally spared themselves an outbreak.”

“The rivers are our lifeline, back home,” I said softly.

“We’ve taken it for granted that our water is safe,” Puck said. “Because it always has been. But the world is changing. New people are bringing new threats to us. And this isn’t a threat most of our tribes were prepared for. It’s no wonder it’s been so devastating.”

I slowly swept my eyes over the room, watching the many Otherwolves here, foreigners to this country just as surely as they had been to ours, not so long ago.

“This . . . could happen again, couldn’t it?” I asked quietly. “I mean, a different disease. Or something else. Something worse.”

“They’ve brought a lot of good as well, Shivah,” Puck said gently. “But, yes. The world is vast. There are many incredible things out there, beyond the limits of our tribal lands. Things that can change our lives,” he adjusted his glasses, meaningfully. I couldn’t argue with him, when he was looking – really looking – up at me, for the first time in the two years I’d known him.

“For better or for worse,” he said. “But the dam’s burst, now. It’s too late to go back. We just have to adapt.”

“You have to get this information back home,” I said suddenly, gripping his hand. “If this dies here, a lot of people die with it.”

Puck nodded, his ears flattening seriously. “I know. And I need Forrest as well, to get through to the Colonists. We both need to make it back to Arbordale, or one of the larger cities back home.”

“We have to get out of here alive first,” I sighed, turning and intending to go for the pitcher of water resting on the bedside table, when something across the room caught my eye.

And I cursed under my breath. Because in all the chaos this morning, I’d forgotten I was supposed to be keeping a vigil.

I sprung up and rushed across the room, nearly knocking into and bowling over a nurse carrying a tray of breakfast for the patients. I didn’t so much as take the time to apologize. I heard Puck calling out to me questioningly as I sprinted towards the cot, now in an isolated corner of the room. The man had the cup to his muzzle, and I was certain I was too late, but I doubled my pace despite it.

I reached the emaciated Otherwolf just as I saw him take his first swallow, and batted the cup out of his hand. The clay mug fell to the floor, bounced once, and spun, its contents spilling across the floorboards. The nurse beside the man looked up at me, horrified.

“What in God’s name-“ she began, but I cut her off viciously.

“Tell me,” I growled out, “the last time he’s eaten or drunk anything willingly!”

The nurse, some kind of tabby feline, flattened her ears down, seeming to realize my point. The emaciated amputee spat out a curse and weakly collapsed back onto his bed with a sob.

“Just let me pass on!” He cried, hoarsely. “This world is nothing but pain for me now!”

I heard Puck quietly padding up behind us. He knelt beside where the cup had fallen to the floor and picked it up gingerly, sniffing it for a few moments. When he looked up at me, his expression both confirmed my fears, and heightened them.

“Shivah,” he said, gesturing to me. I knelt down beside him, as he turned the cup over in his paws.

“I trust your nose,” I said implicitly. “Poison?”

“Not just poison,” he said, his tone somewhat haunted. “Len’sal. A lethal dose, by the sheer strength of the scent. He would have passed on peacefully, at least, but-“

I sighed. “When will those damned berries stop haunting us?”

“Shivah,” the fox said meaningfully, “they shouldn’t be here.”

“I think I caught him in time,” I said. “He only took one swallow-“

“No, I mean, the berries used in this tonic,” Puck pressed, “should not be here. They don’t grow on this Continent. In fact, they don’t even grow over most of Carvecia. They’re specific to the region around your Valley, and further north.

My blood ran cold. Puck’s expression, I knew, must have mirrored mine. Remembrance, fear . . . pain.

I hadn’t wanted to believe it. It had almost been more comforting to think I was mad. That I’d truly put it all behind me. That the ghosts that had haunted me, had nearly burnt me up inside, were truly gone.

But if she was truly here . . . alive still . . . it wasn’t over.

“When I went through my pack after I came back into the world of the living,” Puck murmured, “most of my poisons were missing. Including almost all my Len’sal. The only dried berries left were the ones you’d found. I had a larger pouch of them. It was gone.”

I stood slowly, my eyes sweeping the room. But a silver fox, I would have picked out in the current crowd, no matter how well-disguised.

And I’d never forget those eyes.

“Shivah-“ Puck began, gripping at my sleeve in an attempt to stop me. He couldn’t possibly. All I could see any more was red.

Leaving him, his heart slowing against my palm.

Spilling out on to crumbling moss, sinking into the earth.

Staining my hands, tinging the air with the scent of death.

That scent had sunk deep into the recesses of my mind. I thought I’d never be able to forget it. And I hadn’t. Because here it was again, uninvited, forcing its way back into my every sense. Taking over me.

I was helpless to this anger. I’d been a slave to it for years, and I thought I’d beaten it. But all I’d ever really done was put distance between myself and it. I wasn’t nearly as strong as I like to imagine myself, when it tested me like this.

“Shivah, don’t,” Puck pleaded from beside me. His voice sounded muddy. Far away. I was already trying to pick up her scent on the air. I wasn’t even certain I’d know it if I caught it. She’d always been so far out of my grasp. Like a specter haunting my life, but never quite entering it. All she did was hurt people in a halo around me.

I felt Puck’s paw settle on my arm, and I flung it aside, turning an icy stare down at him. He tucked his tail behind him, looking frightened of me. Before he could say any more, I drove forward and gripped the emaciated canine by the collar of his dirty shirt, forcing his weak frame back up into a sitting position, so he’d have to face me.

“Where is she?!” I demanded.

The man gave a wracking cough and weakly tried to pry my hand off his shirt with his one good arm. When he didn’t reply past that, I shook him.

“What did you tell her?” I spat. “I know you’ve been communicating with her! What information did you trade for that poison? She wouldn’t kill you unless you gave her something! What was it?!”

“Nothing. . . of value,” he growled out, his voice hoarse and defeated.

“I’ll determine that for myself when I catch her!” I snapped. “Where is she heading? Where does she meet them?”

“There’s no point,” he gasped, “none of this. . . serves any. . . point. She has nothing. They’ll kill her anyway.”

“Where is she going?!” I demanded again, snarling. The nurse was frantically tugging at me from behind, trying to get me off the man, and I could hear Puck hesitantly pleading with me, but none of that mattered.

“You want. . . to die, too?” the man asked in a rattling laugh. “Fine.” I released him, and he slumped back down onto the bed. After he’d taken a moment to regain his breath, he continued. “The Brood mother. She’s going. . . to meet with the Brood mother.”

“Who the hell is that?” I asked, frustrated.

“The one . . . who truly leads them all,” the canine stated. “The one who brought all the tribes together to fight us.”

“They’re lead by a woman?” I asked, uncertain I’d heard him right.

“There are chieftains . . . males,” the man sighed. “But, yes. The Cathazra are always led by mothers. Those with the most powerful clutches.” He glared. “Our force would know that, if they’d ever bothered to learn about their people.”

“You could have told them all you’d learned,” I said accusingly. “You were with them. You lived with them. I’m sure you learned more than anyone else ever has.”

“I’m afraid . . . to tell Denholme,” the man said in a tired wheeze. He looked up at me, and the fear in his eyes was so palpable, I began to understand for the first time what sort of a position this man was in. “I love my people. I don’t want our men or our colonists, to die here. But these creatures don’t deserve to be slain, either. Our people are . . . anathema to one another. Every time we meet, blood is spilled. They killed her,” he sobbed, “they killed the one who was looking after me. Because she wanted to bring me back to my own people! That was her only sin!”

“Calm down,” I stammered.

“Denholme will turn anything I tell him into a tactical advantage,” the man insisted. “He’ll use it, to cripple them. To win this. That’s what he does. He doesn’t like to lose . . . no matter the cost.”

“So you’re selling out your own people instead?” I demanded.

“I haven’t sold out either side!” the Otherwolf cried out, then coughed again when his voice cracked.

“Prove it to me,” I said. “Tell me where the vixen is going. You know these people. You must know where she’s gone to find this ‘Brood mother’.”

The Otherwolf gave an exhausted whine, tipping his muzzle back. At length, he breathed out in a long sigh, closing his eyes.

“The river. She’ll be following the river.”

It was still raining when I made it to the river and began following the banks upstream, into the mountains. Puck’s final words to me rang hollowly in my ears, about the danger of going into the wilderness here alone, let alone when visibility was this poor. I’m certain if Ransom had been there, he would have tied me to a chair to keep me from this fool chase.

Every rational fiber of my body knew this was reckless to a near suicidal degree. But I knew I’d never again in my life come so close to catching this shadow that had nipped at our heels, pursued us and been pursued by us, for so long now. Her namesake was dead on. She was the greatest force of evil and pain in my life, and I’d never seen her except out of the corner of my eye, at the edge of my life. She was there every time I’d let down my guard, orchestrating the many tragedies we’d endured over the last two years. But I didn’t even know her real name.

That ended today. No matter what I had to do to accomplish it. I’d tried so hard to come to terms with my anger for this woman and all she’d done, but if the mere mention of her could turn me inside-out like this, than I had to accept that it was, and would always be, unfinished business that would forever keep me from finding real peace. One way or another, I needed this chapter of my life to close.

The memory of what had transpired with Methoa’nuk had not left me, of course. I was determined I wouldn’t kill the woman . . . not until I’d absolutely gotten the closure I needed from her. Vengeance had done me no good in the past.

That being said, I wasn’t certain if I was given the chance at a kill shot, that I’d be able to stop myself from taking it. Grant was gone because of this woman. Countless people had died at her hand, and she hadn’t Xeli’s excuse. As far as I knew, the vixen was perfectly rational, she was just cold.

Evil. She was evil. Sometimes, it wasn’t an overstatement to use the word. There was real evil in the world, and I’d never believe otherwise.

I wasn’t going to let her slip through my fingers this time. Not again. If it meant killing her to stop her, I would.

My feet pounded into the red, muddy clay along the riverbanks, my paw-pads catching the occasional sharp edge of jagged slate and the other unforgiving mountain stones that collected along the river’s edge, sending pangs of ache up through me that I was ignoring as surely as I was the building ache in my lungs. I’d lost track of how long I’d been running now, I knew only that the river was widening and becoming more tumultuous, and that I’d passed the wall nearly an hour ago, which meant I was far past the safe zones. I was moving into enemy territory, and the river itself was one of the most contested areas.

And I was moving in the open, because it was faster. I had to hope the Cathazra wouldn’t be out in force today, due to the lack of sunlight. That was my only possible saving grace.

She’d gotten a good head start on me, I was certain. And I’d seen for myself in the past that she was fast. Possibly faster than me. I had one fact on my side, though.

She didn’t know I was chasing her.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t being vigilant, though. I knew a fox’s hearing was nothing to snuff at. If she heard me coming upon her over the sound of the rain, she could easily make it to a hiding spot and I’d pass her without knowing, or worse yet, she’d have the perfect opportunity to take a shot at me.

Both of our bows would be wet. So this would come down to whose weapon was in better condition. I kept my bow dry nearly all the time, and waxed my string often. I had it stowed as much as I could beneath my cloak now, so when the time came, I’d have the best possible chance. But rain was always a problem. Always.

Something flitted past the edge of my vision, and I went still, backing into the reeds, scanning the treetops for whatever it had been. It couldn’t be a drake, not so low and not in such dark weather. Besides, it had seemed smaller. Could I have caught up to her? Could she have taken to the trees?

It was two bright pin-pricks amongst the dark recesses of foliage that caught my gaze, and drew me towards the dense clump of leafy branches where. . . .

. . . he sat. Black, and small, and not a bird native to these lands. And those eyes. There was no mistaking those burning eyes. Like embers.

My breath came out in a halting gasp. “. . . wh. . .y?” Was what I eventually managed, at last.

The creature stared back at me impassively. Not speaking. He never spoke when I needed him to.

“Why?!” I screamed up into the branches, heedless of any need for stealth in that moment. “Why are you still tormenting me?! You’ve never helped me! You won’t even leave my life, when I’m trying to let go!” I felt my voice catching in my throat, and swallowed back pain in my throat. “I tried . . . to help you,” I said. “So that you could let go. So that we could let go together. I thought you’d gone. I thought . . . I’d never see you again. Why do you always appear right when I’m at my weakest?! When I’m hurting, when I’m uncertain what to do? All you ever do is push me towards the worst decisions! Do you just enjoy watching me burn up inside?!”

Still, the spirit didn’t answer. He simply stood in the branches, staring down at me with those burning eyes, standing out against the dark silhouette of his body.

“I thought I was done with you,” I said, my voice shaking. “I thought I was done, with . . . with all of this. I want it to be over.” I balled my fists, and then I screamed.

“I want you to go away! Leave, and never come back! I want peace!”

The spirit shifted suddenly, and began to take off. In a flash of black wings against the grey backdrop of the sky, he was gone, and the branches shifted against the absence of his weight.

Or perhaps they were moving in the breeze.

But in that moment, I caught sight of something else. A second pair of eyes, behind where the branches had once been. Catching the cloudy light of the obscured sun, flickering green for just an instant. I never would have seen them, had it not been for the shift in the foliage.

I undid the clasp for my cloak, pushing it off my shoulders, and pulling my bow, slowly. The glint in the eyes had not shifted yet, so I had to assume she thought she was still hidden. But that wouldn’t last, once I leveled a shot.

I moved forwards slowly, pulling an arrow from my quiver and nocking it to my bow, but keeping my head turned towards my side of the river, so she’d think I didn’t quite know where she was. The vision out of my peripheral was better at catching movement, and I knew she’d move as soon as she realized I’d detected her. That would be my only shot. She was too much behind cover, now.

Alarm bolted through my blood when I caught that flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye, and I twisted, pulling my body ramrod straight into a firing stance. Just as Ransom had shown me, over and over again, in the months we’d spent in the valley. Just as I’d always run over in my mind, when I thought of hunting down Methoa’nuk, the Raiders . . . the many people in my life who’d wronged me. I’d always feared I might panic, might act hastily.

But in this one moment, I was deathly calm. I was not the woman I’d once been. I was not weak. I was not helpless. I was prepared, and I was a hunter. And this time, she was my prey.

I waited for the right moment, and it came. She was dropping down through branches in the tree, making for the ground. And no matter how spry, no one was as dexterous while climbing as they were on foot. She was five feet from the ground when I saw my shot, between a gap in two thick branches.

I released my arrow, and it sung through the rain. I heard her cry out as it struck her, right where I’d intended, into the meat of her thigh.

I was taking off across the rocky shore almost before she’d hit the ground. I leapt through the shallows as far as I could, before I was forced to wade. I was lucky the river wasn’t wider here, or forging it could have been impossible, not just difficult. By the time I made it to the opposite shoreline, I was soaked head to toe, and nocking another arrow to my bow was probably a futile gesture, but I did it anyway.

I could hear her moving, stumbling through the brush. I closed in on the sound, and soon I could hear it all. Uneven footsteps, staggered breaths belonging to a woman . . . and the unmistakable scent of a fox.

It felt as though I were at the end of a funnel, my vision and my life all closing in on this one moment. Everything around me seemed black save the trail ahead, leading to my prey. She was right there. She was weakened, she was on the run, for the first time since she’d begun haunting me.

And then I saw her. Really saw her. I broke through a thick mass of palms, and she was just . . . there. Standing in the clearing ahead, as soaked as I was, my arrow still protruding from her thigh. Her cloak was torn from falling through the trees, I could smell her blood in the air, and she’d resorted to pulling a thin blade, to defend herself with.

I pulled back my arrow, and leveled it at her. At this close a range, no matter how fast she was . . . I would not miss.

I was about to demand her surrender, when she shocked me by speaking first. But it was more the words than her voice that stunned me so.

“Why do you haunt me so?!” She cried out, in a voice hoarse with exhaustion. “Why did it have . . . to be you? Why is it always you? Have I not avenged you?! Leave me be, spirit!”