I pick up my bedding and return it to my mattress, falling asleep instantly atop it. The sun is full and bright when I wake to my father’s footsteps retreating from my room. I imagine he’s checked on me several times. I rarely sleep in so late.
After I dress and comb my hair, I feel the Telling Stone. Cool to the touch. I focus on it, closing my eyes as I do so. It’s Maekallus’s presence that keeps the stone from warming entirely. He is either a ways off or docile, if the stone’s reaction is so mild. Yet those yellow eyes could never be described as docile. I immediately assume the first reason.
I returned all my borrowed things from my trek into the wildwood save my father’s remaining medallion—the rest of the mysting’s payment. With the gold in my pocket, I walk the perimeter of the house, searching the green spaces between old, tall trees. A fawn peeks out near me, and turns away just as quickly. The Telling Stone doesn’t change.
Needing to busy myself to stave off uncertainty, I join my father in the cellar and tend the mushrooms. They grow with little fuss, but it benefits none of us if a poisonous breed gets into the mix, or if ripe mushrooms go unpicked and wrinkle on the log.
I do not work for long before a sharp pain dances across my palm. I excuse myself back to the house to treat the cut on my hand. Peeling back the bandage, I frown at the mark. I do not know how mysting bargains work, but the cut has not healed in the slightest. At least there is no sign of infection. I wash it, apply a thick layer of salve—in which I include rabbit’s ear, in case the wound is magical—and bandage it anew. My father has not noticed the bandaging; if he does, I’ll tell him I scraped my palm on the nail that sticks out of the ladder to the cellar. The one I’ve known to avoid all my life, but Papa will accept the lie. Even so, I dislike spinning another tale to fool him.
Days pass. I wait for the narval to collect his payment, but he doesn’t come. No mysting can stay in the mortal realm for longer than a few days, but my Telling Stone neither warms nor cools.
My hand doesn’t heal.
My father slips back into his easy routine, the stress of the first gobler incident forgotten, or at least buried. I try to make a new salve for my hand with lavender and tapis root. It staves off infection, but the cut doesn’t so much as crust. I finally show it to my father, for he knows the basics of battlefield wounds. I give him the story of the nail, seasoned with truth—I say I injured my hand days ago, yet it has not healed. His brow pulls taut as he stitches my hand after liberally applying expensive thorrow herb, the seeds of which had been purchased from the apothecary in town. Despite the numbing medicine, the stitches smart. I try to bear them gratefully.
The fine thread holds the cut closed, but the wound does not heal. It grows more tender with each passing hour. Redder and darker. Two days later, with my father’s medallion weighing my pocket, I venture back into the wildwood to close the bargain for myself. I do not go far before I hear footsteps coming my way. My Telling Stone remains unchanged. Regardless, I breathe a sigh of relief when it’s another human who emerges between the trees.
“Tennith,” I say, my start leaving me breathless. A thin beam of sunlight spills through the canopy and dances off his light hair. He’s wearing leathers instead of his usual plain clothes, and four rabbits hang over his shoulder, back feet bound by rope. “You startled me.”
He smiles, reminding me again of how handsome he is. The leathers hug his person far better than his loose farming clothes, highlighting the broadness of his shoulders. I have to remind myself not to stare.
“Enna, pleased to see you. What brings you into the wildwood?”
“I’ve traps of my own.” I indicate the rabbits.
“I never thought you for a hunter. But . . . of course, it makes sense.”
I shrug, though my father is more than capable of sending an arrow into the heart of a boar or deer. That is, if he doesn’t first get lost. What we don’t get from traps set close to the wildwood edge, we purchase from the town.
He eyes me a moment too long, but before I can think of something to fill the quiet space, he says, “If you’re ever in need, I can—”
“Tennith, you’re kind.” And he is, and were my father and I in better repute, perhaps I would wear a comelier dress and try to catch his eye at fair time. I’ve dabbled with the fancy, but dreaming can hurt a heart, as Grandmother would always say. “I assure you we are well. There are only two of us to feed.”
“Yes but . . . please remember the offer. Would you like escort?”
“Thank you, but no. Only one left to check.”
Though his eyes linger on my empty hands, he nods and moves toward the town. I watch him go until the thickness of trees hide any evidence of his presence. Squeezing the Telling Stone, I walk deeper into the forest, focusing on the cool presence of a narval.
The stone doesn’t lead me to the place where I burned a summoning circle into the forest floor, but away from it, northward, where I had last sensed the goblers. I tread carefully, scanning the trees, especially where they grow thick and force me from a direct path. A cool prickle warns of a mysting miles off. It vanishes minutes later. I cross a hunting trail and avoid tall grass for fear of traps, step over a brook, and climb up a short, rocky incline. The Telling Stone’s temperature doesn’t falter, and I wonder at it. Is Maekallus moving away from me at the same pace I’m moving toward him? The stone has previously acted in this manner with rooters, which are docile. And Maekallus is no such thing.
I reach an oval-shaped glade, where oak and aspen part. What I see instead makes me gasp. A grotesque creature is slumped near the center of the clearing, skin blackened and bubbling, though I can still make out arms and legs . . . and a long, stony horn patched with charcoal.
I press my hand against a trunk to keep myself upright. He smells of compost and something foul, something otherworldly. A thin tendril of light, like a glowing red spiderweb, leads from the black mass to the earth, disappearing amid grass and clover.
My voice is a near whisper. “Maekallus?”
The body shifts, head lifting to look at me. His face is patched with black, and a blackened bubble moves across his neck like boiling tar. His eyes are vivid and yellow, but one is heavy, the lid swollen. I see for the first time his cloak beside him, rent and smeared with black ooze.
“You,” he says, the word heavy, venomous, and rasping. “You . . . are the bane of . . .”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, for a wet cough erupts from his throat. He tries to stand, but his hooved foot slips in its own muck, and he falls to his knees.
I take a step forward, staying well out of his reach. “What’s happened to you?”
He glares at me. “Your cursed realm . . .”
He doesn’t have to complete the sentence. I need only look at him to know my realm is eating him alive. My lips part in surprise. This is why the stone’s temperature has remained unchanged. Maekallus has been in the mortal realm this whole time.
“I have your payment here!” I pull the medallion from my pocket. “Good graces, Maekallus! It’s not worth any coin to stay here!”
Maekallus laughs—at least, I believe it’s a laugh. It’s a wet, cruel sound, sticky and terrible. “You think . . . I suffer for you?” Another laugh. “Stupid mortal. I’ve been bound here by your quarry. Two . . . I killed the wrong . . .” He takes a deep, wheezing breath. “Did you not know? . . . The bargain is not . . . complete.”