That, at least, got through to him. But as I wallowed there in the underbrush like a nesting hen with my skirts piled up around me, Rook’s fine coat fabric brushing my hair whenever he shifted, my bladder simply wouldn’t cooperate. Even more so when I glanced around the woods for a distraction and saw a mushroom circle nearby. Each toadstool cap was as wide as a dinner plate, the moss between them peppered with tiny white flowers. Legend had it that fair folk used portals like these to travel the fairy paths. The thought of a second fair one appearing suddenly out of thin air made my insides clench tighter.
A horn sounded. All the hair stood up on my body at the high, quavering melody, and I’m not proud to say I ended up watering the honeysuckles right then and there.
Rook seized my arm, pulling me to my feet as I wrestled my clothes to rights.
“The Wild Hunt,” he said. He drew his sword in front of me and dragged me back through the bushes with the other arm across my chest as though he were holding me at ransom. “It shouldn’t have found us here, especially not so quickly. Something’s wrong.”
Complaining wasn’t in order at a moment like this, so I kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help clawing at his arm in protest. He was wearing his raven pin again, and it was at just the right height to stab me in the back of the head.
“Stop that. As soon as the hounds lay eyes on us they’ll go straight for you. Slaying them alone is child’s play, but protecting a mortal at the same time . . . you must do whatever I tell you, without hesitation.”
Throat dry, I nodded.
A spectral shape bounded toward us through the undergrowth, emitting a faint light of its own. This was no living hound, but a fairy beast. It took the guise of a white hunting dog with long legs and flowing fur, but I knew to look beyond the surface, and soon enough its glamour flickered, so quickly I was left with only the impression of something old beneath the illusion, something dead, dark and clotted with vines and dead leaves. Silently it launched itself over the honeysuckle, its soft liquid eyes fixed upon me. I caught a stench of dry rot before Rook’s sword darted out and reduced it to a clattering rain of twigs entangled with human bones. A quiet, musical sound rose from it when it died, almost like a woman’s sigh.
A chorus of howls swelled through the forest. I shuddered in Rook’s arms. The wintry lament was so lonely, so hauntingly sad I found it difficult to believe those voices belonged to beasts that wanted to kill me.
Listening to this, Rook made a contemptuous noise; I felt the vibration of it in his chest. He sheathed his sword and turned me around.
“There are over a dozen of the creatures, and they’ll all be upon us at once. We cannot fight. We have to run.” It was obvious the idea of fleeing rankled him.
“I can’t—”
“Yes, I know,” he said, casting me an unreadable glance. “Stand back.”
Wind crashed through the trees, sweeping a dizzying flurry of leaves through the forest that broke against Rook like a wave. Then he was gone, and a massive horse stamped and snorted in his place, watching me with unnervingly pale eyes. It was unmistakably him in the same way the raven had been. The fairy light now hovering above my shoulder revealed a hint of auburn in its otherwise black coat. Its mane and tail were wild, thick and tangled. It lowered itself to its knees beside me with an impatient toss of its head.
I was about to break yet another rule of life in Whimsy.
If an unfamiliar dog follows you at night, don’t stop to look at it. If you wake up to find a cat you don’t recognize sitting in your yard, watching your house, don’t open the door. And most of all, if you see a beautiful horse near a lake or the edge of the forest, never, ever try to ride it.
As Emma would say, Oh, hell.
I yanked my ring off and returned it to my pocket. As eager as I was to revenge myself upon Rook, forcing him back into his normal form just in time for the hounds to devour me seemed rather counterproductive. I paused just long enough for a fortifying breath, then climbed astride his broad back with my skirts bunched around my thighs and buried my fingers in his mane.
He lurched upright, powerful muscles bunching beneath his coat, and took off at a ground-swallowing canter. Even clinging to him as if my life depended on it—well, my life did depend on it—I barely stayed on: I lifted clean off his back every time his hooves struck the ground, then slammed down afterward with such painful, tailbone-jolting force I already felt my rear going numb. Whenever he dove sideways to avoid a tree, I slid precariously. He breathed between my legs like a forge’s bellows, and with each shift of his ropey muscles I was reminded that I sat atop a creature ten times or more my own size. The ground was very far away.
I didn’t like riding horses, I decided.
The howling followed us, growing ever closer. Soon I made out elegant white shapes darting through the forest on either side. The two nearest hounds sped up and angled inward to cut us off. A gap in the canopy admitted a shaft of moonlight, and when they bounded across it, their spectral fur gave way to the emaciated bark-skinned frames beneath. Thorny jaws gaped and empty pits stared where their eyes should have been.
Rook gave a brash snort and lunged forward, eating up the distance between us and the hounds. They turned, teeth flashing, far too late—he trampled them to kindling beneath his hooves.
I sensed a trace of smugness in his loping stride and the way he eyed the other hounds, now falling behind us, with his ears flattened to his skull, daring them to come closer. As they say, pride goeth before a fall. We entered a clearing and Rook lurched to a halt before he collided with the figure standing at the center of it, directly in our path.
I had never seen a fair one of the winter court. They didn’t visit Whimsy. Sometimes I wondered what they looked like without any use of human Craft, not even clothes. Now I had my answer.
The being was extraordinarily tall, taller than Rook, and wore no glamour. Its bone-white skin was stretched tight across a thin, angular face surrounded by a weightless corona of equally white hair. I formed only this vague impression of its features, for its eyes drew my attention and kept it. They were jade green in color, like polished stones, and at once inscrutable and magnetic, animated with the cruel, luminous interest of a house cat watching an injured mouse die. I knew at once that I looked upon a creature so distanced from anything human it wouldn’t be able to imitate our ways even if it wanted to.
From toe to collar it was clad in black bark armor that appeared to have simply grown over its body, whorled and ridged with age, leaving its head alone exposed. It made a stilted, courtly gesture, drawing attention to its yellowed, inches-long claws as it swept a hand before its chest. Rook jerked his nose down in what I supposed passed for a bad-tempered bow.
“Oh, Rook!” it exclaimed in a high voice not unlike the hounds’ unearthly howling. “I didn’t know you had company! This is interesting, isn’t it? What do you suppose we should do?”
Those terrible eyes fixed on me and the fair one smiled, but though its mouth moved, the rest of its face remained exactly the same.
Rook pawed at the ground, then reared up halfway, taking me by surprise. His head snapped back and I managed to keep my seat by wrapping my arms around his neck. His pulse pounded against my arms and sweat dampened his silky fur.
“Don’t worry, I shan’t do anything now.” My paralyzed brain noted belatedly that it—she—was female, or at least sounded that way. “The game’s changed, after all. We simply must come up with a new set of rules. It wouldn’t be sporting to fight to the death here in this clearing, not after you’ve been held up by a mortal. Hello there,” she added, leaning to the side for a better look at me. The gracious smile still hung in place unchanged, as forgotten as a hat tossed onto a coatrack.
“Good evening,” I returned, aware that aside from Rook, fine manners were my only protection.
“I am Hemlock, of the house of winter.” Quieter than an owl’s flight, hounds rushed inward from every corner of the clearing. They milled around her legs and pressed their narrow heads against her hands. “Since before the oldest tree in the forest put forth its first root, I have been master of the Wild Hunt.”
Was it just my imagination? Or did I really hear the hounds whispering among themselves—a gentle murmur that sounded like women speaking in hushed, anxious tones behind a closed door?