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Rhian had seemed so week and unstable as she staggered and stumbled when Alwyn saved her that Emrys thought the chase would end quickly, far from the Chalon forest, and yet she kept running. Faster and faster. Rather than gaining on her, they fell behind.
Emrys cursed himself and Alwyn for the stupidity of it all but especially Rhian for being out on the moors near naked, vulnerable enough to be attacked by some mad beast.
Something from the forest. That terrible face.
His mother’s face once more rattled through his skull. Her face grafted into that monster his father killed.
Faster and faster, up hill and down, the sisters chased the girl and Alwyn chased all of them and Emrys, reluctant and frustrated, followed Alwyn. The night became oppressive as they ran and the dark trees of Chalon grew closer. His breathing still clear and full, the cool bite of the air kept him from wearing out, but Emrys only wanted to abandon this foolish quest, these strange violent girls.
“Al!” Emrys called to his cousin and the girl ran straight past the wall of trees marking the edge of the forest and the edge of human lands. “Stop! Al, you can’t!”
But Alwyn didn’t slow down, though the sisters did. They shouted after their sister but they also slowed and stopped a few paces from the trees only to have Alwyn sprint past them, hopping over a fallen limb as he crossed into the forest and disappeared from view. Swallowed by the darkness, the tightly packed trees.
Emrys cursed and slowed, stopping a few feet from the three sisters, their hoods now fallen back from their heads. Panting and arguing amongst themselves, they glared at Emrys when he approached. Three women, all nearly as tall as him. The light of the moons reflected pale off their dark skin. Their red hair, braided tight to their scalps, gave Emrys a martial impression though he could not say why. The braids trailed off the back of their heads like snakes, swinging with their movements.
“This,” the middle of the three said, “is all your fault.” She raised her sword at Emrys and it felt familiar, already.
The one to the right tugged on her arm, pulling the sword from Emrys’ face. “We need to go after her.”
“Been over this.” The one to the left snorted. “She’s dead, cousin. No one comes out of Chalon.”
The middle one pointed her sword at her cousin. “Then go back, Cerys.”
Despite the sword pointed at her throat, Cerys seemed supremely put out by all this. “Your mother will—”
“Do not,” the middle one hissed.
Cerys laughed then. There in the darkness, Chalon looming over them, she laughed.
Emrys watched her. A woman. Tall and powerful and unafraid. Her wide shoulders and thick legs marked her as a warrior and her indifference to the sword, to the forest, spoke of either bravery or stupidity. Or, perhaps, heresy.
Emrys swallowed. Even without his cloak, warmth radiated through him. She was a fire burning bright and hot in the night and Emrys stood transfixed.
“What you want?” Cerys cocked her head and stared hard at Emrys, past her cousin.
The night collapsed in on him. Her attention strangled his thoughts and then his head emptied when the other two turned on him. His gaze darted from one face to the other. All of them awash in moonlight. The moons cast him in silhouette, or so he hoped. He cleared his throat. “They will die in there. You’re right. You sister and—”
“Cousin,” Cerys said.
“—my cousin. The monsters are real. Saw one just tonight.”
“And yet you live,” the sworded one said over her shoulder. “Come on, Rhosyn.” She lowered her sword from her cousin and walked towards the forest. Without acknowledging either Cerys or Emrys, Rhosyn walked after her sister and into the trees.
“Idiots,” Cerys said as she watched them disappear.
She was the most beautiful woman Emrys had ever seen. Seeing her in profile, the moonlight made her skin appear soft and deep. The impression of staring into a still pond. The water dark and impenetrable. Perhaps only a few feet deep but perhaps deep enough to drown in. She turned back to him and Emrys fell into her eyes. Large and black, no distinction between her iris and pupil, as if it was one great hole in her eye begging him to fall inside.
Her forehead knit as she eyed him, evaluating. “Your cousin’s much bigger.”
Emrys smiled. “He’s the muscle.”
“You the brain?”
Emrys shrugged. “Not me running in there.”
She turned back to the forest, running a hand over her forearm. “Get chills even standing here.”
“Me too.”
“I love my cousins,” Celys said.
Emrys swallowed, his hair all standing on edge. Even the hair on his head felt alight. Like a thousand ants crawled over his skull, a swarm of bees roiling in his chest. “I’ve no weapon.”
Celys didn’t turn to him. “You can stay.”
“I’m all right with a bow.”
Celys only stared at the forest for a moment. Then she unlooped the bow from around her chest. The quiver followed. And she handed both to Emrys, turning back to him. “Don’t miss.”
Emrys took them. “We might all die.”
Cerys smiled. “Aye, well.”
Together, the two of them walked to the edge of the forest. Slow. The weight of their entire lives tethered them back to the moors, to the lands of humanity, and each step became tremendous in the time it took to lift a foot, swing it forward, and plant it for the next step. The two of them resisting with all of their might while still moving forward.
Emrys smiled and then laughed.
Cerys raised an eyebrow at him. “Scared?”
“Terrified.” Laughter, uncontrollable and irrepressible, burst forth from him. He wiped at the tears and kept walking, kept laughing.
Then a strong callused hand took his and the laughter died away. He stared down at the black hand covering his own. He raised his eyes to hers and felt a child, a fool, so bewildered by every movement, every experience here at the edge of the world. His thoughts sludged and smeared.
“If we die,” but instead of finishing her thought, Cerys pulled him into her arms, leaned him backwards, and kissed him.
In her arms, leaned so far back that he’d fall without her holding him, the solidity of the earth beneath his feet melted away. Her large, soft lips on his, her tongue darting into his mouth. He responded, a fire bursting forth within him. Grabbing her, pulling her kiss deeper into him, and then she pulled him back to his feet and ended the kiss, leaving him panting, burning, dazed.
“Come on,” she said.
“I’m Emrys,” he said, uselessly.
She smiled though. “You’re a fool, Emrys.”
“You’re beautiful.” He hadn’t meant to say it but he lost control of himself there at the edge of the world. There at the boundary between life and death. For he knew he would die. Felt it like a cold splash of water on his lower back, like a stone dropped in a well that never met the water beneath, like a boy playacting manhood trying to impress a woman on the night of his death.
Her smile stretched wider and she laughed. Deep and rich. Reminding Emrys of the low hum of his childhood. A memory lost, now found, emerging from the throat of this strange, beautiful woman.
And she took his hand once more and the two of them stepped as one into the Chalon Forest.
The sensation of falling into water, dunking his head through the surface. The air, cloying and thick, enveloped him. Coating him in a layer of viscous saliva that he tried to wipe off, taking his hand back from Cerys, but there was nothing.
“Disgusting.” Her words muffled as if Emrys had plunged into water. Cerys stared at the nothing covering her hands and arms, yet she wiped at them too. “Feels foul.”
“Sweet.” His own voice sounded far away, muffled.
She swallowed. “Aye.” Less than pleased by this, she spat. Not to ward off evil but to rid the sickly-sweet taste of the air from her mouth and lungs.
Surrounded by trees, some thick as he was tall, Emrys sucked in shallow breaths. Trapped. Panic rose in him with icy claws raking the insides of his chest, his bowels. The trees closed in, crowding him out, rejecting him, propelling him back from the forest.
It thrummed in his chest like words spoken but felt rather than heard:
there is no home for you here.
Emrys shook his head and picked at his ear, as if that would return life to normal. He’d been inside Chalon before, though never at night, never alone. Any venture beyond the trees held a level of danger and fear, but never like this. “Ever been in here before?”
“Matauc land.”
“No man’s land, this.” Emrys said.
“Aye.”
“This is wrong though. Been in here before and it’s never like this.” He gestured to nothing, to everything. “Something different about—”
“Deviltry.” Cerys stepped past him, unsheathing her sword. “We’ll find them and then get out. Sooner done, sooner back.”
Emrys gripped the bow she gave him and they walked deeper into the forest. No path. Rather, they walked continually around trees, through brush and bramble.
No calls of insects or birds, no rustling of rabbits or foxes. Only their breathing, the crunch of twigs and dry leaves.
“This is a cursed place.” Cerys whispered and Emrys understood.
Felt it too. That fear. The desire to be gone before anything took notice of them.
Emrys said, “Where you think they’re at?”
“Don’t hear nothin.”
And so they walked around trees, under boughs, pushing through tangled brush and webs wide as a cart, thick as silk, but parting easily against Cerys’ blade. They cast their gaze in all directions in hope of finding something or someone or at least some trace of where their cousins had gone.
“You’re of Matauc,” Cerys said. Not a question.
“No,” Emrys said. “Alwyn, though.”
Cerys snorted. “You’ve the look.”
“Get it from my father.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And you?”
Cerys said, “Hear that?”
Emrys stopped and stood as still as possible. Taking a deep breath, he tried to hear beyond his racing heart. But there was nothing. No calling out or screams.
Cerys walked past him and he followed until they reached a small stream, the water flowing slow. Narrow enough Emrys could step over without even acknowledging its existence.
She pointed to the otherside of the stream, to the muddy bank, to the imprint of two heavy boots and one barefoot.
Emrys went to step over the stream but Cerys caught his arm and yanked him back. Dropping her sword point down into the earth where it slid in noiselessly, she clapped her hand over his mouth and held him tight.
“Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”
Kill me, he thought. Let me die here in your arms. Relief flowed through him and his heart began dissolving, letting loose of so much. All the pain and frustration. Letting go of Emrys mip Neb and Emrys mip Owain. Taking a slow breath, he closed his eyes and waited for her to slit his throat and cover herself with his warm blood.
But she whispered so quietly into his ear that he felt the vibrations of sound more than heard the words. “There it is.”
Emrys opened his eyes and saw the enormous footprint across the stream. Big as his chest with toes long as his hand. A great monster, larger than anything he’d ever seen. He cast his eyes upward, trying to understand how something so large could live in these tight confines.
But then he saw what she wanted him to see.
A dozen paces away, a procession of fox demons standing on their hind legs. Tall as he was, they wore robes of white like druids. Leading the procession was a fox wearing the antlers of an elk. A censor billowing incense as it swung from the fox’s hands. Behind it in double file came six more foxes carrying large candles on the ends of poles that the foxes held in both hands.
Hands. Emrys scowled, squinted, trying to make sense of what he watched.
These next six foxes wore no antlers but instead masks of black. Behind them came more foxes dressed in reds and yellows and oranges, all stitched together like patchwork. Ignorant as he was, Emrys understood they represented a flame.
It was then that they began singing. A melody like a sinking ship, like a hawk sailing carelessly through the air, like a swan dying on the surface of a lake. The song filled Emrys with a calming hope, a delightful pull from deep within him, a desire and need to join them, though he could never understand the words. And yet it was oddly human. Or at least the voices reminded him of human voices. And these voices called to him, invited him to join them, and if not for Cerys’ hand clapped over his mouth, Emrys knew he’d be singing with them, joining their procession.
And then there they were. Alwyn and the two armed sisters dancing in the procession, flinging pink petals into the air. Their smiles tight and grotesque beneath eyes wide with terror.
Behind them came more antlered foxes, all dressed in black, their faces smeared with ash to give them terrifying expressions. The first two carried torches like those earlier foxes, but the following four held someone high in the air over their heads.
Rhian.
She didn’t struggle but hung limp as if asleep between their hands.
Their hands. Their hands held her taut. Each fox holding a different limb. And then the end of the procession: a fox draped in silver carried on a throne of human skulls.