A long journey still lay ahead, but he would not face it alone.
The terrain on the eastern side of the Atlantic Bridge was rough and inhospitable, as though once upon a time the land had been sown with salt like the ruins of ancient Carthage. Nothing grew there save low, twisted shrubs and scrub grass that looked to Oliver more like steel wool than something alive.
Ahren Konigen did not accompany the fugitives, but rather remained behind upon the island that had been the domain of the demon of the cherry tree. The apple-tree man— whom Oliver had learned actually was referred to, even in myth, as the Appletree Man— remained with Konigen. Nothing was said, but Oliver understood that they would travel back to their own lands in some way other than traversing this dead landscape, working their way along underground from root to root, perhaps.
Only the Kornwolf and the Kornböcke, as he learned they were called, traveled with them on the Truce Road through that rough terrain. The road itself was little different on this side of the Atlantic Bridge, though it was rutted in places from many long years’ passage of cart wheels. The wolf trotted far ahead, sniffing the road and pausing at the crest of each hill to peruse the horizon, seemingly on guard against the return of the soldiers who had passed earlier. The stag followed behind, aloof as ever, and if Oliver paused to glance its way, the animal would halt and raise its rack of antlers, staring coldly at him until he started onward once more. It was unsettling, yet he never felt threatened by these strange creatures.
They had saved his life, after all. He had no idea why, but they had put themselves in dire peril on his behalf. The thought was not as comforting as he would have expected, for it reminded him of the weight of the threat against him and his companions.
After the initial relief of finding that Frost and Kitsune had both survived, Oliver had asked a number of questions, learning the names of the Harvest gods that had intervened on their behalf and that they were only a few among a seemingly infinite number of such deities.
Now, with the Atlantic Bridge miles behind them and the day growing warmer with the persistence of the sun, it was Kitsune who brought his inquiries to a halt. She threw back the hood of her fur cloak and glanced at Frost, her jade eyes strangely wide.
“Remarkable as it seems, there is a question Oliver has not asked,” she said, more than a hint of exotic accent in her voice that he had not heard before. “Is our destination much farther?”
The winter man frowned with concern, head tilting, icy hair clinking as he regarded her. “I’d thought you were healing?”
Oliver saw now how pale Kitsune seemed. Her hands were at her sides but they seemed to waver as though she was afraid at any moment she might lose her balance, there on the road.
“Healing, yes. But not healed. I need only a little time to rest and something to eat to restore myself.” Kitsune glanced away as she uttered this admission.
Frost scanned the land around them, looked at the Kornwolf and then back at the stag, who had stopped but took no notice of them, like some subway commuter doing his best not to recognize the presence of anyone else on the train. Oliver decided that he did not like the Kornböcke. Not even the littlest bit. Regardless of what it and the others had done, he could not help feeling that the stag thought them beneath its own station.
“At our current pace it will be another hour, at least, before we enter the domain of Ahren Konigen.”
A pained look rippled across Kitsune’s face.
Oliver scratched the back of his head, unsure if the thought that rose in his mind would be welcome. But the way Kitsune trembled, he could not remain silent.
“I could carry you.”
All trace of mischief was gone from her. Kitsune smiled softly at him but shook her head. “You are weakened yourself, Oliver, and did you not hear Frost? It’s an hour’s walk.”
He shrugged lightly and gestured to her. “Well, I couldn’t carry you like this. But . . . as a fox . . .”
The wind tousled his hair and blew up dirt from the road. Kitsune stared at him and he felt himself hushed by her beauty, by the clash of delicacy and viciousness in her. Those jade eyes so often seemed to be laughing, but now there was only tenderness there.
“I . . . it’s just that Frost is ice, and if he carried you—”
“I could carry you both in a storm,” said the winter man, long, sharp fingers waving toward the sky, “but I am also weakened. I don’t know how far we would get.”
“We dare not risk it,” Kitsune rasped, her voice like a little growl in her throat, without taking her eyes away from Oliver. “But if you are truly willing . . .”
Her words trailed off but the inquiry remained in her eyes.
Oliver nodded. “Of course. We all need to rest, somewhere safe. I wasn’t sure if the suggestion would offend you.”
She arched an eyebrow but without any trace of a smile, so that the expression was profoundly enigmatic. Just as Oliver was trying to puzzle it out, Kitsune reached up and raised her hood. The fur rippled across her back and along her arms and then she diminished, transforming from woman to fox in that strangely fluid metamorphosis that Oliver knew would never cease to astonish him.
He set down the shotgun case— which he had retrieved, along with its ammunition, before they left Aerico’s grove— then took off his parka and tied it around his waist as tightly as he could. Despite the sun, the breeze was cool, but the effort of their journey would warm him. With the shotgun case slung across his back once more he turned to Frost and Kitsune again.
Ahead of them, on a rise in the Truce Road, the Kornwolf howled low. Oliver frowned and glanced at the Harvest god, but the wolf did not seem alarmed, only impatient.
The fox walked to him. An image flashed through Oliver’s mind of her trapped in that cherry tree, and the way its branches had captured and violated her. He shuddered as he crouched to pick her up. In his arms, the fox made to climb up one shoulder and he stood steadily, wondering what Kitsune had in mind. In a moment she had wrapped herself around the back of his neck like some kind of living stole. Her body was hot and her fur soft against his skin. The extra weight was not going to make the walk any easier, but he felt sure he could handle it.
“Are you sure about this?” Frost asked, a mist rising from his blue-white eyes.
“I can manage,” Oliver replied.
The winter man turned. “Then let’s be off. I don’t want to be on the road longer than we have to. After we make it to the Harvest Fields, we’d be better off from now on traveling at night.”
Before Oliver could reply, he was startled by the presence of the stag close behind him. It was so close he could smell its breath, damp and earthy like home-brewed beer.
“Move along,” the Kornböcke ordered.
Oliver frowned. He wanted to tell the otherwise silent deity to go fuck himself, but he had a feeling that might undermine the help they were receiving from the gods of the Harvest. Even so—
“We’re doing our best,” Oliver told him.
The stag only glanced around pointedly to remind him that they were still in danger. Oliver got the message but decided that if the stag thought no words were necessary, that was a policy he would also pursue. Without another glance at the creature he started off. At first Kitsune was restless on his shoulders and he could feel her heart beating too fast against the back of his neck. But then she seemed to settle down and lay her head upon her paws on his right shoulder, copper fur tickling his cheek.
Some time later— perhaps Frost’s predicted hour, though Oliver thought it longer— they came over a rise and a valley lay before them so green and lush that Oliver could only think of the Garden of Eden. He thought that Kitsune might have fallen asleep on his shoulders and he held her fore and rear paws gently just in case she might be jostled from her perch. When he spoke to the winter man, who strode beside him with that gait that often seemed like a flamingo across the surface of a lake, he did so in a voice just above a whisper.
“I don’t understand. All of the land we just crossed, from the river to this valley . . . how can it be so barren and this so fertile?”
“There was a war there, once, before the Truce,” the winter man said, as the two of them hurried to catch up with the Kornwolf, who had sped up once they came in sight of the Harvest Fields. “The lands of the Harvest gods were untouched because they were neutral. No soldier was welcome there.”
Oliver nodded. They had always been rebellious and independent, these things of nature. “That’s good to know.”
As exhausted as he was, Oliver felt his spirits lifted and some of his strength returned as they entered the valley. There were groves of trees in spots but most of what he saw, extending out before him all the way to the crest of the farthest hill, were crops. Corn and wheat and cabbage and squash all grew there, regardless of the season in which they were meant to peak. When they passed a pumpkin patch, Oliver actually laughed softly to himself. For some reason, that sound seemed to be the one to wake Kitsune, and soon she tensed to leap down to the road. She did not resume her human shape immediately, but kept pace beside him on silent paws.
The wolf and the stag disappeared into a vast cornfield and Oliver saw the stalks rippling as they passed.
Just as he began to wonder where they would find Ahren Konigen, three figures moved from the crops and out onto the road ahead of them. They were women, petite and lovely, with bronze skin and black hair tied in braids. They were naked save for leaves that at first Oliver assumed had been woven into some covering. But upon closer inspection, he realized that the leaves were growing from their flesh.
As Oliver paused, fascinated by these new Harvest creatures, Kitsune moved past him. Between one step and the next she stood up from the four legs of a fox, copper fur like a banner unfurling in the breeze as it became a hooded cloak once more. She touched Frost on the shoulder and he paused, allowing her to take the lead. Kitsune favored Oliver with a momentary glance before turning her attention fully to these ambassadors— for that was what they seemed, a kind of greeting party sent out of the fields to meet them.
The three women stood waiting as Kitsune approached with a respectful air about her. She put her hands together and bowed her head a moment, speaking in a low voice in what Oliver believed was Japanese. He was only vaguely familiar with the language through some of the law firm’s clients, and the only words he knew translated into either basic greetings or colorful profanity. The three women were nearly indistinguishable from one another but the one in the center seemed by virtue of body language alone to be the leader amongst them. The others clearly deferred to her and it was she who replied to Kitsune, briefly and softly, after which all three of them inclined their heads in one shared motion.
Yet the language the women spoke was not Japanese. It was not any language he had ever heard.
Kitsune returned the respectful bow and backed up two steps before turning away from them and striding toward Frost. The winter man had borne witness to this exchange without word or gesture. Now he turned and beckoned for Oliver to join them. For his part, Oliver had been lulled by curiosity into the role of observer and was almost startled to be drawn back into that of participant.
“They are Deohako,” Kitsune told her companions, “guardian spirits of the Harvest in the legends of the Iroquois people.”
“But you spoke to them in Japanese,” Oliver said.
Her jade eyes sparkled. “True. There is an aspect of their legend in Japanese stories. They understood well enough.” To the winter man, she added, “We are to follow them.”
Frost nodded and Kitsune turned to face the Deohako, who did not hesitate but immediately started into the tall rows of corn. Momentarily that strange parade was making its way along a path that arranged itself before them— crops moving aside to let them pass— and then closed up behind as though to conceal their passage.
Oliver was glad to know their trail would not be visible from the road but he was deeply unsettled by the overall effect, the knowledge that there would be no easy departure from the fields. The feeling persisted as they were swallowed deeper and deeper by the crops until they came to a clearing where the rich brown earth yielded to the heavy print of his boot but where not so much as a sprig or blade of grass was rooted in the soil.
A moment later, they began to grow, just as they had on the island in the midst of the river where the cherry tree demon had nearly killed Oliver and his companions. There were perhaps a dozen of them, some effigies of animals like the Kornwolf and the officious stag, others the shape of humans, but still others little more than oddly shaped stalks of corn, contorted trees, and even a massive squash plant whose growths bore slits that might have been eyes and mouth.
The Appletree Man and Ahren Konigen were the last to arrive. The others shifted through the rich soil to yield to them. The afternoon light was growing long, throwing distorted shadows across the branches and stalks of the Harvest gods, and in that slant of light the Appletree Man barely seemed to have a face at all. When the tree stopped moving save for the breeze in its branches, it seemed to have been there forever. The others might have deferred to both of those deities, but it was Konigen to whom they all looked now. Konigen who spoke.
