Dame of Owls (3 page)

             
On the way up, it got its teeth around her ankle. She ignored the sickening pop as her own momentum pulled her bones out of joint. Pain seared up her leg and burned in her chest as her cracked ribs ground against the unicorn’s shoulder blades. She pulled herself up along the unicorn’s neck and, steadying herself with her good leg, grabbed for its horn.

             
The horn glittered. It sang when she touched it, the high ringing of a bell. It cut so deeply into her hand that she felt it grinding against bone. Sid screamed through her teeth and cursed all the beautiful animals of the forest. The unicorn bucked, trying to throw her off, and nearly succeeded. If she let go of her knife to hold on, she was screwed.

             
The unicorn twisted its head and cantered in a mad circle, determined to bit her again. Her wound widened around the horn, dripping her sluggish blood down unicorn’s pristine white head. Stars popped in Sid’s vision.

             
Something popped hard into the unicorns jaw. A tree branch. And again, and again, until the unicorn was convinced to ignore the madwoman riding on its back and focus its anger on the madman, significantly less hardy, trying to beat it to death with a piece of wood.

             
Gathering all her strength, Sid swung her knife up and cracked it hard into the base of the unicorn’s horn. It took two more blows, a lot of blood, and Chris’s continued idiocy with the local flora before the horn snapped off in her hand. The unicorn staggered drunkenly before falling, which gave Sid just enough time to untangle herself from its mess and not get crushed.

             
It oozed opalescent blood onto the forest floor, and flowers grew and rotted in the puddle of its death. The air was filled with glittering motes. Sid sneezed, and every inch of her objected to the treatment.

             
“Holy shit,” said Chris, belatedly.

             
Sid pressed a hand against her chest, counting her ribs and taking a deep breath to make sure nothing untoward was digging into her lungs. “Don’t worry, it’s dead.”

             
“Duh, it’s dead.” He tossed his tree branch onto the quickly desiccating corpse. “You’re bleeding.”

             
“Oh.” Right, her hand, which still felt like her palm had been flayed open to the bone. Coincidentally, it had been. “I’ll heal.”

             
He tried to take her hand and get a better look at the aftermath, but she clenched her fist and shoved it her coat pocket despite the pounding pain. She could feel her blood leaking out in time to her pulse, and she needed a moment to pop her ankle back where it belonged. She needed Chris not to see any of it, because he’d shown he was smart enough to take advantage of a weakness.

             
“How quickly? And what was that?”

             
“A unicorn.”

             
“Why a unicorn? You – look. You’re standing all wonky, sit down. I can at least wrap it up or something.” He pulled off his over-shirt, presumably to tear it into strips and be a real action hero about the whole thing.

             
“Do I look like I know why a unicorn? And if you’d just stayed in the god damned car instead of wandering off into the woods to
find
the unicorns, I wouldn’t be ‘wonky’ in the first place! Put your damn shirt back on.”

             
“You know, considering you tried to drug me, the least you can do is let me make sure you’re not bleeding to death.”

             
Well, oops. “You weren’t supposed to notice that.” Sid pulled her hand out of her pocket, as if she did actually have to make amends to her kidnapping victim for trying to victimize him.

             
“I told you, I just got out of jail. You pick stuff up, like rampant paranoia.” He’d been able to rip off one of his sleeves, and he smoothed it into a passable bandage as Sid put her hand out and opened her fist. “Jesus.”

             
“You’re telling me.” It was, at least, a relief to be able to unclench her teeth, to stop pretending that she wasn’t in a slow-burn of agony. “And I’m not going to bleed to death. If it had gored me, yes, but no one ever bled to death out of their hand.”

             
“Wanna take a bet on that one?”

             
Chris was less than expert, but passably gentle, as he wound the makeshift bandage and tied it off. The pressure felt good, maybe just because her brain approved of something, anything being done about her muscles saying hello to the fresh spring air.

             
Sid eyed Chris up and down, decided he probably wasn’t going to think any less of her at this point, and shifted her weight to pop her ankle back into joint. She screamed, and must have blacked out a little. By the time her vision cleared, Chris had a hand on her shoulder. She gave herself one more second of him supporting her weight, then shook him off.

             
“We can’t stay here. The knight and the unicorn found us, so there’s some way they’re keeping track of you. I’m not good enough with magic to tell you what the hell that might be, so our only option is to keep moving.”

             
“You never actually told me where we’re going.”

             
She was about to tell him where he could take shared information and shove it, but the stubborn line of his mouth promised her she wouldn’t get any sleep if she didn’t start making compromises.

             
“I’ll tell you everything I know, when we’re in a place I feel safe settling into. But right now, I need you to move before something bigger and less sparkly comes along.”

             
Chris took a minute to think, but eventually he nodded. Sid led the way deeper into the forest, feeling for a safe place in the Thoroughfare.

---

              “You’re looking for something.”

             
Sid tested her weight on her ankle before jogging up the next crumbling hill. “Yes.”

             
Chris had been suspiciously well behaved for the last hour or so, no further escape attempts. Sid supposed facing down a unicorn was enough to subdue anybody, but she was still prepared to tackle him if necessary. It might not even hurt her ribs too much.

             
Still, he’d kept up competently and without complaint, and this was the first question he hadn’t been able to keep a lid on. Maybe she owed him something before his life got any more chaotic.

             
“The world of humans and the world of the fae are close, but not neighbors. It isn’t as easy as popping through a doorway,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “There’s a land between them, what we call the Thoroughfare. It’s in constant flux, but some places are more…reliable.”

             
“Faster?” Chris asked.

             
“And safer. I was taking us to the nearest mapped point when you decided to play Jean Valjean.”

             
Before the Lily Knight got the drop on me, she didn’t add. She needed to maintain some air of competence and authority.

             
“At the time, you were the most disturbing option,” said Chris.

             
“I’m flattered that’s changed. In any case, I think we have at least enough leeway not to charge into the Thoroughfare willy-nilly.”

             
Chris stopped short. Sid turned to see him gesturing broadly at the forest around them.

             
“All this,” he said. “Is the Thoroughfare like this? Or is there a Motel 6 we can stop at? Do you have food? Water? A tent?”

             
Somewhere in the wake of watching him brutalize a unicorn, Sid must have forgotten just how mortal Chris was. His questions surprised her.

             
“Don’t eat anything in the Thoroughfare. Don’t drink anything. Your mind will hunger and thirst, but your body won’t need them. We’ll sleep when, where, and if we can.”

             
“If,” Chris echoed darkly, but followed when she turned and walked on.

             
It was nearing sunrise before Sid was pleased with any of what she felt when she turned her mind towards home. The Thoroughfare was still broader here than she liked, but thin enough that they might even find a waypoint. This was good Spring territory, and there wasn’t enough time to hope for anything better. At least she could breathe easily again.

             
She could see that Chris was tired by the smudges under his eyes and the tight lines around his mouth, but he still had yet to flag or complain. Unwinding her makeshift bandage and discarding it among the bracken, Sid reached out and took Chris’s hand. It was very warm, and dwarfed hers as he clasped her palm.

             
“Keep hold of me,” she told him.

             
Chris nodded, and she wondered if he trusted her or was simply plotting again. She hoped not; she was on the edge of exhaustion herself.

             
With her free hand, Sid reached up and pulled a necklace out from underneath her shirt. The Owl was a simple charm made of silver, with chips of obsidian for its eyes. A plain enough declaration of her house, suitable for a knight in the field.

             
“By the authority of the lady of my house, Ruby of the House of Owls, I seek passage home.”

             
No one knew what pact the Queens had forged with the Thoroughfare’s keepers, but it had held for eons. Sid stepped forward, pulling Chris with her, and the world melted away.

              Chris suffered a moment of gut-wrenching nausea, compounded by the feeling that his feet were treading on something not-quite-solid, before Sid tugged him back into the forest. Or, really,
a
forest. It was superficially alike to the one they’d left behind. There were trees. There was Sid, her fingers like ice in his hand.

             
There were no crickets. No owls. No breeze. Distilled silence, so thick it might have been dripping off the tree branches.

             
There was, at least, a moon, and moonlight casting silver highlights onto Sid’s black curls. Chris had believed her about the guy she’d shot, about the unicorn, about this place. He had not, until just now, really believed what she had to say about herself.

             
From the moment she’d walked into the bookstore she’d seemed so solid. Briefly kind of a dork, but the sort of woman who could look at a criminal record and not run screaming into the night. Chris didn’t pretend to be any kind of reformed bad boy. He’d never set out to be bad in the first place. Things had just sort of fallen into his lap, and without ambition or focus he’d rolled with the punches and the bad ideas. He could explain that, given a few minutes over coffee.

             
Sid looked like she had enough focus for a whole platoon. She was short, but she’d met his eyes without hesitating. And if her full lips and soft face hadn’t been enough to convince him to roll with her awful flirting, her pale green eyes would have done it. And her fine-boned hands, and her strength. Even in her jeans and hoodie she looked like a Fury, a dark Valkyrie. Fae.

             
Well.

             
She let go of Chris’s hand, and warmth started seeping back into his palm. She didn’t leave any blood behind.

             
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

             
She held up her hand to show him shiny, freshly scarred skin. “I can’t say I’m happy, but I’m whole. Now remember: no eating, no drinking. No screaming, it just attracts attention. Come on.”

             
As they walked, Chris could just barely see movement out of the corner of his eye. Something almost-human, but. Gray? Dark, somehow, and blurred. He recalled Sid’s instructions not to scream.

             
“What lives here?” He asked, hardly above a whisper.

             
“We call them the Spring and Autumn Courts. This is Spring’s land. They favor the Winter Court, stories say they gave us our first queen. We probably won’t run into trouble here.”

             
“Probably isn’t the most reassuring word.”

             
“The Spring Court isn’t reassuring.” Sid paused to take a deep breath. “These Courts are to fae as fae are to humans. The oldest ones can look like we do if they choose to, but the appearance is superficial. And they don’t often choose to be comforting.”

             
A childhood memory echoed distantly: the first time Chris had heard all about curiosity and what it did to cats. Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t ask. It had been his father’s golden rule.

             
“What do they look like?” he asked anyway, because screw that.

             
Sid shrugged. “Things. It’s not important, we aren’t about to stop to ask them for directions or pleasant conversation.”

             
“Do they converse?”

             
“I assume so. I’ve never tried it.”

             
She’d stopped walking and was looking over her shoulder at him with an odd, rueful expression. He didn’t know what to make of it, but not knowing what women thought of him was a familiar mystery. He’d take that over the question of just what lurked behind the silvery trees.

---

              More than a few times during their long hike, Chris thought about panicking. He’d been thinking about throwing an absolute temper tantrum ever since the not-dead-enough guy got shot in his store. But life had gone a long way in grinding panic out of him.

             
He should have panicked at 16, when his father finally did as he’d always threatened to and didn’t come home ever again. Should have panicked when he dropped out of college. Should have panicked when he had to chase off Mary’s boyfriend with a bat, when James had come home with those drugs, when the police had arrested them all, when the judge had given him a reduced sentence for being “stupid, but not malicious.”

             
Following Sid, the iron purpose in her stride, was easier than falling down and feeling sorry for himself. She shot people, and he certainly knew how far away from that he needed to stay, but where was he going to go now? What was he supposed to do?

             
You’re following your next bad idea,
the best and least listened to part of his brain warned.
This is your newest lost cause.

             
“Would you really have gone out with me?” he asked, mostly to shut his brain up.

             
“Well,” said Sid, “you’re good looking enough, but the queen has claim.”

             
“Claim? You mean dibs?”

             
Chris couldn’t see her eyeroll, but it was heavily implied in her tone. “Why else do you think we kidnap mortals? I can only imagine that the Summer Court found out and decided you were a good excuse for a petty squabble.”

             
“What if I don’t want anyone to have dibs?”

             
“The queen is beautiful, intelligent, and well spoken. You shouldn’t have any problems.”

             
“That wasn’t really my point.”

             
“It doesn’t have to be.”

             
“How many mortals have you abducted, exactly?”

             
Sid’s shoulders slumped for just a second, some scarce moment of exhaustion that she took hold of and erased.

             
“You’re the sixth, but I’m not exactly the finest knight for the job. I know it sounds, well, it sounds like what it is, but I’m a knight sworn in service to the royal house. I do as I’m ordered. Besides, most of you end up dumped right back where we found you when the queen grows tired of mortal company.”

             
Deciding on discretion as the better part of valor, Chris didn’t ask about ‘most of.’ Too late now to run into the forest full of ill-defined creatures with a dubious allegiance. Sid was, at least, a lady in possession of a great big knife.

             
“Can we rest awhile?” he asked. “Some of us are bookstore clerks.”

             
That earned him a chuckle, but Sid slowed down to examine the woods around them. Beckoning Chris to follow, she took off into the thicker trees. She didn’t stop until she found where one had fallen to create a small bit of natural shelter.

             
“Remember, no food or water, but I should be able to start a fire, and you can get some sleep.”

---

              The very idea of sleep seemed absurd to Chris, but with the fire’s warmth and his jacket bundled beneath his head he managed it. His dreams were uneasy and disjointed, rampant with feelings of being watched and bitter cold.

             
He came awake with a jolt when Sid shook his shoulder. She had her other hand to her lips, a finger demanding silence. Chris wisely didn’t speak, but sat up slowly. Sid pointed across the fire, and he looked without thinking.

             
If something had played telephone with a description of a human being, they might have come out the other side with the being that perched by their fire. It had a head, and the proper number of limbs, and something resembling a face, but everything was warped and stretched like taffy. Chris got the absurd impression that it wanted to be polite and nonthreatening, but nobody had ever told it how many joints human arms were supposed to have.

             
“Spring Court,” Sid whispered. “I don’t know what it wants.”

             
“Dame of Owls,” said the thing with a voice that issued from a hundred impossible mouths. “Knight of Cats. Guide and guardian, sword and shield.”

             
It stretched long, long arms across the fire. Sid reached back, and Chris followed suit without hesitation. The creature wrapped spidery fingers around their wrists, its grasp at once warm and cold.

             
“There is a choice to be made,” it said, and disappeared.

             
Gone. Simply and completely gone, as if it had never been. Sid stared at the spot where it had sat, and Chris couldn’t hear her breathing.

             
“I thought you said they didn’t talk much,” he said.

             
“They don’t, traditionally. That was. Unexpected. You should try to get some more sleep.”

             
But neither of them moved, certainly not to close their eyes.

             
“Is that the first one you’ve ever seen?” he asked.

             
She shook her head. “No. Only this close. And only.” She prodded at her wrist. "I can say that’s the first time one has ever tried to shake hands with me.”

             
“Why did you?”

             
“Why did I what?”

             
“Shake hands with it. Or whatever.”

             
“Well.” Sid frowned. “It seemed polite. I’m not really permitted to make a bad impression. Why did you?”

             
Why did he? Other than his urge to follow her lead, to let her take control in a situation literally beyond his mortal ken. He’d sort of been hoping that she knew what she was doing.

             
“I suppose I’m stupid, pretty much.”

             
“Are you?” she asked, and he couldn’t figure out why she sounded dubious.

             
“More often than I’m not.”

             
Ask anybody. Ask the judge, ask the police, ask his friends, his employers, his professors. ‘Good enough at book work, but not an ounce of common sense.’ God, he was never going to get another job.

---

              Chris had a feeling that time ran a bit wonky in the Thoroughfare. Days seemed to stretch on for impossible hours of magnificent sunlight, or else blinked by in scant hours. He gave up trying to keep track, and Sid didn’t have anything to say about it. She just kept on moving forward through the trees as if drawn by an invisible rope.

             
She had told the truth about food. He needed sleep, though he couldn’t guess exactly how much, and everything else fell by the wayside. That just left him bored, and Sid was sunk deep in her own thoughts.

             
But if she wanted to run around abducting people, she could deal with him being a little obnoxious.

             
“What’s life in fairy land like?”

             
For a long minute, he didn’t think she’d answer. Sometimes she just didn’t.

             
“More like human life than you might expect. Fewer children. But at the end of the day it’s all food and jobs and drama.”

             
“With knights.”

             
“If you think war is embedded in human nature, imagine what we do with longevity and a head start.”

             
Chris knew fighting. He’d known fists and temper and teeth for too long, and he knew he walked like a man expecting it. Sid walked like violence. If Chris was willing to end fights, then Sid was happy to start them.

             
“Do you enjoy it?” he asked.

             
“No one could force me to stay if I didn’t.”

             
“So you’re a dame, then? Like the creepy guy said?”

             
“Dame Obsidian of the House of Owls, if he wanted to be absolutely correct about it.” She didn’t sound too offended. “But yes, I am the only Dame of Owls at present.”

             
“Am I the Knight of Cats, then?”

             
Sid froze, and when Chris walked on past her she grabbed his arm. With considerable strength she pulled him near her, until he was looking down into clear green eyes. His nose was filled with the scents of fresh snow and copper.

             
“Do not make that insinuation in my Court. Knights are an old order, and full of pride. For many, a mortal speaking those words would be a call to violence.”

             
“But it said – ”