#sharp-tongued witch

Before breaching the final, invisible boundary that shielded their home from the outside world, Moira pulled her gelding to a sharp, sudden halt.

"Wait," she breathed, her hand reaching out to catch the sleeve of Isolde's wool coat. Her almond-brown eyes were dead serious beneath her hood. "We clean the mud from our faces, and we keep our mouths shut. Not a word to the younger ones. Not yet."

Isolde reined in her mare with a sharp yank, her dark locks whipped across her cheeks. "They saw us, Moira. The King's vanguard saw exactly what we can do. You think hiding it from the girls is going to change that?"

“For all we know, they’re mounting their steeds and lighting their torches as we speak.” Deirdre added.

"I think panic will kill us faster than steel," Moira countered, her voice tight but fiercely controlled. She looked at Sorcha, then back to Isolde. "We talk to Elspeth first. Let her decide how we proceed."

Isolde looked down at her hands, still vibrating with the residual, violent pull of the earth magic she had channeled to break the monster's jaw. She could still taste the bitter, toxic sting of the creature's purple sap on the wind. Slowly, she nodded, pulling her hood down just enough to reveal her face. "Clean the soot from your clothes. We don't want to leave any trace of the dragon."

They eased their mounts into a gentle, deceptive trot, pushing through the final, interlocking briar-thickets that guarded the valley.

The hidden sanctuary of the crab apple grove opened up before them, instantly wrapping them in the quiet, domestic rhythm of a life hard-won from the ashes of the old king's culling. Here, the world felt safe, insular, and profoundly alive. The coven moved in a steady, comforting dance of shared labor and shared breath, completely oblivious to the shadow that had just fallen over their borders.

Finola stood by the central hearth-fire, her light honey-brown hair slipping loose from its braid as she carefully stirred a massive, bubbling iron pot of wild onion and mutton stew. Freckles spattered across her nose like constellations, her green eyes wide and focused as her face flushed a deep pink from the roaring heat.

Across the clearing, near the woven timber drying racks, Morenna and Maeve worked side by side. Morenna, her strawberry-blonde hair bound in its usual messy braid, flicked damp soil from a fresh harvest of bitter roots, her soft gray eyes tracking the return of the riders with a quiet curiosity. Beside her, Maeve’s tall, lean silhouette cast a long shadow as her striking amber eyes remained intent on her work, her fingers deftly weaving small, protective herbal charms from dried rowan and lavender to hang over the doorways of the huts.

The structures themselves stood clustered around the clearing like stubborn, gnarled extensions of the forest itself. They had come slowly over the last seventeen years—stone set by aching hand, wood cut and shaped by muscle and bone. No dark, forceful magic had commanded them into existence; instead, the beams had been gently coaxed to settle truer, the joints held together by a careful, quiet agreement between the witches and the living timber.

In the softer grass near the stream, two of the youngest orphaned girls of the coven were playing with smooth river stones, their soft, melodic laughter blending seamlessly with the low, rhythmic hum of an evening chant being murmured somewhere deeper in the trees. It was a fragile, beautiful ecosystem built entirely on the deliberate choice to remain free.

Isolde slid from her horse, her boots hitting the damp moss with a heavy, leaden sound. As she unburdened her horse, she looked across the clearing toward a nearby stump, where the matriarch of their sanctuary sat waiting.

Elspeth sat upon her usual moss-covered stump, the silvery-blonde of her hair glinting like spun thread in the fading light. But she was not alone. Gathered in a tight semicircle around her were three other elders of the coven—women whose faces bore the deeply etched lines of the culling they had survived nearly two decades prior.

Isolde and Moira approached them silently, their heavy wool hoods pulled down, the grim set of their shoulders instantly drawing the elders’ attention.

"You're back early," Elspeth said mildly, her steady, practical brown eyes taking in the faint trace of ash clinging to Isolde’s hair. She set her needlework in her lap. "The border is quiet?"

"Not quite…" Isolde replied flatly, stepping into the small circle. Her voice was low, contained, but it cut through the murmurs of the clearing. "A Dhu-Guisch woke out of season. It was tearing through the lower valley, charging straight for the human logging camps."

A sharp, collective intake of breath rippled through the older women.

"A Dhu-Guisch? In the dead of frost?" whispered Sharon, one of the elder seers, her hands immediately flying to her throat. 

"We had to put it down," Moira intervened smoothly, stepping up beside Isolde. "If we hadn't, it would have slaughtered a garrison of the King's scouts. But in doing so... we were seen. The crown's vanguard watched us bring it down. They know exactly what we are."

"They wore the helms with the branching antlers," Isolde said, her voice dropping to a low, jagged whisper. "No doubt they will return to the king and tell him of what they witnessed."

The mention of the new king did not cause a sudden outburst of tears or theatrical gasps.  The panic that followed was quiet, a terrifying kind that hardens in the bones of people who have already seen their world burn once before.

Sharon closed her eyes, her jaw tightening as she let out a slow, trembling breath. "So the rumors from the traders were true. The son does not intend to leave the wild spaces alone."

"He can't afford to," Branwen said, her voice flat and analytical as she leaned heavily on her staff. She looked out over the quiet grove, where the younger girls were still laughing by the fire. "Fergus hunted us out of a mad, holy zealotry. He wanted our blood. But a soldier-king who inherits a starving kingdom? He doesn't want our blood. He wants the timber we sleep under and the iron beneath our feet. A practical man is always far more ruthless than a fanatic."

Tora looked at Elspeth, her gray eyes dark with a cold, pragmatic dread. "We have forty-two souls in this valley, Elspeth. More than half of them have never seen the edge of a blade, let alone an iron net. If the scouts trace the horses back to this ridge, we will not survive another flight."

Hestia, still kneeling by the frost, slowly rose to her feet, wiping the damp earth from her palms onto her heavy wool skirts. Her face was pale, but her voice was steady when she spoke. "The forest did not hide us for seventeen years just for us to scatter like mice at the first sight of trouble. If we run now, we freeze in the northern passes before the winter breaks."

"No one is running," Elspeth said, her voice cutting through the rising tension with the calm, absolute authority of a general. She met the gaze of each elder in turn, her practical brown eyes refusing to allow the dread to take root. "We have spent nearly two decades fortifying this boundary. The wards are deep, and the trees do not give up our secrets willingly."

She turned her gaze to Isolde and Moira, her expression unreadable. "You did what you had to do to keep that beast from bringing an entire garrison into the deep woods. But the buffer we had is gone. Branwen, I want the perimeter charms doubled by dusk. Tora, begin quiet preparations for the stores—not because we are fleeing, but because a coven caught unprepared is already dead."

The elders nodded, the rigid, survivalist instincts of the old culling taking over as they silently dispersed to their duties, leaving Isolde, Moira, and Elspeth standing alone in the deepening shadow of the matriarch's hut.

"Be straight with me," Elspeth said, her voice dropping to a low, intense whisper that barely carried over the rustle of the leaves. "Were you followed? Did you see the King?"

"No," Moira answered immediately, her voice firm. "We doubled back through the jagged rocky switchbacks near the upper ridge and masked our tracks with the brush. If they have hounds, the frost and the aconite will throw off the scent."

Isolde shifted her weight, looking out toward the dark labyrinth of the pines. "And to be fair, we don’t know what the new king looks like. If he was there, he didn't step forward to introduce himself."

Elspeth let out a slow, breathy sigh, her shoulders dropping. She turned her gaze toward the northern ridge, where the mountains rose like jagged, white teeth against the bruising sky. "If we are uprooted now, we are done for. The land beyond those peaks is entirely unknown to us, and trying to traverse the northern passes in the dead of winter... the frost will claim us before the soldiers can."

She stepped forward, placing a heavy, warning hand on each of their shoulders.

"Keep this between us," Elspeth commanded flatly, her practical eyes boring into Isolde’s. "The coven needs to remain steady if the charms are going to hold. Go to Sorcha and Deirdre and tell them to keep their mouths shut—Deirdre especially. Let the girls have their dinner in peace."

"And tomorrow?" Isolde asked quietly.

Beside her, Moira guided her gelding with an effortless, feline grace. She watched the thick thicket of brambles ahead slowly untangle themselves at Isolde's silent command, a faint, wry smile touching her lips.

"You know, you could coax the path to widen without demanding the thorn-bushes apologize to us," Moira said, her voice easily cutting through the quiet crunch of the frost. "A simple path would suffice. You don't have to break the forest's spine just to keep your boots clean."

Isolde smirked, keeping her eyes fixed on the gray mist ahead. "Gentle paths are for the people who live in the stone cities, Moira. Out here, the sharper the boundary, the less likely someone is to stumble across us."

"And yet, you spend half your nights sharpening the boundaries with wolfsbane," Moira countered smoothly, gesturing to the saddlebags where Isolde kept her dried stores. "One day, you'll poison your own fingers before you ever get the chance to fend off a king's scout."

"I hear survival is far more effective when you're thorough," Isolde joked primly, shifting her weight as her mare easily cleared a rotting log.

"Unless the threat is already closer than we think," Moira murmured, her almond-brown eyes flicking toward the southern ridge line where the sky looked heavy and dark. Her voice dropped, too low for the horses to care. "The wind has tasted like iron for three days, Isolde. The humans are pushing further into the perimeter."

Isolde's snort was quiet, though a cold knot tightened in her chest. "You give the humans too much credit. They’re blind in these woods."

As they crested the ridge, the dense canopy broke, and the horses stepped into a clearing where two more figures stood waiting against the gray sky.

Sorcha sat perched on a low-slung stone ledge, her pale-gold hair tumbling down her shoulders like a banner in the breeze. Below her, Deirdre stood with her arms crossed over her chests, her wild, flame-red curls whipped around her freckled face by the morning chill. Neither of them looked relaxed. Their eyes were fixed entirely on the horizon.

Isolde pulled her horse to a halt, her gaze following theirs.

Far below the ridge line, where the ancient trees finally surrendered to the gray valleys of Braemore, the world was changing. Black, greasy plumes of smoke twisted lazily into the sky—not from small hearthfires, but from the massive, expanding encampments of the crown's lumber-works and iron-mines. Even the earth beneath the horses' hooves felt different here at the border; it was a low, uneven thrum, a twitching undercurrent of sickness as the nearby soil began to turn sour and black.

"The humans are encroaching. They're tearing down the elder-groves by the riverbank now," Sorcha said, her voice unusually quiet, breaking the silence as she looked out over the distant, bustling scars in the valley. She tightened her grip on her cloak, her green eyes wide with a genuine, creeping dread. "The forest is pulling back every morning. At the rate they’re expanding their borders, they will reach our territory before the winter passes."

Deirdre gave a sharp, unladylike snort, her blue eyes flashing with a dangerous, volatile heat. "I’d like to see them try. They’ll be flayed by the briars before they can even set a single iron-shod foot on our land."

"It’s not our land, Deirdre," Moira reminded her smoothly, her almond-brown eyes remaining fixed on the distant smoke. "It belongs to the forest. We merely live by its grace."

Isolde let out a low, bitter scoff, her fingers tightening within her horse’s coarse mane. "Someone ought to remind the king of that."

"Didn’t you hear?" Sorcha asked, turning her head slightly. "The old tyrant finally met his end three months ago. But the words from the traders say his son is cut from a far sharper stone."

"King Straun," Isolde murmured, the name tasting like ash on her tongue.

"The very same," Sorcha said, a faint shudder passing through her shoulders. "They say he spent his youth fighting the foreign wars across the channel, breaking empires. I heard from a merchant at the crossroads that he just took back the border-lands from Blait. He emerged from the final siege with his armor completely soaked in blood, wearing a helmet fashioned with a crown of thorns."

Deirdre rolled her eyes, kicking a loose stone over the edge of the bluff. "A crown of thorns. How utterly dramatic. A boy playing at his father’s ghost."

"Do not mistake a soldier for a fool, Deirdre," Moira cautioned softly. "Old Fergus was blinded by his hatred of us. But a young king who has known nothing but war... a man who crowns himself in thorns... he won't be looking for heretics to burn. He will be looking for a kingdom to preserve, no matter the cost."

Isolde didn't speak. She looked down at the pale shoots of aconite pushing through the frozen soil at her mare’s hooves—bruise-violet against the gray. She could feel the ancient, heavy pressure of the forest beneath her palm, whispering a warning that none of them wanted to hear. The old king had been a distant shadow, but this new one was a storm brewing right on their doorstep.

"We should return to the grove," Isolde said finally, turning her mare's head back toward the deep, protective dark of the trees. "Before the smoke carries his name any closer."

They dug their heels into their horses' flanks, but the moment they turned back into the deep dark of the pine, the rumbling beneath their feet grew fervent. The ground did not merely shift; it shuddered with a violent, rhythmic vibration that rattled through the bones of their mounts. Above them, the skeletal canopy rustled frantically as thousands of crows shot out of the branches in a panicked, black swarm, their harsh screams filling the air as they made a mad dash to escape.

Isolde gripped her mare's mane, keeping her balance as the horse vaulted over a patch of slick ice. Through the frantic, passing glimpses between the trunks, she kept her eyes locked on the deeper valley to their left.

"Look!" she shouted over the din.

A hulking figure was tearing its way through the dense undergrowth with terrifying speed. It was a Dhu-Guisch—a massive, primordial beast of root and ancient timber, its towering form casting a shadow that seemed to swallow the gray dawn. As it raced through the forest, the earth was scorched black in its wake, the heat radiating from its massive limbs turning the frozen pine needles to ash instantly. It was charging like a battering ram directly toward the plumes of smoke rising from the human encampments.

The four of them reined in their horses on a high, moss-covered ridge, watching the smoking trail of destruction cut through the valley below.

Moira’s face was pale, her almond-brown eyes wide with perplexity. "This makes no sense. The winter is far too cold for the Dhu-Guisch to be awake. They are supposed to sleep deep beneath the frost until the spring thaw."

"It shouldn't," Sorcha agreed, her voice trembling slightly as she leaned forward on her horse, her soft green eyes tracking the beast’s erratic, furious movements. "Not unless it has been violently disturbed."

Deirdre’s lips twisted into a bitter, knowing snarl as she looked out toward the distant border where the knights’ iron axes were still echoing in the distance. "And you wonder what could have done it? The humans are tearing down the elder-groves and ripping open the belly of the mountain for their iron mines. Of course it's awake. They are bleeding the forest dry."

"We have to stop it," Moira said, her knuckles turning white around her reins as she stared down at the smoking trench left by the beast.

Isolde stared at her, her blue eyes wide with incredulity. "Have you gone mad? Let it run. The humans have spent decades destroying everything in their wake. It is about time they take their punishment."

"Exactly," Deirdre spat, her wild red curls framing a face hardened by cold satisfaction. "Let the thing tear their iron-mines to splinters. I'll personally stoke the ashes."

"It isn't about the humans, you fools," Moira snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut through their bloodlust. She wasn't a soft-hearted pacifist; her almond-brown eyes held the same ancient, untamed glare as any witch born to an unforgiving world. "If that thing butchers a garrison of the King’s guard, the crown won't just send lumber-workers next time. They will march an army into these trees with enough cold iron and salt to burn the entire province to bedrock. We won't have a sanctuary left to defend."

Sorcha nodded quickly, her face pale as she looked between them. "She's right. If the Dhu-Guisch exposes what lies in these woods, they’ll hunt everything that breathes."

Moira looked back toward the path of scorched earth, her jaw tight with a begrudging, bitter pragmatism. "I don't care if a few soldiers bleed. But I care about the children in our grove. We put that beast back to sleep, or the king brings the battle to us."

Isolde scoffed, though the cold weight of Moira's logic pressed hard against her chest. She looked out toward the distant smoke of the encampment, her magic humming an angry, toxic rhythm in her veins. She hated the crown, and she hated the thought of protecting them—but she hated the thought of losing her home even more.

“Fine.” Isolde gave a low, furious hiss, pulling her heavy wool hood up over her dark umber hair to shield her face from the driving mist. "But if we die today, Moira, I am never going to forgive you."

Without waiting for an answer, she dug her heels ruthlessly into her mare's flanks. The horse lunged forward, throwing her weight down the treacherous, rocky incline of the ridge. Behind her, the sharp cracks of hooves on stone echoed through the valley as Moira, Sorcha, and Deirdre took off in a wild, synchronized gallop right after her.

They tore through the final boundary of the forest, the freezing air biting at Isolde’s flushed skin. Ahead, the dense pine gave way to the jagged, ugly clearing of the human logging camp.

Chaos had already swallowed the settlement. At the sight of the towering Dhu-Guisch breaching the tree line, its massive, wooden frame smoldering and trailing black ash, the human workers were running for their lives. Men dropped their iron axes and heavy timber saws, screaming as they scrambled for the flimsy cover of their canvas tents and half-built log cabins. A handful of armed guards desperately tried to hold their ground. They drew their steel swords and notched arrows with trembling hands, but it was painfully obvious it would be a fruitless battle. A steel blade would do nothing but chip against the primordial heartwood of a creature that had slept beneath the frost since the time of the old gods.

The beast reared back, its towering, gnarled limbs casting a shadow of absolute ruin over a cornered cluster of unarmed laborers. Its wooden jaw unhinged, hot ash spewing from its gullet as it prepared to bring its massive fist crashing down.

Isolde dropped her weight low over her mare's bare back, her blue eyes locking onto the monster's chin. She tore her hands from her cloak and swiped the air, drawing upon the violent, raw pressure waiting beneath her palms.

The earth at the edge of the camp didn't just shift—it exploded.

Thick, calcified roots of ancient stone-oak burst forth from the frozen dirt like a localized tremor. They drove upward with a grinding, deafening roar, slamming squarely into the beast’s jaw with enough force to turn its head sideways. The impact sent the Dhu-Guisch staggering back a massive step, its deadly strike missing the terrified laborers by a mere arm's length.

"Look!" a guard screamed from the edge of the clearing, his voice cracking with sheer terror as he pointed toward the ridge. 

Through the smoke and the falling ash, the soldiers watched in disbelief as the four hooded riders emerged completely from the shadows of the wilderness, their horses galloping swiftly and recklessly after the raging monster.

The Dhu-Guisch let out a hollow, splintering roar that shook the marrow in Isolde’s bones, its massive head snapping toward the ridge.

Old legends whispered by the elders warned that the beast was a harbinger of absolute ruin; if the monster saw you before you saw it, your soul was already a goner, claimed by the deep roots of the earth. But if you saw the beast first, you held a sliver of a chance. The witches had the vantage, and they took their chance now with a reckless, desperate fury.

"Draw it away from the camp!" Moira shouted, her gelding veering hard to the left.

Working in perfect, intuitive tandem, the four witches swarmed the clearing like a localized storm. Moira leaned from her saddle, her hands sweeping low; the shadows beneath the logging wagons stretched and thickened, rising like ink to wrap around the monster’s hind legs, tilting its weight and dragging its attention away from the fleeing humans. From the other flank, Sorcha inhaled sharply, throwing a violent blast of compressed wind against the beast's chest, forcing its massive, smoldering torso to pivot toward them.

The Dhu-Guisch blinked open eyes of burning, molten sap. It saw Isolde first.

With a deafening shriek of grinding timber, the primordial nightmare lunged at her. Isolde dug her heels into her mare, veering sharply as the beast's snapping, drooling jaws clapped shut exactly where she had been a heartbeat before, spraying a foul, acidic slime that hissed against the frozen mud. The monster breathed out, unleashing a backdraft of black fire and choking ash that singed the edge of Isolde's wool hood.

"Deirdre!" Isolde screamed, her voice raw.

Deirdre didn't try to quench the monster's inner furnace; she fed it. With a fierce, terrifying snarl, the red-haired witch reached directly into the creature's glowing chest cavity, seizing the ambient flames and turning the beast's own primordial fire against its internal anatomy. She forced the heat to bloom outward, burning too hot, too fast, disrupting the ancient magic holding the timber skeleton together.

The trunk of the beast's torso violently ruptured from the inside out.

The Dhu-Guisch collapsed with a sickening, structural groan. Its massive, towering weight crashed into the earth and slid violently across the clearing, plowing a massive trench into the frozen soil and sending a wall of black dirt, sparks, and splinters flying into the air.

The gargantuan corpse scuttled and skidded directly toward the main human encampment like a falling mountain. Laborers shrieked, scattering in all directions as the smoking mass of root and bone barreled toward the central cabins.

With a final, heavy thud, it stopped. The clearing went completely, suffocatingly silent, save for the hiss of the rain against the scorched wood.

The Dhu-Guisch lay dead, its monstrous form sprawled directly at the feet of the humans. Its wooden ribs slowly unraveled like rotting fingers, releasing thick, iridescent ribbons of purple sap that smelled of ancient graves and sweet wolfsbane.

Isolde pulled her gasping mare to a halt, her chest heaving as she kept her face hidden deep within her hood. Through the rising steam, her blue eyes locked onto the terrified, pale faces of the King's scouts who stood frozen, their swords still drawn, staring in absolute horror not just at the dead creature at their feet, but at the four cloaked figures who had just slain it.

At that distance, under the heavy, low-hanging gray sky, the humans couldn't possibly see their faces clearly. But they didn't need to. The evidence was splashed across the clearing in violent, unmistakable strokes; it was blindingly clear to every man breathing in that valley that the four riders standing before them were witches.

Isolde’s steady gaze locked onto the soldiers who had formed a defensive wall in front of the cabins. Every single one of them wore a heavy, brutalist helm of pockmarked, hammered iron. The metal was dark and coarse, forged with a dense, dimpled texture that caught the weak dawn light like frozen scales. The nasal guards and heavy cheek plates swept down into sharp, severe angles, leaving only hollow, T-shaped black slits where their eyes should be. Sprouting aggressively from the temples of the iron skulls were jagged, branching stag antlers, sweeping outward like skeletal fingers.

For a long, breathless moment, the two worlds stared at one another across the expanse of dead wood and bleeding purple sap. The faceless, eyeless glint of the antlered helms held her captive.

"Isolde," Moira whispered sharply from her side, her horse shifting uncomfortably beneath her. "Let’s go."

By the time she reached the village, the smoke had swallowed the moon entirely, and what little light remained in the heavens had turned an ugly shade of red. Ash drifted upon the wind in slow, soft spirals, settling upon the mare’s mane and the shoulders of her cloak with the gentleness of snowfall. The bells of Saint Brigid's still rang above the crackling flames. They had continued without pause since sunset, a mindless, dreadful persistence, as though the men swinging the ropes mistook murder for worship.

Fear had made monsters of ordinary men. Villages she had ridden through that morning had become graveyards by dusk. Everywhere she found the same ruin: sacred groves reduced to smoldering stumps, doors hanging open upon abandoned homes, and women she had known all her life dragged into the streets beneath iron nets while frightened neighbors recited scripture through tears. Many of the covens had fought back; nature itself recoiled from the slaughter and answered. Roots had split the roads. Rivers had burst their banks. But magic was never meant for war, and against iron and numbers, there were only so many miracles the earth was willing to give.

As she rode into the square, each recognition cut deeper than the last. There was Mairi, who had taught half the valley to weave willow baskets, kneeling in the mud with blood upon her lips. There was young Euna, scarcely more than a girl, whose laughter still echoed from last year's winter feast. Men shouted. Horses screamed. A child cried for his mother from some unseen corner. Elspeth might have stopped had she known where to begin, but the suffering had grown too vast to comprehend.

A thin, desperate scream from the cottage beside the well pulled her reins short.

The thatch roof was already collapsing inward, pouring great, choking clouds of black smoke into the sky. Her mare balked, trembling so violently that Elspeth feared the creature might throw itself backward. Then the cry came again—a child, young enough that the voice still possessed the softness of babyhood.

Shame swept through her before her hesitation could fully form. If the gods condemned her for anything tonight, it would not be for her failures, but for abandoning hope while breath remained.

The heat struck her face as she leapt from the saddle. The loose strands of pale hair that escaped her hood curled and blackened before she even reached the threshold. She paid them no mind. Magic rose instinctively to meet her, as natural as breath; though she could no more command the flames than she could the sea, they yielded before her terror, bending away from the doorway just enough to permit her passage.

Gathering her skirts, she stepped into the burning house.

Fire consumed the curtains and climbed the walls. In the sitting room, the spinning wheel lay overturned among a rain of sparks, and near it, a wooden doll’s painted face blackened in the heat. Another cry reached her—not from above, but from below. Following the sound, she pressed into the small bedchamber at the rear of the house.

Flames licked greedily at the blankets, and a splitting bedpost showered embers across the floorboards. Beneath the iron frame, crouched against the wall, was a child. The little girl could not have seen more than five summers. Soot streaked her face, and she had covered her mouth with her hand to silence her own hoarse coughing and sobbing. She was clutching a threadbare fabric rabbit to her chest.

"It's all right," Elspeth said softly, though her own voice sounded strange over the roar of the fire. "Come, sweetheart. We must go."

The girl only shook her head, pressing herself farther into the shadows.

Above them, the timbers groaned. Sweat ran freely down Elspeth’s temples, but terror had rooted the child in place as surely as old oak cracks stone. She lowered herself further and offered a trembling hand.

"My name is Elspeth," she said, choosing honesty because she had nothing else left to give. "And I am afraid too."

The little girl blinked.

"Truly I am. I think anyone with good sense would be frightened." A sad, fleeting smile touched Elspeth’s lips. "But if you wish to live, darling, you must trust me."

A heavy timber collapsed in the next room, shaking the floorboards beneath their knees. The child flinched violently, her knuckles turning white around the rabbit. Then, slowly, she removed her hand from her mouth.

The toy rabbit emerged first. Then a tiny, soot-covered hand.

Elspeth enclosed the small fingers within her own and drew the child out, gathering her into her arms. The girl buried her face immediately against Elspeth's shoulder, winding herself around her like ivy.

By the time Elspeth staggered back into the night, coughing and half-blinded, the cottage behind them gave a long, dreadful sigh and caved in, sending a storm of sparks into the heavens.

She had just settled the child upon the saddle when a movement in the square caught her eye. One of the soldiers had seen them. He sat astride a chestnut horse, blood upon his sleeve and ash in his beard, and she watched recognition dawn across his face. He shouted to the men beside him, and they turned as one.

The mare scarcely waited for Elspeth to mount before bolting toward the tree line. Elspeth buried one hand in the animal's mane, urging her onward as they fled the screaming bells. Branches clawed at her cloak as they plunged into the forest, and behind them came the distinct, heavy thunder of pursuing hooves.

The forest closed around them like an old and uneasy dream. The pines stood tall and black beneath the smoke-stained sky, and the moon appeared and vanished among the branches as though uncertain whether it wished to witness what Braemore had become.

The mare leapt over a fallen log, nearly losing her seat, and at that same moment the earth beneath them shifted. A great pine groaned overhead. Before Elspeth could raise her head, the ground beneath its roots split apart with a sound like distant thunder. The ancient tree toppled sideways, crashing across the path behind them. The screams of horses and men echoed violently through the dark.

Elspeth twisted in the saddle, her heart hammering. She had felt something in the moment before the timber cracked—a strange, heavy stirring beneath the earth, like the movement of something sleeping uneasily beneath blankets.

One rider managed to force his mount around the fallen trunk, continuing the pursuit. His face was red with exertion as he closed the distance, but his horse suddenly stumbled. The ground beneath the animal's hooves opened, pitching horse and man into the mud.

Then she saw it.

A flash of silver weaving between the trees. For one bewildered instant she mistook the creature for moonlight itself, but moonlight did not possess eyes. The hound paused upon a rocky outcrop and turned its enormous head toward her. Its fur gleamed pale as mist above the lochs, and though it stood taller than any wolf in the northern woods, there was something deeply sorrowful in its gaze.

A Cu Sith. A harbinger of the dead.

If it was a warning, Elspeth thought, it had come too late. Yet the beast neither growled nor bared its teeth. It merely looked at her before disappearing into the deep undergrowth.

Absurdly, her mare followed the creature’s ghost.

The forest grew denser, but one rider remained stubbornly behind them. Elspeth risked a glance over her shoulder. The young soldier had abandoned his sword in favor of a bow. Moonlight caught upon the arrowhead as he raised it, his rangy bay gelding flecked with foam.

She gathered the child closer, though she knew there was little protection her body could offer. The mare's breathing had grown ragged. Ahead, the pale hound slipped once more between the trunks, appearing and disappearing like something remembered rather than seen. Against her neck, the little girl was making small, frightened sounds that seemed too helpless to belong in such a vast forest.

It was because they were so small that Elspeth nearly missed the answer.

The trembling did not belong to the mare. The sensation spread outward with such strange swiftness that the horse pinned back her ears, while ravens burst from the branches in startled clouds. There was no violence in the feeling. If anything, it reminded Elspeth of the way lambs crowded together during a storm, or the manner in which frightened children reached blindly for familiar hands.

The young soldier's horse reared so suddenly that his arrow flew harmlessly into the canopy. Before the man could regain his footing, the earth began to open around him—not with the clean precision of iron weapons, but in the confused, desperate manner of a thing awakened too quickly from sleep.

The roots that emerged were ancient swells of the forest, thick as a man's body and dark with centuries of hidden growth. They wrapped themselves around his legs and waist with a blind, frantic urgency. One enclosed his arm while another curled across his chest; though the young man shouted and begged for mercy, the roots seemed no more aware of his cries than a river is aware of a drowning man. They tightened and writhed, pulling him down into the black dirt until the forest was quiet once more.

The mare halted of her own accord. Elspeth sat frozen, realizing only now that the shaking beneath her palms belonged to the ground itself.

The roots were trembling.

The little girl lifted her head from Elspeth's shoulder. Tears still streaked her cheeks, but her dark eyes were fixed upon the place where the earth had closed. There was nothing triumphant in her expression. She looked no less frightened than the forest itself.

A chill settled over Elspeth that had nothing to do with the night air. The magic had not answered her own soul; she would have known its shape. This possessed none of the patterns she knew.

Understanding came upon her so gradually that she scarcely knew when it arrived. The earth had heard the girl's terror and, in its confusion and ancient loyalty, had become frightened too. The roots had not risen because they wished to kill. They had risen because a little girl wanted the hurting to stop, and the world had answered as best it knew how.

"Darling," Elspeth asked softly, the question feeling more dangerous than any soldier. "Did you do that?"

The child went rigid. She lowered her eyes to her lap, picking nervously at the threadbare ear of her rabbit. Then, she gave the smallest of nods—the movement of a frightened bird. She expected punishment.

"Oh, sweetheart," Elspeth murmured. "No wonder you're frightened. What is your name?"

In a voice roughened by smoke and tears, the child whispered, "Isolde."

"Isolde," Elspeth repeated gently, tasting the shape of it. "And where is your mother, Isolde?"

The question shattered the child's fragile calm. "There were men," she whispered, her lips trembling. "Big ones. They came through the door and Mama told me to hide... she pushed me under the bed. Mama said not to come out. But the flowers came, and then the swords, and..." Her breathing hitched, fresh tears spilling through the soot. "There was blood. Mama was crying and there was fire and I couldn't find—"

She broke apart entirely, burying herself against Elspeth's chest. Elspeth closed her eyes, bowing her head against the dark curls. So many mothers. So many daughters. So much grief.

"You are safe with me now," Elspeth said, her voice steadier than her heart. "I know your heart is hurting. But you are not alone anymore."

The child sniffled, looking up with enormous, dark eyes.

Isolde regarded her solemnly. Then, with a gravity worthy of a queen, she held out the fabric rabbit. Elspeth accepted the bedraggled toy with the care due a sacred relic. "Thank you," she said.

Satisfied, Isolde curled against her once more.

On a moss-covered rise between the trees, pale as moonlight and silent as mist, the Cu Sith waited. It watched them for a long moment, then turned and disappeared beneath the pines.