The Borderkind

CHAPTER 3

Oliver expected to die. Beyond the end of the tunnel he could see the sunlight streaming into the gorge, but he did not think they would ever get there. He had been battered and bruised by his collision with the rocks, his throat was raw from nearly drowning, and his companions seemed exhausted as well. There had been all too much of battle in these past hours, then the trek along the river had drained them further. Blue Jay and Kitsune were ragged and weakened. Frost was their only chance.

The Nagas swam at them, serpentine lower bodies gliding under the water, moving upriver slowly, watching them carefully as though searching for the precise moment to strike. From the waist up they were ordinary enough, men and women carrying bows, arrows at the ready. But below the waist they were enormous snakes, with all the deadly speed that would entail.

“What do we do?” Oliver whispered, his voice resounding eerily off the walls of the tunnel.

“Nothing,” Frost said. “Do nothing.”

He cocked his head, watching the serpent-people as they came nearer. His icicle hair made a familiar clinking noise and a white-blue mist rose from the corners of his diamond eyes.

Oliver nodded. If Frost had the strength, he could stop them. With a wave of his hand, he could turn the air so cold around their arrows that they would shatter. Perhaps, he might even momentarily freeze the river around them. But Frost looked just as drained as the rest of them, and Oliver did not share the certainty in the winter man’s voice.

He raised the Sword of Hunyadi.

“Oliver, no!” Kitsune shouted.

Blue Jay burst from the river, spraying water across the rocks and his companions. In a blur of motion he became a bird, crying out as he darted forward, then he spun in the air, ready to block the arrows of the Nagas.

Not a single arrow flew.

Oliver frowned, staring, sword still at the ready as the Nagas turned to one another, whispering. Their serpentine lower halves undulated beneath the water, keeping them from drifting.

Frost and Kitsune exchanged a look of confusion, and then the winter man gestured for Oliver to lower his sword. Reluctantly, he did so.

“We are travelers in search of brief sanctuary,” Frost announced. “We come openly and without pretense. I am Frost of the Borderkind. My companions and I need rest, and they need food as well. Legend says that Twillig’s Gorge is a place of safe haven for travelers of any allegiance, so long as their intentions are peaceful. Is the legend false?”

The Nagas rose up from the water, swaying cobralike for a moment. They opened their mouths and hissed, but their arrows still did not fly.

“Time changes even legends,” one of the females, perhaps the leader, said. “Perhaps legends most of all. You know that very well, Cailleach Bheur, just as I am certain you know that these are perilous times in the Two Kingdoms. Perilous for Borderkind most of all. There are others of your kind in the Gorge, but they have lived here for many years, and we protect our neighbors. We will fight for them. Risk all for them, just as they would for us.

“But you are not our neighbors,” the Naga said, nodding her head first toward Frost, then toward Kitsune and Blue Jay. “None of you. The company of myths is a danger to us all, when so many want you dead. Why should we risk it for strangers?”

Kitsune growled at the use of the word myth, a term the Borderkind despised. She might have attacked them then, but this time it was Oliver who held her back.

“You’ll turn us away out of cowardice, then?” Frost demanded.

Blue Jay landed atop the rock Oliver had crashed into, changing again into his human shape. He crouched there, glaring down at the Nagas.

“I never would have believed it,” the trickster said. “The world really has changed.”

“Better allies than strangers,” Frost said, voice low. Mist drifted up from his mouth. The light from along the tunnel made the sharp angles of his icy body and face even more severe. “Better friends than enemies. Now more than ever. If you have Borderkind amongst you, the Hunters will come for them. We mean to stop them before they ever get here. That serves us all.”

The Nagas watched them carefully for several long, tense moments, and then the leader raised her bow, let the pressure off of the string, and returned the arrow to its quiver. The others followed suit.

The leader bowed, then looked at Frost, her smile savage. “I ought to kill you just for calling us cowards. But this is not a time for those with no quarrel to slay one another. It may come to pass soon enough that we will all be short of friends. But you understand we must be wary. In these times, visitors to the Gorge are scarce and mostly unwelcome.”

Kitsune squeezed Oliver’s hand but stared at the Nagas. “But you will let us in?”

“To rest. To eat. You will be gone by dawn. And if others of your kin leave to join you on your quest, all the better.”

Oliver felt the tension go out of him. He slid his sword back into his belt and then stretched, feeling every one of the bruises he’d gotten when he slammed into that rock.

He waded downriver toward the Nagas, not liking the way they watched him. Though he was the least dangerous of the group, the sentries of Twillig’s Gorge seemed unduly focused on his movements. Blue Jay, Kitsune, and Frost joined him and the four of them strode to where the Nagas slithered in the water.

The leader, sleek and beautiful from the waist up, her hair cut short and ragged, gazed at him with wide, green eyes.

“That does not apply to you, brother. You are welcome to stay as long as you like. You have a home with Nagas, wherever you find us.”

Oliver stared dumbly at her. She turned and swam away down the river, the other Naga sentries following her. With the undulating of their serpentine bodies, they rode the current, and were out of the tunnel and into the sunlight of the gorge in moments.

“What the hell was that all about?” Oliver asked, glancing around at his friends.

Kitsune frowned. Beneath her hood, her expression was as puzzled as Oliver’s own. “I have no idea. ‘Brother’? Who do they think you are?”

Oliver opened his mouth to repeat the question, but Frost and Blue Jay had already set off after the Nagas, wading toward the end of the tunnel, where the river flowed into the gorge. They must have heard the Naga’s words, and his own reaction, but neither of them slowed or looked back.

“Could it be just that I’m not Borderkind? That I’m no danger to them?”

Kitsune smiled. “I suppose. If they only knew that having you here is even more dangerous than harboring us…The Hunters stalking the Borderkind are working in secret. You’ve got the whole of the Two Kingdoms after you.”

Oliver laughed softly and they set out together. But as they went, he watched Blue Jay and Frost, up ahead. They walked quickly and did not so much as glance at one another, as if neither one of them dared to speak.

It troubled him, though it seemed more strange than important. Idly, he slid his hand into his pocket and touched the seed given to him by the Harvest gods. Though it clung wetly to the damp fabric inside his pocket, he was strangely reassured that it was still there and seemed undamaged.

Then they emerged from the tunnel, and all other thoughts were banished instantly.

In his mind he had pictured Twillig’s Gorge as a river canyon lined with caves, in which its residents would dwell. That much was true. But it was also far more than that. The walls of the gorge were several hundred feet high and as sheer as the cliff face on the ocean bluff behind his father’s house. The village that had blossomed there in the gorge went on for a mile or more before the river disappeared into the face of another cliff. Twillig’s Gorge was closed in on four sides. From what Oliver could see, the only way in was down one of those sheer cliff faces or through a river tunnel.

There were caves, as he’d imagined. Most of them had balconies built on the outside, some with beautiful awnings. The caves were connected by ladders and walkways fixed to the gorge walls, somehow bolted into the stone, and the gorge itself was spanned by arched, stone bridges of elegant, ancient construction, and by nearly primitive hanging bridges of wood and thick rope, strung at odd angles.

From the look of it, that was how Twillig’s Gorge had started. But there had to be a limit to the number of cave dwellings, and so they had built out from the walls. Oliver gaped at the sight. He had seen homes on steep hillsides in his own world-some of them the product of sheer madness, in his opinion. Much of Southern California, or so it seemed, had been built with the front of a house on solid ground and the back on stilts. In comparison to the houses of Twillig’s Gorge, those homes were on bedrock. Some of them spanned the whole gorge, right over the river, and those seemed the safest. Others, though, were so precarious as to defy gravity. They clung to the stone cliffs with only struts beneath them, braced at angles against the rock face.

It was impossible. But Oliver had grown used to the impossible.

Twillig’s Gorge was alive with motion. People moved across bridges and up ladders. Fishermen cast their lines out of cave mouths and sat on balconies awaiting a bite. There were a great many humans of varying race and origin-Lost Ones who had passed through the Veil at a place and time where it had worn momentarily thin and been trapped here. Perhaps two-thirds of the population looked ordinary enough.

Then there were the legendary. A crew of dwarves was excavating a section of the eastern gorge wall. On the western wall, two others, seemingly ignored by the main crew, were carving an enormous tableau, an image of mermaids sitting upon a rocky outcropping in the midst of the ocean. There was something about the image that chilled Oliver. The mermaids were elegant, but looked cruel. Sailors flailed in the water not far away, and the fragments of a shattered sailing ship thrust from the waves.

That was what gave it away. They weren’t mermaids at all. They were Sirens, luring men to their deaths. It was a warning, but he did not know if it had any significance beyond its artistic merit.

There were other legends as well. On either side of the river was rough terrain, perhaps thirty feet on the eastern bank but over one hundred on the western. Nothing should have grown there, but still there were crops, coming right up out of what seemed like gravel. A farmer drove an ox-drawn plow through solid rock, churning it up, ready to plant more seed. The ox was blue.

As Oliver and his companions waded past the field of wheat and corn and toward what appeared to be a boat landing up ahead, he scanned the bridges and ladders. A minotaur crossed a hanging rope bridge above and he flinched as it passed over them, the clop of its hooves making him feel certain the bridge would give way under its weight.

There were boggarts and sprites tossing one another about in what appeared to be a playful manner. Lithe figures that seemed made of water rose out of the river and watched them as they passed. Twillig’s Gorge also had dozens of varieties of animal-people. Oliver had come to group them all together, though he was sure those legends would have been deeply offended. Some had the heads of birds or jungle beasts, others the heads of men with the bodies of horses or apes or alligators. And those were only the ones he saw.

Oliver tried not to stare at the griffin that sat curled upon a rocky ledge on the eastern wall. He ignored the strangely ephemeral people, tall and thin and clad in gauzy colors, who seemed almost invisible unless he stared directly at them. Fairies, or something like them, he was sure.

What he could not ignore were their kin, the tiny little figures that darted all through the gorge like butterflies and dragonflies. Whatever they were-pixies, or peries like the ones he’d seen in the Oldwood shortly after first crossing the Veil-they were beautiful. And there were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. The pixies needed no caves or houses or bridges. They flitted through the air, alighting only for an eyeblink before setting off again, their colors like the petals of a million flowers cast into the air.

“Wow,” Oliver whispered.

Kitsune laughed in delight beside him. For a few moments, as he took this all in, he had forgotten she was there. Now she looped her arm through his and leaned against him, and he liked the warmth of her there.

A pair of men sat together on a high balcony, a hundred feet or more above the river, but they had bodies and limbs as thin as sticks and faces like anteaters, and their legs hung all the way down to the water, their feet curved as though they might hook an enemy, or simply prey, and bring them up to their cave.

Of all the things he had seen thus far, they were the only ones that frightened him.

At the river landing they climbed a set of stone stairs out of the water. Frost and Blue Jay waited for them there, but the two Borderkind were alone. Lost Ones went by without sparing them a glance. Humans on this side of the Veil had lost any sense of awe. Some of them were dressed in strange garments that he thought might be Aztec or Mayan, for he knew that those ancient peoples had ended up on this side of the Veil long ago.

No one stopped. Legends averted their eyes as they passed, not wanting to get involved. The Nagas had presumably returned to their sentry duties, leaving them to fend for themselves. A woman whose body was knotted wood and gnarled, cracked bark, and who had tiny leaves sprouting from her flesh, paused and smiled.

“Welcome,” she said, spreading her hands with their thin, spidery, branch fingers, and offering a small bow.

Frost and Blue Jay returned the bow.

“Our thanks,” Blue Jay said. “You seem the only one willing to make us welcome.”

“Strangers pass with the river. They’ll pay little attention to you unless you stay.” The woman, whose teeth were tiny thorns, smiled. “Are you staying, then?”

“No. Only passing through,” Frost said.

“Pity. But you’ll want the inn, then. Shouldn’t be any trouble getting a room. Very few visitors, these days.”

Oliver leaned in to whisper to Kitsune. “With their hospitality, it’s no wonder.”

Kitsune bumped him playfully. Frost thanked the tree-woman, some kind of forest spirit, Oliver assumed, and they started off along the landing, continuing southward. Oliver noticed that the cliff face on the eastern wall had been carefully carved, transformed so that it almost resembled the facades of old European rowhouses. It was not a city, but the illusion of one, and it chilled him.

There were shops in caves both natural and excavated, all along the landing. A butcher, a bakery, a market, and several little clothes boutiques. Of all the things he had seen in Twillig’s Gorge, that seemed strangest to him. Almost too civilized.

Atop the shops, and below the dwellings that were higher up on the gorge walls, there were stone figures carved and standing sentinel above the river. Gargoyles. Not one of them looked alike, but they were hideous, terrifying to look at. The demonic stone figures had also been placed atop some of the bridges, and one of the homes that spanned the river. It made Oliver think of Venice, in Italy, and some of the beautiful architecture that went into arched passages above the canals.

But some of these were not merely bridges. They went under two homes that had been built across the gorge, and then came in sight of a third structure-a thing of stone and wood that cast a long shadow upon the river and the walls below, with a row of strange peaks across the top, and a small bell tower to cap it all.

“The inn,” Blue Jay said.

To the right, a figure stepped away from the front of a little marionette shop, a wiry little man with matted brown hair, a long face, and crazy eyes.

“You always were pretty fast on the uptake, Jay,” he said.

Blue Jay laughed and stepped forward, pulling the man into a tight embrace.

“Cousin, it’s good to see you.”

The wiry man laughed as well, but his was cold and cynical. “Good to see you alive, Jay.”

Oliver glanced at Kitsune, whose jade eyes had hardened. Blue Jay began to introduce his cousin to Frost, but Oliver leaned in to Kitsune.

“What is it? Who is this guy?”

Kitsune spat on the ground that separated them from Blue Jay, Frost, and the other.

“Oliver Bascombe,” she said, voice rippling with disgust, “meet Coyote.”

The Jaculus flew low, skirting over treetops and the peaks of hills, never so low as to encounter travelers nor so high as to draw undue attention from other airborne predators. Or so he thought.

Hunger gnawed at Lucan, and as he slipped through the air, body undulating, wings propelling him, he nurtured a bitterness in his heart. He had done the right thing, followed his orders to the letter. Ty’Lis and Hinque had sent him north to spy for them, to follow Malla and the Falconer and to watch from this side of the Veil, just in case things went wrong.

And, oh, how things had gone wrong.

It seemed impossible to him that an ordinary man, an Intruder from the other side of the Veil, and a pitiful few Borderkind had defeated and killed not only Malla and the Falconer, but an entire cadre of Kirata, and others. He shivered with pleasure at the thought of what it would have been like if he had been able to attack them when they came through on the hill above the Sorrowful River. Frost might have presented a problem, but the others…he would have loved to sink his fangs into Kitsune’s throat, to wrap himself around her soft fur and tender flesh. And as for Blue Jay…

The Jaculus sniffed as he flew, snorting mucus into his throat, amused at the thought of how easily he could have dispatched the trickster bird. He disliked eating birds. All feather and bone. But with Blue Jay he would have made an exception.

Frustration burned in him, but he pushed it away. He had his orders, and Lucan prided himself on loyalty. He had pledged himself to Ty’Lis and he would fulfill his vow to the edge of death and beyond. Thus was the nobility of the Jaculus.

His tiny wings beat so fiercely that they made a cricket buzz. It was a long way to Palenque, the capital of Yucatazca, but that was why Ty’Lis had sent Lucan. The Jaculi were amongst the fastest creatures in the air.

Lucan crested a hill so quickly that the details of the ground below were a blur. He zipped over tall grass on a long field, then shot through the upper branches of a small stretch of forest with such swiftness that leaves were torn off their branches by the vacuum of his passing.

A wide ribbon of blue crossed his path ahead. The Atlantic River. Off to the north he saw a battalion of Euphrasian soldiers on the march. What they were doing there he had no idea, but it was none of his concern.

His keen eye caught movement, a blur against the blur, down on the riverbank. The Jaculus twisted in the air, almost swimming down from the sky, zipping toward the ground. The vole that had been nibbling at some scattered seeds darted away, sensing Lucan’s approach. It skittered toward a thick stretch of prickly shrubbery on the river’s edge and nearly made it to cover before the Jaculus struck.

Lucan darted his tail downward like a scorpion striking, coiled around the vole, and swept it up toward his jaws in one swift motion. He snapped his fangs closed around its body, plunging venomous needles into its flesh, and it began to shudder, dying. The Jaculus opened his maw, jaw unhinging, and thrust the squirming vole into his throat.

As he beat his tiny wings harder, gliding through the air above the Atlantic River, he swallowed the creature whole. The Atlantic Bridge was just to the south and he swept by it in seconds, though the act of digesting slowed him down some.

A pleasurable shudder went through him. He was going to be sleepy after eating the vole. If only he could have coiled himself into a shady tree for a rest. But it was not to be. He had his duty to fulfill.

In a blink, the river was no longer below him. He slashed across the sky, watching the Truce Road unfold ahead. The terrain was rough, but he could see woods off to the north where the hills rose and there were mountains in the far distance. That was not his course, however. Instead, Lucan turned south, cutting away from the Truce Road. Below, he saw a farm with hundreds of cattle grazing. Past that was a small village, and soon the Truce Road was far behind him.

As he flew south, the air grew warmer. He enjoyed the feel of it. The Jaculus relished heat, and cold made it sluggish. Lucan had embraced the role of spy, but hoped in the future his assignments kept him in Yucatazca.

His path took him through gray afternoon clouds. A light rain began to fall.

High in the eastern sky, something black flashed against the storm. Lucan might have ignored it, but a moment later another shape joined the first. Two birds, black and broad-winged, paced him a hundred feet above.

The Jaculus felt his stomach rumble, acid working on the vole. But he was slowed by the meal and could not digest it any faster.

With a single twist and a thrust of his wings, he switched direction, turning toward a copse of trees at the edge of a field below. Lucan dove, fangs bared, toward the uppermost branches. He shot his tail beneath him like a javelin, grabbed hold of a branch, and swung around, wrapping himself around the tree limb. As he glanced up, he saw the birds descend, their talons out, enormous wings beating the air.

Strigae. They were spies for Ty’Lis as well.

“What are you doing?” the Jaculus cried.

The smaller Strigae crashed through leaves, snapped a branch, and grabbed hold of Lucan, tearing him from his perch. The Jaculus hissed and bared his fangs. He lunged once, missed, and prepared to lunge again, but then the Strigae landed, battering him against the hard ground. The other alighted beside the first and shot out a talon, holding his head down, keeping him from striking. His wings beat uselessly against the dirt.

“Where are you going in such a hurry, sky-worm?” cawed the Strigae who stood upon his head. It bent down and stared into his face, tiny black eyes like stones.

“Returning to Palenque,” Lucan muttered, the talon upon his head making it difficult to speak. “And you had best let me be on my way. I serve at the will of the sorcerer Ty’Lis, as I believe do you. I have vital information for-”

The Strigae pushed the Jaculus’s head into the dirt and put his beak closer to Lucan’s face. “What information?”

“Information I will only reveal to my master.”

The Strigae cawed angrily, and the other followed suit. The two birds were so loud that Lucan’s ears hurt. He twisted and coiled the lower part of his serpent body, but could do nothing. The vole weighed heavy in his gut.

From above came the sound of other wings, much larger, much heavier. The Strigae stopped their cawing and looked up. Lucan tried to see past them, but at first the drizzling rain spattered his eyes and the gray light that filtered through the storm made it difficult to make out the two creatures that flew down and landed heavily a few feet away.

Then Lucan blinked the rain away, and he stopped wriggling beneath his captors. There were few things in any world the Jaculus feared, but the Hunters that slunk across the dirt now, almost blending with the trees, were fear themselves.

Perytons. Their antlers glistened with the rain, wide eyes bright despite the gray storm clouds. The two Atlantean predators moved with a crawling stealth, green-feathered wings pinioned against their backs.

“Jaculus,” said one of the Strigae, as though in answer to a question, though neither of the Perytons had spoken. Lucan was not sure the Hunters ever spoke.

The other Strigae cawed and bent his head in obeisance to the Perytons. “Says he serves Ty’Lis. Says he’s got information for him.”

One of the Perytons stepped back, a grotesque motion like the scuttling of a crab, wings pinned. It slid between two trees and dipped its head as though listening to a voice.

Only then did Lucan see that there was a figure in front of one of the trees. A crone, a terrible hag. She turned and smiled at him, and even from this distance, he could see that her teeth were stone. Her skin was blue, her nose hooked and bulbous.

Jezi-Baba, he thought.

The Jaculus knew he was as good as dead if he did not speak.

The Peryton with Jezi-Baba nodded to the Strigae. The huge black birds cawed loudly. The talon on his head pressed harder.

“I will tear off your head if you do not speak the truth, and now. If there is information for Ty’Lis, it may help us to locate our quarry. If you do not share it, and so thwart us, your master will flay you alive.”

Lucan shuddered, the last trace of strength gone from him, and he told them all that he had seen.

As he spoke, the Perytons closed in around him. The Strigae withdrew, letting him up. He considered fleeing, but only for a moment. With the vole in his belly, they would surely overtake him quickly.

“You mean they saw you? The Borderkind and the Bascombe? They know that you were spying upon them?” the smaller Strigae demanded, ruffling its wings, black feathers gleaming wetly in the rain.

“It could not be helped,” the Jaculus replied, coiled upon the ground, wings aquiver. He bent his head respectfully. “I would have attacked, would have slain those I could, but my instructions were specific. Watch, only, and return with word.”

The Perytons snorted and pawed the ground with clawed, twisted, nearly human hands. They spread their wings with a sound like banners unfurling. Beneath the trees, Jezi-Baba sneered and ground her stone teeth.

“You are useless,” the larger Strigae said, black eyes like buttons. “You were seen. And now you have freely told what you swore to keep secret.”

Lucan could not breathe. “But…you compelled me. You serve Ty’Lis as well.”

The Strigae cawed loudly and looked to the Perytons. First one, then the other, turned their backs, spread their wings, and took to the air.

“No,” the Jaculus pleaded. “No, wait. I…I am loyal. I did as I was told.”

“You are weak,” a voice said, like the whisper of the leaves, and Lucan looked amongst the trees to see Jezi-Baba merging with the bark of a tall, twisted oak. Then she was gone.

The birds began to laugh.

The Jaculus screamed as they closed in around him, beating him with their wings and pecking him, beaks piercing his flesh.

Sleep. Just the thought of it had an allure that Oliver would never have imagined possible. In all his life he had never been so exhausted. His muscles ached as though he’d been pummeled by a prizefighter, arms and legs and back and abdomen all stiff and sore. His eyes burned and his head felt stuffed with cotton, like the worst hangover he’d ever had, except he hadn’t taken a drink.

But he could have used one.

It was mid-afternoon on this side of the Veil. Twillig’s Gorge had obviously not been hospitable to visitors of late, and so there were plenty of vacancies at the inn. Coyote was staying there, and had been for weeks. Apparently his idea of hiding from the Myth Hunters had been to hole up in a place they would inevitably look, but someplace they could not arrive unannounced. Very few beings could approach Twillig’s Gorge without notice. According to Kitsune, Coyote was a master of vanishing when trouble began. Such was the way with troublemakers.

Frost had a quiet conversation with Coyote while the innkeeper-a voluminously fat man with a shaved head and a thick beard-supplied the rest of them with keys. Blue Jay, Kitsune, and Oliver were given rooms next to one another on the third floor, facing north. Frost asked only that he be allowed to rest in the inn’s cold storage and the innkeeper was happy to oblige, for a fee.

At the bottom of the stairs, out of earshot of the innkeeper, Frost addressed them.

“There’s a tavern here at the inn,” he said. “Coyote tells me it’s empty this time of day. Go upstairs and wash. Rest a while. Coyote has sent for clean, dry clothes for all of you. But I’m afraid we cannot sleep yet. We must leave here in the morning, and that means that our planning must begin now. We’ll meet in the tavern in an hour, with any Borderkind in the Gorge who are willing to speak with us.”

Oliver followed Blue Jay and Kitsune up the stairs without a word. He was too tired for questions and just the thought of a bed and a shower drove him on. The inn was stone and wood on the inside as well as out, like some ancient castle. The stairs wound up through the heart of the place. As he made his way up, admiring the tapestries on the walls, he thought of his father. The old man would have loved this place. It was just his style.

But the old man was dead.

Blue Jay had the nearest room, right at the top of the stairs. His clothes were soaked through, and at some point he’d torn the leg of his jeans. He nodded once before disappearing into his room, looking genuinely haggard.

The second room was Oliver’s, while the third, at the end of the hall, had been given to Kitsune. As he stopped at his door, she smiled at him and wrinkled her nose.

“It appears we both could use a bath,” she said lightly, jade eyes sparkling. Her hood was thrown back.

“Do I stink that much?”

Kitsune nodded gravely. “Oh, yes. Terribly.” Then she leaned in toward him and kissed his temple. “Not to worry, Oliver. We’ll sleep well tonight in soft beds with softer pillows. We deserve one pleasant night before we head into the lion’s den.”

The smell of her, so close, was intoxicating: cinnamon and mint, and something else he could not identify.

She held his gaze and one corner of her mouth lifted in mischief, then she turned and went to the door of her room, humming something under her breath, her fur cloak swaying around her.

Oliver watched her until she went inside.

Then he turned the key, and the door swung open, not quite straight in its frame. The room was simply appointed with a wide, sturdy bed upon which lay a thick, floral comforter and a pile of goose down pillows. There was a washbasin on a bureau beside the tall window, and at first he was disappointed, thinking that would be the closest he could come to a bath. But through a narrow door on the other side of the room he found a bathroom complete with claw-foot tub. There was no showerhead, but a bath would do fine. In fact, he thought a bath was just what he needed.

When he had peeled off his damp, filthy clothes, and at last slid down into the hot water and began to run the soap over his body, he could have wept.

He thought of Kitsune’s mischievous grin and her marvelous scent, and a flash of guilt went through him. As alluring as she was, and as much as she flirted with him, he couldn’t allow himself to become entranced by Kitsune. He had begun to cherish her companionship, but-more and more-his mind turned back to Julianna.

When he had first crossed through the Veil, his thoughts had been so overwhelmed with astonishment-and later, as the dangers became clear, with anxiety-that Julianna was just one part of the jumble of thoughts and emotions and fears swirling in his head. But with each passing day his longing for her grew. He felt the distance between them more keenly than ever now, here in this bizarre, hidden village.

What would Julianna have thought of the place?

Oliver thought she would have coped perfectly well. All her life, she had been the one who could adapt to her surroundings; the one without fear of change. How could he not have fallen in love with her, trapped as he was by his inability to escape his father’s expectations?

He had no memory of their first meeting-which was really no surprise, considering they must have been toddlers at the time-but Oliver’s recollection of the first time he had ever really noticed Julianna was incredibly vivid.

Every summer, Bascombe amp; Cox held a picnic at Beacon Point Park for all of their employees. From Max Bascombe, the most senior of senior partners, to Sam Small in the mailroom, every member of the law firm’s staff would attend, with spouses and children in tow. Beacon Point Park overlooked the ocean, and several crumbling concrete staircases led down the breakwater to a private beach, where the picnickers would toss Frisbees or play volleyball, and the brave might take a brief dip in the cold northern waters.

At the end of a rocky promontory stood the lighthouse that gave the park its name. There was no prettier spot in all of Wessex County.

When not in the water, the kids would ramble across the green lawn of the park, playing soccer or Frisbee, while the grownups fired up half a dozen barbecue grills. The firm could have afforded to have the whole thing catered, but Max Bascombe liked to make a big show of the generals cooking for the troops. They ate at picnic tables under the shade trees that surrounded the open lawn. The children, in the moments when they paid any attention at all to the adults, were always greatly amused by the rare spectacle of their parents becoming pleasantly inebriated.

Oliver’s memory of these summer picnics was idyllic. He was sure there had been incidents and arguments worthy of scandal, perhaps when some lawyer got a little too drunk for his own good, but he could not remember any of them. With his father playing host and chief cook, he and Collette had been free of his usual stern regard; free to simply be children, instead of Max Bascombe’s children.

In retrospect, he knew that Julianna had always been pretty. But she had been quiet and serious, so that-even though they were in school together, and saw one another at the summer picnics, and perhaps even passed the ball to one another in those haphazard Beacon Point Park soccer games-to him she was just another girl.

In late July, the month before high school began, that changed.

In the midst of the ritual of the Bascombe amp; Cox summer picnic, Oliver and several of the other boys-many of whom he saw only once a year, as their families did not live in Kitteridge-were playing catch with a Nerf football in the ocean. They dove over waves, passing the sodden ball back and forth, salt water splashing in their faces.

Oliver had just tossed the blue-and-orange Nerf to Danny Hilliard, blinking salt from his eyes. He blinked hard and reached up to rub them, to clear his vision. A strong wave staggered him, and as he got his footing again he turned.

As he opened his eyes, he saw motion out on the jetty. Someone was out there, moving from rock to rock, out past the lighthouse. It took him a moment to recognize the long, wavy, auburn hair; to realize that it was Julianna Whitney out there on the promontory. In a purple bikini top and cutoff denim shorts, and barefoot, she leaped so lightly across the gaps in the rocks that she seemed to be dancing.

Captured by her grace, and by the aura of loneliness that seemed to encircle her, Oliver watched as the slender girl made her way all the way to the huge rock that thrust up at the end of the jetty. The waves crashed against it, sprayed up into the air, and rained down upon it.

Julianna threw her arms back as a crashing wave soaked her. The droplets of ocean water sparkled with prismatic color. Even from that distance, Oliver felt sure he could hear her laughing. For a moment he envied her, so unafraid to be out there on her own.

Then she stepped to the edge of the rock and dove in.

Oliver held his breath in fascination as the waves continued to roll in. He waited for her to come up, and when she did, pushing the damp curtain of her hair away from her eyes, he smiled to himself and started to wade out toward her. There was such abandon in this girl-the girl he’d barely noticed before-that he wanted to be a part of that.

He’d gotten three steps when the waterlogged Nerf struck him in the back of the head, then plopped into the ocean, bobbing on the waves. Laughter erupted, and Oliver turned and picked up the ball, trying to figure out which of the guys was responsible so that he could unleash watery vengeance.

He hadn’t spoken to Julianna that day, or any other day that summer.

But he had never forgotten how she had looked, there on the very tip of the jetty, in the spray of the ocean, or the way he’d held his breath when she’d dived into the waves.

Even now, he held the memory-that image of the thirteen-year-old Julianna-close in his mind. Somehow, it felt to him like a tether to home-like no matter how far he roamed, as long as he could hold on to moments like that, he could still hope to return to Julianna one day.

With every day that passed, he regretted even more the hesitation he had felt on the night before they would have been married. When his father was still alive, he would have blamed the old man for making him so discontent with his life that he doubted even what he felt for Julianna. But, as much of a bastard as Max Bascombe had been, Oliver knew the blame lay with himself. He’d never had the courage that Julianna had.

Crossing the Veil had set him free. He felt different, here: more confident, more himself, than ever before.

But the last time he had spoken to Julianna, her voice had been filled with hurt and doubt and hesitation. His disappearance had given her reason to feel all of those things, and he longed, now, for the opportunity to make it up to her. He had to find Collette first, to get his sister back safely. And he had to convince the monarchs of the Two Kingdoms to grant him a reprieve, to let him prove himself. With every day, he was moving further away from Julianna.

But he felt closer to her than ever before.

For the first time in his life, he felt as if he might be worthy of her.