Chapter 21: The Cloak

Sasha was using a damp rag to clean the grime from his arms and legs, every thick, taut, sinewy muscle; calves like chiseled boxes, and Lark couldn’t—gods help him, he could not focus on anything else.

He was discreet, of course. It was dark, Aine was asleep against his side. He and Sasha were seated across the campfire from each other; every time those piercing white eyes flicked to him, his flicked to the fire doubly quick.

Fascinating stuff, fire. Such depth of emotion in flames. Longing. Yearning. The smoke was swelling like a robust chest might swell with a deep—

When Sasha lifted his sackcloth shirt a few inches to scrub at more abs than Lark had collectively seen in his life, tight enough to bounce a coin, Lark tapped out.

He shrugged off his doublet, eased it under Aine’s head. “Nature calls,” he broke the silence—grotesquely silent, by the way—to announce.

Sasha looked up. Piercing and pretty. “Stay upwind,” he gruffed. “Don’t cross any circles.”

Did he have to demand so huskily—

No. No more.

Lark parroted Sasha’s demand back in a pitchy, nagging tone, something he hadn’t done since pre–pubescence, then padded deeper into the trees.

“You are a wreck,” Blanche piped up from his pocket. “How did you let it get this severe?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, “but I’m ending it here.”

“Bonne chance.” Good luck.

They had set up camp so close to the fairy wood and all the vexatious fairy circles that lined it because the area was green and clear of monsters. The road, a few miles off, was black and crawling with them.

With Aine in their party, they had to tread carefully. Literally. There were no metal boots small enough to fit her. No longer could they afford to bump into infected ettins, step into packs of bubblers, or stumble upon any other unspeakable horrors.

Speaking of unspeakability—the silent treatment. It had started after Lark posed what he considered to be a very logical question: why, if Sasha could kick down the door, hadn’t he escaped sooner?

Really stumped Sasha; he’d hardly spoken since. Maybe the odd command—faster Lark, go Lark, stop Lark, quiet Lark, faster Lark—but certainly no compound sentences.

He wasn’t engaging with Aine either. She’d been peering at him over Lark’s shoulder as they walked, shsh’ing and shha’ing. No reaction, not even a second glance.

Honestly, fair. Getting saddled with a runaway clown (who apparently wanted to bop balloons—mortifying development) and a child (who, really, was just the sweetest thing—no complaints) probably wasn’t part of Sasha’s life plan.

Or maybe he needed time. Four weeks in a cell had to be dehumanizing.

She said you were safe.

What on earth had he meant by that?

Lark paused upon realizing he was about to step right into a circle. The blighters had marked it with brown-capped mushrooms, almost indistinguishable from the scantily moonlit grass.

Close one, he thought. How far had he wandered? And what, exactly, was ‘upwind?’ Sounded like a sailing thing. He didn’t speak sailor.

With a shrug, he unbuttoned his trousers and went about answering nature’s call. Halfway through, he glanced over at the circle. Feeling spiteful, he redirected his stream.

He closed his eyes, let out a contented sigh. Take that, tinker twits.

As he buttoned and washed up, leaves rustled overhead. That was all the warning he received before a long, dark figure swung silent and serpentine from the branches.

They were suspended by their legs, dressed in petrified wood and a dark cowl. Still, the visible half of their face was eye-level, and Lark would recognize it anywhere.

He opened his mouth to shout. A hard, solid hand covered it, stuffed the shout back in.

“Sadly, I’m not here to kill you,” Nathair whispered. “Not a sound. Understood?”

Lark nodded. As soon as the hand lifted, because he wasn’t stupid, he turned to run. Nathair caught him in a tight, pendulum chokehold that time, again muffling his voice.

“I am here to warn you,” Nathair hissed, spinning them back round towards the circle. “Or would you prefer I throw you to the puddle of pixies you just pissed on?”

Lark jerked, nose-breath heavy and labored. The hold had no give whatsoever. Serpentine. He hated—hated, hated, hated snakes. His mind went blank.

They remained grossly cocooned, snake and mouse, while Nathair spoke.

“You are being hunted,” he said, low in the ear. His arms and chest were a shrinking wooden vice. “Elven archers. Dozens of them. Do you know how to finish off an Abomination?”

The hand around Lark’s mouth fractionally released. “Letgo,” he gasped.

“Pierce its heart, yes. You can you guess, then, what the archers have been tasked to do with your Abomination. On sight, I might add.”

“Why—helping us?”

“What’s the fun in telling you that?”

Lark jerked again. “Nathair—”

“They’re closing in as we speak. All angles. The only way out is through.” Nathair unraveled, cackling softly, and gave Lark a swinging shove towards camp, so far away. “Into the woods you go—say hello to the scraplings for me!”

༻❁༺

After several frantic wrong turns, Lark burst from the thicket, out of breath, wild-eyed. Sasha was on his feet in an instant. Aine sat and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“What—” Sasha stopped, stupidly flickable nose scrunching. “You smell like—”

“He found us,” Lark puffed, hurrying to coax Aine up. She was fussy now that she was awake; it didn’t help that they hadn’t eaten. “I know, I know. You can sleep on—”

She started to cry, jagged. Sasha winced. Lark gathered her kicking into both arms, wrangled her to his chest. He took a backwards step, another, back, back.

His heel brushed a fairy circle at the edge of the grassy clearing, any one of them serving as an entrance to the wood, a one-way ticket to the fairy realm, or worse.

The only way out is through.

Sasha’s eyes widened. He rushed forward. “Don’t.”

“We’re found,” Lark repeated, threatening with another half-step. Already he could feel the pull, a strong tugging sensation on the backs of his boots. “Elven archers. They don’t miss.”

“I can handle it.” Sasha spoke slowly, deliberately, same as that ‘okay’ in the dungeons. Didn’t matter. He didn’t know it wasn’t. “Whatever it is—whatever Nathair put in your head, I can keep us safe.”

“You’re in rags, Sasha. One arrow—”

“Listen to me, Lark: you do not know where that circle will take—”

Aine shrilled harder. Sasha winced again. A twig snapped somewhere, either under his boot or an enemy’s. Lark, so fresh from the snake’s coil, needed no further confirmation.

Before Sasha could lunge and catch him, he took his last step. Both feet in.

And all of a sudden, both feet were gone. Sasha’s worried face was gone. All of it: Aine in Lark’s arms, his arms, everything—the world, gone. His corporeal form scattered, rearranged. He became a drop of water falling backwards into a still pond.

The pond was thick. The veil was thick. Gelatinous. Just a drop of water, he plunged and stretched through it slowly; could have taken seconds, days, years. He didn’t know. What was time to a drop of water?

The circle hurled him, corporeal again, out like a bad taste on the other side. The other side of what? He landed on his back. Somewhere soft. Plush grass. Somewhere bright. The sun shouldn’t be—

Pressure on his lungs. Coil. Snakes.

Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t open his eyes yet; it was too bright. Vibrating fingers, his own, tried undoing the laces of his corset, but the bow became a knot.

“B-Blanche,” he gargled.

“Calm down,” she directed near his ear. “He has you.”

Then stronger hands, callused hands, hot-palmed hands that felt safe guided Lark’s away. The corset ripped down the middle. He sucked in a shuddering lungful of crisp, crisp air.

“Why do you still wear this?” a disapproving voice asked, close, above. Lark knew that voice, but something was missing…

Aine.

He sat up and opened his eyes all at once. Sunlight blinded him and he knocked foreheads with a skull much harder than his own—no small feat.

The voice grunted in irritation, still terribly close. Lark blinked the brightness away. Because he knew that grunt, he was prepared to meet a pair of white eyes. Grey lips.

When he instead found himself staring into a pair of brown eyes, turned to maple syrup in the light, he temporarily lost what remained of his marbles. Rosy lips.

He pawed the stranger’s face, meriting an angrier grunt, and hurriedly scunched away on the soft ground until he bumped into something; it giggled and bumped him back.

He scooped it up like a parcel, held it close. “Thereyouare,” he breathed.

Aine wriggled up the tunnel of his embrace, excitedly chattering a whirlwind of non-words. Needed to teach her some real ones. She was trying to give him something.

He mustered the strength to accept the item, process it (small, copper, round), and sound like he wasn’t mid-crisis. Taxing business, going from drop of water to person.

“A compass,” he hoarsely admired, trying to give it back. Aine shook her head. “Ah, for me? Thank you. I’ll cherish it forever.”

“She had that when I found her,” the familiar, unfamiliar voice grumbled, farther now. “I…we’ve been waiting on you.”

Lark went rigid. He tore his gaze from Aine’s toothless smile to the brown-eyed stranger—man who had ripped off his corset, who was now sitting half-sprawled in the grass a short distance away.

The man wore Sasha’s face, sure: same shape, angularity, symmetry, stubble, sulkitude…yet his skin wasn’t a grey-purple patchwork of un-life. It was lily-fair, smooth. Like porcelain. There was a red splotch on the cheek Lark had pawed.

The teeth. That was what was missing; the subtle, endearing rasp of too-big fangs. Only the man’s canines were sharp. Sharp. As in, they’d been filed that way.

Hair tamed, half-up, half-down. Round, blush fingernails. Blue veins. Dangly earrings.

“Human?” Lark spluttered, half-coherent. “Earrings?”

“Pixie prank. Already fading.” The man—Sasha brandished a pinky. The nail was half black. “I think I looked like this. Once.”

Lark covered Aine’s ears. “Shit, Sasha.” He uncovered. She made an annoyed pthhbbt sound. “Are you all right?”

The man—Sasha shrugged, looked aside. Self-conscious. “Can’t smell as good.”

Now, Lark knew of the Sea Wolf, the self-proclaimed Killer Whale (silly, silly name). After the party, he pieced together that Sasha and the Whale were the same person.

But Lark never saw the Whale in person; that mess went down during off-season. Had he known the man looked like that, he might’ve donned flippers and called himself a seal.

Stop staring. Obviously, Sasha didn’t remember who he was, otherwise he would have—at any point—said, ‘and also, I’m the Whale.’

He was likely going through an identity crisis of his own. Stop. Staring.

Lark cleared his throat, having to forcibly tug his attention away. Exposition, always a good distraction. Wait, where were they?

Grass, only it wasn’t grass but a carpet of lush, pillow-soft clovers. Thick trees, both gnarled and youthful, surrounded them, dappled in sunlight. No path in sight, just wild, untouched growth.

The circle must have plopped them in the middle of the wood, which wasn’t just unspoiled by the plague; the sky above was blue. No smog, no Bubble. A spotless, cloudless canvas for the afternoon sun.

Lark wasn’t too invested in nature, allergic to most of it, but he hadn’t seen a clear sky in so long that he almost shed a tear. Bees, butterflies, crickets. Birds chirping. Chimes he couldn’t see whispered on a perfectly temperate breeze.

“It’s beautiful,” he marveled, coming full-circle to meet brown eyes again. They were already on him. Had they been staring?

They diverted again. “So it is,” Sasha mumbled.

Poor guy didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Better throw him a bone. And get the show on the road, they couldn’t sit in the clovers forever.

“So, Aine gets a compass,” Lark summarized, “you get earrings, and I get nothing?”

“Shoes,” said Sasha, still mumbly.

“What?”

“Your shoes.”

Lark peered over Aine’s head at his own feet. His boots, clunky green things with high laces and thick metal soles, appeared just as they had before he stepped in the circle.

Only…

The laces of both had been tied as one, which would have made for a humiliating first step. He eased Aine off his lap, untied them, tied them rightfully. Fucking pixies.

Before his very eyes, guided by invisible hands, his neat bows unraveled and the laces once more bound his boots together.

“Oh, fu—float off!” He tried again, double-knotting that time. Same result. Worse, actually. Triple knots. “Son of a—hooligan.”

Aine trotted over to his boots, pointing at them accusingly. “Hoogan.”

Sasha inched closer, scarecrow-like. “Want me to try?”

Because Lark couldn’t handle the sight of Sasha doing anything in his dangly earrings right now, he nodded and laid flat to stare at the sky instead. Aine appeared overhead.

“Hooligan,” Lark tried.

“Hoogan,” she repeated.

“Hoo-li-gan.”

“Hoo-wi-gan.”

He smirked. “Now I have to know what yellow sounds like. Aine, can you say yellow?”

“Lellow,” she beamed with full conviction.

Sasha shifted Lark’s legs from his lap to the grass. “You’re f…” He hesitated when Aine peered back. “Facing trouble.”

Lark pushed himself up on his elbows with a frown, nearly fell back over when he saw the result of Sasha’s ‘help.’ Quadruple—quintuple—octuple knots.

“Ihatefairies,” he muttered.

“Hate!” Aine exclaimed, her perfect pronunciation serving as the blow that killed him. “Hate fairies!”

༻❁༺

Stumbling through an overgrown wood with your boots laced together was every bit as tedious, frustrating, and demoralizing as it sounded.

And yes, Lark tried taking them off. He tried tossing them away. In a fit of rage, he even seized the dagger from Sasha’s belt and tried to destroy them.

After his umpteenth fall, flat-faced every time, Sasha offered a ride. On his back. As if.

Wouldn’t have made sense, anyway. Lark wasn’t able to take more than inch-wide steps, so Sasha had to hold Aine. She looked like the bittiest little peapod in his big arms.

She grinned happily over his shoulder at Lark as they moved. Though they were on the move, they didn’t have a plan yet. Feed the child—that was the priority.

Okay, they were also using the compass. Trying. The directionals were off. Instead of N for north at the top, there was an R. The other three were just W’s.

R for right, Lark had guessed. W for…wrong?

They were currently heading rightwrong, almost full wrong, because the wood was too thick to reliably travel full right for any length of time.

Oh, and time. It flowed strangely: forwards, backwards, sideways, not at all. Lark caught the trees blowing out-of-sync with the wind more than once.

In some patches, it felt like broad day. In others, the middle of the night. They hadn’t been walking that long, two hours at most. Lastly, somehow, Lark wasn’t hungry yet.

Thinking about it made his head hurt, so he instead focused on teaching Aine some more words. He could only imagine how long she’d been in that tower to know so few.

“Aine, what’s your favorite color?” he asked.

She tilted her head into the crook of Sasha’s neck, confused. “Frit?”

“Fa-vo-rite. Favorite color. The one you like the most.” Lark poked his own nose. “Lark likes purple. Purple.”

“Loch,” she giggled. “Pupple.”

“And Aine?” he prompted, pointing at her. “What does she like?”

“Pupple.”

He snorted. “Are you saying that because you like purple or because I—”

Sasha stopped suddenly, causing Lark to trip over his boots and tumble sideways into some bushes. He poked his head up, irate; Sasha laid a half-clawed palm atop it, forcing it back down.

“Sa-sha,” Lark whined.

“Sh-sha!” Aine added.

“Quiet,” Shasha—Sasha shushed. He and Aine joined Lark in the bushes, staying low. “Look ahead.”

Lark squinted through the leaves. The patch ahead, home to a winding stream, was a dark one. There appeared to be no difference between sun and moon in the fae world, but the dim light shining upon the stream felt paler, colder. Moon-adjacent.

Three naked figures, blue-skinned, hunched, and a little too lanky, populated the water’s edge. Women. They appeared to be doing laundry, washing, scrubbing, wringing. They were weeping.

The weeping was very sad, but it was impossible for Lark to ignore the breasts; unusually long, we’re talking ankles, they’d been flung over the women’s shoulders so as not to get in the way. Awestruck, he slowly slid a hand over Aine’s eyes.

“I’ve read about this,” Sasha whispered, breath close enough to tickle ear. “Bean-nighe; nigheag bheag a bhroin.” 

“Bless you,” Lark whispered back. Sasha shot him a withering look. 

“‘Night washerwoman,’” he clarified. “The spirits of those who died in childbirth. If we’re quiet—” 

“Oi!” Before Sasha could finish with ‘they won’t force us to do laundry with them for all eternity,’ Lark shot up from the cover of the bushes. “That’s mine!”

He was pointing a finger at the laundress closest to them. On her lap, sudsed up with shimmery, spectral bubbles, sat a mossy green cloak.

She lifted her head. Her eyes—two large, empty, leaking holes—regarded Lark coolly. Then she raised a rail-thin arm and pointed right back.

Her webbed finger curled, beckoning. It wrenched him, stiff as a broom, out of the brush.