Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (112 page)

In the morning the fire was out but the sun warmed the roof of the little treehouse and the day outside was fine. Looking down he saw something strange, a long skein of knitted wool the color of blackberry wine, running up and away over the hills and down into the great forest beyond. It was neither the fork to the left, nor the fork to the right, but a road in-between.

“I have knit your road, Jack. The one you must follow, the final length of your journey that will take you to your destination.”

“And what if I don’t know what that destination is anymore?”

“Follow the road and it will find you. That’s how destinations are.”

After a breakfast of berries and nuts and warm bread sweet with new butter, he made his way back down the stairs and took his first faltering step onto the blackberry path. It was knit tight to last and would serve him well. He turned back once more before he left the Owl Woman. “How do I know when I’ve arrived, if I don’t know what it is I seek?”

“You move forward and you hope. That is all anyone needs Jack, a path and some hope for their pocket. You have both those things now. Just don’t look too long into the abyss when you find it, for if you gaze overlong you will end up walking amongst the dead, a ghost stuck between realms.”

The Owl Woman kissed him on his forehead and it felt like a benediction, something warm in his veins to take with him and boost his courage when it faltered. Then she plucked a feather from her own wing, leaving a bead of blood like a ruby on the bare spot left behind.

“The feather is for you. It will summon help when you need it most.”

“How will I know when I need it most?”

“You just will.”

He looked back only once, and found she was standing still, gold eyes watching him go. She raised a wing in farewell and Jack raised his hand in kind and then on he went, down the hill into the forest’s edge.

He was not alone on the road in the days that followed, for there were other wanderers: vagabonds, urchins, wayfarers, medicine men, tricksters, pig herders and gypsies, beggars and seers. Some he avoided, with others he shared their fires and food, giving of his own small store of what he had picked or captured that day. The road grew thinner as he went until there were days when he had to search high and low for a thread snagged in a tree, or a bit of blackberry wine fluff caught on a thistle. But always, if he looked hard enough, he would find a trace of it.

As the autumn passed, with its fires and fallen leaves, its frosts and deep blue skies, the travelers thinned on the road until those left walked with their heads down, muffled in wool and furs, with only a grunt in greeting to those they passed, if that much. The creatures of the woods had gone into their burrows and holes, their nests up high or to the depths of ponds that would soon solidify into ice. Until one afternoon, as the first flakes of snow were dancing light on the air, Jack realized he and Aengus had not seen another soul all day. The woods surrounding them were grey and old, the trunks of the trees stunted and gnarled, reaching up from boggy ground like grasping claws waiting to pull a boy and his dog down.

This must be the November Wood that the gypsies had told him about after he had sought their advice on finding the Crooked Man. One old woman, who reminded him of someone in his life before, had spoken these words to him.

“Such as is dark souls seeks a dark place. I hear he winters in the November Wood, deep in its heart, where neither man nor boy should like to find himself after the frosts come down.”

The woman’s words echoed as a warning now, as dark, tangly underbrush tore at his clothes, the bog, only partially frozen, sucking at his boots. Discouragement seemed to rise in the greenish-grey mists that the ground exhaled and sank straight into his bones and heart. But he kept going, Aengus plodding wearily at his side, the ground so soft and nasty in spots that he had to lift the dog up and sling him around his neck so that they might continue on.

Somewhere in the late afternoon as the light was fading into a thick and disturbing twilight, they came to the edge of a sluggishly-flowing stream, gelid with ice at its edges. It was just wide enough that Jack did not see how they could cross it. He was tired, so tired and would have stopped for the night and slept right there, using the thick, wet moss for a mattress, except he knew that would be a mistake that could kill both him and Aengus.

He felt something move in his bag just then, and wondered if a mouse had crawled in last night while he and Aengus slept. He opened the flap, his heart dipping a little as he saw the proof of how little food they had left. But then he saw a small glowing light in the corner of the bag and reached in to grasp it and pull it out. It was the thread spun by the woman he had met so long ago, the ageless beauty who had hidden in the sharp exterior of the crone, though perhaps it had been the other way round for all he knew—women could be tricky like that. The thread glowed with a strange light, blue as frost under the moon, and it moved as though it knew the way forward, even if he did not.

He stepped to the river’s edge, understanding now what its purpose was. He threw the thread out over the dark water. It flew high, light sparking all along its length and then began to weave itself in the very air, crossing and re-crossing and then fastening itself tight to a rock upon the other side. It had built a narrow bridge by which he could cross the river.

“Wait here for me, Aengus. I have to do this part alone.” How he knew this he could not say, only that it was a knowing without doubt or hesitation, something bone deep. “I will come back for you as soon as I’m done.” This last was said rather shakily, for he understood the Crooked Man waited for him on the other side of the bridge’s span. He must face him alone, or not at all.

Aengus gave him a look of profound betrayal and turned his back on Jack before finding a more stable patch of moss to lie down upon. Curled up around his grievance, the dog was feigning sleep when Jack looked back from the start of the bridge. He took a deep breath and stepped out onto the thread.

It held tight under his feet, strong as wood but swaying slightly. He crossed the river quickly, arriving on the other side to find that winter had been in possession longer here, for snow hid the bleak brown grass, and gathered deep on the withered arms of the trees. The moon was high, a fingernail slice of cold and the hills, hummocked with snow, breathed out chill air that shimmered like diamonds.

He was so still that at first Jack’s eye slid past him, thinking he was just another black-boughed tree, but something pulled his eye back and he realized here he was at last, the man he had sought for so long now that he had gone from a soft-cheeked boy to one with a whiskered jaw and broad shoulders in the interim.

“Hello, Jack,” said the Crooked Man, his voice no more than a hissing of leaves moving on the forest floor, but crawling straight into Jack’s spine nevertheless.

“Hello,” Jack said, with an arrow in his own voice, directed right at the dark shape ahead of him, light snow outlining his broad-brimmed hat, his satchel, his long and terrible form. The only response was a thin-lipped smile, revealing a dark hole, a gaping wound in the white night.

Jack stepped toward the Crooked Man, fear gripping his insides like an ague, but knowing this was what he had come for and he could not hesitate, could not let the man smell the fear that twisted his guts.

“You stole something from me long ago. I have come to retrieve it.”

“You want your dreams, boy?” The hissing of his voice was less like leaves now and more like a serpent coiling in dry straw. “Come and take them, if you dare.”

Jack stepped forward again, then stopped, for the Crooked Man’s shape shifted, slowly, almost imperceptible at first, like an atmospheric disturbance, felt long before it was seen. And for one second he was a border creature, neither man nor animal. And Jack knew he had to do something fast, before it was too late and he was prey. Weaponless, a human boy was a fragile creature, all delicate head and yards of soft permeable skin. He grasped the feather from the Owl Woman’s wing tight in his hand, for he had need of help now as he had never needed it before.

A wolf appeared on the edge of the forest to Jack’s right—a big male, grey as smoke drifting through the dark wood. His eyes were the color of stone, cold and prickling as frost on Jack’s face.

There was a wolf at his back and now a wolf in front of him, for the Crooked Man had fully changed into a wolf as black as night. Jack felt as though every inch of him were exposed, no more than blood and frail bone to be left behind for the scouring winter winds. However, he did not feel menace from the wolf now trotting out from the forest’s edge, rather a strange pulling sensation. Jack stepped backward carefully, away from the snarling black coil of razor-sharp teeth and springing muscle in front of him and closer to the smoke-colored male who was now only feet away. If this was what the feather had summoned, then he would take its help gladly.

Still he shook so that his teeth chattered against each other. The universe had boiled itself down to this moment because this was life at its most basic—blood and bone and fang and fur, whose belly was exposed first, who staggered first and gave over his throat for the kill. He understood suddenly why the wolf stood patiently there, even if he did not understand how a feather could summon a wild beast. He could do it, could slip into the skin of a wild thing, become that thing, and take it over, until he no longer needed the shield of its fur and fangs. He could become it, but he would lose something of himself in the process. It was inevitable that it should be so. Still, he did not see how else to live through the next few minutes. He could not fight the wolf as a boy. He could only fight him wolf to wolf. He grasped the feather tightly in his hand and let go of himself in a way that he had never known a boy could.

At first he thought he had been wrong, for he lost his vision and was swept with a wave of pain so vast he really believed he was about to die. Was he lost in the jump, falling even now into an abyss from which he would not be able to deliver himself? Had this been the Crooked Man’s plan all along?

He landed with a thump that rattled his bones down to their marrow. His sight returned, not in the form he was familiar with but a different kind of seeing, low to the ground, a seeing that took in the slightest stir of wind in the shrubbery, the twitch of movement that told of prey, a scratch on bark, moss turned over by a fleeing paw. A seeing that demanded swift movement, and a terrible stillness like nothing he had ever known as a boy.

The black wolf sprang on him at once, before he had time to fully fit to the contours of his new being, tackling him to the ground in a fury of claw and tooth and muscle that felt like a strangling vine, thick with hatred and venom. Death, he realized could come swift in this moment.

Movement was instinctive, movement was life, and so he moved: twisting, writhing, fangs snapping, meeting air that tasted of pine and earth, meeting fur and coiling serpent-slippery muscle. Meeting bone, tasting marrow, feeling the give and roll of your own hide and sliding, ripping away from the enemy, even the pain a strange form of joy, because it spurred your own violence, your own blood hunger. It was a state of being in which the senses crossed over, blended and were not one distinct from any other.

He felt the burning rake of claws gain purchase in his side and then rip out, freeing blood to flow. The black wolf was terribly strong, and Jack knew he would not have more than a fleeting chance to best him. He would have to hope he didn’t die before that chance showed itself.

Then the black wolf had him down, flipped over on his back, and the pain in his side was like fire scything his bones from his hide. This was how death came then, swift and under a low, dark sky, the air cold as an icy razor. Suddenly the black wolf whimpered low in his throat and pulled himself out of the fight with a great shudder of his stinking hide. Jack was thrown, rolling over and up, finding his paws sinking into the boggy ground. He looked through the blood haze that clouded his vision to see what had happened, thinking perhaps he had wounded the black wolf more profoundly than seemed possible.

It was as clear as pawprints in the snow that this was not the case. The black wolf looked relatively unharmed but was afraid, lips curled up, baring his fangs, the line of fur down his back stiff as quills. He was looking at the flower that Muireann had given Jack at their parting. It must have been loosed from his pocket when his clothes fell away from his wolf body. He didn’t understand what it was about the flower that could possibly be scaring the black wolf. It gave him a chance though, and chance by its very nature had to be seized. So he took the precious fear of the black wolf and righted himself, feeling the slippery letting of blood into fur as he moved.

He stood straight and looked into the black wolf’s eyes. They were silver like coins, like the moon, both fathomless and depthless. They stood thus, the wind blowing over and through them and a strange knowing passed between, a language without words, one of instinct and marrow, one that was so old it had been born along with the wind and the seas. It came into his mind in pictures, shadow paintings like drawings on a cave wall seen only by firelight. The flower was Muireann’s life, its essence held there within the undying petals, a final gift to him, a cloak of protection and love. He knew this in an instinctual way, just as he now knew that how a raven flew in the wind told of his fortunes in the hunt and that when the ice groaned in winter it was asking for snow to come down and lay its blanket of comfort over it. He knew that the land itself spoke in varying tempers, soft, fluting words for the green of spring, hard and wrath-filled for great cold. Just as he knew that now was his moment to strike, when the black wolf was, for just a moment, afraid.

He sprang and attacked all in one movement, rage flowing like boiling mercury through his blood. When you only had one shot you went for the throat, because it was the only guarantee of death. He bit hard, teeth clamping down, piercing, tasting the hot rush of blood, cartilage and life on his tongue. It was thick and sweet and salt, it was the taste of victory, it was the taste of life. He must not let go, must not allow the Crooked Man to slip away, to haunt his life once again.