DEER FLIGHT

Aliette de Bodard

Illustrated by Stefan Olsen

Aliette de Bodard lives in Paris, France, where she works as a Computer Engineer. In her spare time she writes speculative fiction inspired by her love of history and mythology. Her short stories have sold to Abyss & Apex, Writers of the Future and other publications (visit her website at aliettedebodard.com for more information). ‘Deer Flight’ was inspired by the numerous fairy tales Aliette read during her childhood.

For fifteen years after his wife found her doe-skin under the floorboards and ran away, Lesper waited for her to come back. He would go from pool to pool in the dark places of the forest, and watch the deer herds gather, hoping one of them would turn human. Hoping it would be her, smiling at him, telling him she had been wrong to return to the forest. He knew it was foolishness, but still he waited.

On the third day of the fifteenth year, he found a lone doe-girl in human shape near the edge of the forest, slumped against a tree. She was breathing hard, and her discarded doe-skin lay at her feet.

She was not Tarra. For a while he did not know what to say. He had hoped, so much, that it might be his wife, but the girl before him was far younger. And so different.

She raised her eyes, and saw him. Huge almond eyes bored into him as if searching his soul. She was utterly naked; her human skin was brown, gleaming with russet reflections, and he knew it would be soft and pliant under his fingers, knew she would smell musky, of the herd, and of the earth with its mantle of fallen leaves.

“Lesper,” she said. “Sanctuary—I claim sanctuary.”

“From whom?” he asked, still trying to recover from the shock of seeing one of her kind.

Her mouth stretched in a bitter smile. “Hunters. I have shaken them off, for now.” She focused on him for the first time. “I am sorry for your loss.”

He started to say he had not lost anything, and then it occurred to him she had known his name, and where his house was. “What do you mean?” he asked. But her head had fallen back against the trunk, and her chest barely moved.

He carried her to his house, through the last trees of the forest. Her doe-skin lay on his shoulder, tingling with magic. She weighed little, a thing of dappled light and endless afternoons by the pool. The horn bracelets on her arms were cold at first, and then warmed against his skin. Her legs were crisscrossed with red weals. Running through brambles, he guessed, and wondered how long they had before the hunters, whoever they were, caught up with them.

No use worrying. His wife had fled, and years at the edge of the forest had dulled his magic. Lesper was as defenceless as the girl he had in his arms, a greying wizard with little magic of his own, and no knowledge of weapons.

Once in his house, he laid her on the bed, her doe-skin by her side. Then he rummaged through the chests, and found his old book of magic. He opened it to a healing spell, stared at the faded, alien words on the page. They tasted sour in his mouth as he pronounced them: it took him three tries before he managed to get the spell to work.

Some wizard, he thought, wryly amused, watching the lacerations on the legs knit together. Wustan, his former liege, would have laughed at such a feeble healing. He felt light-headed, as if his own veins were open, pouring blood on the floor. A healing always took its toll out of the wizard’s strength, but his unfamiliarity with the spell meant it was much worse than usual.

He reached, shakily, for a chair, pulled it near the bed, and waited.

After a while she opened her eyes. He saw her tense at the unfamiliarity of the surroundings. Her whole body straightened as if she wanted to wrap the doe-skin around her, shape-change into a doe, and leap back into the forest.

“Lesper,” she said, at last, sinking back against the pillow.

“You are safe,” he said. “For now.”

She nodded. “My name is Naraya. I owe you—”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just tell me who they are, and why they hunt you. And why you should share my loss.”

Her eyes grew distant, as if she were remembering the depths of the forest, and the herd she had left behind. “They came upon us at dawn. Near the pool where we take off our skins and bathe. We scattered—we thought if we went far enough into the forest we would lose them. I ran—it hurt so much, my legs were burning, I could not think of anything else but escape. I—” The eyes focused on him again. “Lesper, I’m sorry. They killed Tarra.”

Her grief, her weariness, were audible. “Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t have answers. I only saw hounds, and horsemen, coming into our secret place as if all the wards meant nothing to them.”

“And Tarra?”

Her face froze, as if she were seeking words of comfort. “Tarra—Tarra wanted to come back to you. She had told us; we knew it would be one of her last baths with us. Gods,” she said, closing her eyes, “how she laughed as she discarded her skin and took her human shape. I—They shot an arrow, and it hit her in the back.”

He thought of Tarra, of her hair, carelessly tossed back as she stood before the pool. Of her gone, and fifteen years of waiting reduced to ashes.

“I have to see her.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Naraya said. “They knew where the pool was. If you go there they will find you.”

“I need to see her,” he repeated.

“You did love her,” Naraya said at last. “For all that you stole her skin in the first place.”

I stole her skin as she bathed by that pool because I saw her, and knew she had to be mine. I realised that if I could prevent her from changing shapes she would not run away. And later I fell in love. He knew Naraya would not understand.

“It changes nothing,” Naraya said. “It is folly, to go back to that place.”

“You do not know who hunts you.”

Her eyes were wary, those of a doe before it bolts. “No.”

“They have found your secret place. They have followed you through the breadth of the wood. What makes you think you are safe here?”

“You are a wizard,” she said, with such hunger in her voice that he felt ashamed of what he had sunk to.

“I am poor protection against your hunters, especially if I do not know what spells they use, and where they come from. They may have left something by the pool. And,” he said, “I was told that the place could not be found twice in the same way.” I could not find it. I was lost for fifteen years in the forest, listening to its voice, but hearing nothing.

“They may know all the ways.” Naraya did not speak for a while, watched him, with what seemed like pity to him. “For your healing, then. And we will not tarry there.”

“No. You should rest now,” he added.

“We are both tired.”

Yes, we are. But he did not move. He watched her until the huge eyes closed, and she breathed evenly, abandoning herself to sleep.

The horn bracelets on her wrists caught the light. On impulse, he reached out, touched them. They tingled with magic. Like everything of hers, most likely; like her tunic, like the doe-skin on the bed. He laid his hand on the skin, let its magic rise in him, speaking of another time, a time when he had walked through the forest, losing himself in its song, and had seen otherworldly women bathing in a pool that should not have been there.

He slept on the floor near the hearth that night, and dreamt of deer running through the forest, russet shadows soon swallowed by the trees. And the hunters came, casting their darkness over his little world; the hunters came, bearing bows and barbed arrows, and they laughed at his pain.

He gave Naraya some of his wife’s clothes, and blinked back tears when he saw her: her hair held in place by his wife’s horn hairpins, the russet, delicate oval of her face. She moved within the house with hunger in her eyes, encompassing everything new to her, devouring human things with her gaze.

“I have dreamt my whole life of entering one of your dwellings,” she said, when he grew curious.

Her existence was the forest and the herd and the pool; was it any wonder that just as Lesper dreamt of losing himself under the trees, she too dreamt of something beyond her reach?

Naraya wrapped her doe-skin around her shoulders, tied the ends so it would not fall. “Shall we go?”

He nodded, not trusting his voice.

Once within the forest she did not speak, but bounded ahead, mingling with the trees. He could taste her fear. What did he think he was doing? It was sheer foolishness to go back there.

No. He had to see Tarra.

Within the forest, the light never changed, as if the sun outside had no power under the canopy. It seemed to him that no time at all had passed when Naraya stopped. Ahead of them, trees grew sparser, changed in some indefinable way to become old and vast and terrible.

“Here,” Naraya said. She did not need to; this was what he had been seeking, all his life. The need to see Tarra was greater now, constricting his chest, shortening his breath. He had to run forward.

He checked himself, with difficulty. Tarra was dead. Nothing he said or did would bring her back. Cautiously, he focused on his surroundings. The forest sang its endless, familiar tune, but here it sounded stronger. The air smelled of stale magic, with a tantalising hint of the familiar, one that eluded him the more he sought it.

Naraya was kneeling by a tree, looking at the ground. “Their tracks are a day old. The wards have drawn themselves together again.”

“Is it safe?” he asked.

She shrugged. “As much as it can be.”

They went forward, slowly. Naraya was looking everywhere around her, as if horsemen might burst out from one of the trees. Her lips were pressed against each other, so hard they showed white against her russet skin.

He felt a resistance as they passed the edge of the wood, but it quickly vanished, leaving them standing, alone, in a place where light fell in swathes, like a shining veil over the blades of grass and the surface of the water.

Less disoriented than Lesper, Naraya had run forward, and was kneeling by the lakeside. He followed her, his head still spinning at the wonder of it all, still tracking that elusive scent in the spells of the invaders.

Tarra lay on her side in the dewy grass, bathed in light. She was in human shape. For a moment he allowed himself to think she was sleeping, but then Naraya moved aside, and he saw the arrow between Tarra’s shoulder blades.

The world spun and spun and went darker. A wordless cry escaped him; he knelt by her side, touching the cold, moist flesh, the dull hair.

“I am sorry,” Naraya said, behind him, her voice toneless. “She chose the wrong moment.”

He could not speak. There were no words to encompass the depth of his grief. His wife was dead and everything he had held to for fifteen years had irremediably shattered.

Slowly, Lesper worked the arrow loose, raised it to the light. The shaft was black, and the tail feathers bore no distinctive patterns. It throbbed with magic: it had to, to bring one of the deer-people down.

Magic. Hunters. Yes, he knew the patterns of the spell in the air, knew them because they were his own, expanded upon to break the entrance barrier. His own.

“Areskia,” he said.

“What does it mean?” Naraya asked.

A thousand words rose in his mind, clamouring to be released. “It means you are in danger.”

“Why?”

“She knows all there is to know about the forest and your kind. However far you run, she will find you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I taught her,” Lesper said. “A long time ago.” He remembered her, twenty years ago: a cocky girl Lord Wustan had chosen as Lesper’s apprentice, eager to learn, eager to mock. And she had learnt, all too well. When Lesper had turned his back on the court and chosen the forest, Areskia had replaced him. As far as he knew, she still was Wustan’s wizard. Why should she want to hunt the deer-people? Why would she kill?

It made no sense, he thought, kneeling by the side of his wife, dead for no reason he could discern. No sense at all. Gently, he closed Tarra’s eyes, brushed her hair, as he had used to do, when they lay together in bed. Forgive me. I was not there when you needed me.

He did not know, afterwards, how they managed the long journey back. Tarra’s body lay heavily in his arms, her doe-skin on her shoulder. He had stabbed the arrow into it, to carry it better, and now it seemed to drag him down with each step he took.

Naraya walked by his side, silent, her head lifted to scent the wind. He longed, more than ever, to lose himself in the magic of the forest, to find a place where there was no grief, no tears. Areskia, he thought. Is this how you repay me for my teachings?

Her hunters had scattered the deer-people, had hunted Naraya through the woods. To kill her, as they had killed Tarra? But why would they want to kill the deer-people? Why would they leave Tarra’s body by the pool? He did not know. But they had been after Naraya, and the one thing he did know was that Areskia was not one to let her prize escape. Or Wustan, for that matter, although the man he remembered, easygoing and blunt-spoken, would never have understood what power lay in the forest.

He would bury Tarra, give her that at least. And then he and Naraya would have to leave his house, which was too close to the castle and the city it protected. They would have to move to some other place, away from Wustan’s power, away from Areskia’s sight. If there were such places in the world.

What did Areskia want of the deer-people?

They were within yards of his house when Naraya stopped. “What is it?” he asked.

She shook herself, turned to him a face twisted by fear. “They are here,” she said. “Run.”

And then the world burst apart.

From behind the thick foliage, he caught glimpses of colours, heard horses’ hooves, clinks of metal, harsh words barked by familiar voices. Before he could think clearly, he turned, and ran after Naraya.

She was already far in front of him, a blur of movement among the trees. He followed, still holding Tarra, his heart threatening to burst out of his chest, a sour taste of fear filling his mouth. Already he was no longer a wizard or a human, but something far more primordial, something that ran and hid in the shadows because it was defenceless, something doomed by the hunt.

Running, running with the sound of the hunters’ hooves behind them. Faceless, voiceless, the horses galloped after both of them, getting closer and closer. His grip on Tarra loosened; he could not think of anything but the hunt at his heels.

“Where?” he asked, his breath burning in his throat. “Where do we go?”

She was ahead of him, bounding on legs that did not seem to work the human way. She turned back, liquid eyes alight with terror, and shouted, “The pool, inside the woods! They won’t be able to—”

The rest of her voice was lost to him. His chest ached; he was an old man, with none of her grace, none of the agility that never seemed to leave the deer-people.

“I can’t,” he said, struggling to remember a word, a spell. The forest seemed to have taken everything from him. His hands, deadened, finally lost their hold on his wife’s body, and for a moment he stopped running and stood unmoving over the corpse he had gone so far to claim.

He heard her scream. She reached out, threw something white towards him. He extended his hands to receive it, but it went wide.

“Don’t touch it,” she shouted. “Run, Lesper, it’s all that matters.”

He had time to see, at his feet, one of the horn pins that had held her hair. And then she was near him, lifting him, pressing something into the palm of his hand. “Hold on,” she said, and the sounds of hooves echoed all around them.

There was a noise, like hundreds of twigs breaking. He turned, and saw that where the pin had lain was now a vast expanse of thorns.

He felt her doe-skin unfold, wrap itself around her, felt the forest magic rise. He was holding on to her, and she had become something else now, her neck elongating, and she was holding him not with hands, lengthening under him, changing.

Run, she said, in his head, and the doe beneath him leapt forward, into the shadows.

But … he said, thinking of the thorns.

They’re not real, she said. I made them using the power in the horn, but I can’t shape more than illusions. As soon as they realise this the thorns will vanish. It’s a matter of seeing what’s true and what’s not.

He could still hear the hunt, the hounds baying. The air was thick with magic; patterns he had once known by heart, the mastery of which remained just beyond his reach.

He turned, and saw the horsemen behind them. The thorns had vanished. They’re gaining on us, he said. He could barely hang on to her: he was tossed from side to side as she ran.

Throw the bracelets, she answered.

They were in his hand: she had given them to him as she picked him up.

Throw them.

He raised his hand, threw them as far as he could; watched their glittering arc. As they touched the earth light blinded him, and when he looked again, twin lakes extended as far as his eyes could see.

Another illusion? he asked.

Yes, she said. I am the youngest of my kind, Lesper, I can’t cast more than this. And we have no horn left now.

The lakes did not stop the hunters for long, either; soon he heard again the hooves behind them. The doe under him was breathing hard; he could feel her weariness, and knew it would not be long before she collapsed.

Naraya. He wanted to tell her to abandon him; without his weight she might run fast enough to elude them.

The words never got past his lips.

Something rose under the hooves of the doe, something unexpected. Her front legs collapsed, throwing him towards the ground.

He landed on a carpet of dead leaves that failed to soften his fall. His head ached, and one of his legs felt broken.

“Naraya,” he said.

She was struggling to free herself from the branch that had snared her legs; the eyes she raised to him were filled with tears.

Gently, gritting his teeth against the pain in his legs, he tried to lift the branch. His arms failed him. “I’m sorry,” he said. He stood over her, shaking as if with fever, as a dozen horsemen formed a circle around them.

“Leave her alone,” he said, as the world spun and spun around him.

The hunters laughed. He knew what they saw: an old, greying man, barely able to stand.

“Leave her,” he said, in a shaking voice.

The circle opened, to admit a white rider on a white horse, with clothes so bright they hurt Lesper’s eyes.

“She is mine,” the rider said, and then her eyes focused on Lesper.

“Areskia,” Lesper said. He did not have the energy to bow.

“Lesper? What are you doing here?” She had not changed: the drawling voice was still the same; her face, with its harsh lines and aquiline nose, was still that of the girl who had eagerly learnt every one of his spells.

What I have to do. “Leave her be,” he said. He struggled to find other words. “She is innocent.”

Areskia laughed, bitterly. “I should hope so. Otherwise my time has been wasted.”

“I—” Her radiance hurt his eyes; he struggled to focus his mind on something, anything that would reach her. He was so weary the trees and the riders had started to merge with one another. “Leave her,” he said.

“And if I do not? What spell do you plan on revealing?” Her voice was sad. “You are a wreck, Lesper. Fifteen years in the forest, looking for your wife, and even human words have deserted you. You couldn’t even recite a simple spell without collapsing.”

I made my own choices. Words fled, as if Tarra’s death had scattered his being to the corners of the world. He could no longer focus on anything.

He heard Areskia say to the riders, “Take her. Alive.”

No. No. You killed Tarra, he thought, and then the world spun and spun, and darkness came to swallow him whole. The last thing he heard was Naraya’s screams.

Sometime later, Lesper woke, so weak he could barely move. He was alone; Naraya had disappeared. Areskia had won.

Why? he thought, and had no answer. For a long while he lay on his back, staring at the canopy of trees overhead. Tarra was dead; Naraya had been captured. He had failed both of them.

You are a wreck, Lesper.

He was.

The forest made no comment. It spoke with its usual voice, in the rustle of leaves in the trees, and in the birdsong above him. It did not judge. It could not judge.

He had failed both Tarra and Naraya.

When he could move again, he rose, wincing at the pain. He felt so weak he thought he would collapse again.

Slowly he made his way back, leaning on a branch he had picked up. He recovered the bracelets and the hairpins. They had resumed their normal shape; Naraya’s illusions were no more. He held them in his hand, breathing in the forest magic that was as alien to him as the human spells he had once mastered.

Tarra’s body was still where he had dropped it, the arrow still embedded in her doe-skin. He knelt, slowly, picked her up. Her weight was tangible, almost reassuring. That at least he had not lost.

He carried her all the way, clinging to her even though his arms ached and his hands threatened to drop their burden.

Back in his house, Lesper paused to eat some bread. He then found a shovel, and slowly dug a grave for his wife at the back of the garden.

Tarra.

I am sorry.

After he had covered both her and her doe-skin with earth, he stood back, and looked at the brown patch of earth at his feet, with the black arrow driven point first into the ground, to serve as a marker: all that was left of fifteen years. He would have wept, but he no longer knew how.

He knelt by the grave instead, and prayed to a god he had never really believed in. He prayed that she would find safe passage into heaven, and ascend into the light with no memory of the hunt.

Night fell, covered him with its cool mantle. He did not move, feeling the forest around him come awake with starlight, with the voices of owls and great cats on the prowl.

Naraya was gone. He felt the warmth of the hairpin and of the bracelets in his hands.

You are a wreck, Lesper.

What could he do? Any spell would sap the strength out of him. Areskia was right: fifteen years spent at the edge of the forest had slowly drained his power, leaving him with nothing of the magic he had once wielded. Nothing.

The bracelets tingled under his touch. He remembered no human spell. But in fifteen years he had had time to see another kind of magic.

The forest was silent now, watching him.

“Help me,” he said aloud. “Naraya was yours. She is still yours.”

There was no answer. But the horn in his hands was warm, exuding magic.

Help me.

He felt the magic rise, felt himself open to the power pouring out of the objects in his hands, even as they were reduced to dust. The magic wrapped itself around him, shaped him as it would. It was wild, and old beyond belief, and it felt his need as no one else could. Naraya had not been able to see its full potential.

Help me, he said, and then all human words were burnt out of him. Power coursed through his veins like sap, rustled in his hair, extended wings like giant leaves. His mind widened, touched the forest. He was the trees growing slowly towards light they could not reach, the bucks fighting each other for the does, the roots burrowing deep under the earth in their endless quest for water.

He rose, scarcely aware he had done so. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a wordless roar came out of him, scattering owls from their perches.

He saw in his thoughts a building made of stone, with towers like branches and walls with deep-seated roots. There.

Under the light of the stars he walked towards the castle. The earth was smooth under his feet, and the trees whispered to him in words of wind, words that encompassed every question he had asked himself for fifteen years, words that went beyond the meagre spells he had once known.

He reached the road, which lay deserted at this hour of the night. Had there been robbers he could have scattered them with a word.

No one was there to stop him in the streets of the city either. Only one building was lit, and the sounds of revelry floated to him, meaningless.

Before the castle gates two guards watched him come, and raised their spears to block his way.

Let me pass, he wanted to say. I have come, and you may not stop me.

They would not have understood.

He raised a hand instead, and vines rose along the shafts of the spears, extending tendrils towards the guards, until they were bound as securely as prey in a spider’s web. He walked past them then, towards the gates. They sprouted leaves at his touch, remembering spring in the forest and the deep longing to put forth flowers. He had only to push, and the gates opened.

More guards ran towards him. He bound them with a flick of his hand. He could feel, like a faraway heartbeat, the presence of the one he had come to rescue, and it was in that direction that he went.

I am coming.

At last he reached a room with thick, oaken doors. His hand extended towards the panels, but they opened without his touch.

A woman dressed in white, with a harsh face, stood watching him warily. She had just shaken off the last of the vines twining on her dress. Behind her, not so lucky, two guards had been bound.

“Begone,” she said, and the taste of her spell filled the air.

You may not touch me, he thought. You have no hold over what I am.

She heard nothing, but something made her pause, look at him. “Lesper? What have you done?”

Give her to me. Give her to me and I’ll leave.

She shook her head. Reached out, slowly, with a pale hand, and touched his chest. Cold spread through him, burning his limbs, his mind.

“What have you done?” the woman asked, and he heard the panic in her voice.

What needed to be done.

Magic throbbed in the air around him, but did not touch him. He shook her off, and moved past her, into the room.

The deer-girl, in human shape, was lying on a bed at the farthest end, her face pale, her eyes closed. A thin red line marked her right wrist. He moved closer, a sense of exultation rising through him, the magic receding as he neared his goal.

And saw the second bed.

An old man lay upon it, his face the colour of winter snow, with a bluish tinge. A poultice covered his chest. The sound of his laboured breathing filled the room, made Lesper ill at ease, as if any gesture might sever the thin thread of the old man’s life. He knew the face, as well as his own.

Wustan. His liege, long ago.

The forest magic rushed out of him as he knelt before the bed, years of obedience having ingrained the gesture in his mind. “My lord,” he said, in a hoarse voice that felt as though it had not been used in years. There was no answer.

“He has been that way for four days,” Areskia said, behind him.

“How?” he asked.

Areskia moved so that she stood between him and the bed. “I would have thought news would reach you, Lesper, even in that forsaken house where you live.” She was not smiling. “He rode to the hunt five days ago, chasing a boar. His guards lost him, and we combed the forest the whole night without finding anything. When we found him in the morning, he was as you see him.”

Lesper did not know why he felt such guilt, as if he had been the one who had failed Wustan. “Couldn’t you heal him?”

“A healing takes of the wizard’s strength to help the body repair itself. He is so near death that any attempt would drain the wizard dry before he had any chance to begin his recovery.” She sounded weary, as if she no longer believed in anything. Four days of keeping watch by his bed. Four days of wondering when the last spark would falter and fail.

No.

“You hunted,” he said. And remembered, from his former lifetime, a healing spell that did not tax the wizard’s strength. “For an innocent.”

“You see it at last,” Areskia said. “A bowl of an innocent’s blood will lend enough strength to snatch a man from Death’s claws.”

He turned, to look at Naraya, at the thin slit, already healed, on her wrist. The youngest of her kind, she had said. Of those who did not know human flaws.

“There were others you could have found,” he said.

Areskia’s face was grim. “Yes,” she said. “Babes. That much blood would have killed them. I balk at this kind of cruelty, Lesper. My oath was of fealty to Lord Wustan, but there are limits.”

He looked at Wustan: faint colour had returned to the old man’s cheeks, and there might have been a slight, very slight rise in his breath.

“He is better now than he used to be,” Areskia said. “All I can do is wait. I had not expected a miracle in any case.”

“There was no need to kill Tarra,” he said.

“Tarra?” Her face was blank.

“My wife.”

“I did not kill her,” Areskia said.

“Someone shot her.”

Her face darkened. “I gave strict orders to the contrary, and they were obeyed as far as I know.”

“On your word?”

“On my word as a wizard and vassal,” she snapped. “But I don’t claim to control every man’s gestures. If you find who did this, you have my leave to repay them in kind.”

He wanted so much to believe her guilty. Because if he did not, he had to face the knowledge that Tarra’s murderer would never be found. That he would never have his revenge. But a wizard’s word was not given lightly.

“What will you do?” he asked.

“Wait,” Areskia said, spreading her hands, helplessly. “He should mend.”

She loved him. It was an odd thing to say of a wizard for her liege, but he heard it in her voice. It was more than duty that had kept her by Wustan’s bed, wondering when he would die. Lesper should have been glad. She had hunted him through the wood until he collapsed, had scattered the deer-people. And now she was paying, she was experiencing grief, worry. Part of him revelled in her despair, but another, deeper part whispered that he should know what love could do. That he should forgive. He did not want to. He wanted her to suffer as he had.

He could not hate her. He understood her, all too well.

At length Areskia turned away from the bed. “You can take her.” She gestured, and the vines binding the guards fell away. With the forest magic gone, Lesper no longer knew how to prevent her from undoing his spell, so he let her do. “The guards will escort you out. I have no further need for her. She should recover quickly; she is young, after all.” As Wustan was not.

“I thought—”

“That I would fight you?” She shook her head. “No. Leave me be, Lesper.”

He moved, took hold of Naraya. Areskia was sitting by the head of the bed, watching Wustan intently, her face twisted by anxiety.

“Thank you,” he said.

She did not answer at first. “Be careful, Lesper. The forest is a treacherous mistress, and one day you’ll pay the price for using its power so liberally.”

He said nothing. He merely walked away, followed by the two guards. The last image he had of her was of a woman in white, watching silently over her Lord, and it hurt him like a knife twisted in his heart.

Naraya woke soon after he brought her home. She bore no other marks than the slit on her wrist, and thanked him profusely for coming to her rescue. He felt a fraud. She had never been in danger. The well of grief within him would not close: he would have to go back to the castle and wring the truth out of those who had hunted Naraya and the deer-people. He needed to know who had killed Tarra.

Naraya, oblivious to his musings, had rummaged in the cupboard for herbs, and was brewing him a tea. She sounded perfectly happy, as if nothing had ever happened, and was singing to herself, words he could not understand.

At length, unable to bear her company, a mute reminder of his dead wife, he went into the garden, and sat by Tarra’s grave. The arrow that marked it still quivered with magic; he reached out, on impulse, and took it. Magic throbbed within the palm of his hand.

Magic. Areskia had to have given those arrows to the soldiers. Had to have seen the need for bringing a deer-woman down. She had lied to him. He was rising to go back to the castle, and then something else occurred to him.

The magic in the arrow was familiar. All too familiar. It had consumed him, drained him of everything but grief. Forest magic. Areskia would not have known how to draw on it.

He felt the tingle of magic from the arrow, let it fill him. He remembered Naraya’s words: it’s a matter of seeing what’s true and what’s not.

What was true and was not. What was…

The arrow wavered between his fingers, changed into something else. His grip shifted, and it bit into his skin, drawing blood: a dagger made of horn, with images of the deer-people engraved on the hilt. He remembered how, when they first had come near the pool, Naraya had knelt by Tarra’s side, obscuring her for a brief moment while she drew on the power within the horn. To hide the dagger in Tarra’s corpse.

When he raised his eyes, Naraya was watching him. “So you’ve found out,” she said.

“You killed her,” he said, showing her the dagger. Her dagger.

She laughed. There was no innocence in that laughter, but a bitterness that cut him to the core. The deer-people were not meant to laugh like that.

“Why?” he asked.

She shook her head. “She did not love you, Lesper. She never loved you. You deserved so much better than her.”

“She wanted to come back to me.”

“Yes,” Naraya said. “You are blind, Lesper. She came to you because you took her skin, and she ran back into the forest because she was young, and thought summer would last forever. She thought the herd would always be there for her, and that the winter of her life was a far away dream. When she could no longer run with us, she wanted to come back. It was unfair.”

“Unfair?”

“She had someone to come back to,” Naraya said. Her voice broke. “Do you have any idea of what life in the forest is really like, Lesper? Not knowing from one year to the next whether the food will still be there? Growing old, and year after year wondering if the herd will still want you? If the wolves will not finally outrun you?”

Her voice was harsh. “Why should she have everything I wanted, and throw it away?”

“You killed her.”

“Yes.”

He wondered what he would have done, when he first found her and learnt she had killed Tarra.

“You’re a good man, Lesper,” Naraya said.

He rose, holding the dagger, the horn dagger she had plunged in Tarra’s back. “Yes,” he said. “And blind as well.”

She held herself straight, bitterly proud. “And what will you do? Kill me?”

He wanted to. He ached so much with grief, with the need to do something, anything to take his mind off his sorrow. It would be easy, to stab her. She would fight, but she was still unschooled in the magic of her kind, and he could draw on the dagger’s power if need be. He imagined the dagger plunging in her chest, the blood spreading across her skin in a rising tide.

“No,” he said, letting the dagger fall to the ground. “I will not stain that blade with your blood. You are not worthy of that mercy.” The herd would reject her for what she had done, and she had no place in the human world, no matter how dearly she had wanted to be part of it. And killing her would not end his grief. Nothing would. “Go,” he said.

Her face was unreadable. She turned, slowly, as stately as a queen. “Goodbye, Lesper,” she said.

He watched her walk away from him. At the end of the clearing she turned, and said, “My skin is yours. I have no further need of it, and you should be able to put it to better use than me.” And then she was gone. Forever. He fell to his knees, and wept.

Tarra. He would never know whether Naraya had been lying about his wife. He was not sure he cared any more: Tarra was dead, and he had loved her. It seemed to be the only thing that mattered.

Inside the house, Naraya’s skin lay on the bed, shimmering with a hundred colours to his eye. It promised power. He took it, and felt the voice of the forest rise in him. Come.

There would be deer-people in the woods, who still remembered Tarra. Who could tell him something of what she had been, of her life during those fifteen years.

He stood, holding the skin. Fifteen years of waiting for her, and the waiting was over.

You are blind, Lesper. Despite everything, he could not bring himself to hate Naraya. She had so much wanted to be human, and it had distorted everything for her.

Blind. Areskia had been wrong as well, to think her innocent. Not everything in the forest was innocent, just as not all men were tainted. If there ever was a fool, it was he, he who had believed good of Naraya. He who could forgive a murderer, and walk away from hunters without a thought of revenge.

The skin rippled under his touch, filling him with strength, promising the endless cycle of seasons, springs running with the males, autumns of fleeting love, winters with the rest of the herd drawn around him, protecting him from the world he had left.

Slowly, he laid it on his shoulders. Power settled on him like a mantle.

One last thing, he thought. One last debt to pay.

*

Areskia was still sitting by the bed when he came. Wustan’s face was still pale; his breath still came in shallow gasps.

“Lesper?” she asked, and then she saw his face. “No. You cannot—”

“She did not have the power to heal him,” he said. “But I have. I have paid the price.” He held out his wrist to her. “Take what you need.”

He did not feel the cut, nor the loss of blood. Sap rose to fill his veins, and the forest was still singing to him. His skin parted like leaves for the knife, and closed around the wound.

“Goodbye,” he said, longing already for the comfort of his kin. He no longer knew anything save the desire to lose himself under the canopy.

He turned, never seeing colour return to Wustan’s face, or Areskia’s last, desperate look at him. He had made his choice.

And the forest sang in his blood, and held him close, and consumed his grief.