“SO, WHY IS the moor forbidden?” I’m aiming for nonchalant, but my voice sounds tense in my ears. “Are there flying monkeys? Rodents of Unusual Size?”
“What?”
“Just checking.”
It’s the morning of the third day and we’ve abandoned the road, picking our way over scrubby hills and wind-scoured stone. The sun is grayish and reluctant here, as if it’s shining through greasy paper, and the trees are stunted and crabbed.
Primrose has pulled the horse to a stop before a pair of tall, jagged stones. They aren’t carved with strange symbols or glowing or anything, but there’s something deliberate about the angle of them, like they aren’t there by accident.
The princess makes her graceful dismount and touches her palm to the sharp edge of the stone. “It’s forbidden because my father wishes to protect his people, and the moor is dangerous if you don’t know the way.”
“Do we know the way?”
“Harold told me. In some detail.” The flatness of her tone suggests that Harold is one of those men whose conversations are more like long, boastful speeches. “I listened well.”
Without the slightest change of expression, without even drawing a breath, Primrose drags her palm hard across the edge. When she draws back the stone shines slick and dark with blood.
“Jesus, Primrose, what are you doing?”
She doesn’t answer, but merely lifts her hand to the sky, palm up. I watch her blood run down her wrist, red as roses, red as riding hoods. I was so sure I’d landed in one of those soft, G-rated fairy tales, stripped of medieval horrors; I can feel it shifting beneath my feet, twisting toward the kind of tale where prices are paid and blood is spilled.
A shape wings toward us across the moor, ragged and black. It lands on the standing stone in a rush of feathers, and for the first time in my life I fully appreciate the difference between a crow and a raven. This bird is huge and wild-looking, clearly built for midnights dreary rather than McDonald’s parking lots.
It dips forward and laps at Primrose’s palm with a thick tongue and this, I find, is a little much. “Okay, what the fuck?”
“We’ll leave Buttercup behind and continue on foot,” Primrose says evenly. “Walk close behind me, and do not stray to either side.” The raven launches back into the air, cutting a curving path through the smeary sky, and lands on a low branch a quarter mile ahead. Primrose follows it, stepping between the standing stones with her bloodied palm held tight to her chest. I follow them both, muttering about antibiotics and blood poisoning and tetanus, feeling the cold knock of the knife against my ribs, hoping to God all this nonsense is worth it.
BY NIGHTFALL, A mist has risen. I’m tired and hungry and my muscles are shuddering from three days without supplements or steroids. Primrose isn’t much better; the curse has woken her at midnight for each of the last three nights, the pull growing stronger each time. I’m not sure she slept at all last night, but merely curled beneath her cloak with her eyes screwed shut, fighting the silent call of her spell.