“A demon!”

“A ghost.”

“I thought we were just after the sky cloak. I didn’t come here to hunt demons!”

She fitted the arrow to the string; tested the pull; swung the bow around to aim into the trees. Loosed the arrow.

A scream—a hit!—surprised him. He heard a shout of pain, then the rustle of undergrowth as they retreated through the undergrowth. Men argued:

“We’re six, they’re two.”

“The horses!”

“Not that easy.” That was Taller’s voice, startled out of his dream of sweetsmoke. He spoke in a mumble that quieted the others. “He’ll kill us just by tearing out our insides, just with a look from him. You know it’s true. Best we hurry back and report. Maybe he won’t chase us if we go quickly.”

Eyes narrowed, she spotted the second arrow and fetched it.

In the brush, the whispered debate went on. “You fools. Two of them, six of us.”

“Best we saddle the horses, if you will,” the envoy said to her.

For the first time, she was listening to him. She walked back to the fire as casually as if no man had just tried to kill them, as if they were not in danger of a second attack coming at any moment.

She whistled, and the horses trotted over to her. He held his staff at the ready, his senses trained on the thorn tree fence and the woodland scrub beyond it, on the noises of the cadre as they crept out of arrow range, debating what to do next, no one able to take charge. He didn’t fear them, and if they attacked, he’d have no choice but to kill them. Perhaps they instinctively guessed it, for the taste of their living essence faded entirely. They had chosen retreat.

A weaver bird flitted within the thorns, its wings a faint stutter. Branches ticked against each other as the breeze stirred them. A bud breathed into a trembling petal as it struggled to unfurl with the same slow majesty as wings.

She walked up beside him, leading the horses. He slid back into himself.

She had saddled them, tied on his few possessions. She said nothing; she didn’t even look at him but kept staring at the break in the thorn fence where the short man had cut his way out. She was ready to go.

He took Telling’s reins and swung into the saddle. He didn’t trust the bay mare, and because the girl tolerated her easily, he let her ride the bay.

He turned Telling’s head toward the sea, and the girl, on Seeing, followed his lead. He urged the gray to a trot, to a canter, to a run, and as they reached the shore, they unfurled their wings and skimmed over the water, rising on slow wing beats. The sea fell away beneath. As the shelter shrank with distance, the thorn trees could from the height be seen quite obviously to be planted by hand, while the scrub grown beyond them had a wilder scumble.