river. The man's disturbing laugh echoed off the surrounding trees.
"Poor hunter," he moaned playfully, raising fingers with stained nails and straightening from his crouch.
Magiere took a step back. "I just want the dog. I don't want to hurt you."
He laughed again, eyes half closed until their glow resembled sparkling slashes in his face.
"Of course, you don't," the man said, his voice as hollow as his cheeks.
Then he sprang.
* * *
It was the same dream, but this time wine-soaked slumber couldn't wash it away.
Leesil, only twelve years old, squatted on the floor of the dark room beneath his parents' home, listening to his father's lesson.
"Here—" his father pointed to the base of the human skull in his hand—"is where thin straight blades can be applied while the individual is distracted. This will cause instant and silent death in most large-skulled humanoids."
Father rolled the skull over to expose the opening where the spine would have been attached.
"It is a most difficult stroke. If you fail to execute it correctly"—he scowled briefly at Leesil—"a hard side stroke on withdrawal may save you before the target can make any sound. Always use the stiletto or similar thin strong blades for this—never a dagger or knife. Wide blades will jam in the base of the skull, or be deflected by the top vertebrae."
The man stared at his son. A thick, peppered beard hid the lower half of his thin angular face. He held out the skull. Young Leesil looked at it, but mostly noticed how slender and almost delicate his father's hands were, so graceful in everything they did, no matter how vicious.
"Do you understand?" his father asked.
Leesil looked up, the stiletto in his own hand a little too large for a boy. In waking hours, he remembered nodding silently in answer to his father's question, but the dream was always different than memory. He was about to take the bone skull, but hesitated.
"No, Father," young Leesil answered, "I don't understand."
Out of the shadows rose a second figure, seeming to sprout from the dark ground in the corner of the room. She was tall, slightly more so than his father, and delicately slender, with skin the honey-brown of Leesil's own, though smooth and more perfect than any person's he had ever seen. Long hair and narrow, feathery eyebrows glistened pale gold like threads of a sunlit spiderweb. The points of her ears rarely showed from beneath those polished tresses. Her large amber-brown eyes slanted up at the sides, matching the angle of her brows.
"The proper answer is yes, Leesil," she said in her sweet voice, a loving mother's admonishment for misbehavior.
Her eyes looked calmly down at him and made him ache inside for want of pleasing her, even when it made him sick inside to do what she asked.
"Yes, Mother… yes, Father," he whispered. "I understand."
Leesil rolled over in his sleep and moaned, pulled suddenly awake, but uncertain what had interrupted his slumber. For a moment, he was grateful for whatever had roused him. His head hurt from exhaustion and too much wine. He'd drunk too little to block out the dream on this night, yet barely enough to achieve slumber. With his vision blurred, it took several moments for him to realize the camp around him lay empty.
"Magiere?" he called. "Chap?"
There was no answer. Fear began to clear the alcohol daze from his thoughts.
From a distance came a wailing he couldn't call human or animal. Leesil pulled himself to his feet, shoved two stilettos up his sleeves into wrist sheathes, and staggered through the forest toward the sound.
* * *
Magiere shifted away again, holding her assailant at bay with short swipes of her blade, which wouldn't break her guard. Her breath was coming harder now from exhaustion, but all her feints and maneuvers hadn't discouraged her opponent. He ducked and dodged each swing, grinning one moment, or letting out a short, cackling laugh as he hopped and danced. Her foot brushed something low to the ground, a bush or a downed branch, and she realized he'd maneuvered her back toward the trees.
Panic rose in her throat. She'd barely managed to keep him at bay, not taking her eyes from him for fear he'd make another leap that she couldn't stop. If she had to concentrate on not losing her footing in the forest, she'd either stumble and fall or, worse, get distracted and lose her guard.
"Hunter, hunter," the white man sang as he leaped to her right, landing in a crouch, all fours poised