a man drove a wain laden with a fifteen-foot pile of hay. Two boys sat atop the pile, stabilizing themselves with one hand on the side pole while sharing what looked to be a red cheese round. They passed by a woman throwing kitchen scraps to her white-and-black-speckled chickens.
This was the village closest to the Mother’s lair. He’d smelled these villagers with longing on many an evening. These were the homes he’d stolen about in the darkness, listening to the humans, tempting his appetite, until the Mother had ordered him to stay away.
He had not heard the person shadowing him for some time. But that probably only meant it was light enough for them to see the way better and avoid things that cracked in the dark.
This also meant he could leave visible spoor. Nevertheless, it was quicker to follow sound. So he broke yet another branch and continued along the ridge past the village, past the stand of fat spruce from which the Mother had called him, and to the entrance that stood up on the hill above the swamp.
There were three entrances he knew about. The one in the cliffs by the sea. This one. And another found in the buried ruin of the stone-wights on the other side of the hill.
Hunger stood at the entrance, the small stream running out of the lopsided mouth and down the hill. He looked down at River and released her hands from his mouth. She clutched her shoulders in pain.
He was sorry. He should have thought about the pain and numbness that would result from holding her arms in one position for so long. He smoothed her hair back from her face with one finger. She did not pull away this time. She looked so fragile in his arms.
For a moment he lost his courage. The Mother was cunning and strong. How could beings with such frail bodies hope to contend with her?
But they had. She had said so herself. Hunger looked back. He hoped whoever followed him had such power. He felt the Mother’s compulsion upon him. Hunger stepped into the thin, cold water with River in his arms and disappeared into the dark.
BODY AND SOUL
H
unger laid River down next to Purity in the ink-black chamber. Both River and Purity cried out at first, but then they recognized each other and began to sob. For joy or despair, Hunger did not know. He left to get some of the wood he’d stored in another chamber to make a fire.
He’d left Purity with fire in the beginning, but she’d tried to run away, and the Mother had made him steal hobbles from a smith and put them on her ankles. The hobbles had taken all thoughts of flight out of her. And, in truth, it would have made escape impossible, for there was a steep cliff she’d have to scale to escape, if she could even find it in the dark. He supposed he’d have to get hobbles for River as well.
River and Purity talked in low voices, but they stopped when they heard him enter his chamber. He placed his small nest of tinder and kindling a pace from them on the floor, struck the flint against his fire-steel until three sparks fell into the tinder. Then he blew. A small flame leapt up. He added small bits of kindling. The fire grew. And he finally added a small stick.
He felt the Mother behind him.
Had she discovered his plan? A small panic rose within and he turned.
But it was not the Mother that stood before him. Instead, a woman of strange and exquisite beauty, clothed in brightness, looked upon him. Dark hair tumbled down her naked shoulders. Pale shoulders. Pale skin. He’d seen this woman before: the memory of that face lay just under the surface of his mind. But she was not human. Was this another of the Mother’s kind then, come to steal the souls of these women?
He rose in alarm and prepared to defend them.
“You’ve lost your focus,” the beauty said.
Hunger could not tell if she spoke the words with her mouth or directly in his mind, but he knew it was indeed the Mother.
“You are beautiful,” he said in both wonder and confusion. But this was some trick. He looked closer to see if he could detect the lie, then reached out and touched her arm, but she was as real as the rocks about him.
What kind of power must one have to change the very