The Wood Wife by Terri Windling (the false prince TXT) 📕

the others. “The one who shot at Cody, and Pepe. I saw his truck parked off the road. Tomás says he’s out to hunt the white stag.” Her face was grim as she rose to her feet. “The stag is One of Them. The Nightmage. Anna’s ‘guardian angel of the east.’ ”

“In that case, can it be killed?” Fox asked her.

“In that shape, yes, I think it can. Look at the damage a gun did to Cody; and what happens to the ones caught in animal traps. I don’t know what will happen if a guardian dies. I don’t think I want to find out.”

Dora looked troubled. “You know, Juan has taken up an interest in deer hunting lately.”

“Juan?” said Fox. “He’s got to be the least violent person—” Fox stopped abruptly, looking uneasily at Dora’s black eye.

“Yes, I know,” said Dora, “but he’s been asking Tomás all about it. He even bought a hunting knife. I thought it was weird—but then so much has been weird about Juan these last few months.”

Fox and Maggie exchanged a look. “I don’t like the sound of any of this,” she muttered.

Fox said, “All right, here’s what I think. You and Dora should hike back to the Alders’ house and phone the sheriff’s office. We’ve got to get this trigger-happy young fool out of the canyon, particularly with Juan still out there. We don’t know where Tomás is now either, and this poacher could mistake either one for a deer. My sisters are out there somewhere too. They weren’t at the house when we stopped by.”

“What exactly do you plan to do here alone?” said Maggie. “Threaten the guy with your flashlight, maybe? I say we stick together.”

Dora agreed. “The Alders are bound to be calling the sheriff by now anyway. I don’t want to go back, not while Juan is still in the hills.”

Fox sighed. “All right. I’m overruled. But I don’t like it. I’d feel better if the two of you would go back.”

“Stop playing the cowboy,” Maggie said drily. “Three of us will be more intimidating than one, and I don’t really believe he’d shoot at us. It’s the stag he wants, not the law on his heels.”

“I reckon you’re right about that,” Fox conceded. “All right, then, let’s head for the springs. That’s where Tomás has seen the stag; that’s where the poacher will be.”

Crow crept quietly after them on the path that ran along Redwater Creek. Their trail was lit by the copper glow of the huge, round moon hanging overhead. The moon was high. The air was sharp. An owl hooted somewhere in the night. Soon the Hounds would reach Red Springs Canyon, and then the hunt would begin.

The three ahead were silent on the trail, oblivious to the changes in the desert around them. Rootmegs had begun to gather beneath the mesquites’ gnarled black limbs. The willow witch was braiding her long green hair by the rocky edge of the creek; the three passed right by her, seeing only a willow sapling clinging to the rocks. The rocks themselves shifted and groaned, exposing wrinkled faces shaped of granite, veined with quartz, their blind eyes flashing silver mica. Overhead, the winged ones hovered, wearing shapes of mist and dust and light, leaking trails of color behind them onto the stones of the desert floor. In the thorny green cholla, a pale face lifted to drink that color down like rain, while the purple staghorn cholla tied on their staghorn caps over their spiney little heads.

They gathered, the thornwights, the tumbleweeds, the fierce devil’s claws, and the tiny fairy dusters. The witches, the mages, the shape-shifters. Phantasms, fairies, spirits, and ghosts. To Maggie and the others it was just rising mist, inexplicably covering the dry, stony soil. Soon the moon would reach its peak. And then, yes, the hunt would begin.

Crow’s coyote mouth gaped wide in a smile of anticipation. He sniffed the air. The stag was still distant. The poacher waited at the canyon’s heart; his blood lust had a distinct, acrid smell. Crow could also smell blood. The scent of death. He recalled those two shots that had rung through the night. The Owl Boy’s pet had killed once already, preparing for the prize to come. Whatever it was he had killed lay somewhere ahead, near the circle of the springs.

Then Crow heard a thin cry, a wailing, a howling more eerie than the coyotes’ song. The Hounds were loose, coming over the hills, driving the stag before them. The Floodmage ran in the wake of the Hounds, limned by the light of the copper moon. An owl called again, the Windmage, her rival. Crow shifted into a bird shape himself, rising into the clear night sky above the trail by Redwater Creek. Enough of Black Maggie and her foolish companions. They were slow. They were growing tedious. They were going to miss the hunt.

Crow soared, and circled, and settled on the limb of a sycamore tree arched over the springs. The spring water was hot tonight, steaming in the cold night air. The water ran red, the heart-blood of the mountain, pumping through the land’s dry veins. The white trees, the white tumbled stone glowed luminescent in the full moon’s light. From that perch, Crow could see the approach of the spectral Hounds, and the Drowned Girl with them, her white hair streaming behind her, her small white feet pounding over the stones.

The Hounds glowed golden, ghostly, formed of moonlight turned to flesh and bone. Their bodies were thin and skeletal, whipcord muscles rippling under the fur. Their eyes were red, their jaws enormous—too large for the rest of them, grotesque, crowded with long, sharp teeth and lolling crimson tongues. The earth was scorched where they passed by, howling in their blood lust.

But where was the stag? Ah, there he was. The Hounds had split into two packs, herding the wild-eyed animal between them. In one pack was the Bright Hunter, the painter, marked as One