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

face twisted with some strong emotion. Crow couldn’t begin to imagine what it was. “The stag will die anyway,” the young man said. “It can’t survive crippled in the wild. It would be a mercy to finish it off.”

“No,” said Fox. “You know that’s not true. The Alders can look after him. Give me the knife, Juan. It’s over now. Just call the bargain off.”

“He can’t,” hissed the Floodmage.

“I can’t,” said Juan. “Something is going to die tonight. The Hounds are loose and they’ll have to feed now.”

“Put down the knife, boy. The Hounds will feed,” said another voice altogether.

Tomás Yazzie appeared on the rock ridge above him. He jumped the last drop to the canyon floor, breathing hard, his brown face stern.

“What’s this? What’s this?” the Owl Boy hissed. The Hounds growled, and the trapped beast trembled.

“Give me the knife. You’re no hunter, boy,” Tomás said. He took it from the startled painter’s hand.

“Thank God,” said Fox, closing his eyes as he breathed out one long sigh of relief.

“No!” Maggie screamed from behind him.

Fox’s eyes snapped open. Tomás approached the stag, wading through the unresistant Hounds, the knife held in a hunter’s grip.

“What the hell are you doing?” Fox yelled, running after the other man. The Hounds turned, snarling, snapping at him, separating him from Tomás and the stag.

“I’ve said the prayers,” Tomás said to the stag. The stag attempted to back away, moving awkwardly, painfully. Tomás said, “I’ve burned tobacco. I’ve said the prayers. Gift me with your life, my brother.”

The stag attempted one last lunge, one desperate leap to break free of the Hounds, the man, the walls that encircled him. Tomás ran, flung one arm around its neck, snapping back the great stag’s head, plunging the knife behind the jawbone, as Maggie screamed again: “No!”

The stag slumped to the ground, and the man fell with him heavily. “Go with the wind, brother,” Crow heard him tell the stag.

Crow leapt from the ledge on a black crow’s wings, and landed behind Tomás, shaped as a man. “Take the skin,” he urged him. “Quick! Or else he’ll be trapped in the white stag’s death, as he was trapped in its life.”

Tomás slowly stood and turned to the Floodmage, who was watching him with bright-eyed interest. “Call off your dogs, girl.”

“I cannot,” she said.

He looked at her sternly. “Then you don’t deserve to run them.”

Anger crossed the lovely young face. “Give me the blood, and I’ll call them off.” She gathered a handful of sandy soil, and fire blossomed in her hand. The flames died, and she held a large earthenware bowl. She tossed the bowl to Crow.

Crow held the bowl as Tomás bled the stag. Then the Drowned Girl took the bowl from him, a trail of hot blood staining her thin white dress. “Come,” she said to her terrible Hounds. “You will feed soon, my beautiful ones.”

When the Hounds had turned from the stag’s body, moving like water through the circle of stones, Fox approached Tomás and Crow, Black Maggie close behind. Fox took the leather pouch from his belt and spilled tobacco into his palm. He knelt before the stag’s great head, and he poured the offering to the ground.

Tomás bent over the stag’s body, the hunting knife clutched in his hand. Then he gutted the beast, pulling the blade from the chest, down the length of the smooth white belly. As the body opened, the entrails steamed hot as a fire to warm the ones gathered round. Steam billowed in the cold desert air, rising as smoke to the clear night sky, forming the shape of a man made out of mist and stars, crowned with horns. His face was narrow, his nose was hooked; the great horns lifted from the curve of his brow. He stepped from the broken body of the stag, pulling himself from the shape beneath. When his feet touched ground, he solidified; the mist became flesh, but just barely so. Crow could still see the night sky through him, the stars and the round copper moon.

The Floodmage looked up from her Hounds, and smiled at Crow smugly. “You see, I was right. I knew that he was trapped somewhere here on the mountain—and not in that witch woman’s painting at all. I told you even she would not send his essence away from the land.”

The girl had been right, Crow would give her that. The Nightmage had been here all along. They’d known the stag was one of his creatures. They’d not known he’d been bound inside it, bound so deep in the animal-self that not one of them saw him there.

Crow rose from the carcass and stared at the mage. But the Stag Man who stared back at him was not the creature that he remembered; the arrogance, the intelligence, the sly wit of the mage were gone now. The Stag Man stood and he looked at them all with an animal’s wild-eyed wariness. He was panting, his thin chest rising and falling. Crow began to laugh.

“Why do you laugh?” hissed the Owl Boy from the trees.

“Because I was right as well. You can’t have your Nightmage back again—this one is a mage no longer. Look at him! He’s been in the animal shape too long. He’s forgotten what he is.”

“That’s impossible,” said the Floodmage sharply, leaving her Hounds to come stand with them. “This land is alive. It would taste ugly and dead if there was no guardian here.”

Crow smiled at her, enjoying this game. “Then there must be another guardian. A Spiritmage watching over the east. A human mage, my dear.”

“Cooper is dead,” said the Drowned Girl, glaring darkly at the Trickster.

“Then a new Spiritmage has taken his place.” Crow’s wolfish smile grew wider.

“Impossible,” the girl said again. “This painter of mine is no Spiritmage. And your little poet hasn’t been here long enough.”

“Then I think it is neither a painter nor poet,” said Crow. “Am I right, Tomás Yazzie?”

Tomás inclined his head. “I look after this