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

land as best I know how. I listen to it with respect. Mage, shaman—those are just words. Call me what you will, spirit-brother.”

“You can’t be a mage,” the girl spat out. The ends of her white hair smouldered. “You have no mastery, no artistry. There is nothing about you that is beautiful.”

Tomás gave the girl a charming smile. “No mastery? No artistry? You’ve never looked at my garden, then, have you? My beans, my corn, my big gourd vines—they are beautiful indeed.”

The girl’s pale face grew paler still. Her eyes were wide and black as the sky.

But Tomás turned his back on her. “I need your help,” he said to Fox. “You too, boy,” he called to Juan.

He lifted the entrails from the stag’s body and left them steaming on the cold ground. Together, they roped the body, lifted and hung it from a sycamore’s strong limb. Crow watched with interest as Tomás expertly flayed the skin from the warm flesh beneath. Black Maggie also watched, sitting by the springs until the long job was done. The Nightmage just stood. His eyes never left Tomás, or the gleam of the knife.

When he was finished, Tomás folded the heavy white deerskin into his arms. “Cut the body down,” he said to Juan. “Let the Hounds feed and be done.” He turned to Crow, and gave him the skin. “Do what must be done with this. No tricks. No games tonight.”

Crow barked with laughter, barely conscious of having shifted to half-coyote form now. His arms were still manshaped. He held the skin, and presented it to the Stag Man.

“Your freedom,” Crow said. “Take it. Go on and take it. It’s a gift.”

The Stag Man took the soiled white skin. He wrapped it around his shoulders. As he did so, he solidified farther, a creature now of true flesh and blood, the great horns on his head forked into points that glowed like flame. His cheeks were drawn with lines and spirals; he wore six copper bans on his wrist. He removed one band and awkwardly tossed it to the ground at Tomás’s feet. He gazed long at the seventh mage, his animal eyes unreadable. Then he shifted back into his stagshape, whole now, and unbloodied. This time it was only one shape among many, a shape to carry him away from the springs, from the canyon, out into the night. The Hounds ignored him, letting him pass, his hooves striking sparks from the rocky ground. And when he left, no turquoise marked the trail that he had taken.

Tomás knelt down by the edge of Red Springs to wash the blood of the stag from his hands. The spring water ran clear and cold. The moon was sinking into the west.

“How did you know?” Black Maggie asked him. “You told me you’d never hunt the white stag. How did you know what had to be done?”

Crow drew close to hear his answer.

“I got lost in the hills… No. Led astray. And so I lit a fire. I listened to the flames, the wood, the wind. They told me on this night the stag would die, and by my hand.”

“I see. And can you teach me how to listen to the fire, the wood, and the wind?”

“You already know. You’re a poet,” he said. “I’ll teach you something better.”

“What’s that?”

“How to grow beans and corn and squash in the middle of the desert.”

“All right. It’s a deal,” Black Maggie agreed, smiling at the hunter.

Crow frowned. She hadn’t even asked the man what he wanted in return.

Crow cocked his head and looked at Maggie out of dark coyote eyes; and then at Dora, quiet, shivering, leaning against her husband. The painter was fey and wild-eyed; the glamour was still upon him. By morning it would fade away; he would not remember the work of this night. He might not remember the Drowned Girl at all. Crow turned suddenly to the Floodmage.

“Release this man from your bargain. The terms are met. The stag was killed.”

“But not by his hand,” the Drowned Girl said.

Crow wrinkled his coyote nose. “The shape you have made him is not beautiful. Nor is it amusing. Let him go back to his true shape now; it was more interesting than this one.”

She smiled at him, a cold little smile. “He’ll never be a great painter without me. He’ll only be good. Content, nothing more.”

Crow shrugged. “And what does that matter to me?”

“Then what will you give me if I do?”

“What do you want?” he bargained.

“Give me lightning, thunder and storms. I’ll flood Tanque Verde Falls this year.”

His own smile was sly. “You’ll have it,” he said. “Yes. That will be amusing.”

When the Hounds had fed, they followed the Drowned Girl back into the Rincon hills, growing more indistinct with every step, turning back into moonlight. The Owl Boy leapt into the sky, careful to leave no feathers behind. The coyotes crawled from the shadows then, and one black dog followed after them, trying to pretend they had never hidden there, never been afraid of the Hounds. Their song echoed through the canyon once more, along with the song that Crow alone could hear: the rootmegs singing, the water chanting, the mountains humming in their deep baritone. Spirits returned to rock, root, and thorn; ghosts drifted back to the dry, sandy soil. The night would end, day could come, and That-Which-Moved kept on turning.

“Look Fox, there’s One-Eye,” said Maggie as a small black shape came trotting up Red Springs Trail, two coyotes trailing behind him, one limping as she walked.

“Thank heavens,” breathed Fox, rubbing weary eyes, leaving a smear of blood on his cheek. The three coyotes surrounded him; he knelt down by the largest. “Pepe, please go find the Alders. Have them call out Search and Rescue, if they haven’t called them already. We’re going to need a medic back here, and a stretcher. As quick as you can.”

Fox rose, crossed the clearing, and squatted on his heels beside the poacher. He