Tanin screamed again at dawn. His cry came not from the deep well of grief as it had before he slept; no, this time it came from a piercing agony in the calf of his left leg, as though a white hot thorn had been stabbed into his flesh.

He had only enough time to take one more breath to scream anew before realizing he was face-to-face with an eight-eyed monster the size of his own torso.

Tanin rolled instinctively to one side, forgetting that he’d taken refuge in a tree. With a yelp, he tumbled to the forest floor. Fighting the shock of the hard landing, he turned to sit back on his hands and looked upward.

He wished he hadn’t.

The monster slid on a silken dragline, hovering near his face, eight legs bristling with black hair and a bulbous body, glistening as if wet. Tanin screeched and shuffled backward as the colossal spider rotated on its thread and grabbed for him with barbed chelicerae.

Tanin skittered farther away, disgusted and terrified. For a moment, he was sure the thing would continue its descent, land on the ground, and come racing after him. Instead, the spider spun lazily around for a moment, then righted itself and began climbing the dragline back up to the tree. The spider hiked into the very spot where Tanin had slept. The Fell noticed a greenish orb hanging just beyond where he’d lain.

A cocoon. Or an egg sac. And he’d slept beside it, perhaps as the monster hunted during the night.

Groaning and feeling as if a million bugs were scratching his skin, Tanin quickly assembled his belongings—everything had fallen out with him, for which he was eternally grateful—and limped into the forest.

He had only travelled several lengths before stopping and gasping as the pain in his leg renewed. Tanin lifted the leg backward to inspect the wound. He saw two black puncture wounds in his calf, their edges already beginning to redden.

He wept helplessly. Not even a full day into his quest to save Memine and the others, and here he sat, envenomed; beaten by sandcats and massive spiders. Yes, the Charic must certainly be quaking in fear at his approach.

As a burning hot itchiness spread through his calf, Tanin’s breath became shallow. What sort of poison was this? It might kill him outright; the desert arachnids around Desita were smaller, no bigger than a finger or two, and their venom only killed the very young, very old, or the ill.

What could a monster this size do to him?

Chills gripped his body as the poison spread. Just as his stomach had clenched last night as he screamed, now it clenched again against his will. The tightness began low in his belly but spiraled methodically up his body. The muscles surrounding his first rib tightened. In another moment, he feared, the paralysis would reach his heart.

“Memine . . .” Tanin whispered. “Memine, forgive me. I tried.”

Another rib tightened, making it harder to breathe.

Ahead of him, a shape slowly materialized in the darkness of the forest. Tanin struggled for his spear and held it out somewhat pointlessly; he had no strength to fend off an attack. The spear tip trembled wildly, betraying his sickened state as chills wracked him head to toe.

The creature stepped forward, making no sound. It was hairless and unclothed, but covered in tiny, interlocking leaves—like the sandcats, its skin seemed to function as camouflage. He saw no sex, but its movements struck Tanin as feminine. Long-stemmed pale flowers hung from the top of her head like hair and either moved in a breeze Tanin could not feel . . . or else danced freely of their own accord.

She—if it was a she—approached the Fell and knelt gracefully by his side. By then, his third rib had knotted and he could feel his heart struggling to pound. The girl examined his body, from his black hair to his unshod and hard-soled tan feet. Her mouth was small and closed into a thin line, almost imperceptible amidst the tiny leaves on her face, and she had no nose. Her eyes, however, were twice the size of his own, and luminously green, as if being lit from deep within her head. Tanin intuited she was no threat to him . . . and that it didn’t matter, because in the next moment, he could not inhale.

He dropped the spear and grasped at the girl’s arms. She did not resist him, looking into his face with something like innocence and compassion.

Tanin shook helplessly, his mouth snapping open and shut, begging for breath. The girl laid a hand upon his inflamed wound.

His vision tunneled. This is how you die, Tanin thought. This is how it happens, this is what it feels like, oh Memine, my cowardly life is over . . .

Then the tunnel widened. Tanin blinked as the faintest sliver of breath slipped through his throat. His body seized the reprieve, and he clutched the forest girl more tightly. She nodded once, vaguely; a delicate, dandelion bob. Tanin felt each muscle in his body slowly release. His panic did not subside at the same rate, but did begin to abate as he was able to take and release larger and larger breaths.

He saw then that as she touched the wound, the girl’s hand slowly turned brown.

Wincing in surprise, Tanin watched as the small leaves—as small and tight as serpent’s scales—took on a dark hue, then curled at their edges, then dried entirely. Just as the Fell absorbed moisture from plants, this forest creature was absorbing the spider’s venom from his body and healing the punctures. But the cost was her own limb.

Tanin let himself fall backward against the ground, taking in deep, grateful breaths. The pain was gone, but weakness still suffused his muscles.

She stood over him, a thin smile on the line of her mouth. Her left arm had gone as dead as a summer tree branch.

“Thank you,” Tanin whispered.

The girl gave no indication she understood. She merely grasped her left arm in her right hand and pulled it upward. The arm snapped like a branch and she tossed it carelessly into the forest.

Tanin knew magic of this sort only from tales; how magnificent to now see it, to feel it, for himself. He lay still, trying to recover, and the girl stayed in place, gazing at him with a childlike sort of peacefulness.

His world had never been so big.

When Tanin felt strong enough to pull himself into a sitting position, the girl backed silently away, as if to give him room.

“Thank you,” he repeated.

The girl tilted her head. Tanin draped his arms over his raised knees.

“I am Tanin of the Fell.”

Her mouth opened, small and lacking any noticeable lips, like a tortoise. She moved her jaw up and down, up and down . . . and then he heard a faint whisper. The whisper grew louder by degrees until he could make out her windy, soft voice repeating, “I am Tanin of the Fell.”

The words were accented; or rather, seemed to be formed in an alien tongue. He tried again. “What’s your name?”

The girl moved her mouth for several moments before finally being able to say, “What is your name?”

Ah, he thought. Very well. She does not speak the Kassian tongue, but can quickly learn it.

He patted his chest. “Tanin.”

He gestured gently toward her.

The girl’s large eyes, as big around as the palms of his hand, blinked and widened. She moved her mouth silently; silently; then whispered; whispered; and finally spoke.

“My name is Iona, Tanin Fell.”

Tanin smiled, and curiously felt like weeping. He didn’t, for he’d done enough of that the past day, but this contact with what seemed a friendly creature—friendly enough to save his life, anyway—filled him with a sort of warm hope.

“Iona. Thank you for saving my life. But your arm . . . you must be in pain.”

She peered at the dry, brown stub sticking out of her body like a wooden bone. Facing him again, she said—after a moment of working her jaw—“From the earth it will come.”

Tanin blinked. It would come? He took that to mean the limb would grow back. An amazing feat. “That’s good. I’m glad.”

Iona said nothing, but still seemed to be smiling at him. In sum, her features indicated enormous age laid over with newly born youth; an odd dichotomy.

Tanin dragged himself to a fallen log and sat upon it. His strength was returning, slowly, and he relished the idea of eating something soon, but chose instead to focus on his mission. Iona may very well disappear as quickly as she arrived, and he needed as much information as he could get from her.

“Iona . . . I’m looking for someone. My love. She’s like me. A Fell. Her name in Memine.”

“Her name is Memine, Tanin Fell.”

“Yes, that’s right. She was taken from me, and brought through this forest.”

“. . . Through this forest, Tanin Fell.”

“She and several others of my kind were taken by creatures called the Charic’sada.”

Iona’s mouth fell open wide, wider than he would have thought possible. A squealing wind issued from it like the hiss of a thousand sandcats. Her eyes narrowed almost shut, her body contorted into a defensive crouch, and in one heartbeat, she’d vanished.

Tanin stood, legs wobbling. “Iona! Iona, wait. Please! I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

He scanned the trees. There had been a single moment where her leafy skin had darkened, matching the dimness of the forest behind her as if turning invisible, and then she was gone. Tanin felt like he might be looking right at her but was unable to distinguish between her body and the very woods.

“Iona? Please, come back! I need your help if you can. If you’re . . . if you’re willing?”

He turned in a circle, searching up, down, side to side, around again. If she was nearby, she was utterly camouflaged.

Tanin’s shoulders slumped. “Iona . . . if you can hear me . . . please, I am among the last of my people. The only free Fell in Kassia. I’m not a Guardian, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I can save Memine or the others . . . I’m all alone.”

He pursed his lips. Stupid and cowardly, no surprise there. Iona had saved his life and he’d offended or terrified her with his words. Well done, Tanin. Well done as usual.

“Alone, Tanin Fell?”

Tanin spun. In the relative darkness behind him, he thought he could see the outline of Iona’s naked body, but just barely. Indeed, he got the impression she was allowing him to see only so much; that if she so wished it, she could stand there completely invisible thanks to the manipulation of the color of her skin.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Tanin . . . is . . . alone?”

He implored her with his expression to not disappear. “I am.”

Iona stepped forward. Her body moved with the fluidity of the Fell river, making no sound against the forest floor. Tanin rubbed his eyes as she approached; she’d been much closer than he first thought. Not only could she disappear, but in doing so she became a sort of living optical illusion.

“Iona . . . is . . . alone, Tanin Fell.”

She paused a body length away from him. Her eyes were still somewhat narrow, and Tanin sensed tension in her lithe form.

Iona turned her head to the west, or what Tanin thought was west; his sense of direction since his tumble from the spider tree had yet to reorient. The sun had only barely risen, and the woods were still dim and gray.

“They take, Tanin Fell,” Iona whispered. Her skin darkened momentarily. “They . . . destroy.”

Tanin raised his hands, slowly, in what he hoped was a calming gesture. “The Charic?”

Iona hissed. “Yes, Tanin Fell.”

“They destroyed your people, too?”

Iona said nothing, but glared again to the west as if sending her hate on a mission to find her enemies.

“Iona . . . I have to find my love. I have to find my people. Maybe yours as well?”

She cocked her head. Tanin decided not to ask more about their fate just yet.

“Will you please help me? This forest must be your home, but it’s another world to me. Please.”

Iona stared him a moment longer. “I will help you, Tanin Fell.”

Tanin sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

The girl nodded in her odd, floral way. Casting a meaningful glance at her missing arm, she held up her intact right hand. “Tanin Fell.”

He gathered his things. “Yes.”

Iona wiggled her fingers in the air. They danced like grass.

“Do not get hurt again.”

# # #

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