Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson Read online

  He tilted his head, tossed an errant strand of long light brown hair out of his eye, and said, “Sometimes. I do warn you that calling me human is a little optimistic. I have not been simply human for a long time.”

  “Wolf,” she said, her throat closing as the Name was born on her tongue. “Killer.” She pulled her hand away from him as if his flesh were hot iron. The beast was riled, and the flash of the memory of fangs closing upon her left her too afraid to control it properly.

  “Sometimes,” he agreed again mildly, as if unaware of his danger. Maybe he didn’t know. “But it was your father who tried to have us kill you. Happily, his control slipped, or my grandmother the witch did not give him enough control of us because he fair annoyed her. She does things like that. So we killed him instead of you.”

  She held still, all of her. The beast was silenced. The wolf sitting beside her was as nothing compared to what he told her. She felt as if time stopped, as if nothing moved inside her at all, not even her heart. “My father is dead?”

  Samuel, who evidently was sometimes a wolf, though she’d never heard of such a thing as a human who could turn into a wolf, said, “Yes. It wasn’t an easy thing, not even for us. He killed the rest of the pack, all but my da and me. But your father is dead and returned to the forest.”

  Her heart started beating again, but it hurt, and she clasped her fist to her chest in an effort to stop it. Grief, rage, and relief fought for ascendance. Once, she had loved him, her father whose death changed so much.

  Samuel sat on the edge of her bed and held up a carved wooden bowl that steamed and smelled of good things. “Drink this.”

  Her beast rose at his nearness, teetering on the brink of taking control. But when he simply did not move, she was able to breathe, and the thing her father had made of her subsided reluctantly. When she started to reach for the bowl, her hands shook, so she put them back down.

  His mouth flattened, and the corner of his eyes tightened. “I did that,” he said, as if the words pained him.

  “What?”

  “To your shoulder,” he said. “It went bad—and the fever kept you sick for a while. Haida tells me that usually you heal faster but that you had used all your magic to thwart the forest lord’s will. In any case, the shoulder will bother you for a while longer—I don’t know how long. My patients were regular folk, not fae. Haida seems to think that you’ve been weakened by your magic working and might heal as slowly as a human. In that case, it will hurt for a few more days.”

  She blinked at him a moment. Her shoulder hurt, it was true, but compared to what she usually felt after her father had finished with her, it was nothing.

  She might have said something, but he lifted the bowl to her lips. She contemplated another True Name she had not let escape: Samuel Silverheart. She was named for the metal—Ariana and silver were not always the same. But she feared that the name meant what it sounded like; she could not love a wolf.

  “I am Ariana,” she told him when the bowl was empty.

  He bowed his head. “I wish that our first meeting had been different, lady. But upon this our second meeting, I say that I am happy to make your acquaintance.”

  • • •

  Samuel’s eyes held shadows that never left, though they lightened now and then—especially when he sang.

  Ariana was not a hobgoblin, like Haida, to read emotions more easily than words. But despite the darkness born of sorrow and anger, he was gentle and patient with her sudden starts. When she fretted over staying in bed, he didn’t argue as Haida did.

  While the hobgoblin scolded, he left the room. Ariana had swung her legs off her bed, when he brought in a skin drum.

  He frowned at her bare feet. She found herself tucking them up beneath her instead of getting up as she’d intended. Because her bare toes seemed more vulnerable than she liked in front of this man who was nearly a stranger. He sat on the side of her bed, and she scooted farther back, away from him and against the wall.

  “Well, then,” he said, not looking at her. “I saw this sitting around in the kitchen for no reason, and though it’s been a while, I couldn’t resist.”

  She didn’t recognize the drum, which meant that Underhill had brought it for him—like a puppy seeking to please. It didn’t reassure her completely—Underhill had served her father long—but it helped to make her more comfortable.

  He struck up a soft, solemn rhythm and sang.

  She’d heard sweeter voices; the fae have singers among them. But music loved his voice just the same. His song was about a wren singing in a field and a man who longed for his childhood home. When he was finished, he raised one eyebrow, set a quicker beat, and hopped directly into a song about a clever mouse and not so clever woman.

  There were better singers among the fae, but he would have done well, even so, she thought, in the courts where her mother had lived.

  At his orders, she stayed in bed for a few more days. When she grew restless, Haida brought her weaving to her. It was not her favorite task, but making cloth was a necessity even for the fae. Samuel came in while she was threading the warp—and he made her teach him. At first he made a mess of it, but his fingers were long and clever, and it wasn’t long before he caught on. She thought it was another thing to keep her in bed. But when he later made Haida teach him to cook his favorite soups and sweets, she decided it was just curiosity.

  If it hadn’t been for his kindness to her little champion, she might have resisted him longer—no matter the serious attention he’d given to her women’s work. He was human (and wolf, warned her beast, though it wasn’t loud around Samuel). Ariana wasn’t used to small kindnesses being dealt out by men, and she felt herself falling under the spell of the soft-spoken Samuel, just as Haida was.

  The hobgoblin had initially resisted his intrusion into her kitchen—but then he proposed a trade. He taught her a song for every dish she taught him to make, finding pretty but simple tunes with limited range, so Haida could sing them well. Her little friend’s pleasure in making her own music made him happier than learning to cook did.

  He let Ariana get out of bed after three days—and then, contrary man, he became relentless in his demands for her to move, to bend and twist. An old wound in her leg bothered him the most. He told her to keep salve on it to soften the scar, made her move and bend until it hurt, then bend a little more.

  It took her a week before she admitted that she’d named him true: Silverheart, Ariana’s heart. Her body loved his form, but her heart loved the man within who had so much kindness inside him.

  TEN

  Samuel

  Haida was shy and nervous about my bumbling around in her kitchen. But I needed something to keep my hands and mind busy. Ariana was healing much faster than I expected, and after the first few days, her care was not enough to keep me busy. I needed to do things to keep my mind off Da.

  Haida had broken the hold my grandmother had on me, but the tie that bound my father to the witch was stronger than mine, either because he’d taken Dafydd’s place as head of the pack, since he was closer in blood to her, or—and he’d said this was probable—because she’d had her claws into him longer. The witch would be enraged with the deaths of the rest of the pack and whatever Haida had done to free me—and my father was facing her alone. When I was certain that Ariana would heal without me, I would return to do for my father what Haida had done for me.

  I would free him from the witch. I could all but taste her blood on my tongue—and it was a fine taste, one to look forward to.

  In the meantime, I found things to keep me busy. If she had not loved music so much, Haida would never have let me into her kitchen. My wife . . . my wife had never let me help her cook.

  As I worked grinding leaves to powder I thought about those lost memories. My da, he remembered my wife’s name and my children’s, too. I remember asking him about them and he told me
, and their names and faces ran from me as if they could no longer stay within me.

  The sound of Haida’s singing soothed my sore heart. I don’t know why she’d never sung on her own—her voice was lovely—but she treasured the songs I gave her more than my grandmother treasured power. After I’d been underfoot awhile, Haida quit being so quiet.

  “I knew that you had it in you,” I told her after she scolded me, then paused, almost cringing away from me. “Good. Now do it again.”

  “You,” she exclaimed in exasperated tones, but she stopped cringing. “You go. Do as I told you.”

  So I pounded and ground and stirred at her direction. Some of the ingredients were new to me. When I asked about those, Haida’s eyes grew round, and she ducked her head, glancing around herself, as if asking for permission.

  “That would be Underhill,” she said. “This part of Underhill, anyway. It likes you. Brings out favorites to share with you.”

  Some of those ingredients I learned centuries later. Saffron, paprika, black pepper—spices from all over the world. It was there I first tasted oranges, bananas, and potatoes. Some of the foods I ate there I never knowingly tasted again.

  I was crushing peppercorns with a mortar and pestle when she said to me, “You must be careful with my lady.”

  “I won’t hurt her,” I promised after sorting through several replies. Had Haida noticed how I looked at her sometimes? There was nothing that could come of it. I was a monster, and beyond that a simple village herbalist, and she a fairy princess. But a man could look and dream, couldn’t he?

  She made a chiding sound. “Of course you will. Everyone hurts everyone—it is a part of living. But I don’t mean careful that way. She has a beast inside her.”

  “So do I,” I told her, and as if that acknowledgment awakened it, the wolf inside me surfaced.

  “Your heart beats with a wolf’s rhythm,” Haida said prosaically. “But it is not a monster. Not the way my lady’s is—or your da’s is, for that matter.”

  “My da is the same as I,” I protested. “And Ariana is . . .” Words failed me for a moment. “Ariana is strong and true as a good oak tree.”

  Haida set her wooden spoon to rest on a small table and turned to look at me. “No,” she said, heavily. “No, she is not. Once, she was lovely and sweet and, it hurts me to confess, spoiled. Beloved daughter. But immortality is more curse than blessing. All things pass away. Love may live for a month or a year, but sooner or later, it leaves.”

  I stopped working with the mortar. “No,” I told her, because my heart knew better. “That is not true.”

  “Have you lived so long as I?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I have lived long enough to know that love doesn’t die.” I might not remember my wife’s face or her name, but I remembered her smell, the touch of her hand, and the sound of her laughter. Not even the witch’s magic could steal that from me. I loved my wife still, and the pain of her loss burned in my heart. “Not if you cherish it. Love, like any other living thing, needs to be fed. Only if you starve it will it die.”

  Haida blinked a little and leaned against the table where she had been working.

  “But you were talking about Ariana,” I said. “And not of love.”

  She nodded. “And not of love. Ariana’s father ruined her. If you hurt her or scare her, the beast will attack. It is dangerous.”

  “So am I,” I told her.

  “It was afraid of her father and could not disobey him,” she said. “But her father is no more, and it will do anything to protect her. Anything. And nothing you are is sufficient to protect yourself from it.”

  She meant it. I could smell her fear of the beast inside her lady.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said gently. “I am only here for a day or two more. As soon as I’m certain that she doesn’t need me, I have to go to my da.” And I would die. I might tell myself differently, but I had been with the witch for too long to believe in any other end.

  Until then, I would continue to play human, to remember the man I had once been, even if I could not remember my family or my life, except in bits and pieces. I would take what I could, then do my best to save my da and to save me.

  That night, as I turned wool into yarn as Ariana wove, she turned her head away from me with uncharacteristic shyness. “Do you really think love lives forever?”

  “I think that you listen in doorways,” I said lightly.

  Her mouth curved up, but she still didn’t look at me, her eyes paying closer attention to sliding her weft through the warp yarn in her loom. “I think that Underhill lets me hear what it chooses, even when I am tucked away and half-asleep. Answer my question.”

  I raised an eyebrow at the imperious demand.

  She looked at me, laughed, and said, “Please?”

  “I can only speak for myself,” I said. “But there are none that I have ever loved who I no longer love. Wife, children, and parents, I love them still, though they have, with the exception of my father, been gone for a very long time.”

  She worked for a long time without speaking. Then she said, very quietly. “You worry about your father?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I will leave tomorrow to go to him.”

  We didn’t speak again until she asked me to sing.

  The next morning, I left Ariana sleeping and ventured into the kitchen. Haida was there before me, as she always was. She handed me a bowl of cooked grain sweetened with honey, her face stormy.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You will leave us,” she said.

  “The witch holds my da.” I sat on a stool and started eating.

  “They will come back for her,” she said in a low voice, with an anxious glance toward the room where Ariana still slept. “The hounds spent three years with her as their prey, not allowed the kill. When they know that the forest lord is dead, they will come back and kill her.”

  “I will return, as fast as I am able,” I told her. “But my father needs me.”

  She smiled, but she didn’t mean it. “I know you will. And maybe they won’t come. But I didn’t worry about them until I knew you were going.”

  I finished the food and touched her hand. “I trust you to keep her safe.”

  It didn’t take long for me to ready myself to go. I did not need a pack, just boots and a good woolen cloak. I should have changed forms because the wolf would have made the journey quicker. But I had only just regained my humanity and was loath to lose it. I stepped outside to put on my boots so the dirt on the soles wouldn’t drop on the floor. The door opened again behind me.

  “Samuel? You are leaving?”

  I turned and saw her. The winter-morning sun lit her face and hair until she glowed the silver of her name. Like as not, she was centuries older than I, but she looked no more than a maiden.

  “I told you I must,” I said. “Da is still in thrall to the witch. I don’t know what she did to him for our disobedience.”

  “Take this,” she said, and she gave me a silver chain, long enough to wrap twice around my neck. “My home can be difficult to find. If you are wearing this chain in my father’s . . . in this forest and say my name three times, you’ll find yourself on my doorstep without delay.”

  The silver burned my hand, and I dropped it with a hiss. She picked it up.

  “Silver burns evil,” I told her.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “My father wore silver, and it never burned him.” She ran the chain through her fingers once. “I don’t have much magic left, but silver loves me. Try it now.”

  I took it, and it lay gently on my hands. And when I put the chain over my head and settled it around my neck, it did not burn. It was chill from her magic.

  “I don’t know that I will be able to come back,” I said.

  “If you will let me have a lock o
f your hair, with Haida’s aid I can come to you,” Ariana told me. “I may be without power, but Haida is more than a match for a mortal witch. I have a debt to settle.”

  “She is not mortal,” I said. “Not anymore. And there is no debt to settle between us. I but healed where harm was given. Haida freed me of my grandmother’s leash. If there is a debt, it is between Haida and I—and it goes the other way.”

  She frowned at me, the expression making her look a lot less young. “Nonetheless,” she said.

  I hesitated, but in the end I let her cut some of my hair. And I admit to leaving her home with a lighter heart because of the silver chain and the loss of a few strands of hair.

  ELEVEN

  Samuel

  It took me three days to find the witch’s hut, though the distance I’d traveled to Ariana’s home in the first place had not been nearly so long. Doubtless it was some sort of fae magic. I spent all three of those days working out how to sneak up on her.

  It was then somewhat anticlimactic that when I reached the hut, it had been burned to the ground. Even when I shifted and let the wolf’s nose test the ground, I could not find any sign of where my grandmother or my da had gone. Though I had been gone only a bit more than a week, the fire seemed seasons older.

  I stayed wolf for three more days, searching for scent trails. On the fourth day, I went to the oak where my father used to make me change into human. I found nothing new there and was leaving the little hollow when my grandmother stepped out of the shadows.

  “You return at last,” she said. “I knew you would come.”

  I raised my head and met her gaze. She looked worn. Older by decades, not just a bare week. Her brown hair was spiderwebbed with gray, and her skin had forgone the blush of youth for dryer parchment.

  “Underhill time doesn’t run as ours. You’ve been gone a full year,” she said, understanding my confusion full well. Da had told me she couldn’t read every thought a person had, but she could pick through the surface of a mind fairly easily. “’Tis good for your da’s sake that it wasn’t two years, or I’d have lost patience and used him up.”