Wystwood

38. Wings woven from grass

Ada couldn't hear her footsteps on the cobblestones as they approached the archway, Lark's song quashing any other sound from the street. But she could hear her heartbeat, quick and keen, thrumming through her ears and urging her to turn and run.

"Pull your hood down," said Raeph. "Low enough that neither of us will be able to make out your face."

"Charming," Ada muttered, tugging down the lip of her hood and bowing her head until the dark velvet traced the tip of her nose.

As they drew closer to the Hound, Ada saw flickers of sunlight glinting off of his metal mouth guard. The reflections flared around his feet, near enough that Ada thought the fae may be slouching down, huddled against the worn stones of the pillar.

"Mathieu," Raeph greeted him, sidling forwards until his back hid Ada completely.

The Hound startled up at Raeph's voice, eyes widening, and he choked out, "Sir."

He spoke with a low trepidation, his breath a shuddering through his meshed mask. Ada peered around Raeph's shoulder, trying to catch a better glimpse of him, but dipped her head before his darting eyes could flitter to her face.

She suppressed a gasp, watching the reflected light dance around their boots. The Hound didn't bear the hardened expression worn by his confrere, and sleepless shadows of violet didn't haunt the plump flesh beneath his eyes. He was only a boy, perhaps a few years into his adolescence, and not yet sixteen. He didn't slouch against the archway as she had thought, but stood as near to his full height as he could manage, weighed down by the heavy chains wrapped in circles around his narrow shoulders.

"Not Sir, Mathieu. I'm not your officer or general," Raeph replied, which only seemed to increase the boy's anxiety, his small fingers wrenching threads from his oversized tunic. Raeph sighed and swept the hair back from his face. "My companion and I are crossing through the arch. You will speak of it to no one, even if you are questioned by a superior. Do you understand?"

"Si—" Mathieu caught himself, but his words continued to stutter. "I cannot let any citizen of the city through the archway, nor can anyone enter without express permission and orders of our Lady herself, may the world be laid bare before her."

Despite the cracking of his voice, the boy spoke with certainty, as though he had repeated the command a thousand times before. But Raeph was shaking his head before Mathieu had even finished his mantra, stepping forwards until the young fae was completely backed against the arch. Raeph's fingers slid to a pocket beneath his belt, and the boy's eyes bulged as a gold coin skimmed through the air and into his palm.

"Your silence is valuable to me, and it's only fair that I compensate you for it," said Raeph, though Mathieu seemed distracted by the coin poking between his clenched fingers. "But, if word of my companion and I does spread around the city, you should know that yours will be the first door I'll come knocking on."

His voice was as mild as the spring air, but his words cut through it like a knife. They ripped the boy's attention back to Raeph, just as he placed a hand around the Hound's long chains and drew them taut around the boy's throat. "And you should know that gold isn't the only metal I'm happy to deal with."

Mathieu must have stopped breathing altogether, as he did not gasp for a breath when Raeph let the chains rattle back against his tunic.

"I trust we have a deal, then?" Raeph purred, fingers smoothing out his rumpled shirt and deliberately skimming the hilt of his ebony dagger.

Mathieu stammered back to attention. "I— Yes. Yes, Sir."

"Excellent." Raeph turned on his heel and sidled back to Ada's side. Neither of them chanced a look back to Lark, whose tune still carried on the breeze. It was approaching a clamorous peak, and more voices swelled into the air to join him like a flock of stirring songbirds.

Ada took a step, followed by another, and with Raeph's arm grazing her cloak, she crossed through the archway. Then, all she could see was green. Grass ran in great quilting stretches in every direction, dipping here and there into divots and depressions before rising back up and continuing to climb. The meadows seemed to sing a tune of their own, the wind whistling through each blade of grass and swaying on and on throughout the valley.

Without the city wall to keep the valley at bay, Ada felt the immensity of freedom settle upon her shoulders. A scattering of cobblestones gave way to spongy grass beneath her boots, and all Ada wanted to do was let it propel her up the valley's slope. It would send her soaring to the hillside, thatching her wings woven from grass ribbons, and the wystwood trees would ripple up on the horizon, winding together branches that would lead Ada to the Wishing Well.

But her dream was interrupted by a gash of black as Raeph trampled in front of her, walking not forwards but to the left. She was about to call out when a curl of silver caught her eye and she squinted past him.

A stream, so perfectly clear that it cast the sunshine a molten silver, surged down the side of the valley and through a barred watergate built into the city's wall. Ada suddenly remembered seeing it when she had first approached Wysthaven, though it had been so far away that the stream had looked like a thread of unstitched silk.

Ada's hopes came crumbling to her feet along with her wish of wings as the wind hissed a laugh through the grass. Raeph was leading her up a different side of the valley, each step along the riverbank bringing them to a forest of wystwood that didn't hold her Wishing Well. She had finally left Wysthaven, but was walking in the wrong direction.

"May I ask you a question?" Raeph interrupted her thoughts once again, and Ada cringed back from the dandelions that fluttered around her ankles.

But his voice was uncharacteristically soft, lighter than the cotton seeds now spiralling through the air, as though wary of frightening her. It was a vast difference to when he had last attempted to question her, thunderous threats lining his interrogation on how she had made it into the Wystwood. Ada had been adamant not to answer him then, but now with their dealing hanging heavy in the air, she was uncertain how she would respond. 

Instead, she huffed out a humourless laugh. "You seem in the business of taking things, I'm surprised you'd want to ask first."

She looked up at the fae walking beside her, his long legs slowing his pace to match her own. She had expected him to be at odds with the valley, like a sketch from charcoal being paired with the strokes of a watercolour. But instead, she was struck with the same thought she had had within the forest; his leather belts and winged shirt sleeves strangely suiting the earthy wilderness and boundless blue sky. He stood slightly taller here, his chin tilted up into the unsmoked air, as though he belonged in the open.

Raeph's eyes were as bright as the stream, and to Ada's surprise, a faint smile played around the corners of his lips. "You seem in the business of avoiding answers, so I thought it best to change my tact."

His reply was so unexpected that when Ada laughed again, it was with true astonishment. "What's the question?"

He was quiet for a moment, the wind swirling his dark hair across his eyes, before he asked, "How did you manage to enter Wysthaven? There's always a Hound posted by the arches, and no other easy method to mount the wall. How did you find a way?"

"I..." Ada trailed off, thinking back to the grey archway engraved with the city name, and to the decrepit fae woman without eyes who had grasped at her hand. "I just walked in. There wasn't a Hound, there wasn't anyone there at all apart from an old beggar."

Raeph didn't reply, but his brows dipped down into a frown as he lowered his eyes from the sunshine. They walked on in silence, each lost in their own thoughts that seemed to surge through their minds as fast as the silver stream.