The words were barely out of my mouth when the rabbit Briar Girl held leaped from her arms. By the time it hit the ground, it was ten times the size. A wolf, almost as large as a horse, but with feathers instead of fur. The patterns, length, and direction of the feathers were reminiscent of flames curling in the air.
Rather than the wolf’s ferocious snarl, however, the demeanor was more fitting for a bird of prey or a reptile. Cold, still, and emotionless.
When I looked at the individual details, they weren’t fitting, either. The wolf’s claws were more like talons. The teeth too narrow and clean to belong to a real wolf.
“Saying that was a mistake,” the Briar Girl said. “My companion thinks we should kill you now.”
“Let’s talk it out first, and then we can mutually decide one way or the other,” I said.
She looked at her familiar, and then seemed to come to a decision. “Perhaps.”
“Behaim is the local powerhouse, with the Duchamps not far behind. You, Johannes, Maggie and I, maybe even Mara, we’re stuck on the fringes. Conservation of ninjitsu isn’t in effect here. Those families are big. Lots of practitioners, who’ve grown up into power, who have been handed everything they have. They’re scary. A fucking kid, half my age, give or take a couple years, tried to off me, just yesterday. I get it, if you’re too scared to go up against them.”
The Briar Girl smiled. “You’re so transparent. Appealing to my pride? I have little. Look at me. I forage in the snow for edible plants. I hunt for my food, and I clean it myself.”
She thrust her hands at me.
“With these hands, I’ve cleaned a deer. Hung it, bled it, removed its hide. I washed the shit from its guts with my hands and freezing water from a creek, so I could use them.”
She gestured towards the bird-mask things.
“For the feorgbold, I had to dig up and barter for the corpses no one would claim. I walked from here to Toronto and back, a full day and night to get there, longer to get back, dragging the body in a suitcase behind me. I purified them, I washed them utterly clean, I decorated them with care, and I gave of myself to bring them forth. Are you so power hungry that you imagine all of us are itching to depose the current powers?”
I didn’t really have a response to that.
Rose did. “More accurate to say every practitioner we’ve seen has been power hungry. Laird may have misled us on that front.”
“You’re bargaining from a position of stupidity. Ignorance. That does not bode well for you, Thorburns.”
“Thorburns, plural?” I asked.
“I know who she is.”
“How?” Rose asked, without hesitation.
For an instant, I thought maybe she’d given it away. Then I remembered that the Briar Girl couldn’t lie. That was one obvious trick from the playbook that didn’t work in this world.
“I live here?” Briar Girl asked. “In these woods. I’ve watched the Thorburn family for almost six years. Hoping, waiting. I can see the ties that bind you to the house. If you are not one of the Thorburns, you’re of the Thorburns.”
“I’m guessing she can probably smell it on you, too,” I said.
The Briar Girl smiled again. I noticed her teeth weren’t stellar, and there might have been one missing among the back molars. “Now it’s my turn to ask how you might know that.”
“If I were living in the woods, hunting and foraging for my food, probably selling what I could to buy creature comforts like clothes, I might try to wrangle the same thing,” I said. “I can’t help but notice the cold doesn’t bother you, either, so you’re doing some things to make life easier for you.”
Not to mention that your familiar might demand something along those lines. I glanced at the thing, and it huffed hot breath into the air, where it fogged around the snout and the intense yellow bird’s eyes.
If I didn’t have experience through Rose, I might not have even considered that the hot breath was purely for show. A spirit didn’t need to breathe any more than a vestige did.
“I’ve made a good few changes,” the Briar Girl said. Her attention flickered to her familiar, as well. “Not enough, it seems.”
“Your… partner, wants you to be stronger?” I asked.
“You’re back to discussing power,” Briar Girl said. She spread her arms. “Look at me, Thorburn. I gave up my power for this. What are you going to tell me that might change my mind?”
I don’t know, but I’d better figure it out before you decide to have me torn limb from limb.
“What’s ‘this’?” Rose asked. “What did you give your power up for?”
“A place in the world,” Briar Girl said. “This place, specifically.”
“Why this place?” Rose asked.
“Because this is where my friends are. When I left civilization, I came here first, and this is my home, this is where they are.”
“What if we moved them?” I asked. “Hypothetically. Would you and I be able to get along?”
“Try it. Try to move every spirit, elemental and Other to another forest. I would like to see it.”
Rose said, “To move the spirits, you’d have to move every single one of the trees and animals here, that the spirits are attached to. You’d lose ground if the animals returned to their old habitats or if trees started sprouting from the ground. I don’t even know you’d begin to move the elementals. You’d probably have to bargain with the Others on a one-on-one basis… it would be a lifetime of work, if it was even possible.”
“The voice is clever,” Briar Girl said. “And she’s right.”
“Would it help?” I asked. “You seem poised to treat us as enemies so long as we own this land. Would we be able to get along if this wasn’t an issue?”
“No,” Briar Girl said.
I sighed.
“Your kind is dangerous. Even you… you stink of something foul. I can smell it and they can smell it.”
“When I’ve barely interacted with anything?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Briar Girl said. “Can’t you see it? The animals don’t like you.”
I looked over the crowd of spirits that had surrounded me. The animal spirits… they were bristling, alternately retreating and advancing, trying to look aggressive. Their snarls were small, barely audible, but constant.
“Once upon a time, when humans weren’t much more than animals, we relied on our dogs to scare off the Others who wanted to prey on us and do mischief. Cats hunted and fought with the lesser Goblins, returning to owners with torn ears or small injuries. They still have those instincts. To destroy things of darkness, foulness and blight, before rot can set in.”
“Rot?” I asked.
“The way I was told it,” Briar Girl said, “Many of the worst of them were architects. Call them spirits, or divine servants of the god or gods who put the world together, or lesser gods. Doesn’t matter. They put things together. Stars in the sky, mountains, oceans, they gathered the animals and gave them the instincts that each species would pass on to others of their kind, and to the species that came about, later on. But things reached a certain mass, and a counterweight was needed.”