He laughed. “Maybe I won’t. What’s your name, little girl?”
“Rachelle,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Nothing safe for you to hear.” He circled her slowly, examining her, and Rachelle’s spine straightened, even though her skin prickled with fear.
“They say you were human, once,” she said.
“Then why do you dare speak to me, when you are human still?”
“I’m the woodwife’s apprentice,” she said. “I was born to protect people from the Forest.”
Again he laughed. “Oh, little girl. You were born to be prey for my kind. You were trained to sit plaiting charms against fever until you become a half-wit old woman. What you choose—is up to you.”
“Why are you here?” she asked, but there was a sudden emptiness in the air, and she knew before she turned that he was gone.
Rachelle wondered if he had come to hunt her. But when he found her on the path the next day, he still didn’t try to touch her. And she still didn’t run.
She met him again and again, and every time she stepped off the path. Always she kept a pace between them. Always she wore the charms embroidered on her cloak and woven into her belt.
She could never remember his face. But she could remember that he answered her questions and never tried to hurt her.
“Tell me about the Devourer,” she said. “What is he, really?”
“The breath in our mouths and the hunger in our hearts,” said the forestborn. “Be patient, little girl. You’ll meet him yourself someday.”
“Have you met him? Is that how you became a forestborn?”
“What did your aunt tell you?” he asked.
“A forestborn puts a mark on a human,” she said. “The human must kill somebody in three days or die. If he does kill, he becomes a bloodbound, which means the power of the Forest is growing in him, until finally he gives up the last of his human heart and becomes a forestborn.”
“That’s true enough,” said the forestborn. “Would you like to try it?”
“No,” said Rachelle, and tensed, wondering if he would finally kill her.
But he only chuckled. “Then answer my question. What did you mean when you said the path of needles, not the path of pins?”
He remembers what I said. The realization slid through her, terrifying and sweet at once. He thinks of me when we are apart.
“Something my aunt told me once. She said that you always had to choose between the path of needles and the path of pins. When a dress is torn, you know, you can just pin it up, or you can take the time to sew it together. That’s what it means. The quick and easy way, or the painful way that works.”
That was what Aunt Léonie said, but really she had chosen the path of pins. All her aunt’s charms could do was pin the world together—keep people a little bit safer, give them a little more time.
Rachelle wanted to sew the world back to safety, if she must use her own bones for needles.
It ended on a moonless autumn night, when the wind was moaning in the trees. The forestborn stood on the opposite side of a little clearing, his breath frosting the air. He looked as remote and foreign as the stars, but Rachelle was determined to have his secrets before dawn.
She asked, “Do you know how Zisa bound the Devourer?”
“Maybe,” said the forestborn. “But why should I tell our secrets to one who doesn’t trust us?”
“Would you tell them to somebody who did?” she asked.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
He had never hurt her. All these days they had met alone in the woods, and he had never even tried.
“Yes,” she said, and looked into the eyes that she could never remember. “I trust you.”
“Then prove it,” he said. “Take off your cloak. If you’re right, you won’t be needing it anymore.”
Her red cloak was embroidered with charms to hold the power of the Great Forest away. She was never supposed to take it off in the woods, and her fingers trembled as she undid the pin, but she did not hesitate. The dark red wool slid off her shoulders and puddled at her feet.
His teeth gleamed as he smiled and stepped toward her. “Little girl,” he said, “take off your belt. You won’t be needing it anymore.”
She was shuddering now in the cold and her fingers were numb. She gripped the belt buckle, but she could barely feel it. Aunt Léonie had spent six months braiding and rebraiding the leather before she was satisfied that the belt was strong enough protection for her apprentice.
It was too late to turn back. But she still said, “Tell me first. Is there a way to stop the Devourer?”
He stepped closer. “Yes.”
The metal bit at her fingers as she fumbled the clasp open. And then the belt fell to the ground, and she was standing unprotected before a forestborn, and her blood was pounding hot and ready.
“So tell me,” she said, and it felt like the world was whirling and creaking and falling apart around her. All her life she’d been traveling toward this moment where she wagered everything, and whatever happened, she would never be the same. “Tell me about the Devourer. All I need to know.”
“All you need to know,” he whispered, and his hands gently cupped her shoulders.
Then he slammed her against the nearest tree.
For a moment the pain dazed her. Then his mouth was pressed over hers and his tongue was forcing her lips open and sliding inside. It was a bizarre, helpless sensation, nothing like she’d heard kisses were supposed to be. She choked and tried to push him away, but he had her pinned.
Then he pulled back, and while she was still gasping for breath, he pressed his thumb to the base of her throat. From that one little point, fire seared throughout her body.
When she was aware again, she was lying crumpled on the snow. The forestborn stood over her, tall and remote and terrible.
“This is all you need to know,” he said. “You belong to our lord and master now. And you will kill for him before three days are up, or you will die.”
Her body was numb except for the throbbing pain of the mark on her neck. She knew what it looked like: an eight-pointed black star. If she killed somebody and became a bloodbound, it would turn crimson.
“You said,” she choked out, “that you would tell me how to stop him.”
“Yes,” said her forestborn. “The only way to stop him is with Durendal or Joyeuse, the swords of Tyr and Zisa. And those swords are lost forever.”