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Page 23 of Into the Heartless Wood

for my dreaming time.

Her claws are burrowed into me.

She slices me open from the inside.

“You wake.” Her voice, cool with rage.

The relief, sudden and sharp, as she pulls her claws out of me.

I stumble back.

Pain dances bright behind my eyes.

Anger burns in hers. “I called to you. For twenty turnings of the sun I have called, and you have not come.”

Her antlers are stained dark with berry juice,

stark against the green of the trees.

Her claws drip amber,

sticky with my sap.

I

am

so

afraid.

I quail before her.

She knows.

Sheknows.

She made me.

She will unmake me.

He will never remember.

“Why have you not come?”

Wind snarls her green hair.

She wears a briar necklace,

blooming with roses.

She is heedless

of the thorns.

“ANSWER!”

Her voice is the bugle cry of a stag in spring.