There was a time Fig thought her mother was afraid of her. She had no other reference to understand the look on her mother’s face when she lunged forward to still her blade. She was a girl in her eleventh summer, then. She had spent the season learning to tie and set snares. She and her mother made a game of checking the traps each morning, laughing as each failed attempt hung limp. Hopeful that dawn, the girl had run ahead to find her first success — a speckled rodent the length of her forearm. It thrashed with the force of the wild, its back arcing like a fish on shore. She had seen her mother complete the next step dozens of times, but her hands were too small to wring its neck. To still the creature, she needed to press forward with her knife—

No, her mother had shouted as she wrenched the girl’s wrist. The sound disturbed the quiet of the forest. Even the rodent, desperate to live, stilled. Let me, my sunbeam. Her mother’s hands found its neck and the creature was dead. It hung limp, transformed from animal to food.

I can do it, she had insisted, confused. She had practiced her knots for three moons.

But you will not, her mother had commanded.

Like many of her mother’s neuroses, no attempt to sway her succeeded. As the years passed the girl learned to stalk, trap, and skin, attack, defend, and intimidate — but not kill. Never kill. Her mother trained her in the mechanics — weak points and organ positions — to be called upon in a dire moment. But she would never be faced with such a thing as long as they were together. And they would be together for a long, long time.

Yet Fig was alone. What would have felt incomprehensible a moon ago had become her normal faster than she’d expected. She felt the ooze that Cathea had provided seep into her skin as she stalked between the trees beyond the witch’s land. Though her thorn wounds gaped, she could not feel them. She put weight on her injured knee as easily as she had the day before. A neat trick. She hoped Wren was making note of it in his book.

She twirled her knife and pictured the faint line she had left at the base of Cathea’s throat. Unlike her first meeting with Wren and Altair, Fig had felt endangered in the witch’s trap. Another hair forward and her blade would have parted the witch’s skin like a kite ripped along the branch of a tree. It was the first time she had attempted such a blow. What would she find there, in the gap betwixt living flesh? What did her mother need so desperately to hide?

The rush Fig had felt at the cottage pulsed beneath her skin. She circled back to the village’s field — far faster without Wren — and continued the investigation Cathea’s trap had so unceremoniously interrupted. As before, the cramped field pulsed with strange magic. She took a few deep breaths to isolate and discard it. Much quieter, what remained of the harvested stalks hummed in harmony with the mushrooms, the vines, Cathea herself.

It seemed the plants had once been low bushes. Most of their leaves had been left intact, which suggested the true prize was whatever grew between them. Ripped and crushed leaves littered the soil beneath the branches. Fig dug to find a few squished berries. Each was a cluster of smaller spheres like a raspberry, but with deep brown skin. She rubbed the torn flesh between her fingers and brought the juice to her nose. Its magic smelled of the amplified earthiness of Cathea’s mushrooms. The antidote. Its harvester had left very little behind.

Fig looked again for tracks in the packed dirt around the field. She found only her own. Someone neurotic and careful could have smoothed their steps, but the hastily ripped leaves did not suggest such mindfulness. If they had covered their tracks magically, it was in no way she could sense. She looked to the sky. Birds may have dived for the berries, but the fruits were so obviously unnatural, unappetizing.

She was on her knees poking at the soil when a thunderous boom knocked her forward. She gripped the ground to steady herself. An aftershock rattled her head — only her head. Magic. It shook between her ears like a boulder rumbling down a canyon. She scrambled to her feet, but the sensation disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

Her feet faster than her fear, she ran. The force had come from beyond the treeline, away from the route to Cathea’s cottage. Her head was eerily silent, deaf as in the breath after thunder. Whatever had made the sound was large. Fast.

It appeared without warning. Fig’s heels scraped along the forest floor as she skidded to a stop. Ahead of her was a creature the height of a bull, but slick and thin as if a wolf had been pulled through the eye of a needle. Its light gray fur lay flat to its skin like an otter’s, its snout, torso, and legs barely thicker than the bones within. Its entire body trembled as if in its stillness it might shatter. She traced the lines of its body with wonder. On the flank closest to her was a gash the length of her forearm, the flesh inside gray instead of red. Liquid coalesced at its edge like glass. The creature regarded her with unblinking eyes, then sprung into motion like an arrow in flight. It was gone.

The second boom hit her a second after the creature disappeared, as if it outran the sound itself. She stumbled back into the brush at the force of it. Before she could regain her footing, a second figure burst through the trees.

Fig saw a spear first, its wicked point dipped in some white pigment. Holding it was a person with white kinks of hair cropped tight to their skull and tanned leather clothing held together by knots. They sniffed the air and cursed an unfamiliar word. Fig held her breath. They sniffed again.

“Kin?” Their head turned toward where she lay concealed by foliage. Though they looked nothing like her mother, the way they held themselves was so similar it staggered her.

Fig searched for magic and found it lathered upon the spear, the leather, the surface of their skin like a musk. It radiated a warmth like sitting at the edge of a fire, like the plush of pressing a finger into meat to judge the cooked flesh inside. It felt like home. She stood.

“Ah.” They rose from a crouch and nodded their head in greeting. “Stranger.” Fig stared at them, bewildered. Their magic was so distracting she felt outside herself. The stranger had shaved the hair from their eyebrows and painted instead thin white lines above each eye. Sharpened bits of bone rested on their bottom lip like fangs. Fig watched the points shift as they frowned at her silence. “What pack are you?”

Pack. The same word Cathea had asked after, though they seemed to be fishing for a name. Perhaps that is what Cervus had meant when he described her mother — Fastened need not be a descriptor, but a name. Both. But she did not dare utter it.

Two more figures ran into view and stopped upon seeing the first. One was a woman with two sets of eyes stacked upon each other. The other, a man bare from the waist up, three pairs of black speckled wings burst from his back. Fig absorbed this with trepidation. Their magic was the same at the first, but with an undercurrent of something sharper, darker — demonic.

“Did it jump again?” the winged man asked with excitement. He jerked his head to examine the space from whence the creature had sprung away.

“Who is this?” the four-eyed woman added. While two eyes looked upon Fig, the other two followed the path of the creature.

The winged man noticed her for the first time. Noting her astonishment, he fluttered a spin. “Nice, right? Falcons.”

The first stranger jabbed him with the butt of their spear. The four-eyed woman crossed her arms.

Fig did not want to answer their questions. She pushed away her shock and curiosity to fall back on her task.

“Do you know anything of the village south of here?”

“The unattuned?” the winged man asked, his brow scrunched. “Are they dead yet?”

She kept her face still. “No.”

“Taking their time,” he scoffed.

“There was an antidote to their illness growing in their fields,” Fig continued. She resolved to be as vague as possible, to leave Cathea out.

“You are poorly mannered, youngling,” the spear-wielder interrupted.

“And bare,” the many-eyed woman added, now looking her up and down with all four. Her neck, arms, and ankles were littered with twine-bound charms.

Fig worked to churn this influx of information. Magic clung to the skin of these strangers like sweat — magic more harmonious than any she’d encountered. They tensed their bodies like her mother. They decorated themselves like her mother. They moved in packs as Cathea had described. Occultists. Further, they spoke to her as one of their own. The first had sniffed her out and called out to her rather than pounce. She heard Cathea in her head: It is not normal for you to be so alone.

“We do not have time for this,” seethed the four-eyed witch. “The Beast runs farther in each moment.”

“The Beast?” Fig exclaimed. Her mother had told her stories of Beasts. Beasts swallowing waterfalls, flying above clouds, digging deep beneath the ground. Beasts in the stars, Beasts spinning riddles, Beasts who could speak with voices like fluttering leaves. She never knew, with her mother, what was true and what was not. Rather, it wasn’t important. They filled their days with imagination, projection. Most of the world existed outside what she ever expected to experience. But now, she did not have time for tales. Reluctantly, she affirmed, “I’m seeking the antidote from the fields. Do you know what happened to it?”

“You don’t seek the Nimble?” the spear-wielder asked, confused.

“Is that the gray creature that went by?”

“You saw it?” the winged witch shouted.

Fig nodded. The three occultists look between each other. She felt from the length of their silence that something was communicated beyond her reach.

“If it showed itself to you, you are honored. You will hunt it,” the four-eyed witch insisted.

“Their antidote is gone, anyway,” the winged witch pulled at his elbows behind his head in a series of stretches. “We took it.”

Fig watched his feet lift above the ground as his wings flapped. So her trackless thief was a bird, after all. A bird witch who stunk of demons. “They need not die. It could heal them,” she pressed.

“They die by their own hands,” the spear-wielder dismissed. “Those who steal from the earth should be clever enough to escape its wrath.”

The four-eyed witch laughed. “They play games they cannot afford to lose.”

Fig heard Cathea scowling in her head. There is always a game. She crossed her arms. “And if I wanted the antidote for myself?”

Each occultist straightened and regarded her with new hunger. The spear wielder licked their lips. “Well, that’s a different kind of game entirely.”

They spoke in a rush, words flying between them as if tossing a ball.

“Three-slice?”

“Fire jump.”

“Cavern hang!”

“The hunt,” Four-Eyes interjected. The other two agreed. She turned to face Fig. “The Nimble appeared to you. It is an invitation. We extend one, as well. Be the first to collect its blood, and we relinquish any antidote beyond what our pack requires. Fail, and you must do our bidding until the next new moon.”

“That’s not fair,” Fig protested. “There are three of you and one of me.”

They laughed all at once like hyenas.

“True!” the winged one grinned. “Would be more fun with even odds. Pick a partner. We’ll compete in pairs.”

“How could I possibly trust my partner?” Fig demanded.

More laughter. Four-Eyes was the first to calm herself. “The one you choose will swear a witch’s promise to do their best.”

“But still, you know much more of the Beast than I,” Fig added, a brow raised. If her mother’s stories were more truth than fable, a Beast could take any number of shapes or sizes. Could have any number of desires.

“Then you’d better pick the right partner,” the spear-wielder grinned.

Fig looked between them.

The spear-wielder had been the first to speak to her, seemingly hot on the Beast’s trail. Though Fig did not sense any line of authority in the way they spoke, it was possible they led the hunt. As they stood, they tossed their spear from hand to hand. It was a throwing weapon. Fig had only her knives. If she was to win this game, she needed to be close to the creature to bleed it. She did not want to worry over the witch throwing blows from behind her back.

The winged occultist smelled the most of demon magic. It was blanketed under his other scents, but fresh enough in her mind to pick out. Whatever method Lepocapra used to take from the bodies of animals, this witch had used it, too. He arched his back as each pair of wings flexed on its own. He went shirtless, and had wing patterns painted over his shoulders in the same hue as the spear-wielder. His hands were empty. Though he could flutter a half foot off the ground, his wings did not seem large enough to fully support his weight for long. Whatever advantage this afforded did not seem worth the trouble of his personality.

That left Four-Eyes. She stood with her arms crossed, enjoying the game but with increasing impatience. She wore a dress of tanned leather like the spear-wielder, held together in intricate knots and molded shapes that were more skillful than practical. Her top set of eyes focused on Fig while the bottom two darted from tree to tree. She seemed to be the most intent on the hunt. At her hips hung two crescent blades. She hunted up close as well, then.

“You,” Fig declared, pointing at the many-eyed witch.

The witch bowed low enough for Fig to see the jagged pattern of her scalp. Strokes of paint streaked through her hair. She held out a hand the way Vaani had, all those days ago. “I swear to hunt the Nimble to the best of my ability until the game is done.”

Fig thought over her wording as quickly as possible. She did not know how long she could keep her lack of magic from the occultists, but an oath to the best of her ability would surely reveal it at once. And she did not know how a witch’s pact was enforced.

She hesitated for a moment to see if Four-Eyes expected her to swear the same. The witch waved her extended hand impatiently. It seemed not. Fig grasped it and felt a rush of magic. It collected and settled in her palm like a stone. When she balled her fist around it, it sunk into her skin. Heavy, tangible.

“Then we’re off!” the winged witch yelled giddily. He and the spear-wielder broke into a sprint. Fig tensed her legs to spring after them, but Four-Eyes held out an arm.

“When the Nimble appeared to you, what stance did it take? Leave out no detail.”

“It was facing that way,” Fig pointed where the other two had departed. “Trembling with all four paws on the ground. It had a wound on its leg — I think. It looked like a wound but it wasn’t red. There was some substance around it.”

“It was wounded?” Four-Eyes gasped, then grinned. When her cheeks lifted, her bottom set of eyes bent into crescents. “Where?”

“Right haunch.”

“And it was facing the way they ran?”

Fig nodded. Four-Eyes took off in the opposite direction. Fig followed her and strained to match her pace. She was out of practice. Long days sitting in the caravan had interrupted her usual training. What would her mother say? She felt her legs burn as she pushed to find a rhythm to fall into step behind the witch.

“Not bad, barebones,” Four-Eyes called over her shoulder as they settled into a burning pace. “Clever to hide your magic, too. Haven’t seen that trick before.”

Fig’s mind whirled. Cathea had assumed the same — that she concealed her magic somehow, rather than lacking it outright. Curious. Though she had garnered enough of their favor to join the hunt, she could sense a ferocity simmering under the surface of the occultists’ fun. She needed a suitable lie to sate the witch’s curiosity.

“It’s a game among my pack. As the youngest, I’m sent out alone and concealed.”

“Ha!” Four-Eyes laughed. “A bit cruel, but fun. To do what?”

“As if I’d say.” Fig followed her nerves to match Four-eye’s playful pitch.

The witch only laughed again.

They ran for a while without further conversation. Fig exhaled with relief, then pushed to the witch’s side. Again Four-Eyes’ upper gaze looked ahead while her lower gaze scanned the forest floor.

“Where are we going?” Fig asked.

“Beasts rise from intensity in the natural world much as we do. The Nimble’s impetus is in its evasion. It has evolved over time to escape everything, even time. Our elders say it can run so fast it jumps a generation. The mother of my mother was the last to hunt it.”

Fig had never heard a story of someone hunting a Beast. She wondered yet again if this was an ignorance her mother had shared, or a purposeful secrecy.

“How can you track such a thing?” she asked.

“You must be smart. Ferris and Ao are not. Well,” Four-Eyes’ lips parted over sharp canines, “not as smart as me. If you saw the Nimble bleeding, that means one of us has already pierced it. It appeared to you after. And so we go where it had been, not where it was going.”

“You truly believe that?” Fig stuttered. “That it travels through time?”

“I believe anything I need to win.”

Fig did not know what to make of that. But she was confident in her choice of partner.

“How long have you been tracking it?”

“Only since the last full moon,” Four-Eyes replied. “We’ve been chasing it in circles, but the center of its spiral is here. It seems drawn to the strangeness of the land.”

Fig thought of the lavender-skinned family lying still in their bed. “Do you often encounter the unattuned?”

“None who are long for this world,” Four-Eyes laughed again, darker this time.

Fig eyed the dried blood on her sickles. If the occultists had been circling the area, maybe Quil’s map had sensed the village as, ironically, the safest place for the caravan to travel. The eye of the storm. The caravan’s continued safety relied on her winning the antidote. Did the map know such things? So many toppled stones in advance? Time was more malleable than Fig had ever thought.

“Why do we seek its blood?” she asked.

“My foremother says it runs thick as resin, gray as slate. To use it in a ritual amplifies magic tenfold.”

Fig whistled. She thought of the substance she had seen, so firm it was almost glass. “Is the Beast intelligent? Can it speak?”

“Yes, the Nimble is intelligent. It desires to be hunted. It does not need to speak to tell us so.”

“Why would something desire to be hunted?”

“It’s like us.” Four-Eyes smiled. “It enjoys the chase.”

They ran a while longer. Fig focused much of her energy on merely keeping up. As the final dregs of twilight leaked below the horizon, it required more and more focus to find her footing below the rising moon. She almost collided with Four-Eyes’ back when the witch came to a sudden halt.

“Did you see that?” the witch whispered.

Fig shook her head. Though the forest took on a blue-gray sheen in the night, all was as it had been. When the thunderous magic struck again, Fig folded in shock while Four-Eyes stood with her hands on her hips.

“We missed the jump.” The witch frowned.

“How?” Fig winced through the rumbling aftershocks.

Four-Eyes stalked forward, both sets of eyes trained on the ground. She knelt beside two deep paw prints and pointed to a second set a stone’s throw away.

Fig pictured the Beast in motion with awe. “That’s the length of its stride?”

“And the end of it,” Four-Eyes replied, scouring the ground ahead. She scooped dirt from the edge of the track and held it to Fig’s nose. “Memorize that.”

Fig inhaled and coughed. The dirt smoked with heat and smelled of something acidic and sharp.

“When it jumps, there’s an echo of silver light, then the wave of magic. The longer between them, the farther it is from you.”

“Like lightning,” Fig realized. “But if it can jump anywhere, anytime, where do we go next?”

“You see why we’ve chased it for most of the moon,” Four-Eyes replied, her eyes bright.

“Will we kill it?”

Four-Eyes laughed as she shook out her legs. “Not even close.” She pulled a vial the length of a finger from her belt. “We hope to fill one of these with its blood. If we manage two, we’d be legends.”

Fig leaned against a nearby tree to catch her breath. “So do we follow it forward? Or back?”

“I prefer back.” Four-Eyes followed the Beast’s tracks in reverse. “Ao prefers forward. As neither of us have succeeded, we have only resolve to choose by. We know it is circling, and the circle is tightening. With good fortune, it won’t jump farther than the night. Even Beasts tire.”

“Tire? Does it sleep?”

“Never in a time or place we can see. It feeds, though. We think it was drawn to this area by whatever idiocy those unattuned wrought. This land is odd.” Four-Eyes wrinkled her nose. “But perhaps delicious in its oddity.”

Her pace slowed as they followed the Nimble’s tracks. The space between its hind and front paw prints was longer than Fig had ever seen in an animal’s tracks. The creature must extend itself almost completely straight while running. On occasions where it changed directions, they walked in an arc to find the point of its back paws pushing off, deeper on one side than the other. Moonlight made long shadows of the trees.

Fig was still focused on the tracks when she recoiled from another wave of the Nimble’s magic, much fainter this time, as if an echo of a storm on the horizon.

“Spillan,” Four-Eyes spat. Fig recognized it as the same word Ao had cursed. “Another one.”

“Shall we turn back?”

“No,” the witch insisted. She did not elaborate. All four of her eyes trained on the tracks.

They continued their work. Fig was not sure what exactly they were looking for, and feared asking. The faraway jump had soured Four-eye’s confidence. They kept walking.

The witch did not perk up again until they came across a wide pool of liquid beside tighter, more tentative prints. Fig gagged at the smell while Four-Eyes whooped. The Beast’s urine was potent, sulfuric.

The witch held a hand above it.

“Cold.” She scanned the area. “And the end of the tracks.”

“Our trail is old,” Fig concluded hesitantly.

Four-Eyes danced her fingers on the side of Fig’s head. “Break time from a line. There is no old.”

Fig scrunched her nose in both confusion and revulsion.

“Think like an animal,” Four-Eyes continued. In stillness, Fig could see the paint on her hair peel and flake. The witch’s forehead glistened with sweat.

Fig took herself back, back to the days spent traveling the wood with her mother. She heard the lullaby of her mother’s voice lecturing on deer, foxes, wolves. “Is it territorial?”

Four-Eyes snapped her fingers, pleased. “Yes. It marks its scent like any other creature. We think territory anchors its jumps.”

A silver light illuminated the side of the witch’s face then. She pressed a finger to her lips and pulled Fig to the ground. They crawled on their elbows beneath the fronds of a flowering fern. A few paces away from the end of its trail, the Beast appeared suddenly, in a burst of light. Fig bit her lip against the ensuing explosion of magic, more forceful so close.

The Nimble itself was silent. Fig watched its chest swell and deflate, breathing shape into the dramatic curve from its ribs to a narrow pelvis. Its steps were as dainty as a long-legged bird’s. It circled a few times, then folded itself upon the ground. It pawed at a long stick it gripped between its teeth.

“That’s the top of Ao’s spear,” Four-Eyes whispered. Disappointment melted into excitement. “But its skin is unbroken. They’ve failed and lost their weapon.” She stifled delighted laughter.

“Do we strike now?” Fig asked.

The creature at ease stunned her to stillness. It was so large, so fragile — yet it oozed a power that pushed away the earth itself. She fought the feeling. The Beast must stand before it could jump again. Its unfolding was their opportunity. Four-Eyes nodded.

Fig positioned herself behind the witch. The handle of her knife was warm in her sweating palm. She waited for a signal.

A rush of wind and wings blew them backward. Ferris appeared like a bird of prey diving, the paint on his torso bleeding white to his waist. His wings flexed as he wrapped his body around the Beast’s head and neck. “Now!”

The Beast writhed, its body liquid. Its spine curved as Ao’s spear flew and buried itself in the dirt. With two shakes, it was free of Ferris, then gone. For a breath, the two occultists stood in silence. Fig held in a scream from another burst of thunderous magic as the others only winced against it.

Ao pulled her spear from the ground. “Fair try. Perhaps we need more weight on you.”

“I can’t fly with more weight,” Ferris groaned. He had been thrown into the ground, hard. Fig saw the beginning of a bruise bloom on his hip.

Ao turned to taunt them. “Better luck on the next one, you two. Waste time watching, you miss your shot.”

“Only one witch here missed their shot,” Four-Eyes drawled.

Ferris hiccuped a laugh. Ao hit him again with the butt of their spear. “You should stretch your arms for blade sharpening duty all moon. It’s only a matter of time,” they continued.

“Oh, that’s for sure,” Four-Eyes replied with a wicked grin.

“You know something,” Ao frowned. Suspicion overtook their superiority.

Four-Eyes threw an arm over Fig’s shoulder. It was heavy with muscle and damp with sweat. Fig’s face flushed. “Barebones and I are getting on quite well, that’s all I’ll say.” Four-Eyes smiled. “Hope your luck rises with the moon.”

“Helmina,” Ao whined.

The two continued their teasing while Fig’s mind spun. These occultists spoke each other’s names with ease. Either they were false names, or her mother’s protection was unique among her people. Or perhaps these were not her people at all, and different packs of occultists were unique in this respect. None of them had asked for her name, after all. Out of discourtesy? Or a courtesy she did not understand?

Four-Eyes — Helmina — steered her away from the other two. “Don’t get too lonely without us!” she called over her shoulder.

Ao only pouted while Ferris whispered in their ear.

“I don’t understand,” Fig said when they were distant enough to speak freely. “Ao had their spear. But so did the Nimble.”

“It came from the future,” Helmina explained. “They have their spear now, but must lose it in battle later tonight. The Nimble we saw jumped from then.”

Fig fell silent for a moment, awestruck. Then, “Do we know when? How?”

“Neither,” Helmina mused. “Though it won’t go far. These jumps are the closest together we’ve seen.”

“I’ve never seen a creature move like that,” Fig admitted, her resolve waning.

“It is at an advantage in the open like this.” Helmina’s split eyes darted around the forest.

No matter how much she stared, Fig could not overcome the strangeness of seeing each pair move on their own, the witch’s face like a frame within which marbles spun in their sockets. The illusion expanded to four tiger’s eye stones that dangled from braids on either side. The striped gems caught moonlight much the same as Helmina’s deep brown pupils.

The witch’s bottom set of eyes found Fig’s gaze. “Are you admiring that they’re such a close match?” she preened.

Fig thought of Lepocapra’s many eyes dotted across its fur. They had all been different colors, different sizes — lizard, doe, bear. “The closest I’ve seen,” Fig replied honestly.

“It’s garish when they don’t match,” Helmina insisted. She brushed the braids away from her face. “Ferris stoops low enough to deal with animals. Disgusting.”

So Fig’s theory was correct. She pitied Ferris’ falcons out there in the woods, hopping about without their wings. “Whose were they?” she asked.

“My bludsora,” Helmina replied dreamily. “Our mother molded us to be slightly different, but our eyes were the same. We traded last winter — her eyes for half my life. I see twice as much; she lives twice as long.”

Fig attempted to contain her shock. Our mother. She raced to pick at the pieces of Helmina’s words. Cervus had said a non-occultist would call Iraya her sister. That occultists had kin structures of their own, beyond his reach. He had said that Iraya was not born the way she was.

Helmina took her silence for admiration. “Neat, I know.” She pressed her fingers into the delicate skin below her lower eyes. “I’m so lucky.”

Then the the witch’s nostrils flared, and her head tilted up. Before Fig could ask, they were running again. Helmina had caught a scent. Fig searched for it herself, recalling the acrid smoke of the Nimble’s footsteps, the sulfur of its markings. She could find no trace of it. There was only Helmina’s occultist musk, the sturdy, monotonous magic of the many trees and plants, the deep pulse of smaller creatures that had crawled back inside their burrows, nests, husks. Cathea was right about fear in the wood. Whether overwhelmed by the magic of the occultists or their prey, the forest’s usual denizens cowered and hid.

“What is your pack like?” Helmina asked with ease despite their pace, the charms on her arms and legs dancing as she ran.

The ache of Fig’s loneliness pressed at her heart. Perhaps this witch could understand her in a way the caravaners could not. She resolved to tell the truth, however obscured. “Isolated,” she huffed. “Reclusive. My mother does not care for the unattuned or other witches.”

Helmina laughed. “I’ve heard of packs like that.”

Fig felt something ease inside her. “She has long hair, dark as night. In winter it reaches the backs of her knees. She knows what color dye every flower yields. She sings while she gardens. She can knife a bird in flight from fifty paces.”

“She must be proud of you,” Helmina remarked, “to send you out on your own.”

In truth, her mother would be furious. Terrified. Inconsolable. But that explosion was far away, now. When Fig found her, relief would wash away such things like a flood. They would be together again, and all would be as it should.

“My mother kept my bludsora and I at her hip for decades,” Helmina offered. “I’d seen thirty summers before she let us out of her sight.” She laughed. “Meanwhile the pack found Ferris lodged in some cliff by himself. They say he’d been devouring gulls and painting himself with their blood.”

Fig expected to find the image revolting but instead felt pity. Relief — he belonged with a pack. She did not understand why she felt so. “And Ao?”

“Ao found us themself. They awoke in a field of hundreds of slaughtered sheep. Something violent had happened.” Helmina smiled, “violent enough to shape a witch.”

Fig had more questions, but Helmina slowed and held out an arm.

“Stop,” she commanded. Fig could smell it now. The air crackled like moments before a storm. “Can you climb?” Helmina whispered.

Fig nodded. Helmina took a few more steps, then interlaced her hands to boost Fig into the boughs of a sturdy tree.

“I distract it. You descend, knife out. We must act quickly before it jumps. Understood?”

Fig drew her blade in acknowledgment. As she shimmied forward on a thick branch, Helmina ducked behind the trunk of a tree a few paces over. The crackling sensation heightened. The hairs on Fig’s arms stood upright.

She heard it before she saw it — paws hitting the ground with the force of something heavy, fast. When Helmina twirled from behind her tree, what was a streak of silver gray solidified into the curved body of the Beast. It reared up onto its back legs to evade as the witch struck forward with one crescent blade, two. Helmina shifted her weight between her legs as its head darted, deciding which direction to run.

As soon as Fig made out the curve of its spine she jumped from the tree blade first. Though she aimed for the thickest part of it, the drum of its ribcage, still it curved away from her like fish in the current. She pulled her arm back and rolled into a somersault between its legs. She felt a wave of displaced air and smoke, then the cacophony of magic. She pulled her hands over her ears as she hit her aching head upon the ground.

Helmina screamed in frustration. Fig froze, afraid of her anger. But the witch only took a deep breath and extended a hand to help her up.

“Decent try,” she huffed. “A second faster, perhaps.”

Fig ignored the proffered hand. Something was off. She rolled dirt across her forehead to steady herself as she sorted through all she had experienced in that instant, in her flight from tree to ground, in the flash she spent between the Beast’s legs. The spark and thunder of the Beast itself was on top, overpowering. She dug beneath it. Helmina’s magic, thick like a poultice over her legs and arms. Beneath that. Something faint, something odd. She scrunched her nose. Where had she sensed that before?

“Delicious,” she gasped. She turned to Helmina who stood by, confused. “You said it found the corrupted land here ‘delicious.’”

“It’s a guess,” Helmina agreed slowly. “We’ve seen it forage.”

“It smells of the spoiled land, of the villagers’ spoiled crops. If it’s attracted to the imbalance, of course their harvest is the center of its spiral.”

“Interesting. You think we can track it there?”

“Better.” Fig stood. “We can trap it.”

Helmina’s grin nearly split her face in two. “I’m listening.”

“You said it is at an advantage out in the open.” Fig began to pace. “What if there was a place with walls on each side, with only one entrance, full of poisoned food we know it wants to eat?”

“I would be thrilled to know of such a place,” Helmina laughed.

“You three have no affection for unattuned people. I bet you never even explored their village.”

The witch waved her hand in dismissal. “Their meager settlements contain nothing of interest to us.”

Fig felt the thrill of the hunt rush through her. Her body vibrated down to the bone. She was doing this for the villagers. Yes. She was saving their lives. She didn’t do it for this exhilaration, for the blood pounding in her legs, for the sight of the other occultists frowning in displeasure, submitting at her feet. That was only a bonus. An unexpected effect. It was her turn to grin.

“Then Ao and Ferris are too far behind to catch up.”

* . · : · . ✦ . · : · . *

The mechanics of the trap survived Helmina’s scrutiny. The witch deemed suitable the storehouse’s wooden walls and crossbeams despite mocking their rudimentary design. Not only did the stockpiled food possess the same magical oddness as the field from whence it came — easier now for Fig to pick out — it flowed out in waves as soon as she rolled open the large barn door. The piles of bags and boxes made for adequate hiding places where their scents would be obscured. For good measure, Fig gathered fresh crops from the field and broke them in a jagged path leading to the storehouse. Lettuce heads lay open like split fruit, snapped carrots revealed the bright orange of their inner flesh. The oddness in the air intensified. All that remained was to wait.

Fig positioned herself to the side of the storehouse door. Helmina hid behind a towering stack of potatoes. The open frame cast a rectangle of moonlight in the earthy dark. Fig watched it shift as time passed. They felt the aftershocks of three jumps, the last more distant than the first. The risk was, of course, that Ao and Ferris’s direct attack would prove successful before their ambush could come to fruition. But her mother had taught her patience. A snare was just a stick and twine until it transformed, in an instant, to an instrument of death and bounty. That transformation could not be rushed.

The pale light through the open door was a sliver when the air around them began to crackle. Fig heard Helmina’s spine straighten in the dark. The padding footsteps of the Beast were a whisper at first, then heavier, solid. Fig felt air displaced by inquisitive sniffing before the tip of its snout poked through the doorway, its nose the size of her fist. She held her breath. The temperature of the storeroom rose as the Beast entered, step by step, its body pulsing with effort. She watched its massive ribs expand, contract. She traced the deep, caving curve down to its high hips. She waited for the tail, the tentative, twitching tail. When its entire body entered the threshold, she pushed with all her weight on the heavy wooden door.

The room exploded with movement.

The Nimble ran with force at the back wall, the side. Boxes and crates burst open beneath the weight of its steps. Fig ducked as the Beast flung itself at the door above her head. The storehouse shook with herbs and sawdust but held.

When the Nimble bounced back onto its feet, Helmina was there — a crescent blade in one hand and the glass vial in the other. Fig saw a glint of recognition in the creature’s eyes. It was trapped. The hunt was, for the first time that night, the first time that moon, a challenge. They began to dance.

Fig had wondered what the occultists’ magic was like. They had run through the night at a punishing but possible speed. Their weapons, though skillfully wielded, seemed mundane in construction. Helmina’s doubled eyesight had seemed more ritual gift than active ability. Here, Fig was wrong.

Helmina jumped across the mayhem like a dragonfly on the surface of a lake. One set of eyes tracked the Nimble, the other the boxes, beams, and shelves sent flying in its wake. She pushed off of objects in motion as if gravity were suspended, as if she were a creature never built to touch the ground. The Nimble writhed and snapped. Helmina ducked and dodged. Fig felt the heat of magic build and combust on the surface of the witch’s legs. She moved unlike anything Fig had ever seen.

Long ropes of braided garlic swayed like seaweed beneath harsh waves. Fig watched as Helmina snatched one in mid-air and somersaulted to wrap it around the creature’s legs. The Beast let out a mighty screech. Fig saw only the flash of Helmina’s blade, the glint of the small glass vial, before the Nimble freed itself with a vigorous shake and the witch went flying to collide with the wall beside Fig with a sickening crack.

Then, all was still. All was quiet. The Nimble looked to where Helmina lay crumpled. It took slow steps forward. Fig felt her heart pound between her ears. Helmina’s head lolled to the side, all four eyes closed. Her body was foreign, unrecognizable in stillness. Some of the charms along her arms had shattered, her skin coated in gem dust and flecks of clay. Clutched in her fist was the vial. Its contents were solid and ashy like dried magma, beads of gray pooling from the top. Her fingers loosened. The jar began to roll. Fig reached out to stop it.

She was flying. No, not flying — running. Her nose cut the air so her head and body could fit between its streams. She felt blood, thick with magic, pumping through her legs, her chest, the wild frenzy of her heart. She saw the three occultists, chasing behind. She saw a new young one among them, warped and empty. She saw spear and blade and fist and teeth. Not fast enough! She tasted the fruits of the land, rich with strangeness. She heard the cries of people slain by her pursuers. She saw the empty one again, kneeling at the field in twilight. That’s where she was from. She saw the loud one dive from the air. She saw the many-eyed one curse and kick. She saw the white-haired one bring down their spear on a large man and his shadow. She felt an itch on her leg. She saw the moon wane as the night bit its edges. She saw the large walls filled with food. She saw the many-eyed witch finally, finally step up to the thrill, the thrill, the thrill. She felt the wound slice deep into her haunch. The blood pumping. They had succeeded. It was time for her to leave.

She looked down the slope of her snout at the girl.

She looked down the slope of her nose at the Beast.

Fig returned to herself like water through a funnel. One moment she was rippling, expansive, the next contained in the contours of her body. The dimensions of the world narrowed. She was holding the vial in her hand, a drop of its thick, gray blood smeared over her thumb.

The Nimble turned to leave. Her head sloshed with the events of the evening. She pushed out everything, everything except the man. The man and his shadow. She began to panic. She recognized the curve of his wide shoulders, the black tuft of his beard.

“Wait!” she called. Her limbs shook as she tried to pull legs and paws into arms and hands. She crawled forward, the Beast’s mind overwhelming her own. She needed to leave. She needed to reach the man. She threw herself forward and wrapped her arms around the Nimble’s back leg.

She felt all of the night’s jumps at once. Dirt beneath her paws, then sand, then rocks, then grass. Faces and limbs flashed as if she were spinning, drowning. She gripped tighter. It was a branch. A single branch with many boughs, many arms, many leaves. She thrust herself forward like crawling through a narrowing tunnel. There was a spear pointed at Quil, a smokey figure behind.

The Nimble’s thunderous magic reverberated from inside of her. She felt her very bones vibrate as she lost her grip on the Nimble’s thin leg and the world exploded in a flash of silver light.

---

“We’re only passing through.” Fig heard Quil’s deep voice trembling.

“Ao, focus!”

Fig blinked against blindness, the Nimble’s running body appearing in bursts like a flipbook. Ferris flew above it, his hands outstretched like claws. When he dove, he flattened the length of his body against the Beast’s spine, his wings flapping like sails to slow the creature’s gait. Ao appeared alongside it, lashing out with the hungry tip of their spear. The Nimble jumped and kicked over each blow. Behind them, crouched low to the ground, were Quil and Altair.

Fig rubbed her eyes. The smoke was gone. More pressingly, Ao and Ferris were flailing. She heard a mighty crack as the Nimble caught Ao’s spear in its mouth and snapped it. The witch made one final, desperate lunge with their hands before it jumped away.

“Distraction!” Ao screeched. They ran to where Quil and Altair knelt faster than either could react. They grabbed Quil’s mighty bow and shattered it upon his shoulder. He fell to the ground. Altair was yelling. Fig could not hear it through the ringing in her ears. She forced herself upright.

Ferris stood beside her, panting with his hands on his hips. “Good, someone else for them to take it out on. We have luck tonight, yet.” He looked at her curiously. “You’ll have to tell us how you managed to jump with the Beast. Hope all your bits are where they should be.”

“No,” Fig cried, ignoring him. “Stop.” She stumbled forward.

Ao gathered the ruined wood of the bow and shredded it further to pelt at Quil.

“Stop!” Fig demanded, louder.

Ao scowled over their shoulder. “You are out of place, youngling.”

Fig found her footing and unsheathed her knife. “I said stop.”

“You dare,” Ao seethed.

“Where is Helmina?” Ferris called, looking around.

“Dad,” Altair shook his father’s shoulder. “Dad.”

Fig stepped between Ao and Quil. “You will not hurt these people.”

“Enough,” Ao spat. They struck at Fig’s chest with the ruined stump of their spear. Fig turned to evade it but met another blow at her hip. The witch was fast. She took steps backward as they stepped forward, eyes burning.

“You are young, so perhaps it falls on me to teach you. You are not my kin. Do not break my focus. Do not interrupt my kills.” The witch stopped when Fig’s knife touched the leather on her chest. “Do not start what you cannot finish.”

Fig pulled back. She could see the white all around Ao’s irises, the hot air exhaled angrily from their nose.

She sliced down at the witch’s shoulder.

Ao growled as they jumped back then thrust forward with the remains of their spear. The force it took to parry the ruined weapon sent a shock of pain up Fig’s arm. She dodged the next two blows aimed at her shoulder, her head. She heard the air hiss with the speed of each miss. Ao’s weapon was a third of its usual length. Fig guessed that this imbalance was the only thing slowing them enough for her to evade.

She took small, quick steps backwards. On the next thrust, she grabbed the witch’s wrist with her free hand and pulled. She tried to drive her knife into the witch’s side but instead watched the world spin as Ao used her own momentum to throw her over their shoulder and into the ground, hard. All Fig’s breath left her chest in a wheeze.

She rolled before the spear shaft slammed into the grass where her head had landed and hooked her leg around the witch’s ankle in an attempt to drop her to the dirt. Ao only stumbled and kicked her in the side. Fig’s ribs exploded with pain. She heard Altair’s voice but could not make out the words.

“Up!” Ao demanded.

Fig began to stand, only for Ao to kick her in the side again. She felt something crack.

“Up,” the witch repeated.

Fig looked to Ferris, who stood to the side in dismay. His arms were crossed. On the other side of her, Altair had a hand on their own knife. They looked between her and their collapsed father in a panic.

“Keep him awake,” Fig spat, blood coming up with the words.

Altair nodded. Ao reared back for a third kick when Fig pulled a throwing knife from her side and whipped it at the witch. It only grazed their arm. She had never been a particularly good shot. But it was enough to send the witch backward and give Fig a moment to get back on her feet.

“Ao, we don’t have time for this,” Ferris called from cupped hands.

They ignored him and began to prowl in a circle. Fig matched their steps. Her ribs ached, but she pushed that aside. The cut she had made in Ao’s arm pulsed, sang. Blood dropped from the wound twinkling like starlight. There was magic in it. Magic that called to her the way the blood in the forest had, back in the woods, back in her old life. Something hot pressed up against the underside of her skin, impossible to ignore, impossible to free.

Ao charged forward. Fig blocked their blow with her forearm, again sent shivering with the force of it. She did not have the time to be so distracted.

She parried a flurry of blows from the witch, each more frenzied than the last. Ao was getting angrier, sloppier. Fig waited for an opening to kick the broken spear shaft from the witch’s hands. When they twisted away from the next strike of her knife, Fig kicked again at the back of their knee. They fell, and she slammed her knee into the back of their head.

She heard Ferris giggle. Ao groaned on all fours. Fig exhaled. Had she done it?

Ao spun faster than she could comprehend to tackle Fig to the ground. They wrestled for her knife for a moment before Ao shoved an elbow into Fig’s injured rib. Fig screamed in pain and let go. The witch pushed her onto her back and straddled her, knife raised.

Fig looked down the blade of her own knife to the occultist’s snarling face. She had done her best. Her mother might have critiqued her form, the bend in her knees, her reaction speed, but she would be proud, she thought. That was as good an end as any. She closed her eyes.

“Come now, Ao. No one likes a sore loser!” a voice called from across the field. Silhouetted in moonlight was Helmina — one arm tied up in a makeshift sling, the other holding the glass vial. Her stride was triumphant despite a slight limp.

Ao’s thin white brows furrowed.

“You have it!” Ferris exclaimed, wings aflutter.

“And you are bound to do my bidding until the next moon.” Helmina looked to Ao. “Drop it.”

Ao let Fig’s blade fall to the ground beside her head. One moment she was incensed, murderous, the next, querulous and pouting. “No fair, we were distracted.”

“Help her up,” Helmina ordered.

Ao stood and offered Fig an arm. She hesitated, looking to where Altair was still crouched over Quil. Their gray eyes darted between her and the witches with confusion and fear.

“This century,” Ao snapped, rolling their eyes. Fig ignored their arm and stood up on her own.

“How did you do it?” Ferris fawned over Helmina.

“Barebones here is a master strategist,” the witch replied. She clapped Fig on the back and laughed.

“Did you send her here to throw us off? Foul play, Helmina,” Ao huffed.

Fig gripped her aching ribs and eyed them warily.

“That is for us to know and for you to whine about,” Helmina preened. She winked her two right eyes at Fig, wrinkling the dry trails of blood on either side of her face. Beneath pride and curiosity, Fig saw her own exhaustion mirrored. The witch’s shoulder hung out of its socket, arm held up by a scrap of fabric from the storehouse tied over her neck. Blood ran down her neck and over her collarbones from the place her head had slammed against the wall.

The witch's voice raised even higher in bravado, “Your pack will hang on your every word when you tell them of this. A youngling and a Beastbleeder!”

Her pack. For a moment, Fig was transported to another world. A world where she had her own Helmina, Ferris, Ao — perhaps three of each, five. A world where she and her mother were not alone, where their clearing was filled with kin who bickered and joked and wove clothing and sang songs and competed and occasionally attempted to kill each other. A world in which she had somewhere to return to that was not empty and dark.

If Helmina saw Quil and Altair she did not seem to care. “This is for you,” she said as she pulled a pouch off of Ferris’s belt and placed it in Fig’s hands. Fig pulled it open and recognized the whiff of Cathea’s magic – the antidote. “And a little more,” Helmina added, producing a second vial with just a drop of the Nimble’s gray blood. “Not a part of our agreement, but your due nonetheless. Take it as a reminder to strengthen your negotiating instinct,” she teased.

Ao frowned at Fig. Blood coated their arm and tainted their body paint shades of pink. “Take it and hurry home, youngling. Your betters will not always be there to save you.”

Fig ignored them. The thick, red line of their wound sung to her even more sweetly here, up close. The air above it warped. Trees and limbs and grass curved around it. It was the center of the universe. She coughed more of her own blood up into her mouth. The pain in her ribs bent her double, snapping reality back into place.

“That’ll heal up in a half moon, I’m sure,” Helmina laughed.

Fig looked up at the witch, her vision blurring her doubled eyes into six, eight. “Where will you go, now?”

Helmina put her good hand on her hip. “Why, looking for more fun?”

Fig felt blood seep out the corner of her lip. “No.”

All three occultists laughed now, high pitched and piercing.

“We’ll track down the rest of our pack and boast until the moon turns red.” Ferris puffed out his chest.

Helmina pinched his face between her fingers to pull him down into a bow. “No, I will boast and you will lament your many failures.”

Ao only crossed their arms and scowled.

Helmina turned to Fig with her fist against her forehead. “May your fire burn hot, your feet step swift. Good fortune with your game.”

Fig hesitated, then settled on waving awkwardly in reply. “And yours.”

The occultists stalked back to the treeline, Helmina pulling Ferris by the jaw, Ao sulking behind. Fig felt an ache of sadness as the darkness swallowed them.

When they were fully out of sight, magic and possibility leaked from the air. She was alone again. Mundane again.

“Don’t come any closer,” Altair called from behind her, their voice hard.

The urgency of the scene fell back upon her shoulders. She turned to see Quil, bruised but breathing.

Altair knelt by their father’s head with their knife out. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

She tucked the antidote and vial into her belt and raised her hands. “Altair—”

“Answer the question.”

“We would not be having this conversation if I were one of them,” she grimaced. “I’d be flying through the forest and you’d be dead. Again. How many times must I save your life for you to trust me?”

She watched them hesitate. Then harden. “Witches lie. They manipulate.”

“It is not a lie to say that your father will not make it back to camp if you do not let me help you.”

“Is that a threat?”

Stupid, stupid. Fig groaned and spit blood onto the grass. “Where is his horse?”

“Where is Wren?” Altair retorted.

She knew they would not be happy with the answer. “I will bring him to you and he can tell you himself.”

“I don’t believe you,” Altair scowled. “My dad shouldn’t have left Wren alone with you. I was right to come back for him.”

“Were you?” Fig spat, smearing blood on the back of her hand. “You were safe, and now you’re not. You threw your father to a pack of occultists and then the person you detest the most had to save you. Again. I risked my life for the antidote to the villagers’ sickness, and again for him. Because I like him. If it were you,” she shrugged and trailed off. Her vision started to blur.

Their shoulders drooped. Perhaps that one was a threat. She hadn’t the energy to care.

The first light of dawn slid shades of blue across her face. Her head felt so light it might separate from her body and float away. “I likely only have until sunrise to be upright. Move. Now.”

She didn’t know if it was the logic of her speech or her obvious infirmity, but Altair obeyed. She sat next to Quil and checked his pulse. He was unconscious, but alive. Solid. Fig closed her eyes.

She didn’t know how much time passed, but Altair returned with the horse. It took all of their combined strength to hoist the large man over the saddle. The effort brought tears to her eyes as her ribs shifted. Altair watched her with concern. Their bravado faded into guilt.

“Don’t talk to me,” Fig huffed. “Walk them to camp. I’ll get Wren.” He would do the talking, she decided. Help her explain this, or obscure it. She turned her back on Altair before they could reply.

The woods welcomed her with a sigh. Though her feet dragged through the brush, her pulse beat a marching song. She traced each moment of her fight with Ao in her head. She could have shifted her weight earlier, could have flicked her knife more from the wrist. She would not make the same mistakes again.

The witch’s blood called from her memory like a siren begging her to dash herself upon the rocks. The Nimble’s blood glistened at her hip. She ran her tongue over her own blood, pulled from deep within her to settle between her teeth. A large turkey vulture landed on a branch before her. She followed it into the morning, cold with dew.