Soul of Fire by Laura Anne Gilman

Author:Laura Anne Gilman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: LUNA
Published: 2013-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The Huntsman was old. He remembered when the world was a slower, larger place. He also remembered that it had never been a simpler place. Some things never changed.

The note from the old wolf had come on the heels of the witches’ warning. He had needed neither, already aware of the change in the world.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” the man across the counter said.

“I’ve been away.” He had been hiding. Spending long afternoons in the Center, the tree-ringed clearing where there was no time, no stress, only peace and calm. The last time he had been there, he had sat all night by a fire, watching the stars wheel and turn, and found no peace, no calm.

Preternaturals stalked this world. AJ had warned him, and the witches had confirmed it. The Huntsman had no beef with supernaturals; how could he, tangled in their hold for all these years? If he sometimes longed for the dust and oblivion that would have been his measure had he not stepped between a wood nymph and a wolf centuries before, that did not mean he did not still love his nymph, and the wolf...

He had called the lupin friend for almost as long. Supernaturals did not hold grudges. Not of that sort. And neither could he. But preternaturals did not belong here.

“And now you’re back.” The human across the counter finished bagging up his supplies, slow and methodical. “You do nothing without a reason, David.”

That was true. The witches—the only of his species who could see what he was, who could understand—had called him to duty.

The grocer was human, but he was human the way the Huntsman himself was: touched by their grace, changed by their magic, able to see the fantastical and, having once seen, unable to live anywhere or any way else.

He had once thought he had paid the price for that, paid in double and in full. He had been wrong.

“There’s a storm coming, Jack.”

The grocer wasn’t fool enough to bother looking at the clear sky outside his shop. “Your lumbago tell you that?”

“No games.” He had never been one for games, but Jack had. Once it had been all games and foolishness with the boy, and how long ago that seemed now. Jack hadn’t been a boy for decades. “No ache that tells me the fair folk are distressed, that magic is stirring where none should move. The elves are at their tricks again.” He was an old-fashioned man, and he would use old-fashioned terms, and to hell with any who mocked him for it.

“Ayup.” Jack was no fool, for all that he’d once played one. “And you think we need to do something about it? You?”

“Once a meddler, always a meddler, it seems,” the old man said, not without some rue.

Jack put his elbows on the counter, his palms pressed together. He had been a fair-haired boy once, before that hair receded and the bright, clever look in his eye was replaced by a more knowing one.

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