The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed

Author:Premee Mohamed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan Books

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Veris asked the tokens how to return to the house, and they said nothing; perhaps, she worried, they were trying to communicate that they must return in a way other than how they had gotten in. But she didn’t know how she had gotten in, nor the children, and the house was the only landmark she truly had. “Is there another way?” she whispered, focusing all her attention on them. “There has to be another way. Please, only show me how. We don’t have much time.”

She watched them rock back and forth only in time with her heart: cube, nut, boar. The children watched them with drowsy interest, the boy absently holding the girl’s long velvet-covered arm with both hands. They would both be tall one day, Veris thought. Like their father: two big monsters.

“Are they magic?” whispered Aram. “Are you a witch?”

“A what?”

“Well, Father always said they have witches in the place he comes from,” Aram said; he visibly wanted to touch the tokens on her palm, and held himself back with difficulty. “He said they’re ladies that can do magic.”

“No, I’m not one of those,” Veris said. “It may be that I own some things that can do magic on their own; but me, no.”

Aram nodded, disappointed. “I wish I could be a witch,” he mumbled. “But I’m not going to be anything.”

Eleonor elbowed him, impatient. “You are so,” she said. “We talked about it. Don’t you remember? I’m going to rule half of the lands, and you’re going to rule the other half. At the same time. Because it’s too much work for one person really.”

“But Father said—”

“Never mind what Father said,” she said. “I’m the heir and when I’m Tyrant, I’ll do what I like, and I’ll make you an heir too.”

The chestnut, normally the least talkative of the three tokens, twitched sharply and rolled on Veris’s palm so quickly she had to fumble and catch it with her other hand, slow and clumsy with her wound-stiffened shoulder. Go, the chestnut had seemed to say, or felt as if it said, putting invisible or nonexistent lips to the lines on her palm, and quickly too.

Veris stuffed everything into her vest pocket and patted herself down, then briskly frisked the children to make sure they would not drop or spill anything, feeling with envy that she could not deny the richness of their clothing, the softness of the fur. Too clearly did she remember shivering in her sleeping clothes in the throne room, as the cold autumn sun came in without warmth, like the eyes of the Tyrant. “This way,” she said. “Quick and quiet as a mouse. I have reason to believe there is something after us.”

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