Roger followed her gaze. He was up the tree, then back down again, ribbon in hand, before Mouse could even catch her breath. He pressed it into her hands.
Her injuries were minor, so it was easy to hide the ill-advised adventure from Lord Dewhurst. It was not long before the bruises faded, and they were all off on another adventure.
And here the ribbon was, perfectly preserved, while all the world had gone to pieces. How could it be that something still existed from before the war, unchanged? Nothing else did.
Dawson coughed in the doorway.
“I half expected you to be gone,” he said gruffly. “Chin up, Lady Dewhurst.”
There was still plenty of light by the time Mouse regained her composure and ventured into the woods again to visit John and collect the bike.
Dante’s statue was not in its usual place. Unsettled, Mouse pressed on. Her attention caught on an overgrown fork in the path. Sunlight slid across the earth in a strange way, and a golden memory flooded her senses, her father smiling at her over his shoulder as he led her to a blooming meadow at the end of this exact path.
The sun was still up. She had time, and the longer walk would help her decompress, she decided.
Stones jutted across the path, forcing her to weave in and out of its borders. A few statues lined the track, arms outstretched like Dante’s, but time had worn them down to faceless, featureless forms. Summer foliage coated them in ghoulish mantles.
A patch of flowers caught her eye beyond the trees, and she quickened her pace toward the comforting burst of color. She was almost at the end of the path, feet away from a carpet of flowers, when a shape loomed out of the shadows.
Mouse jolted back. A rock snagged at her heel, and she tumbled down. Half dazed, she gazed up at the shape.
Dante was there, reaching out to her.
“You scared me half to death,” Mouse croaked. She scanned the tree line for a sign of mischief-makers. Her heart thundered in her ears. “Come out, children. You’ve had your fun.”
No one answered.
In the dimming light, a sparkle near Dante’s eye caught herattention. She tensed. Surely, she was imagining things, but it struck her that the stone was not of the natural world. She steadied her breath, tightening her hold on her heartbeat.Nonsense, she admonished herself.You’ve faced blood and gore, and here you are terrified by a practical joke.
She forced herself up and forward, taking in Dante’s form. Beneath the moss growing across the stone, there were a few marks she’d never noticed before. Under the foliage there was a white line across his exposed eye, like a scar. His stone torso split in the middle of his chest, creating a gap between the two sides of his rib cage. The hole was covered in moss and vines, but Mouse could make out a shape behind it. She worked her fingers through the greenery. They met with something cool and smooth. Her fingertips tingled.
There were words written around the hole in his chest. Although Mouse was not fluent in the Faerie language, she could recognize enough of it to roughly translate the passage.
Speak, and unbind me, it read.
She sounded out the letters, the Faerie words airy as they passed her lips.
In an instant, mist rose around Mouse, and the statue nearly vanished from view, even though her fingers were still pressed against its chest. At first, she thought of smoke, of fires from bombs or artillery.
Then, her rational mind caught up to where she was. The village children must still be playing a trick on her. The air did not smell of anything but musky forest.
“That’s enough,” she called out again, squinting through the haze. “If you put the statues back and swear to never do something so pea-brained again, I won’t tell Reverend John Martin about this.”
“Sorry if I gave you a fright,” said a low voice from the mist, its droll tone not sorry at all.
It was not a child’s voice.
Mouse blinked. She could see Dante’s form better, but there was something about the shape that stopped her short. Where before he had only one whole arm, now his outline had two.
Her mind stuttered.
“Dante, did you just…speak?” Mouse asked meekly.
“Yes,” he said, as logically and calmly as though statues spoke to humans as often as people passing in the street.
For a moment, Mouse did not know what to think. Perhaps she’d hit her head? She prodded the back of her skull, but there was no pain. Had she gone mad, then? No, she could not accept that Thistlemarsh had already driven her to a cracking point. Instead, she focused on the figure. The mist had mostly cleared.
In Dante’s place stood a man, a shock of white-blond hair slicked back on his head. He wore an odd coat of deep green with embroidery on his cuffs. A thin white scar ran across his eye down to his cheek. There was a sharpness to his features. But more than that, he was so handsome it was like looking into the sun. It hurt.