“A little woodwife charm. That’s all.”
“You think that can stop our master?”
“So let me try and fail, and then we’ll go home together.”
He stared at her a moment longer, then laughed softly. “I wouldn’t love you if you were any weaker,” he said, and let go of her.
Rachelle sat up, grasped Durendal, and willed it back into the form of a needle. Then she gathered up a great loop of the string tied to her finger, and she started to knot it around the needle.
The most terrible charms, Margot had said, or the most simple.
And it was a very simple charm that Rachelle started to weave—one of the first she’d ever learned, a little knot pattern that would soothe and bind the things beneath it. Usually it was just one step in a larger charm, something to keep the barn doors shut against woodspawn or the wrong seeds from sprouting. Now she knotted it over and over, twisting in upon itself. She picked up other strings and knotted them into it as well.
She was doomed to be devoured, was she? Then she would make of herself—of all the bloodbound and all the forestborn—such a morsel as would choke the Devourer forever.
The roaring grew louder. The dust shook at her feet.
“What are you doing?” Erec demanded.
The pattern had taken life. As the strings dragged through the dust toward the Devourer, they wiggled and bunched and tied themselves into the little knots, again and again. She could sense the power in them, like a thousand voices whispering close-shut-fall-forever.
“It’s falling,” she said. “For all of time, it’s been falling, and dragging us along with it. I’m setting it free.”
The strings were made of the Devourer’s power, and now they were twisted into patterns that continually turned the Devourer in on itself, collapsing it away from the human world. From any world.
“What have you done?” Erec demanded.
“I think,” said Rachelle, “I’ve taught it to devour itself.”
She stood. She still remembered what he had done. She would still hate him, when they returned to daylight. But she had seen the Devourer now, the limitless hunger and despair, and she couldn’t wish for even him to become part of that.
“Come with me,” she said, and took his hand.
A tremor passed through his face. He didn’t say anything, but he gripped her hand in return.
Around them, the dust shuddered again, then started running toward the Devourer in little waves that crashed and broke against their legs. Rachelle staggered and marched forward, leaning against the pull of the Devourer, which sucked at her like an inverse wind.
“What do you think remains for us?” Erec demanded. “Are we going to beg and grovel before your precious saint and bishop?”
“We might die first!” Rachelle shouted back over the growing roar of the Devourer. She was actually pretty sure they would die, even if they weren’t sucked in. The light had faded; she could see no way out, nothing but darkness.
She barely heard him when he said, “No, my lady. That fate is not for me.”
She didn’t see him look back. But she knew that he did, because she felt his hand crumble to salt and ashes in her grasp.
A scream ripped out of her throat. But there was no time for grief or rage. The pull was getting stronger; so was the song, and it took all her strength to remember that she must not turn around, must not look back and be swallowed up by the cataclysm of swirling despair behind her.
She willed Durendal back into the form of a sword, gripped it two-handed, and plunged it into the ground. Then she knelt and clung to it as the flying dust scoured her face, as the thread burned on her finger, as the Devourer screamed into her mind.
She thought of the long-forgotten boy killed to make the bone that Zisa would steal to make Durendal, and she thought, Help me. Please.
The hilt warmed beneath her hands. Then it grew hot, and then it burned with a fire that far surpassed that of the string on her finger. Rachelle sobbed, but she hung on. This was the sword that endured all things; she felt sure that if she did not let go, she could endure along with it.
Suddenly there was a great, rending scream that seemed to split the air in two. A flash of light.
And then, silence. And darkness.
And she was not holding a sword, but warm and human hands.
She opened her eyes.
Aunt Léonie looked back at her.
She was the same as when she died. Blood still dripped down the side of her face and soaked the front of her dress; the hollow gash was still cut into her throat. And yet there was no pain and no fear in her eyes. She was smiling, and that smile—the very way she breathed—was more alive, more real than Rachelle had ever seen her when she lived. Her spattered blood was transfigured into a lovingly crafted decoration. She possessed the wounds, as they had once possessed her.
“You—” Rachelle said, and her throat closed up. She did not feel afraid, only ignorant and helplessly ashamed.
“You’re dead,” she whispered finally. “I know you are with God, so why are you still bleeding?”
“Because,” said Aunt Léonie, “how else could I forgive you?”
There were tears running down Rachelle’s face, salty as the wasteland that had swallowed Erec. “That makes no sense.”
“You were never the cleverest child,” said Aunt Léonie. “But you had a good heart. That’s why I chose you to guard Durendal.” She laid a hand, sticky with blood, against Rachelle’s cheek. “And you did. You fought very hard and you were very brave.”
“And wicked.”
“That too. And now you have a choice.”
“What?” Rachelle asked warily.
“Look at your hands,” said Aunt Léonie.
Rachelle looked down. There was a skein’s worth of glowing white threads, tied to all her fingers and wending away into the darkness ahead of her like a river.
“If you want to go back,” said Aunt Léonie, “you may.”
“Back.” The word was dry and hollow in her mouth. “You mean . . .”
“I mean you will live again.”
“But I’m dead.”
“Yes.”
“People who are dead don’t just get to . . . to choose to come back to life. Or why didn’t you?” Her voice shook with fury. “Why didn’t you?”
Aunt Léonie just smiled fondly. “Do you think I’m here to answer that? I’m here to remind you that you have only ever had one choice: the path of needles, or the path of pins.”