The Hob's Bargain

A woman dressed in boy's clothing walked out from the shadows of the trees where I'd been watching. Her face was strong, though not pretty. Her dark hair was drawn untidily back into a thick braid. I'd thought it might be like looking into a mirror, but it wasn't. I'd thought it might be like looking at Caulem animated by the shaper, but it wasn't like that either. She was a stranger; if I hadn't known she was a fetch, I wouldn't have noticed she looked like me.

"What do you see?" I asked Caefawn.

He shrugged with his ever-present grin, though his eyes were wary. "Nothing, but I heard it speak."

"Leave this valley," I said, turning back to the woman.

"He brings you here to me," she purred. I never purr, at least not in public. I began to feel a little indignant, but she continued. "So kind of him. He never told you what happens to a human who meets their fetch, did he?"

A few days ago, I would have believed her. Believed the mere sight of her would kill me. But I trusted Caefawn. He wouldn't have brought me here if death was the only thing to win.

"I've heard the stories," I agreed mildly. "But you ca

"Not if I don't believe you can hurt me," I continued, watching her face closely to see if I was right. I was.

"We don't believe in you anymore," I said cheerfully. This one was as easy as the noeglins had been. "If someone meets you and talks with you, when he is home, he'll dismiss it as his imagination. It's been too long since your kind has been here. You'll have to find other prey."

She laughed. Not good. She approached me, gripped my hand with hers. I could see the pale scar the hillgrim had left me winding down her forearm. The hair on the back of my neck lifted, and I met her eyes. She smiled and looked at her arm as I'd just done, drawing my gaze with hers. The skin on her arms began to dry. It cracked and pulled back, curling away from the flesh. I stared at it, unable to break her spell.

The skin broke along the lines of the hillgrim's scar, and for a moment, just an instant, I thought the arm I stared at was mine. I cried out with the sharp pain of it and with revulsion at the ugly wound. The pain made it more real, so when I shifted my gaze away from her arm to mine, I wasn't surprised to see that my scar had split, too. Yellow pus oozed out like a tear and dropped to the ground. The distinctive odor of rotting flesh filled the air. I felt the hob's hands on my shoulders, but I couldn't pull away.

"Break it," he said hoarsely. Good, he was scared, too, how comforting. "Break her hold."

Very helpful, I thought, but he was right. I thought of how I had broken the ghost's hold in the garden and tried thinking of Daryn again. The fetch giggled and ran her tongue into the same ear Daryn had. Her saliva burned, and I couldn't hear out of the ear.

Passion didn't work. I'd try something else, then. Caefawn had enveloped me in his arms from behind. I could feel his heart beat against my back like a drum, like hoof-beats.

A vision came, and I grabbed it with both hands, unsure whether it would help me or her.

Duck's hooves drummed against the ground shaded with golden light from the sunset's fading glow. I sat him without saddle, reins resting loosely on his neck.

I remembered the day clearly, several weeks after we'd come back from Auberg. Memories shifted to accommodate the vision, subtly strengthening both sight and memory.

I laughed as the wind caught my hair and spilled it out of its loose braid. Free, I was free. Free of hiding what I was. Free of being less than I could be. I gloried in my strength, my freedom. The price had been too high, but it was paid. Now there was no one to hold me in subtle chains of wifehood, womanhood. No one to belittle my warnings because I was a woman, and women are given to such fits and starts. No need to hide what I was behind the image of what I should be.

I let out a war cry and shook my hair in the wind. Letting the cool fingers of air wash my other self behind me. The weak woman who cowered in her cellar was gone forever. The woman I was now had grown beyond her.

I stretched out my arms until they felt like wings as Duck ran down the mountain.

I came to myself slowly. I looked at the fetch and said, softly. "Go away."

Her eyes faded from brown to sea-green; her face shifted subtly, leaving behind cheeks more rounded, lips softer, jaw narrower than they had been. She snarled at me, and her face looked less than human. Then she was gone.

"About time," growled Caefawn.

I sank to my rump on the cold grass, which was damp from the spray of the small waterfall. My arm hurt as if it had been savagely ripped open, but there was nothing wrong with it. The hillgrim's scar was as it had been, and my wrist was unbruised. I covered my face with my hands and took deep, slow breaths until I felt like myself again.

The hob watched Aren put herself together again, one layer at a time. First she put aside the fear, then the rush of danger. She did it so thoroughly he could barely smell the remnant emotions on her. She had such control. He wondered if she'd learned it, or if she'd always been that way.

"Why is it that strong feelings broke her hold on me, just as it broke the ghost's hold in the garden?" Her voice was soft and calm.

"How do you control the spirits?" He asked not because he couldn't have told her the answer, but because she'd learn it better if she found it herself.

It was hard for her to articulate what she'd done. A limitation of the language, he thought. He wondered if the bloodmages had their own language for what they did.

"I take a little bit of their spirit inside of me," she said. "If I separate it from the rest of the creature, they ca

He nodded. "It's like knowing their real names. You have a part of them, and they ca

"So why can I break their hold by thinking about" — she hesitated. He could see in the darkness as easily as the light, so he watched the blush highlight her cheeks.

"By thinking about strong emotions? It worked with the ghost, and now with the fetch."

"Not just any emotions," he said, speculating about what strong emotions she'd been using. He could make a good guess, and it delighted him. "Only things that make your spirit want to stay with your body." Experimentally, he ran his tail in a swift caress over her heated cheek. She was still nervous about his hands—perhaps it was his claws. But his tail she found amusing and peculiarly safe, and he used it to his advantage.

She appeared to be lost in thought, and pretended not to notice when his tail slid over her shoulder and wrapped around her wrist. It was the slight dimpling of her cheek that gave her pretense away.

Controlled she was, but there was also humor in her, if not mischief. He could almost remember having a mate with mischief—but he would make do with humor. She was so much better than being Alone. He tightened his tail a bit, though not enough to betray his desperation. He could make do with Aren.