Viv splashed to shore, and lay on the grass for a long minute, breathing sweet air and savoring the absence of immanent death. Then she cleaned both herself and her sword, as best she could, of the sticky black ichor. She felt as if she were almost going through an out-of-body experience: it seemed impossible to reconcile her sense of self with the reality she had just survived. She knew herself as a smart girl, friendly and practical and hard-working: someone who might make a good public relations executive someday. She did not know herself as a dragonslayer.
But there was still a child in jeopardy, so she forced herself to keep moving, even though her own actions felt strange and mechanical. She retraced her steps to the cave mouth. The grass there was crushed from the fight, and black with pools of dragon-blood. She avoided those, walking carefully to the edge of the wyrm’s burrow. It seemed to go straight back into the hillside, further than the light could reach. She went up to the edge of the blackness, and then into it, shuffling forward with her arms outstretched.
She nearly tripped over the boy, the small warm bulk of him curled into the back of the burrow. He did not wake when she shook him and called to him, so she stuck Excalibur under her arm and dragged him by his armpits out into the light.
He was very thin, and his elbows and knees were skinned, but she saw no other injury on him. He breathed deeply and evenly in his sleep. She guessed he must be under some sort of spell: maybe it would lift when she got him home.
She allowed herself, then and only then, to think about going home. Irusan had said: The only way back is the Sword Bridge. But she had seen no bridge at all.
She sat in thought for a long moment, formulating a plan, and when she had it clear in her mind she set about picking through the detritus of the battlefield, gathering up the wet and dirty scraps that used to be her coat. She stuffed them in the pockets of her jeans, where they hung down her sides and spilled out of her back hip pockets like some kind of pathetic attempt at a hula skirt. Then she tried lifting the sleeping child, and found that by maneuvering him over her shoulder, into a fireman’s carry, she could walk with him. Bearing the boy over her shoulder, and Excalibur clamped under her arm, she staggered back once more to the stream.
“Raabo!” she cried, as loud as she could, and heard the echoes in the hills. “Raabo! I have your rags, and I have your bones!”
The echoes died away. Viv eased the sleeping child to the grass and waited beneath the timeless sky. Finally, a wheedling voice answered: “You called on Raabo, your ladyship?”
Viv turned, and saw the little man behind her: he’d approached noiselessly somehow. He was not angry now, but obsequious, bobbing his head and smiling a fawning smile. “Those bones, your ladyship? Are those bones for Raabo?” He reached out his twiggy hands, grabbing at the child on the ground, but she kicked at him forcefully and he danced away.
“No!” she said. “I mean the bones of the worm, and these rags that I have in my pockets.”
He twisted his hands together. “And what do you want for them, proud Lady, generous Lady, pretty sword-maiden and slayer of wyrms?”
“I want to know where to find the Sword Bridge.”
“Done!” he cried. “You have it right there. Now give me my rags.”
“This sword?” Viv demanded.
“Yes, that sword, your stupid—your ladyship,” the fairy snapped back, before remembering to smooth his tone once more. “I mean, gentle Lady, that the worlds divide on the edge of its blade, but what it severs it also can connect.”
“But,” Viv protested, “how do I use it to make the bridge?”
Raabo stamped his foot, and raised both hands to cover his mouth as he mumbled imprecations: “ignorant, stupid...” Viv caught. Finally, when he’d finished his outburst of temper, he dropped his hands and smiled his unpleasant smile. “Pardon me, Lady, I only meant to say that surely you must know the power of the sword is in your mind.”
“Pip—someone else told me, the magic is in the idea,” Viv admitted.
“So form the idea of the bridge,” Raabo said condescendingly, “and you will have it. Now give me my rags!”
“Fine,” she said, “here you are,” and tossed them at his feet. He scampered about collecting them, petting each one as he picked it up, whispering to them things that Viv chose not to hear. Instead, she regarded her sword. A bridge had to go over something, she decided, and water was best. Of course the sword was nowhere near long enough to stretch over the stream. But if she set it on the bank, so that the tip hung out over the water—well, that would be enough for the idea of the thing.
And then she would have to cross it. So she hoisted the sleeping boy back on to her shoulder, stepped up to the hilt of the sword, and put one foot on the flat of the blade where it laid against the earth.
“Good-bye, your stupidship,” Raabo said cheerfully behind her.
“Good-bye, little creep,” she answered, and screwed her eyes closed as she stepped out into the air.
Her foot landed on springy steel. The blade beneath her feet bent but did not break. Carefully, swaying beneath her heavy burden, eyes still firmly shut, she took another tiny step. And so she walked blindly, heel-to-toe, for many more steps than the length of the blade should have allowed, until at last when she put her weight down there was nothing to support it, and she stumbled to her knees with a splash.
But when her eyes flew open she saw that she was not in any stream—just in the middle of the shallow reflecting pool, with high trees on either side and the Pulgas water temple behind her. The light was thin and harsh, not much past dawn. The little marble shrine stood solid and serene, entirely earthly.
She sloshed to the edge of the pool and laid the boy on the grass, then went back to fetch her sword from where it lay at the bottom of the water. The child still lay comatose, even when she touched Excalibur’s tip to his chest.
She stood there staring at him for a moment, too tired to feel much beyond a dull incomprehension. She had killed a dragon. Wasn’t it enough?
But it was not enough. She stood there, swaying with exhaustion, until she thought of something else she might do. Once again she whistled the series of falling notes that Piper had taught her. And this time, as the last of them died away, she heard an answer: a little swirl of music. Piper himself stepped out from the line of the trees, lowering his flute from his lips. He took in the tableau at a glance, and gave her a smile that seemed sad.
“So,” he said, “you have learned what fairies hunt.”
“I went a long way to get him,” Viv said, and her voice quavered a little. “But he won’t wake up. Can you wake him up?”
Piper walked over to them and bent over the sleeping child, brushing his forehead with long pale fingers. Then he looked up at Viv. “Yes,” he said. “He ate nothing, he made no bargains, he never touched the Queen. His soul is still his own. I can wake him.”
“Oh thank God,” she breathed, her eyes burning with sudden tears.
“You should let me take him back to his mother,” Piper said. “Let him awaken there, thinking it was all a nightmare.”
Viv wiped her eyes. "Promise me," she said, "that you’ll get him back safely."
Piper nodded soberly. “You have my word,” he said, “that I will return him to his mother, and wake him, and that I will leave him with no new hurt on him. That is as much as I can promise; I will not be responsible for his safety once he is out of my care. But if you have destroyed the circle in the woods as I told you, then the Hunt will not come for him again.”
“I destroyed it,” she said.
“So.” Piper followed this with nothing, until, seeing that there was nothing left to say, Viv stood aside and let him gather the child into his arms. He carried the boy much more easily than she had, walking lightly back to the topiary row. He gave her one unreadable glance over his shoulder before he disappeared behind the line of trees.
Utterly emptied, Viv made her way step by muddy step up the hillside—and found that Noah’s borrowed car still sat on the embankment. It hit her like the sight of an angel, a revelation of mercy. She trudged to the passenger door and let herself in. Noah was passed out in the driver’s seat, but he jerked awake, gasping, at the sound of the car door slamming shut.
“Just me,” Viv said.
“Wha—did—did you—” Noah stuttered.
“Yeah,” she said. “I did. I found him and I brought him back. Piper came to take him home.”
“Good,” Noah said. Then he breathed deep and said it again, with a hand on her shoulder: “Good. You did good, Viv.”
“I killed a dragon,” she said.
“What, really? What was it like?”
She closed her eyes. “Just take me home, please, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
When at last she was returned to her apartment, after seeing Noah off with a tired wave, Viv showered, brushed her teeth, and fell into a dreamless sleep that was only broken mid-afternoon by the cat meowing to go outside. She spent the rest of her Sunday inside, doing some light housecleaning and reading, and had no trouble falling asleep again when evening came.
She was at work on time Monday morning, but when Jennifer asked her brightly about her weekend, her mind filled, not with the horror of a dragon in the flesh, but with the memory of kissing Auterre. “Nothing,” she evaded. As her gaze slid away she saw the friendly smile fading from Jennifer’s face; it was all business between them for the rest of the day.
Three times she composed a that-was-fun-but-we-can’t-do-it-again e-mail to Auterre, and three times she deleted it without sending, remembering again the heat of his lean body and the thrill of clinging to his back as they raced through city streets.
The bright spot of her day was Noah, who brought her a copy of the daily paper, where a small column buried in the inner pages reported that a groggy nine-year-old boy had been brought to a police station by a Good Samaritan. By pleasing coincidence, his mother had been there at the time, attempting to file a missing person’s report. The minor and his mother, both being homeless, were referred to a shelter and a caseworker assigned to monitor the child’s welfare.
“You’re right,” Viv said after reading the item. “We did good. Both of us.”
“Practice tonight?” he asked her, but she shook her head.
“Not tonight. I need—I need a little bit of normal for a while.”
“Didn’t you get the memo? Weird is the new normal,” Noah informed her, but off her haunted look: “Okay, you tell me when you’re ready.”
She took her laptop home that night, and finally sent an e-mail to Auterre. It read simply: I get my first paycheck on Friday. My turn to buy dinner?