Father never spoke of meeting her, but it was in his eyes when he blinked and whenever he stared into the fire. Her touch formed the shadows on his face.
‘We all have shadows that don’t belong to us,’ Father said. ‘Wear them like furs, and someone might even think you know what you’re doing.’
Hawke found her by a tree a week after Father died. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘What have we here?’
‘It’s so good to finally meet you,’ Hawke told her, heart rabbiting in his chest, though he stood his ground. For Father, he supposed. For himself. The heels of his boots sunk into the muddied marsh. ‘I’ve heard so much—and know so little.’
‘You look just like him,’ she replied, the tip of her thumbnail sharp against the bridge of his nose. ‘The spitting image—save, of course, for this stupid choice in painting your face.’
If she pulled one of his braids next, Hawke thought, he might begin to suspect she liked him.
In the same way an owl liked a mouse. Loved it, even.
His spells quickened. His dreams deepened. He heard wings when he closed his eyes, or when he drew fish in off the line, crude hooks rasping at their gills. He turned to discover there was nothing over his shoulder, just his breath painting the cold. Lingering and fading were one and the same.
He took off his robes. Plunged, naked, into the murky stream. If she was watching, he might as well give her a good show.
It was her hand that guided him that afternoon, her shadows that he wore. The wolfling gave him a fine chase, but by the time he broke through the fall of weeping branches, it was long gone—as though it’d never deigned to be chased at all.
Still, Hawke didn’t come up completely empty-handed that day.
There was a human in the clearing. Feathers on his shoulders, not fur. He slept—fitfully—and in his sleep he murmured this: ‘I didn’t do it.’
Hawke rested his staff against the inside of his thigh and waited. The stranger had a staff of his own, and hair as tangled as brambles, and marks on his wrists that spoke of shackles.
At last, his eyelashes fluttered over his cheeks.
‘Well, well,’ Hawke said. ‘What have we here?’
‘I might be with the Chasind,’ the stranger said that night, ‘but if you think I’m chastened by it, think again!’
Hawke only wished he had a braid to pull.
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