Air.
It wasn’t dramatic, just a tiny twist of the shoulder. But the blade missed skin by millimeters.
“What?” hissed Quill. She was marble in the moonlight, a white thing. A wrinkled maggot. “Cut the whelp!”
He opened his left hand. Hannah’s hair fell about her face, and she slumped in a faint to the bottom of the bone and twisted-branch sphere. The cage rocked back a fraction.
“No,” said Quill. “No, no, no…”
He shifted a foot and let go of the knife-its blade clattered against wood and bone. The spell was breaking. With both hands, he gripped a cold cross-member of the cage.
“No,” growled Quill. “No!”
“ Back! ” Nicholas hurled his weight backward and his arms wrenched straight, pulling against the top of the cage. It rocked violently on its low tower.
Quill scrambled to grab the cage.
“Fool!” she hissed. “What’re ye doing!”
The cage teetered. Quill finally grabbed hold of the opposite side of the woven sphere with both gnarled hands, pulling her weight down against Nicholas’s counterpull.
And as he felt her hang her weight off it, he released his own grip. He fell backward through cold air.
Quill realized her mistake too late. The low tower leaned, and the ugly cage began to roll over onto her.
“Oh no!” she screamed.
The cage toppled, carrying unconscious Hannah within and Quill beneath it, and hit the ground with a loud and sickly splintering crash.
Nicholas was on his back, winded, drowning in pain and unable to breathe.
He curled onto his side, mouth wide, frantically willing a scrap of air to draw into his burning lungs. His diaphragm finally jittered alive and he sucked in a throaty gasp.
His eyes rolled, hunting for Quill.
The old woman was on the ground. She had clung to the cage as it fell, but it had rolled as it collapsed; only one leg had been caught beneath it, and now she strained to pull it from the splintery grip of spiny wood.
“Feck ya!” she hissed, but Nicholas didn’t know if she was cursing him, herself, or someone else. Her hands patted the earth, crawling like gray crabs, hunting.
For the knife, he thought. Where is it?
“Where is it?” she whispered, a dry pipe rasp, echoing him. She strained, with an effort that amazed him, pushed up against the ruined cage, and pulled her leg free.
On opposite sides of the cage, Nicholas and Quill both rolled to their knees. Both scoured the sandy ground with eyes and fingers for the knife.
“You fucking bitch,” whispered Nicholas.
“Feck you,” she hissed again, this time surely to him.
Inside the deflated gridwork, Hannah moaned, coming awake.
“You cut their throats!” he spat, fingers crawling under the hard, gnarled branches and into the damp soil.
“For Him!”
“For yourself, you greedy whore!”
“Feck you,” she repeated quietly. “Where is it?”
Nicholas painfully rocked back on his haunches. The cold moonlight made the bones in the cage as white as the ribs of undersea things. A wink of silver! His eyes jerked to the shine off the keen edge of the knife. The weapon lay just outside the bars. Near to him. Far from Quill.
“Yes,” he whispered.
But Quill was grinning.
She’d remembered Hannah’s paring knife, and pulled it from the corpse folds of her clothes-a sharp triangle of bright metal.
“Hannah,” whispered Nicholas.
The girl, still bound in gray-white silk, lay on the bottom of the collapsed cage, halfway between him and Quill.
The spoiled oyster skin around Quill’s eyes wrinkled. “Are ya quick, boy? Quicker than yer little dead blond friend?”
Nicholas blinked, wondering which to dive for-Quill? The hatch? The knife?
Quill didn’t hesitate. She scuttled around the side of the cage like a crab.
Nicholas leapt for the hatch, determined to pull Hannah out. He grabbed the cold, twisted timber, and pulled, but the hatch didn’t budge. Its frame had distorted when the cage had crashed down.
Fast as forked lightning, Quill’s free hand struck between the bone and branch bars and roughly snatched a ragged handful of Hannah’s hair. Hannah gasped, her eyes fluttering open.
“Get off her!” yelled Nicholas.
Quill ignored him and pulled Hannah toward her by her hair. Hannah shrieked in new pain, conscious now. Her eyes flew open, unfocused, hunting. They found Nicholas.
“Mr. Clo-”
His name died in the girl’s mouth as Quill slowly slid her other hand between the bars. In it was the glittering blade.
In the corner of his eye, Nicholas saw a twin sparkle-Quill’s wicked little knife-jutting from the dark sand under a snapped cage branch. His fingers closed around it. It was as useless as a burned match with him so far from Quill.
“He is cruel and kind, isn’t He?” twittered the old woman. “Eh, pretty man? I lose my fine old knife but He provides me wi’ another!” She laughed. Wind tickled the trees, and their leaves whispered approvingly.
Hannah kicked and struggled, but Quill wrenched her hair tight. She tested the paring knife’s blade with her thumb, and nodded. A shadow passed over the sandy circle of trees. Quill looked up. Overhead, the moon slipped momentarily behind a ragged cloud.
“Let me g-” cried Hannah, but her words were cut short as Quill cruelly twisted her hair even tighter. The girl screamed in fresh pain.
Quill looked over at Nicholas. Her mouth creaked open in an ugly, raw-gummed smile. “Let’s send her on her way, then,” she whispered, “so that you and I can be.”
“Don’t, Rowena,” whispered Nicholas. “Don’t do it.”
Quill looked at the sky as a patient mother regards a wayward child. “Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.”
Hannah stared pleadingly at Nicholas, eyes wet with pain and wide with terror.
The clouds rode over the moon-over… over… nearly…
And, suddenly, an idea arrived. As clear and bright as the pending moonlight, casting everything in Nicholas’s mind sharp and lucid. He knew what to do.
“Rowena,” he said softly. He was surprised at how calm he felt. “Rowena?”
Quill looked over at him.
He lifted her little, sharp knife to his own wrist.
The old woman blinked. “No,” she whispered.
The moon broke clear of the clouds.
Nicholas plunged the blade in. The pain was as clean as new glass. He dragged the blade through tendons and veins. Blood, dark like syrup, gushed out.
“No!” cried Quill.
He watched his blood flow between the branch bars onto the sand, soaking away. His calmness felt beautiful. Now, how do I start? he wondered. What do I say?
But the words came of their own accord.
“With my blood I call on you. I call on the Green Man.”
“ No,” repeated Quill, more loudly.
Blood pulsed out, slapping delicately into a growing puddle. Nicholas watched it, fascinated.
