until you fade from exhaustion, and when you can run no longer, I will skin you alive and wear you on cold winter days. You may live or die. The choice is yours.”
“I want to live,” said David.
“Then we are agreed,” said the huntress. With that, she fed her bow and arrows to the fire and drew David a detailed map of the forest, showing him the way back to the road, which he tucked carefully into his shirt. The huntress then instructed him in what he had to do. She brought from the stable a pair of huge blades, heavy and sharp as guillotines, then raised them above the operating tables using a system of ropes and pulleys. The huntress adjusted one of these so that it would sever her body in half when it fell, then showed David how to apply the salve immediately so that she would not bleed to death before her torso could be attached to the horse’s body. She went over the procedures with him again and again, until he knew them by rote. Then the huntress stripped herself naked, took a long, heavy blade in her hands, and with two strokes severed her horse’s head from its body. There was a great deal of blood at first, but David and the huntress quickly poured the salve over the red, exposed flesh of the horse’s neck, the wounds smoking and sizzling as the mixture did its work. Instantly the ejections from the veins and arteries ceased. The horse’s body lay on the floor, its heart still beating, while its head lay nearby, the eyes rolling in the sockets, the tongue lolling from its mouth.
“We don’t have long,” said the huntress. “Hurry, hurry!”
She lay upon the table beneath the blade. David tried not to look at her nakedness and instead concentrated on the preparations for the release of the blade, as he had been instructed. While he checked the ropes once again, the huntress gripped his arm. In her right hand, she held a sharp knife.
“If you try to run away, or if you betray me, this knife will leave my hand and find your body before you can get an arm’s length from me. Do you understand?”
David nodded. One of his ankles was tied to the leg of the table. He couldn’t run far, even if he wanted to take his chances. The huntress released her grip upon him. Beside her stood one of the glass jars containing the miraculous salve. It would be David’s task to pour it on her wounded body, then haul her from the table to the floor. From there, he would help her to crawl to the horse. Once the two wounds were touching, he would have to pour more salve upon them, causing the huntress and the horse to fuse together, creating one living creature.
“Then do it, and be quick.”
David stepped back. The rope holding the guillotine in place was taut. To avoid any accidents, he simply had to sever it with his sword blade, causing it to drop down upon the huntress and split her body into two pieces.
“Ready?” asked David.
He laid the blade upon the rope. The huntress gritted her teeth.
“Yes. Do it! Do it now!”
David raised the blade above his head and brought it down on the rope with all of his strength. The rope snapped and the blade fell, cutting the huntress in two. She screamed in agony, writhing upon the table as the blood poured from both halves of her being.
“The salve!” she cried. “Apply it quickly!”
But instead David raised the blade again and cut off the huntress’s right hand. It fell to the floor, the knife still held tightly in its grasp. Finally, with a third stroke, David broke the rope holding him to the table. He jumped over the horse’s body and ran for the door, while all the time the huntress’s screams of rage and pain filled the room. The door was locked, but the key remained in the keyhole. David tried to turn it, but it would not move.
Behind him, the huntress’s screams rose in pitch, followed suddenly by a smell of burning. David turned to see the the great wound in her upper body smoking and bubbling as the salve repaired her injuries. Her right arm too was covered in the salve, and she was pouring more on the floor so that it pooled over the wrist of her severed hand, healing the wound. Using the stump and the power of her left hand, she forced herself off the table and onto the floor.
“Come back here!” she hissed. “We’re not done yet. I’ll eat you alive.”
She touched her stump to her right hand, then doused both with salve. Instantly, the two halves reconnected, and she raised the knife to her mouth, clasping the blade between her teeth. The huntress began to pull herself across the floor, drawing closer and closer to David. Her hand touched the end of his trouser leg as the key turned in the lock and the door opened. David pulled his leg free and ran out into the open air, then stopped dead.
He was not alone.
The clearing before the house was filled with an assemblage of creatures with the bodies of children and the heads of beasts. There were foxes and deer and rabbits and weasels, the features of the smaller animals sitting incongruously on the larger human shoulders, their necks narrowed by the actions of the salve. The hybrids moved awkwardly, as though not in control of their own limbs. They shuffled and staggered, their faces filled with confusion and pain. Slowly, they approached the house, just as the huntress dragged herself through the doorway and on to the grass. The knife dropped from her mouth, and she grasped it in her fist.
“What are you doing here, you foul creatures? Get away from this place. Go back to skulking in the shadows.”
But the beasts did not respond. They just kept shambling forward, their gaze fixed on the huntress. The huntress looked up at David. She was frightened now.
“Take me back inside,” she said. “Quickly, before they reach me. I forgive you for all that you have done. You are free to go. Only do not leave me here with . . .
David shook his head. He moved away from her as a creature with the body of a boy but the head of a squirrel twitched its nose at him.
“Don’t desert me,” cried the huntress. She was now almost surrounded, the knife striking out feebly at thin air as the beasts she had created encircled her.
“Help me!” she shouted to David. “Please help me.”
And then the animals fell upon her, tearing and biting, ripping and shredding, as David turned away from the grisly sight and fled into the forest.
XVIII. Of Roland
DAVID WALKED for many hours through the forest, trying as best he could to follow the huntress’s map. There were trails marked upon it that either had ceased to exist or had never existed in the first place. Cairns of stones that had been used for generations as primitive signposts were often obscured by long grass, were overgrown by moss, or had been demolished by passing animals or vindictive travelers, so that David was forced again and again to go back over old ground, or slash at the undergrowth with his sword in order to find the markers. From time to time he wondered if the huntress had been planning to trick him by constructing a false map, a ruse that would have left him trapped in her forest, easy prey for her once she became a centaur.
Then, suddenly, he glimpsed a thin line of white through the trees, and moments later he was standing on the edge of the forest with the road before him. David had no idea where he was. He could have been back at the dwarfs’ crossing or farther east along the road, but he didn’t care. He was just glad to be out of the woods and once again on the path that would take him to the king’s castle.
He walked on, until the dim light of this world began to fade, then sat on a rock and ate a piece of dry bread and some of the dried fruit that the dwarfs had pressed upon him, washed down with cool water from the little brook that always ran alongside the path.
He wondered what his dad and Rose were doing. He supposed that they must be very worried about him by now, but he had no idea what would happen if they looked in the sunken garden, or even if anything remained of the garden itself. He recalled the fire of the burning bomber illuminating the night sky, and the desperate roar of the plane’s engines as it descended. It must have torn the garden apart when it struck, scattering bricks and airplane parts across the lawn and setting fire to the trees beyond. Perhaps the crack in the wall through which David had escaped had collapsed in the aftermath of the crash, and the path from his world to this one was no more. There would be no way for his father to know if David had been in the garden when the plane fell, or what had become of him if he was there when it happened. He imagined men and women sifting through the remains of the plane, searching for charred bodies in the wreckage, fearful of finding one that was smaller than the rest . . .
Not for the first time, David worried about whether he was doing the right thing by moving farther and farther
