The more steps a plan requires to go right, the more likely it is to fail. If you happen to require an outside factor to go your way, you're screwed. In the massive forest where we were prey masquerading as predators, those odds of success versus failure seemed somehow bleaker. I didn't want to rely on luck or chance, even if I knew we couldn't succeed without some degree of both.
Dakota and I had to do everything in our power to minimize risk, maximize reward, and avoid getting ourselves killed—or worse—in the process.
The one thing we agreed on was that if we wanted to rescue brides from their hideous husbands, we needed to steal them. One, the lords had quite possibly centuries of experience in tracking and rounding up the ladies. Two, since I doubted the Lords would be particularly reclusive, stalking them would yield faster results than wandering aimlessly through the Malumbrian Oaks, hoping we stumble across a dame here or there. In theory, anyway.
The first night alone with Dakota, we slept on opposite sides of Shail's body even though I knew she had to be cold. We'd set up shop in a cavern near Jessie's resting place. Being so close to the falls we could shout and still hardly hear each other in the chilled damp; there was no way my high school rival was comfortable. Still, I didn't make a big deal about sleeping on the side of the cave facing the entrance, where a thin mist from the falling water swept through at all hours. That demon blood inside of me was good for keeping out the cold, but the dewy accumulations that collected on my face come dawn were hardly pleasant, either.
We had bigger problems than that, however. The saying went, 'there's safety in numbers.' Looking at our number, two women and a cat, the confidence in such regards was extremely low. It was a miracle she'd chosen to partner up with me, when we were as chummy with each other as lions and hyenas.
Dakota didn't really like me. I didn't really like Dakota. During the night we'd disagreed half a dozen times on strategy. In the same breath, she'd accuse me of being a cow herder, then claim she was a fair huntress, what with her daddy bringing home the biggest bull moose three years in a row. Dig a big hole to trap the demon, she'd say, to which I'd point out that we lacked shovels, let alone the energy to dig the size of hole we'd need. And whose to say the demon couldn't climb out? Over Shail's back I'd hear her grumbled curses. Set a snare? We didn't have a material sturdy enough, and again, I wasn't sure that would even work on most Lords. Not to mention, what would we do once we caught him? Ask him nicely to show us where he's stashed his future fiancées?
"You know what we need?" I said as dawn turned the mist deep lavender, though the light had yet to fully penetrate our shelter. Fine water droplets collected and rolled off Shail's whiskers as the armored cat slept.
"A rifle?" Dakota hissed from the dark.
"Bait."
After a moment, the woman's blonde head bobbed into focus. In the grungy darkness, I could make out little more than a shape. "No," she said.
"I wasn't asking you bite the bullet," I said, sitting up against our narrow wall. Shail, undisturbed, continued to snooze between us. "I'll do it."
Dakota laughed, a high, pleasant sound that made me more annoyed than relaxed. "It's obviously going to be me, unless you let me tie Jessie up somewhere." She paused. "Actually, that's a grand idea. We'll check her in the morning. If her gut hasn't swelled to the size of Texas, I don't see why we can't prop her up. Dab on a little clay for some makeup and call it a day."
"If she doesn't look that dead, that might mean she isn't," I hissed, glaring at the spot I figured was her head. "Leave her out of this."
"Well," the woman sniffed, "I don't hear a safer choice coming from you."
"Nothing is safe here," I pointed out, crossing my arms. My fingers touched the ripped leather of my bracer. I dragged my finger along the smooth skin beneath it. "And it won't ever be. If we're going to rescue these other girls, we can't have everyone grab a limb and drag Jessie away into the night. And that's if the Lord decides her limp body is worth taking."
Dakota shrugged. "So we leave her behind as a valiant sacrifice. Isn't that a nicer fate? If she's not up by tomorrow, even if her skin has yet to hold an open house for maggots..."
I groaned. "Can you not refer to her like that?"
"That depends," she snipped. "Can you stop pretending like she's going to be okay? She's not waking up, Tay. She's just trapped in another kind of death. Is one kind of misery better than another?"
"Are you going to go in there and put her out of it?"
Dakota was silent. At last she rolled her shoulders back, thrust out her chin and said, "Well, she's your charge."
"Say we do abandon her like you want," I said, rubbing my chin. "What about the next time? Who will we use then?"
Shail stretched between us, rumbling away at Dakota as she pressed her elbows into the cat to leer through the gloom. "How many brides are we talking here? At some point, you've got to bring us to the castle. At some point, you'll be hurting us, not helping."
"I'll know," I promised, studying the rocks overhead.
Her head shook. "That's the thing about gambling. You start getting the hang of it, making larger and larger bets, and then just as you chase that final win, the house takes all your money."
She was right, but what she said wasn't something I hadn't wondered myself, especially after losing Jessie that way. If I had just taken Jessie, the girl might still be...Here. "Will it make you happy if we set a goal?" I said, pulling my braid out. While neither of us had a comb, it felt good to do something normal, even if it was a simple action like combing my fingers through the dirty locks.
"It'll make me happy if you stick to it. You said it yourself, I can't get into the castle on my own. I'm trusting you."
"We'll say twenty."
She edged around Shail to join me. Even though we were both damp and filthy, somehow she still looked pretty beneath the grime as she wound her hands through her hair. "Too high," she said after some time. "Ten."
"If you see a Lord you like better, stay with him." On this matter, I refused to budge. "Any more than twenty and I think we'll run into trouble staying hidden. And if we can't handle that many, we'll call it quits sooner."
"When you say twenty," she began, "you're including yourself, right?"
"Excluding," I said, raising my eyebrows. "I'm a Lady."
"Seems to me like you count towards everyone else's total," Dakota observed.
"I don't care about anyone but us."
"Whatever." I sensed the resigned comment was her way of saying she accepted my resolve. "Two down, eighteen to go."
"I don't want to get caught, either. It's going to suck for a long time, but if we don't try, it's only going to be worse," I admitted, watching her tie the end of hair with a strip of her dress. She glanced over at me, blue eyes questioning, but looked away again just as quickly. As soon as the light had brightened another few tones, she asked to borrow my knife to make a spear.
We spent the morning watching Shail paddle around the water and sharpening Dakota something that could, at a minimum, skewer a fish. Finding a Lord was no easy task, especially since the only land we felt comfortable with was so close to where we spent the night. Before we could do anything, we had to scout out a better area or find one of the demons and go from there.
And before that, we had to eat. So spears it was.
Shail's contribution was exactly the sort of help you'd expect to get from a creature of the feline variety- which is to say, he held the title of chief surveyor. When he was feeling particularly curious, he'd meander over to our rare catches: small, silver-backed fish with fat bodies and long whiskers.
Dakota, perhaps suffering a change of heart, volunteered herself to act as live bait. I told her she didn't have to, that we could find a Lord and just watch him until we learned where he kept the brides, but with curls of wood shavings in her lap the woman touched the end of her spear and said she wanted to be the fox in the hen house.
Eventually (and quite hungrily, since the cat had stolen breakfast) we left Shail at the waterfall and headed deeper into the forest, north of the spider's nest, where Dakota claimed she'd come from. It was an unnerving walk, though my companion made it look a stroll through Central Park. I trailed behind her so far back and to one side that I could barely see her lithe frame clambering over fat roots and over upended boulders like some a small, pale fox in a temperate jungle. She stopped every now and then to sweep the sweat from her forehead, let out a breathy sigh or girly screech or sometimes both. Using her spear as a walking stick, hips swaying in her shortened gown, she was a perky, bold target.
Perfect target, if I was being honest.
But what mattered to me, as I hunkered down in the bushes like a creep, what mattered to me was whether or not I'd be able to keep up with whatever monster carried her away.
...And also that she'd survive the encounter. I might not have liked her, but I wasn't mean enough to wish her dead.
Just wanted to share with you all the cake my mom and aunt got for my birthday. My aunt really wanted it put online, lol, so I thought Wild Side and Hunted would be fair enough places to display it!
Stephen King: "I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose."
The sheep and the bear are from two of my book covers here: Counting Sheep and Run Cold.
...Let's see what monsters I turn loose on Monday.