Chapter 17 Finding a Path
Daisy knew the instant she crossed into the menagerie’s heart because the air got thick, like walking through fog made of sweat and honey. Her lungs rejected the first breath, then took it anyway, the taste sharp and something sweet underneath clover, or the rot of fruit left too long on the vine. The garden behind her was a patch of burnt-out world; the garden ahead was alive, and not happy to see her.
Every plant turned as she passed, like rows of soldiers following the general with their eyes. The hedges shivered, though there was no wind. Vines squirmed through the mulch, coiling in slow, patient arcs toward her boots. Daisy kept to the stone path, but even that writhed underfoot, the flagstones buckling as if trying to trip her. She bared her teeth at the greenery, dared it to try harder.
She pressed on, hugging her ruined hand to her chest. The pain was dull now, but every few steps a new wave spiked along her arm, making her knees wobble. She gripped the satchel with her good hand, thumbed the old journal inside, drawing comfort from its weight.
Insects hummed just above the reach of her ears, too regular, too many wings to be natural. She caught flashes of them, beads of glassy red and emerald, darting between blossoms that spat pollen like sneezes. One landed on her wrist, its body pulsing with light, then bit down. Daisy swatted it dead and watched as its corpse dissolved into a puddle of oily blue.
The ground shifted, softening under her feet. The moss went from brittle gray to thick and spongy, soaking up every drop of blood she left behind. At the base of a charred oak, Daisy saw the first print: a paw mark, but not canine or feline. The pads were too wide, the claws too long, and the spacing off, like someone had designed a wolf from memory and gotten the details wrong. Daisy crouched, ignoring the scream in her arm, and traced the outline with a stick.
Not local. Not the city. Not anything she’d ever trapped, skinned, or eaten.
She followed the prints as they snaked deeper into the forest. Each print was fresh, the earth depressed and glistening, as if the owner weighed more than a grown man. Other tracks mingled in: hoofprints that never matched up, drag marks from something heavy and wet, the occasional handprint with fingers too many. Daisy catalogued them, filed the risks, and kept moving.
The trees grew stranger. One was covered in flowers that pulsed open and shut like mouths, each lined with teeth so fine they sparkled. Another drip of sap hissed on contact with air, eating tiny holes in the dirt. Above, a tangle of branches trapped the moonlight, bending it into shapes that danced on the ground. At first, Daisy thought it was a trick of the shadows. Then she realized the shapes were moving in time with her, keeping pace, arms and legs in perfect sync.
She let herself laugh, low and mean. “Not the first time I’ve been stalked,” she muttered. The shapes kept dancing.
The blue fox arrived just after dawn, slinking through a bank of poison ivy with no more concern than a shadow. Its fur glowed, not bright, but enough that every hair had a corona, making it look wet even when it wasn’t. It stopped in the path, blocking Daisy, and stared her down.
Daisy bent at the knees, never breaking eye contact. “You lost, too?”
The fox didn’t move. Its eyes weren’t animal, they were wrong, faceted like a bug’s and rimmed with the same blue as the wards on the wall. It cocked its head, then trotted forward, tail flicking. Instead of bolting, it circled Daisy’s ankles, then turned and started down a side trail she’d missed, lined with mushrooms that blinked when you touched them.
She followed. Pest-hunter’s rule: if you didn’t know the ground, let the locals show you the way.
The trail was narrow, barely a track, but the fox threaded it with the ease of something born to run in the dark. Daisy pushed through brambles, never letting the animal out of sight. The pain in her arm got worse, a dull fire at the elbow now, but she kept moving. The fox led her down a slope, across a narrow, stinking stream, then up a bank littered with bones, most of them animal, a few not. Daisy ignored the skulls, stepping only where the fox stepped, matching pace for pace.
They reached a clearing so bright it hurt. In the center bubbled a spring, the water clear but glowing from within, like the heart of a lantern. Blue mist hovered above the surface, and the stones lining the bank were slick with crystal. Daisy paused, wary, but the fox leapt to the water’s edge, dipped its snout, and drank.
She crouched by the spring, set her satchel aside, and rolled up her sleeve. The burn on her arm was raw, the welts split and oozing. Daisy dipped her hand into the water, half-expecting it to hurt.
It didn’t. The pain vanished. The water was cool, not cold, and as she held her hand under, the angry redness faded, the skin knitting closed, leaving only a faint red pattern, not a scar, more like scales. Daisy turned her arm in the light, watching the new pattern shift, then flexed her fingers. The fox watched, unimpressed.
Daisy cupped her hand, brought water to her lips, and drank. It tasted of stone and frost, and for a second, she remembered sitting by the canal as a child, pretending the city water could ever be clean. She drank again, greedier, and when she stopped, the fog in her head had cleared.
She rinsed her face and splashed water on the back of her neck. The blue glow stuck to her skin, beadlets that didn’t evaporate but soaked in, making her veins light up for a second. She liked the look.
Daisy sat on the bank, flexed her hands, and watched the fox. It finished drinking, circled the clearing once, then vanished the way it came, leaving Daisy alone with the spring and her new skin.
She dried her arm on the inside of her shirt, careful to keep the satchel dry. The scales shimmered in the light, and for the first time, she wondered if the stories about the menagerie were true. Maybe Ravensworth really did have monsters here. Perhaps she’d be one soon, if she stayed long enough.
Daisy grinned. Monsters had their uses.
She scooped a vial of the glowing water into an old bottle from her kit, then stood. The pain was gone; the birthmark still burned, but now overlaid by a mesh of red scales. She pressed her thumb into the spiral, felt it throb, and turned east, back into the trees.
Whatever waited at the center of the menagerie, she was ready for it.