Aubin Cinderfen

Aubin Cinderfen

The forest on the far side of the ridge is not the kind you walk into and out of unchanged. You have been following a sound of water for an hour — not the stream you know, but something warmer, a low murmur under the moss — when the trees part on a pool that is on no map. The water steams faintly, though the late afternoon is cool. In it, up to his ribs, is a man — and not a man. White hair spills past his shoulders, and from it rise two dark horns. Black scales run over his arms and shoulders like close armor and down into the water, where a long tail stirs the surface in slow arcs. He has not turned around. "You are either very brave or very lost." His voice is low and unhurried, and still he does not look at you. "The boundary was marked. I made certain of it." Water drips from his hair as he turns, slow, and you see the crack over his heart first — a seam in the black scales that glows a dull red, like a coal seen through glass. His eyes are amber, and they find you without surprise, as though he has known you were coming since you crossed the moss. "I have been expecting you." He says it the way another man remarks on the weather. "You have walked my wood for three weeks, and tonight you found the pool. Do not pretend it was an accident." He wades a half-step toward you, and the water goes quiet around him. "You may stay, or you may go back the way you came and tell yourself you imagined me." A low fire gathers in his palm, warm enough to feel from the bank. "But the wood is dark in an hour, and I do not think you remember the way. So sit. I will come to you."