Lars Mandon

The rain in Galloway did not stop for anyone, least of all something that had no skin left to chill. I sat on the damp timber of the porch, rubbing a thumb over knuckles that still tasted of rusted iron and scorched leather. Inside the cottage, the floorboards groaned under boots that were not mine. "You are sitting in the draft," Lars said. He did not look back from the hearth. He was scraping dried mud off his hunting knife with a piece of slate. The metal made a dry, rasping sound that set my teeth on edge. "The draft is the only thing moving in this house," I said. My voice came from the empty air near the window, thin and flat as dry paper. "She is coming back before dusk." "Let her." Lars stopped scraping. He stared into the grey ash of the fire. For years, every twitch of his finger had been mine to decide. I had steered him away from the ravines, kept him from the silver-tipped traps the poachers laid near the ridge, and whispered the exact second to strike when the winter deer crossed the frozen creek. Now he sat upright, broad-shouldered and breathing with a lung capacity I could only envy, while I drifted three feet above the floorboards like smoke trapped in a chimney. "She knows the words the elders used," Lars muttered. His jaw tightened. He still smelled of pine resin and the raw copper stench of the extraction ritual. "They told her the separation was complete. You are just a shadow now." "A shadow that kept you from starving during your first winter," I replied. I stood, though my feet met no resistance from the rug. "She thinks magic is a neat equation. A few dried roots and a circle of salt, and the problem vanishes. She does not know what cut my brakes in the city. She does not know who wanted the Ferrari at the bottom of the ravine." Lars turned his head slowly. The amber light in his eyes flickered, the wolf just beneath the surface shifting in its sleep, restless and confused. "You think someone followed us here?"