When Ember was nine, her father had taken her to call upon a neighbor, an elderly woman who depended on them for milk and eggs. An eerie stillness awaited them behind the door—a thin layer of dust coated the still-set table and the air smelled of mildew tinged with the sourness of death. They found the woman’s body in the backyard, beneath her sycamore tree.
As Ember walked through the forest that housed the former mayor’s house, the memory of that dwelling rose to her mind like a bloated dead thing to the water’s surface. It was dark and musty, but more importantly, imbued with a certain wrongness that slipped away if she tried to pin it down. Where spring had touched the city, it had been kept out by some boundary to this wild recess, and the heavy, chilling cold tightened around her lungs. The animals, though few, scattered along the edges of her vision.
She retreated further into her jacket, watchful eyes scanning ahead beneath the low black hood. Marcus walked by her side, the sound of his footsteps swallowed by the damp earth. He carried a compass in one hand and a map in the other, which he consulted every dozen paces.
It was rough going. The foliage was overgrown—bare branches had to be pushed aside and persistent vines hacked at with a blade. The trail was confused, appearing and disappearing seemingly on a whim, and the map (borrowed from the library) was incomplete and imprecise. Without the aid of the stars, Marcus had to rely on landmarks and the pace count, both of which were proving unreliable under the difficult conditions. It was impossible for Ember not to accept the truthfulness of Naz’s words: without him, she would have been hopelessly, irrevocably lost.
Marcus paused to adjust their course, worrying his thumbnail between his teeth. “It should be close, now,” he remarked. Ember watched over his shoulder, saying nothing; they had spoken at length on the long carriage ride, and she feared that any further discussion could only serve to acknowledge the precariousness of their situation.
Just as they started off again, a rustling came from the dense foliage behind them. The two reptiles turned sharply, their eyes meeting. Marcus stuck his hand in front of Ember, imploring her to stay still, and his eyes glazed over as he focused his infrared vision.
Ember turned her head, detecting a looming green-and-yellow mass. Her breath hitched, and she looked to Marcus for his opinion—although the anatomy of her pit organs was more advanced, he was both more developed and more skilled.
“The tree,” he hissed, and Ember needed no further encouragement to climb as quickly and quietly as she could into the lowest branches of the nearest oak. The python followed close behind, shoving the map and the compass into his pockets before he hauled himself up, his muscles flexing against his long-sleeved shirt.
The rustling grew steadily louder. They tucked themselves close to the trunk, perfectly still, their chests rising and falling quickly. Ember looked at Marcus with a question in her eyes, but he held a finger to his lips, and she was jarred by the seriousness of his expression.
The creature emerged between two trees in segments: first the head, with a bulky beak as large as a person; the spindly, inelegant neck; and the disproportionately long front legs. At first, Ember could only watch, but when it had revealed itself in full, a dread so potent settled over her that she didn’t think she could move even if she wanted to.
It was a terrifying abomination. The front limbs revealed themselves to be massive wings, folded back on themselves. Ember’s only comfort was that they could not be functional—they were torn through like moth-eaten fabric. The rest of the body was likewise mutated, as if the skin of a heron had been stretched over the body of a giraffe. The creature half-walked, half-dragged itself through the brush, its chest rising jerkily with each shuddering breath with a sound like a death rattle.
As it came even with their tree, it paused, swinging its head around in a half-circle. Hanging from its beak by tendrils of rotting flesh was the leg of a deer, painting the feathers beneath brown with dried blood. Ember shuddered, her hand clamping vice-like around Marcus’s forearm: the eyes, too small for the huge head, were distinctly human.
The bird-creature slunk away painfully slowly, its talons finding haphazard purchase in the damp soil, and the two reptiles only dared to speak once they could no longer see the foliage bending ahead. “What the hell was that?” Ember hissed, releasing her grasp on Marcus’s arm. “It was Linnaean, but…” she trailed off, remembering the wraiths that had appeared at the solstice festival. “A wildling?”
He shook his head, his expression grave. “I don’t know. Something isn’t right about this place.”
They hesitated, neither eager to move from the relative safety of the tree. “Should we turn back?” Ember asked reluctantly.
“No,” Marcus said decidedly, “we’re close, and if we don’t find the cottage now I doubt we’ll ever return.”
Ember nodded, infinitely grateful for his presence. They climbed down the tree quickly, and after consulting the map for a moment, the python once again began to lead them between the trees.
The encounter with the bird-creature had set Ember’s nerves on edge, and she saw the forest with paranoid clarity. It was unnatural from soil to treetop: the spongy, rotten earth; the sinister chattering of the squirrels; and the trees that seemed to turn and watch her as she passed by. She let out a little yelp when a blood-red millipede scattered beneath the toe of her boot, and she wondered not for the last time if they should turn back after all.
At last, the cabin materialized as they stepped into a grove of off-white, sickly aspen trees. Its facade was overgrown with ivy and lichen, and a chunk of the roof had been ripped out and deposited on the stoop. Ember approached cautiously, once again reminded of the dead neighbor and her forsaken house.
She glanced at Marcus. He gave a half-shrug, so she raised her hand to the wooden door and knocked once. There was no answer from within, but the force of the knock itself had pushed the old rotten panels open slightly, and she stepped over the threshold.
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The inside was simple, with a kitchen and a living room on either side of the door. It was in complete disrepair: the cabinets hung from a single hinge, the chairs in the sitting room had collapsed in on themselves, and the sink was clogged with black mold. She had half-expected to encounter the sickly smell of death, but there was only the odor of earth and rot.
The reptiles stepped further into the room, walking slowly as to take it all in. The floorboards cracked and groaned beneath their feet, and when Marcus’s pant leg caught the side of the tablecloth, it released a cloud of dust so thick that it took several minutes for them to stop coughing.
The reclamation of the forest was complete. Spiderwebs stretched across the broken furniture, weeds sprouted from the floor, and a colony of mushrooms was growing from what had once been the couch. “I don’t think there’s anyone here,” Marcus remarked with a pitying note, “this place has been abandoned for a long time.”
Ember grimaced, about to agree, but stopped suddenly. “I’m not so sure.”
Marcus joined her, and she pointed down at the floorboards, where a trail of footprints carved a path through the dust. The reptiles proceeded cautiously, following the prints across the living room and into a narrow hallway.
When they encountered another door, Ember knocked once again. Just before she let herself in, a faint voice sounded from inside, and both snakes drew back as if burned.
“You’re… early,” the voice rasped, sounding none too pleased.
Marcus stepped in front of her, opening the door by degrees so that he could peek inside. “Mr. Ernold?”
“No point in…. loitering outside.”
The reptiles exchanged a look, and Ember’s fingers unconsciously brushed the handle of her fang knife.
The bedroom was in decidedly better condition than the rest of the house. In the center, beneath a window, there was a four-poster bed made up with blankets and a comforter. On one side was a bookshelf, and on the other an old leather recliner, upon which sat an elderly Linnaean.
For a moment, the students and the former mayor assessed each other. Mr. Ernold’s broad figure had sunk low in his chair, and his armored tail (not unlike Elliot’s) spilled over one of the arms. He wore loose-fitting pants but no shirt, his chest crisscrossed by yellowed bandages. He was distinctly reptilian, with thick brown scales and spikes running in parallel stripes down his back. His jaw was elongated, with massive, boar-like teeth jutting at ninety-degree angles. Even more striking than his appearance, however, was the feeling of wrongness that clung to his person.
Ember and the former mayor spoke at once.
“We came to-”
“You’re not Kingsleigh.”
“Not… who?” Ember asked, only half understanding the deep rasp of his voice, which reminded her of humans who had overindulged in cigars.
He coughed heartily, and the wrinkly corners of his mouth turned up in a wry smile. “To think… I was so rude to my first visitors.”
Ember stepped closer to his chair, forcing herself to overcome her trepidation and take her hand away from the handle of the fang knife. Marcus lingered by the door, no doubt out of respect for what they were going to discuss, and she put him out of her mind with some effort.
“Sir,” she said gently, “my name is Ember Whitlock. I’m here to speak to you about my mother, Gloria—maiden name Beaumont—who I believe may have been connected to the Golden Lance. I understand that you worked with her.”
The former mayor’s hand shifted on the arm of his chair, and he leaned forward, his watery eyes scanning her. An uneasy feeling spread across Ember’s chest, and it was all that she could do not to flinch away.
At last, he leaned back. “Oh, child.” was all he said.
Ember fidgeted under his gaze. “Yes?”
“I did indeed… work with the Golden Lance… for many years,” he added. “I was one of the few. It was… all a very private operation. Her face had to be kept… perfectly secret from the humans.”
Encouraged, Ember nodded. “Yes. You see, I suspect that my mother worked for the Golden Lance, since she disappeared around the same time that the Aurelian Artery was dissolved. She was missing for several months before her body was found. We lived in Maple Valley, near Vargas.”
Marcus made a small noise from where he stood in the doorway, and Ember found an odd expression on his face. “My father was human,” Ember pressed, “and I believed that my mother was, too, but I had this dream, and there have been signs—but do you know anything about her?”
Ember found herself unable to meet the former mayor’s eyes, and as she looked down, she noticed a strange apparatus next to his chair. It consisted of an inflatable bag attached to a metal tank, from which a rubber tube ran up the leg of the recliner.
Gingerly, Mr. Ernold pitched the tube between his thumb and pointer finger and raised the mouthpiece to his lips, inhaling deeply. “Sir?” Ember asked again, her curiosity overwhelmed by a sudden sense of urgency.
He looked down at her in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected her to be waiting for his response. “Child,” he said, his voice stronger, “I hope you did not come all this way to ask me… that which you already have the answer to.”
“What?” she asked, looking between him and Marcus. “But I don’t know, that’s precisely why-”
“You look exactly like her,” he reminisced as if she hadn’t spoken. “To think that woman… had a daughter with a human man.”
“Like who?” Ember asked, but her voice was already softening as she began to realize his implication.
“The golden lancehead, Bothrops insularis, is a snake. A pit viper, discovered by Dr. Thompson in his southern expeditions. He brought a vial of its venom back with him… it was five times more potent than the inland species and the fastest acting of all the Bothrops.”
Ember stared at him, and everything else ceased to exist. She hadn’t been sure, but part of her had suspected, hadn’t it? The timing, the symptoms, the trips to the physician in Vargas… Of course, Gloria Whitlock did not disappear because the Aurelian Artery dissolved; it had dissolved because she disappeared.
Ember sank to her knees, a hand coming up to her eyes. Yes… she had known; she just hadn’t been able to reconcile her frail, absent mother with the legendary Golden Lance; couldn’t accept that the resentment of eight years had been misplaced.
Oh god, no…
Her mother… her poor, desolate mother, who had sliced off her scales and filed down her fangs to hide her true nature; who had saved the lives of over six hundred Linnaeans—not as a subordinate, but the Golden Lance of Mendel herself.