Six tiny gossamer white wings slowly turned red, and thread-thin limbs twitched in my palm. I’d crushed some kind of butterfly. I watched it struggle to get up, its body shaking. It would die. I felt a heartbroken sort of disgust.

“I’ve killed it. I hate killing bugs.” Even as I spoke, though, it continued to crawl around. I peered closer. The wings were bent out of shape and dissolved in some parts, and the body was completely crushed, a trail of something blue and lumpy leaking out of the side. It had run out of blood to bleed. It should have died immediately. Yet against all odds, it was alive.

“You haven’t killed it, child. It won’t die,” Tally said, a note of something bitter in her voice. I looked at her, and then at the bug.

“You do see this, right? There’s no way it’s going to live. Unless this kind of bug is immortal in your world? Is it magical?” I asked, excited. The bug gave a feeble shiver, and a leg dropped off. Tally shook her head.

“It’s a common white rose fly. The only magical thing about it is its ability to survive in the poisonous moss fields. It’s not immortal.” Her whiskers twitched. “At least, it shouldn’t be.”

I felt a surge of sickness overtake me. “Why isn’t it dead? I… I crushed it, Tally.”

“Give it here, Amara,” she said, extending her paw. I handed over the mangled mess of blood and gossamer as gingerly as I could, scraping off a stray wing. It was wet and limp like old foliage.

“Refuah Shleima,” Tally muttered, making a complex hand gesture over the fly. It started to glow a bright red and the wings unbent themselves. Its legs seemed to fuse themselves back to the body in a flash of hot light. The body filled out again. The light surrounding it faded to a bruise pink, leaving a presumably healthy bug to sit and twitch bemusedly in the palm of Tally’s paw. The six white wings were folded in on themselves in a spiral formation that, funnily enough, did look exactly like a rose, and the body was an electric blue.

“You’re a healer.” This seemed a lot like confirmation that Tally was a good guy. But she only shook her head.

“Hardly. Healing is by no means my specialty, and that was a very weak spell. The only reason that it worked as well as it did is that that bug had a very small life force. You probably have anywhere from ten to twenty times as much. I have twenty to sixty times that. I specialize in protection and purification.” The white rose fly started whirring, and the wings spun around so fast they became a blur. Like a tiny helicopter, it rose into the air and buzzed away.

I watched it go. “Why didn’t it die?” I asked again.

“Nothing dies. Not anymore,” Tally said. Her yellow eyes looked tired and old. “It happened last week. The cycle just stopped.”

I paused. “That sounds like it would be a good thing…” I looked at the blood on my palm and shuddered, wiping it on the moss by my knee. If Tally hadn’t been there, would it just have been like that forever? “But I can see how it could be a problem,” I conceded.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the worse of a predicament it seemed to be. I was faintly aware of the concept of ecology, and suddenly I found myself fervently hoping they didn’t have a lot of bugs in this world.

“Good. You have sense. The old and sickly just waste away in pain, and animals can only gnaw at the entrails of their still-living prey. Once we leave the moss fields, it won’t be pretty,” she replied bluntly. I suddenly felt very uneasy.

I felt strongly that there was no way I’d been dropped into this magical world without a thing to do. An adventure. Maybe logic was out the window, but I couldn’t accept pointlessness. And I certainly didn’t like the idea of so much suffering. Besides, the book was gone. What else could I do? It took me less than thirty seconds to make my decision.

“How are we gonna fix it?”

Tally smiled. I was getting more used to her facial expressions. “Well, actually, I’m on my way to visit a sorceress who might know how to help us. And yes, before you ask, I am trying to fix this problem. I don’t like the idea of immortality, not for me and not for anyone else.”

Bingo. I let myself indulge for a moment in the excitement her statement made me feel. What was it she’d called me again?

“A story traveler. I think I might know what you mean now,” I said. “How far is it until we find the sorceress?”

I felt another jolt of anticipation. A sorceress. This was so cool.

“Around half a day’s walk through that forest there. We’ll see her cottage if we follow the smoke because she always has a fire burning. Cold-blooded, I suppose.”

Half a day? I jumped up, tossing food into our pack, eager to get a move on.

“Well, let’s go! If we hurry we can get there by this evening, right?” I glanced up at the sky.

“Child! Wait a minute, my joints aren’t what they used to be,” Tally said, laughing softly to herself. She got up from the ground somewhat laboriously and pointed towards the forest. I bounced in place.

“We go there.”

“Yeah, yeah, I figured! Let’s go, I want to meet her!” I said, admittedly somewhat impatiently. I didn’t like being condescended to, and people did it so very often. I took off at a light jog towards the trees. I heard her following behind me.

The journey passed in a haze as we traipsed across the field. I was too overcome to do much except walk and passively take in my surroundings. The sky was a bright blue and the reddish sun hovered in it like a burn. I saw another white rose fly at one point under an outcropping of moss and took care to avoid it. Other than that, there were no signs of life and my thoughts were quickly directed towards the aching in my legs. Fortunately, stubbornness is one hell of a motivator and I refused to be outpaced by the old lady. Even if she was sweet in a weird way.

We reached the edge of the forest after about an hour. The transition between it and the field was more abrupt than I had expected, like walking into a thick line of greenery. The change underfoot was almost immediate, and I missed the springiness acutely. The first thing that struck me was the underlying scent.

“It smells like copper, Tally,” I pointed out. She stared straight ahead.

“Yes. Yes, it does.”

Her refusal to elaborate was interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the forest. It was just as lush as it looked from afar. The air was damp and smelled of honey, spice, and copper. Vines twisted in thick ropes of green from canopy to ground and the undergrowth was soft patches of clover mixed with various wide-leaf plants. I hadn’t drawn anything since I was a little kid, but I kind of wanted to try drawing the forest. The trees were slender and tall with flaky gray bark. Bright red and orange flowers peered out from patches of rich mud. I picked a few as we walked and gave them to Tally, who absentmindedly began weaving them together into a sort of crown. It was… nice.

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There were animals, which was a nice change from the fields. The forest was filled with the music of croaks and chirps and a strange hoarse screeching sound that came in suspiciously regular intervals. It reminded me of a ticking clock, except it sounded terrible. A bird with no legs and three heads, covered in electric blue feathers; lots of fuzzy white flying things that never stayed still long enough for a proper look; a miniature green lizard that sang with the voice of a human and breathed black flames. Tally gave this last one a wide berth, so I followed suit. I kind of wanted to investigate it further, but if it was dangerous, then I didn’t want to take any chances. I resolved to ask about it later. I was so taken by the creatures that I could barely speak.

The scent of copper grew stronger the further we walked and Tally made a face, dragging me away from it.

“No, stop! What is that smell?” I insisted, yanking my arm out of her grasp. It had to be coming from somewhere. Maybe a weird plant? I walked towards it, following my nose. She sighed behind me.

“Come on, stay with me. It’s not something you’ll want to see, I can guarantee that.”

I looked back. Tally leaned heavily on her cane and beckoned. I was frustrated. If she wasn’t going to explain, I wasn’t going to wait for her. I shook my head.

“I’ll just be a minute,” I said, and turned away, following it through the underbrush. I batted away wide leaves and side-stepped mottled red thorns. Clumsily, sure, but I managed to avoid getting scratched for the most part. A leaf was stained with the same red color a bit further in, and I paused before looking down. The ground under my feet was muddy, giving way to pools of filthy crimson that bubbled up in my footprints. I gagged. What the hell was I stepping in? I briefly considered turning back. Briefly.

“What happened here?” I muttered, pushing through anyway. The place where the scent of blood seemed to be the strongest (because it was blood, wasn’t it? I knew it in my bones.) was a clearing with sunlight pouring in and twining flowers blossoming among the clover.

My gaze was drawn to the bloodied creature in the center. It was by far the strangest creature I’d ever seen. It looked like an ordinary deer, but it had one black and unblinking eye. It had no mouth or nose. Instead it had a pair of antennae on its head and a large beak protruding from its stomach. It was lying down with its flank slashed open, staring directly at me. I could see part of its ribcage. This time when I gagged, I did throw up, whirling dizzily around into the bushes and gripping feverishly at a tree. The bark slid nauseatingly under my fingers and I held on tighter, straining my fingers.

“Are you alright?” The voice was shrill and choked. I turned back around, feeling a cold shock of dissonance. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes.

“Did you just talk?” I asked senselessly. I couldn’t meet its eye. I saw it blink for the first time in my peripheral vision. Its eyelids were translucent and slid across the glossy black surface from the left and right instead of the top and bottom like a human eye.

“Yes. Are you alright?” It shifted slightly, tossing its head.

It was mortally wounded.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I asked, feeling quite out of my depth.

“No. You already know that I’m not. It would be pointless to ask. But my question was a reasonable one, wasn’t it?”

I found myself unable to argue.

“I’m okay, I think,” I said. “Do you have a name? Can I help you?” I clenched my fists, rocking back and forth. Another cold shock of horror washed over me.

“Dania,” it said. “And you can’t help me. I just want to die.” It sounded almost placid.

I thought this over. That didn’t make sense to me. “No, you don’t,” I asserted after a long moment. It blinked at me again.

“Pardon?”

“No living thing really wants to die,” I said, feeling a surge of frustration. I was trying to say something, but I wasn’t sure how to get it across. I was bad at putting things into words at the best of times. “You just want the pain to stop, right?”

It tilted its head. I couldn’t read its expression and I felt uneasy. Nothing here was easy to decipher. At least with human faces, I could match up what the movements were with things I’d read about and make guesses. But I had no idea what smiles or frowns or anything looked like on this creature.

“You’re clever, and you’re right. But to me, now, there is no difference between them, so you are impractical.” Its voice hurt to listen to.

“I… I suppose. I’ll try and help you,” I told it. Tally could heal, couldn’t she? I turned around to shout for her. “Tally! Tally, come over here!” My voice carried through the trees, hopefully to wherever she was.

About thirty seconds later, she crashed through the underbrush and pulled up short. Tally’s confident face did something I wasn’t familiar with.

“Oh,” she said. She looked at me, mouth twisting as if it’d been suddenly filled with poison. “Darling, I…”

“Don’t tell me you can’t,” I said, feeling wretched.

She looked at Dania briefly. “This is beyond my scope. Far, far beyond anything I could heal. I’m sorry.” She approached it and knelt by its side. “Who did this to you?”

It opened its beak to reply.

“A young man with a long rusty knife. He asked me if I knew where the traveler was. I told him I didn’t know what he meant,” Dania said, growing visibly restless. Its voice was strained. “He looked half-dead himself, pale with wild eyes and a slit across his throat. He asked again, and I said I didn’t know. He got angry and did this to me, then walked away!”

Tally went rigid. “How long ago was this?”

“Perhaps fifteen minutes ago,” Dania replied. I backed away, trembling. Damn that book. From the sound of it, I was already being hunted by a dead man walking. My guide immediately took charge.

“Get on my back. Don’t argue,” she said, tossing her cane to the side and hunching over in a single fluid motion. I obeyed as fast as my shaking legs would allow, gripping the solid back below me in a panic. I was too far gone to really worry if I was too heavy for the old woman. It turned out to be an unfounded fear anyway.

Tally moved suddenly with the speed of lightning, dashing to the nearest tree and climbing deftly up with claws that seemed to pop out of nowhere. I held on like a little baby koala and fought the urge to screech and dig into her sides with my nails. Within seconds we were forty feet up a tree and balanced on swaying branches, hidden and wrapped in dappled green light. Tally placed me in a secure nook between two large branches and perched across from me on a smaller branch that I feared would snap under her. Her wide yellow eyes turned to me.

“Are you okay?” I opened my mouth to speak but she held out her hand. “Wait- keep your voice low.”

I obeyed. “I’m not hurt, only scared.”

Her eyes narrowed into exaggeratedly catlike slits, looking me over. After a few seconds, she nodded sharply, put her finger to her lips, and swarmed impossibly higher up the trees, her checkered blue and white trousers vanishing into the leaves.

I squatted there for a while, waiting.

Tally clambered back down- perhaps a few minutes had elapsed. It felt like longer.

“I don’t see him anywhere, but I do see the smoke. If we follow that we’ll be safe. The sorceress has safety charms up,” Tally whispered. “Get on my back again.”

She hunched over, curving her back in a smooth arc. I’d come to my wits enough to feel slightly awkward about using her as a horse, but I climbed on as gently as I could. The second I got a secure hold, I felt the ground drop out from under me. And then another impact, smooth as butter. It took a couple iterations before I processed what was happening. Tally was leaping from tree to tree, flying in the canopy with the ease of a well-oiled machine. Her powerful muscles rippled under my hands, previously hidden by the layers of fat. I made a mental note to never underestimate her again.

I managed to collect myself enough to get a good look ahead after a while, and saw a thin curl of smoke in the distance. Relief washed over me.

“Thank God,” I breathed.

Tally panted heavily, running along a branch. I was amazed she still had breath to speak. “Which one?”

I honestly could think of no reply, so I fell silent. We remained so for the next few minutes and I never once loosened my grip. My hands were starting to strain when she came to a halt and skittered down a tree trunk headfirst. I tumbled off. We both took a moment to breathe, and I attempted fruitlessly to unbend my fingers.

Tally spoke first. “We- we should, be- be under her protection, now,” she gasped. “Her wards. Ca-harry me inside. Going that fast takes a lot, ha, out of me, nowadays, ‘s why I don’t do it. Anymore.” She plopped onto the cobblestone walkway.

I was able to get a better look at the house now. It was surprisingly modest for a sorceress. The walls were made of rough-cut dark wood panels and the roof was simple clay tile. There was a window but black curtains blocked the view inside. An intricately carved door with a slash across the front stood slightly ajar, and the faint sound of humming leaked out.

I looked at Tally. She was still slumped on the ground, legs askew. “Should I knock?” I asked, feeling silly. She bobbed her head, her furry ears flapping with the motion. I felt an absurd impulse to laugh.

“On the doorframe,” she told me. “Carry me there, would ya?”

I half carried, half dragged her to the front stoop and knocked.