Willow caught the scent of woodsmoke on the driving, chilly wind and stopped just as they were about to enter the forested mountains. Annabelle went on a few paces more before turning back.

“We have to keep going.”

“There’s someone here,” Willow said. “There’s a fire.”

“We’ll light a fire when we stop,” Annabelle said. She’d cast both of them portable heat cores which kept them warm under their cloaks, but Willow was having none of it.

“We need to find out if anything is waiting for us up there,” she said, and pointed with her chin toward the forested peaks. Willow could only imagine what might be hiding in those hollers and she didn’t want to be surprised. They’d only gotten by so well over the last weeks because of the plains and their uninterrupted sight-lines.

“You don’t want to talk to these people,” Annabelle said, and came back. “They’re country folk. Twisted and weird.”

“They’re folk though,” Willow confirmed. She hadn’t been sure if a magical beast might be able to cut and light a fire up until now, but Annabelle had confirmed it. She set off to the right up a steep hillside beside the rocky highway they followed. Annabelle stayed back on the dark rock for a few minutes as Willow climbed, then joined her in the ascent. It was much easier than Willow thought, given that she had her psychokinetically stabilized staff.

Annabelle had no such aid, and scrambled in the wind-blasted dust behind her.

When they reached the ridge above, Willow caught sight of a thin streamer of smoke rising from a stand of trees not too far off. Annabelle came huffing up behind.

“This is a waste of time,” Annabelle said. “You’ll not find anything out from these people that you don’t already know. They’re miscreants.”

“Why do you hate them so much,” Willow asked.

Annabelle looked over to the streamer drifting on the wind and spat on the ground. The move shocked Willow.

“They’re pigfuckers,” Annabelle said.

“They… have sex with pigs?”

“No, that’s just what we call them. If they did, that wouldn’t be so bad. Nobody’s business really but their own. These people fuck magical creatures in those woods. They mate with them and produce cursed offspring which blur the gods-scribed lines between man and animal. They’re a violation of natural law.”

Willow started toward the stand of trees. “You never showed this side of yourself back in Durum.”

“That’s because there weren’t abominations like this back there.”

“There was the warbeast,” Willow countered, bristling at the word. After what she’d discovered during their journey the term seemed cruel and calculated to turn a thinking being into a tool

“It showed its true colors. It never spoke in the human tongue—”

“It was insane with pain,” Willow snapped.

“That’s just what the creatures want you to think,” Annabelle said. “They’re just hopped-up animals like the rest of them. They can speak, but they only play at humanity.”

The screening copse of trees was thin and they’d only passed a few steps into the pines before they saw the little cabin. Melodic sounds came from within. Someone was playing a guitar or something that sounded like it.

Willow walked up to the door and raised her staff.

“Willow,” Annabelle warned, but Willow knocked wood against wood three times then stepped back. The song immediately stopped.

She heard shuffling within as chilled winter air blasted her ears raw and threatened to tear her cloak from her body. She held the folds of fabric closer together around the little core of heat.

The door opened, revealing a stooped man with a wild mane of graying hair. He was dressed strangely for the season, with only a white blouse and a pair of short trousers. He looked at the two of them, then leaned out and peered around.

“You’re here, then,” he said, seeming satisfied that there were no others in the trees.

“Were you expecting us,” Willow asked.

The man waved them in and disappeared into the small wooden hut. Willow didn’t look back to see what Annabelle thought about this development, and pushed her way into the humid interior. She turned, holding the door for Annabelle as the other woman made up her mind, then she made her way in as well. Willow shut the door and latched it with a cord-and-hook she found at eye-level.

The most enticing aroma permeated the shack—something savory stewing in a black cauldron held over the fireplace on a swiveling iron arm. Bryan and Margaret had had inscripted heating elements on their iron stove—she hadn’t seen a fireplace cooking setup since leaving Bridgewater. The sight brought back memories she wasn’t entirely prepared for.

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“We didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner,” Willow called to the man across the small house. Between them was a table just big enough for one, a single chair and a small loom hanging up on the wall. Every square inch of wall space seemed to be reserved for the multitudinous iron tools that hung there, many of which Willow recognized from her life out in the country.

“I expected you a bit later,” the man said as he turned with a bowl of soup in his hands. “But its plenty good as it is. Please, sit.”

He laid the bowl down on the table in front of Willow, then scooted the chair in beside her. Willow lost her nerve and glanced at Annabelle, who only rolled her eyes. She gingerly took the seat just to spite her.

The man returned with two bowls, one of which he gave to Annabelle. He sat on the floor beside the table and began noisily slurping the stew. After weeks of eating only what they could catch and more often than not burned by their still-rudimentary attempts at field-cooking, the stew smelled like a gift from heaven. Willow cautiously dipped her spoon and took a sip.

It tasted just as good as it smelled.

The soup was so good she didn’t notice until a few minutes in that there wasn’t a trace of essence in it. Whatever meat he’d added to the brew wasn’t from a magical creature. That was fine by Willow—they’d slaughtered a rabbit haloed in a nimbus of frost the day before, which had filled Willow enough even though its meat hadn’t been that plentiful. With a surplus of essence coming in through eating magical creatures, she’d found her appetite strangely depressed to an almost ordinary level.

Dinner proceeded silently save for the slurps of their host. Willow supposed she should slurp too, but years of manners forbid her from following his lead. Annabelle was also silent. This gave Willow the mental space to catalog the room.

There were a bevvy of tools for woodcutting and slaughtering on the walls, but none for farming or processing grain. She supposed this man must either trade for flour or go without, a thought that Willow couldn’t comprehend. Without bread what was there? Meat perhaps, but she hadn’t smelled a coop or pigpen as they approached. Did he hunt and scavenge everything he ate?

The man finished up first and watched Willow; as the minutes went on she became more and more uncomfortable with his gaze. Annabelle observed this scene silently from the other side of the table.

Once the bowl was blessedly empty Willow rose and looked for a tap, but chided herself after a moment. Of course there wouldn’t be any running water here—she was too used to city life in Durum. But there would probably be a stream close-by where he’d wash the dishes.

The man rose as well.

“Where do you clean your—,” Willow said, but the man took Willow and Annabelle’s bowls and disappeared out through the door into the cold, leaving them alone in the house.

Annabelle rose and dusted off her traveling cloak as if she didn’t want even the smallest speck of dust from inside to remain on her.

“Satisfied? I’d suggest we leave before he returns. There’s no telling what he’s got in mind—”

“I’m going to stay,” Willow said. “He knew we were coming. Aren’t you even a little curious why?”

Annabelle shrugged. “It wouldn’t take a great genius to fool you. He was cooking for himself.”

Willow looked over at the cauldron which he’d swung out of the fireplace, letting the flames roar up the flue.

“No, I don’t think he was,” she said.

The man returned shortly after, pretty much as soon as Willow had noticed the strange guitar leaned up against the wall in the corner. It had a long neck and a circular body drawn tight with some kind of stretched hide. He cracked the door, came in, and followed Willow’s eye to the instrument.

“Excuse me, but we never introduced ourselves,” Willow said, trying to bring a little civility to this extremely strange encounter. I’m Willow Tremont and this is Annabelle…”

It was then that she realized she didn’t even know Annabelle’s last name. Strange that they’d traveled so far and she didn’t know it, but Annabelle remained silent on the matter to the man.

“Walter,” the man said, then motioned to the floor before the fire. It was stone-flagged, but even through Willow’s shoes she felt the radiating warmth. As she sat down she immediately felt like she might doze off soon if she wasn’t careful. The man carefully picked up his instrument and sat down in front of her. Annabelle reluctantly joined them a little farther away from the fire.

“Walter,” Willow said. “Did you know we were coming?”

Walter nodded his head. “Yup,” he said, and picked a few notes from the strings. They danced around the small house and died on the wood walls. She’d never heard anything like it before.

“How? We haven’t told anyone where we’re going.”

“If you listen hard enough out here, you’re liable to hear a great many things. Take for instance the two stone golems waiting for you at the pass out yonder.”

“Stone golems,” Willow asked. Walter nodded and strummed a chord.

“There’s been a regular menagerie running through these hills over the last month, but the golems stopped and hunkered down in the boulders at the highway’s edge. There’s no way to go around them—too steep to the right, and the river to the left. You’ll have to go right between them.”

“Do you know—,” Willow started, then swallowed. “Can they speak?”

“Oh yes, they can speak. They’ll talk with about any critter that happens by, as I hear it.”

Willow sighed. “Good. I hate—”

“Killin’ em,” he finished for her, and she nodded, shamefaced.

“You’ll have to, before you pass,” he said. “But they’ll know its coming. They know who you are now—word’s passed back up through the valley, probably up to Asche. They’ll be expecting it if they’re still themselves. So will the rest, I reckon.”

“You’re not surprised,” Willow asked. “People usually are when they see me battle one of them. Especially if they see me put one out of its misery.”

“You’re special to them,” the man said, and began picking notes so softly that Willow could barely hear. “They think you’re their savior.”

“I’m no savior,” Willow said. “I’m a calamity. I couldn’t stay in Durum—the warbeasts would just keep on coming. I’m a danger to everyone around me, and I can offer nothing but death to the creatures from Asche.”

“They want it, you know,” Walter said. “Do you know how long a warbeast can live in misery? Centuries. Can you imagine being in pain for so long?”

Willow clenched fists no longer tender from atrophy.

“Yes.”

“If you think things are bad now,” Walter said, and began to pluck a little louder. “You’re in for a surprise when you get to Asche. Just don’t lose sight of yourself, Queen. Don’t let what you see twist you.. Remember who you are, to yourself and to them.”

“That song,” Willow said, staring at his fingers as they flew over the strings. “What is it?”

“Passed down by my memaw, from her memaw back as far as anyone can remember. I’ll sing for a bit, then you can stay the night. You’ll have to be on your guard once you enter the mountains and this might be the last good sleep you get.”

The notes rose in a fever pitch, then died down again to something that sounded almost like water running through a brook.

He sang.

“Almost heaven…”