The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis

He felt it then, clean and bright as a blade oiled and set into a scabbard: the line between hunting and arrival.

He knew exactly how close he was because the crane head under his wrist went warm, stupid, superstitious warmth—just blood moving right under his skin when a man who has promised himself something is about to collect.

He stepped to the side and put his hand on the mule path's low wall.

"Come out," he said. Not loud. Not a shout. An invitation to make a mistake.

Nothing moved.

He smiled. He put two fingers to his mouth and made a sound that wasn't a whistle and wasn't a bird.

The men in the ditch moved like water.

A shape broke from the scrub above, cutting left instead of right the way all men did when they thought there was still time. Gaoyu took him in the shoulder with a throw. The shape staggered, kept his feet, and flung a bundle toward the brush.

The bundle rolled once, twice, hit the low wall and stopped.

Yan Luo was already there. He dropped to one knee and caught it before it slid back into the path.

Small. Warm. Too still.

He sliced the tie and the linen holding everything together fell away.

A face stared up at him—blackened hair stubble pasted to the scalp, a bruise on the cheek bone gone yellow under brown dye, eyes open too wide without tears.

Lin Wei did not make a sound. He did not need to.

Instead, he reached up with both hands and hooked them into the front of Yan Luo's robe, the way a drowning boy catches the thing that is not water.

His fingers found the fold at the collarbone and bit down. He clung like he would never let go because he had already learned what letting go cost.

Yan Luo's breath left him, not because the child was heavy, but because something behind his ribs had been holding its own breath for too many hours.

He wrapped one arm around the boy, the other hand cupping the small skull as if he could sink the warmth of his palm through skin and glue and fear and season and erase the whole road.

"Mine," he said, very softly. "My son." It was not for the men to hear or the air to carry the words away.

It was for the boy, and for himself, and for the mountain that would understand what he meant without words.

The path erupted—shouting, steel, the low bark of men who were not brave and knew it too late.

Gaoyu was laughing, cruel and clean.

Someone tried to grab the coffin poles they'd brought; three knives persuaded him to consider death elsewhere. The bell hut door slammed and then splintered. The bell tolled once of its own accord when a body hit it.

Yan Luo didn't watch any of it. He stood with the boy on his hip the way men stand when they have carried smaller burdens a long time and learned exactly how to keep their balance. Lin Wei's breath warmed his throat. The small hands did not loosen.

He glanced down the path.

The poles lay waiting where they had left it. He pictured the palace road, the gate that would open without anyone daring to announce him, the woman at the top of the stairs who would not run and would not cry and would still be the first thing the boy would look for when he learned safety again.

"Take them alive if they'll speak," he said, not raising his voice. "If they won't, cut tongues and keep hands. Someone sold this route to Baiguang. I want the name that thinks it hasn't been written down yet."

Gaoyu grunted assent, already doing the math of bodies and knots and speed.

Yan Luo looked at the boy again.

Lin Wei's fingers had gotten into his robe and refused to remember how to let go. Good. He pressed his mouth briefly to the crusted hairline, not a kiss, not a prayer, just contact. The crane head dug into his wrist bone like punctuation.

"Don't worry," he whispered, dipping down his head so that the boy could hear him better. "I'm taking you back to your mom. I'm taking you home."

Lin Wei's fingers tightened around the silk in his fists and ever so slowly nodded his head.

Yan Lao adjusted his hold on the boy and began to walk. The cold cut at his lungs. The world had edges again. The road back would be shorter than the road out; roads always are when you are carrying the thing you came to get.

Behind him, the bell stopped ringing. In front of him, the city waited to pretend it had slept through all of this. He could feel the mountain turn its face toward them like a beast that had heard its name.

"Tell the palace," he said over his shoulder. "No one sleeps was a good order. Now give them a better one."

Gaoyu's voice came back, amused for the first time in two days. "What's that?"

"Boil water," Yan Luo said. "The boy is cold."

A man in the ditch groaned, half-trussed, trying to drag himself toward a crossbow he'd dropped. Yan Luo didn't shift the boy to see better; he didn't need to. His men moved in without him asking. One set a boot on the man's wrist. Another kicked the weapon into the frost. The sound it made was thin and brittle, like a pot cracked in firing.

Lin Wei flinched at the noise, his hands spasming in Yan Luo's robe.

Yan Luo angled his wrist so the boy's cheek pressed into silk instead of air. "Not for you to look at," he said. His tone had no edge, no demand. Just fact.

The boy stayed tucked in, eyes closed, small breath warming the hollow of Yan Luo's throat.

Annoyed, Yan Luo spun around, taking the boy away from everyone and everything that caused him to tremble in fear.

He did not slow down to let anyone catch up. Instead, he walked the way a man walks when the thing in his arms has rewired his spine, and his entire life.

This started off as doing something for the woman he was obsessed with.

But now? Holding the child in his arms?

His fate had been sealed.

And he wasn't all that upset about it.