Reckless IV: The Silver Tracks

1TogetherFox felt Jacob’s breath on her neck, warm and familiar. Hewas sleeping so soundly that he didn’t wake up when shegently eased out of his embrace. Whatever he was encounteringin his dreams made him smile, and Fox ran her fingersover his lips as if she could read what he was dreaming. Thetwo moons that shone on her world dappled his foreheadwith rusty red and pale silver, and birds whose names shedidn’t know cried outside the inn.Doryeong… Her tongue could barely pronounce thename of the port city where they had arrived the day before.They had given up. Maybe that was why Jacob was sleepingso deeply. After all the months in which they had losthis brother’s trail and picked it up again countless times. Atime or two, they had almost caught up with Will. But bynow they had been searching in vain for weeks for any signof him, and yesterday, as the sun had set over a strange sea,they had finally decided to call it off. Even Jacob believedthat his brother did not want to be found after all that hadhappened, and that it was time to go their separate ways.So why could she still not sleep? Was it because she wasn’tused to being so blissfully happy?Fox pulled the quilt over Jacob’s shoulder. Their ownpath. Finally. A sprig of white blossoms filled the roomthey were sleeping in with lush, sweet fragrance. Two moretravelers were sleeping on the mats the landlady had wordlesslyrolled out for them. The ferry to Aotearoa ran out ofDoryeong. An old friend of Jacob’s, Robert Dunbar, keptsending enthusiastic telegrams from there, which told ofthree-eyed lizards, of enchanted whale bones, and of wildkings who had the fern forests of their homeland tattooedon their skin.Their own path. Fox kissed the moonlight off Jacob’s faceand carefully slipped out from under the quilt that warmedthem both. The night lured the vixen outside. Maybe if shewore the fur, all this human happiness wouldn’t make herheart overflow so much.She stole past the two stone dragons that guarded theentrance to the modest inn, and under trees that swayed theirbranches in the breeze from the nearby sea, she changed. Theinn stood on an unpaved road, and the flat wooden housesthat lined it wore their roofs like wooden cowls. Doryeongwas nothing like the seaside village where Fox had grownup. Even the fishing boats on the dark waves that lined theharbor just a few houses away seemed to come from a fairytale she had never heard of before.