Page 56 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

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Lukos truly was as beautiful as Victor Owl-Eyed’s drawings. The snow, which Zeno had never seen before, was wet and soft, and there were mountains stretching jagged over the gray sky like broken glass. But as Zeno stood from the place where he landed, certain he’d found the place where Victor Owl-Eyed lived, he was pitched forward by a gust of wind so cold that it felt like he’d been struck from behind.

The wind in Gerakia never blew cold. Even in winter, when it gusted down the narrow streets in town and made ripples over lakes in the foothills, it was always a friendly sort of wind. It picked up leaves and stirred wind chimes, or knocked papers into scholars’ drinks in the open-air cafes. Zeno and his friends at school liked to run with it, shrieking as it pushed them down the big hill by the school. Once, a student from the Two Sisters had come whizzing by on skates, and Zeno and his best friend Luc had spent an entire summer saving up for their own pair.

This was not the kind of wind for skating. It howled as it rolled over Zeno like some kind of feral beast, and it raked icy claws over his back and in his hair. Zeno covered his head with his bag and huddled there for a minute, waiting for it to move past him, but there was always more, and snow started building up around him.

“Hello?” Zeno got up, squinting into the darkness. The mountains were still there, but they were barely visible through the wind and snow. “Victor Owl-Eyed? I think I was—I think a fountain sprite sent me here?”

He trudged forward, shivering as his pants grew heavy and damp with snow. It was seeping through his shoes, too, and his face felt numb and raw. Surely the fountain sprite wouldn’t have left him in the middle of a storm. He’d asked to go to Victor, hadn’t he?

“Maybe I should’ve thrown in a gold coin after all,” he said, and shouted for Victor again. His voice was caught by the wind, which tossed it about until it was lost in the howl of the storm.

He didn’t know how long he walked, but when he turned to look, he’d only managed to make it a few feet. Zeno hugged his bag close and felt a sob rise in his chest, heavy and miserable.

“I want to go back to Salvatore,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I was wrong, I should’ve—lowered my—should’ve made a smaller wish. I just wanted to…” He hunched down again, sobbing in the loud, ugly wail of all small children who found themselves alone and frightened, and the wind shrieked and whistled above him like a monster in one of his storybooks, ready to eat him whole.

The snow in front of him shifted, and Zeno screamed, covering his face as a horrible, furry paw skittered down in front of him. When it didn’t lift to rip him to pieces, he squinted through his hands and saw nothing more than a lovely white fox with red eyes. It looked at him, ears twitching, and shook snow off its fur.

“Hi,” Zeno whispered. “You’re pretty. Are you lost? Are you cold?” He held his tunic open. “You can climb inside, I’ll keep you warm.”

The fox just looked at him, so Zeno got to his knees to lift it to his chest. He snuggled it close, not wondering why a wild creature would be so tame and quiet in his arms.

“I think I’m lost too,” he told it. “But that’s okay. We can be lost together.”

The wind rolled around them, and the fox stretched up to press a cold nose to his cheek. Then, as the wind threw snow in his face and made his eyes water, the fox kept stretching, and stretching, and stretching, until it wasn’t a fox at all but something far, far different.

“Hello, child.” A woman leaned over him, her long, black hair falling over a face as white as snow. She had a heavy coat made of the same soft fur as the fox, and her sleeves were so big that they felt like enormous curtains brushing against him as she wiped the tears from Zeno’s face. “I was told you would be here.”

Zeno stared up at her. Her face was bloodless, but her lips were painted red, reflecting her deep red eyes. “Are you a witch? Or a mage? Did you know the fountain sprite?”

She tilted her head slightly. “I do not know of fountains. The one who told me of you is the brother of my creator, and of the god I serve.”

“Gods aren’t real,” Zeno said. The philosophers were pretty clear about that. “They’re just big, powerful people who live a long time, or they’re really high tales.”

The woman blinked slowly. “My creator is a god. He is not a person. You could call him my father, as he is the father of all of my kind, but we are not people, either.”

“You’re a person if you have a soul, according to Benedetta. Salvatore says people don’t have souls and you just need to walk on two feet.”

“I can walk on four,” the woman said. “Sometimes I do not walk at all. Come into my cloak, child, and I will bring you where you need to go.”

Zeno hefted his bag over his shoulder, and the woman wrapped him in her enormous coat. She picked him up, even though he was seven and didn’t need to be carried anymore, and her soft coat was warm and heavy like a thick blanket. Her hands, however, were cold, and her chest didn’t move as though she needed to breathe.

“What are you, if you’re not a person?” Zeno asked. “What’s your name?”

“I’ve forgotten my name,” the woman said. “But I am one of the Sea-Father’s northern children. We swim in the cold waters as seals and walk the shores of Lukos as foxes, and sometimes as a third form that is ours and ours alone.”

“The form you’re in now?”

She shrugged. She started walking through the storm, and Zeno looked behind them to find that her footsteps looked like the prints of a fox on the snow. “We do not often take this shape, now that the Lukoi live here, or I do not believe we do. I have seen my people from afar, looking out from these shores where I must remain.”

“Why?” Zeno looked up into her red eyes, which were fixed on the horizon. “Why can’t you leave?”

“I have a duty,” the woman said. “I find lost things. I bring them home. I give them to the ferryman, who brings them beyond the river. I have done this since the first Lukoi came to this island.”

It all sounded pretty philosophical to Zeno. “Oh. So you don’t get days off?”

She finally glanced down at him. “Most of the Lukoi do not speak to me. They know to be afraid.”

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