Page 6 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“That can’t be all there is,” she pled again. She looked around at the papers scattered around the Shadowwood Mother. Surely there must be something else amongst them that would at least guide her in the right direction.

“The prophecy will unfold as it’s meant to. They always do.” The Shadowwood Mother settled back against the log and folded her hands in her lap. “You’d best be on your way now; you’d do well to return before your friends wake.”

There was a sense of finality to her words; Aisling knew then that there were no more answers to be found here. At least, not tonight. After several long moments of silence, Aisling retrieved her lantern and crawled back out the way she came. This time, the sharp thorns protruding from the walls of the tunnel scratched and pulled at her hair and clothes—the thicket, or whatever it was that possessed it, was reluctant tolet her leave.

Briar was waiting patiently, having at some point drifted off to sleep beside the entrance. His fluffy, white fur was almost entirely brown and matted and when Aisling unhooked his leash, he pranced around her as though to show it off. It was a brief moment of levity that she desperately needed.

Retracing their steps through the woods, the words of the prophecy reverberated in Aisling’s mind. She replayed them over and over, repetition etching each line deeper into her consciousness, dissecting every word for a meaning that she could understand. The imagery evoked by the lines resonated with her in a way, but she struggled to comprehend how they could be tied to her. The war, the darkness, and the destined role of the Red Woman felt at once both distant and intimately personal. She yearned for answers, but they remained elusive, teasing her with fragments of understanding that remained just beyond her grasp.

At least now, too tired to be concerned about hunters or sprites or any other manner of Fae finding her, Aisling could enjoy the hike back. Briar bounded on ahead, glad to finally be free of the leash. The early morning air was crisp and laden with dew and smelled so much sweeter than the heavy, earthy air inside the thicket. She allowed it to clear her head and quiet her racing thoughts for a time. Instead of the words of the prophecy, she tried only to hear the sounds of the forest waking up around her. The soft birdsong, slowly replacing the crickets’ chirping. The steady rhythm of her footfalls.

By the time Aisling and Briar stumbled back into camp, exhausted and streaked with mud, the sun was just barely beginning to rise.Through the haze, it still shone a muted shade of red. Aisling rolled her eyes. It felt like even the sky was taunting her.

It wasn’t worth the cleanup to track all their mud back into the tent just to lay down for a couple of hours, so Aisling instead knelt outside the door and leaned in to pack up her things. Her back and shoulders ached from the tension she’d carried there all night, and shivering against the cold didn’t help, either. She pulled on her heavy coat, but the chill was deeper than it could warm. The icy grip of fear squeezed her tightly, especially when she looked at the other tents where her friends were still asleep, utterly oblivious of the other side of the world around them. Ignorant of the insidious threat looming ever closer, echoing across the Veil.

Conflict surged in Aisling’s stomach as she grappled with the weight of her choices. Just as she had when she saw the tree sprite, desperate and alone, she felt called to embrace her role and protect her friends. Her home. But doubt crept in like choking vines, whispering that she was ill-equipped for such a monumental task.

Sensing the swell of her emotions, Briar ambled over to Aisling from where he’d been searching for scraps around the grill. He laid down beside her and rested his chin on her thighs. He sighed a short puff of air through his nose and Aisling stopped what she was doing to scratch the top of his head. Briar’s weight was an anchor that brought her back to the present and drew her away from the maddening thoughts of Fae and prophecies and world-saving. Here, they weren’t the Red Woman and the White Bear. They were just Aislingand Briar.

“You’d like to think of yourself as a bear, though, wouldn’t you?” Aisling teased him, finishing her own thought out loud. If he could have rolled his eyes, she was certain he would have.

“Fuck, and here I thought our mud bath wasn’t scheduled until later this afternoon.” Seb was the first of the others to wake and couldn’t resist commenting on her appearance when he crawled out of his tent.

“Funny,” she quipped. “Briar took off after a rabbit when I let him out this morning and decided to take a detour through a mud puddle the size of my car.”

“And you—what? Swam in after him?” He was picking through the remains of the fire, looking for anything to burn to cook breakfast over. There was nothing left but crumbled ashes. “When Jackson and Lida wake up, we could all go back to my place to eat if you want.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll head back once I’m done here and get this guy cleaned off.” Aisling shooed Briar off of her lap so she could finish packing.

Though the normalcy of a morning with her friends would have undoubtedly done her some good, Aisling was critically low on patience and wanted nothing more than to sink into her bed and close her eyes and pretend that the night before had been nothing more than a bad, bad dream.

Instead of driving back to her apartment, Aisling navigated toward the southwest side of the island. She skirted along the edge of town until she reached the trailer park that sat nestled in a grassy field just beyond. The plot of land hosted eleven mobile homes and four trailers, small and unremarkable, all peeling paint in faded pastels and weather-worn tin roofs. Apart from the trailers, each structure was the same height and the same long, shoebox shape. The lots were tight—there was little space between the buildings, yet Aisling knew that theLots For Sale/Leasesign posted on the chain link fence surrounding the property would never be taken down.

Still, it was lively. Even this early in the morning, a mob of children on bikes wove in and out of the mobile homes. Their tires left tread paths through the grass and their pants were wet up to theirknees from the dew that clung to the tall blades. The sound of a lawnmower competed with the children’s yelling and laughter. To Aisling, the air here always smelled green.

She pulled around to park beside a blue trailer toward the back of the property. It was the rearmost home, right up against the chain link fence that had been erected a few years before when parents grew tired of their little ones running off to play in the woods beyond. Briar eagerly jumped from the back seat when she opened the door, but Aisling caught him by the collar before he could run off.

“Bath first.” She led him over to the hose bib on the side of the house and turned it on. The water came out cold—freezing, almost—but Briar was unbothered by it. He wagged his tail happily while Aisling’s fingers grew numb as she worked them through his fur. He’d somehow managed to get dirt all the way down to his skin.

“You look like hell.” Rodney had come out when he heard the water running and was leaning against the doorframe, watching Aisling work with a bemused expression on his face.

Aisling ignored his comment, instead nodding towards him. “That’s new.”

“You like?” He raised a hand to tousle his hair, now a shocking shade of safety orange. It had been a rich, indigo blue when she’d last seen him a few days prior.

She shrugged, then returned her attention to Briar. “The blue looked better.”

“You didn’t like the blue at first, either, when I changed it from green,” he reminded her. “It’ll grow on you.”

“Maybe. Can you grab me a towel?”

Rodney returned a moment later and tossed her a threadbare beach towel and a pair of sweatpants. “Unless you’re planning on hosing off too, put those on before you come in. I don’t want to clean up your mud trail.”

Once Aisling had changed and toweled Briar off, she followed him inside the mobile home, rolling the waistband of the pants over several times to keep them from dragging. Rodney was in the tiny kitchen space putting a kettle on the stove to boil.

“Tea?” he asked, then held up a bag of white bread. “Toast?”

She pulled a chair out from the small table and sat and watched Briar wander into the living room to curl up on the couch. “Both, please. Everyone missed you at the campout last night.”

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