Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(135)
Author: Kim Harrison

Oh God. Insanity runs in families. "I’m crazy, just like my mother."

In a motion of grace, Penn stood. She froze as he moved to her, his feet placed on the hard wood toe first, silent. The wind gusted, and he sat before her, close enough to touch. "Crazy?" he whispered, and she could feel the cool of the woods in his breath. "Lilly, you are too old to believe without knowing first. You are too wise, too beaten by ugly-minded men to draw me to your innocence long lost. But you ache like a newborn woman wanting the perfection she deserves. I heard you. I came."

His hand rose, and she backed away, her feet numb in the cold. "Don’t touch me."

"Too scared to run in the field, too timid to swim in the river."

"Shut up!"

"Too old to learn how to love a man beyond his faults." Unbothered, Penn did slow handsprings to the end of the bridge, eyes sparkling as he met her gaze. "And men are all flawed, aren’t they? I warn them. I warn all young women, but they never believe. I don’t need to warn you. You know it twice over. I see it in you. Betrayed. I’d never have done that to you. I’d never betray Meg."

Oh God. Meg. Em. Why hadn’t she listened? But it had sounded . . . delusional. "Leave my girls alone."

Penn lay down on the bridge, his arms behind his head as he stared at the sky. "Then you do believe in me." His smile was chilling. His build had changed, his shoulders widening and his jaw carrying the first hints of maturity, and a hint of a gold stubble glinted in the moonlight. "Your mother was beautiful. I can see echoes of it in you, and waves of it in Meg."

His voice was deeper. Fear moved Lilly, and she splashed closer. "You will not touch my daughters!" Penn said nothing, and flustered, she added, "Why are you here?"

Penn sat up, his clothes catching the moonlight like still water as he spread his arms wide as if to take in the world. "Everyone has to be somewhere." Stretching out again on his side, he leveled his amber eyes with hers, glinting with challenge. "Run with me. I know a tree where fireflies gather every year. They’ll shine like stars for you. I can show you. You will run without tiring, Lilly, if you run with me. Remember running without tiring? The moonlight a river in your lungs, your bare feet hardly touching the ground as the darkness opens and closes behind you? Run with me." He reached to touch her face, and she pulled back.

Oh God. A young girl could never resist this. "You are cruel."

Penn smiled all the wider, his teeth white and catching the light. "I am life at its strongest, and life is cruel." Shifting his body, he leaned in as if to tell her a secret. "It is exhilarating-if you live it right. It’s not too late. You are beautiful, Lilly, your scars becoming. Exciting. I like them. You’re not like anyone else who can see me. You . . . might understand."

The masculine scent of him was rising between them, familiar but promising something new. A shiver ran though her, and Penn’s smile widened upon seeing it.

"Oh, you long to find out. It glows from you like an ache. Come with me. Live."

She shook her head but didn’t pull away. She felt so young with him. It was a false feeling, the only one that was keeping her sane. "What do you want?" she asked, and he blinked.

Slowly he sat up, and moonlight fell between them. "I live as a spirit, though I feel the ache of having had flesh once," he said, and Lilly levered herself up onto the bridge. "The gods took my soul from me when I disobeyed them, giving me the power to feel the world only when I existed within a tree, hoping that I’d stay in one. It’s a sad thing, to feel only what comes your way. I want to be whole again, not just for a night, but forever. I need a soul."

"That’s why you like women, not men," she guessed, and Penn blinked, clearly surprised.

"Oh, I like you best," he said, his voice deepening even more as he looked her up and down in an entirely new way. "Yes. Women have the power of creation; they are lesser goddesses, though they know it not, believing the lies that men tell. A soul is pure creation energy, and only a woman, even one just born, can divide a million times and never be less, only more. I want a soul, Lilly. I want freedom. Is that wrong?"

She drew back into herself as he put a hand between them and leaned in, the heat of him giving her goose bumps. His copper hair was a thick wave and his muscles had taken on the weight of maturity, of strength. He was becoming what she wanted, and she couldn’t help her fascination.

"I want the freedom to go anywhere, do anything," he whispered. "You have everything, and you do nothing with it! My penance is to be without a soul until a woman gives me one anew. But only the young ever see me. Until you."

"What would you do?" she asked, and his artless guile fell from him.

Putting a finger to his lips, he drew away, pulling himself up to crouch on the balls of his feet before her. "Such a question. Let’s run to the middle of the field and stop for a time. There are ways to make the moon move slowly. I will share them with you."

Fear slid through her as he extended a hand for her to rise. She had sacrificed so much, and for what? It would be so easy . . . This was no angel, but a demon. "Did you kill the man my mother found?" she asked, and Penn slowly stood, his hand dropping to his side.

"No." He looked older, thirty perhaps, but a lean, confident thirty, and her lips parted when she recognized Kevin’s youth in him. "The boy with her did."

Stunned, Lilly blinked up at him. Kevin’s dad?

Penn shrugged, moving with a dancer’s grace and looking more and more like Kevin with every step. "He thought it was me talking to Em, and the boy killed the man as your mother watched." Lean and slim, he turned sideways, the light catching the glint in his eye. "He meant to save her, but the guilt pinned her to the earth to die. She grew old, just as I warned her. But it’s not too late for you."

Horrified, Lilly touched her mouth, turning where she stood to look at the silent farmhouse behind her. She jumped, startled when Penn sat down beside her, the scent of a frog-rimmed pool flowing over her.

"Why do you sully yourselves with unfaithful men? This is why you mourn, Lilly-no man can be true to a goddess. But I’m not a man. I know the patience of the winter, the glory of the spring. I will be true where mere mortals cannot. You ask too much of them, then weep when they fail you."

His breath on her cheek made her close her eyes. The unsaid promise was there, and something in her responded, wanted it even as she knew it was a lie.

"Run with me," he whispered. "That’s all I ask tonight. No more than that. It will bring you alive. Remember being alive? Aching for something you know is there and willing to give all to have it?"