Morning light sifted through leaves and laid a pale sheen across the stream. Suraia knelt at the water’s edge with a fold of cloth spread beside her, rinsing a handful of berries and turning each one in her fingers before easing it onto the cloth to dry. The air smelt of crushed mint and damp bark, cool and clean—until a thin, sour note lifted from the shallows.
A fish—small, silver—floated belly-up where the current slowed against a stone. Another nudged a tangle of grass and failed to swim free. Suraia’s mouth went dry. She scanned the water, growing colder with each new patch of dull, lifeless shine.
Suraia dropped the berries instantly, letting them drift on the surface, and hurried back through fern and dabbled shadow, trying to clean her wet hands on moist moss along the way, to the little camp.
Thorn stood in the clearing with his hands on his knees, bent to regard a small arctic fox that watched him with bright, expectant, glowing blue eyes. White fur, blue-tipped ears and tail, blue socks and muzzle; the little creature’s head canted, then dipped—an unmistakable nod. Thorn spoke in Common, slow and steady, the way a stone drops through still water.
“Again. Breathe, and then listen. Not with your ears—here.” Thorn tapped his sternum. “Stretch your senses. Smell the breeze. Feel the ground.”
The fox’s tail swished, it turned its head towards the human woman and excitedly jumped up and down. The fox sprang towards Suraia in a tumble of white and blue, paws scrabbling at Suraia’s boots, then danced in a circle, delighted by its own existence. Suraia knelt down with a hesitant look blinking a few times, the fox stood very tall, as if preening.
The red headed woman carefully held out her hand and the fox playfully plopped it’s head on it, tail wagging.
“Vasha?” Suraia asked, astonishment breaking into a smile.
The fox gave a very solemn nod, then sneezed.
Thorn straightened, green eyes glinting. “We are practising,” Thorn said. “Her native shape is the foundation. It should be easiest shift to learn and master. Vasha is a quick study.”
The little fox beamed by sheer force of wagging tail. Thorn crouched and tied Vasha’s bundle—clothes, boots, bracers, bow, quiver, and dagger—into a neat roll, slinging it with their other kit.
Suraia pointed towards where she came from, face suddenly serious. “The stream… there are dead fish.”
Thorn’s eyes sharpened at once. “Show me.”
They moved together through the undergrowth: Thorn’s long stride sending fern-fronds whispering, Suraia keeping pace, the little arctic fox padding between them, nose to the breeze. At Suraia’s shallow ford, the wrongness waited in the quiet—fish turning in slow circles, another drifting to the bank, scattered berries here and there, the washing cloth still spread out at the water’s edge. The water itself ran clear over pebbles; the life within it did not.
Thorn crouched on the bank and stared upstream, jaw set. Thorn picked up the cloth and dipped it through the surface and lifted it; clear droplets beaded and fell. No stain, no scum—only that stillness where motion should have been. “Do not drink,” he said. “Do not touch it if you do not have to.”
Vasha, still a fox, put her nose high and sneezed again, ears tilting. She peered downstream at a thrush that had come to bathe and instead perched awkwardly with its feathers ruffled and dull. Vasha padded closer, small shape careful, and made a soft sound—half yip, half question. The bird stared through her, then beat away in a clatter that spoke more of panic than sense.
Suraia watched it go, unease twisting. Realisation hit the red headed woman and in a sudden half panicked motion she swatted her hands around. “I… I tried to wash berries here. Even I can feel something is wrong now.”
Thorn nodded once. “The water is fouled in spirit if not in sight. The sickness we saw in animals—this would do it.” He looked again towards the trees and then back to the flow. “If this stream leads to the trading post, they will already be unwell.”
Vasha, fox-quick, turned a circle and looked from Thorn to Suraia with open question. Thorn exhaled as he took Vasha’s bundle out again and tossed it towards the small white fox.
“We warn the watchtower first,” he said. “Then we follow the river up.”
The arctic fox took her bundle, bounded behind a thicket, and fur poured back into flesh and bone. Moments later Vasha emerged, tugging the last laces tight, and quickly putting a loose braid in her hair, blue-tipped ears flicking with impatience. “Right. Let us run then.”
Suraia understood at once. Thorn reached beneath the fur pelt and took the black cloak; he drew the hood forward, shadows cutting his features down to a stern jaw and the bright set of light-green eyes whose irises glowed faintly. It did nothing for size, but it softened the shock of bark-brown skin and moss-dark hair. Vasha smirked faintly.
“Still a tree in a wheatfield, Master Thornwing,” Vasha said, fond as a dare.
Thorn grunted. “Move.”
The Three Points trading post was frayed at the edges. A listless hush had settled over the market square; fewer hawkers cried their wares, and those who did were hoarse. At the apothecary door, a knot of people waited, faces pale, hands wrapped in shawls despite the mild day. A child sat on a barrel, head drooping against his mother’s shoulder, skin flushed and eyes dull. Somewhere unseen, someone retched. Suraia’s stomach sank.
Christopher Cooper Crooby stood outside the watchtower door with his helm under his arm, hair sticking at odd angles as though sleep had fought him and lost. When he saw the trio cross the square, he stepped forward quickly, expression sharpening.
“You look like you have news,” the Xaverion guard said.
“We do,” Thorn answered. “Bad news.”
They went inside and Christopher listened without interruption as Thorn described the river and the fish turning in clear water, the dulled bird, the hush along the bank where there should have been quick life. Vasha added crisp observations between, quick as sparrow-notes.
Christopher squared his shoulders. “Right.” He crossed to the door, bellowed for two volunteers, and rattled orders with a speed that looked like relief at having something useful to do: mark the river unsafe; post warnings at water points; stop children from playing in the shallows; find barrels of the last clean well to share out. “And send for the apothecary—no, I will go to him after.”
He turned back, softer. “You three did well.”
Suraia took a breath. “I… I could try to help someone. To… to cleanse them.” Suraia’s eyes flicked to the window where the queue had lengthened.
Christopher searched Suraia’s face with a look that said he had seen the farmyard and the way a circle of villagers could harden around one small red headed healer. He nodded anyway. “Choose someone who asks,” Christopher said quietly. “I will stand by.”
They went back into the sun. The line at the apothecary opened as people shifted to look. Suraia’s gaze moved along the faces—pinched, tense, distrustful—and settled on an older man sitting on a stool, his breath short and shallow, sweat shining. His wife stood behind him wringing a kerchief until the fabric twisted thin.
Suraia knelt by the older man and spoke low. “May I try?”
The woman’s mouth pinched tighter. The older man looked at Suraia’s freckled face and the steadiness she forced into her eyes. “Aye,” he said at last, voice rough. “If you can.”
Suraia set her hand to the older man’s brow. White light with a soft blue hue gathered beneath Suraia’s skin, pushing against the flush and the tremor. The world narrowed to heat and breath and the thin, wrong note Suraia felt in his body. Suraia found the thread of it and pulled, coaxing it out through skin and air and light. The older man inhaled sharply; colour retreated from his cheeks to a healthier shade, and his breath evened.
A murmur went through the queue. The wife stared at Suraia’s glowing hand with something like disgust. When Suraia drew away and the light faded, the woman stepped between Suraia and her husband and said, thin as a blade, “I think you should leave… now!” Then she gathered her husband and hurried away, muttering under her breath.
Suraia bowed her head and rose, hands knotting uneasily. People stared—uneasy glances shared, whispers behind hands, someone pointing at the woman with the red curls. She swallowed, mouth tasting of iron and salt, and fixed her gaze on the ground, cheeks burning.
Thorn stood next to the human healer, his expression hidden beneath the hood of the black cloak. Vasha’s expression was clearly visible—disbelief and a prickle of anger—as she looked at Suraia, who still found the cobbles fascinating.
Christopher’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing to the retreating couple. Instead, he moved to the next knot of people and spoke rapidly about boiled water and sealed barrels and keeping children from the banks. Orders filled the space that gratitude would not.
“I will hold the line here,” he said, glancing towards Thorn. “If the river is fouled, and folk have drunk, then this is only the start.”
“We will follow it up,” the Ee’dornil said. “We will find the source.”
The Xaverion guard nodded, earnest. “You have my thanks. Again.” His gaze flicked towards the far side of the square where a few of Aelric Harren’s hangers-on lounged in the shade, watching more than helping. Christopher’s mouth thinned. “And the sooner the better.”
They turned away from the tower together. As soon as the crowd thinned, Vasha leaned close to Suraia, voice tight but low. “I don’t understand them. You helped. They looked at you like you had bitten them.”
Suraia attempted a small smile and failed. “It’s… it’s how it often is.”
Vasha’s ears flattened. “Then they’re fools.”
Thorn inclined his head once—agreement, spare and solid. “We will not waste daylight.”
They left the square and made for the woods. Thorn pulled the black hood back as soon as they reached the trees, and air moved over green hair like wind through willow. Vasha adjusted the strap of the quiver across the new bracers. Suraia tugged at her bag, eyes still lowered.
“We need speed,” Thorn said. “If certain eyes see, then they see.”
Suraia understood before Thorn began to undress. Her cheeks burned and she looked away as the trousers came off, keeping her gaze pinned to the ground while she gathered the Ee’dornil’s clothing and bag.
When the human woman looked up she briefly met Vasha’s gaze who seemed to be studying her with slightly tilted head, eyes gleaming a knowing grin playing on her face.
Bones shifted—the heavy grace of a dire wolf rising from Thorn like a green tide. Fur, deep as moss and tipped like pine, rippled along Thorn’s shoulders. The air thrummed with the change. Thorn shook once, as though settling a shape worn many times before, and turned his glowing green gaze on Suraia and then Vasha.
Vasha started stripping again without fuss while Suraia politely turned away. The Oakhai tucked her clothes, bracers and bow-gear together, and with a ripple of fur and bone folded back into the small arctic fox. The little white fox stretched before it nosed the bundle of clothes towards the human woman.
Suraia bundled both sets of clothes tight and stowed them in Thorn’s pack, hoisting the weight securely. Then she climbed on the Dire wolves back again, sliding astride and finding the thick ruff with both hands. The arctic fox bounded to the fore and paused, looking back up at them, blue eyes bright and ready.
The dire wolf crouched, coiled, and sprang.