After first asking a satyr who smelled like a barn, she talked to what had to be a gnome and then to a man who looked human but had an uncomfortably distinct shadow with an even more distinct tail. They were all busy and had no idea where Dry-Eyes was. Emily wandered the endlessly branching halls, hoping she could find her way back to her room if she couldn’t find someone who could help her find the sprite.
Finally, after despairing of finding anyone in the now-empty halls, Emily saw what had to be the biggest, most beautiful cat she’d ever seen. The shine of the even hall lighting brought out the impossibly darker spots scattered through jet-black fur and their shoulders came to mid-torso on Emily. She wondered if that was a size that non-magical panthers could reach. She realised she was gaping and shut her mouth as the cat flowed like ink toward her.
The panther padded close and looked up at Emily through delicate eyebrow whiskers. “She’s out in the winter garden. Would you like me to bring you there?”
Emily nodded. It was somehow weirder for a cat to talk than a grasshopper, weirder still that it knew what she wanted. The panther blinked a slow, feline blink and Emily swirled for a moment in blackness before standing on the frozen ground of a path that wound between snow-covered trees.
“I thought you were going to lead me, or something.” Emily realised she was talking to herself. The cat hadn’t bothered to come along. Chagrined, she started walking, looking for Dry-Eyes. She needed to remember the literalness and rule-bending tendencies at play here: the perversity of the Folk didn’t limit itself only to deals and promises made.
Emily wondered if there were gardens for all the seasons. Most of the plants around her lay dead and bare, though there were patches of startlingly bright flowers she couldn’t identify. The path forked and Emily realised she wasn’t going to just stumble across the sprite.
“Dry-Eyes?” She jogged in place a little; the cold was setting in and her feet were going numb. There was no sign of the sprite. Emily looked back the way she’d come, wondering if she should just return to her room and wait there. The path cut clearly through the trees and stopped, Emily estimated, right about where the panther had materialised her. Her sigh formed a visible cloud in the frozen air.
She heard a yell and hurried down the path towards the sound, hoping she was headed in the right direction. It wasn’t long before she reached a clearing where a naked man with a raven’s head danced around angrily, swatting the air as though under attack by an invisible swarm of bees. He made a wild grab and caught something from the air. Emily realised it was Dry-Eyes struggling in his grip. His beak clacked.
“Hey!” Emily started forward, her fists clenched, angry that she’d left the knife back in her room. The man cocked his head at her, blue-black tongue visible in his open, panting beak.
Using the distraction, Dry-Eyes wriggled around and bit down hard on the web between his thumb and index finger. The man cawed and threw her. Before Emily could worry about the sprite smashing into a tree, Dry-Eyes rolled in mid air and brought herself to a stop, wings buzzing. She flicked her hand and the man was ablaze.
There was a moment where everyone in the clearing seemed to freeze: Emily on her way to Dry-Eyes; Dry-Eyes hanging in the air, panting; the burning man’s avian eyes goggling at the flames eating his skin. In a sudden rush, he ran into the snow-covered trees and out of sight.
“What the hell.” Emily gestured at where he’d gone. A soft crash echoed back as he stumbled in the forest. “Are you okay? Did that guy just, like, attack you?”
Dry-eyes smiled. “Ha, no. We were just settling something.”
“By him grabbing you and by you setting him on fire?” Emily gestured futilely. “What were you settling?” She looked at the center of the clearing, where the snow was melted away.
“Y’know, I can’t remember exactly.” Dry-Eyes turned to go back to the main path. Emily followed.
“You can’t remember, but you set him on fire.”
“He’ll put himself out eventually. Anyway, I remembered that I owed him one and since we were here I figured I might as well take care of it.”
“We’re guests here. Won’t people be mad?”
The sprite stopped and flew around to meet Emily’s eyes. “Why would they?” She gestured. “This way out.”
Emily followed her through the frozen beauty of the garden to an arch made of stone and ice. Through it, Emily could see into one of the monastery’s halls. There was no tangible feeling as they passed through, except that Emily’s feet began to prickle as they thawed.
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