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“Don’t,” I said with a shudder. I didn’t think I’d be eating pigeon again anytime soon, if ever. But Oraik only grinned.

I reached the rock and set my bag on it. Then I took a seat, arranging my skirts. I hoped the faeries hadn’t taken Kalcedon much further, though of course he could be days away by this point. We were nearly out of food.

“Bird, do you know how much further we have to go?” I asked. It shrieked a loud whistle into my ear. I winced and leaned away, clapping a hand over the side of my head. My patience was fast fading. The sound was too loud.

“See? That’s what you get for being rude,” Oraik joked with a grin. I pried the bird off my shoulder and rubbed my poor, abused ear.

“Next time I cast something like this, I’m leaving breath out of it,” I complained. “Is it hard to rupture an eardrum, do you think?”

Then the stone moved beneath me.

I grabbed onto my seat with both hands. The low rumble continued. Was it an earthquake? I’d only felt one once before. And why did the stone feel less like stone, and more like roughened leather?

“Meda!” Oraik screamed. He grabbed me with his free arm and yanked me back. I stumbled towards him as the bird tumbled out of my hand with a squawk.

The ground wasn’t shaking. Only the stone had been. I turned and gaped at it. It wasn’t a stone at all. There was a large, toothy mouth along one side of it, and it was hauling itself up out of the ground. The food bag with all my possessions fell away as it did. The thing was hideous.

The stone seemed to be its head, beneath which two long arms, a torso, and two squat legs emerged. Its body was as rough and lumpy as the head, covered in dirt. Beetles and earthworms clung to the parts which had lain beneath the earth. It swept a heavy arm across the ground, groping for us blindly.

Instinctively I threw up a shield to cover myself and Oraik. But I’d left out the third member of our group, because in my head it had still been with us, not floundering on the forest floor.

“Bird!” I yelped, just as a heavy three-fingered stone hand wrapped around our wooden guide.

Oraik grabbed a branch off the ground. He threw it like a javelin at the stone creature. The branch smacked into its head and fell; the creature groped forward with its other hand, searching for Oraik. The bird wriggled loose and flapped awkwardly towards me before thumping into the shield. It tumbled to the ground in a tangle of wooden wings and beak. A high whistle of alarm pierced through the air.

The stone-thing took a step towards Oraik. Without thinking I dropped the shield and sketched Kalcedon’s attack spell. The air chilled around my hands as I slammed the outland power into where a human’s heart would be.

How strange it was, to cast without needing anyone there beside me.

It fell backwards, crashing through branches and landing so hard we felt the earth’s reverberation. I smashed the power into its torso again, and then its head. It wasn’t moving.

Oraik and I stayed frozen a moment longer before I dropped my hands, cursed, and bent to scoop up the bird.

“What was that?” Oraik breathed.

“Some kind of troll, I guess,” I told him, and gulped. “Though a lot uglier than the drawings I’ve seen, so who could say.”

“Were you trying to warn us?” Oraik asked the bird. The little thing sat in a trembling huddle in my cupped palms, wood feathers puffed out. “I’m sorry. We’ll listen next time.”

“Perhaps you ought to take it,” I suggested to Oraik. “Who knows if I’ll need to cast again.” The bird inched sideways into Oraik’s hand when coaxed. I went to pick up the bag of food, my eyes not straying from the troll in case it wasn’t dead.

“Let’s keep moving,” Oraik suggested. “I think we can find somewhere nicer to eat than next to a troll’s body, don’t you?”

We ate a little further on, sitting cross-legged on the ground because we dared not trust any of the rocks. When we went to move again, Bird peeped and ruffled its wings. Oraik set the creature down on the forest floor. It hopped around, cocked its head to one side, then turned to point its beak off-course to the left. Bird chirped loudly.

“I think it wants us to go that way,” Oraik said.

“That’s not how we were headed before.”

“Maybe Kalcedon’s on the move,” Oraik said with a shrug. I frowned, but agreed, and we changed course.

There was no more trouble until late afternoon.

I paused mid-step and threw out my hand to stop Oraik. Something moved ahead of us, just visible through the trees. I crouched down and peered ahead. A lilt of laughter reached my ears, then a clank of metal. But I couldn’t see anything or feel any shift in the warmth around us.

“Is there danger?” I heard Oraik whisper to the bird, who stood as straight as it could on the ground, head swiveling stiffly. “You knew there was a troll. Do you know about this?”

I heard a soft whistle from the bird, like a bit of breeze through the branches. I wasn’t sure what to make of that sound, but it was certainly less distressed than the bird had sounded before.