Opening Acts

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  Ferns grew lush between the trees. Ketty bounded through them, until Smoke caught up with her. In a swirl of gray vapor, he manifested not two steps ahead. She had no chance at all to stop. With a tiny cry she crashed into him, knocking him off balance, even as his arms closed around her.

  He made sure they fell together. He went down on his side to avoid breaking his bow, and the ferns closed over them. They would have been nicely hidden if Ketty hadn't started to struggle. Smoke rolled her onto her back, pinning her against the ground as he hissed in her ear. "Be still or they'll know you're here! If they come hunting you, I'll have to kill them."

  "What are you?" she whimpered. "I saw you. You were smoke-!"

  He scowled at her, lying helpless beneath him in the green twilight under the ferns. "That's what my sisters named me, but you don't have to name me the same."

  "Smoke?" she whispered, as the vibration of the cantering hooves rumbled up from the ground.

  "It will be fixed if you say it again," he warned.

  Her brow wrinkled in abject confusion. "Smoke?"

  His lip curled. "It's done then."

  "Are you a forest spirit? One of the Haunten?"

  "Hush now. They're here."

  A man's deep voice boomed over them. "Ketty! You clumsy sow. You left a trail for me to follow as plain as the forest road." Fern fronds crunched under the horses' hooves. "I brought my whip, Ketty, and your husband."

  Ketty opened her mouth. Smoke clapped a hand over it before she could protest that the widower was not her husband yet. She stared up at him with wild eyes. Stay still. He mouthed the words. Do not move. Do not show yourself.

  She nodded tentatively and he took his hand away. Then he reached out again to the threads that formed the weft of the world and, seeming to become a heavy pall of gray smoke, he sank away into the moist ground.