she too is a wanderer now

Amalthea stood in the park, wrapped in an eclectic coat as the wind pulled at her hair. Autumn had descended rapidly once the weather finally changed; the trees were ablaze with color and the sky was full of birds that were leaving. Amalthea wondered where they went, if they went anywhere at all. But every fall they left, and every spring they returned.

She stared up at a tree, quietly counting.

"Seven," she murmured to herself as the black birds in the tree talked to each other.

She clutched her coat, wondering. What secret was there? She was sure there were dozens, maybe hundreds in Darrow. The birds didn't say that, simply that there was one. She was not a secret, was she? She did not announce herself to everyone, but... people knew her. Some people knew her.

The strange, pale girl frowned when one of the birds flew away. Six? The star-like mark on her forehead tingled and she reached up to rub it, then turned. There was Mad Sweeney, coming her way.

"Six," she announced out loud when he was close enough. "Six for gold."

Amalthea waited for Magnus by the side of a country road. Once he'd told her when he was free, she'd told him where to meet her. She could feel the familiar power of the ley line and she wondered if Magnus was familiar with that as well. She wasn't sure how anyone could ignore it, though before coming here she had never heard it called by one particular name or another. She had walked it end to end by now; of course it could not lead her out of this place.

It was a road of a different kind. It did not pull at her feet the way the roads of men did.

She looked up when the warlock arrived and offered him a small smile. "It is not a far walk," she promised him. "But I thought it right that we do walk."

Amalthea had always approached the forest on foot, and she saw no reason to do anything differently this time.