Once the deer was gone, the current and birdsong returned, and I sat at the riverbank until sunrise before continuing my journey north. Grandmother’s advice of sleeping during the day and moving during the night was sound, but irrelevant now that the nights were long and sunlight lasted only a few hours —  it wasn’t enough to fully rest, and I’d rather spend as little time stumbling around in the dark as possible.

Perhaps it was the sunlight, or the knowledge that not every supernatural creature here wanted me dead, but the forest felt less hostile now. I wasn’t clutching my heart, or my ax, at the tiniest sound anymore — I was getting comfortable. This, as Mother had taught me, could be what killed me.

All wasn’t sunshine and birdsong, however. At lunchtime I found that the trolls had thrown away most of my food. I only had rations to last me another day, if I made sure not to eat to fullness. I’d have to start hunting soon, or at least find some edible plants or berries … in the beginning of winter.

Still, I had to try. There had to be things here that grew despite the cold.

My assumptions proved correct when I, a few hours after my encounter with the deer, stumbled upon a region rich with bushes which grew heavy, dark berries. But when I touched my ax to one of the clusters, the violet skins of the fruit burst into brown muck and the entire branch rotted within seconds. I covered my mouth to avoid breathing in the fumes and swallowed my disappointment and anxiety.

Not knowing whether the plants here were sentient or not kept me from digging for edible roots in the earth, so I decided to take the risk and try to get as far north as I could before I ran out of food. Having no source of food would be dangerous, but drawing the fury of the creatures here would be dangerous, too. Between a slow death and a premature one, I had to pick the former.

It was midday when I heard the music. I’d been following another deer trail when a merry melody came floating into earshot. It didn’t sound too far off east, close enough to allow my curiosity to get the better of me. I broke from the path and stalked through the underbrush towards the source of the sound careful not to disturb my surroundings too much in case these musicians were hostile. Out of all the ways I could imagine dying, getting beaten to death with a flute was the least dignified.

The melody led me to the top of a hill, and in a small clearing below were the instruments that produced it. Only the instruments; nobody was playing them. A flute bobbed up and down as if held by invisible hands, while a bow drew across the strings of a violin, and a harp plucked itself. The instruments hovered around a small campfire and played for two creatures dancing next to it.    

At first I thought nothing of it and figured I should move on — until I heard sobbing. It was faint and nearly drowned out by the music, but sounded like a child crying.

I craned my neck to see the dancing shapes better, trying to figure out which one of them was the child, right before something brushed against my leg and I flinched. When I realized that something was nothing but a branch, it was too late. The violin had stopped playing and turned my way as if it had eyes with which to look. I didn’t move.

While the other instruments continued playing, the violin switched its tune to a louder, more energetic song. The flute and harp started but quickly joined it, and the creatures dancing nearby clasped hands, spinning in a circle. The crying grew louder now, and I had to blink several times to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. Was it coming from that tiny green light in the space between the two larger individuals?

I couldn’t remember anything about camps with sentient instruments from what Grandmother had told me before. I did, however, remember a ballad my father would sing to me as a lullaby, about a group of youths being lured into the forest by a strange man with goat horns. He played a song on his fiddle so enchanting they couldn’t stop dancing, even as the flesh tore off their feet. It ended with them dying.

That ballad had always frightened and intrigued me. Even as a child I knew it was meant to keep kids away from the woods at night, and yet I couldn’t help but wonder what a song so wonderful and terrible at once would sound like. And how long it would take for someone to dance themselves to death.

Perhaps there had been a bit of truth to the tale, after all. Though the music wasn’t affecting me, the two creatures danced, their limbs flung about erratically, and the ground around them was dark with what I could only assume was trampled earth and blood. They had bone flashing where their heels should be.

I gripped my hatchet and untangled myself from the undergrowth, rising from my crouched position. I tried to approach slowly and quietly, but rotting leaves and damp moss covered the slope before me and made me practically slide down towards the campsite.

So much for a stealthy approach.

I picked myself off the ground, finally able to see the individuals dancing. One of them looked like a woman, but once the dance turned her back to me, I saw it was hollow and rough like the inside of a dead tree. The other creature was a misshapen, too-long wolf that stood on its hind legs, its tongue lolling out between sharp teeth.

The crying had indeed been coming from the tiny shape that glowed green, and it was the only thing reacting to its predicament: the wolf and the tree-woman were dead, their corpses animated by the music.

Before I could do anything else, the flute broke formation and flew right toward me as if shot from a bow. I dodged with a yelp, stumbling to regain balance as it flew past. It flipped around quickly before aiming for my face again, but I was prepared this time, catching it mid-air only inches from my nose.

It was like holding onto the limb of an animal struggling against my grasp. I grabbed it with both hands, trying to keep it still as it twitched and yanked about.

“The fiddle! It’s the fiddle! Stop it, please!” screamed the glowing thing with the childlike voice.

The music had become frantic now. Both the harp and violin hovered closer, played louder as though trying to smother me between them. Pain stabbed through my skull with each stroke of the violin’s bow, and I felt it snap the capillaries in my nose, hot blood trickling down my mouth and chin, and my eyeballs vibrated hideously in their sockets.

Blinded and deafened, I stumbled against the still-struggling flute as it began to gain control.

I needed my hands free to cover my ears. So I snapped it in half.

A terrible, pained dissonance came from the violin. The pause was enough for me to find my ax on the ground, but when I blindly swung to make the cursed noise stop, I met nothing but air.

“It’s above you!” shouted the glowing thing.

I thought my head would burst. The music had gotten so loud I couldn’t hold the ax anymore, I needed both of my hands to protect my ears lest I went deaf. I managed to get back on my feet, aware of the harp and violin right in front of me despite the tears in my eyes and my face nearly splitting apart.

Blissfully, my hands were barely enough to block the noise and most of the pain, enough for me to blink myself into coherent thought and look around for a solution. I could try to run, but I’d be one ax short. One weapon short. And that thing — whatever it was — needed my help. So I checked my surroundings again, keeping a distance from the approaching instruments to hold the cursed music at bay. There was nothing but trees.

Perhaps I could work with that.

Haphazard plan hatched, I slowly moved toward a thick and ancient oak until its trunk was right behind me. The instruments followed, still trying to subdue me with their cacophony, or perhaps force me to dance like their previous victims. I waited for the violin to get close, gritting my teeth as the volume and pain grew. Once it was in front of me, I took a deep breath.

Which ear would I sacrifice? The right one, of course, since my right hand was stronger.

It was only a split second, but it felt as if someone had shoved a knife into my ear. I couldn’t hear my own scream, couldn’t see anything, but I’d aimed well. My hand closed around the neck of the violin and I spun around, the momentum of my entire body flinging the instrument against the tree behind me.

It splintered into a hundred pieces of fine wood and silence graced my ears once more. Mostly silence, anyway; there was ringing, accompanied by the thumping of a headache.

I collapsed against the oak and touched my fingertips to the inside of my right ear. It was a miracle I hadn’t gone deaf.

Something thick and warm ran down my thigh — blood. It dribbled down in rivulets from the severed neck of the violin still in my hand. I threw it away from me in terror, too startled to cry out. The other pieces of it were spread around my feet, all bleeding. Its wooden husk had been like skin, protecting living, pulsating flesh inside. It even had what could only be a heart, tiny and dark crimson as it was, still pumping blood through veins. Veins that were slowly reaching out of the flesh like little wriggling maggots, searching for each other. When they found a different piece, the veins intertwined, and began to pull together across the forest floor.

I hastily retrieved my ax, and in a sudden rage and hatred at this thing’s sheer audacity, slashed the blade into its filthy little heart. Once was enough. Another scream, but this one pathetic and small, came from an orifice I didn’t care to find. The red flesh turned black and shriveled up before my eyes, sizzling and burning away.

Thankfully, the harp was nowhere to be found. At my feet was nothing but a crooked branch with what looked like snapped sinew tied to it.

I breathed out. Once I knew nothing wouldn’t rise again, I turned back to the victims.

The wolf’s corpse had fallen in an awkward position. Next to it was a vaguely woman-shaped log, covered in thick moss and rancid-looking mushrooms. For a moment I wish I’d been religious, or at least known a prayer. Fae or not, this was a terrible way to die.

“You saved me!”

The only survivor was nothing but a handful of green light sitting between its former dance partners. Feeling bold, I crouched in front of it to get a closer look.

It wasn’t an insect, or at least not like any insect I’d ever seen. It looked like a tiny, thin human, with disproportionately long limbs and faceted black eyes that took up half of its face. It had four wings, similar to those of a dragonfly, and clothing made of leaves and flower petals, though these “clothes” were growing out of its skin rather than worn.

“What are you?” I wondered.

“I’m a pixie!” it chirped. “What are you?”

“I’m …” Evidently some creatures here had an appetite for humans, but I couldn’t come up with a decent lie in time. “I’m human.”

The pixie gasped, “You are? I’ve never seen one before! I thought you were an elf, but your ears are small, and you’re terribly ugly!”

I decided to ignore that — antagonizing the only creature willing to speak to me without eating me wasn’t the best idea.

The pixie straightened out its wings while humming a merry tune, something that almost reminded me of the way Sinéad would sometimes brush imaginary dust off her skirts.

Though it was a little odd how quickly this creature recovered from what could be hours or even days of torture.

“My name is Amaryllis. What’s yours?”

“Sidra.”

“What is a human doing this far from home, Sidra?” Amaryllis asked. Its wings started flapping rapidly and it slowly rose into the air to hover in front of my face.

“I’m looking for my sister. She was taken by someone, and I have to find her. Can you help?”

Amaryllis hummed as it spun around in slow, thoughtful circles, “Elf lords sometimes steal human girls, don’t they? I could ask my mother. She’d know where to find one.”

“Really?”

“Really! Come, I’ll take you there right away!”

Amaryllis spun around one final time before heading south. This was the opposite of where I needed to go, but if this pixie’s mother could give me an actual destination or even directions, then I had nothing to lose.

So I followed the pixie, questioning my fate. For the first time in days, everything didn’t seem so hopeless anymore. But how many times would I have to escape death for a sliver of progress?

How much longer until my luck ran dry?