She tipped her head, her chopped hair falling in ragged lines around her face. Together they stepped off the path into the dark woods. Aran glanced once more over his shoulder. The dim bulk of the giant lay unmoving.
The cheerful babble of water ahead lifted Aran’s spirits. Spark was right about the stream. She probably was right most of the time. Which meant he should have gone with her, and left the realm when he had the chance.
Spark’s fireball licked red and gold reflections from the surface of the stream. Moving to the edge, Aran peered into the water.
“Do you see anything?” she asked.
Mindful that something might leap out and grab him, he carefully leaned forward. A flick of movement caught his attention, a flash of silver beneath the far bank.
“Maybe,” he said. “Can you bring your fireball closer?”
The flame floated to the center of the stream. Aran squinted into the shadows under the water and kept very still. Another flash and flicker.
“Some fish in there,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
He’d spent plenty of time fishing with his uncles, mostly off the piers, but in the shallows, too. He knew a fish when he saw one. Even if it was a faerie fish.
“It makes sense,” he said, turning to face Spark. “A stick and a berry. But what can we use for the line?”
“What are you talking about?” She frowned at him.
“Fishing. I think we need to catch one of those fish.”
He glanced around, studying the trees. Most of them were evergreens, though a short distance up the bank grew a leafy tree with long, thin branches. He didn’t know if it was a hazel, but it was the best choice they had.
“You get the sticks,” Spark said, “I’ll look for berries.”
She caught on fast. Aran nodded, biting his tongue on words of caution. As if he needed to warn the most prime simmer in the world about the dangers of a game.
A few minutes later they reconvened on the stream bank. Aran had two branches, stripped of their leaves. Spark carried a cluster of red berries, still attached to a sprig of leaves.
“Here.” She handed him the berries, then started messing with the edge of her cloak.
“What are you doing?”
“We need string, right?”
She plucked at the heavy wool a moment more, then pulled her dagger from her boot and sliced at her cloak. Aran helped her unravel a length of dark green thread, pulling until it was about twenty feet long. They cut it from the cloak, then sliced it in half. Aran rolled the slender strand between his fingers. Would it be strong enough?
“Do we need hooks?” Spark asked as she assembled her fishing pole.
“I don’t think so. The old woman didn’t mention them. But if we do, I can make us a couple.”
“You can?”
“Yeah, out of sharpened twigs.”
“You know a fair bit about fishing.”
“I used to fish with my mom’s side of the family.” Before his life took a sudden turn into grim.
He bent and sifted through the pine needles on the bank until he found a nice pointy one, then poked a hole in the berry with it. Squinting, he threaded the berry and tied a complicated knot at the end. Seeing his work, Spark did the same.
“So… we just throw the berry in?” She waved her makeshift pole at him. “Any extra tips?”
“We’re trying for that deeper part where the bank’s cut away. And cast upstream, so the bait drifts past. Wish we had a net.”
Spark shrugged out of her cloak and laid it on the ground.
“It’s already ripped,” she said. “A little fish slime won’t hurt it.”
“Fish aren’t that slimy. But yeah, we can bundle the fish up, keep it from flopping back into the stream.”
Provided they caught one.
He and Spark cast, his throw landing farther upstream than hers. Quietly, they watched the berries bob along the surface. When his bait floated into the shadows, Aran leaned forward in concentration, but didn’t get a bite. Not the next time, either. Or the time after that. After a while he lost count.
Spark sighed. “I don’t think this is even—hey!”
Her berry plunged under the surface and her line went taut.
“Now what?” She turned a half-panicked gaze on him. “I’ve never done this before.”
Aran tossed his pole on the bank and grabbed the cloak.
“Go downstream—quick.” He eyed the tight curve of her stick. “Don’t want to break your pole. That’s it. Let the fish run a bit.”
Spark hurried along the stream bank, Aran right behind her. He kept giving instructions—when to pull back, when to gather up the slack.
“Wind the extra line up on your pole, like that. Good. Do you see it?”