Enchanted by Alethea Kontis Read Free Book Online

forgot to beat. In his thoughts, the sun shone in her hammered-gold hair as she stretched out on the ground beside him. She took off her shoes and her skirts pooled around her fair-skinned feet. She was as fresh and wild and innocent and mysterious as the Wood itself. She knew so little of the world and yet saw everything through eyes of uncommon wisdom. She spoke, and the bright crystal tones of her voice soothed him. She laughed with her whole body, and when she smiled, she glowed. She was startlingly beautiful, like a newborn fawn, even more so in her blissful unawareness of the fact. She was at the same time selfish and giving, ungrateful and kind. Her name was Sunday.
    And she loved him.
    Quickly he touched himself again to make sure that he had indeed come back as a man, whole and—despite the excruciating pain—unharmed. Thus reassured, he let his thoughts wander back to his girl. He would find her and bind her to him forever, as the gods willed it, and the world would be as it was meant to be.
    He held a hand over his face and peeked at the color-saturated world through the spaces between his fingers. The air dried his eyes, and he tried to close an inner eyelid that no longer existed. The leaves in the canopy above were the brilliant green of new-birthed spring. A jay pecked about in the nearby grass, blue as a sliver of sky come down to visit.
    A raspy sigh betrayed his thirst. Not yet ready for too-long legs, he crawled on hands and knees to the bucket beside the well. He raised the smooth, wooden edge to his lips with shaking arms and drank greedily from it, thrilling in the beads of water that ran down the sides of his face and onto his chest. He filled the bucket again and emptied it over his head, several times, washing the slime and sick from his body. He felt like a new man. He
was
a new man. The reflection wavering on the water examined him with its old and familiar face. The face of a prince. A prince
her
family would have nothing to do with.
    In rage, he howled and smashed the bucket against the ruined well. He lifted some smallish rocks and hurled them a pitifully short distance into the Wood. It did little to appease him. Fate continued to be both mischievous and cruel, and life was still not fair.
    He and Sunday were each victims of their history. She might have loved him truly, hopefully still loved him, but her love for her family was a bond he would never ask her to betray. Of all the women in the land, Fate had chosen Jack Woodcutter’s little sister. It was a cruel, cruel joke.
    He had to find her.
    He tentatively stood up and stumbled forward, forcing his muscles to remember motions that for almost twenty years had been second nature to him. Thorns and branches scraped the language of the Wood in raw lines on his tender reborn skin. To his relief, a thin blanket of clouds politely moved over the scorching sun. He scanned the ground for the path his true love’s feet had trod three days running.
    He slammed straight into a memory: a vision of horses and hounds leapt before him. He’d done this before. He was a hunter. He had tracked the stag and wild boar and brought home the spoils for feasting and celebration. Food as far as the eye could see, song enough to fill the days and the nights unstopped, and women, such women ... pretty shadows now in the memory of another life. He focused on a new memory, the one thing he had worth living for. She was a tiny thing with a gleam in her eye and a smile that made his blood sing.
    The layer of clouds in the sky grew thick. The path disappeared. He raised his head, straining to see the edge of the Wood through the trees. An abyss of barkened trunks stared back at him. He bowed his head and shuffled on, eyes flitting from one bright stone to the next in the ever-increasing darkness. Finally, he found himself at the edge of the world. Only a few trees separated him from the grassy meadow beyond the Wood. The towerhouse stood bold against the sky, calling