Ballad

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I was used to being the hunter. If I saw something I wanted, I stalked it, smelled it, made it mine. By "it" I mean "him," of course. I liked them young, talented, male. The more handsome the better. Sweetened the deal. I had to look at them until they died, so they might as well be pretty.

I wasn't cruel. I was generous. Every one of them begged me for what I gave him: beauty, inspiration, death. I turned their ordinary lives into something extraordinary. I was the best thing that ever happened to every single one of them.

Really, I wasn't so much hunter as benefactor.

But today, in this autumn wood, I was neither. Someone had summoned me, pulled me from my intangible form into a real body. I didn't see anybody here, but I could still smell the remnants of a spell. I could hear my footfalls on the dry leaves, and the sound made me uneasy. I felt vulnerable in this bloodred wood, noisy and exposed in my form as a human girl, and I wasn't used to it. All around me smelled of burning thyme and burning leaves, summoning spells and fall bonfires. As soon as I found a bit of human thought to ride on, I was getting out of here.

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