MORNING FROST SAT ON the ground the first time Tate walked the ragged, natural stone hall of the Offering Gorge. Her feet had been bare then, not booted like they were now—chew-tough soles and supple leather floured in red dust a luxury. She'd also carried Talia, a ready bulge in her belly causing more discomfort than the cuts on her feet. Each step left blood on the white frost, smattering her tracks red. 

     Tate's breath snuck past the iron plate pressing down on her tongue, a ghostly movement in the morning light. Her belly hung low, and she wrapped one arm around the base, supporting her baby's weight while her other hand kept against the nearest rock wall, gripping and guiding her further inside. The bruises on these knuckles were visible in any light, like charcoal smudges, evidence of contact. Dried blood, not her own, flecked the thin skin between the bones.

     It'd been a solid punch. Any man would have been proud to have thrown it.

     Tate stumbled. The hem of her nightgown caught on cactus needles longer than her swollen fingers. The lock at the base of her neck clicked against the iron bands it kept in place. She let her belly go to touch the muzzle guarding her mouth. The cage, held together by tiny welds, encircled her jaw, bridling her like a horse. A centerpiece branched in a Y-shape over her nose, splitting the expanse of her face in half, racing up and over her tangled hair to meet the lock behind her head. She whimpered. The sound rode her next breath out into the cold, loud in the morning quiet.

     Where had it gone wrong? Tate tried to put the pieces together. Her mind felt fissured in two, conflicted and confused, and her heart ached worse than the root of her heavy belly. Broken, she guessed.

     Warm tears traveled down Tate's cheeks, free to escape the scold's bridle at the tip of her chin. She struggled to breathe in. The baby fluttered against her ribs—flick, flick, flick—protesting the panic spreading from Tate's chest with each gasp, moving throughout her shaky body.

     Mind the child.

     The female voice inside her head forced Tate to let out a sharp breath. It was all she could audibly manage with the spiked plate biding its time against her tongue. One word, and it'd happily bite her into submission.

     Until now, her mother had kept a silent distance, guiding with impressions and the occasional candled image in Tate's mind, throwing shadows of unfamiliar destinations, leading her daughter away from civilization and Death titled Sheriff of Blackburn.

    We had an agreement, Aida, Tate thought. No words. On any other given day, Tate would rather forget the woman completely. But the arrest and imminent threat of hanging had made inviting her mother's spirit inside a less repulsive option.

     You oughta be ashamed, Aida said. I didn't raise you to be cruel.

     You didn't raise me.

     I'd be more grateful in your predicament. I dare recall; you summoned me.

     People make mistakes.

     Tate yanked her nightgown hem free of the cactus cluster and wrapped the stolen jacket she wore closer to her body. The world around her started molding into shape as the bruised light improved, melting from ugly shadow-black to yellow-grey. Rock formations scattered about began to appear. Some were jagged spirals; others seemed disk-like, dinner plates balanced one atop the other, hoodoos climbing toward the sky.

     Why have you led me here? Tate asked. Grotesque was the word she could conjure. Her eyes drifted to the surrounding gorge walls, the planes she could see. Ancient white markings—hundreds of tiny scratches forming shapes—covered the uneven rock. Pictures of things she couldn't quite make out yet. A thumbprint left by the Ute. A warning?

     For the child— Aida's voice halted mid-sentence. Something akin to ice shocked Tate's insides. Her skin prickled with a cold that came from the marrow and stayed in her bones long after the moment was gone. Colder than the air or the frost under her feet.

    Aida's ice-ridden emotions crested to words: You've been followed.

     Flinty hooves glanced off rock. A sharp whiny echoed after. Tate's feet were numb. She barely felt the ground underneath her as she ran another yard to a hollow in the wall disguised from afar by an outcropping of tall red boulders. Climbing inside, she pressed her back into hiding and leaned forward just enough to see.

     Six horses scattered into view, forming a line across the width of the gorge. The men in the saddles rode deep on their seats, booted feet pushing their wide stirrups forward, legs extended. In one hand, they held the split reins, loose-fingered; in their other hand, each wielded a ready gun. They milled about, unsure, their horses too hot from the gallop to stand still. Voices carried, deep, indistinct.

     Tate's breaths hammered her chest. Her throat closed with each exhale, refusing any return. She grabbed her belly and tried to squeeze further into the hiding. The iron lock clicked with each tiny movement.

     How foolish to think she had escaped so easily.

     Tate watched as one rider separated from the line and trotted aways up the dry riverbed. He sat stiff-backed in the saddle, a rifle butted against his thigh, muzzle pointed like an errant gesture at the lit sky. He wore black, how he usually did, to offset the silver star at home on his left vested breast. The brimmed hat pulled low on his brow hid eyes that Tate could still see in her dreams. Soft and pale blue. Eyes Tate had let devour her on many nights when she wore candlelight like a gown, allowing the hands that now held a gun to roam the edges and centers of her body.

     "WITCH."

     Wayde McCoy's voice boomed off the rocks. Tate's foot slipped, scattering gravel. His head turned toward the sound, raising the rifle along with it, aiming it at the rising cliff wall.

     "Don't make this any more of a difficulty," he said. "Come on out."

     Tate dug her fingers into her palms. The pain from her sore hand grounded her. She could imagine the groomed mustache on Wayde's upper lip moving with his words. The wiry blond hair crusted with dry blood, faint smudges still visible about his nostrils. She'd landed a solid punch right before her mother had siphoned every ounce of heat from the room to throw Wayde down the flight of stairs into the sheriff's office below. His kindness had been securing Tate in the one-room apartment they shared above the office instead of a cell. A kindness turned to advantage.

     The image of his body sprawled unconscious, head cocked against the square leg of a desk, burnt the corners of Tate's mind. It'd taken every bit of fear and sense to keep her from running to help him.

     "You brought this on yourself," Wayde bellowed. Her refusal to appear angered him. His horse sidestepped nervously. "You did this. You and your curse. And now you've run back to the devils as proof."

     I did nothing, Tate wanted to scream, but Wayde had ensured her silence. No questioning. No chance to refute accusations. Two deputies and one eager blacksmith for her defense. The seams were still warm when he'd locked the bridle in place. She knew the key to her voice was on his person even now. The plate nipped her tongue as it flexed. The word 'devils' bounced down the canyon, melting into whispers that multiplied and rolled back.

     "If you surrender to me, I'll spare our child."

     Our child. It'd been days since he'd last said those words, substituting familiarity for distant and cold terms. Disgusted.

     "I'll raise it well in Blackburn. You have my word."

     Something brushed the back of Tate's neck, the light touch of a finger just below the lock on the scold's bridle. And it burned like an open flame.

     Tate gasped. Wayde adjusted his aim and pulled the trigger.

     The rifle flashed. The rock exploded over Tate's head, showering grit and sand. A dark voice, a growl, swelled inside her head:

     RUN

     Tate did.

     Out of hiding, out into the open, she ran. One heartbeat. Two steps. Tate could feel the horse moving up behind her, closer with each stride she took to get away. The rifle's second report proceeded a sharp punch in her back, and before she could force a sound, she fell.

     The spiked plate stabbed her tongue on impact. Blood in her mouth. Blood on her hands. Tate struggled to crawl across the sand, one arm dragging her forward, the other hand pressed against the wound on her belly, doing little to stem the bloom of the brightest red growing on her white nightgown.

     Where had it gone wrong?

     Stirrups creaked behind her. Boots hit the ground. She heard the clack of metal and the whisper of leather as Wayde sheathed his rifle in the scabbard strapped to the saddle.

     Wayde grabbed her shoulder and rolled her over; his roughness betrayed gentle memories of past caresses. He crouched, balancing on the balls of his feet, a revolver hung loose in his left hand, his arms draped over his knees. He knocked his hat back with his thumb and looked away for a moment, contemplative, as if the sight of Tate prone on her back, belly rounded like a small, misshapen hill, sickened him.

     "This ain't my fault."

     The salty taste of blood prickled her tongue. Tate coughed.

     "Do you think I want this? Because I don't. You," Wayde sniffed, "are a vile and unnatural thing. God knows the baby you carry is stained by it."

     Tate tried for the gun dangling within reach, but he pulled it away just shy of her stiff fingers.

     "Shame on you for this," Wayde said. He explored the source of the bleeding on her swollen stomach, flicking her hands aside as she tried weakly to stop him. "Looks like it went through clean."

     With a sigh, he slipped the revolver into the holster attached to the oiled belt slung low on his hips. Tate could feel the pain now; the first few moments of cold shock were a distant memory. Her nerves clawed into existence, alive again, relaying the sensation of dying up and down her limbs in fiery waves. (And still, the touch on the back of her neck burned above it, begging for notice.) She could see the thin stripe detail on Wayde's trousers as he knelt near her head. The longer she looked, the sharper the lines.

     What he did next surprised her.

     "Attagirl." Carefully, Wayde tipped her chin to one side. Tate heard a rattle of keys. Click. The lock popped. The pressure on her skull eased. Gently prying, he removed the plate from her mouth like he would a bit from his horse and dropped the scold's bridle beside them.

     Tate's vision blurred. She hardly noticed Wayde's fingers stroking her forehead, brushing curls aside. She didn't flinch when his lips touched her skin, at the edge of her hairline, hollow and strange. Her gaze fixed on a boulder across the riverbed. Through the silhouette of the bridle staked in the sand, she could see a man huddled atop the red rock.

     No, not a man. Instinct told Tate differently. The gorge was, after all, home to creatures so dangerous and wild and half-believed, even the Ute kept clear.  Tate had never seen a Desert Folk, indulging only in Aida's numerous stories throughout childhood, when the parental threat of being "sold to fairies" seemed the best outcome in her tiny, unhappy life.

     And yet there he was.

     Akin to her Sheriff, the fairy before her wore a cut of black, but while Wayde's varied tone according to the light, these were pure shadows. Shadows that moved with his slim body as he rocked slowly, side to side, watching how a hawk watched a hard-sought meal. He mimicked Wayde's posture, almost for fun. His duster coat split behind him, flanking his bent legs. His elbows rested on his knees, mud-caked boots planted firmly on the red rock. When Wayde moved, so did the fairy. Tate's eye followed the hand gestures to a face half-hidden by a wide leather hat. When he was sure she'd noticed, the fairy curled fingers twice the usual length into a fist—leaving one free to draw a line down the side of his pale, pale throat.

     In answer, the burn on the back of Tate's neck flared, painful. She blinked, slow, catching fragments of a broad smile as it stretched from one pointed ear to the other, dividing his thin, grey mouth in two. Teeth, dozens—needles like snake fangs—filled the gash. And while Wayde's face had been deceptively handsome from the start, blue-eyed, with a straight, flared nose and a bristled jaw strong enough to lean on, the face she saw now reminisced of a flaky wasps nest.

     Tate wondered if Death had selected a head uglier than even Aida's tales could encapsulate personally for her passing.

     "Your devils may save you," Wayde's voice floated back into earshot, "but if I ever see you in Blackburn again, I'll shoot you in the goddamn face. You best believe that."

     Tate choked. Thick blood jumped in the rear of her throat. She heard Wayde's weight pull at the saddle as he mounted. The leather squeaked like an old wood floor. Horse hooves kicked sand up on her bare legs. And then he and his men were gone.

     The abrupt silence played tricks on her ears. An unnatural hum took the place of tack jigging and horses chewing bits. Crickets? Voices? The wind hushed through the rocky gullet, carrying remnants of words she couldn't understand. Whispers...

     "Mama?" Tate flexed her voice for the first time in days. It cracked from the effort.

     Mama?

     Ain't no mamas here. The same darkness that had told her to "run" vibrated inside her whole body. She rolled her head to see the fairy had appeared beside her without twitching a muscle. He squatted just out of reach. Dressed as a gunslinger without a gun, a mimic with a face that would have given her baby a birthmark had she cared enough at the moment to be afraid.  But Tate felt nothing.

     Mama? She reached again for Aida and came up empty.

     The world went black.

     Morning frost sat on the ground the first time Tate died. And as she stood now, under the blinding white sun, baby on her back instead of sitting on her spine, bleeding out, she glared down at the rusted fin of the scold's bridle as it wilted, half-buried in the sand. Thin dark veins spread from the iron across the ground, festering like a dirty wound.

     She spat on it and kept walking.

A/N: Thank you for reading! If anyone is interested, I discovered the perfect album for Tate's vibe: 'Shadow Works' by Kerli.