Denholm sat on the edge of a raging river. After wandering aimlessly through the Darkwood for two whole days, he finally stopped when he found this pce. He didn’t stop here just because it had water. There were plenty of streams, though none had been so wide and powerful as this. He stayed because here, it was loud enough he almost couldn’t hear his own thoughts anymore.

  He ground one of his blistering fingers against the raised lettering on the side of the metal key he’d been given. Once he started to get used to the pain, he switched fingers and started the process all over again. After a while, he had to switch hands. After even that stopped distracting him, he threw the key into the river again.

  And just like the st ten times, a few seconds after it disappeared beneath the surface, Denholm felt a familiar weight in his pocket again. He took the key out and stared at it.

  He threw it again.

  In his pocket, once again, the weight returned.

  Denholm screamed, abruptly pulling his pants down and kicking his way out of them. He took the key again, snarled at it, and threw it as far as he could, right into the middle of the deepest currents.

  A few seconds ter, he tasted metal. Denhold spat the key out into his hand and stared at it, eyelids twitching. He screamed at it and threw it again. This time, he shut his mouth as tight as he could, teeth grinding, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth.

  A few seconds ter, he felt something cold on his head. Hands shaking, he reached up and plucked the key out of a tangle in his dichevelled hair, matted with sweat and even a little blood as it was after running through thickets for days on end.

  He held the key in front of his face again, and then had an idea.

  He gripped the key firmly and pressed the sharpest angle he could find to his scalp. Then, he began to scrape. It hurt. It hurt so much more than digging his fingers into it had, even more than tearing his skin on the brambles over these past two days. So much it made him make noises he couldn’t believe could come from a person. After not long, he had to stop. The pain was just too much. It was a new kind of pain he had never felt, one that drained what energy that had been left in his body so completely he couldn’t help but slump to the ground, the sides of his vision threatening to close in.

  He held the key in front of him one more time, bloody tufts of hair stuck to it. He stared at it and stared at it, trying to find a solution, but the reality was that even if he removed his entire head of hair, filled his mouth and throat with rocks and then threw it away, it would just appear again with him. Maybe up his nose. Maybe in his eye socket. Maybe under his skin this time. It didn’t matter. He was stuck with it. All he wanted was for it to go away.

  Because if he closed his eyes and let the river sounds drown out his thoughts, that little weight of metal was still there, still noticeable. The one reminder of what he had done that was impossible to shed. He had killed Silvi. Silvi…

  After his vision cleared up, Denholm got to his feet again, walked to the riverside, and stood in the shallow water, letting it run over his feet, his toes sinking into the sand. He watched the river as it ran by him, so uncaring of his presence and his plight. He envied it. Just moving, never having to think about the things it had done. Even if someone drowned in the water, it wouldn’t be the river's fault, it was just a natural obstacle that had always been and would always be there.

  Denholm held the key up again. The power of a god…

  He wished… he wished, he wished, he wished he could trade it all back for what he had lost, but he couldn’t. The Trickster was gone, Silvi was gone, and all that was left was this key. When he stared into the currents, every so often, he saw her face. It wasn’t her, of course, just shapes in the froth that happened to resemble a face, but Denholm couldn’t help seeing her if he tried. Denholm curled his toes into the wet sediment and prepared himself. When he held the key up in front of him one st time, he couldn’t help seeing her face in the reflections of clouds in the metal.

  Denholm blinked.

  This key!

  Realization washed over his mind. How could he have been stupid enough that he hadn’t thought about it until now? What if… and it was a big if, but he didn’t care. What if the stolen power of a god could bring Silvi back? He was talking about a real deity, after all. Certainly, Denholm could not be sure it would work but… but…

  For the first time since it happened, he felt a glimmer of hope again.

  Resolved to his new mission, Denholm stepped away from the river and trudged back into the Darkwood.

  Somehow or other, he was going to find a god.