Excerpt:
Poison lost count of the days remarkably fast as she traveled with Bram.  It was only by the most intense calculation that she worked out that it had been a week since Azalea had been taken by the Scarecrow.  A week that had passed at the plodding tempo of the grint’s webbed feet slapping in the mud, broken only occassionally by stops to camp or when the cart became stuck and they had to lever it out.  She thought about Azalea, what she must be going through, but she found that she could not even speculate.  She knew nothing of the ways of the phaeries.  All the legends and stories of challengings made no mention of what happened to the children that were taken. 

And though it gave her a guilty feeling to think it, she was enjoying herself. 

Oh, it was hard and uncomfortable, that was for sure.  The midges and flies but them during the day, and every morning she woke up stiff from another cramped night curled up in the cart.  Bram never made any mention of the way he found his traveling gear in a neat pile on the ground every day, but he never stopped putting it back in the same place, and Poison never stopped unpacking it to make space for herself under the trainpaulin.  Last night it had rained hard, and she had heard him cursing as he flailed around the campsite, trying to find shelter for the packs and blankets she had displaced; he had pulled back the tarp that she lay under and glowered down on her, water drooling from the brim of his hat. 

“My supplies are getting wet!” he blustered.

“So am I, now,” she said sleepily.  “How’s the floor, by the way?”

He huffed indignantly and threw the tarp back over her.  She never did find out how he dept them dry, but she heard him rummaging around at the other end of the cart and presumed he’d taken out his tent and replaced it with the supplies.  She didn’t care; at least she was dry.  On for the marsh folk, she thought mischievously as she fell asleep.

And yet all the discomfort could not sour the pride and excitement in her breast, for she was really away: away from Gull, away from Snapdragon and the villagers who disdained her, and soon, away from the Black Marshes.  She tried to keep her feet on the ground, but she could not resist spinning off into heady fantasies of witches and trolls, strong heroes and quick-witted heroines.

Silly girl, she told herself.  They’re just stories.  But somehow, she never quite believed it.

And Bram was good company for her as well.  He was a taciturn fellow, but he was perfectly willing to answer questions that Poison asked him.  Her interest in what she called the “outside world” was insatiable, and she listened attentively to even his most mundane anecdotes.  But while he talked long about places he’d been and people he’d met, he never asked questions of her - perhaps because he wasn’t interested, perhaps because he was polite – and that suited her fine.  He was a good man, she decided.  Gruff and solitary, but honest and decent.  She was not so naïve that she had never thought what might happen between a man of his size and a younger girl, in the depths of the marshes where nobody could help her.  Bram had never made her feel threatened that way. 

It was midday and uncharacteristically sunny when Bram announced they would be coming into sight of Shieldtown and moment.  Poison felt her heart leap and craned forward in the seat, peering at the trees ahead.  They had been thinning out all day, and the ground was firm enough to be almost called a road now.  She waited eagerly, with Bram stealing amused glances at her out of the corner of his eye.  The cart wheels creaked on.

Finally, Bram could stand it no longer.  “You’ll fall off your seat if you lean any more, girl.”

“Where is it?” she demanded, still staring furiously at the unyielding trees ahead.

He tapped her shoulder and she glared at him irritably.  He gave her a wink and then pointed with a stubby, gloved finger.

“You didn’t look up,” he said.

She did so, raising her gaze to the canopy where the trees meshed their branches overhead.  She took a sharp breath in amazement as she laid eyes for the first time on Shieldtown.