The Woods at Night

It’s always funny how immediately you can regret something that you, yourself, helped plan. 

Except, wait, no, I didn’t plan this, and it wasn’t funny, either. I was way too smart to be out in the woods, in the middle of the night, carrying little more than a flashlight and a prayer.

The plan I had helped with was pretty straightforward. Mara was having a monster problem, and I couldn’t tell Grammy that without bringing up questions like “how does a civilian know what monsters are, and why is she asking about Wardens and dragons?” I would have had to show proof, you see, and proof would include incriminating messages. So, instead, of confronting that directly, our plan was to arrange a sleepover at Mara’s house. Grammy could hardly refuse, not after all her efforts to help me make friends, but she’d also know that it was dangerous to let me sleep somewhere new without protection. So the whole, simple idea was to get her to accept the sleepover request, and then have her go to Mara’s house and set up wards and lainlines, find the illdýr in the area, take care of them, and then we’d be home free. Secrets kept and monsters gone. 

Sure, the fresh lainlines wouldn’t be as strong as the ones around our house, where they had grown to be part of the land itself, but it would be protection for Mara’s family, and, more importantly, if there was anything particularly nasty in the area, Grammy would find it and take care of it.

The plan worked. Unfortunately. Meaning that I unknowingly let myself get roped into a sleepover with a monster-obsessed lunatic who was convinced that Grammy hadn’t gotten rid of the ‘main perpetrator.’

It all started out fine. Grammy dropped me off and warned me to be careful, saying something about how she’d noticed that there might be a bigger illdýr in the area. She also said she’d be working tonight, so, that told me she’d be looking for whatever that bigger monster was. Fantastic. Exactly what we’d hoped.

And the actual sleepover itself went nicely. Mara’s step-mom made us cookies, Mara’s step-brother left us largely alone, and Mara’s dad was nice and came to eat with us during dinner. We watched two different movies, one of which was apparently new from the big city—considering Grammy couldn’t afford a TV at our home, I’d been secretly hoping for some movies. Afterwards, Mara showed me how to rewind the tapes, and I felt for a moment like I might have a chance at becoming technologically savvy.

And then we went to bed.

It was 1AM. The household was dead quiet, and I was settling into the guest bedroom when Mara snuck out of her room and knocked on my door. Since I had no idea what sleeping in this new place would be like, having her come down and talk a bit could have been a helpful distraction to settle my nerves. 

It wasn’t.

“It’s not gone,” she said, confidently pushing her way into the room. “The monster, that is.” She was fully dressed in cargo pants, a grey, long-sleeved shirt, and she hugged a heavy winter coat in her arms.

“Yeah, it’s probably still figuring out that there are wards in place now,” I replied, eyeing the coat suspiciously.

“No, not the smaller ones. They’re already not as present. I’m talking about the big one.”

My heart sank. “What do you mean ‘the big one’?”

Mara closed the door behind her, explaining that she’d been keeping tabs on the monster population, and she could tell that a ‘big fish’ had shown up recently, who was the culprit for all their recent problems.

“It was more removed tonight,” she admitted, “but somehow I feel like that’s just a bluff. Or something like that. I don’t think it’s been quite scared off.”

I squinted at her. She seemed as sure as if the monster itself had dropped by to give her a memo before disappearing into the night. “Okay, maybe, but Grammy is out there, and she as good as promised that she’s on a hunt. So she’ll take care of it.”

“Are you sure? Like, what if she’s not ready for this thing?”

I stared at her as if I could psychically transmit how stupid of a question that was. “She might be retired, but she’s the senior Warden in the area, and still one of our best.” Despite Grammy and I’s rocky relationship, I still carried a deep pride about cool she could be, and had been. At least when she wasn’t making me do training.

Mara stared right back, as if she could psychically transmit how stupidly stubborn I was being. “Okay, yeah, I get that, but this is different.”

I raised my eyebrows as exaggeratedly as I could. “And is this your professional monster-related opinion, from your vast experience, or…?” I meant it as a joke, but I can admit now I also meant it to sting. Her insistence (and so late at night) was grating on my nerves—I wanted her to remember she was an amateur and forget that I was one, too.

Mara’s glare caught fire. “I may not have had as much experience as you, but I do have some. I’m not an idiot. You don’t know what I know, and I know enough to tell the difference between a regular, small-scale monster and something completely different.”

“Yeah?” I said. “You know taking a picture of a monster doesn’t exactly count as ‘experience,’ right?”

“Ugh!” Mara threw her hands up. “I said, I’m not an idiot! I’ll prove it to you, and then maybe then you’ll be able to get what I mean through your thick head. Maybe.”

“Okay,” I replied, crossing my arms, “sounds good. Prove it.”

“Get dressed in normal clothes again and I’ll meet you at the kitchen door in ten minutes.”

“The kitchen door?” My righteous indignation experienced a hiccup.

She put her hands on her hips, undettered. “We’re going on a field trip.”

It was my turn to throw my hands up. “Oh no. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances are we leaving this house until it’s daytime.”

“You just told me to prove it. I intend to.”

“Look.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I know you think you know a lot, and that’s fine, I’m glad you’re interested in monsters or whatever, but you know they’re dangerous, right? We could die, or worse.”

She tossed her head, and her thick, wiry hair bounced. “It just sounds like you’re afraid.”

That stung, like fresh lemon on a raw blister. Struggling to keep my volume low, I balled my hands into fists. “No, I’m just not a total idiot! And you know what else? Grammy’s out there. If we run into her, there are going to be a lot of questions that neither of us are going to want to answer.”

“So now you’re scared of your grandmother,” she sniffed. “Good. If you’re so worried about that, maybe I can just message her about all this so she knows what’s really going on.”

“You’re blackmailing me?” The question burst out like a screeching firework. We both froze for a moment, glowering at each other in the dark while we waited for any tell-tale signs that someone had heard us.

Recovering, Mara punctuated her next few sentences with sharp pokes under my collarbone. “Look, you won’t believe me unless I do something drastic, and, even though you’re being an absolute know-it-all right now, I need you to understand what’s going on on the off-chance that you might be able to help.”

“Yeah, but Grammy’s out there!” I poked her back. “She’s going to find out everything that needs to be understood! Why on earth would I be better?”

Mara slapped my hand away. “She’s going to look in the wrong place,” she said. “I’ve been watching it for a week now. It’s tricky, and it’s not like the other ones. I don’t know how to explain it, exactly, but trust me when I say that it’s going to be somewhere completely different than it should be.”

I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. “I don’t even want to know how you’ve been keeping tabs on monsters.”

“We’re just going to take a look,” Mara insisted. “We’re not going to hunt it or whatever you think I’m thinking. I’m just going to prove what I’ve been saying, and after you have the right information you can get Grammy as involved as you like. “

“She’s already involved,” I repeated, wishing I could grab Mara and shake some idea of what she was trying to do into her brain. “And there are monsters out there. And they will find us.”

“Sounds like the almighty Warden boy doesn’t want to get his hands dirty.” Mara crossed her arms and lifted her chin.

That shouldn’t have worked. Maybe it had something to do with how I’d spent the past few days stewing over how I couldn’t do anything about Kalgyrad. Maybe I was just more mad than afraid. I stood there for a moment, momentarily picturing what it would look like if I slapped her in the face.

“Alright,” I said, pushing her towards the door, “I’ll meet you down there in five minutes, and then we’ll go and prove that you don’t have a clue about illdýr, and that you’re way in over your head, and then we’re both going to get eaten, and you’d better be happy when that happens.”

“Fine,” she said, “you’d better be there.”

“Fine,” I snapped back, and shut the door.

At the very least, I wasn’t so blinded by frustration that I forgot to grab my coat, Mithae-inscribed baseball bat, and a heavy flashlight, but honestly I didn’t have half of the equipment I’d need for a real hunt. And I was still blinded enough to keep listening to Mara, even though as soon as she opened the kitchen door open I knew this was a horrible idea. Instead of saying anything, I ended up stealthing my way out of the empty kitchen, through the yard, and out the exterior wall.

“I’m not seeing this almighty monster genius of yours anywhere,” I hissed a couple of minutes into the walk. We kept the flashlight off for now, in case anyone was nearby to see.

“I’m not seeing the hordes of monsters you promised, either,” Mara hissed back.

“We’re still around the area that Grammy took care of.”

“Exactly.”

We didn’t say anything for a while, until we went from circling the house to making our way down the ridge, towards the nearest valley.

“You’d better know where you’re going,” I said. “We don’t want to get lost on top of everything else.”

“The house is pretty well visible from most of the woods,” Mara shot back. “We’ll be fine.” 

I did believe that she’d checked that during the day, but I wasn’t fully convinced she’d been out in the woods at night—at least not enough to know how eerily the forest could change about you, become unsettling, fluid, even in places you’d swear were familiar. But I didn’t want to get snapped at again, and internally I was teetering between wanting Mara to reap the consequences of her actions and being terrified of that very result.

Mara’s family was a bit more well-to-do than Grammy’s. Their house was much closer to town than ours, hanging just past the outskirts, and they also had more security, supposedly, but Mara didn’t seem concerned about that. The house itself—two-storied, plus a furnished basement, a walled-in property, and an above-ground pool—was situated on a ridge quarter-way up the mountain. Most of the slope was pretty gentle around it, but I had seen from their window several areas that looked to drop off drastically, and that gnawed at me as I followed behind Mara and tried to keep as quiet as possible. One hand stayed clutched around my baseball bat; the other was curled around the unlit flashlight in my pocket. The forest around us acted as a slight buffer for the wind I could hear wailing around the mountain, but not very well; it mostly just blew the leaveless trees to dance in every direction, like a cacophony of thousand-limbed puppets.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” I said again, puffing visible breaths in the chill. Mara had stopped to look around her.

“Yes,” she said, tersely, and pointed down, further into the valley. “It’s that way.”

“What is? The monster? A bear? Or a rockslide and some broken limbs?”

She shot me a look that I could only assume was scathing, but I couldn’t tell in the dark.

Why were we out here? This was insanity, even if she was right about there being a special, different kind of monster. Especially if she was right.

But she was picking her way down the slope, moving from tree to tree with more ease than I expected from her, and so there was little that I could do but follow—unless I wanted to be left all alone in unknown woods. Which, could Mara offer me any actual protection? Not really. But having anyone with me was better than no one, and maybe she was better at this than I had guessed. The grumpy part of me didn’t want that, but the screaming-helplessly part of me could only hope.

Mithae lessons with a dragon didn’t sound so bad right about then.

Sliding in scree and hopping after her, using trees to stop my descent, it occurred to me that there was no way Grammy wouldn’t see the evidence of this in my laundry.

Maybe I could just say we’d gone out in the forest during the day?

But, more immediately important, we were getting further and further away from the house that, as I had feared, was vanishing, lights and all, behind the ridge and the trees. Even as I overtook Mara, I could feel my knees shaking, hidden behind my already quick hiking. I took no satisfaction in noticing that I was quieter and more sure-footed than she was; our contest was rapidly dwindling from my list of priorities. Looking up and around, I dwindled under trees that towered overhead in black columns, combing the air with skeletal fingers. Hypothetically, the lack of leaves on the trees meant more light for those of us on the ground, but the moon was only a yellowed sliver, already fading from the sky. So, instead, the shadows warped into confusing shapelessness.

“Where exactly are we going?” I whispered.

“Into the valley,” she said. “I’ve seen movement from there multiple times.”

“It… it was… maybe it was a deer.” Above me, the trees rubbed their hands together in a sudden gust.

“Oh, come on.” She huffed an indignant cloud of warm breath. “I know the difference between a deer and a monster.”

“I just… I really think we should probably check this out tomorrow.” I picked my way down a rocky patch, feeling the way they shifted under my feet, threatening to toss me down the slope. 

“I haven’t seen much of anything during the day,” Mara replied, letting herself skid to the next tree. “I don’t think we’d be able to find it.”

“If it really is something different,” I said, catching a cobweb on my baseball bat, “then don’t you think… shouldn’t we find it when its not awake? And hopefully not hungry?” Honestly, I should have lead with that earlier. “I… I know how to track monsters. We could track it and to where its coming from, and find out more about it when its asleep.”

Mara stopped to catch her breath. “Well, it’s too late now.”

“No, it’s not. Its really not.” Something touched my jacket, drawing a light line across it. Before I jumped out of my skin, I realized it was a tree branch. “We can just turn around.”

“Well, I’m not going back,” Mara said, squinting up at me. “You can go back, if that’s what you want.”

I’m ashamed to say that I considered it, seriously. I had a brief, clear image of opening the kitchen door to a rush of warm air, peeling my dirty clothes off, and slipping into a warm bed. I’d brought my earplugs, too, so I’d have a decent shot at a night’s sleep. And the walls would be there, around the house, around the room. The guest bedroom only had one small window, and it faced the inside of the outer wall, so, it was even less likely anything would be knocking at it. I might be able to get a really good night’s sleep. And when had been the last time I’d had that?

Looking back up the hill, crowded with an expanse of stark shadows and rustling undergrowth, I also pictured the climb it would take, in the dark, and realized I’d have to do it by myself. An open space where anything could nab me, and I’d be too focused on the ground to be properly defensive. I might have a good shot at making a run for the door, but I wasn’t exactly a trained athlete.

Okay, I was, but I wasn’t very good.

There was sound and motion behind me, and I turned to watch the faint moonlight dappling Mara’s bright blue coat, catching on her gloves where she held on to a branch. Her feet slipped on a loose rock, and, though she held herself steady, the rock grated against its companions and skidded away, the sounds in my ears equivalent to a gunshot. A signal that here we were, fumbling around in the night.

A thought struck me, keen as the winter wind cutting into my face: if I left her here alone, she would die.

Not that there was much I could do to prevent a tragedy, when it came down to hard logic. That was something I knew far too well. But, by the same token of ‘logic,’ if I went back up the hill by myself, I might also die. And even if I didn’t, well—I pictured myself back in the bed, waking up in the morning after a good rest, knowing that Mara had died, alone, in the middle of the night, because I had been too much of a coward to see this through. 

Gritting my teeth, I went after her. Whether or not either of us were particularly good at this didn’t matter—even amateurs were safer together. And while I knew I wasn’t enough of a Warden to guarantee protection for anyone (especially myself), I’d be less than nothing if I didn’t try.

And, nipping the back of my head was a more irrational, more substantial fear: I didn’t want to be left alone.

Thinking back and comparing notes, Mara could tell that I was considering going back—and that upset her more than she was willing to admit. The skill she’d displayed earlier was dissolving. Even as I decided to stay with her, she tripped on a root and went down in flurry of flailing and furious mutters. She tried to catch herself on her knee, but instead lost her balance on the uneven slope and sprawled face-down into a pile of leaves and brush.

I reflexively clenched my baseball bat in my hand, the rough cloth of its handle chafing at my callouses. That fall had been louder than any of our movements before. Crouching, I went after her, though she was already picking herself up and sweeping debris off her clothes.

“Keep it down,” I hissed. “Are you okay?”

“I think I ‘kept it down’ as much as was appropriate for the situation.” She jerked her coat back into position. “But thanks for being so worried about my safety.”

Too preoccupied to answer, I wheeled towards the slope above us, searching for anything that might have followed our scent, heard our feet. But the night was too full of shapes that swayed and ducked in the starlight for me to pick out anything specific—just a flood of potential nightmares.

It’s just the woods. I told myself, holding on to my bat with both hands. There’s nothing there, not now. Just trees.

Unless I was missing something. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Oh, look, we’re almost to the bottom,” Mara said, too conversationally to be genuine.

I waved frantically at her to be quiet.

“Don’t shush me,” she shot back, though in a noticeably lower volume. “Let’s just get this taken care of. That little flower thing down there looks like it’s the direction we want to be going, anyway, so we can use that as a marker.”

I spun around fast enough that I floundered for balance in the leaves, eyes immediately going to the spot.

“Weird, it looks like it’s… glowing? I guess it’s just the moonlight.”

Grabbing Mara’s elbow, I made a run for it, back up the slope, back for safety—or at least that’s what I tried to do.

“Hey!” Mara jerked back. “What are you doing?”

A thousand words choked in my throat, unable to force their way through; instead, I snatched at her again, hand shaking visibly even in the low light.

“What is wrong—” Mara took another step back. Her foot barely caught the edge of the rock she was on; she slipped and tried to correct her balance, but ended up misstepping again, windmilling, landing hard at an awkward angle—momentum pitched her backward and down the slope and into thin air where the slope had eroded into a small drop-off. Too breathless and scared to scream, I dashed after her, blindly fishing the flashlight out of my pocket—as if that was going to do anything.

Mara rolled a little further and lay there, dazed, face up in the loam and leaves, a few feet from the glowing ‘flower.’ I could see the whites of her eyes, wide in the darkness, mixing into the blur of the night and trees as I half-slid, half-scrambled my way down, a sudden image of the dead I’ve seen imposing itself over her open eyes. Catching myself just in time, I lowered myself off the drop-off as she rolled onto her elbows, slowly, with a groan, and reached up to touch her head.

I wanted to yell at her to move, but I was as mute in my terror as if someone had ripped the vocal cords out of my throat. Instead, I watched as she dusted leaves out of her hair and looked up at me, a frown sinking itself onto her eyebrows while I stopped, panting, a few feet from her, whole body shuddering with effort and adrenaline. Wordlessly, I turned the flashlight on, pointing it at the ‘flower.’ Except it wasn’t a flower, it was the horn of a foxlight, huddled beneath a bush and waiting for prey to come within reach of its stinger, within range to sink its black teeth into flesh and suck away a living soul. 

I had no idea what I was doing—the flashlight wouldn’t do anything to it—the foxlight was blind, and its ‘flowers’ absorbed light—but I focused the beam of light on the leaf-dappled monstrosity crouching motionless in the shadows it had woven around itself. Part of me, I think, was hoping Grammy or a Warden or someone would see the light, know something was wrong, know to come get us.

Mara, still on the ground, froze with her eyes on the fox-like body; it hunched under spider legs, its long, curving horns dangling the glowing flower, angler-fish-like, in front of a wet, grin-wrinkled nose. 

Letting out a high-pitched gargle, Mara jumped upright and kicked it on its chin, her foot connecting with a wet thud. The foxlight’s body shuddered; snarling, it lifted its head in sickening wail, a sound like a dying siren that sent our heads ringing, shards of the spine-splitting sound sinking into our nerves. Mara flung her hands over her ears, swaying and almost falling; I took a step back, hands too full to follow suit, knowing I need to grab her and run before it came after us; I could see its tail lashing in the undergrowth. But I just stood there, shaking, flashlight beam juddering around the forest, waiting until I could hear again.

“N-n-need… need to… need to go…” I managed to stutter, but I didn’t think Mara could hear me.

In the trembling light, I could see the foxlight gather itself for a jump, knobbly legs rising ever further above its thin back. Its horns began clicking and shaking, beginning to twist themselves around in a horrible contortion that seemed to unmake its own skull. It was preparing itself, grinning, shrieking—it was going to attack—foxlights are fast—faster than sight—I couldn’t move—my legs were stuck in place like my shoes had been nailed down—

Mara grabbed the baseball bat from my hand, grip much firmer than mine, but her eyes were still peeled open, mouth a grim line; she was going to try to attack it first. She wouldn’t be able to hit it before it hit her.

There was a sound in the trees like wind trying to talk.

I wanted to yell at her to stop, no, don’t get closer to it. The world spun into a sudden, clear focus, and I realized that the rhythmic sound I could hear wasn’t just my blood in my ears.

In a flash of memory drawn in photographic detail, I saw Mara adjusting her grip on the baseball bat, blue coat shifting in the light, her normally carefully-curated hair crumpled into a wiry mess—the foxlight twitched, lips curled back over discolored teeth, flower collapsing as its horn disjointed itself—the trees in gray and brown and black flashed glimpses of yellow from my light, contrasted against a sky of black and ice and purple—shapes flapped and wheeled, forming as if summoned into being by the foxlight’s cry—

The foxlight often hunts with a pack of whisperwings, my brain recited like someone had pressed play on a recording. While the foxlight feeds off pain and misery and your life force, whisperwings can tear a full-grown buck to bloody shreds over the course of an hour, eating it bit by bit without killing it. Some liken them to a crueler form of piranha. The foxlight finds a target and whips it into an unstable frenzy; the whisperwings descend and feast, in turn causing—

STOP IT. 

Each sentence vividly evoked visuals, dragging me and Mara into the place of the buck—but somehow the ludicrousness of the situation, the irritation of my illdýr studies playing so clearly through my mind at a time like this—I jolted into action. Switching the flashlight off and shoving it into my pocket, I grabbed Mara with my free hand in as vice-like a grip as I could manage and tore off into the woods faster than I’d ever run before. 

Mara might have held back a little—I’m not sure. I was too occupied with making my way through the woods as quick and cleanly as I could, ducking, weaving, changing directions, and not looking behind me at any costs.

In retrospect, plunging blindly into unfamiliar woods was not my best move. But I wasn’t really thinking; any sharp touch of twig or rock was a foxlight’s sting, any brush of a branch about my head was the beating of a whisperwing around my ears. My feet slapped down on mud and ice, and stumbled down into the winding bottom of a small stream bed. Heedless of the danger of twisting an ankle, I scrambled on, frantic, breath sobbing in my throat. On and on and on, until my side burned—and my wildly seeking eyes caught a glimpse of shelter under an outcropping of stone, sticking out of the wall of the mountain with a gathering of trees around it. Using Mara’s weight to slingshot her in front of me, I pushed her into the gap and crawled after her, turning to make sure that the spruce bushes blocked any entrance from above, and collapsed into panting. The surge of my heart pounded my body in an unending rhythm. Lying half on my elbows, my breath shook me at each exhale, coming in short bursts; sweat and heat were building up in my jacket—but there was no way I was taking it off.

I could hear Mara, in a similar state, half-beside and half-behind me.

“Is it… is it following us?” Mara gasped out.

I shook my head, trying to say I didn’t know. I still couldn’t talk. I could only lie there and feel the dirt and rocks and spruce needles under me and digging into the palms of my hands.

“We’ll have to talk about your rescue methods later,” she said after a long silence, still breathing hard. She huffed a laugh after, as if she was making a joke, but I didn’t look back to see her expression. Instead, my eyes were busy combing the ground and sky for any sign of movement beside the wind, any fluorescence or glow that might be moving towards us. 

Nothing that I could see. For now.

I lay there until the sweat began to turn cold against my skin and my breathing slowed. 

Mara kept shifting uncomfortably. It took longer for her breath to settle. Every now and then she’d try to say something, and I’d shush her. Slowly, slowly, the night settled into its regular pattern. 

I didn’t want to think about how loud we’d been; how strong my fear was and how that would smell delicious to any number of monsters that might be heading our way; how badly I’d frozen, useless, and almost let Mara get killed.

We’d have to leave, soon, before anything else followed our scent. And besides illdýr there were mountain lions and bears, and while those were less likely to hunt us down directly, I still didn’t want to find out I had trespassed on their territory. Not to mention snakes. But for now, we needed to gather ourselves, and this was as safe a hiding spot as any for the time being. Relatively speaking. It felt safe enough at least, with the screen of bushes in front of us.

As my body settled back into normalcy, my throat protested its dryness; I licked cracked lips, saliva thick on my tongue.

Another failure. Even though this was supposed to have been a short trip (according to Mara), I should have known better than to go anywhere in the woods without a water bottle. Dehydration is bad enough; lost in the wilderness it could be the difference between life and death. If Grammy ever found out, she’d kill me for that oversight alone.

“How long are we going to stay here?” Mara finally whispered.

My tongue still felt heavy and swollen with fear and thirst, but it was working again. “Not much longer,” I said, voice creaking like it had gotten rusty. “We will want to get moving before anything can track us.”

She sighed. “On the bright side, at least I think we headed in the direction I was planning on going.”

I had forgotten: we’d been out here to find a new, strange monster. With the bushes waving above my head and every wind carrying the threat of attack, the possibility of finding said anomaly felt disturbingly more probable than it had in the guest bedroom. “You… you hadn’t been seeing stuff like the foxlight, had you?”

“Is that what that creature is called? But no, I think that was pretty small, relatively speaking. We’re looking for something much bigger.”

Why in the name of sanity had I ever stepped foot outside the kitchen door with this… this crazy person? “No, we are going back to your house.”

“Won’t the fox thingee be there, blocking our path?” Mara said. I looked back to find her propping her chin up on her hands, feet waving casually in the air. “Besides, we’re lost already.”

“Which means we should be trying to get ourselves unlost,” I snapped, “before we run into something worse.” I should have brought my compass. She was at least right about the dangers of going back towards the foxlight—and who knew if the whisperwings had started expanding their hunting grounds toward us. We needed a plan, and fast; but I really didn’t want that plan to be ‘look for something bigger and scarier.’ 

Something chuckled from the rocks above us.

“You’re right about the being lost thing. Where were we going, again?”

The voice floated down around us, thin and sighing like a many-layered breeze. But that makes it sound too… light. Too calm, harmless. Even as it settled like gossamer on our ears, it felt playful—the way a cat is playful with a mouse. Soft? Yes. Gentle? Not at all. 

We both stiffened. An overwhelming sense of power, of uncast, organic Mithae sizzling and crackling effortlessly through its voice, slammed into me like the smell of a rotting corpse. The pounding in my chest jackhammered its rhythm again while I, rigid, kept my eyes on Mara. She was not looking back at me. Instead, her gaze went past me, pinned to something on the other side of the spruce—her eyes were flung open, mouth pulled into a taught line.

My breath stuck in my throat, choking me in its fervor to come out and gasp at air and scream; my body tightened into immovable lines. There was something behind me, something that Mara was staring at, something staring at me. I couldn’t try and think of what it was—my brain was caught in static between the urge to turn around and the urge to curl myself into a sightless ball and let myself get killed.

But looking, it turned out, didn’t matter.

Materializing in the dark, between Mara and I, was a deeper outline of black—a crystalline shape forming itself into sharp edges and swirls of trailing mist. It moved towards me, something round inside it bubbling forward from the surface, splitting in two with a glimmering line, stretching itself inside out to reveal an orb of glowing white, marred with an inky double-pupil.

The voice came again, its gauzy words edged with an unfriendly grin. “So, who are you two?”

To be continued…..