Chapter 22 #3
She didn’t see any good holds to the left though. She might just have to… No.
There.
A flaw in the rock. It was narrow, but it would do.
She’d only needed that hold for balance.
She stretched, caught it with her fingertips, repositioned her foot.
And she was up. Only another eight feet, all curving in toward the top.
She scrambled up the last of it and hauled herself, panting, over the edge.
She looked around and let out a breath of relief when she saw she was alone.
She collapsed onto her back for a moment and stared up at the sky.
The air was fresher here. She hadn’t realized the woods smelled so bad until she was clear of them.
She’d blamed it on the swamp, but they were well away from that.
She’d just gotten used to the smell of rot.
She drank it in, feeling like she was shedding a week’s worth of filth from her body and mind.
Once she caught her breath, she stood up and looked around again.
The ground was rocky near the edge of the cliff, with sparse tufts of low grass springing up in patches.
A few trees farther back, stunted and short.
They stretched the length of the ridge, though there appeared to be a drop beyond.
Below, woods extended all around. It was like she was on an island amid a rolling sea that extended for miles in every direction.
The trees didn’t look sick from here. They looked beautiful.
Reds and yellows fading toward brown with the approaching winter.
Still, there were enough leaves on the trees to make it difficult to see down to the ground.
There were no flashes of light reflecting off metal.
No movement nearby except for a few birds and squirrels. No smoke.
They’d already gone as far as the trees had told her. She’d either have to risk reaching out again, though the oak had warned her against it, or she’d have to pick a direction and hope for the best.
She’d have to lie to Casrian again.
Gaze searching the ground below, she started to move along the edge of the cliff, focusing her attention on the east and south.
If the men had passed this way days ago, they’d be well out of sight.
She wished she had the ability to see great distances or to find things with her mind.
Those would be useful abilities. Tilly had once told her about a fae she’d met as a child who could cast her awareness into a pet falcon and see out of its eyes when it flew. Now, that would be a useful gift.
Trees wouldn’t even talk to her half the time and when they did, it wasn’t like an actual conversation.
It was impressions of soil and air and water.
They didn’t understand time in the same way people did.
They didn’t care much about what people did beneath their branches so long as it didn’t involve fire or an ax.
She was lucky the oak had told her enough to get her this far.
Disappointment settling in her gut, she walked back toward the spot where she’d climbed up. She tied her rope to the trunk of a nearby tree and tugged it to make sure it would bear her weight. She took one last long look at the forest below.
A smell reached her on the breeze. Stronger and more acrid than the smell of rot.
A musky animal smell that clogged her throat and made her freeze like spotted prey.
Cold shot down her spine. She crouched, going still as a rabbit.
Her gaze swept past the rocky ground—open and clear—to the trees. There, she saw it.
The creature was about four feet tall at a crouch.
Its head was turned her way, tilting slightly to the side like it was studying her, seeing what she would do.
It was very aware of her presence. At rest, it looked like a large wolf.
Powerful haunches, thinner front legs, enormous paws ending in curved claws.
It had the snout of a wolf too, and the teeth, but that was where the similarities ended.
It wasn’t a wolf. Not a natural one anyway.
For one thing, it had no fur on its body.
Instead, it was covered with a thin, slick skin that clung to its ropy muscles and seemed to repel the sunlight.
Or maybe that wasn’t skin at all but blackened muscle wrapped around a bony frame.
It seemed to gather shadows to itself just as the witch had done.
Even in the daylight, it was hard to tell the boundary between its body and the darkness around it.
A darkness that moved, twisting lazily in the hollow beneath a fallen tree.
She could see its eyes though, slitted and yellow and hungry, staring out at her from a lean face above that heavy jaw.
She went dizzy with fear. Her breath locked in her chest and her mouth went dry. She stepped carefully back toward the edge of the cliff.
The thing tracked her movement, sliding closer to her as she retreated, step for step. Then it lunged, moving faster than she could follow, and she dove for the rope.