CHAPTER FIFTEEN #3
Ignoring her, Anya pulled her bedroll free and spread it smooth on the ground. She would determine how to move forward in the daylight. “I’m exhausted. Wake me if there’s a disaster. But please do not invite one,” she said, bitingly, to Sabina.
“I’d like to know more about you,” said Perrine, and Anya snorted as she turned over, her face to the trees, and immediately fell asleep.
Her sleep was deep, deep as it had been the night before, deeper.
Deeper than anything she’d ever felt. As deep as if the earth itself drew its blanket over her.
As if roots dragged her under the soil. As if an invisible hand held her under, and plucked the chords of her body, of her heart, like strings.
As if she would never wake.
But she did wake. A gradual claw into consciousness, as if breaking through a shell.
Stirred by an awareness of something creeping nearby.
Something in the dark. Something watching her.
For a dizzying, terrifying second, she thought she was again eight years old.
Hungry and cold and having just seen her mother grow still and cool as stone, feeling invisible fingers lifting her hair and the ends of her dress, crawled under the shelter of a softly blooming tree, holding her breath for as long as she could stand so as not to make a sound.
Then, she remembered. The camp. Perrine and Sabina slept nearby.
The fire was dead. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dark; quicker than usual.
She kept perfectly still. She strained to hear any telltale sound, anything to help identify what stalked her in the dark.
She prayed to the seven skies it was something natural, like a wolf, or a fox. No – not a fox.
Slowly rising to her feet, she scanned the camp. Perrine was asleep. The falcon was roosted on a high branch, unmoving.
Sabina was gone.
Well. Good; let her go. One less thorn in her side. One less stone in her shoe. She couldn’t have asked for a better solution. She sat on her bedroll, her back to the rowan tree. Its scent wafted over her in the warm night air.
She cursed under her breath, gripped her hatchet, and crept into the trees.
Years of living in the country left her able to see fairly well in the dark, even on moonless nights. She could not see it, but she knew this night was not moonless. It was a new moon. No – a waxing crescent, just the slimmest sickle.
But she didn’t know how she knew. Over the chaos of the past few days, she hadn’t bothered tracking the moon’s cycle. On impulse, she let her mind drift, flutter out of focus. She almost felt she could sense it, pinpoint its exact place in the sky, trace its slow, inexorable creep.
She came back to herself, startled. It must be a fancy, her dream-addled mind making sense of the night.
But even if it were directly above her head, it should be no more than the thinnest crescent. It should not illuminate the trees like pale ghosts against the dark.
And yet.
She counted backwards to the last full moon. Forwards, to midsummer’s eve.
Four days.
She kept moving, locking her eyes on the horizon as she scanned the trees. Just ahead, she spotted a gray dress, stark and silver as a tree trunk against the night.
“Sabina?” Though barely above a whisper, her voice sounded like a trumpet in the quiet.
The figure did not answer.
Anya crept closer, her hatchet low but at the ready. She reached the frozen figure and touched her gently on the shoulder.
Sabina did not startle, or move at all. She whispered, “Did you hear her?”
Anya scanned their surroundings, studying each tree for peering eyes, grinning teeth, jagged claws. “I heard no one.”
“She was crying again.” Sabina stared at nothing. Her breath crawled. “She stopped when you came near.”
Her words gripped Anya’s heart with a pale hand. Clutching her hatchet until her knuckles ached, she peered deeper into the dark. It spread before her, showing its secrets like never before, and still she saw nothing. Nothing but trees.
Sabina sprang to life, gripping her torn skirts and rushing forward. “I must go after her.”
Anya’s heart sank. She could save Sabina tonight, but the forest had sunk its teeth into her. Like a snake with its fangs clamped hard into the flesh of its prey, nothing would make it loosen its grip on her now.
Nothing would be easier than to let her go, to let the forest take her. An offering. Blood for blood. Balance.
Instead, Anya put away her hatchet and ran after her. She quickly caught up and stepped in front of Sabina. When she tried to dart past, Anya gripped her by the shoulders. The other woman stopped moving but still stared past her. “Sabina.”
Sabina looked at her, her eyes round with fear and helpless hope.
“Come.” She took her hand and led her back to camp.
When they reached it, Perrine had awoken.
She questioned Anya with a torch-lit frown.
Anya shook her head and planted the scribe beneath the rowan tree, sitting cross legged before her with her quiver on her back and her bow in her lap.
Perrine extinguished her torch, and Anya settled in for a long, sleepless night, listening to the silent song of the moon; peering, as if through silver daylight, into the dark.