The Flame in the Mist

by Kit Grindstaff

  The wind dropped, and they stopped at the edge of the light sphere.

  “You … you’re the ones whose cries I used to hear at the castle,” Jemma said. “The ones who frightened all the Dwellers away. But I thought you were inside, not out.”

  One of the phantoms—a girl of no more than six years old—opened her mouth. Her words sighed out like a mournful breeze: “I want my brother.” Then other voices joined hers in echoing whispers: “I want my brother.… I want my sister.… Help us.… Help.…”

  “Help you?” Jemma said, sorrow welling up in her. “But how? What can I do?” Did these children not know they were dead, their bones rotting in the dungeons?

  “I want my brother.… Trapped in the castle. They can’t reach the Light.…”

  “What do you mean?”

  The phantom girl pushed one hand into the golden sphere and brushed Jemma’s arm.

  “Dead, but still there,” she whispered. “Their souls was swallowed by the monster.”

  The monster. Yesterday’s Ceremony. The screams Jemma had heard pouring from the Entity’s mouth.… She tried not to think of its name, but couldn’t stop herself. Scagavay.

  “Yes,” she muttered. “Yes, they’re all trapped.…”

  The luminous sphere shimmered and began breaking apart. Fragments of its golden light faded away as the ghosts dulled into silhouettes and melted into Mist and emptiness.

  Jemma stared down the hill. “Come back!” she shouted. “Tell me your story!” But all that answered was the hooting of a lone owl high in the trees.

  Six in the morning struck, then half past. Jemma wandered aimlessly, not caring if she went uphill or down. She felt haunted by those hollow beings, and by their lost brothers and sisters. But why, why had they been murdered? Had killing them given the Agromonds some kind of Power? It must have. Why else would they have done such a thing?

  Dawn filtered through the trees; the Mist was getting paler. Jemma’s own plight hit her: before long, the search parties would be out again. And she had nowhere to hide.

  Hollow! Noodle’s and Pie’s thoughts streaked into her. Warm hollow!

  “But how will I find it again?

  Ask the book.

  She pulled it halfheartedly from her pouch, opened it, and read aloud: “If thou know’st not where thou goest, how cans’t find the place? The starting-pointe remains too stronge in the Mynd, and pulleth thee backe. Only keep a cleare picture of thy Destination in thy heade, and it will be as though it come to you.…”

  “But I did know where I was going,” Jemma groaned. “Hazebury!” She pondered the words further. A cleare picture … Perhaps a name wasn’t enough. And she’d also kept worrying about the castle—the “starting pointe.” As the book said, it had felt like an anchor, pulling her back. Making her walk in circles. But if she’d been walking in circles, that meant the hollow couldn’t be far.

  A clear picture. Jemma closed her eyes and recalled as much detail of the spiders’ hollow as she could: its luminosity; its warmth; the soft, dry leaves beneath her.… Her legs began to walk, and she opened her eyes again, letting her feet carry her. A left turn here, down the slope, uphill there. None of it was the way she would consciously have chosen, but she felt magnetized, as if an invisible force pulled her onward. Before long, she heard voices coming from behind her: hunters, no doubt, looking for her. Her heart skipped; thoughts pushed into her mind—This way, surely? Not that!—but she ignored them, running as if in a trance.

  “Oy, Axe—look over ’ere! The ferns are flatter, like someone’s bin walkin’.”

  The voices were getting closer. And closer. Suddenly, with a familiar pattering sound, seven or eight wolf spiders sped up the path toward her, then passed her by, heading in the direction of her pursuers. Yelps cut through the Mist. “Look at the size of them things!” “Don’t let ’em bite you, whatever you do, or you’ll be done for!” “Aagh—get away!”

  Just ahead, Jemma felt the web pulling on her, revealing its whereabouts.

  “Watch out—run! Gus—behind yer!”

  She threw herself into the hollow’s earthy entrance, and sank into soft leaves.

  “Don’t be such cowards!” Shade’s voice. “Just kill the monsters!”

  Sounds of swiping, then “Missed! They won’t keep still.”

  “Mord take them!” said Shade. “This way, then.”

  The sounds of the search party faded. The enemy was gone—for the moment. But now Jemma had the key to getting out of the forest. A clear destination. Digby had described it to her often enough: the edge of the forest, the moat, the river, the village … She needed to actually see it all in her mind’s eye, not just say a name. Then, once she was there, she would find Digby, and—

  First things first, she thought, curling up with Noodle and Pie in the crook of her arm. Now, we need rest. Later, before we leave, I’ll read some more, and take a good look at those crystals.

  But rest evaded her, and for several tolls of the castle bell she was plagued by images of wraiths and rabbit heads, babies and black shadows. Finally, long after nine, she fell asleep.

  When Jemma woke, it was already dark, and she’d lost precious travel time. The crystals, and the book’s secrets, would have to wait. Hastily gathering her belongings, she pulled herself out of the hollow for the second time. But this time, she felt sure, there’d be no coming back.

  It was time to move on. She was ready.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Lair

  Tuesday night

  Noodle’s and Pie’s squeals cut through the night. Stop, stop!

  Jemma dug her heels into the ground, teetering at a precipice. Her feet slid from under her and she grabbed a shrub, clinging to it for dear life. A large stone, dislodged by her boot, rolled off the edge. It cracked against rock as it plummeted, then landed with a splash several seconds later, somewhere far below.

  The rats scuttled up behind her.

  “Rattusses, thank you! One step more, and …” Jemma pulled herself to sit. Beyond her feet, the sheer face of Mordwin’s Crag fell away into a sea of white. The Mist, waiting to swallow her whole.

  Not safe to walk.

  They were right. She would have to crawl.

  According to Digby’s description of the crag, at some point its sheer face met a perpendicular arm of equally sheer rock that sloped downward, eventually leading to the road into Hazebury. By her reckoning, that was to the right of where they now were.

  “This way, Rattusses.” Jemma dropped to her hands and knees.

  We’ll go first.

  Noodle and Pie slithered along the edge of the precipice, stopping every few feet to wait for Jemma, then moving ahead again and disappearing into the Mist. If they hadn’t warned me, she thought, I’d be nothing but a broken heap at the bottom of the crag. I can’t afford to let my focus waver, not for one second.

  Another hour passed, then two. Occasionally, the three of them stopped to rest, gobbling down a bite of sausage and sipping a little water. Eleven o’clock clanged out from on top of the crag. At least the bell sounded farther away now. But every inch of progress was perilous and exhausting. The shawl pouch around Jemma’s waist felt increasingly heavy, and the snail’s pace drove the night’s chill deeper into her bones as warmth from the book and cloak ebbed. It seemed that they too needed rest occasionally.

  At last, the dark shadow of a tree line loomed through the Mist. Jemma scrambled to her feet and trotted after the rats into the forest, welcoming the softer ground and the cover of pines and firs. A lone mountain cow grazed nearby. She’d only ever seen one before, delivered to the castle two Mordmases ago by Digby and his father. Shy creatures, Digby had said, as they’d hung the shaggy red carcass in the scullery. Jemma had been impressed by its horns, but hadn’t liked the taste of its meat; it was too thick, somehow, as if it was full of mud.

  “So have no fear of me, cow,” she whispered. “I’m not looking for beef tonight. Though I wouldn’t mind your coa
t.”

  The cow raised its head and lumbered away as soon as it saw her. But its motion made something flutter in its wake: a triangle of fabric, snagged on a bramble. Jemma’s heart leapt. That brown, woolen weave … She ran and picked it off the thorns.

  “A piece of Marsh’s dress, Rattusses! So she was here.” Jemma shoved the ragged scrap into one pocket, uttering a fervent wish for Marsh’s safety before walking on.

  Branches rustled. Owls screeched, trees creaked. The ground became steeper. Jemma kept her eyes on it to avoid roots, rocks, and rabbit burrows. The Mist was thinning slightly, and she relaxed a little, able to fix her destination more clearly in her mind: the row of thatched, stone houses Digby had so often described, in the middle of which was Goodfellows Grocery, where he lived with his parents and younger brothers and sister—the triplets, whose antics she loved hearing about. The thought of his face—vivid blue eyes, sandy-colored hair, lopsided grin—made her smile, and now Marsh’s face joined in her imaginings, doubling her optimism. Perhaps Marsh would be there too, waiting for her.

  The single toll of eleven-thirty drifted down the crag.

  “The bell is definitely farther away now,” Jemma said. “Definitely! By this time tomorrow, we could be in Hazebury—”

  Snap!

  Jemma stopped in her tracks and looked up. Light beams darted around ahead of her, and she saw four burly, long-coated silhouettes attached by thin cords to smaller silhouettes closer to the ground. She ducked behind a tree. Then came a series of strange sounds, something between Feo belching and a gruff groan, only ten times as loud.

  “Shut up, Fang!” A man’s voice, low and gravelly. “Stupid hound!” He yanked the cord he held, and the creature at the end of it let out a sharp yelp. “ ’Ere, Zeb, give ’im another whiff of the girl’s dress.”

  “Right you are, Lok.”

  Rustling, mumbling, cursing, then another yelp, this one sounding eager and hungry. Noodle and Pie clawed their way into Jemma’s pockets and lay there quivering. Jemma felt as though worms were crawling around her belly. Unlike yesterday’s posse, these men weren’t afraid of the forest at night. They must be really tough, or mean, or both.…

  The men moved away. But one of the hounds lifted its snout into the air and sniffed, then broke from the pack, snapping its leash. It headed straight toward Jemma.

  “Oy, over there—Fang’s got the scent! Gimme a hand up, Zeb, you idiot.”

  Jemma took off down the hill, begging her Stone for help. Brambles and branches reached out to snag her as she passed; others pulled back to let her through. But the snorting and growling behind her was getting closer, and closer, until it was practically at her heels.

  She turned and swiveled her pouch around to the front, then snatched the remaining sausages from it and threw them at the hound. It caught them in its jaws and chomped them down in one mouthful. She lunged for her knife. But before she could grab it, the creature leapt. Jemma dodged to one side, but too late. Its teeth sliced through her shawl bundle, tearing it from her waist. It thrashed the fabric from side to side as if it were a dead duck. The crystals flew in opposite directions; the book plopped to the ground. She seized it and ran.

  “There she is!”

  Snarls and thumping feet behind her. Snapping twigs, snapping jaws. Shouting, getting closer. Her limbs fired with terror. At any second now, the hounds would be upon her—

  Suddenly, the ground beneath her collapsed, and Jemma plummeted down a narrow shaft. Her arm scraped rock; her sleeve ripped, her skin seared. She felt the cloak catch, jolting her; then it too ripped, and she fell through empty space, landing on her back onto something soft and furry. The book bounced off her stomach and landed on the floor beside her. Noodle and Pie wriggled out of her pockets and lay flat on her chest, their teeth chattering.

  Five silhouetted heads and shoulders peered down at her. One of the hounds had evidently fallen in after her and hung by its leash, thrashing against the sides of the shaft. It yelped as the man holding it yanked it back out and onto solid ground.

  “I ain’t goin’ down there,” the man said. “We’d never get out!”

  “Aukron’s lair, by the looks of it,” said another.

  “An’ how do we get our reward, without proof she’s a gonner?”

  “That bit o’ scarf Fang’s been gnawin’ on is as good a proof as any. Let ’em try’n’ deny me my cash!”

  “Wait a mo’, Lok—over ’ere. Look—a hand! Someone else the Aukron had fer dinner, I s’pect. We can use it to fool them Agromonds. It’s small enough to be a nipper’s, so if we strip the rest o’ the flesh off of it … like this … there! They’ll never know it’s not the girl’s. Sorry, sir, ma’am; the dogs got ’er—we couldn’t stop ’em in time—but ’ere, let us give you a hand!” The men broke into demonic laughter and walked away amidst the sound of howls and breaking branches.

  Jemma felt nauseous. A hand …? She fingered the piece of Marsh’s dress in her pocket, grief searing through her. Stop it! she said to herself, biting back tears. Maybe it’s not Marsh’s hand. Even if it is, that doesn’t mean she’s dead. She breathed deeply to calm herself.

  “Ugh!” The air smelled foul, and she hastily pushed herself up to sit. Her hands were resting on thick, matted fur. A mountain cow lay beneath her, slit from belly to throat, innards spilling onto the ground. The cow was still warm; freshly dead—so that couldn’t be where the stench was coming from. As her eyesight adjusted, Jemma saw that the cow wasn’t the only unfortunate creature to have fallen into the cave; the ground was strewn with carcasses. Hanks of rotting hide lay all around, crawling with maggots. Beneath them was a carpet of bones, some intact, others splintered as if they’d been subjected to furious attack.

  Dread seethed through her. “Oh, no,” she whispered, suppressing the urge to throw up. “Maybe those thugs were right, and this really is the Aukron’s lair.…”

  She had always scoffed at stories of the Aukron, laughing off Nox’s gory enactments of its ferocity, which had delighted her and the twins when they were little. She’d even doubted its existence, though Feo insisted it was real.

  “Oh, yes, Jemma,” he’d said. “It roams the forest at night. Cunning it is, and loves to make its prey as afraid as possible. It won’t eat whole humans, though—just their guts. They’re its favorite snack!”

  “And how could anybody possibly know that, silly?” she’d always retorted, laughing. “If it ate your guts, you’d be dead, and it would be a bit difficult to tell anyone, wouldn’t it?”

  But now, it was obvious: the Aukron was the Agromonds’ creation, its tastes determined by them, so of course Feo would know. The intestines that coiled at her feet and oozed blood onto her boots were nothing to laugh at.

  Her own stomach tightened. “We’ve got to get out of here, Rattusses,” she said, standing up. “Fast.”

  Jemma looked up the shaft. It was about twice her height, and just wide enough for the cow to have fallen through. Jutting across the bottom of it was a large, pointed rock—no doubt the one that had grazed her, and caused the cow’s grisly death. If she could grab hold of it, perhaps she could hoist herself up. She stepped onto the cow’s flank and bounced on it to see if she could spring high enough, but her hand batted thin air. Next, she took off her cloak, and managed to hook it around the rock, but when she pulled on it, she heard its fragile velvet rip.

  “Think, Jemma, think!” Frantically, she looked around the cave. From about halfway up its earthen walls, what appeared to be branches were jutting out in every direction—tree roots, she realized: a mass of them, tangled across the roof of the cave. That might be a way to climb to the shaft. But even the lowest one was several feet out of reach. She looked around again. The book. Bones. Hide. Rotten flesh. Roots. Bones. Roots. Bones. The words beat through her head in time with her thumping heart, churning up an idea. She found a long femur, splintered at one end, rounded at the other. Using a skull as a hammer, she drove its sharp end into the wall at
knee height, leaving about a foot of its rounded end sticking out. She stood on it and stretched her arm up. The roots were still out of reach, so she hammered a second femur into the wall. It wouldn’t hold. She tried in several other places, but all around the cave, the earth crumbled above waist level.

  “Mord take it!” Jemma hurled the bone to the ground. It somersaulted, then embedded itself between coils of intestine, a taunting reminder of the Aukron’s favorite delicacy. Panic rising, she looked around again. Skulls. Hide. Cow guts. Cow guts … Strong as wire, Digby used to say about them. Once, he’d made a skipping rope for her out of them. Skipping rope …

  Rope! Jemma eyed the shaft, estimating the distance of the jutting rock. Then, taking her knife from her boot top, she sliced off a length of the cow’s innards, amazed by how much fit into one animal. Folding the coil in two, she threw the looped end up toward the rock. It flopped down just short of its mark. Again she tried, and failed.

  “Patience, Jemma, patience,” she said. “See it happening.” She took a deep breath and tried a third time. The loop hooked over the rock, leaving two lengths of intestines dangling down. But they were slippery, and impossible to hold on to. She picked up the book, held it to the glistening tubes, and concentrated. Dry … Dry … Steam exuded from them, and within moments, their surface was tacky: perfect to grip.

  “Come on, Rattusses,” she said, tucking the knife back into her boot

  Noodle and Pie clambered up to her shoulders, ears flat against their heads. Jemma stuffed the book into one pocket, shoving her stone inside the front of her dress. She was about to start her climb when she spotted something brown sticking out from beneath the cow’s horns.