Everybody reacted. Amber screamed and the two Huntsmen cursed and I gagged as my stomach tried to follow the moon. I met Yejun’s eyes and then I stumbled away, into the clearing. The horse reared again, and Brynn had fallen onto her backside. But her hands were free, and she was scooting away from the horse and toward the fire.
Amber had her arms over her head as if she expected the sky to fall. Tala grabbed her. “What is—” and then all three of my dogs and I were in the middle of them, adding to the chaos. I caught Brynn from behind, then leapt over the fire. The dogs barked, jumped up, and snapped at whatever was handy. Brynn fought me, struggling.
“Why didn’t you fight Amber or Tala?” I demanded, exasperated. “I can just leave you here if you really want to stay...”
She went limp. “AT. I thought—” Then she raised her head. “More horses.”
“Hey!” shouted Yejun. “Better move! Guy with the chicken legs is trying to start something in the tangle.”
Then another horse burst out of the shrubbery directly ahead of us. This one had a rider. Brynn froze, but I lunged forward, dragging her with me. The horse stomped, then reared, because apparently that’s part of the job requirements for Wild Hunt horses. While the horse was busy showing off, we went around him. As we did, I glanced up and saw Ion, First Huntsman of the Wild Hunt, looking down at me with the same amusement he’d shown the first time I’d seen him. He could have reached down and grabbed me or Brynn. He might have ended up with a broken hand for his trouble, but he could have done it.
He didn’t. He didn’t even turn his horse to pursue us when we were past him. And I wasn’t at all surprised. Catching us then would have ruined all the fun.
“Come on,” I said to Brynn as we put a tree between us and him. The daylight forest was alabaster and crimson and gold, interrupted by all the jutting grey rocks. It would have been beautiful if I had a moment to appreciate it. Instead, all I could do was hope that maybe the horses would break a leg on one of the stones.
“What about Yejun?” asked Brynn, pulling against the way I yanked her after me.
“He showed up on his own. I assume he can escape on his own.”
“AT!” she said reproachfully.
I sighed. “The dogs are with them. We’ll meet up soon. But we have to move fast because pretty soon those people with the horses going to start chasing us.”
Brynn’s mouth opened, then closed again. Then she followed me, docile as a chastened puppy.
I headed back the way we’d come, casting about every so often for the trail of the giant predator I’d crossed before. It was odd, though. The only way I could tell we were going back the way we came was the ghost of my own scent. The land didn’t lose the rocks that had sprung up as I pursued Brynn and Amber. If anything, it became rockier. The crimson leaves that covered the ground thinned out and the trees thickened, their branches tangling up. Twice I stopped to carefully move around, to make sure there really was a trail, and not something wrong with my nose. It was always tricky following my own trail, since my own scent was always with me. I could detect faint traces of Heart’s scent, just enough to think we were going the right way. But it was weird. When we reached the predator’s trail, I almost didn’t notice.
I stopped absently and Brynn jiggled my arm. “We have to keep going,” she said urgently. “All three of them have horses now.”
“Let’s wait—ah.”
Heart appeared around a tree, a moment before Grim bounded over a fallen log and Yejun climbed after him. Grim pranced over to me and sat down, wagging his tail, clearly expecting praise for being a good dog. I gave him an unfriendly look.
“You were supposed to stay on the trail.” He licked my hand and wagged his tail more, his ears pricked hopefully. I blew out my breath and scratched his head.
Yejun said, “Where’s that blond chick? Amber? She seemed pretty upset when I brought back the sun.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out his sunglasses.
“She’s running. Nod is with her.” I frowned, skimming the surface of Nod’s perceptions. “She doesn’t like the sun. How the hell did you do that?”
“You don’t like it either?” He gave me a crooked grin.
“I love it. But let’s be clear, you also picked the damned moon out of the sky.” My stomach churned just remembering it.
“Well, it wasn’t the real moon,” he said, as if that excused matters. He looked down at something glinting in his hand. “Kind of like a lens filter, really. Maybe somebody left it behind.”
“Are we waiting for the singing girl, too?” asked Brynn nervously. “She cut my hands free back there. I don’t know why. I saw her on the trail, and then... “ She shook her head instead of finishing.
“I was—” I started to say. Then a horn blew nearby. It was a long, sweet sound, as if all the terror and death it heralded was simply the shadow cast by the beauty of the horn’s voice. A tremor went down my spine. “Please tell me that’s not the horn we need?”
Yejun frowned. “I don’t know. I can find out, if we’re not about to be—”
“We are,” said Brynn and I together. I turned away, to the predator’s trail. It meandered around a large tree and vanished into the forest depths. “Come on.”
“Yo, this is the wrong way,” said Yejun, like he knew what direction we should be going.
“I know. It’s got a distraction at the other end, though.”
“They’re coming,” said Brynn tersely.
“Let’s run,” I suggested.
We ran. It was a lot easier to avoid tripping in the daylight, but the ground was still uneven and rocky and slippery with old red leaves. Once Brynn tripped, and when she rose to her feet there was more crimson on the rock than when she’d fallen. That was bad, I thought. On the bright side, the ones pursuing us didn’t seem to have any hounds. Instead there was the horn, and the thunder of hooves and the bell-like laughter of Tala against the chanting song of Ipa.
It seemed like we ran for hours, though I didn’t think the humans had the endurance to run that long. The predator’s trail I followed just went on and on, without us ever catching up. Brynn was the first to tire and Heart and Grim ran beside her to lend her their strength. But as the sun slipped toward the horizon and the light streaming through the trees turned scarlet, Yejun too flagged. When he stumbled, I turned back to him.
He pushed himself to his feet and rubbed sweat away from his face, still wearing those sunglasses. I said, “I’m going to try the Curtain again. See if the two of you can get out of here.”
Yejun only glanced over, then looked past me, as if what I said was irrelevant to him. Brynn was so tired she didn’t even have the breath to argue. But it didn’t matter. I reached out and the Curtain was still as hard and slippery as a soap-slicked shower door.
“There’s a hill ahead,” said Yejun. “We can do something there. Well, I can, anyhow.”
I turned and peered against the glare of the setting sun. Squinting, I could just see the rising roundness of a stony knob of land. Excitement flickered against my growing weariness. “I think that’s where we’re going.” And I plunged ahead again.
It was as if our hunters knew. Brynn yelped and sprinted ahead of me a moment before the hoofbeats made the ground shake. The forest opened up on the approach to the hill, giving both the riders and us a chance to stretch out. Silently I urged the dogs to look for a cave, and they dashed ahead to do so. I slackened my pace so that both Yejun and Brynn overtook me. Then I turned for just a moment to look at the three riders approaching us.
It wasn’t three riders anymore, though. It was four, and the spectral forms of two more paced them as they surged toward us like something out of a dream of shining death. Ion was in the lead, on his black and crimson steed, and once again, he pointed at me and grinned.
Then the dogs found what they were looking for, and they found what I was looking for, too. At their furious barking, I turned and dashed after my friends. As I passed them, I panted, �
��This way. And be ready to get out of the way. Throw yourselves down if you have to.”
Something roared inside the hill. Heard from a distance, it had just been a noise—the sort of roar you barely notice when you live in or near a city. There’s always engines somewhere, after all.
This wasn’t an engine. This was an enormous, furious animal, and it was far too close to my friends. I could fight it, I thought hazily, instinctively.
The memory of my father’s voice in the back of my head said, Yes, and I remembered the taste of flesh in a horrible flash.
But I hadn’t come to fight it. Not myself. The dogs, still barking furiously, hurtled out from a cave back in a gully amid scattered, rounded stones and broken trees. The animal they’d annoyed emerged after them and roared again. It was a giant bear, rank and red-furred, standing at least as tall on all fours as Tala the Huntress. It was rangier than the bears in the Pacific Northwest, as if it hadn’t eaten in a while, and its face was more like a raccoon. And did I mention it was huge? It was huge. I’d never seen a natural predator so large. There were swords shorter than its claws.
“Oh my god,” said Yejun, and his hands twitched.
A loose rock rolled across the ground, and my stomach rolled over, too. I grabbed his arm. “No! This is what I was looking for. Just... get out of his way.”
Grim and Heart turned back to the bear and took turns darting in to snap at the big guy. Brynn and Yejun and I circled around them, trying to be inconspicuous. But it knew human shapes and after roaring in fury at the dogs, the bear turned to glare balefully at us.
The hunting horn of the Wild Hunt sounded again, just beyond the screen of trees. I gave Brynn and Yejun a shove forward, toward the bear. “Straight to the cave, guys!”
The Huntsmen burst from beyond the trees, their horses screaming in excitement. The great bear looked between the three of us charging him, toward the dogs teasing him, and finally at the Huntsmen on their prancing hoses. He stood up on his hind legs and roared so loud that I felt it through the stone underfoot. Then he dropped to all fours and loped around the hill, away from the Huntsmen.
As the bear fled, we scrambled over the lip to his den and pressed ourselves against the inner wall. The dogs dashed in after us and, at my command, flattened themselves on the ground.
Yejun whispered, “This is a terrible hiding spot. They saw us run in here.”
“Go further back,” I suggested. “Their horses won’t like it back there. They won’t, either. But it doesn’t matter. Look.”
The horses of the Wild Hunt danced with an excitement their riders shared. I could see the discussion, what there was of it, happening just through their body language. They were delighted to find the bear, eager to pursue and finish him, all but the one called Ipa. He pointed at our cave and argued, but he was the only one. I watched the horses backing up and adjusting their position as a fifth hunter arrived. Then they turned and cantered around the hill, after the bear. Ion held out his hand to the cave as they went, in a gesture that seemed to indicate approval or possibly amusement.
“We’re not hiding,” I said as the thunder of hooves softened. “Not exactly. We’re just putting off on the inevitable. And getting out of sight to make the decision easier for them. That bear looks a lot more fun to fight than three kids will be. Taking his claws will be a serious trophy. Posting our heads on the wall of their castle or whatever isn’t going to impress the locals nearly as much. Whoever the locals are.” Yejun and Brynn both stared at me and I shrugged. “So we have some time now.”
I looked around the cave. It was dim, because the setting sun was on the other side of the hill, but it was still brighter than the wrong night had been. There were drifts of hair and small bones, and a lot of chewed branches. There were glints under some of the debris I didn’t want to investigate. It was an old cave and it looked like something had been living there a long, long time. It wasn’t shallow, either; the cave narrowed at the back, becoming a passage to deeper inside the hill. It was much, much darker back there.
Brynn sagged against the wall, then slid down it. “Okay. Some time. That’s great, because I’m bushed.” She put her head against her knees, then lifted it again. “What happened to me? Wait, no, more important question: where’s my camera bag?”
Yejun sat down against the other wall. “I left it on the trail so we could find our way back.”
“Great,” sighed Brynn, and put her head down again.
“Why did you decide to come after me?” I asked Yejun, and I tried not to snap. Without help, I didn’t know that I would have gotten Brynn away. That was more important than losing the trail.
He stretched out on the floor of the cave and took his sunglasses off. “Talked to Cat and Jen. Jen said you’d need help, and we weren’t getting anywhere without you.”
“Oh.” I thought about that for a moment. “Wait, what? How did you talk to them? Cellphones don’t work in the Backworld. I’ve tried.”
Without a word, Yejun flopped his arms out to the sides and opened his palms. With only a tiny twist of my stomach, two lifesize images shimmered into existence, one near each hand. Cat sat at a table that faded out of sight, while Jen paced in place. Both of them looked down at Yejun when they appeared, then around the cave.
“AT,” said Jen, a smile flickering across her face. “I’m glad you’re together again.”
-twelve-
I ran my hands through my hair as I looked between the image of Cat, the image of Jen, and Yejun lying between them like he was taking a nap. There’d been a lot of weird today. This wasn’t the weirdest thing. I just needed a minute to readjust. Clearly the three of them had worked out some magic to manage communications through the Curtain. That was excellent. Great news. An innovation I’m sure everybody would want to copy. But Geometry magic wasn’t my gig. All I had to do was accept that it worked.
“I wanted to apologize for what happened before,” Jen added. “Sometimes I get so tired now. When that happens, I can’t stop thinking about bad things. And after Sen... saved me... my bad thoughts can take over everything around me.” She said “saved me” like she didn’t think it was the right phrase at all.
I waved her apology off. “It happens. Even if you’re not—” I stopped.
“Undead?” Jen laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “Thank you. Was Yejun helpful?”
“He stole the moon,” I said, and I couldn’t help the note of accusation in my voice.
“Really?” asked Cat, looking down at Yejun.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Yejun said without opening his eyes. “Really, it wasn’t. I saw how to do it, and I did. It wasn’t the real moon, just some old tangle of magic. If I’d known it was going to upset her so much I would have done something else.”
Jen looked between me and Yejun, then shook her head. “Where are you now?”
“Resting in a cave,” I told her. “I don’t know if we can get back to the trail. The Wild Hunt is riding through the forest.” I remembered the uncertainty I’d had about the horn they were blowing and added, “It may not matter. They had a horn.”
Cat and Jen exchanged a look that went on too long. Then Jen hugged herself as she said, “The Wild Hunt only chases loose souls.”
“I think maybe they’ve changed the rules some. These guys had the Chief Huntsman leading them around and they were chasing us,” I said. “Maybe since we’re in their territory we’re their legal prey now. How should I know? But they were definitely hunting us and now they’re after this prehistoric bear I found for them.”
I thought Brynn was asleep, but she lifted her head suddenly, listening to something I couldn’t hear. Then she stood up. “Can we go back further into the cave? I don’t want to be here when they come back looking for us.”
Even tapping into Nod’s senses as he moved through the forest with Amber, I couldn’t hear anything. But I remembered how she’d always heard the horses before I did when we were running. “Good idea.” I looked down
at Yejun. “Do you, uh, have to lie down like that to summon them?”
Yejun’s eyes slitted open, then he rolled to his feet, fished something out of his pocket, and headed deeper into the cave. The images moved with him. Grim darted ahead, because he always had to be in the lead, while Heart stayed back with Brynn and me.
Whatever Yejun held glowed with a soft, silvery light. He’d come more prepared for this adventure than I’d expected, given how quickly we’d run into it. We walked behind him for a few minutes, the images of his teachers drifting along silently. The cave narrowed into a claustrophobic neck, something barely tall enough for Yejun. The Huntsmen would have trouble squeezing back here after us. And if they changed their size, even for a short time, they’d be easier to fight.
And then the stone neck opened up again, into a rounded cave with three more irregular passages leading off, and a sort of natural chimney rising up to a stone shelf that opened to the outside. There was an old stack of firewood against one wall, and the blackened remains of an ancient fire.
“Did a bear make that?” asked Brynn uncertainly.
“They don’t usually make fires, but I admit the bears here could be special.” I cocked my head, listening. Somebody was walking down one of the other passages. But it was a familiar tread, and even Grim didn’t think it was worth barking about. He was far too interested in nosing about the woodpile, eventually discovering what looked to be the rotted remains of a rough leather satchel.
“You can rest here,” Yejun told Brynn. He put his glowing rock or whatever it was into the firepit, then touched the curving wall near the woodpile with both hands. Cat and Jen flickered onto the wall as Yejun went on. “At least until we decide where we’re going next.”
He shot me an inscrutable look. I wanted to shout at him, because I’d know exactly where we were going if he and Grim hadn’t left the trail.
“Thanks,” Brynn said tiredly, collapsing onto the ground. Then she sprang to her feet again, looking around wildly. “Somebody’s coming.”
Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3) Page 11
