Thank you.
He looked up into the oak tree. It had filled with black beneath a pink sky. The evening had slipped by fast. Niklas searched for cat eyes among the branches, but saw none. Did the lynx come here often? Was she close now?
He wished he could climb into the tree and watch for her, but on this particular day it might be best not to argue with Grandma Alma about the meaning of “before dark.” More than likely, the hunters would be out again tonight. He put his things in the satchel and headed home.
He made it to the first bend in the trail before he heard the screeches go up. Birds flew out of the woods behind him, black flecks against a bright orange flicker.
Fire.
For a second, Niklas hesitated. How much time would he waste if he ran home to fetch Uncle Anders? Two minutes if he could fly, ten minutes with the way the path looped. But if he could get up there before the fire truly caught, he might be able to put it out. He decided to try. He yelled through the woods, “Help! Uncle Anders! Someone! There’s a fire!” Then he turned and ran back up the trail. As he neared the bridge, he filled with horror.
The oak tree was burning.
The flames hadn’t reached the canopy yet, but yellow tongues licked up the trunk, reaching higher with every second. How could it be burning? Healthy, green wood like this, alone on the lip of a cliff?
Niklas sprinted past the fire to fill his satchel with water from the Summerchild. He hurried back up the bank and sloshed it against the base of the trunk. The bark sputtered, but it still burned. He fetched satchelful after satchelful, but he couldn’t keep the flames from eating their way into the branches.
Niklas didn’t stop. The oak tree was his and Lin’s, and now it belonged to the lynx, too. He refused to give up on it.
The fire crackled so loudly that Niklas didn’t hear the snapping noises until they were close. Uncle Anders at last! Except he should be coming up the trail, not down from the mountain. Niklas peered in between the trees. Someone wove through the underbrush with muted flashlights. The hunting party, then. They must have cut through the woods.
“Mr. Fale! Mrs. Ottem! It’s the oak tree! Quick, get over here!” A puff of smoke caught him, and Niklas bent over coughing. “Why are you just standing there?” he croaked. “Come and help me!”
No one came out of the bushes.
“Mr. Molyk?” Niklas rubbed his eyes. “Uncle Anders?”
The rotten stench from last night blasted toward him.
The beast.
This time, he couldn’t run. The beast was closer to the trail. It would cut him off no matter which way he tried to bolt. And he couldn’t climb into the oak tree. Niklas was caught on a strip of land with nowhere to go.
He dropped the satchel and picked up a fallen branch that had caught fire at one end. The green eyes blinked.
“Oh, you don’t like this?” Niklas held the branch like a sword. A host of twigs snapped as the beast moved back. It feared the flames.
Niklas took a step forward. The beast backed farther into the underbrush, until its eyes resembled dim jellyfish in the darkness under the trees.
Sparks whipped past Niklas’s face, but he didn’t care. He was already on fire, on the inside. “You killed Rag!” he shouted, and pushed on across the path.
Something heavy hit his shoulders and slammed him to the ground. A shape outlined against the blaze from the fire crouched over him, pinning his arms and hips down so he couldn’t move. Niklas squirmed and fought, but it did no good. A circle of needle-like teeth opened over his face as the creature snarled.
“Stupid cub! Can’t you see that’s what it wants?”
Niklas stopped thrashing. The creature had cat eyes, not beast eyes.
The lynx eased off him. “Stand up,” she hissed at him. “Get back to the oak!”
Niklas bolted to his feet. The anger had been knocked out of him, and now he felt dizzy. The lynx had taken up position in front of him, right by the burning branch that lay on the ground. Niklas could be mistaken, but it looked like she was barring the way between him and the beast.
In the underbrush, the green eyes narrowed.
The lynx tucked in her stubby tail. “Do you want to die? Back to the oak!”
Niklas stumbled backward until he felt the heat from the fire. The beast let out a piercing double-pitched howl and lunged forward, but the lynx twisted out of the way and leaped across the path with Niklas.
Over them, the entire tree burned. Most of the heat rose upward, but embers dropped down from the canopy and the ground smoldered. “We can’t stay here,” Niklas coughed.
“We have to.” The lynx paced in circles, keeping her distance. “It’s the only place it won’t go.”
“We can fight it off with torches,” Niklas said. “It fears the fire.”
The lynx flattened her ears. “It started the fire. Threw a rock at the tree and then it burned.”
Which must be wrong, of course, because rocks couldn’t start fires, and Niklas had seen the beast shrink away from flames himself.
“What it fears is this tree,” the lynx said, skipping smoothly to the side to dodge a falling patch of bark. “It won’t go near it.”
The beast lurked just beyond the forest edge, but Niklas’s eyes watered from the smoke, and he couldn’t see clearly. “Is it a bear?”
“No bear,” the lynx said.
“Then what?”
The lynx bared her teeth. “I don’t know. It doesn’t belong here.”
Niklas squinted. Through the branches he glimpsed massive shoulders, patches of bark. A claw slid out, black and curved like a scythe, and the beast cut the underbrush in one quick sweep. It sneered at them with a mouthful of saw teeth.
Niklas’s heart kicked against his ribs. The beast had a mouth. A slavering mouth in a face that was too angled and leathery for a human, but which definitely wasn’t a muzzle. And it had three ears. The third stuck out from its neck, folding and unfolding.
He felt his limbs go limp.
“What is it?” the lynx growled. “Do you know it?”
He did.
And he understood, now, why the beast had stopped chasing him when he climbed into the tree last night, why it wouldn’t cross the path now, why it had left the lamb on the screaming stone of all places. The lynx was right. This creature didn’t belong here, or in any other place that was real.
It belonged in a game.
“Yeah.” Niklas opened his shirt pocket and scooped out the acorns. “It’s a troll.”
CHAPTER NINE
In his defense, Niklas Summerhill had never used troll’s bane before. Not for real.
The moment he let go of the acorns, he knew the throw was short. A piece of burning oak crashed to the ground right in front of him, making him snatch his hand back early. But when the sparks cleared, the green eyes had vanished.
The lynx spoke behind him. Niklas felt the hairs rise on his neck. “What did you do?”
“I threw acorns at it. Troll’s bane. It kills them.” Across the path there was no troll, but no body, either. “Or it’s supposed to.”
“Like a gun.” The lynx began pacing, staying as far away from Niklas as she could get. She looked as if she were caught in a cage. Niklas supposed they were caged, inside the protection of the oak tree. Except now the jailer had left. “Do you think it’s . . . ?”
“No. Not dead, but you scared it into hiding. Do it again.”
Ah right, excellent idea, except he had no more acorns. In the panic, he had thrown them all. He glanced around at the scorched grass. “Do you know the nuts from this tree?”
“Yes. They make the squirrels taste bitter.”
“Let’s see if we can find some.”
Niklas ended up doing the searching, which was hard to do without turning his back on either the spot where the troll
had disappeared or the lynx. She watched him silently, gliding out of the way of burning objects until he gave up. The acorns had all burnt, or the bitter squirrels had gotten them.
But he found something else lying in the crook of two roots not far from the tree trunk. A round rock the size of his palm, wrapped in hide. There was a drawing on it: three jagged lines that met at the bottom. He held it up. “Is this the rock you saw the troll toss?”
“Smells like it.”
Niklas frowned at the stone. If it started the fire, then maybe . . . He took two quick steps and hurled it into the Summerchild. Immediately the flames in the oak tree died down, as easily as if someone had flipped a switch. Niklas blinked up at the naked branches as his eyesight adjusted. For a moment they were silent and shiny with char.
Then the first crack sounded.
“Look out!” Niklas rolled to the side as a big branch thundered to the ground. All around them, the oak tree’s limbs came down in great huffs of ashes, until the trunk itself gave and toppled groaning off the ledge.
Niklas stared at the blackened stump. The fire must have eaten the tree to the core in minutes for it to collapse like that. He was no expert, but it must be far too fast. And the way the fire had died as soon as the leather rock hit the water . . . It was wrong. Unnatural.
Magical.
“It’s coming.”
That shook him out of it. If there were talking lynxes and trolls, then why not magic? A better question was why the troll had burned the tree. “You think the protection of the oak tree is broken?”
The lynx tilted her head in the direction of the path. The green eyes were back.
“We go after the tree,” she said.
“Down from the ledge?” Niklas rubbed his forehead. He had perched on the branches above the slope many times. The drop was so steep and littered with boulders that the slightest misstep could set off a slide. “No one can climb down that hill in the dark.”
“You can if you want to live,” the lynx said, tossing her neck. With two fluid bounds, she leaped off the cliff.
Niklas ran to the edge. The lynx stared up at him from a shelf ten feet down. He cast one last glance back toward the troll, then got down on his belly and went over the edge legs first. The lynx waited until he dangled by his hands before she moved on.
“Follow.”
Niklas tried to stay on the lynx’s tail, but the four-pawed path she chose among the boulders was hard to copy. More than once she returned to show him the way out of an unstable patch. “Not so slow!”
Behind them, where the top of the hill drew a black semicircle in the sky, a silhouette loomed against the blue of night, eyes glowing like emeralds. It sniffed along the lip of the ledge, but it made no move to climb down after them.
“It’s too heavy,” the lynx said. “The stones will tumble. The newcomers know. They know the land.”
“Newcomers? They?” Niklas couldn’t help raising his voice. “How many are there?”
The troll answered with another jarring howl. The lynx flicked her ears back. “Not so loud!”
“Sorry,” Niklas whispered.
“Now try to follow. The screaming stone isn’t far.”
Of course. If that creature really was a troll, and the rules of the game were true, then the other safe place was the farm, on the other side of the screaming stone. “How do you know the trolls can’t get past the stone? Have you seen them try?”
“Quiet,” the lynx warned. “It’s heavy, but it’s fast. If it takes the trail, it will be waiting for us on the other side.”
They cut a straight, slow line along the dell of the Summerchild. The lynx slipped easily between broken roots and boulders. She looked like she had been magically transported from a jungle with her flecked fur that glowed golden in the tree shadows. When she turned to make sure he kept up, her eyes were lined like an Egyptian queen’s.
“Are you the lynx I . . . ?” Niklas cleared his throat. Saved seemed too forward. “I mean, did you take the roast I left for you in the ash tree?”
“Old meat,” the lynx scoffed. “Disgusting.”
“Sorry,” Niklas said again, covering a little grin. Now that the troll was behind them, the thrill of hearing her talk jolted his chest. She curled her tongue so carefully around the sounds when she spoke, slurring every s, but she still knew the word disgusting.
“You asked how many. I’ve seen two. The three-eared one up there and the clever one with scars. But I stay out of their way when I can.”
“Probably wise,” Niklas said.
“The forest has changed,” the lynx said. “Something is poisoning it. It’s not safe anymore. Most of the prey animals have left already. You should leave, too.”
Niklas stopped for a moment, trying to find a way down from a mossy boulder the size of a shed. “Why haven’t you left?”
A quiet sort of hiss, and the lynx replied, “Because you’re too rash to watch your back. You can’t hide, you can’t pounce, and you don’t know the first thing about sneaking.”
“Hey now.” Niklas slid down the stone, knocking his shin against a hazel tree. Being called rash was one thing, but he could sneak well enough. Mr. Molyk and his boots would testify to that. “I know how to handle myself in the wild.”
“Do you? Everywhere you’ve walked, the trolls, as you name them, have walked, too. They’re hunting you.”
Hunting. Niklas thought of the long claw and the saw teeth. After that he kept quiet until they ducked out of the trees by the big ash, only a few yards above the screaming stone. The lynx lifted her lips to taste the air, good ear tall and tense. “Is the troll here?” Niklas whispered as he moved up alongside her.
“No.” She edged away from him and jumped onto the lowest branch of the ash. “Go now,” she said. “Don’t come back.”
“What do you mean? Of course I’m coming back.”
The lynx beat her tail. “Didn’t you hear? They’re hunting you, and the oak is gone. There’s nowhere safe for you in the forest now.”
“But trolls belong in stories and games. They aren’t . . .” He cut himself short. He was going to say they weren’t real, but with the chill of threat trickling down his back every time he glanced up the trail, that sounded plain foolish.
“They’re mine,” he said instead. “That thing sticking out from the troll’s neck? He uses it to find people who are trying to hide from him. I know that because I made it up last summer. Just as I made up the border.” He nodded at the screaming stone. “So they’re my problem. Besides, the grown-ups have no idea how to get rid of them. I’m the only one in this valley who does.”
Well, except one person, and a stubborn one at that. He glanced down at the main house at the bottom of the hill. Both he and Lin agreed that Grandma Alma must have owned that first jar of troll’s bane in the loft, the one that started the game in the first place. He should find a way to ask her tomorrow.
The lynx stared at him, head cocked and white chin tucked in. “But I just told you they’ll kill you.”
“Good thing I have you to watch my back, then.” He smiled up at her. “Can I ask you something? How is it that you can talk?”
She shifted on the branch, making the leaves rustle. “I had hoped you could tell me that.”
“No idea,” Niklas said. The lynx didn’t reply, and he got the feeling he had disappointed her. He added, “But we can try to find out. When did it start?”
“After the last spring storm,” she said. “I’d hidden in a cave, so I don’t know what happened outside. But something must have, because when I came out from my shelter, the valley looked different to me. Full of . . .”
Her ears twitched at some sound Niklas couldn’t catch. “It is on the trail. You need to go past the stone now, or the killing will happen tonight.”
“All right. Just meet me here tomorrow.”
Niklas bolted out from under the ash tree and past the screaming stone. On the other side, he skidded to a stop. “Wait! I can’t go without knowing your name.”
The lynx thought for a moment before she said, “I’m the lynx of these woods.”
Niklas laughed. “I guess lynxes don’t have names. Well, I’ll give you one. I’m Niklas, and you’re. . . .”
He tilted his head. He didn’t know why the lynx could talk, or why she stayed here to protect him. But it made him hurt with happiness. No grown-ups could know about this, not if it meant he would have to share her, or give her up. Not even Grandma Alma.
“You’re Secret.”
“Stupid cub.” The golden fur faded into the darkness of the ash tree. “But I’ll keep the name.”
CHAPTER TEN
That night the nightmare changed.
It started as before, the waiting, the coming, the white dress. But this time his mother didn’t float. She labored step by jerky step, dragging something heavy up the trail. A rusty cage on a long chain. When she turned by the screaming stone, she raised her arm and pointed up the mountainside, up toward Sorrowdeep, while murky water poured out between her lips.
She looked like she was screaming, too.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Niklas came downstairs, sun filled the kitchen. Grandma Alma balanced on her toes, straining to fetch her blue mug from the bottom shelf of the cabinet. They would have to move all the cupboards down a foot before long.
Already his grandmother’s world had shrunk to just this one floor and maybe the steps outside on a particularly warm and dry day. He hurried over and got the mug for her. “If it isn’t the heir to the realm,” she said, plucking it out of his hands.
“Good morning.” Niklas didn’t want to inherit anything if it meant the queen would be gone.
“Is it? I thought it was past noon,” Grandma Alma dunked the mug in a pot of dark brown tea. She liked to keep the leaves simmering away on the stove, even though it made the tea so bitter, it was near undrinkable. She also liked to say that anyone with sense in their skull knew to sweeten life with at least three sugar cubes. She stirred the grainy slush. “What’s the matter?”
Thornghost Page 4