The Watch (The Red Series Book 1)

by Amanda Witt

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled. Should I run? But then it would surely chase me, and I doubted I could outrun it. Should I stand still and hope it wouldn’t notice me? Could it climb trees?

  It lowered its head to the ground, sniffed, and then raised its face in my direction. The night was so dark I couldn’t get a clear look at it—wolves were large wild dogs, distant relatives of the dogs the cattle workers used, but something about this creature didn’t feel dog-like. The shape of its head seemed wrong and I couldn’t see a tail. I tried to remember what I had been taught about bears. Weren’t bears either black or dark brown? This thing was definitely light in color.

  After a long moment I thought might kill me from fear alone, the creature shook itself as if awakening from a dream, stood up on its hind legs, and sniffed the breeze again. When its face turned away from me I threw my rock into the underbrush. In a heartbeat the creature dropped to all fours and was gone, pounding after the sound. I hurried in the opposite direction, quickly but as quietly as I could.

  How long I ran I don’t know, but it was long enough that my legs grew shaky. Finally I stopped and listened so hard that I forgot to breathe, but I heard nothing. I started walking again, still listening, but the only sound was an occasional hoot-owl, the first so close I nearly jumped out of my skin. Maybe I’d startled it before it startled me.

  The trees were now thickly matted with undergrowth. Large rocks, boulders really, began cropping up time and again whatever path I took. I had to go slowly, circling those boulders, squeezing through low-slung branches, stopping to untangle my legs from clinging vines. If there had ever been a path, I’d lost it long ago. All I was pretty sure of was that I was still bearing north, or at least northwest, away from the city and toward the wilderland. Maybe I was already in the wilderland; I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had to keep pressing on in the same direction or risk going in circles all night long.

  Eventually I found myself confronting an enormous fallen tree, its top twice as high as I was tall. I couldn’t go under it—dense undergrowth filled the space. To the left was a mass of twisted blackberry bramble, and to my right was a large boulder and more dense growth.

  I’d have to climb over the tree. But in the middle of the night, exhausted as I was, it seemed too daunting a task.

  I decided to rest for a bit before tackling it. I thought again about the strange wild creature and wished I could climb a tree and rest up there, but the trees around me were either giant, their lowest branches unreachable, or young striplings with branches too thin to support even my weight. And anyway, for all I knew, the thing could climb.

  Huddling down at the foot of a tall pine, hiding in the shadows of the undergrowth, I leaned back and shut my eyes. The wind rustled some dying leaves nearby, and the thought came to me that if I lay down here and didn’t rise, soon enough I’d be buried under autumn leaves, hidden by the forest. Vanishing without a trace wouldn’t be so bad. It would be clean, somehow, my blood on nobody’s hands but my own.

  For a long time I sat there, resting my eyes or opening them on the dark. I was too tired by then to feel afraid, too tired to feel sorry for myself, too tired to think or even to listen for creatures in the night. I merely sat there, feeling the wind on my face, smelling the piney trees.

  Soon I would get up and go on; I would keep trying. I’d go still deeper into the woods, on and on as long as it took, until I found the Guardians. If they didn’t kill me before I could say a word, I’d ask them to help us.

  In my exhausted state I’d actually begun to drift into sleep when something jerked me awake—a voice, saying my name.

  “Red?” it muttered.

  I held very still, not even daring to breathe.

  A form had clambered onto the fallen tree from the other side, and now stood perched on top. It was large and there was something wrong about it, something deformed.

  “Red,” it said again. “Red, red, red, red, red.”

  It had a man’s voice, but the cadences were sing-songy and blurred, like those of a small child.

  “Redder . . ..redder . . .” it said. Then it snuffled and leapt down from the tree, landing only a few feet away from me. I couldn’t move. There was only one clear thought in my head: Coming to the woods had been a very, very bad idea.

  “Redder . . .redder . . .redder . . .reddest!”

  The thing leapt at me—it was a large man with a long tangled beard. He grabbed at me and then I moved, shrieking and scooting away, avoiding his hands, crawling on my hands and knees, trying to get my feet under me so I could run, but he caught me around the waist and lifted me off the ground. He was strong, and so large, and in a heartbeat I had been flung over his back and was gasping for breath, his shoulder digging painfully into my stomach.

  As he hauled me over the fallen tree I raised up, struggling against him, but he gripped me tightly around the legs and tipped me further back so that I banged my chin against his lower back and bit my tongue. He stank of smoke and muck, and the rough fabric of his shirt scraped against my face as he began to move faster, in a sort of staggering half-trot. I cried out again but he gave me an impatient shake, and I imagined how easy it would be for him to swing me around and slam my head against a boulder. I could imagine all sorts of horrible deaths—and anyway there was no point in calling for help out there in the lonely woods.

  My more immediate danger was that, as he loped along, I was jolted with every stride, hard enough that at this rate I’d be too dazed to take any useful action by the time he stopped. There was no good position, but I found that by bending myself against him, crossing my arms over my chest and holding my head in my hands, I could minimize the damage.

  The dark woods went by in a blur, sideways and upside down, rocks and trees and thick patches of undergrowth. I don’t know how long he carried me, but it felt like I’d been dangling over his back forever when we came to a clearing and he stopped, and with no warning he swung me off his shoulder and dumped me on the ground, putting one heavy foot on my stomach to hold me in place. My head swam—the clearing circled dizzily around me—but finally it stilled, and there in the clearing, in the light of the waning half-moon, I finally got a good look at my captor.

  He stood crookedly, with one shoulder dipping down and the other rising high, and when I saw his face any hope I had of appealing to his better nature vanished. Behind his wild beard his mouth hung open loosely, and his pale eyes were vacant. He must be another luckless soul, driven insane by whatever it was in the woods that had driven Rosella mad, the difference being that this one didn’t drift around helpfully warning people to stay out of the wilderland, or harmlessly warbling unhinged melodies about lost love.

  After a moment of staring vacantly ahead, he raised his chin and bellowed, “Red! Red redder reddest!” I had a horrible feeling that he was calling his friends.

  Then he looked down at me, lifted his foot from my stomach, and prodded at me with his toe. I didn’t know why he was doing that, but when he kicked harder and began to make frustrated sounds, I rolled to my hands and knees. He grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet. Then, holding tight to my arm, he began to slap at me, not hard but hard enough, patting at my legs, my chest, my back, turning me this way and that, his hot foul breath in my face.

  “Red redder reddest,” he muttered, and a line of spit ran down into his filthy beard.

  Terrified and revolted, I turned my face away from him—and my heart leapt.

  There in the moonlight, at the edge of the clearing, was another man, just barely out of the shadows. Unlike the thing holding me, he was normal looking—or, rather, better than normal. Beautiful wouldn’t be putting it too strongly, if a man could be called that. He had long fair hair—in the moonlight I couldn’t tell whether it was blond or silver, or how old he was except to say he was definitely a grown man, far older than me—and he was tall and straight, with broad shoulders, and dressed in clothes covered in a pattern of dark and light that made him b
lend in with the shadows and moonlight.

  “Have you been hunting, Caliban?” he said. His tone was clear and amused, as if he were humoring the creature. “What have you found?”

  My captor took me by the shoulders and shoved me out in front of him.

  “Red,” he said. “Red girl.” And he yanked off my cap and let it fall to the ground.

  The other man nodded. “Like moth to flame,” he said quietly, his eyes on me. “Cover it up again, there’s a good girl.”

  I bent and picked up my cap, and as quickly as I could, twisted my hair up and hid it.

  The man in the distance remained rooted where he was, looking at me consideringly. He was clean and handsome, and had every appearance of sanity. I wanted to call out to him for help, but there was something dangerous in his aspect, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, so I stayed quiet.

  “Are you out here alone?” he said finally.

  There didn’t seem to be any point in lying, so I nodded.

  He untied something from his waist and tossed it towards us. It fell right at my feet—a small leather bag, the top pulled together in a tight gather.

  “A treat for Caliban,” the man said. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had a treat, hasn’t it, Caliban?”

  My captor snatched up the bag. Then he began slapping at my back, almost hard enough to knock me off my feet.

  “You’ve dusted her off very nicely,” the man in the distance said. “Now let her alone before you break her.”

  The hands stopped pawing at me. I could feel him standing behind me, but he wasn’t restraining me any longer, wasn’t holding onto my arm or any part of me.

  “Come to me, girl,” the man said. “He’ll let you. He knows you’re mine.”

  “Then he’s mistaken,” said another voice. I swung around but couldn’t see who was speaking. “Lieutenant Jensen! Bring the prisoner to me.”

  The man behind me grabbed me up, flung me back over his shoulder, and began hurrying toward the edge of the clearing in his stumbling, halting gait—not toward the beautiful man but a quarter turn away from him. “Red redder reddest!” he said excitedly.

  “Well done,” said the voice, and my captor jerked to a halt in front of a bank of shadows. “Set her down.” I was unceremoniously dropped onto the ground like a sack of grain, and when I got to my feet I found myself face to face with an old man who was wearing the same sort of splotchy clothing as the handsome younger man.

  “Don’t make any sudden moves,” the old man said in an undertone, then raised his voice. “Jensen! Cover my retreat.”

  The man stood up as straight as he could, clutching the leather bag to his chest. “Sir!” he said, then turned and trotted off, stuffing the bag into his shirt as he went.

  “Come.” The old man didn’t look at me. He said that one word, turned, and set off into the woods.

  I looked back over my shoulder, towards the handsome man, but he had vanished. Taking a deep breath I did the only thing that seemed possible: I followed the old man deeper into the woods.

  He moved swiftly for someone his age, and quietly. I had to hurry to keep up, and more than once stepped on something sharp or hard, but I was afraid to pause for fear of losing him. He made several sudden turns for no reason that I could see, and twice reached out and without a word pulled me up behind him into the branches of a tree, where we seemed to be waiting or hiding.

  The first time we did this I saw nothing. We waited for awhile, then climbed down and went on. The second time, however, the enormous four-legged wild creature—or another like it—came and snuffled around the base of the tree. The old man was beneath me, and I hoped he knew how to fight the thing off if it began to climb.

  But it didn’t climb. After sniffing all around the tree on all fours, the creature stood up just like a man and peed on the tree. The sight, combined with the pungent ammonia smell, made me gag, but I fought the reflex back for fear the thing would hear and come scrambling up the tree after me.

  Then it walked away on two legs, and as it walked I could no longer tell why I’d ever thought it was an animal. It looked just like a naked, dirt-encrusted man.

  We stayed clinging to the tree for a long time, so long that I began to wonder whether we would stay there until daylight. Finally, though, the old man climbed down and dropped to the ground and I followed, carefully avoiding the place where the creature had marked the tree.

  We walked on, and soon it seemed like every few steps there was another large boulder. Some we went around, others, because they lay in a narrow path hemmed in by bramble-choked woods, we climbed over. My adrenaline rush had by now long faded, so I concentrated on following the old man’s steps, on keeping up without falling or making noise. I tried to move like him, a secret creature of the night. I lost all track of time.

  At some point I became aware of a faint hissing noise—I thought I had been hearing it for some time without noticing. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. But the clouds had covered the moon again, and I could see very little, even less than I might have because it was dark enough now that I didn’t dare gaze about lest I trip in the darkness or lose the old man.

  I was only a step behind him and skirting an especially large boulder when he spoke to me for the first time since we’d begun the trek.

  “Come inside,” he said.

  At first I couldn’t tell what he meant. Then I realized that what seemed to be a shadow on the sloping rock wall behind him was a hole almost as tall as I was.

  I followed him to it. It was the opening to a cave.

  Though I’d been following the old man through the woods for ages, I was reluctant to be trapped with him in a cave somewhere deep in the wilderland. Then again, I didn’t want to be outside alone if the wild man who’d abducted me showed up again. There was also that mysterious hissing noise, louder than ever now. So, deciding the old man was the least scary of three scary things, I followed him inside.

  Once in the pitch blackness of the cave I changed my mind—the old man was a certain and present danger, and the wild man and the noise only possible future ones. So I turned back, creeping quietly, and pressed myself against the cold stone wall beside the opening, trying to see out into the darkness, trying to see if it was safe to creep out there and away alone.

  Behind me came the sound of a match being struck and a sudden glow of light. I turned and saw the old man setting a lamp in the middle of the floor of the cave, saw too that the cave wasn’t a bare hole in the rock, but a home. One part of the rock-walled room was crowded with stacks and stacks of short metal cylinders with paper labels, and the rest of the wall space was lined with stacks and stacks of books—more books than I had ever seen, more books than I knew existed. In one corner stood a pallet-like bed with a bright cover, and at its foot a large rectangular box with hinges.

  For a hole in a rock the place was quite civilized. How long had this man been out here, fending for himself in the woods?

  In the lamplight the man still looked very old, at least as old as the Watchers, but he also looked wiry and strong. His face was deeply lined from his nose down to the corners of his mouth, and around the corners of his eyes, and he had no hair except for a silvery gray stubble that matched the uneven stubble on his chin. His eyebrows were silver and his eyes were a startling bright blue. As I studied him, he opened a tin container and took out a handful of dried apple slices.

  “Hungry?” he asked. I nodded and he brought the apples to me, along with a cup of water from a covered bucket on the floor; then he went back and took out apples and water for himself and sat on the end of his pallet, eating.

  The apples were sweet and satisfying, the water cold and fresh, and I finished them quickly. I stood there turning the empty cup over in my hands, waiting for the food to hit my bloodstream and stop my trembling, and as it did I began to realize exactly how exhausted I was—so exhausted, I couldn’t go one step further, not unless some new burst of fright sent more ad
renaline coursing through my veins.

  The old man ate another piece of apple. He hadn’t so much as glanced at me, since he’d handed me food and water.

  Cautiously I slid down to a sitting position, resting my back against the rocky wall. Safe or not, and whether I wanted to or not, I had to rest. Worse, safe or not I’d soon be asleep. My eyelids were heavy and my limbs too relaxed, and the hissing sound outside didn’t help. Now that I was sitting still and not hurrying through the woods, I could hear a rhythmic quality to it, a soft and gentle shushing. It rose and fell, rose and fell, pulling at my tense muscles, unwinding the tight cords in my neck and shoulders, lulling me to relax.

  Without thinking I reached up and pulled off my black cap. The old man gave a sharp intake of breath. He looked startled, and then pained, and then—and this was oddest of all—tender.

  When our eyes met, he spoke. “Jensen spoke truer than he knew,” he said, in a quiet and musing voice. “Red indeed.”

  His words made perfect sense, coming as they did when he’d seen my hair, but somehow I felt he was changing the subject.

  “What is her name?” he said.

  My heart leapt in panic and I scanned the cave, trying to see who he was speaking to—someone hidden in the shadows, or behind the books. Someone else to fear.

  I could spot no one, and no one answered him. His eyes were fixed expectantly on me.

  Maybe in my exhaustion I’d misheard him. Maybe he’d only asked me my own name. After a moment’s further lingering uncertainty, I answered. “My name is Red,” I said.

  The old man shut his eyes and began to laugh, a long lilting cackle that raised goose bumps on my arms. He laughed so hard he cried, holding his stomach and rocking. He made no move toward me or I’d have been gone, out of the cave and into the night, regardless of whatever else was out there.

  After what seemed like a very long time his cackles subsided. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and shook his head, still smiling. “Red in hair and Red in name. Jensen was twice right. That’s a record.”