by J. Thorn
With the rising sun warming his back, the shadows of the trees stretched long across the field and touched the road. Thom shifted his feet and saw his own shadow move across the dirt path. It loomed tall and exaggerated like the men who walked on stilts in traveling carnivals.
And then he saw the tracks. The clear boot marks indented the road, as did the clawed imprints of three dread wolves. He told himself the tracks could have been made at any time, maybe even days ago. But Thom knew the tracks were recent. The imprints remained undisturbed by the whipping winds. The monsters came through during the night while his family slept within a few feet of their bloody fangs.
What if the dread wolves that made these tracks are searching the fields where my family sleeps right now?
He remembered the snapping branch, the feeling he was being watched—
Thom bolted out of the trees, running across the field without concern of being spotted. Sword drawn, he ran for the twin spruce trees marking their camp.
Fifty paces from the camp.
Forty.
The trees swayed in the building breeze, seeming to laugh at him. In his mind, he saw the slaughtered peddler, the headless horse, the blood-soaked bodies of his friends amid the burning wreckage of Droman Meadows.
Thirty paces away.
Twenty.
Ten.
He crashed through the spruce boughs and saw the thin tendril of smoke from their smoldering fire rising above a small hillock, like a beacon to their camp.
Fool, he thought. You’re so stupid, Thom Meeks.
He didn’t see his wife and daughters. He didn’t see—
He cleared the barrier and saw his family sleeping as they were when he left. Chest heaving, he dropped the sword and smothered the smoldering coals with soil, watching the trees and waiting for monsters to burst forth. Without speaking, he shook each of them awake.
Kira gave a confused start but as she opened her mouth in question, she recognized the danger in Thom’s eyes.
The daughters swiveled their heads, searching the dappled light of the copse for signs of danger. The past two nights taught them when to be frightened, and this was one of those times. Thom pressed a finger to his lips to keep them quiet as he pulled them each to their feet.
Their stomachs snarled with hunger and their sore legs protested the thought of further travel. But nobody complained. Their eyes carried a knowing fear, a remembrance of the horrors which pursued them out of Droman Meadows.
He led them out of the copse, parallel to the Mylan Road and behind the scattering of trees which ran northward through the fields. The road appeared bloody in the warm, morning light, stretching for miles into the distance without sign of movement. Any travelers would have long since been slaughtered by the dread wolves hunting along this path. And where were those monsters now? Were they among the trees, crouching behind the next tangle of brush and ready to spring upon them?
He thought he saw bristled, black fur along the periphery of every hill, razor claws poised behind every tree. When the wind whistled through the tree tops, he thought he heard the baleful howls of the beasts coming closer.
Thom rushed his family northward, alternating between running and jogging for the better part of the next hour, until he knew they could not keep up the pace. Since they fled their camp, he had not seen any sign of the dread wolves or an enemy. That didn’t mean the monsters were not stalking them within the trees, but he believed the immediate danger passed.
As they continued their trek toward the perceived safety of Mylan, Thom noticed something else. The tree line bordered the road from Droman Meadows to Drake’s Pass, but from just beyond the pass to their current location, it began to veer eastward. The swerve was so subtle, he hadn’t noticed the change. Whereas the trees stood a hundred paces from the road at their last camp, they were now roughly one hundred and fifty paces away. As he studied the divergence on the horizon between the road and tree line, Thom estimated the trees would soon be three hundred or four hundred paces from the road.
The fading tree line made him feel as though a power wanted to trick them into entering the bordering forests to the east. The coercion seemed clever—almost devious. He shook the thought out of his head.
It is only a divergence between the trees and the road. If we continue moving toward Mylan, we will find another line of trees growing through the field near the road.
Thom stopped without saying a word. Kira and the girls walked a few paces past him before they stopped as well.
“What is it, Thom?” Kira asked.
Thom looked through his wife, his mouth moving but not making words as he wrestled with the thoughts in his head. They stood at a crossroads. Should they continue to move beyond the seclusion of the flora and accept they would soon be a great distance from the road, or should they risk the possibility of encountering enemies?
Do not deviate from the path.
He heard the rasp of the sorcerer’s voice as though the cloaked figure stood behind him. Thom spun completely around, seeing only the surprised faces of his wife and daughters.
“Thom?” Kira asked, grasping his shoulder.
“It’s the monsters again, isn’t it, Daddy?” Delia asked. “The monsters.”
“Shhhh.”
Thom pressed his finger to his lips and they went quiet. Sarra’s hands clawed at her skirts as her eyes darted back and forth between the trees. Even the twins wrapped arms around their older sister, looking into the gloom of the distant forest to the east. The shadows spilled long out of the eastern forest like ink from a bottle.
He not only heard the sorcerer’s voice, he swore he felt the man’s hot breath on the back of his neck. Thom rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on reality and not visual or auditory illusions. But the voice could not have been any clearer in that moment even if it was Kira shouting at him.
The keening of the morning wind rustled the tree branches and they scraped together like ancient oracle bones.
He loosened his cloak at the neck and pushed his matted hair away from his sweaty face, locks sticking to his forehead like a wet cloth.
“It grows warmer still,” Thom said.
“Spring finally comes,” Sarra said.
Her eyes searched for the new blooms of wildflowers which should have covered the valley this time of year. She saw only parched fields of dirt and weed shoots poking out of the soil. The morning breeze felt off and Sarra wrinkled her nose as though she was downwind of carrion.
Thom caught the scent, too.
“This is not spring,” he said.
The air had a dirty, sticky quality to it, like rancid syrup spilling from a long dead tree. It made him want to rinse off in a nearby stream.
“We cannot continue along this route. We are being drawn away from the king’s road and I do not like it.”
“But is it safe to travel along the road, Daddy?” Krea asked.
“We have no choice. We must hasten along the road, always on the lookout for other travelers. If we remain observant, we will be able to find a place of hiding before we are spotted.”
“And perhaps we will come across the King’s soldiers,” Kira said, nodding to her daughters.
That brought a smile to Delia’s face but the other girls looked doubtful.
Thom started walking again, cutting a diagonal path through fields stirring from winter’s slumber. Several minutes later, they reached the Mylan Road. His eyes moved between the hilly horizon and forest, glancing back with wary knowledge of what stalked their trail. He studied the dirt for tracks and found no sign of recent travel except for the twin crevices and horse hooves marking a peddler’s wagon. He shivered, wondering if it was the same horse and peddler who met their fate in the pass.
By noon, they passed the Merith River, its waters heliographing under the sun in whites and oranges that blinded them. The river, choked with ice melt from the higher terrain, ran to the edge of the road and roared beneath tall pines and budding deciduous trees. Thom knew from maps tha
t the waterway eventually curved back to the west and ran into the Sea of Mylan.
The road veered east to avoid the river. In times of rapid snow melt and storms, the water eclipsed its banks and swallowed the Mylan Road, cutting off trade and travel for weeks.
For several minutes, the family paralleled the rapids which slowed as the banks widened to the width of a small village. Here, they could almost forget their peril, caught up in the soothing churn of water over rock with the air freshened by the river. Thom thought of Otter Stream, the turbulent brook along the southern border of Droman Meadows, where the village boys fished and sailed toy ships. He remembered his own childhood on its banks and could almost feel the crisp chill of the water. Thom shook the memory and put a hand over his heart where a dull ache throbbed.
They moved beyond the river, the road curving northward as the roar of the waters drifted away to the northwest in a hollow drone like the wind at the end of a long tunnel. The air took on the same unwashed feel it had before, as though no rain or snow scoured it clean this year. The temperature grew warmer as they moved north, feeling more like a mid-spring heat. Yet the flora did not explode in buds so much as it seemed to retract itself from the air, bending away from the sun as though sickened. Something rotted, almost fetid, was on the wind, too. Kira yanked down on her shawl despite the sweat beading on her forehead.
Sarra donned the crown of flowers and this refocused the twins from the scent of the wind toward the chiding of their older sister. At first, Krea and Jasmine elbowed one another and giggled in each other’s ears. Sarra saw the twins from the corner of her eye, and though she didn’t wish them to tease her, she was too lost in thought of Bran to pay them much mind.
Delia walked between Thom and Kira, her mood lightened by the river and the warm sun. She talked again of dancing at the inn, of meeting real warriors in Mylan and perhaps even the king. She talked of many things, until her voice was all Thom or Kira heard.
Sarra ignored them, so the twins began to mimic Sarra’s voice.
“Oh, I cannot wait to dance with Bran at the inn. He is as dashing as a prince,” Krea said, batting her eyes.
“And as strong and brave as the mightiest warrior in the land,” Jasmine said.
“If only we could run away together and marry, just like in the fairytales.”
Thom, Kira and Delia walked several strides ahead of the others, the gap widening as Sarra slowed so she could better hear her sisters’ taunts.
Jasmine took Krea’s hands in hers, curtsied, and said, “Oh Bran, do you really think I am the most beautiful girl in the valley?”
“Why, yes,” Krea said, lowering her voice in an exaggerated version of Bran Allador. “You are as fair as a cloudless sky in summer, as beautiful as the first flower of springtime.”
“Oooh, tell me more, tell me more.”
“Your hair is like honey, the taste of your lips like wine.”
“Oh, Bran.”
“When the sun strikes your hair, it glows like—”
“Stop it,” Sarra said.
“—the golden leaves of autumn, and the ocean waters at sunset.”
“I said, stop.”
“Oh my,” Jasmine said. “I do believe we have upset the princess.”
“Oh, we mustn’t,” Krea said. “For she is the fairest in the land and if the prince were to find out—”
“I’m warning you,” Sarra said.
“Warning me?” Jasmine said, the levity extinguished from her eyes. “If mother and father were not here to protect you, you would not talk so bold.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
But as she said it, Sarra glanced up the road. Her parents became smaller, drifting farther away. She swore she saw the air ripple behind her departing family as though waves of heat bubbled off the road. As she squinted at the shimmering, translucent wall along the road, she realized she could no longer hear any sounds from the north. An unseen barrier reflected all noise in that direction. Jasmine’s voice spun her around.
“You always get your way and we are tired of it. But you are a long way from home now. You aren’t special out here. In fact, you’re no better than us.”
Jasmine snatched the flower crown from Sarra’s head.
“Give it back.”
“Come take it from me,” Jasmine said.
Her eyes flared, and although Sarra was taller and two years older, she paused instead of stepping forward.
“I knew you didn’t have the guts.”
As Jasmine handed the crown to Krea, Sarra slapped her across the face. Jasmine felt the red outline of her sister’s hand rising into a welt like a bad sunburn. She stared into Sarra’s eyes with a resolute calmness that unsettled the older sister more than if she brandished a knife.
Sarra looked north again, the heads of her parents and Delia disappearing below a small hill. She felt an empty, raw gnawing in her gut. The distant air over the road shimmered like an apparition.
Jasmine’s face contorted into an uncomfortable, greasy smile.
“We should go,” Sarra said. “They are getting away from us.”
“You have had this coming for a long time.”
Jasmine threw herself at her older sister and as Sarra fell into the field off the road, a howl swelled out of the south.
Sarra sprung to her feet, spitting her words. “This is your fault. This is all your fault.’
Another howl. This one from the west and much closer.
“Where are mother and father?” Jasmine asked in a high-pitched voice. She looked northward along the Mylan Road and saw the three imprints of her family’s steps disappearing over the ridge, as though they walked off the edge of the Earth.
“How could they not notice we stopped? We were right behind them,” Krea said.
Krea and Jasmine exchanged knowing glances, their eyes revealing they were responsible for falling behind. Sarra knew her sisters intentionally hung back and that was the reason they separated from their parents.
The third baying came from where the river brushed up against the road.
Another howl rose from the north, so close it had to be just below the hill crest where their family disappeared.
The sounds of the dread wolves seemed to rise all around them.
“What are we going to do?” Jasmine asked. She began to cry.
Sarra grabbed the twins by the arms. “If you want to live, do as I say.”
She pulled them east across the field, running and stumbling over the buckled terrain. Soft, thawing soil pulled at their shoes. The horizon bounced and twisted with each jolt of foot against meadow.
Pricker bushes snagged at their ankles, ripping thin lacerations and making them yelp. They tripped and fell, then ran again. The howls drew nearer and Sarra feared if she looked back, she would see the blood-soaked fangs of the monsters right behind them.
“Run for the trees.”
Sarra let go of their arms and the three sisters hurried toward the outer edge of the eastern forest. The midday shadows pooled at their feet like the black mire of a swamp. Sarra did not notice the tingly prickle of fear running down her back upon seeing the congregation of blackness. She heard only the pursuing monsters and felt the thunder of her heart thrumming through her body.
As though accepting weary travelers to the inn, the forest welcomed them inside with spindly, crooked arms.
Chapter 16
“For the lord’s sake, Thom. They were just here,” Kira said, her eyes like saucers. “How could they disappear without us noticing?”
“Sarra?”
“Where are you, Krea?”
“Jasmine?”
The road ascended sharply into a crest behind them and as Thom stepped forward, he struck an invisible barrier that felt as solid as a castle wall. Thom squinted, sensing the air wavering above the crest. Their cries did not reverberate hollow through the valley. Rather, their voices seemed to die at the crest and reflect back at them, as though they shouted inside of an e
nclosed room.
“We have to go back to find them,” Kira said. “Hurry, Thom.”
As Thom climbed the road, he felt a pressure against his ears. He remembered Marik’s magic, but the pressure was more intense this time, as though he was at the ocean’s bottom with a day’s journey of water above him. He doubled over, first clutching his ears and then his stomach. He wanted to vomit.
This is not like the sorcerer’s magic. No, not like that at all.
Something enveloped him, an energy older than time, a power that smelled of old, musty parchment and bowls of cream left too long in the sun. He dared not open his mouth, fearful he would taste the foul power.
“Thom.”
Thom looked toward his wife and Delia. She’d called his name several times and he had not heard until now. As he stumbled back toward her, Kira’s skin paled and her face stiffened like a clay mask.
“What is wrong? Why didn’t you answer me?”
His ears popped and the presence vanished. His stomach settled as he drew in long, deep breaths.
“Didn’t you feel it?” he asked.
Kira shook her head, looking at Thom as if he had grown a third arm.
“What are you talking about? The girls. Our daughters. We must find them at once.”
Delia cried into Kira’s leg, one fearful eye locked on her father as the first howl of the dread wolf tore through the afternoon sky. It came from the south toward where his older daughters disappeared. Thom forgot about the odd barrier, rushing up the incline to where he could survey the terrain southward. He cleared the crest, not feeling the hurtful, sickening pressure from before. The sun shifted west of the road, beginning its slow yet inevitable afternoon descent toward darkness. The shadows, though they pooled along the bases of scattered trees, bled eastward as though pointing him in the direction he must pursue.
Another dread wolf answered the call of the first. Delia’s legs froze and Kira had to drag her up the incline. Others answered the unholy calls. Thom realized creatures flanked them to the north, west and south. Although he could not yet see the beasts, they drew nearer.
“You must be my eyes to the north,” he said to Kira as he unsheathed the sword. He ran south along the Mylan Road, retracting their steps.