Page 84

The human woman was awake now, and as Cub watched, she reached for him with her tiny hand.

Cub jerked away and roared.

The woman’s hands flew up to cover her ears, but Cub’s roar was loud enough to shake the Break. The ground bucked the woman’s body, sent her tumbling over the edge.

The man screamed and grabbed the hood of her coat. She scrambled back up onto the rock, and the man pulled hard on her arms. Then they held each other, making strange broken sounds, so soft and sad.

Cub stared at them. He heard the rush of blood through their frightened bodies. Pounding heart to pounding heart. These humans, they couldseehim. His mothers had told him that humans held none of the Old Wild inside them. Their eyes were too simple and small to glimpse great beasts like Cub.

But maybe something was changing, after so many long years.

Maybe,Cub thought, a shiver prickling his hide, the Old Wild had decided to help.

The man whispered, “If this is the end, know that I have loved you deeply and happily, my darling.”

“I love you, Ford,” said the woman. “I love you, I love you.”

Cub forgot he was angry. His tired old heart ached as it hadn’t in years and years. Maybe ever since his mothers died.Love.He knew that word.

He leaned over and sniffed the humans’ tiny dark heads. They stared up at him, holding each other and trembling like leaves blown off their limbs.

And suddenly Cub remembered something from the day the eastern witches’ angry fire tore open the Vale’s skies.

His mothers had looked so frightened. Scared and small and lost.

These humans’ faces looked just the same.

The woman sat up tall and asked, “Why?”

At the same time, Cub rumbled that very question. “Why?”

The woman crept toward the edge of her cliff. The man whispered, “Fern, no!”

But the woman was brave. Cub knew then that she must be a mother.

He lowered his head to stare at her. His eye was as tall as her whole body.

The woman said, “Why do you hurt us, Gulgot?”

Cub was confused. “Gulgot” was a word he had heard the else-hand use, but he did not know what it meant. And now this human was talking to him likehewas Gulgot.

He blew hot air out of his snout. “Why?” he asked again. “Who?”

“You are turning our land into one of darkness,” the woman said. “The higher you climb, the faster your shadows spill out into the world. They’re turning swamps into monsters, animals into vicious beasts. Fog sits heavy across the land, choking the trees and stinking up the rivers. And every day, the Break widens. The Vale will shatter.”

The woman began to cry, and as Cub watched her, he began to cry too, mammoth tears that splashed onto the rock.

“Why do you do this?” the woman asked. “Why do you hurt us?”

“Why?” asked Cub, his words grinding like rough metal plates, for he was not used to speaking to anyone but himself. “Why did my mothers die?”

The human man gasped.

The woman stared at Cub, her face gone scrunched. She was confused, just as Cub was!

“Your mothers?” she asked.

Cub groaned in frustration. He shook his massive head back and forth, back and forth. That made a wind that nearly blew the humans away into the darkness.