Page 9

Chapter Nine

‘ W e’re leaving.’ I marched out of Baba Yaga’s bedroom to where the others were milling around, building a fire, filtering through her belongings, and generally making themselves at home. ‘We can’t stay here.’

‘But we planned to spend the night,’ Gwin said from the kitchen, where she was sorting through jars. ‘We’ll have to sleep out in the open if we don’t.’

‘I know somewhere else we can go,’ I said, thinking of Cotus’s cabin. ‘It’s still a long trek away, but it’s too dangerous to stay here. We might be caught.’

‘Caught by who?’ Mae asked from where she was crouched by the fireplace.

‘Does it matter who? Someone who has staked enough of a claim to carve numbers in all the surrounding trees. Some of the gangs of Snatchers who come to the Yawn hunting swoon aren’t worth interfering with.’

She rose to her feet, dusting her hands on her pants. ‘Or it could have been Binders.’

‘It could be Binders,’ I agreed quickly. Binders hunted her kind and sold them into the blood trade. If that would make them more likely to agree to leave, then I’d lean into that theory. ‘Let’s try and avoid that sort of encounter if we can help it.’ I caught the sceptical looks Gwin and Daethie exchanged.

‘Alright,’ Mae said, eyes darting towards the doorway, where the others were still scouting the clearing outside. ‘But you‘ll have to convince Goras. He’ll hate switching plans last minute.’

‘I’ll handle him.’

Once outside, I caught sight of Goras near the treeline, his arms crossed as he scanned the perimeter. His expression darkened when he saw me approaching, clearly sensing I had news he wouldn’t like.

‘We’re not staying here,’ I said, meeting his gaze directly. ‘I don’t like the markers on the trees. Anyone bold enough to mark their land like that is serious about keeping strangers out. It’s too risky.’

Goras narrowed his eyes, glancing back at the cottage and then at me. ‘We cannot risk open ground overnight in this part of the mountains.’

‘We won’t. I know of somewhere else we can go. It’s still a long walk, but it’s riskier to stay here.’

A tense silence settled between us, and then, with a reluctant grunt, Goras nodded. We quickly gathered anything we’d salvaged and regrouped, walking back down the path out of the clearing when the sun was beginning to dip into afternoon.

As we passed the tree with the number nineteen carved into it, I was suddenly gripped with a fierce, burning rage. He wanted to scare me? How dare he think I would scare so easily. I stopped, turned back to the cottage: empty, careworn, the number twenty only barely visible from here, and magic burned in my blood, the feeling a soothing outlet for the fury. I remembered the sound of his smooth voice counting out the numbers, remembered the thrill of running from him.

Not fast enough, my dear. It’s like you wanted to be caught.

I drew the magic, drew the rage , into my palms and threw my hands before me. Lighting slashed through the clearing, searing-bright and landing with a deafening crack! My eardrums shuddered, my legs gave out as the ground shook, and I dropped heavily to one knee, hands clasping my head as pain tore through it. I groaned through gritted teeth, my vision swimming into darkness for a moment before there were hands on my shoulders and voices all around me. Angry voices. Shocked voices. Gwinellyn’s voice, right beside my ear.

‘Are you alright?’

‘Yes,’ I said, though I wasn’t. I felt like I was going to be sick. But with some difficulty, I blinked my vision clear to look up and see what damage I’d wrought. There was a huge crater off to the right of the cottage, where dirt had been kicked up in every direction and the ground had been torn away. But Baba Yaga’s cottage was on fire, the hungry flames making quick work of the thatched roof, licking enthusiastically around the edges of a great, gaping hole in the corner of the house where the bolt had struck. The windows I’d once cleaned for her had shattered, part of the wall reduced to rubble.

‘What have you done?!’ Goras was demanding as he appeared before me. ‘And why ?’

But I didn’t answer. Just stared over his shoulder, feeling an immense sense of satisfaction at the destruction I’d wrought. So much more striking than some paltry numbers carved into trees. He was ranting and raving about my instability or what have you, and Elias was yelling back at him, and I had the sense that Mae was trying to rein them both in, but none of it appeared to touch me because I was so light-headed and dizzy as I seemed to drift just beyond my body, not quite connected to my surroundings. Whenever I blinked, the moment my eyes were shut stretched impossibly long as a dark threatened to overwhelm me, but I managed to surface at the last moment each time. Perhaps it was the strength of the bolt that affected me this way. Perhaps it was how little thought I’d put into the amount of magic I was going to use. It had just erupted out of me, unrestrained, bloated on rage. I’d have to be more careful.

But oh, it had felt good in the moment. It had felt good to destroy something, to see my power at work.

I hoped Draven would return here. I hoped he would see the destruction and tremble for what it meant.

Come and get me.

‘Rhi, we have to go.’

I blinked Mae into focus. She was crouched before me, my hand in hers. I was on the ground, I realised. I didn’t know when I’d sat down.

‘Leozaurs live in these parts. They’re curious. They’ll be attracted to the noise and the smoke,’ she continued. ‘We need to go now.’

‘What’s a leozaur?’ I asked as she helped me to my feet.

‘Not something we want following us. A sort of winged feline even a wyvern will think twice about crossing paths with.’

A memory gripped me, of a winged creature with a spine-studded ruff leaping over me, wings snapping out to catch the air. Of one slinking across a cage in a menagerie, tearing Lord Boccius to shreds. It cleared my head enough for me to pick up my pace in following Mae and the others, leaving the burning hut behind us. We strung out in a line, winding through the narrow gorge Baba Yaga had called home, and there was none of the chatter now that had marked the beginning of the day. Tension rode the whole group, and it felt like a silence loaded with judgement. Judgement of me.

After one too many sidelong glances in my direction, I finally said, ‘It seems you were all worried for nothing. I’ve never seen quieter woods than this.’

‘That’s not a good thing,’ Mae said in a low voice, turning back to me to speak. ‘It shouldn’t be this quiet.’

‘The birds are smarter than we are,’ Kelvhan growled behind me.

‘What do you mean?’ I flashed a glance around me, all the thrill of destroying the cottage draining away. The trees were still and silent, the gloom between them deep. Would they reach out to grasp us the way they had when I’d gone looking for Baba Yaga? Surely not when I was travelling with people the plant life seemed to adore so ardently. ‘Is there something out there?’

Mae paused to fall into step beside me, touching my arm. ‘Keep it down. They’re hunting us.’

Those words sent chills of fear scampering across my skin, quickening my pace as well as my pulse. ‘How do you know?’

‘I can feel them,’ she replied, and suddenly their magic, that ability to reach out and sense each other, felt a whole lot more useful than I’d ever thought. Her hand remained on my arm, slowing my steps. ‘Don’t run, or they’ll give chase. We have to stay together and stay calm. They’re less likely to strike when we’re in a group.’

‘What do we do?’ The words came out as little more than a hasty breath.

‘Just keep moving.’

My heart fluttered like a moth at a window as I tried to do as I was told, tried to keep my pace measured while my every instinct was screaming at me to run. I could feel it myself now, that sense that we were being watched tingling down the back of my neck.

A cry behind us snapped at my calm and I whipped around, already bracing myself for blood, for flashing teeth. Daethie was on the ground, having tripped over a rogue branch. Kelvhan had turned back, reaching out to help her up. And behind them both, the glint of eyes, the silhouette of a shape. A low, huffing growl. Kel grabbed Daethie’s arm, pulling her to her feet. They both stumbled forwards, and the eyes sunk closer to the ground as the creature crouched low.

Mae was tugging on my arm. ‘Now we run!’

We surged into a stumbling dash, dodging trees, tripping on stones, my sight fixed on Mae’s back as I tried to follow her, tried to tune out the screaming panic that had me by the throat, choking my breath.

The growling had grown into a snarl behind us, joined by one to the left where I wouldn’t dare to look, only veering away from the sound as much as I could without losing the others completely. Mae was just a flash of pale pink dress and purple headband before me, dipping in and out of sight as she wove between the trees. The ground was uneven, sharp stones biting into my shoes, and I stumbled. My knee jarred as I hit the dirt, but I ignored it as I pulled myself up. Too slowly. Too late. Movement flashed to my right, and suddenly one of the creatures was before me, as terrifying as I remembered it. Flat, lizard-like nose, feline skull, wicked thorns running down the back of its neck, wings flared out either side and huge, luminous yellow eyes with slitted pupils. It opened its jaws in a vicious snarl, before lunging forwards. I screamed, dodging it by a breath. Jaws snapped on empty air and I was running faster than I’d ever run in my life, but where were the others? I couldn’t see them! Had they left me to fend for myself? But no, there was Daethie, pushing past me, wide eyes flashing in my direction, and Kelvhan gesturing wildly at me to follow. As though I needed the encouragement.

‘This way!’ I heard Elias call from up ahead. ‘There’s a rockface. We can hide!’

I had no idea how rock would help us when it seemed only like a good way to wind up cornered, but I pushed harder, following Daethie and Kel. She was flagging, I realised. Hobbled with a frantic limp. She had an arm through Kel’s and he was trying to help her. I took a hold of her other arm and looped it around my shoulders, and together we all but lifted her from the floor. And there, up ahead, I could see the others surging towards a towering rockface, the wall of the gorge, and in that wall a dark slit of space. I hoped Elias knew what he was about, because there’d be nowhere else to run in there.

We barely slowed down as we reached the crack. Elias and Gwin vanished inside first. Goras paused by the entrance like he was braced to fight the beasts as Tanathil slid past him. I stuffed Daethie in before me, turning her shoulders to fit, and as she disappeared into the dark I followed her, wriggling through, scraping my arms, the adrenaline of the chase immediately compounded by the panic of being in so tight a space. But I kept moving, praying that the crack was deep enough to fit us all. Kel was grunting and muttering right behind me as he attempted to scrape himself through the narrow space, and just as my panic surged again at the thought of being stuck in here, the rock widened. I stumbled forwards, throwing my hands out and catching what I thought was Gwinellyn from the sound of the gasp she made as I thumped into her.

The thick, dusty air rumbled with another grating snarl as I found wall, pressed myself against it with people crammed either side of me, making room for Gors and Kel to cram in as well. The wedge of light that was the opening flickered and wavered with movement as the snarling continued, and as my eyes adjusted I realised it was the leozaurs reaching in, swiping at us with their massive paws, growling their frustration as they couldn’t reach us. Those barrel chests, those huge leathery wings made it impossible for them to fit.

‘How did you know they’d get stuck?’ I asked Elias in a whisper, bubbles of hysteria rising in my chest. I felt like laughing. Which was mad. We were still trapped.

‘I didn’t,’ he replied.

‘I’m glad I didn’t know that before I squeezed inside.’ I was still too flooded with adrenaline to even imagine being trapped in here with the creatures. Especially not when they were huffing and clawing at the entrance. ‘Now what?’

‘We wait. They’re as easily bored as they are curious. If we don’t do anything interesting for long enough, they’ll leave us alone.’ Mae’s voice threaded through the dark, identifying herself as one of the silhouettes squashed to my left, almost swallowed by Goras’s hulking form.

‘Wonderful,’ I muttered. The air was stale and thick in here, and only becoming more so with the eight of us breathing away.

‘Can we get a little wriggle room up the front there? Some of us are crammed into Kel’s armpit.’ Tan’s words were distinctly muffled.

‘There’s plenty of room in front if you want to trade an armpit for a Leozaur’s mouth,’ Kel replied.

As though to remind us that they were still there, another growl rumbled through the air, seeming to almost shake the stone around us.

I realised Daethie was leaning heavily on me, her breathing laboured. ‘Are you alright?’ I asked her, shifting my stance so the wall would take more of our weight.

‘Oh, I’m alright, I’ve had worse,’ she said, though she didn’t sound alright. ‘You helped me.’ There was a lick of surprise in the way she said it that made me bristle.

‘Did you think I’d let you and Kel get eaten?’

‘Perhaps.’

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. Just focused on watching that shifting light at the mouth of the crevice that indicated the leozaurs were still pacing.

Time passed. We kept quiet, hoping to provide no entertainment for our hunters, though Tanathil kept whispering riddles and trying to get us to guess the answers. Gwinellyn and Elias were clearly squashed in next to each other and content to be so, murmuring to each other in voices too low for me to make out the words, their tone a caress in the dark. Something in my chest twisted and ached at the sound. I smothered the feeling, unwilling to attend to it. To name it.

The stillness was the first sign that we’d been left alone. Then the quiet. The rumbling growls grew fainter, further between, until they died away completely.

‘Are they gone?’ Gwin whispered.

‘Don’t test it yet,’ Goas replied. ‘Wait.’

I wasn’t about to argue with that. We waited as the light changed, shifting into late afternoon, before finally venturing out, creeping back into the open one by one. I ducked my head as I stepped back through the crevice, remembering too well those leathery wings that could still descend on us from above.

Gwin stepped out of the opening behind me, peering at the surrounding trees. ‘They look gone.’

Elias was a breath behind her, so close he could have been her shadow. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘If they catch wind of us, they’ll give chase again. We’d better move fast and find this cabin. There’ll be more than leozaurs hunting us if we’re out after nightfall.’

We reached Cotus’s cabin well after nightfall, as it turned out, after a tense walk filled with little of the laughter or talking from earlier in the day. Everyone was twitchy, ready to jump at a shadow or the rustling of wind in the trees, especially when dusk came swooping through the mountains. But even with that ominous warning about what else might be hunting us after nightfall, there had been little to do but walk on.

So the sight of the derelict little cabin was sweet relief. It looked even more neglected than when I’d stayed there with Cotus on my first journey into the Yawn. The roof had slumped further to one side and looked to be kept from falling only by the stranglehold of the vines creeping all over the place. But it had walls and a door, and we piled into that little room, cramming the floor with the thickly-woven blankets that would be serving as our bedrolls. When that was done, I drifted outside while the others tried to set a fire and scrounge together something to eat. It felt odd, being here again. It was too easy to remember my powerless desperation, running into the Yawn to beg Baba Yaga to help me find a way around my deal with Draven. I stared up at the cold stars and wondered where he was. Imagined the moment I would see him again. Imagined the thrill of revealing to him how the balance of power had shifted.

Gwin come out of the cabin to stand beside me, nursing the distinct air of someone about to have an uncomfortable conversation.

‘Rhiandra,’ she began, tone apologetic.

I shot her a sidelong glance. ‘Gwinellyn.’

‘What happened back there… with the magic… we’re all a little worried about you.’

‘I’m not going mad,’ I said immediately. ‘I just wanted whoever thought Baba Yaga’s cottage was theirs to claim to realise it wasn’t.’

‘I’m not saying you’re going mad.’ She embraced the pause that followed this statement for far too long. I wondered what she meant me to read into it. That she wasn’t saying I was going mad, but the others were? That she wasn’t saying I was going mad yet? ‘But I would like you to promise you won’t use your magic again before we reach Oceatold.’

‘And why should I promise that?’

‘Well, for a few reasons. One being that I don’t want it drawing attention to us, which is a reason I know you’ll understand. Another is that it would be better for our enemies not to know about your magic because then they can’t plan for it if we need to use it to our advantage. A third is that, well, it’s really scary.’ She laughed as she added this last piece, which was well-handled on her part. I considered her reasoning, acknowledging that it was sound, even if I didn’t like what it meant for me. I understood the need to be discrete as we moved through the land as much as anyone.

‘Alright,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not enough of an idiot to go flinging it about willy nilly out there, though, right? You don’t need to scold me like a naughty child.’

‘I know that.’

We stood for another few minutes just watching those icy, glinting stars. Then a low, yipping howl stuttered through the air, and the wind picked up, so cold it seemed to be touched with the snow off the mountain tops.

‘Let’s go in,’ Gwin suggested, chaffing at her arms. ‘I’m exhausted.’

As we turned to go inside, I stole one last look at the stars, feeling their cold, indifferent light prickling against my skin. The howl lingered in my ears, low and haunting, as if some ancient part of the land itself were stirring. For just a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of movement far off in the shadows beyond the cabin. A trick of the dim light, I told myself as I shut the door behind us.