Page 125 of The Moorwitch

“He’s coming!” Sylvie shouts, glancing out a window then pulling back as a silver-tipped arrow slices through it and impales a vine with a squelch.

Leaning heavily on Mr. MacDougal, I follow Sylvie and Mrs. MacDougal up the stairs, clambering over vines and spaces where the steps burned through entirely. Charred bits of wood fall from the ceiling, the house groaning as if it is doing all it can to hold itself together. Captain snuffs the doors and singed drapes, his hackles still raised.

The front doors crash open, one coming entirely off its hinges, and I catch a glint of silver armor in the doorway before we turn down another corridor.

“It’s no use,” I gasp out. “There’s nowhere to run.”

“We’re not just giving up!” Sylvie says.

We press deeper into the house, hearing the fae advance behind us. They hack at vines with their swords and kick down doors. I hear a crash and hope the ceiling caved in on Lachlan, but then I hear him shout out, “You cannot possibly elude me, niece!”

“Is he really my uncle?” Sylvie asks Mrs. MacDougal.

“Aye, lass.” The old woman shoulders open another door and ushers us all through. “It’s why your brother withheld your magic from you. He and your mother knew if you began channeling, it’d only be a matter of time before your faerie blood stirred.”

Sylvie looks delighted, even as her murderous kin pursues us deeper and deeper into the ruined bowels of her house. “My faerie blood! Iknewit! I knew I was terribly special!”

Mrs. MacDougal groans and drags her down another corridor, then up a stairwell. I’m so racked with pain, my eyes dancing with dark spots, I cannot even tell where we are. Lachlan is getting closer; I hear him knocking at the walls, sweetly calling out my name and Sylvie’s, toying with us now.

In my fevered, anguished mind, his voice warps into a gross imitation of my aunt’s; his sword hilt thumping on the walls becomesthe rap of her heeled boots. Terror courses through me, tangling the years into a great, impossible knot, until it seems I am eight years old again. Where is my hidden passageway now? Where is my tunnel through the walls that will carry me to safety?

Then I realize: I know exactly where it is.

Chapter Thirty-Six

“Wait!” I cry, pulling Mr. MacDougal’s arm until he stops. “I know what to do!”

He and his wife look at me askance, perhaps thinking, rightfully, howIwas the one to cause all this mess in the first place.

“My room,” I say. “Go to my room, and I think I can save us.”

Whatever doubts may linger in Mrs. MacDougal’s mind, she seems to brush them aside, and she grimly nods. “We’re nearly there anyway.”

Two hidden servant’s doors lead us directly to the hallway where my room is, but we have to scurry under a fallen beam to reach my door. While Mr. MacDougal shoulders it open, I listen to Lachlan calling out further down the corridor, sounding angrier now.

The door finally opens; it had been blocked by more burnt rubble. My stomach lurches, thinking the fire might have destroyed everything in here, but then I see it—the corner of my valise, where I’d dropped it on the other side of the bed.

“Open it!” I cry. “Hang up the tapestry inside.”

“What good will that do?” Mrs. MacDougal demands, as Sylvie unlatches the valise.

“You’ll see,” I tell her.

I lean against the door and hear footsteps coming down the corridor. My slippers are set against the wall, remarkably unharmed, and I pull them onto my dirty, scraped feet.

The MacDougals hang the tapestry on the curtain rod, then look at me. I nod, then push forward, Sylvie helping me along. Every step, every breath, is a knife of unbearable pain. Tears run from my eyes; they taste of salt and soot.

I take the guide thread in one hand and Sylvie’s in the other; she in turn holds Mrs. MacDougal’s hand, Mrs. MacDougal takes hold of her husband, and he grips Captain’s collar.

“Ready?” I say, my voice strained.

At that moment the door to my room bursts from its hinges and Lachlan appears in the doorway. His sword shines in his hand, and his eyes are angry blue flames.

“Stop—!”

I don’t hear the rest of his shout, because I push through the threads of the tapestry. They part once more for me, and I pull the others along.

We spill into the strange world of the shifting threads, a tangle of limbs and hands, keeping hold of each other. But another hand comes too—Lachlan took hold of Mr. MacDougal’s coat, and I turn to see his head and shoulders pushing through the tapestry, with the rest of him soon to follow.