Page 65 of The Moorwitch

I notice more movement flanking me; shadows run outside my line of sight, like wolves stalking prey. Always they vanish just as my eyes fall on the places they were. But once, I fully glimpse ...something. A creature mottled gray, with burning red eyes and great, knobby legs.

Gasping, I crash through the woods. Every step I take, thorns push out of the earth and scrape my ankles. My skirt rips on a branch, a strip of cloth left dangling behind. The shadows hurry me along, and it seems they are getting nearer and bolder; I see a flash of dark fur, hear a snap of teeth.

Finally, unable to run any further, my breath scraping my throat, I stop and lean, panting, on a tree. Then, with a sob of horror, I seespiders crawling all over the trunk, and they swarm over my hands. I recoil, shrieking, batting them off my arms.

Despair overwhelms me, and I sink to my knees. I try to think of what to do, of some spell to light the way. But my thoughts disintegrate before they can lead anywhere. The shadow-creatures lurk just out of sight, but I feel them circling, circling. My scent is in their noses.

“Please,” I whisper. “Someone help me.”

From behind me, slithering and sly, comes a reply.

“Mydear,” she says, “you had only to ask. Turn around and face me, girl.”

I rise slowly, my soul emptying of panic, of courage, of defiance. I become dread. Black, vast, consuming. When I turn, I know whom I will see, and she does not disappoint.

Tall and skeletal, my aunt looms before me in terrifying detail. She wears a black gown, her hair high and elegant, her long-stemmed pipe perched delicately between her fingers.

Horribly, she smiles at me.

“Wicked Rose,” she hisses. “I told you that you would come to no good end. I did tell you.”

I run, but every step I take, thorns grasp at me. I trip and go on hands and knees, sobbing, the terror rabid, gnawing at me. I cannot get enough breath. My vision shrinks to a pinpoint. I hear her following behind, a whisper, a susurrus of dry paper over leaves. I can feel her awful smile.

Something lunges out of the trees and takes a snap at my skirt; it rips fabric away with a tear. Spinning, I see a terrible sight: a wolfish thing with eight long, hairy legs and a too-wide mouth, every inch of its expansive gums studded with long, glinting teeth. It scurries away with a scrap of my skirt in its mouth, and I stumble in the other direction, mind bursting with terror. Wherever I go, I hear my aunt’s laughter.

I will die here.

I know it with certainty, and terror infuses me. No matter how fast or far I run, she will follow. As she hasalwaysfollowed. She has been waiting all these years, knowing I would return to her.

“The tree,” I whisper to myself. “I just have to reach the tree. Then it will be over.”

“Fool child!” She appears before me, blocking my way. “You think you can escape what you did to me? You are not worthy. You are nothing! Nothing!”

She stabs her pipe at me, its bowl flaring red.

I cry out, landing hard on the ground and curling up, trying to hide from the coming pain. It’s as if she’s reached into my chest and dug her nails into my heart and is pulling it from me. From every side, the wolf-spiders lunge, hissing and snarling. Their jaws open, their teeth seeking my flesh.

I scream.

All at once a blinding white light floods the trees, so brilliant it banishes every shadow and throws into startling detail every vein on every leaf, a scouring, searching, violent light that passes through trunk and through me, for a moment wiping every thought from my head, filling me with its radiance. My aunt vanishes like smoke before a gale, nothing more than an illusion. The wolf-spiders retreat, whining, and vanish into the woods’ depths.

When the light fades, I see a woman looming over me, her silhouette outlined by the fading glow, her crown tall and jagged.

“Little witch,” she sighs, “what have you done?”

She reaches for me, and at the touch of her cold and lovely fingers, I faint.

Chapter Twenty-One

When I wake, I find myself sunken into a pool of luxurious textiles—silks and velvets, satins and cashmeres. For a moment, I simply relish the textures and the exquisite warmth, like being wrapped in a cocoon.

Then I bolt upright, remembering.

The portal. The wood. My aunt. The monstrous, wolfish spiders.

There’s no sign of any of it now. I’m in an ornate room, every wall a burnished mirror. The ceiling is peaked, and from it hang many chandeliers—all broken, chipped, and faded, but a few candles burn between them. The bed is a nest of blankets and cushions, most of them frayed. But despite the raggedness of the objects, the room is elegant, a shabby memory of grandeur. And it’s drenched in cobwebs.

On a silver-plated credenza, a small music box plays an endlessly repeating melody, and with a start, I realize I know the song. I’ve heard it recently, sung in the sweet voice of Carolina, my former student: