<Bang!> went the boards. She knew she didn’t hear it with her own ears, but the horses were carrying it to her: papa-horse Slip had kicked out and shaken the side of the den or something.
That was too much. She flew out of bed and grabbed her sweater. < Bang!> went the boards again. Rain was <upset> and <wanting fight> and thinking <shadow in the storm.>
She could tell where her door was because light from the common-room came down the hall even when the fire was banked for the night, and it hadn’t been banked too long, because there was a glow in the room. She had no trouble finding her boots.
<Bang!> Thump! went the logs, one sound in her head and one in her ears. That was real for sure; and she thought about waking up mama and papa; but they were asleep and she didn’t want to make a fuss and be told she was silly or dreaming, which was what mama had said the last time she’d come running to their bed, scared. She’d see first.
So she hurried and opened the door to the snow-passage that led from the barracks to the den, and took down the ’lectric light from its shelf and carried it, shining its light up and around and down the wooden walls and floor, wood planks all shiny with ice where the drips were, and icicled in places.
The dark was scary. Vermin like willy-wisps would burrow under the boards or anywhere they could when it got cold, and they got hungry and they’d make holes in the boards and try to bite your ankles; and you mustn’t ever fall if they bit you, that was what mama said, because they’d swarm all over you and eat you till nothing but bones were left. Granpa when she was little had said they liked toes, especially in the wintertime and especially from little girls who didn’t mind and didn’t do what they were supposed to.
But granpa had gone away with grandma and not come back and now her parents didn’t think they were ever coming back. Mama thought they’d fallen off a cliff. Papa thought maybe granpa’s heart might have given out and grandma wouldn’t leave that place. Things did happen out in the Wild.
Things happened, too, in dark passages, where the light made scary shapes on the boards around and underfoot and overhead. She wasn’t supposed to be in the passage before mama and papa were awake. She might get in trouble.
But now she’d mostly done it, anyway, and she was already going to get in trouble—so she figured she might as well find out if Rain was all right, before papa and mama woke up and stopped her and she got in trouble for having done nothing at all.
So on that thought she ran, thump-thump, down the boards, and her light and her shadow went ahead of her.
It was awfully cold. She’d thought she’d just be a minute, and then she wouldn’t need her coat, but a brisk draft was coming through, blowing her hair and chilling right through her clothes.
Then she heard another, slower thumping on the boards, one-two, three-four feet, and she knew that was <Rain in the passage> where Rain wasn’t ever supposed to be. Rain showed up, his eyes shimmering beneath the bangs that mostly covered his face and his split-lipped nose working, nostrils wide, to be sure who she was in spite of the <Jennie with light> that was in his mind. She’d scared him with her giant-shadow, and he scared her with his.
“It’s me,” she said in a quavery voice, but it was always dependent on the rider to be the grown-up, so she talked like mama. “Silly. You can’t turn around. Back up. <Back up.”>
Somebody had left the door open at the den-end of the passage, she thought, and that wasn’t her fault. But when Rain had backed, with her pushing at his chest, all the way back to the den, she saw the door was kicked to flinders.
Rain was scaring her.
Rain was thinking about <something outside the walls> and it hadn’t any shape, or it had a lot of them, and the wind out in the dark was howling like bushdevils. She thought, There’s something out there.
Or somebody out there.
But not—not someone like mama and papa. Not like the villagers. Not like anybody she knew who’d be outside.
She didn’t like it. Rain didn’t. And Slip left the den altogether, an angry darkness headed out into the snow from the open door. Slip couldn’t get out of the camp: the outside gate was always shut. But Slip could get himself clear of every other sending but that and then in a very loud sending let it know it wasn’t welcome, that was what Slip could do. Mom-horse was nervous and angry and Rain would have gone out there, too—but she hadn’t brought her coat and she didn’t want Rain to go out there.
Because there were things in the winter storms that could come right over the walls and get you, grandma had said so when she was little, when once she had opened the door at night. She never forgot it.
<Papa?> she thought. <Papa coming outside.> She didn’t care if she got in trouble. She thought maybe being safe was better.
Something was wrong. Ridley knew it in the ambient before he was entirely awake, and came out of bed in a hurry. So did Callie, and the horses weren’t reaching them sufficiently to carry what they thought to each other, but his own horse Slip was loud enough with the situation as it was. Slip was sending <females> and <male horse> and <living things in the storm> that had a vague resemblance to willy-wisps. Slip didn’t trust what was running through the ambient right now, something that had to do with <Shimmer> and <Rain,> and <Jennie.>
That wasn’t right. The whole center of the business was <scared Jennie.>
“Dammit,” Ridley said, heart speeding with the possibilities: that his daughter was outside he had no need to guess. He struggled into his boots and slammed his foot into the heel on his way for the door. Callie was pulling on her pants. He grabbed his sweater off the chair and pulled it on as he reached the door where he kept the shotgun. “Bring the rifle!” he yelled back at Callie. If you met a vermin-rush a shotgun was the only answer. If it was a bear or a cat you’d better have a punch to take it down, because a shotgun was worthless unless it took it in the face, and in the face meant it was coming over you before it dropped. He didn’t know what they had to contend with. The nature of it wasn’t coming clear to him as he headed into the passageway to the den and met a gust of cold air the minute he opened the door.
He shut the shelter-side door—cardinal rule, not to leave a passageway end unsecured when that door might be the only barrier between you and a breakthrough of vermin.
Then he ran the wooden corridor, the ambient he was getting coming clearer and clearer, that Jennie was in distress, that Slip was upset—Slip was his horse, and Slip was giving him a rush of impressions of <snowy yard, snow falling. Night, cold wind, strange dark shapes in the ambient.> Shimmer was sending her peculiar mare-in-foal antagonism; and <bite and kick,> Rain was sending, in close company with <Jennie here.>
The door was kicked in. The horses had done that. Jennie was close by it, sending <Jennie with Rain, Jennie with pregnant Shimmer>—scared and trying not to show it.
He had the shotgun in one hand. He heard Callie coming. He hugged Jennie against him with the other arm and tried to hear Slip’s notion of what it was out there, as Callie was trying to hear.
<Ridley with gun. Slip watching in the yard. Log walls standing safe in the snow-fall, in the dark.>
“I couldn’t see anything,” Jennie said. The kid had no coat. Ridley grabbed a blanket they used for the horses and wrapped it around her. “I heard <Rain calling,”> Jennie said. “I know I shouldn’t come out. But you were <asleep.”>