Empty. The world was empty but for her.
She knew that wasn’t true. There were other people, and if there were those who would trick her, trap her, and◦– then what? What would they do to her once they’d caught her? She’d heard things, wild, wicked things, of women and men treated as slaves and subjected not just to endless hours of work, but every other kind of degradation too. If that could happen in London, where help was often no more than a shout away, it could happen here, where a girl could scream her lungs to bloody ruin and no one would either care or hear.
If there were those sorts of people, there had to be some of the other kind, the ones that would take her in, feed her, teach her, help her rescue Dalip, Stanislav, Mama and the others. Why? Because there did. It was a law of the universe, wasn’t it? For every gold-plated bastard, there was going to be an angel. She just had to find them in this green wasteland.
Where should she start looking? She shaded her eyes against the brightness of the sky, and studied the view in front of her, carefully this time.
Assuming she didn’t want to throw herself at the geomancer, she didn’t want to go near the closest mountains. There was nothing at the coast for her. The hill country, then, where houses might hide in the folds of the ground, where they’d only light fires at night and put them out by morning, like those people who kept their curtains closed and their door unanswered against the debt collectors and the police.
Perhaps the hill country was just that: a different country. It didn’t look it, but there weren’t lines on the ground like there were lines on the map.
She felt hopeful, like she’d discovered something for herself that was useful.
Then the wolf began to call.
Her heart stopped for a second, before beginning to race. She’d stayed still far too long, gazing into the far distance and making plans, when she should have been walking. Now she might have to run. Something she could do, but not for very long. Enough to outrun a store detective or the drugged-up wildlife she grew up around. Not wolves, though. Not them.
Mary stretched her calves, rising up on her toes, like she might have known what she was doing, and started down the ridge to go back among the trees.
She lost sight of all her landmarks, and felt only the pressure on her back, pushing her on. She ran a little, walked a lot, and tried to keep a good pace overall. In keeping with the pattern of when the wolfman put in his first appearance, the gaps between howls were almost unbearably long.
He had wolves, so she guessed he was going to find her. That part was out of her control. What she was determined to do was find someone to protect her from him before then. As she kept on, it grew darker, and the tree trunks began to merge with the gaps between them.
The moon hadn’t yet risen, though the threat of it was in the sky ahead, the highest clouds rimed in white. When it did, she’d be able to see again, but for now, her advance slowed to a crawl, banging between trees like the steel ball in that old pinball machine they’d had in the games room of the first home she’d been in.
The wolves called again. They sounded closer. No, they sounded close. She didn’t know how that worked. Did they pick up scents like dogs, follow them with their noses to the ground, and drag their handlers behind them, like she’d seen in all those cop films? If so, she’d done the right thing in crossing the river to break her trail. Could she do that again?
But there were no more big rivers, just little ones, so she made as much use of those as she could, jumping in their shallow courses and splashing upstream for what she knew might not be long enough before she leapt out and resumed her course.
The moon finally rose, huge and pale and three-quarters full, turning the black forest into a silver miracle. She could see again, and it was enough. She was more tired than she’d ever been, but she knew there was no time to rest. Keep moving. Don’t stop.
The stupid thing was, the old her would have given up by now, sat sullenly against a tree and waited for capture. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? The wolfman had her number, and he was going to track her down with a tenacity beyond that of the most vindictive Met officer.
The new her, the Mary that was slowly emerging under the bright sun and pale moon of here, was made of different stuff. Maybe the old Mary was right, but there’d be no long-suffering social worker to dig her out this time. What she did now actually mattered. It was for keeps.
Up and down another ridge, the sparse woodland clinging to its flanks providing little cover for either of them. She looked behind her, saw nothing, and pressed on.
Almost immediately, there was a howl that sounded like it was right behind her. It wasn’t ridiculous. They’d come out of the woods at her and Dalip like they were ghosts before. So what should she do if they were just over the last rise? How was she going to slip to the side, so they’d miss her completely?
By doubling back on herself.
It felt so wrong, running towards the threat, not away. Any moment, the wolfman and his two pets would be standing in her path, blocking her way, forcing her to the ground with fists and feet and claws and teeth. She ran parallel to the ridge line, where the exposed rock rose from the thin soil like broken bones, and at a place where two huge boulders almost met, she climbed back up and squeezed herself through the gap to the other side.
‘Do not move,’ said the voice in her ear, close enough that she could feel his breath against her hair. ‘Do not speak. They might not be able to see you, but they will be able to hear you.’
Mary froze. The shadow unwound around her, covering her, as if a black veil had dropped over her face. She could still make out the landscape bathed in bright moonlight, but she was one step removed, as if she was watching it rather than living it.
Stone scraped on stone, close by. A clatter of pebbles, a heavy footfall as they steadied themselves. Hard breathing, a soft groan. The patter and pad of an animal and the cackle of a chain looping and straightening.
The wolfman walked right by her, looking into the slit of space afforded by the boulders. The moon shone silver off his wolfskin hood, and his breath condensed in the air in a glowing, transitory cloud. The nearest wolf stretched towards her hiding place, nose in the air, drinking deeply of the night’s scents.
She was in plain sight, and yet it was still searching for her. Nostrils twitching, teeth partly bared, muzzle turning in tiny angles; it knew, it knew she was there, precisely within a single leap of her, and it could do nothing. Confused, it let out a whimpering growl and put its head down in an acknowledgement of failure and submission.
The wolfman, oblivious to the subtle clues, was searching ahead with his own dark-adapted eyes, and pulled on the chain to hurry his pets along. He stepped out of view, but Mary knew well enough not to break cover. She stayed wedged, back and knees pressed against cold stone.
Eventually, a wolf howled, further away, mournful, unfulfilled by the hunt, and the veil about her lifted.
When she tried to move, she was so stiff she fell over, landing hard on her side and stinging her hands. One of the rocks above her moved, unwrapping itself to become the figure of a man.
‘I heard the wolves hunting. I wondered who their prey was.’
‘That trick you did; it looked straight at me, and it couldn’t see me.’ She turned herself over on to her back and bent first one leg in the air, then the other. ‘How did you do that?’
‘Study, hard and long. Practice, painful and repetitive. Will, strong enough to make your nose bleed.’
‘Really?’
‘No. If you have the knack, I could teach you in an hour. It is nothing more than a bit of simple hedge-magic.’