Glenn backed away from him and picked her way through the
trees. She tried her best to not make a sound, but her body was numb and moved clumsily. Jolts of fear stabbed into her when a branch snapped or a leaf crackled underfoot.
17
Finally she came to a clearing where the forest had been driven back just enough to make room for a house of timber and mossy stone.
The heavy copse of trees around it bent forward, looming over the thatched roof and the simple, bare yard. It was even darker in this area of the forest — out there in that small piece of land, it seemed to be almost night.
Kevin trudged up a slate walk toward the house. Glenn sank into the cover of the trees and watched as he went to the door and, without pause, reached for the doorknob. There was a flash of warm candlelight as it opened. Then Kevin stepped inside and was gone.
Glenn crouched in the snow-flecked debris of the forest floor.
Her hands shook and the muscles in her legs quivered as icy water dripped from her soaked hair across her skin. She needed help, but had no idea where she was, much less how to get back to Aamon. Even if she did, it might be hours before she could return with him. What would have happened to Kevin in that time?
What was happening to him now?
Glenn stepped out of the trees and onto the grass. Her legs shook as she made her way up the rock-lined path to the door. Once there, she took a single faltering breath, turned the door handle, and stepped inside the house.
Kevin sat at a small wooden table with his back to Glenn. In front of him was a bowl of what looked like oatmeal. Kevin picked up a spoon, filled it, then ate slowly and mechanically.
Rows of open cabinets lined the wall across from them. They were filled with glass jars, lumps of moss, a brass set of scales, a chart of the stars. A collection of animal bones was laid out on black felt.
The whole house smelled of wood and the musty perfume of dried flowers and herbs.
“Kevin?”
Small drops of blood fell from the soaked end of his shirt and splattered onto the wood floor. Glenn took a rag that was lying on the table and knelt down beside Kevin. He took no notice of her as she pressed it tight into his side.
Glenn became aware of a fire crackling off to her right, and alongside it, a strange rhythmic creaking. She wanted to grab Kevin and run, but she found herself somewhat like a puppet herself, turning toward the sounds.
Across the room was a gray stone fireplace and a rocking chair made from knotty bark-covered tree branches. The chair reminded Glenn of the animal bones on the table behind her, like the skeleton of some crouching beast.
The chair gently rocked, its back to Glenn. A lump grew in her throat. The rounded edges of someone’s shoulders and a sleekly pulled-back plain of gray hair was visible over the edge of the chair.
Mixed in with the rocking chair’s creaking was another sound, a dry clicking that made her think of jaws opening and closing.
“You must be cold.” The woman’s voice was crisp and strong, with only the slightest tinge of age. “Come, sit by my fire.”
“I came for my friend.”
“Sit,” the woman said. “Be warm.”
Glenn’s clothes were dark with river water and icy tremors still shook her. How far would she get with Kevin in tow on the verge of hypothermia? No, she needed the woman to stop doing whatever it was she was doing to him, and she needed to get warm.
“Hold this here,” Glenn said, moving one of Kevin’s hands over the rag. He said nothing but did as he was told while scooping spoonfuls of oatmeal into his mouth.
Glenn circled around to the woman’s right, staying as far away as she could, keeping an eye on the chair, ready at any moment to grab Kevin and take her chances. But the woman didn’t even look at her.
Glenn sat down on a stone bench beneath a window. The heat from the fire filled her up.
The woman was in her seventies or eighties, Glenn guessed. She had a small, finely shaped face and long gray hair that was swept into a bun at the back of her head. In her long-fingered hands she held two bone-colored knitting needles. She worked them back and forth, drawing together a pile of yarn in her lap.
“There,” she said. “That’s better. Isn’t it?”
“Who are you?”
The woman paused her knitting. The firelight flickered orange across the lines of her face. Her eyes were almost entirely covered with milky cataracts. She was clearly blind.
“My name is Opal Whitley,” she said.
“What do you want?”
Opal’s brow furrowed. “I can’t feel you,” she said, puzzled. “Him, I can feel.” She gestured to Kevin and then laid the tip of one of the knitting needles against her temple. “In here. But you, I try to feel you like I feel him and there’s nothing there. Where you are is … a hole. An empty place in the room.”
The red jewel on Glenn’s bracelet shone dully.
Back at the table, Kevin neatly set his spoon next to the empty bowl. “I’m done with my supper now.”
“Why don’t you go outside for a while, Cort?”
Kevin pushed his chair from the table, hand still on the rag at his side. He threw open the front door and slammed it behind him. Glenn looked out the window as Kevin ran into the yard and then abruptly stopped as if he had forgotten what he’d gone out there to do. He stood perfectly still, staring ahead into the shifting darkness of the forest. He reminded Glenn of a toy set aside, waiting until it was needed again.
“What did you do to him?” she asked.
Opal examined the pile of yarn with her fingertips, then picked up her knitting needles again. They clacked together once and she dropped them into her lap, as if she couldn’t muster the energy or the will.
“No one travels that road anymore,” she said. “It’s been years since anyone fell into the web. I had almost forgotten it was there. Then I felt him there, so … young. I’ve been alone for so long. I couldn’t resist. I wasn’t going to hurt him.”
Her web, Glenn thought, remembering the strange symbol on the rocks at the head of the trail. A circle with eight radiating lines, a spider.
The plaque had been a warning.
“What was that thing?” Glenn asked. “In the boat.”
“A servant. Pieced together from bits of my forest. The river. The trees. It has no will of its own.” Opal pointed to a locket that hung by a silver chain at the edge of the mantel. “It’s bound to the owner of that charm to do little errands.”
“Like kidnapping people.”
“Will you pour us some tea, dear?”
Opal inclined her head toward an iron kettle suspended over the fire. A thick towel sat on the hearth nearby.
“Let my friend go.”