For the first time, Glenn wondered not why her mother had left them, but why she had ever left the Magisterium in the first place.
What would drive her away from such a place, and what would make her return only to destroy it?
She ran her fingers along the simple gray curves of the bracelet resting in her lap.
I could ask her now, couldn’t I?
“This is as far as I go.”
The wagon had come to a halt. The landscape around was empty prairie, fields of dirt and weeds and snow. There was a scattering of small houses in the distance. A thin dirt trail branched off the road they were on and led to a series of foothills that gave way to a small range of low mountains. Glenn was surprised to see that the sky was darkening quickly. Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed the passing hours.
“How far is it to Bethany?”
“Straight on, you’d be there tonight, but only a fool would go through those hills at night. Best you head that way,” the man said, pointing to one of the scatterings of houses to their left. “Some family will take you in ’til the morning.”
Glenn thanked the driver, grabbed the pack, and dropped from the wagon into the snowy dirt by an intact pilgrim stone. The reins snapped, and slowly the wagon groaned off on its way. Glenn listened to the low whistle of the wind as it blew a fog of white between her and the trader. Before she knew it, the man had disappeared and she was alone.
The distant farmhouses huddled together against the cold. If Glenn had to guess, she’d say it was two hours or more to get to one of them. Then she’d have to talk her way inside and then … what? Lie in some barn for another night, accomplishing nothing?
To her right was a collection of low peaks whose gray slate seemed almost blue in the wintry haze. The path was a straight shot into the foothills, but then she lost its course as it wound up and around the rolling crests.
If she pushed, she could be in Bethany that night. And if it was Bethany tonight, could it be home tomorrow?
Glenn’s hand brushed the pilgrim stone as she shouldered her backpack. Her fingers lingered over the split circle carved on its face.
Let Aamon be there, she thought and then set off down the road.
The trail narrowed and grew steeper as it snaked into rocky knolls. Every other step seemed to fall on loose gravel and dirt, made all the more treacherous by a veneer of snow and ice. Glenn’s legs were aching, her ankles shook with the strain, but still she climbed. She picked her steps carefully, bracing herself on the rock wall that grew up to the right when she faltered. To her left, the path dropped off to a boulder-and scrub-covered floor far below.
As the sun slipped farther toward the horizon, night drifted in like a fog. Glenn stopped and peered into the gathering dark, but there was nothing to see, just the narrow path ahead of her, its edges fading in the gloom. Glenn took a step forward and faltered on a patch of slick gravel. One foot slipped off the path and into the air. She tried to balance, but the awkward weight of the pack threw her off and gravity yanked at her heels. Glenn panicked, throwing herself violently to her right until her shoulder slammed into the rock wall.
Glenn drew several deep breaths to calm her pounding heart.
When the shaking in her legs ceased she peeled herself off the wall and moved up the path.
The hours passed and the darkness grew. Cold bit at her, and at times the winds that came screaming down the narrow path seemed as if they could blow her away. Glenn’s feet were slowly going numb. A light snow began to fall. Panic revved inside her, but she forced herself to push it down, to set one shaking foot in front of the other and keep going.
“Alnitak,” she whispered, stuttering, into the dark, imagining points of light appearing on her bedroom ceiling. “Alnilam. Mintaka.”
Glenn began to take another step, but stopped when the gravel down the path ahead of her shifted. She froze and listened. Nothing.
Just the wind. Glenn raised her foot, but there it was again, followed this time by a shower of dirt and rocks that tumbled down the hillside only feet from where she stood.
There was something waiting in the gloom ahead of her.
Glenn raised one foot and set it down behind her, but then the same sound came again. This time, behind her. She was trapped. Her hand slid up the wall to her right. At first there was only cold stone, but then her fingers discovered a crack. The ground shifted again in front of and behind her, closer this time, faster.
Glenn leapt, found another crevice for her left hand, and pulled herself up, her feet kicking at the smooth rock until they hit shallow depressions and took hold. Looking up, she could barely make out a series of short plateaus and crevices. A few deep seams, deeper areas of darkness, ran the wall’s length. The gravel below shifted again. Glenn pushed off and her fingers grazed a chink in the rock. A fingernail snapped as she dug in but she didn’t let go, she groped for another handhold, finally pulling herself up and away from the path. Glenn clambered up until she hit a narrow shelf, just wide enough for her to rise up onto her knees. She dared a look back to see what was coming for her.
It was as if the darkness below had congealed into two deep shadows. Both of them were tall and thin, like shifting smoke, and moving fast toward the same wall she had scrambled up.
Glenn’s heart flipped. The two figures were already on the wall, but they didn’t pause to find holds. They slid up, their hands flat on the rock, as if they were sticking to it. Glenn threw herself against the stone, finding two more handholds and yanking herself up. When she made it to the hill’s moonlit crest she rolled up onto it, then ran across the uneven rock. The two creatures came over the lip of the hill. They were faceless, freakishly elongated and thin, with tendril-like arms and legs.
Wisps of their dark bodies trailed behind them as they glided across the stone. Glenn fled up a short rise, leaping onto another hilltop that curved away to the right. She took off again, moving down a narrow corridor of rock.
She made it only a few feet before what she saw ahead pulled the last breath out of her lungs and crashed her down onto her knees. There, dark silhouettes against the deep blue night sky, were four more of the smokelike creatures. They stood in a semicircle at the edge of the cliff, their bodies wavering in the wind. Beyond them was sky and, to either side, high rock walls.
Glenn knew if she turned around she’d see the other two right behind her, cutting off her escape. There was nowhere to run. Even if she could fight, there were too many of them.
She had only one choice.
Glenn pulled back the sleeve of her coat and her fingers found the edge of the bracelet. Her breath caught in her throat as she tore it off and the dull metal hit the ground.
Glenn was aware only of the cold rock below the soles of her boots as she advanced toward the faceless creatures at the other side of the hill. She halved the distance between them and stopped. A gust of wind blew across the mountaintop. Removing the bracelet was like waking up a little at a time. The world began to pulse around her, becoming more vivid, fuller. High up on the mountain, there weren’t as many voices coming at her, just the smoothness of stone, the deep night, and the creatures that stood before her.
Without the bracelet to block them out, they were like places where the night, weighed down by some infinitely dense hunger, collapsed in on itself. They reached out for her, tugging at her, eager to press in through her flesh and fill her body. They wanted to devour her.
Become her.
Glenn’s knees started to buckle, but she threw her head back.
Above her the moon was huge and brilliantly white. It was transfixing, so cool and clean. Its light filled up her arms and legs and chest and drew her upward. Soon Glenn was aware of being high above the mountains, barely able to feel the shadowy things below.