“I…” Josephine’s shuddering interrupted her words. With a visible effort, she regained some composure. “She is a child. She is a wise woman.”
“I don’t understand. She’s a child and a wise woman? What’s her name?”
“I don’t remember. Why can’t I remember?” Josephine stopped where she was and hunkered down, burying her face in her hands. Soft sobs escaped her attempt to hide them from me.
I hunkered next to her, going to one knee, rubbing her back. “There, there. It’s fine. It’s fine. You’ll remember soon enough.” That was when I realized her clothing had shifted from the adventure wear back into the blue linen dress and heavy silken dressing gown. Her admirable control had slipped away. This was the time to push, to get deep into her psyche. “You’ll remember. You’re afraid of remembering. Why are you afraid?”
Josephine shook her head, still covering her face.
“It’s time to stop being a child, Josephine. You need to help me if I am to help you. Tell me what happened. Why are you afraid?”
“The book. I read from the book. I wasn’t supposed to. It whispered to me in dreams. I wasn’t supposed to read from it. I was supposed to protect it as it protected me!”
She gasped in pain and twisted. Under my hand, the form of a thick book pushed against the fabric of her clothing. I felt the edge of the book dig into my palm. Something whispered to me. I yanked my hand back as if scalded. Josephine surged to her feet and stumbled to the side of the mountain. She leaned against the rough rock, panting. “The book was not meant to be read. Not by me.” She gave me a piercing glance. “Not by you.”
I stood, uncurling slowly, at a loss for words. The book tried to force itself out of her. I felt it. I could not deny it. But what did that mean? Did it represent something that Josephine knew, something dangerous? Or was my mind playing tricks on me in this strange place?
Something hovered on the edge of my awareness. Something I did not want to examine. This world. The Dreamlands. They were a figment of Josephine’s considerable imagination. Yet, I experienced it too.
Above us came an unearthly cry. I froze. A nightmarish creature assaulted my mind with its alien wrongness. Bulbous eyes protruded from its horse-shaped head and its cry revealed sharpened teeth. The sound of its leathery wings beat the air. It was huge. So huge; the largest creature I’d ever seen. Watching it come with its scales and serpentine tail, I could not look away. Even as I wanted to flee, I did not—could not—move. I watched it come at me with talons outstretched, yet I was rooted to the spot. How could such a monstrosity exist? It was like nothing I’d ever imagined, or even dreamed of in my worst nightmare. Part of me screamed to move. The other part stared at my oncoming death like a deer in a bright light. I closed my eyes.
Something slammed into me. A moment later, I opened my eyes and found myself on the ground, looking at Josephine. She’d pushed me out of the path of the creature’s claws.
“Shantak! We must flee. They’ll dash us against the rocks.” She took my hand and pulled me up behind her.
We ran.
There was still only one path; a winding rocky road butted against the mountain on one side and a sheer drop off on the other. Behind us the shantak screamed and gave chase. Just as we were hemmed in by the mountain, they were thwarted by it as well.
There were two of them. They darted in from the left side and from behind. They couldn’t get close enough to grab either of us. We had rocks to throw and the mountain to keep them at bay, but I didn’t know how much longer these would ward them off.
I kept Josephine ahead of me. The danger had paradoxically given her the focus she needed to regain her composure. She was the expert in this realm—whether she remembered everything or not—and she was our best hope for escaping the monsters that pursued us.
In the distance, I could see a stone bridge spanning the chasm. Even though there was plenty of room to flee to the other side, I couldn’t see how we’d get across harried by monsters that should not exist. Still, we fled. We had no other choice.
We rounded a sharp bend and hesitated. Not more than one hundred yards before us was the end of our path. Our choice was a rock wall to put our backs to, or the bridge that crossed the chasm. There were no other ways to flee.
Behind us, the shantak screamed again.
Chapter 8
I prefer to think about things before I do them. I plot, plan, and consider. I rehearse conversations in my head, research before I write, and decide my route before I travel. I dislike improvisation in uncontrolled circumstances. It is who I am and who I have always been.
However, there are times when I cannot be in control. When I act on instinct, I am usually correct. Usually. I believe appropriate, instinctive actions come from a lifetime of planning and experience. It is only after the fact that I understand what I did and why.
Josephine and I ran until we could go no farther without traversing the bridge I’d thought was stone. This close to it, I saw that it was not stone, but ice and wide enough that two cars could pass each other. My stomach roiled at the thought of crossing that chasm on an icy bridge.
“What do we do?” Josephine stood close at my back.
I looked around for handholds—up or down—for us to climb to safety. There was nothing. Worse, the sky above darkened and swirls of light that looked suspiciously like eyes appeared to watch. The wind picked up and the clouds began to roil as if alive. Lightning lit the clouds from within, followed by the crashing boom of thunder. There was no help there. Even the mountain itself had taken on a malevolent quality, looming over us. Our only escape from the shantak was the bridge of ice.
Then I remembered my father’s pistol. It was already in my hand, waiting for me to realize it was there. I checked both the magazine and the chamber. I had six rounds to protect us. Steeling my resolve, I set my stance and took aim. “As soon as I start firing, you get across that bridge. I’ll follow.” I kept my fear to myself. If I appeared confident, Josephine would trust that I knew what I was doing.
“I am ready.” Josephine lifted her robe to make sure she didn’t tread on it as she fled.
“Good. Go.” I fired my first shot at the closest shantak monster. My shot was true. I hit it in one of its bulbous eyes. My next shot struck it in the neck. Josephine sprinted away, across the icy bridge on nimble feet. I watched as the wounded monster crashed into the mountain and flailed its bat-like wings, keening in pain. The second shantak turned from me to its fallen companion. My hopes for a feral response died in vain.
Instead of attacking and savaging its wounded peer, it landed next to it and licked at the blood. Not to feast, but to clean, to help, to heal. I backed up as the first monster went still and the second gave a cry of rage before launching itself into the air with great flaps of its leathery wings.
I sprinted after Josephine, expecting her to be at the other end of the bridge. To my horror, she stood in the middle of it, staring down at the chasm beneath. “Josephine, run! Run!” The bridge that had seemed so reasonable moments before now seemed impossibly long and thin. My shoes couldn’t gain purchase and I skittered across it in an unsteady gait.
As I reached Josephine, the creature above us screamed. Josephine shook her head, mumbling, “The minions of the Black Wind. How do they know I’m here? How can they?”
I aimed a shot at the shantak and fired—more to scare than to harm. “Josephine, go!”
She looked at me with fear-filled eyes. “They know I’m here.”
I fired again, keeping the nightmare creature at bay. “We’ll deal with it. Now go!”