He ground his forehead against the stone.
‘I should never have brought her here.’
Cade looked out across the Lands Beyond, remembering the eternity of blue skies and green pastures it had been months ago. But he had been more enchanted by the sight of Abi, standing beside this very stone. She had stripped off her dairymaid’s cap, pale hair shamelessly aflutter, shielding her eyes as she fell in love with the horizon. He knew then that he had lost her. In bringing her here, in attempting to draw her closer to him, he had succeeded only in casting her away, striking in her a longing for that which neither he nor the Horned Father nor anything in the Cradle could ever hope to satisfy.
The Horned Father gave no answer. There was only that deadening murmur in the air as the boundary stones considered Cade’s entreaty. His hands fell away, his palms tingling. He had seen something move in the Lands Beyond.
Cade instinctively flattened himself upon the grass, thankful his torch was extinguished. He was unsure what he had just seen, but something about it caused his heart to beat hard against the earth. Not daring to raise his head, he stared into darkness, cold grass nuzzling his face. Had he seen only a scarecrow? He recalled something with outstretched arms, its ragged garments licking the air. Yet he knew full well that scarecrows stood staked in their fields; they did not shamble silently about the earth of their own volition.
He must be mistaken. Horned Throne preserve him, he had to be mistaken.
He slowly raised his head, struggling to steady his hastening breath as he peered out from behind the stone, and over the bushes that covered the steep slope.
Ice drenched his scalp at the sight of a shred of darkness bobbing on the spot some distance below, far too big to be a rabbit. It vanished beneath the brow of a hill before he could identify it.
A fox, then. It must be a fox, he thought.
As he struggled to convince himself, the shape rose again, nearer this time. It was steadily mounting the hill. He could see a figure, perfectly visible in the moonlight, cloaked it seemed, its long vestments flapping in the wind, arms thrashing as it clawed its way up the slope towards him.
Cade heard himself whimper, feeling his limbs shake with a sudden energy as he went to bolt back through the pines. The figure stumbled and fell. He heard a distant yelp of pain. Long pale hair flashed in the moonlight.
‘Abi!’
Cade sprang, eyes fixed on the exhausted figure struggling up the hill below. He took several strides past the boundary stone before he realised what he’d done.
As he passed between the boundary stones and down the hillside, Cade’s skull rang like a bell, its shimmering echoes ceaseless, entrancing. He shook his head to clear it and stumbled onto his rump, suddenly fascinated by the feel of the grass caressing his palms, cold and damp. He could smell foxglove and heather, richer and sweeter than anything that grew in the Cradle. The sky shone black, bedewed with diamond stars. Cade felt as though some cataract had been lifted from his eyes, enabling him to behold the world with a new and hypnotic clarity. The pale green moon gazed down at him and he could see every ring and grain on its radiant surface as clearly as if he were holding it in his hand. He reached out, half-expecting to touch it, when the moon opened its eyes and screamed at him.
Cade recoiled in terror, flailing as he realised someone was shaking him, trying to drag him upright.
‘Get up!’ Abi screamed at him, her hair wild, her face streaked with dirt. ‘Move, Cade! Run!’
Cade gazed up at her, struggling to comprehend, to sober himself from the haze of newfound sensations.
A shock of pain lashed his cheek as Abi slapped him. She dragged him to his feet, clawing at him, urging him back up the hill towards the boundary stones. Cade could feel his new alertness settling into focus and he found himself absorbed by the sight of his legs steadying into a run beneath him. Whatever was happening to him could wait for an explanation. Abi gasped at his side, her skirts clawed to rags, her baggage lost. The crags tumbled into the empty foothills far below. Nothing but the wind stirred the cascading grass that swept away into the Lands Beyond.
‘It’s gone,’ Cade said. ‘Whatever you’re running from, Abi, it’s gone.’
She cried out as he pulled her back, pointing into the empty chasm below.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I see nothing.’
She seized him by the shirt, her breath hot in his face, eyes white rings of terror in the dark.
‘That doesn’t mean it’s not there.’
She wrenched him back up towards the boundary stones, but Cade shrugged her off. Something else had moved down there. A thicket of tall grass some sixty paces below had shifted against the wind. Cade was already crouched, weighing a slender throwing axe in his hand. A grabbler perhaps, lumbering through the weeds in search of worms?
He tried to pinpoint the spot, but the space at which he was trying to stare seemed to keep pushing his eyes away. Try as he might, they simply would not focus on the spot where he had seen the grass move. Yet every time he looked away, he thought he could see something moving steadily towards him. He looked again, trying to catch himself out, but his eyes just slipped across that benighted patch of ground, as if whatever stood there was too abhorrent to behold. Cade could see nothing.
Abi shrieked as she tugged at his arm, begging him to move. But Cade refused to stir. He knew Abi to be as fearless as any hunter. To hear her voice ring with such terror felt to him somehow indecent, and he craved to obliterate the cause of it. Spurred by anger, he pounced, gauging the distance between them and that shuffling patch of grass as he flung the axe high in the air. Its thin steel head dulled with charcoal, the axe was almost invisible in the moonlight, silent as an owl as it dived for its target. Cade tried to glare at that ruffling grass, impatient for the death-squeal of whatever lurked there. But the harder he tried to look the more readily his vision bounced aside. His head throbbed.
The axe rang as it shattered in mid-air, just short of its mark. Cade froze. There came no threats, no snarls of rage. The wind carried no musk. There was nothing there, and yet on it came. When Cade looked aside he could perceive the grass continuing its bristling path up the hill towards him, the sward flattening as if beneath a heavy and implacable tread, slowly closing the distance between them.
‘Why?’ he said, his voice sounding slow and stupid. ‘Why isn’t it dead? What is it?’
He felt another splash of pain across his cheek as Abi released him from his stupor.
‘Now’s not the time to ask, Cade. Run!’
Suddenly he was scrambling back up the hill with Abi, neither daring to look back. The boundary stone rose before them, imperious as it watched the two young sinners struggling below. He and Abi had put themselves beyond the Horned Father’s reach, beyond salvation. How could He welcome them back into His blessed sanctuary? How could He possibly protect them, when the very thing that pursued them could have been sent by Him to deliver punishment?
Cade clawed his way uphill. The long grass snagged the toes of his shoes; sharp stones slit his hands and shins. The boundary stone loomed black, its silhouette melting into the night sky as if fading from reach. His movements felt dream-slow and he sensed a presence gathering behind him, hungering for him. He imagined it reaching for him, tearing through the caul of reality, about to clamp an immovable hand upon his shoulder.
Cade whimpered as Abi dragged him after her, pulling him past the stone, back into the Cradle.
Cade saw Abi sink to the ground, limp and breathless. He hauled her onto his shoulders as though she were a hunter’s kill, his legs threatening to buckle under her dead weight as he carried her into the pines. She was too exhausted to protest as he dumped her in a hollow at the foot of a tree. He peered back through the ramrod trunks at the boundary stone that guarded their retreat. The air was still. Nothing yet stirred near the stone. As his own breath returned, he felt giddy with relief. He rested his head against the bark and thanked the Horned Throne for His forgiveness of two foolish children.
‘Are you hurt, Abi?’
She shook her head, a thicket of hair masking her face as she panted.
‘That thing out there,’ said Cade. ‘What manner of abomination was it?’
She brushed her hair aside and looked up at him, her face ghostly and imploring. She spoke in gasps.
‘I know not, Cade. And it matters not. All that matters is that we are safe. Thank you. And thank the Throne.’
Relief engulfed them both and they threw their arms around each other. Cade enjoyed a moment of wondrous surrender before rage erupted and he snarled at the girl.
