8 – 5

Milo leans the axe against his leg and makes a pantomime of spitting into his palms, rubbing them together as his daughter groans. The totem at his feet has been reduced to a length of trunk around half my height. The rest has been piled into a throne, from which Lavinia reigns as Queen of Splinters. It's a title self-given, born from having to pull a sharp, little shard from the heel of her palms just one time too many. The Queen watches her father roll his shoulders and heft the axe. Before he swings, he asks, “What do you think? One swing or two?”

There's a little span of wood-and-bark that holds the totem's trunk together. Her Majesty steps down from her throne to give a royal inspection. She crosses her arms and frowns as she circles, deep in study. “Two,” she says decisively.

“Two?” Milo demands, affronted. His dark eyes glitter with humor. “Two?!”

“You've been chopping for a while,” the little queen explains, with a shrug and a smile hidden in the corner of her mouth. “maybe you're tired.” It's sly, how she says tired and means old. Sly to her, anyway.

With a shake of his head, Milo sets the axe down and leans on the handle. “So little faith,” he laments, as that hidden smiles reveals itself with a giggle. The sound of his daughter's laughter pulls a smile of his own across his face. It's in his voice when he asks, “What did I do to deserve this?”

Adelaide, who had until now sat beside me in silence, joins in the teasing by calling out, “I'll answer that!”

“Don't you dare!” Milo protests.

“Do it!” the Queen of Splinters shouts. Her green eyes are bright and eager. Adelaide stands and walks over to her family, putting her hand atop Milo's. Their eyes meet, and some soft and gossamer feeling travels between them in that silent moment.

“Your father,” Adelaide pronounces, “has no idea how to make tea!”

Milo gasps, betrayed.

Lavinia rolls her eyes, disappointed. “Does he let it steep for too long?” she asks. Her mother nods. “Of course he does,” she sighs, long-suffering. Milo, from the look of him, had no idea. From there they proceed to bickering, levying accusations against one another and defending themselves from the same. Charges of Leaving Clothes Laying About are flatly denied, while Being Too Protective of One's Vegetable Garden is more sidestepped.

If I burn the totem, and Adelaide is right, then I will bring a cruel and bloody doom to these people. I can't stop seeing them dead. Milo's, sundered of limb and head, left as bait to draw the rest in. Lavinia, pierced by talons keener than Cobalt steel, small and shattered in the grip of an eight-fingered hand. Adelaide, gutted and left to die in slow agony, using her life's last breaths to curse my name. Clarke, blue eyes dull and empty, icy star dormant for evermore.

Would it come then, having left me for last? Where would it find me? How would I react? Would I try to hide, to run, or to fight? I would like to think that I would stay defiant to the end, that I would die with knife in hand and hatred in my heart.

Only I didn't, did I? I had my knife. I could have sliced blindly in the dark and hoped that I would strike some vital part of it. Instead I crawled across the ground like a baby, through the dirt like a worm, bleeding and weeping as I fled. I was terrified then. I am terrified now. It lies beneath all else that I feel, buried in a too-shallow grave in my heart. I look at my hands, palms scuffed red by the axe's wooden handle. There's dirt on my fingers, old and new. The long, thick scab spanning my back itches and aches.

Is it far, from here to Amberdusk? If memory serves, the town isn't more than a four-hour walk from its signpost on the roadside. On horseback, it's less than half of that. I've no idea where the road is, or where I am in relation to it. As far as can be seen, it's just trees, and that little path of hard-packed dirt soon swallowed by them. So, follow that path until it reaches the road. How long will that take, and how far away is that signpost? Could someone get there before nightfall? Could five?

Would it even matter? I've no reason beyond hope to think that Amberdusk is any safer than where I sit, or the house behind me. Maybe the size and brightness of a town would be enough to ward the monster off. Maybe not. Maybe there's shadow and alley enough for it to creep in and find us, slaughter us where we sleep, and leave again with none the wiser.

What if there is nowhere safe? What if things are not as Adelaide fears, but as I do, and that no matter what, the monster will come back?

Why would it not?

- - -

The sun begins Her fall into the west, golden heart ringed with burnished brass. The cool air that tousled grass and rustled leaves grows colder by the minute. The sky's blue is deepening into an ever-richer indigo. Those animals that call the daylight hours their own tire and return to roost and rest, while the nocturnal begin to awaken. Too late in the season for fireflies, yet there is still prey aplenty for bird and bat to swoop upon and snatch away. A beautiful sight, from a seat on the front steps of a house. I hold a mug of tea, properly brewed and steeped, in the curl of my hands and watch the shadows grow longer and deeper as the sun sinks low and lower still.

We would not have made it to Amberdusk. Not even if there were horses. I asked, and was answered, as I gave what little help I was allowed in adding the totem's ruined pieces to the firewood pile. Too far. If we had left with the dawn and stopped for nothing, we may have made it just after the moon rose in full.

May have.

This tea is supposed to calm the nerve and soothe the mind. Milo said it helps, when the hour is late and sleep is far from reach. Supposed to help, is what he doesn't say, not with Lavinia in earshot. It was she who gave him it, who took a day-and-night's travel with her mother to Amberdusk just to find something to help her father. He would drink every bitter, over-brewed drop before admitting it.

I take another drink, tealeaf and honey on my tongue. It's helping me as much as it has him. Through the closed door behind me come the sounds of a family at dinner: cutlery and crockery and conversation. I was given a plate of my own, along with my mug. The thought of food is repulsive to the churn of feeling in my belly, bashed and battered into a noxious blend, with fear always beneath. If I were to force down even a single bite, I should think I'd puke it back up again. So the plate sits untouched beside me, growing cold. It's a shame, really. Whoever cooked it knows their craft.

Door behind me opens, bringing the splash of dirty plates into soapy water and the muttered complaints of she whose chore it is to wash them. It's quite the fall from Queen of Splinters to Maid of Kitchens. Shuffle of steps turns my head. Clarke, sleepy-eyed and draped in a blanket, smiles at me. She holds the blanket closed in the fold of her arm. The other, she's wrapped around her belly in the vain hope of relieving the cramping pain. “Hi,” she murmurs. In the last rays of twilight, the strong lines of her jaw, nose and brow are contrasted with the soft curve of her smile and feeling in her eyes. Her ink-dark hair falls loosely around her face, curled and tangled from sleep.

I swallow, honey and dregs sticky on my teeth and sour on my breath. “Feeling better?” I ask.

She shakes her head, “No, but...I'm awake, so...” she shrugs. She lets her gaze look me over, as if to ensure I'm just as battered as when she last saw me. Stops at the plate, filled with cold and untouched food. “Not hungry?” I shake my head and offer nothing else. “Me neither. I never can eat, the first few days.”

I lift my arm in a silent invitation, one she takes. Sits beside me with care and tucks herself against me. My arm falls across her shoulders, my hand ending up curled around the crown of her head. She turns her face into my neck, lashes fluttering against my skin. Her sigh spills warm breath down the column of my throat. “You're cold,” she murmurs. I hadn't noticed until now. She shifts and shuffles until the blanket covers us both, trapping the warmth of our bodies between us.

Turn my head to press my mouth into her hair and whisper, “My thanks,” I feel myself smile at her soft huff of laughter. For a blessed moment there's nothing else. Her body is soft and warm and trusting-loose against me. Her linked arms around my neck ground me. The churn in my belly settles and I can stop watching the shadows. I set the empty mug down and tuck some of her hair behind her ear. She shivers as I trace its curve with my finger, her mouth pressing into the curve where my neck and shoulder meet. The feeling of it flows down my spine and settles somewhere in my hips. A blessed moment.

It doesn't last. With the sun fallen in the west, the moon dares show himself above the Icewalls. Cold clings to the edges of our little nest. It will start to sink in, soon. The shadows swallow the trees, making a shapeless mass of darkness where once a forest stood. Somewhere in those depths, baleful moonlight will shine on a dank cave or fetid hollow, and the monster lurking there will stir. Which one of us will be right? Adelaide, or me?

I watch the shadows, and I wait. It won't be long now.

Coda

The day before she'd married Milo, her mother had taken her aside. She hadn't known what to expect. Some wedding night advice, as if that ship hadn't sailed long ago? How it feels to not always like the person you love? A joke or story from the early days of her own marriage?

What Adelaide Leighton – soon to be Thorngage – received instead was...she didn't even know what to call it. A lesson? A warning? Her mother had looked her in the eye and told her, in all seriousness, that at some point in the future, she would feel as if something was terribly, horribly wrong. It'll come out of nowhere, her mother warned, and you might think you're being silly, paranoid, or overprotective. Don't. Listen to that feeling. Follow through.

“It saved your life,” her mother told her, “you were out playing near the pond, alone, and you fell in. You were two, and you nearly drowned. Your father and I both had that feeling at the same time and took off running. We knew exactly where you were. Goddess only knows how. So, when it happens, and it will, listen.”

So, when Adelaide wakes in an instant from the depths of sleep with her heart pounding and the absolute, utter certainty that her daughter's life is in danger, now, she listens. Springs from the bed and throws the door open, Milo hot on her heels. She yanks the door to her daughter's room open and rushes in.

The window is gone. Like it never was. Curled against the headboard of her bed, pale as snow and shivering, is her little girl. She's crying and she's wet herself, and the lower half of her nightgown is bloody and stuck to her skin. Adelaide's mind rushes through ideas, each one more horrible than the last. When Lavinia sees her, she screams and reaches out, too scared to move.

It's Milo who goes to her, takes her up in his arms and carries her out into the hall. She's screaming and crying and babbling. Adelaide hears claws and monster and there's not much to misunderstand. She looks at the empty frame and beyond it, out into the night. Footsteps racing down the hall towards her. Too light to be Milo. Not light enough to be her baby.

Zira comes running in, knife in hand. Takes in the room and everything in it, fast as can be. Golden-brown eyes go from horror to sorrow. Doesn't say a word, just comes to stand next to her. Together, they watch the shadows. Together, they see it.

The taunting curl of an eight-fingered hand, a single talon gently dripping blood, bathed in moonlight.