9 – 2

Clarke asks, “Does it matter? It's here, now.” and keeps her gaze on me while she speaks. There's a bitter, defeated fatigue in her voice and a look of keen hurt in her eyes. She wants me to see, I think, and know that what she feels is my doing. It was my idea to go on this pointless journey. A warning by mail would have sufficed. I was the one who drew a monster's attention and, out of guilt, just tried to leave her to deal with it alone. I want to go to her and hold her like I did earlier, to set right what I made wrong.

Shame stands me still. Milo says, “Yes,” with such certainty that Clarke lets it go, though there's a mulishness to her jaw that suggests she wanted to do otherwise. “In situations like this, information is king. Or –” he jostles Lavinia's shoulder with a faint smile. She gives one back to him, worn down by fear and fatigue. “queen. The more we know, the better off we are. So...” He looks around the room, just as Adelaide had before, “let's answer the question. Why now? Why not during the day?”

Could any of us say, with any certainty, why? Maybe it's like a bat, and isn't suited for daylight hours. Maybe its nature as an accursed moon's-child means the sun's bright, blessed rays harm it. Maybe it delayed because doing so would sow anxiety and uncertainty.

Or maybe it simply did because it could. We could sit for hours and suppose one thing after another, until either the sun rose or it got bored of this game and killed us. It's the latter that bids me speak, that gives me the spur to lift my gaze from the floor and my voice from a murmur. “I don't think...that's not going to help. Knowing that won't do us any good.” No one says anything. I dare continue, “We should – we need to find out how to scare it, or –”

Clarke interrupts, voice snapping and biting-sharp. “Don't be ridiculous! There's no scaring that thing! You saw it! I saw it! There's –” She stops suddenly, hissing breath through her nose, and says nothing else. Her eyes burn, shimmer-bright, as she glares at me. The line of her jaw jumps.

Twice now have I been stung by the venom on another's tongue. First Adelaide, her daughter's blood dripping to pool on the floor of her kitchen, and now Clarke. Both stopped themselves too late and both, I deserve. I close my mouth and blink until the ache of threatening tears fades away. It takes only a moment. In the passage of that time I find Adelaide's attention drawn to me. “You weren't finished,” she prompts.

There's a knot in my throat that roughens my answer, “Or hurt it,” I finish. “There has to be a way to hurt it.”

It's Lavinia's hoarse and quiet voice who puts the question out. “What if there's not?”

“There is,” her father answers. He sounds so sure. “There always is, we just have to find it.”

I am not. I ask, “How?” and it cracks as it leaves my mouth, halting the words to follow in their tracks. How do you know, I meant to ask. How can you be sure, I should have asked.

It would seem that Milo hears what I left unspoken. “Be right back,” he says, but not before drawing in a deep, steadying breath. It would also seem that there is a difference between surety and calm. With a look at his wife and a squeeze to his daughter's shoulder, he leaves into the hall. Footsteps, then an opening door, then a distant shuffle of activity. Clarke won't look at me. Adelaide won't look away.

If the monster, the bramble-beast, stays it hand to fray our nerves to the point of breaking, I should think its goal not far from success.

Lavinia excepted. She droops, listing graceless and weary into her mother's side as her eyes flutter. She fights the sleep her body wishes of her, knowing it to be unsafe. An ongoing struggle, one slowly lost. Would it better if she were to take what sleep she could find, and when? There's no saying when there'll be another time for rest. Maybe all of us should.

Footsteps in the hall, and Milo returns. What he holds is as long as an outstretched arm and perhaps a hand's-breath wide. At one end it tapers sharply into a point. At the other, an oddly round bulk. From the flex of his wrist, it has some weight to it. Wrapped in thick cloth from end to end, the shape of it is familiar to me. I should think I've seen something like it, or perhaps smaller, before now.

He sets it down on the table and begins to unfold the cloth. As he does, he says, “I'm from Talent, originally. Moved out here what, eight years ago?” He looks to Adelaide, who confirms the time with a nod. “Vin was four at the time, so...you can imagine how fun that trip was.” I can. I've sixteen years experience to draw from, though as a sister and not a parent. “Point is, there's a law in that city – all of them, really – that even if you leave, you still count as a citizen when it's time to go to war. Happens all the time, way things are down there.” He reveals a sword, sheathed in leather and scarred with use. “I've done this before,” He says, answering my forgotten question. “Now, we're gonna do it again.”

- - -

The sword sits on the dining table, surrounded by strips of cloth and looking for all the world like it hatched from them. The rounded, gray-steel bottom below the leather-wrapped grip is stamped with a city-kingdom's seal. Beneath the cracked, rotting leather is wood, sanded smooth by rough paper. Where grip meets sheath is a straight bar of metal, each end pointed wickedly. The blade itself is hidden inside the sheath.

For which I am relieved. How stupid to be unsettled by a sheathed sword, when that bramble-beast stalks the night. There is something sinister about its dull gleam in the lamplight and how heavily it lays on the table. In those wicked points and the promise of a keen, cutting edge, there is something worse than sinister. I am drawn to that potency, to the feeling of metal beneath my fingers and the weight of it in my hand. An instrument of death, made for no other purpose but to end.

“Milo,” Adelaide whispers. His name is raw as it leaves her mouth, given hoarse and rasping life from the bottom of her throat. There's a question in that word, and a plea. There's sorrow and pride and love. Milo's hand trembles as he lifts it from his old sword.

“I'm alright,” he answers her, rough and throaty as she, “I have to be.” He curls his fingers around the hand she reaches for him. Holds tight to it. Draws strength from it. Says, “So, let's talk about how to kill this thing.” He turns his dark eyes on us; first asking me, “Ever get it with your knife?”

I shake my head and confess, “No.”

He nods as though he expected as much. Then, of Clarke, asks, “You going to be well enough to work your magic?”

She still won't look at me, but does at him. With a faint smile absent of all humor, she answers, “I have to be.” His mouth twitches, as much of a smile as he can muster. Leans his palms on the table and frowns down at it for a moment.

“Right,” he says, “Right...Okay, so – best we can tell, this thing's got three major advantages on us: its strength, its speed, and it can see in the dark. We take those away from it...” he drums his fingertips on the tabletop.

We can kill it, the rest of us hear.

What if we can't? What if we do everything right, and our blades strike true, our traps find purchase, our schemes bear fruit, and it all comes to naught? What if the moon will brook no harm befalling its favored son, and the bramble-beast simply cannot be killed? What can we do then, other than die? I don't want to ask, but can't stop myself, "What if we can't?”

“We can,” he answers, sure and certain, but it's not good enough. It may have never been.

“But it –”

Adelaide interrupts me now, her eyes flashing and voice hard. “Shut up,” she orders, “If you don't have anything helpful to offer, then...shut up.”

I can't, or I won't. Either way, the result is the same. My fears spill out of me, tumbling one after another, louder and more strident with every word that passes my lips. I've no control over what I say, and distantly I realize that my fraying nerve has finally snapped. I can't hear what I'm saying over the ringing rush of blood in my ears. I can't see their faces through the blur of tears in my eyes. I go on and on and on, until a hand touches my face.

Long, cool fingers brush my heated cheek, slide through my hair, and curl to cup the back of my head. The touch is familiar. Her nose against mine, her breath warm on my mouth. I'm gasping for breath, shuddering with the effort of it. I see blue, like the open sky, and a brow presses into my own. An unspoken promise, now given to a whisper that cuts through the roar in the my blood. “I'm here,” Clarke says, “I'm here, with you.”

I breathe it in. I breathe her in. Close my eyes and push deeper into her hold. She brings her free hand up to join the first. She holds me. “I'm sorry,” I spill words and tears onto her. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry...”

She hushes me. “It's alright,” she soothes, “it's alright.”

Calm returns to me, slow and tentative, as if skittish. Once I stop shaking I pull away enough from Clarke to look Adelaide in the eye. “You're right,” I tell her, “I'm sorry.”

There's regret, there. Remorse, too. She shakes her head and says, “No. No, I shouldn't have – that wasn't right.”

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Only then does Clarke let me go. I catch hold of her, wrap my arms around her belly, draw her against me. She comes with a quiet hum. Her warmth helps me swallow the knot in my throat. “What about fire?” I ask, “if we build one big enough, or...a wall, or something, we could blind it. Trap it, too.” A light sparks in Milo's eyes. He grins at me and nods.

“You did want a bonfire,” he says. “Let's do it.”