A head takes shape in it, arching back like something straining against a set of immovable bonds. The mouth opens, enraged, and the echo of a scream comes wailing down the canyon toward us.
I stumble on a loose stone and go sprawling in the dust. Ahead is a narrow ravine that leads up out of the village—a steep climb that normally would have me groaning. Right now, it’s a glorious staircase out of this nightmare.
We’re headed for it when another shriek rings out. A pair of translucent hands reaches from the shadows toward us. Nimh reels back, forcing me to fling myself to one side to avoid a collision.
We whirl around, feet pounding until we reach a precipice, skidding to a halt so abruptly that pebbles skitter ahead and down into the ravine. Nimh’s gaze travels along the edge until it falls upon a rickety rope bridge beyond it, leading to the far side of the canyon. It looks like it’s made of string and toothpicks.
“You’re kidding me,” I burst out, and she looks back, incredulous, as if I’m the one who’s kidding her.
“North, hurry!”
The cat certainly doesn’t hesitate. He runs out onto the bridge on light feet, bolting for the safety of the other side. Nimh’s only a moment behind him, and the whole thing wobbles crazily, but she’s almost as light on her feet as the ginger streak ahead of her, every undulation seeming to carry her farther.
The second she reaches the other side, I’m after her. But I weigh more, and I have no idea what I’m doing. I cling to the ropes on either side, the bridge bucking wildly as I stumble along it. Nimh waits for me on the far side, and one look at her face tells me there’s something behind me.
I twist around to see a face made of smoke contorted into an impossible scream, its mouth too wide, black holes where its eyes should be. My foot goes over the edge of the bridge as the thing’s face shifts between something vaguely human and something animal, like a vidscreen flicking back and forth between two channels.
I drag myself across the last bit of the bridge as it swings wildly, and scramble after Nimh as she finds an open doorway in one of the shacks on the far side of the ravine. We throw ourselves inside, and I slam the door closed hard enough to make the entire building shake.
Nimh and I move as one toward the only piece of heavy furniture in the one-room shack: a large wooden chest. “What are those things?” I gasp, as we each take a side and drag it across the dirt to bar the door.
Daylight shines through the gaps in the wood walls. A fine layer of sandy dust filters down from the swatch of heavy fabric overhead into my hair.
“Mist-wraiths,” she answers breathlessly, stumbling back from the chest until her shoulders hit the far wall. “I have heard stories—but only stories, they were only ever stories!”
“Are they what killed the villagers?”
Her head turns toward me, her eyes big black pools in the gloom. “North, they are the villagers.”
The beggar boy’s words echo in my head as if he’s standing right beside me.
There are ghosts in those hills. If you keep on, they’ll never let you leave.
I open my mouth, trying to think of anything other than the terror biting at my gut. Before I can speak, something thuds against the door, making the walls shudder. I jerk from the door and the chest, stumbling backward until I’m side by side with Nimh at the far wall.
“I—I can help you!” she’s calling, tears in her eyes. “Please, stop—stop this. Let me bless you—let me try to ease your pain—!” She cuts herself off with a little scream as the shack quivers, air ringing with another slam against the door.
I’m breathing in quick, shallow bursts, my head spinning. “That stuff you threw at them—how much of it do you have left?”
When Nimh doesn’t answer, I turn to find her staring at me, her face tight with fear. I have only to look at her to know the answer.
None.
The walls shudder again as the door takes another beating. My hand gives a jerk, some instinct to reach out for Nimh quickly thwarted by newer, harder-learned instincts. Her eyes follow the movement, then lift to my face, her own stricken.
Then, so quickly my ears ring in the sudden silence, the battering at the door stops.
The door is silhouetted by the sun outside … and as I stare, something shifts against its dark surface. Trying to catch my breath, it takes me a moment to understand what I’m seeing, until the door groans and shifts as if with some great weight.
A wisp of smoke is coming through the door—not floating, as if on the wind, but bubbling and roiling as if surging through under great pressure.
Then another wisp, and another, and another …
The fingers of a hand, being pushed slowly, and with great, shuddering effort, through the wood itself. The part of my brain that knows words like predator and prey—a part that never had a workout before the Skysinger fell—screams at me to run. It knows what my logical mind doesn’t.
Magic is real, and it’s going to kill me.
The fingers become a hand, followed by a wrist, followed by an elbow … The very bones of the shack itself groan under the pressure… .
And then there’s an explosion of daylight, and I hear Nimh scream, and my own voice tears out of me, certain I’ll feel icy fingers around my throat at any moment.
My vision adjusts, seizing upon a single crouched figure, lit all around by a shaft of light. A moment later the figure rises and I realize it’s someone in a cloak, face hooded and hidden from view. The figure stands on a pool of faded blue fabric—the roof! She must have come in from above, while those things battered at the door.
She? Yes, definitely a woman—something in the proportions, even with a cloak, the way she moves.
She reaches into a bag slung over one shoulder, drawing out an object the size of her fist. Then, with a grunt of effort, she heaves it at the door, where it smashes into glass shards and sends a spray of liquid across the uneven boards.
A wail of pain and fury, resonating as if coming from half a dozen different throats, like a speaker squealing with dissonant feedback, slices all around the cabin—and then silence.
For a moment no one moves—the only sound is the strange, arrhythmic syncopation of three sets of lungs heaving for breath.
Then the woman whirls to face us. The mantle wrapped around her shoulders and over her head is of deep purple, jewel-like in the sun that streams in through the unroofed shack. Her skin is fair, though lined, her eyes shadowed under her hood.
“Quick now,” she says, voice brisk and certain despite the wobble in it. “Help me, girl. How is your water magic?”
Nimh is half-collapsed against the back wall—what little strength fear left her, surprise took. Blinking rapidly, she wobbles to her feet, croaking, “But—what … who …”
“Your water magic, girl!” The woman’s voice cracks like a whip, and my own muscles twitch to attention in response, though her eyes are on Nimh and have spared me not a glance. “I only have one more jar left, and there are too many of them for us to get from here to the edge of the village—can you create vapor from water?”
Nimh stares at her, mouth hanging open, as the woman pulls out a small glass jar filled with water. The moment stretches, until a faint sound from the other side of the door makes all three of us stiffen: the long, slow rasp of fingernails on rough wood.