Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
—Henry David Thoreau
Chapter 21
Back in the Wood
Thane:
The evening slipped away. One moonbeam after another slid through black branches, teasing and calling, until finally, the Mistress of the Night disappeared. I slumped against the wall, one curved claw absently drawing patterns in the dust on a side table. The time for hunting was over. The shelter of sweet black night gone. Still the moon continued to call to me, even after her sister, the ever-brilliant sun, crested the nearby hills.
A breeze circled through the woods, a moan and a sigh of wind, then it swept back toward the Driscoll mansion, carrying with it the stench of death. It seeped through windows and doors, curled down corridors until it found me. Standing alone in the front parlor.
I closed my eyes.
It was the dead human in the woods. Already his body was beginning to decompose, to cast the foul odor of rotting meat into passing air currents.
I heard a soft footstep approach, cautious, hesitant. A familiar face loomed in the narrow doorway. River.
“Do you smell it?” my brother asked, keeping his voice low. He glanced behind him to make sure no one else was about.
“Of course I do,” I replied, bitterness in my voice.
And then another voice drew near, singing morning poems, clear and sweet.
Sage.
“Good morrow, lads,” she said, opening drapes, then walking through sunbeams as if they were paths of butter, never a grimace of pain when the searing light touched her flesh. She was more cunning than she seemed on the surface, just like her brother. “Just one more day of sun. The Hunt begins tonight.”
She smiled at both of us before shifting her skin, until she became little more than a shadow, the same shape she had been most of the evening. Then she slipped off into another room, near invisible, her scent masked and her heartbeat stilled.
She was watching us, had been ever since she spotted us in the wood last night.
“Fair and square,” I cursed. It wouldn’t be long before one of the Blackmoors discovered the moldering heap we had left back in the wood. But I couldn’t let that happen. Not yet.
Chapter 22
White Shadows
Maddie:
Mists rolled over the landscape, laid on top of each other like sheets of tissue paper, muffling sound and replacing the night with eerie white shadows. The sun tried to break through. One part of the sky seemed slightly brighter, seemed to say, yes the sun still exists. But the mists won the battle. They moved and shifted, curled around the cabin and blocked out any connection with the outside world. The only thing I could see from the kitchen window was the wrought-iron weather vane that perched atop the Ticonderoga Falls Bed and Breakfast.
I tried to warm the cottage with a fire in the living room and the thick fragrance of scrambled eggs and bacon. Apparently it worked. My son stumbled to the small kitchen table as if summoned from the dead. He yawned and scratched his head while I poured him a glass of orange juice, then loaded his plate with food. Everything was fine, for a few minutes. He was eating, drinking, waking up.
Then he looked around, as if something was missing.
“Where’s Samwise?” Tucker asked between bites of jam-laden toast.
“Outside. Finish your breakfast, sweetheart.”
“He should come in,” he said, sliding from his chair, then heading toward the door.
“No! I mean, not yet.”
Tucker stopped in the middle of the living room, stared out the window at the dog, his leash tied to one of the porch rails. “Why can’t he come in? And why is he wearing his muzzle?” He whirled around, looked at me with a concerned expression. “Did he see a mailman? Mom, I told you, Sam never bit the mailman. He just barks a lot and acts like he might, but he never does—”
“I know. He didn’t see a mailman. Finish your breakfast.”
He opened the door to the porch, stood in the doorway. “I wanna see Sam.”
“No!” I raced across the room and slammed the door closed. “I need to—he got in a fight with a wild animal last night, and he’s been acting funny this morning. We have to take him to the vet after we eat.”
“What wild animal? Is he okay? Is he hurt?”
“Tucker—”
“I don’t want any breakfast!” He was crying now, putting on his shoes and his jacket. “I wanna go to the vet and make sure Sam is okay.”
I glanced out the window, saw the dog stare at me with pleading brown eyes, tail thumping so hard I could feel the vibration on the floor. I sighed, then took my car keys and handed them to Tucker. “All right. But you have to listen to me, understand?”
He nodded, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket.
“Go out the side door and unlock the car. Get in the passenger seat. I’ll get the dog and put him in the cargo area—”
“But he never rides back there—”
“Tucker. You’ll have to stay home if you don’t do what I say.”