He’d be leaving Hill House the following day. Likely never to return.
Leo pressed his forehead against the window glass, warring with himself. He was still angrier than he liked to admit. How could Rose Red do that to him? After a whole summer together, knowing as well as she did how much he wanted to hunt the monster, how could she show him . . . that?
Suddenly he got to his feet and swept up Bloodbiter’s Wrath from where it had lain untouched since that night at the cave. He had to pass the library door, which was cracked open, but he didn’t stop to see if his cousin was inside. Everybody was busy in Hill House, packing and making arrangements for his journey back home, and nobody noticed him as he made his way to the back garden. Nobody except perhaps old Mousehand, who was trimming the starflower vines and said not a word to anybody when he saw Leo pass through the garden gate and up the mountain path.
Leo’s anger cooled as he walked that familiar way and took the turn at the sapling tied with a red scarf. The deer trail was more comfortable even than the hallways of Hill House, the trees friendlier than the household inhabitants. Even the air was easier to breathe.
He climbed to the Lake of Endless Blackness. The dam had fallen into disrepair, and the lake was mostly gone, leaving behind the litter of dozens of broken ships. Leo knelt beside the little dam wall, inspecting the places where the mud and pebbles had broken free, but he did not try to repair them.
“Bah.”
He looked up. The goat stood on the other side of the stream. She blinked her yellow eyes at him, twitching her long ears.
“Hullo, Beana,” he said.
She put her nose down to drink. When she raised it again, droplets falling from her snout, she solemnly said, “Bah.”
“Where’s Rose Red?”
The goat shook her head and stamped her hind hoof.
Leo stood up, leaning against Bloodbiter’s Wrath like an old man weary from a long journey. “I was hoping she’d be here today. But she probably doesn’t want to see me anymore, does she?”
“Baaaaah!” said the goat.
“I was pretty mad. I was . . . it was so . . .” He couldn’t finish, for he didn’t know what he was trying to say exactly. It was difficult to think with the old nanny giving him that no-nonsense stare of hers. “You shouldn’t be so far from home, Beana,” he growled. “Liable to get picked off by wolves or something. Shoo now, girl, shoo!”
“She ain’t alone.”
Of course, he thought as Rose Red emerged. She had been standing beside the goat all along; he had simply not seen her.
Leo hung his head in shame or sorrow; he wasn’t certain which. “Hullo, Rose Red,” he whispered.
“Hullo, Leo.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow. Back to the tablelands.”
“So me old dad told me.”
They looked at each other shyly, and Leo rubbed his toe against the back of the other leg. “I don’t think my mother will let me come back,” he said at length. “She was pretty angry in her letter. About me staying out after hours, that is.”
“Beana wasn’t too pleased with me neither.” Rose Red patted her goat’s back and shrugged. “So it’s probably for the best.”
Leo’s face wrinkled and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe, to think even. He didn’t know what emotion it was that clutched at his heart, but it was something like fear. Fear of nothing he could name, but fear as potent as poison. Dragons eat them, why were there tears in his eyes?
“Rosie,” he said, speaking louder and all in a rush, “I don’t want to leave without you knowing that . . . without you understanding that . . . what we saw in the cave . . . What I saw—what you saw—it wasn’t what you think—”
“Leo, what are you doing?”
The shout shot through Leo’s head like an arrow. He whirled about, brandishing his beanpole, just in time to see Foxbrush scrambling over the rise, his fine clothes disheveled and a few strands of his perfect hair blown out of place.
“Foxbrush!” Leo cried, only just keeping from smacking his cousin across the face. “Foxbrush, why are you here?”
“Do you see?” Foxbrush was pointing, gesturing wildly behind him. Leo whirled again, just in time to catch a last evil-eyed glare from the goat. Then she turned tail and ran into the brush, the sounds of her passage crashing back to his ears long after she left his sight. There was no sign of Rose Red.
“Leo, did you see? Did you see that?”
Leo’s face was red with fury when he turned to his cousin again. Foxbrush, however, was white as a ghost and babbling. “You saw it, didn’t you? That thing? It’s just like they all said! Leanbear and Redbird and the rest. It’s just like—”