The scream is low and muffled, full of anguish and lost hope. And then it turns into a soft moan, followed by a whimper that flutters through the trees like hummingbird wings. Cursing, I turn on my heel and run toward the sound, pumping my legs harder, willing them to go faster, faster, faster.
The wind is stronger here, howling through the gaps in the trees, shredding through my clothes and slicing my skin. My boots grow heavy on my feet and my breath rushes out of me in a white puff, and still I run, until I make it to a small, shaded clearing that is dark as night and I see him, a bloody mass on the ground, his clothes lying in tattered ribbons around him. He is surrounded by shadows that undulate and swim through the air, the dirt beneath them turning to ice.
Sentinels. They freeze their victims, keeping the meat fresh so they can take their time skinning them alive.
Most of his flesh is gone. The copper scent of blood mixes with the smell of the wood. His muscles look like slabs of beef held together by spaghetti. I palm my coin out of habit and think Joe, get your ass here. Now.
I start forward, but bile rises up my throat. I crouch on the ground and vomit until there’s nothing left. I don’t think the traveler could possibly still be alive, but then his head, all exposed muscle and bone, tilts in my direction, shards of ice along his neck creaking and breaking as he mouths the words, “Help me.”
I rub my sleeve across my mouth and run forward, waving my arms and shrieking at the shadows as if they’re birds that can be scared away. “Go! Get out of here!”
But the shadows don’t leave. Their laughter sounds like ice breaking.
I pull my knife on them. “Get away from him,” I say, trying to sound brave even as I take a step back.
The shadows slither closer, darker in the spaces where their bodies overlap. They reach for me with twiglike fingers, their whispers clogging my ears. Fresh meat, they wheeze. So nice to eat. I take another step back and trip into a patch of sunlight. The shadow fingers pull back quick, as if they’ve been burned.
I’m safe here, in this circle of light, even as the Sentinels slink around the edges of it as if searching for a weakness, a shadow bridge they can swim through to get to me, but I can’t stay. The shadows are already returning to the traveler. They take another strip of skin from his hip, and I don’t think. I step into the darkness. “Hey!”
They turn to me. They move faster than my eyes can track them. The back of my hand burns suddenly; I jump back into the circle of light, hoping some of them will follow me and die, or get hurt enough to back off, or something, but they stay in the darkness.
My hand bleeds where a slice of skin has been peeled off.
“Winter!” Uncle Joe’s voice echoes off the trees. I glance behind me. A scowl wrinkles his otherwise unmarred face as he storms down the path, a black leather duster blowing out behind him.
He steps in front of me, shielding my body with his. He holds up his hand, curling his fist around an orb of white light as if it were a baseball. Strips of light break through the gaps between his fingers. “Be gone, demons.”
The light shoots from his palm and the shadows break apart. They burrow into the ground, into black nooks in the trees and beneath fallen logs. Their high-pitched screams tinkle through the air like falling glass.
I stand, my legs wobbling beneath me. I take a step forward, but Uncle Joe’s hand grips my shoulder.
“Stay back,” he says.
“Th-there’s a traveler in there,” I say, pointing to the flayed body on the ground. The sun has returned to the clearing, though the mottled shade of the canopy still shrouds the boy. My teeth are chattering like maracas and I can’t stop shaking. Too much adrenaline coursing through my veins. Too much, too much—I don’t know what to do with it all.
“I’ll get him,” Joe says, stepping out of the sunlight. He crouches next to the body and places his ear against the latticework of muscles and veins stretching over his chest. Joe pulls back with a sigh and shakes his head.
“No.” The word tumbles out of my mouth.
I was too late. I didn’t save him.
I don’t even know where he came from, or how old he was. The only thing I know for certain is this: He wasn’t supposed to die here. He might have been fated to die ten seconds after he walked back through the threshold into his own time, or ten years after, or fifty. But it should have been in his time, in his world. Not now. Not here.
I’m the reason he’s dead. If I had found him first, if I had listened more closely, if I had been better, stronger, faster—
Joe wipes a tear from my cheek. I watch the droplet run down his finger.
“I did this,” I say.
“No,” he says, “you didn’t.”
I look up at him, guilt sparking into anger. “Yes, I did. It’s my job to get these travelers home safely. I’m responsible for what happens to them in here.”
“Winter—”
“I have to patrol.” I take off through the trees, even though I know it’s no use. There’s no one else in my sector—no one I can feel anyway. Maybe there are some I can’t feel because they’re no longer alive, because they’ve been flayed to death, too.
“Winter, stop,” Uncle Joe shouts, his footsteps crunching branches behind me. “It isn’t safe.”
“Just leave me alone,” I yell back, glancing over my shoulder, but I can barely see him through the wall of tears blinding me.
“Winter!”
I crumple to the ground, sobs racking my body. Uncle Joe stops next to me and wraps an arm around my shoulder. He smells like cigarettes and worn leather.
“What if there’s someone else?” I ask him.
“There isn’t.”
“How do you know?”
He sighs. “Frankly, I don’t. What I do know is you promised me last night you’d be careful and not go traipsing around the wood without a reason, and you’re going to keep that promise.”
Last night. It all comes rushing back to me. I want to ask him why he had mud on his pants. Why he took so long to come find me. I want to ask him straight out if he’s one of Varo’s followers, but I don’t.
Because I’m weaker than I let on. Because I can’t lose him, too.
So I say nothing. I just let him lead me back the way I came, where the main path from my threshold forks, where the air is warm and has long since burned off the morning frost. Where the leaves look normal—or as normal as they’ve ever looked for being made of magic and other secret things—and the ground is solid beneath my feet.
*
I feel sick when I finally leave the wood, Joe disappearing behind me. Bile claws up my throat, pushing pushing pushing until I can’t keep it in anymore. I bend over Dad’s rock—my rock—where his and Mom’s initials have been scraped in, and dry heave over the damp grass. My stomach convulses, over and over again. I can’t breathe. I start to panic, tell myself I need to stop, that there’s nothing left.