Kitabı oku: «Red Sister», sayfa 9

The abbess waited for the door to close. She pulled up one of the chairs from an unused desk and sat on it, presenting a slightly comical image, portly abbess perched on child’s seat. ‘I’m not holy? What is holy? Nona? Anyone?’ Silence. Nona would have answered but found that she didn’t know. ‘I believe in the Ancestor – in the spirit of the Ancestor.’

‘Believe? Like Sister Wheel believes?’ Nona couldn’t keep the venom from her words – when she looked at Wheel it seemed that something had been left out in the making of the woman. Nona felt the same way about herself most of the time – as if some part had been omitted in her construction, so wholly absent that she couldn’t even say what it was, only that a void lay where it should be. ‘I hate Sister Wheel.’ It’s harder to forgive someone else your own sins than those uniquely theirs. Much harder.

‘You don’t know Sister Wheel, Nona. You’ve only just met her.’

Nona scowled. ‘I know plenty. I’ve seen plenty. More than you can see from up here in your nice warm convent, paid for by all the people working down there in the city and out in the Corridor growing your food from the mud. What good is holy if it can’t feed and clothe itself? This is a place to turn children into old women, praying for the sins of the world and never seeing them.’ Some of the words were her father’s but she owned all the anger. ‘What good is holy if it watches my friend die – not because she did something wrong but because her blood wasn’t good enough?’

Around her the novices’ faces had frozen into a range of expressions, from horror and shock on Jula and Ruli, to amazement on Clera, and on Arabella a smile that could mean anything. Nona wanted to take back what she said – even now she wanted to apologize and beg to stay … but she couldn’t get the words past her locked jaw.

‘You’re right, Nona.’ The abbess nodded to herself, her attention resting for the moment on her only ring, set with a large amethyst.

Nona blinked, she’d been tensing for the blow, or the condemnation.

‘If we spent our whole lives here we would have little to offer the world and know little enough of the world to have context for our prayer …’ Seeing Nona’s frown she spoke more simply. ‘We wouldn’t understand what we’re praying for. Without knowing the chaos and confusion that washes all around this plateau, our Rock of Faith, we could not appreciate the serenity we seek.’ Abbess Glass paused and fixed Nona with dark eyes. It seemed important to her that Nona understand … that Nona believe. ‘I wasn’t always a nun. I had a son and I breathed for him. When we buried him my sorrow consumed me. Was my grief holy? Was it unique? All our hurts and follies are repeated time and again. Generation after generation live the same mistakes. But we’re not like the fire, or the river, or the wind – we’re not a single tune, its variations played out forever, a game of numbers until the world dies. There’s a story written in us. Your parents – your father and his ice tunnels, your mother and her Church of Hope, both of them, whether they loved you or left you, are in you bone-deep, remembered in your blood. The hunska has risen to the surface in you, the quickness of some relative dead these past ten thousand years – you think your mother and father are less present?’

Nona found her teeth clenched too tight for reply. Anger over her mother seethed through her and her hands twitched for violence.

‘There’s a story written in us, added to with each conception – it remembers and it changes us – we move to something from something.’ Abbess Glass held her two hands before her side by side, palms out, thumbs folded in, very close together so that the narrowest of gaps stood between the index finger of both. ‘Life.’ She raised one hand a fraction. ‘Death.’ She raised the other to match it. ‘We spend all our years on the short journey across this gap. But look – the gap is narrow if you cross it, but follow it and it’s long. As long as you like. You and I journey across the gap, but as a people we follow it. The Ancestor stands at both ends. The Ancestor watches us from before the flight – before the shiphearts first beat their rhythm. That is the Ancestor of singular form, the origin, the alpha. Along our journey we have become many and varied. The Ancestor watches us from the start and from the end, from beyond the death of stars, in the cold dark of beyond. That is the Ancestor of singular mind, the destination, the omega.

‘The Ancestor is meaning in chaos, memory in time, and that is holy. The ritual that Sister Wheel teaches is part of that memory – our connection to it, and it is important, whatever you think about the person who delivers the message. But what I really care about is the knowing behind it. We are many parts of the one. We are the steps, the Ancestor is the journey.’ She stood and reached for Nona’s hand. ‘Come on, we’d better go.’

Surprise loosened Nona’s tongue. ‘Why? Where?’ She stepped back, suspicious.

‘By now Sister Wheel will have found the Blade Hall locked, gone in search of Sister Tallow, found her in the sanatorium and recovered the key. Do you want to be here when she gets back with that wire-cane?’ She reached the door and opened it, pulling Nona after her. ‘Behave yourselves, girls. Mistress Spirit will be looking to use that cane and won’t require much excuse.’

‘Sister Wheel will calm down soon enough.’ The abbess crossed the foyer to open the main doors. ‘At least as calm as she gets. Though I won’t pretend that she’s not the sort to hold a grudge. She carries her passion for the faith in both hands, does Sister Wheel, and any disrespect to me, real or assumed, is to her an attack on that faith, Nona. Stay on her good side and pay attention: you need to know what she teaches.’

They approached the abbess’s house, where her cat, Malkin, lay sleeping on the steps. Abbess Glass paused. ‘You can always speak your mind to me, Nona, but it will go easier on you with Sister Wheel and others if you’re seen to be punished for disrespect for the office I represent. Today you will spend an hour in contemplation at the sinkhole instead of joining your class for the evening meal.’

‘Yes, abbess.’ Nona had eaten a week’s worth of food in two days: she could miss dinner and hardly notice it. She had known hunger before. True hunger.

A figure came running towards them across the ground between the dome and the forest of pillars. The abbess stared at the approaching nun. ‘You need to learn what Mistress Spirit teaches. Once it is given over you can make it your own. You can order and prioritize the tenets of the faith to your own liking, as do we all. But first you need to know what they are …’ She trailed off distractedly as the runner drew close, sleeves and skirts flapping, and came to a halt before them.

‘Sister Flint?’ Abbess Glass tilted her head.

The etiolated nun inclined her head, seemingly untroubled by her long sprint. ‘Visitors approach, abbess. A judge of the high circuit and nine men-at-arms.’

‘Curious.’ The abbess pursed her lips. ‘Not by the Seren Way, nor the Vinery Stair, or we would have had warning. Is Sister Oak still patrolling the Cart Way?’

Sister Flint nodded.

‘Then our visitors have either flown here on the backs of eagles or taken a very long walk in order to come upon us unannounced …’

‘Eagles?’ Nona asked.

‘A joke, dear.’ The abbess frowned and looked up at Sister Flint. ‘When will they arrive?’

‘A few minutes.’

‘Hmmm.’ Abbess Glass lowered herself, with a little difficulty, to sit upon the steps of her official residence. ‘Fetch my crozier, Nona, will you? Just behind the front door. It’s open.’

Nona hurried up the steps and pushed through the panelled door into a dim hallway tiled in black and white. Her footsteps echoed in the vaulted space above her as she entered. A rack of five identical croziers stood against the wall a little way in, hefty staves bound with iron hoops, the top coiling like a shepherd’s crook, the flat spiral covered in plates of very thinly beaten gold, each one embossed with scenes from the book of the Ancestor. She took the first, surprised at its weight, and hurried back to the abbess.

‘Thank you.’ Abbess Glass took the crozier and patted the step beside her. ‘Sit.’

Nona sat, and Malkin stalked away. Sister Flint waited at the bottom of the steps, the wind wrapping her habit tight about her painful thinness.

Before too long they saw the visitors making their way through the pillars, ill at ease among the forest of stone. ‘Did you know, Nona, that the stone from which those pillars are made can’t be found anywhere in the Corridor? It’s all beneath the ice now. Lost to us.’

Nona started to reply then let the words fall. Abbess Glass knew she knew nothing.

The approaching men wore long red cloaks and breastplates of burnished steel, their helms gleaming and ornate. They flanked a grey-haired man in a thick black robe riding an enormous horse, one built for endurance rather than speed. A second man, also in a black robe, but a thinner one, tossed by the wind, followed, leading a mule with laden saddlebags.

By now half a dozen nuns watched from the doorway of the Ancestor’s dome, Sister Wheel among them, having paused on her return to Spirit class with wire-cane in hand.

The nine guardsmen arrayed themselves before Abbess Glass’s steps and the old man dismounted from his giant horse. He held himself with a degree of confidence and dignity that would put Grey Stephen to shame. Nona wondered if he were a lord or some close relation to the emperor. A thick circlet of twisted gold strands held a white mane from his patrician’s face. He regarded the abbess from beneath neatly trimmed eyebrows, channelling a slight air of distaste down either side of a prominent and angular nose.

‘Those are quite the grandest city guardsmen I’ve ever seen,’ Abbess Glass murmured. ‘I smell money here, and lots of it.’

The younger man came forward clutching a heavy book bound in black leather. Nona had watched him tugging it from the mule’s saddlebag.

‘Judge Irvone Galamsis offers the Abbess of Sweet Mercy Convent his greetings and felicitations on this the birthday of Emperor Hedral Antsis, fourth of his name.’

Abbess Glass bent towards Nona, her voice low and carrying a smile. ‘Almost every day is the birthday of some emperor or other if you dig deep enough.’ With a grunt she got to her feet, using her crozier to lever herself up. ‘Irvone, a delight to see you again. Will you be staying to dinner? The novices would be so excited! A judge visiting us, and not just some common sort but one third of the highest jury in the land!’

‘I’ve come for the girl, abbess. I don’t plan to stay long.’

‘Girl? We have lots of those here, Irvone. I’m charged to look after them, body and soul.’

‘The convicted murderer that you helped abscond from Harriton prison two days ago.’

‘Convicted?’ The abbess rubbed her chin. ‘There was a trial? Or was a rope merely purchased for her?’

Judge Irvone snapped his fingers and the young man hefted up his book, opening it to a page marked with a silk ribbon. He read from it, his voice precisely measured. ‘In the ruling of Judge Maker, esteemed of the high court: Within the sound of the palace bells a stateless person may be convicted by any prison official of more than three years’ service on the evidence of five or more eyewitnesses of good standing. YoM 3417.’

The golden head of the abbess’s staff made slow revolutions. ‘Such a new cover for such an old book, judge. Year of the Moon 3417? Your law predates this convent. It predates most of Verity! And I doubt if it has been used in the time these buildings have stood here.’

‘Even so, Warden James passed sentence upon the girl when she arrived at Harriton.’ The judge looked towards the convent. ‘If you would be so good as to have the child brought out – that would be preferable to a search of the premises.’

Nona realized with a start that none of the men knew that she was the one they were looking for.

‘Of course.’ The abbess nodded. ‘Of course, I would be glad to help. But it seems to me that even in these modern times, and even with a law so old … would one not require someone to have been murdered in order to hang another person for murder? Or has poor Raymel gone to his accounting with the Ancestor?’

The judge waved a bored hand at his assistant who turned to another page marked with a length of silk. ‘YoM 3702, Judge Arc Leensis rules that in cases of attempted murder the perpetrator may hang for murder if the original conviction were based upon the reasonable belief that the victim would die.’

‘Thuran Tacsis must have paid out a considerable weight of gold to have your clerks scouring the law books with such diligence, Irvone.’

‘What man would not want justice for his son?’ The judge inclined his head, apparently solemn and thoughtful. Nona wondered if he had ever met Raymel Tacsis. ‘Lord Tacsis is prepared to overlook your interference with the due execution of the law, Abbess Glass, and out of respect for the church I do not propose to press the case on behalf of the city. However, you would be well advised to place the murderer known as Nona Reeve into my custody without delay.’

Nona ground her teeth tight against the urge to spit. Partnis Reeve had given her nothing she wanted to keep, his name least of all.

‘I would never disobey the high court, Irvone.’ Abbess Glass stopped turning her crozier. The judge snorted. Abbess Glass waited a moment then continued. ‘But—’

‘Ha!’ The judge shook his head.

‘But Nona is now a novice at the convent and as such any and all misdemeanours, past and present, fall under the jurisdiction of church law. As do mine. I’m sorry that you’ve had a wasted trip. You really should stay for dinner, the girls would be delighted—’

The big black book of laws hit the ground with a resounding thump. ‘That’s her, isn’t it?’ The young assistant advanced towards the steps, finger pointing at Nona. ‘That’s the little bitch who did it!’

‘Lano …’ The judge shook his head, more in resignation than anger. ‘I told you you should not have come.’

Nona stared at him, seeing the man for the first time and finding something familiar in the narrow cast of his features, perhaps the pale fury in his eyes or the slant of his lips.

‘He would have killed Saida!’ The anger of that moment in the Caltess returned to Nona in an instant, as if it had never left. ‘He deser—’

Lano Tacsis moved faster than anyone Nona had ever seen, a blur of dark robes, twisting past Sister Flint even as she reached for him with reflexes to shame a cave viper. Nona barely had time to throw up her hands in front of the fingers reaching to seize her by the throat. A moment later Lano was being hauled backward, a scream of anger choked off by Sister Flint’s slim arm fastened about his neck.

‘What?’ Abbess Glass, locked into the moment of the attack, now found her voice, only realizing there had been an assault as the perpetrator was pulled away. ‘Nona! Are you hurt?’

Nona stared up at the abbess’s concern. ‘No.’

‘Your hands!’

Nona raised them, both dripping crimson. There was no pain.

‘The bitch cut me! That little gutterling actually cut me!’ Lano, thrown back into the arms of the closest guardsmen, clutched one hand with the other, blood pulsing between his fingers. ‘Arrest her!’

Other nuns now stood between the judge’s men and the abbess, Sisters Kettle and Apple flanking Sister Flint along with two Nona didn’t know.

‘Lano Tacsis?’ Abbess Glass took a step forward. ‘Does your father know that you’re here, young man?’

Lano snarled and took a step forward, but slowly enough to allow the guardsmen to hold him back.

‘I see your time at the Tetragode has been well spent. Your disguise and turn of speed were both admirable.’ The abbess looked to Judge Irvone, sighed, and returned her gaze to the young man before her. ‘It seems that both of Thuran Tacsis’s sons have yet to learn that beating little girls is not a pastime that can be pursued entirely without consequence … I do have a number of older girls here who would be happy to teach you that lesson if you care to make a challenge within the Blade Hall?’

‘You don’t scare me, Shella Yammal!’ Lano spat the words, white-faced in fury, hectic patches of red around his eyes. ‘Yes, I know your line and your family, old woman. My father could buy this rock from under your miserable collection of old hags and rejects.’

‘What Lano means,’ Judge Irvone raised his voice, a deep and impressive instrument full of gravitas and authority, ‘is that we will return to Verity and pursue this matter through the appropriate channels.’ He motioned to a guard to retrieve the dropped legal tome then used another man for support as he mounted his horse.

‘High Priest Jacob dines at my father’s table, you miserable sack of blubber!’ Lano roared. The judge waved for the men holding him to start back towards the pillars. ‘I’ll sink you for this!’ Lano let them drag him as he shouted. ‘I’ll have that girl roasted! I’ll serve her to my brother on a dinner plate! The high priest will have you beaten from this place, old woman. You’ll beg on the streets before I’m done!’

Now about twenty yards off, heels dragging, Lano Tacsis shook off the men holding him and stalked to the front of their party to remonstrate with the judge. The nuns watched in silence. The harsh edges of Lano’s outrage stretched back across the plateau even as the men reached the pillars.

‘Well.’ Abbess Glass sat down heavily on the steps once more. She didn’t seem inclined to say more. Sister Apple turned towards her but the abbess waved her away. ‘You heard the man – we can expect a visit from the high priest soon enough. A good time to clean the place up a bit and make sure everything is in order. I’ll leave you in charge of that, Apple dear.’

Sister Apple pursed her lips, glanced at Nona’s hands, then nodded and led the others away. Sister Wheel lingered, but a gesture with the crozier sent her hurrying after the others.

‘So,’ the abbess said, patting the step beside her. ‘You have a knife?’

Nona nodded and took her place on the cold stone.

‘Understandable, I suppose.’ Abbess Glass kept her eyes on the distant pillars. ‘But I must ask you to return it to the Blade stores.’

‘Yes, abbess.’ Nona looked down at her hands, conflicted. The abbess had done more to protect her than her own mother had: she might lose everything just for some peasant girl she barely knew. Nona hadn’t told a lie, but even so it felt wrong to deceive her. ‘I will.’

‘Are you sure none of that blood is yours?’ the abbess asked.

Nona flexed her hands, the fingers already sticking to each other. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Run along then. Put that knife back and we won’t speak of it again. It’s my duty and the duty of all your sisters here to protect you. You don’t need a blade.’

‘Yes, abbess.’ Nona got quickly to her feet. ‘I will.’ She wanted to thank the abbess, but nothing she thought to say sounded right. And whatever had happened Abbess Glass had still watched Saida hang.

Nona ran off, the Corridor wind trying to steer her. She would put the knife into Blade Hall’s stores straight away … but first she would run to the dormitories and retrieve it from her bed.

10

Nona came late to the dormitory, having slipped into the bathhouse on her way back from contemplation at the sinkhole to avoid Sister Wheel, only to have the woman hold an endless conversation right outside the door with some unknown party. Nona thought she heard her name mentioned but maddeningly the thickness of the door, the splashing of two or more older novices in the pool, and the soft but constant gurgling of the pipes kept the actual words just beyond hearing. At one point Wheel raised her voice enough for Nona to catch, ‘Assassin!’ and a moment later, ‘Blood!’ but after that only muttering.

Eventually Sister Wheel ran out of opinions, or at least time to deliver them in, and left, allowing Nona to escape. She stepped out from the steams and instantly discovered the misery of mixing a warm damp habit with a cold and invasive wind.

Rain started to splatter about her as she passed the laundry. Despite her haste to reach the dormitories Nona paused at the laundry side door. A nun held it open a hand’s-width, having stopped to finish her conversation with someone further inside.

‘… Ancestor! We don’t want him here again.’

‘…’

‘You weren’t even here back then to see it, girl. Abbess Shard hadn’t the guts to keep him out. He’d have the novices over to Heart Hall for “special testing”. And not just the older ones.’

‘…’

‘Just an archon. And if he was like that as an archon what do you think he’s like as high priest? No wonder he hates Glass! They say—’ The door shut again as the conversation drew the sister back into the laundry.

Nona waited a minute, then another, then moved on, as wet with the rain as if she’d swum from the bathhouse. On opening the door to the Red sleeping hall she found the class chatting in various groups around the beds, a few of the girls starting to undress but nobody in any particular hurry. Arabella’s voice carried through the mix, though she was hidden by the three or four novices around her. ‘—could say those things to Sister Wheel!’

‘And we got shaved just because she took your belt, Ara!’

Nona saw that Jula was one of those in Arabella’s circle. It stung to see her there, but what she’d said was true. And the attention of a noble, an almost princess, must be very flattering to a scribe’s daughter. Head down, Nona walked to her bed.

‘Heard the law came looking for you.’ Clera, lying on top of her blankets, put down her class scroll at Nona’s approach. ‘I hate those judges.’ She set her penny spinning on the writing slate beside her, spattering the lamplight.

Nona offered up a weak smile and turned to her bed. Clera patted her own. ‘You look half-drowned. Use this.’ She tossed over a rough grey towel. ‘What did you do, Nona? Did they come to arrest you for cheeking the abbess? Or for being a tunnel-worshipper?’ She grinned, pushing aside her hair, and patted again. ‘Come, tell Clera everything.’

Nona pulled her wet habit off, wiped her face, rubbed at her hair, then despite her mood sat where Clera indicated.

Clera leaned in close. ‘A judge? A damned judge rode all the way up here to get you? What the hell did you do, Nona?’ She took hold of Nona’s arm. ‘And how are you still here? I don’t want them to take you away!’

Nona sighed. Sooner or later the whole convent would know about Raymel Tacsis. She was surprised the story wasn’t circulating among the novices already. Sooner or later. She would rather it was later though …‘You’re my friend?’ she asked.

‘I am.’ The grip on her arm strengthened.

‘I lied.’ Nona looked up. Ruli was sat on the next bed now, nightcap in place, one pale strand of hair escaping. ‘I wasn’t taken from the village by raiders …’

Clera and Ruli shuffled closer, saying nothing, and Nona started her story anew.

‘A juggler once came to my village. He was my first friend—’ Nona backtracked. ‘In my whole life I’d had one friend. It’s a hard thing to live in as a stranger in a small village. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere you’re not known. I used to think there was something wrong with me to make the other children turn me away. Something more than being dark … I’ve never understood people – not truly – not how to be at ease with them and make them be at ease with me. Sometimes I feel as though I’m playing a part, like those mummers who travel the roads, only I don’t know the words properly, or how I’m supposed to act.

‘I had one friend. I don’t know if he was a proper friend, but he said he was, and nobody had told me that before, so it was something special.’

‘The juggler? How old was he?’ Clera asked, leaning in with Ruli. Jula sat nearby now, watching, her expression unreadable.

‘Twenty-two,’ Nona said, remembering Amondo’s face, light and shadow in the brilliance of the focus moon.

‘Twenty-two!’ Clera gasped and exchanged glances with Ruli. ‘That’s a grown man.’

‘What was he called?’ Jula from the next bed.

‘Amondo. He only stayed three days. He said he had to keep travelling to find new people who would pay to see his show. But on the morning that she found him gone my mother was very angry. I hadn’t seen her like that before, at least not so bad, throwing around her baskets and cursing him. Then she saw me standing in the corner, trying to be out of the way, and she said it was my fault, all of it was my fault, and that I’d driven Amondo away and that she hated me.’

‘Did he touch you?’ Clera demanded.

‘Yes.’ Nona frowned. It seemed like a stupid question.

Ruli drew in a sharp breath.

‘I mean … in a bad way?’ Clera said.

‘He didn’t hit me …’ Nona’s frown deepened. ‘He showed me how to juggle.’ She pursed her lips and shrugged. ‘And when he left I went after him. I told myself I was going to get him to come back so my mother wouldn’t be so angry with me. She was cross most of the time, as though something was wrong with everything. I don’t remember her laughing. Ever. But I thought if Amondo came back that might change and we could be happy. I told myself I was going to get him to come back – but really part of me hoped he would ask me to come with him, and another part of me knew I would say yes.

‘My father told me stories and they were different from the ones Grey Stephen would tell the village on fire-nights. They were different because I knew he had been to the places he was describing, and they made me want to go too. Da’s stories made me feel that the world went on so much further than I could see, and that the Corridor was a road that could take me anywhere. I could reach the Marn Sea and sail on a fishing boat, or dig emeralds from the ground in Tecras, or hunt whiters on the ice, or explore the tunnels and discover the Missing. Anything.

‘Old Mother Sible saw Amondo leave along the Rellam trail. She told him the forest was a haunted place but he just laughed and said everywhere had its ghosts.’

Nona fell into her own story as she had before, not hearing the words as she spoke them, only seeing events play out before the eye of her mind.

Mother Sible called after me to stop. ‘You won’t catch him ’fore he gets to the woods.’

I kept running, foot-wrappings soaked and muddy, flapping as I dodged the wheel ruts.

‘You won’t catch him …’ The old woman’s voice lost itself in the distance.

I’d been as far as the Rellam Forest before. I’d gathered sticks in the margins, hunted for hedgehogs among the dry leaves, peered into the dark spaces between the boles of the trees, looking for the faerie lights that folk in the village spoke about. Seen nothing, found nothing, except for sticks, and back at the hut they’d burned the same as any others. I’d been to the Rellam Forest before – but not as the sun was falling. And I’d never ventured in.

Still, Amondo and I both stood on the same road. We both stood beneath the same clouds, hung with sun-bright edges and rain-dark hearts – rain comes from a dark heart. I would catch up with him before it fell.

Amondo had more than an hour’s head start on me and Mother Sible proved right in her prediction. I found myself panting, sore-footed and sweaty, the trail now just a band of beaten green, winding its way into the first trees as if it too had heard the woods’ reputation and was trying to delay entering.

Everywhere has its ghosts, Amondo had said, but in most places those ghosts are at least hidden in the corners, or tucked away at right angles to the world, waiting their moment. In the Rellam Forest you could see the ghosts, patterned on the gloom beneath the canopy, the distortion of their faces frozen into the bark of ancient trunks. And you could hear them too, screaming into the silence, not quite breaking it but making it tremble.

I was scared. More scared than I’d ever been of the bigs who chased me, or of Black Will’s hound that took Jenna’s fingers the year before. What made me follow that trail with the sun falling, and the cold wind speaking through the branches, was a larger fear, one that had been with me ever since I had words to put around it: the fear that I wouldn’t ever leave that village, that I would stay and grow old and bent and be put in the ground there, wasting all the years of my life as an outsider, inside.

I got a few miles along the trail before the gloom thickened past the point that I could find my way. Hungry and cold, I crouched with my back to an old tree and waited. A light rain started to fall, the sort that’s half ice and hits the leaves with a splat, gathering in wet clumps before it drops to ground.

When you’re moving in a dark and haunted forest the urge is for every step to be taken more quickly than the last. There’s a pressure between your shoulder blades. Each creak and groan is a hunter stalking you, each flutter of wind its breath, close against your neck. You want to break and run, in any direction, just so long as it’s fast.

When you’re still the urge is to be stiller. The knowledge that eyes are turned your way quietens the air inside your lungs. You make yourself small. You hold every muscle tight. And you listen. Above all you listen to the woods as they close about you.

I stayed there, cramped and shivering and terrified, until the moon’s focus found me. The light filtered down, slow at first, making the impenetrable gloom penetrable once more, recreating the forest around me, resolving monstrosities into chance alignment of unconnected branches. Within minutes I could see the trail. I started to run. For all that time walking the path I had wanted to break and run, but that way lies madness: you don’t run from terror, not if you ever want to stop again. Now though, with the red light shafting down all around me to dapple the ground in bright patches, I ran.