Atsuki Nightwhisper's Arc

Chapter 6 of 17

Matthias was gone down the stair. Atsuki held the whole pendant in his fist. He wanted to sit with the family and ask his mother's name. But the priest knew where they hid. A witnessed oath might stop him in daylight. It would not stop a knife in the dark. Atsuki looked at the old woman who had pulled him through the wall. "He'll bring others," Atsuki said. "Men who don't care who watches. You have to leave now." The old woman's hands shook. "We are old. We cannot run down the cliffs faster than his sword." A child clung to her skirt. A pale flower drooped in the child's fingers, its petals almost see-through. The family had lived here so long they still gathered blossoms for the table. That life was ending tonight. Atsuki ran to the broken window. Below, Matthias climbed down the weed-choked steps. He moved slow, sure of his kill. There was time, but not much. Atsuki thought of the road down, the switchbacks, the rocks. On foot the priest would catch them. Then a shape dropped from the tower's high ledge. A lynx landed on the sill. Wide feathered wings folded against its spotted flanks. Green feathers caught the last light. It stared at Atsuki with flat yellow eyes and did not run. "He's ours," the old woman said. "He nests in the old lookout. He carries our young when the path floods." Atsuki understood. "Then he carries them now." He lifted the smallest child onto the lynx's back. The old woman helped a second child up. The winged cat crouched, steady under the weight. "Take them down," Atsuki told the beast. "Away from the priest. Fast." The lynx spread its wings and dropped from the window. It caught the wind and glided over the cliff, past Matthias, out of his reach. The priest stopped and stared up as the children sailed over his head toward the woods below. He shouted. He could not follow. Atsuki turned to the old woman. "Get the rest to the far stair. He'll chase the ones he can reach. He can't reach them." They climbed down the tower's shadowed side while Matthias scrambled after the flying beast. By the time he reached the trees, the lynx had landed and the children had scattered into the moss. The family slipped away along a goat path Matthias never saw. At the bottom, Atsuki counted them. All alive. The old woman gripped his arm. "They know our faces now. We can never come back here." Atsuki looked at the whole pendant, then at the frightened family scattered in the dark. He had saved them from the sword tonight. But he had also torn them from the only home that hid them. Matthias still lived, still hunted, and now the family had nowhere left to run but with him.