Linny Marsh's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Linny climbed until her legs shook. The creature kept its distance below her, gray against the gray scree, patient as weather. She reached a shelf of rock and stopped because her lungs would not let her go on. The thing stopped too. It sat back on its short legs and watched her with wet, forward eyes. Its ears turned like a cat's. Up close it looked less like a wolf and more like something between a mouse and a house cat, swollen too big. She understood then that it had not lunged. It had walked her up the ridge for an hour and never closed the gap. If it wanted her dead she would be dead. She pulled the journal from her coat. Her hands were shaking. She flipped past the coordinates to the page she had copied from the stolen painter's book — the sketch of the place with the flat, still light. She held it open and turned it toward the animal. "This," she said. Her voice cracked. "Do you know this?" The creature stood. It came three steps up the slope and stopped again. Its nose worked the air above the page. Then it turned its flat head and looked north, off her route, into a stand of frost-bright trees she had planned to skirt wide. It looked back at her. It looked north again. It took another step, deliberate, away from the direction she meant to go. Linny closed the journal. Every rule she had ever been given said run downhill and take her chances on the road. Forge would have said it louder than anyone. He was not here to say it. That was the point of leaving. She picked up her bundle. "Alright," she said. "Show me." The creature moved. It did not hurry. It kept ten paces ahead and looked back at each turn to be sure she followed. Its short legs punched neat holes in the frost. Twice she stopped to breathe and it stopped with her, sitting like a fat gray cat on the stone. The pines thickened. She stepped through a gap in the rocks and into a dense cluster of frostwood trees. Ice sheathed every branch. The canopy above her caught the light and threw it back in small hard pieces. The air smelled of cold sap. She had never seen a wood like this on any map. The creature waited, watching her. Linny set her bundle down and pulled out her charcoal. Her hand was steady now. She had followed a monster off her route and it had brought her somewhere no painter's journal had described. She did not know if she was being led to the place she wanted or away from it. She only knew she was deeper in the woods than she had planned to be by nightfall, and the thing that had herded her here was waiting to see what she would do next.