Linny Marsh's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Linny followed the gray creature into a thicker stand of frostwoods. The trunks pressed close here. Ice coated the fine upper branches and made a low shimmer above them. Snow muffled every sound but her own breath. Then the creature stopped. Its ears pushed forward. Linny stopped too. She heard it a moment later—a slow, heavy tread between the trees ahead. Something big. Something that did not care about being quiet. Her hand went to her knife and closed on nothing. She had left it wedged in the snow at the hollow's mouth. She had climbed out and forgotten it. Her stomach dropped. She crouched behind the nearest trunk. The creature crouched with her, low against her boot. She had heard the village talk about what lived past the ridge. She had laughed then. She was not laughing now. Her hands shook inside her sleeves. The trees ahead parted. A white cat the size of a plow horse stepped into the gap. Small blue wings folded tight against its shoulders. Its eyes were a hard, pale blue. It lifted its head and drew in the air. Linny pressed flat to the bark. She had no blade. She had a knife-cut coat, paint tubes warm against her belly, and a small gray animal breathing at her ankle. Nothing that would stop the thing in front of her. The panther took a step. Then another. It moved without hurry, the way the first creature had moved on the ridge road, and she understood it was choosing when. Beside her, the gray creature shifted. Its whole body went tight. Then it broke. It shot out from behind the trunk in a low gray streak, tail flat, and cut across the panther's line of sight. The panther's head snapped around. Its haunches dropped. It sprang. Wings opened once, twice. The panther cleared a low branch and was gone between the trunks, chasing the smaller shape deeper into the cluster. Snow sifted down from the disturbed limbs. Linny did not think. She ran the other way. She ran until her lungs burned and the trees thinned. She did not look back for the creature that had stayed with her since the ridge. She could not help it now. It had bought her this. She stumbled out of the frostwoods onto a lip of open ground and stopped hard. Below her the land dropped off, a raging River of ice chunks and broken trees flowed hundreds of feet down. Lights sparkled just above the trees on the other side. She was so close. She just needed a way across.