Scarlett Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 11 of 14

Scarlett walked for a long time. The junk went on in every direction. She passed a wagon tongue standing up in the floor like a spear, and a pile of shoes with no pairs, and more chickens that did not look at her. Her legs shook. The poison in her blood had not left her. She stopped to rest against a stack of barrels and heard it then, from somewhere behind the heap of rope she had left an hour ago. A knock. Then another. Something rapping the floor and waiting, rapping and waiting, the way a blind man taps a stick. She drew her sword. The knocking moved. It came around the far side of a broken cart and she saw what made it. A hand. Only a hand. As wide as a table and shaped like a man's, with knuckles and veins and a clean thumbnail. It moved on its fingers like a spider walks. It struck the floor with one fingertip, held still, then struck again, listening for her through the ground. She ran. Her ribs burned. She cut left around a door standing on nothing and right around a heap of clay bowls, and behind her the knocking sped up and came on. She could not fight it. In her state a straight fight would end her in one grip. She ducked behind a wagon and held her breath. The tapping stopped. Then it started again, closer, patient, tracking the drum of her heart through her boots. It caught her at a low wall of crates. She turned with the sword raised in both hands, ready to bring it down on the wrist. The hand stopped. It did not lunge. It sank to the floor and lay flat, fingers spread, palm down. She waited. It waited. She stepped back. It walked forward, the same distance, and settled again. She stepped sideways. It matched her and settled again. It was not hunting now. It was following. She lowered the sword an inch. The hand lifted one finger and pointed straight up at the empty sky where the rift had been. Then it turned over. The palm opened toward her, flat and still, waiting to be stepped on. Scarlett stared at the lines cut across it. Her mouth went dry. Her hands would not stop shaking. She did not know what waited above, or who had sent the hand, or what climbing onto it would cost. She only knew it was the first door she had been offered, and she was more afraid than she had ever been in the arena.