Tsuki Usagiri's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The hill shuddered again, and Tsuki heard something else answer the drum. Not below. Above. A thin note slid down the moon paths, the way a knife slides down a shelf. She knew that sound. A hunter walked the paths tonight, drawn by her beat the way a fox is drawn by a kicked pebble. Melody's silver box still hummed at her feet. The jar in its slot pulsed pale blue. Tsuki lifted her ears. Something was already moving toward them, and dawn was hours away. "There's a listener on the paths," she said. "Following the beat back up." Melody's wings twitched flat against her cloak. "Then we stop playing." "If I stop, the god sleeps again." "If you don't, whatever's coming finds us before he's fully awake." A shape parted the grass at the ridge. Tall. Long-eared. Cut from shadow with no face inside it. It moved without sound, one slow step, then another. Tsuki had seen its kind once, from a great distance, hunting a spirit that had grown too loud. It wanted the drum quiet. It would take her hands to make it so. A rustle came from the burrow's mouth. A rabbit climbed out of the dark. He stood on his hind legs, taller than a rabbit should stand, wrapped in bark and ivy. His eyes were lit from inside. "Elder," Tsuki said. He looked at her, then at the shadow on the ridge. "I felt the beat in the roots," he said. "I came up." He did not flinch at the shape climbing down toward them. "You woke him. Now something is hunting you." "Yes." "Then play louder." Tsuki understood. The god was half awake, listening. A living ear was here at last. She dropped to her knees beside the silver box and struck the drum straight into the open jar. Melody sealed it fast and shoved it back in the slot. The antennae threw the beat into the ground and into the air at once. The Burrow Elder planted his feet and did not close his eyes. He heard. He heard every strike. The pale carrots in the patch beside the burrow bent their leaves toward the sound. Tsuki felt herself thicken at the edges. Grass no longer showed through her knees. The shadow reached the flat ground and stopped. The beat pressed against it. Tsuki hit the drum harder, and the Elder spoke a single word into the noise, low and flat. "Down." The earth answered him. The ground under the shadow softened and slumped. It sank to its knees, then its chest. It clawed at the dirt without a sound. The hill swallowed it whole. The soil closed. The ridge was empty. Tsuki lowered the drum. Her hands were solid. The Elder watched her, still and quiet. "He's awake under us," he said. "He knows your face now. So does the warren." He turned back toward the burrow. "Come inside before the next one comes."