The deer bounded right into him. He stumbled, fell, and hit his head on the rocky bank. Stars rang in his eyes. The deer’s hooves bruised as they bounded over him. Then they were past, without giving any sign they’d noticed him or Maurice or the cat.
Wincing, Arthur sat on a rock and touched his forehead. His fingers came away bloody.
His head spun. “That’s not good.”
Freya slunk along the edge of the pool to sit at his side.
“The bandages were in my suitcase. Why did I think I could do this? I should’ve listened to Lottie. She told me it was dangerous, and I thought I’d be fine because—I don’t know why I thought that. We don’t even have the horse anymore.”
The horse hadn’t been any use without the cart, but having a big, bulky beast at his shoulder all morning had been a comfort. He scooped Freya up and buried his face in her fur.
“You can’t leave me, all right?”
She made a face, disgruntled at the sudden hug, but didn’t wriggle free. Letting out a breath, Arthur set her back down. She put a paw on his thigh and purred at him. He focused on the purring instead of the blood trickling down the side of his face. Not for the first time, he wished he were more like Charlotte. She would’ve known what to do.
Untucking his shirt, he tried to tear a strip of fabric away with his teeth. All he got was an aching jaw and a damp hem.He splashed water onto the wound and pressed his hem to his forehead, hoping the injury was small enough for a little pressure and time to stop the bleeding.
Arthur sighed. The loss of the horse had sucked any hope from the day. His one remaining comfort was the stream. It gave him something to follow, hopefully something that wouldn’t shift or vanish on him. The cat would’ve been a comfort, too, if he hadn’t been afraid she’d run off or get eaten.
The ground trembled. So faintly at first that Arthur thought he’d imagined it.
“Do you feel that?” he asked Freya.
She tensed, her golden eyes fixed on the underbrush across the stream.
“Freya?”
She scrambled up his shoulder and clung to him, claws digging into his skin.
“Ow— What—”
More deer burst from the trees. A whole herd of red deer this time, hinds barking in alarm as they raced through the forest. Birds flew with them, whistling or cawing or crying. A raven seemed to turn to Arthur as it passed, croaking in warning. Like the roe deer that had knocked him over, many of the creatures were partially translucent, affording a glimpse of their skulls, their vertebrae, their ribs.
Arthur cowered until they’d passed. He got slowly to his feet, checking his forehead. The blood was already tacky. Not too bad of an injury, probably.
“That’s something,” he mumbled. “What d’you suppose...?”
A high, soft whistle shrilled. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Wind burst through the undergrowth, so strong it buffeted him.
“What...?”
Then he saw them.
A pair of massive—eagles, he might’ve called them, if they hadn’t been all wrong. Black as the storm clouds out to sea each autumn. Eyes that flashed like lightning. They winged along as though they weren’t far too large for a forest understory. Each time they called out—that high, soft whistle rather than the terrible screech Arthur would’ve imagined—a gust of wind whirled through the trees, growing stronger and colder. Trees cracked and groaned. Branches broke and smashed to the ground.
Freya yowled in his ear. Arthur swore, shouldered his knapsack, and started running.
xi. In which the children find a corpse
Charlotte had slept fitfully in her chair and awoken at dawn, exhausted. There had been chores to do, so she’d shuffled to the kitchen to make tea. That roused her some.
So that’s something, she imagined Arthur saying, as he so often did, and she sighed. With a horse and cart, he could be to Port Lorne and back in a little over a week, if all went well, but already the time since he’d left felt interminable.
Throughout the day, Jonas slipped into the role left vacant by their uncle’s absence. Distracting Sasha so Charlotte could have some quiet and get things done. Tidying the house, less erratically than Arthur usually did. Noticing when Charlotte had a stab of pain or a dizzy spell, bringing her an ointment or stool or whatever else they thought she needed.
At lunchtime, Jonas was making sandwiches when Charlotte entered the kitchen. A piece of ham dropped on the floor; they called for the cat, but she failed to appear.
Their brow wrinkled. “Where’s Freya?”
