Chapters 9-10

(In which we learn a little bit about chicken entrails, and Elizabeth and Priest get into a bit of a row, I'm afraid)

Ninth

Elizabeth had left Grim alone, to allow him to go back to sleep. He had read to her the legend of Garren and Marjorey, as detailed in one of the books stacked next to his sick-bed, ones that Priest had read to him during his fevers, in what struck her as an uncharacteristic kindness from the harsh man. Grim told her that he had first heard the tale in childhood, told to him by his parents or siblings or friends or by a traveling bard, though this last was a rarity in the realms of the Shades.

It was hard to believe that Priest could be the Garren from the story. His given first name of Gareth was close enough, but he did not appear much older than Grim. And the book from which Grim read was ancient, its leaves oiled with age, so the story had to be much older.

Elizabeth had questions beyond number...but the energy expended in reading the story had been enough to weaken Grim, so she had held off. She laid her hand against his brow to find he was hot again. She hoped his effort had not caused any setback to his healing.

Her stomach growled. She couldn't put off eating any longer. Priest was probably still angry with her, but it had to be well past time for breakfast, and he had asked her to meet him. If she were hungry now, she would be ravenous by the time she found him among this maze.

She wandered through the twists and turns, periodically dropping to her knees to look for his feet. It took her only a few minutes to see him and a few more to untangle the path to his immediate proximity. He sat on a chair with a large book open in his lap, its pages filled with text that was not only oriented left-to-right, but also was in English. But he wasn't reading this book, rather was using it as a canvas to sketch an interpretation of the maps in front of him, without apparent regard for the words on the pages. On the ground next to him small paint-pots rested with brush handles sticking out. Paint flecked his hands and wrists, and his fingertips were coated with it, though Elizabeth saw only pencil marks on the paper on which he worked.

"I will...be with you...in just a moment," he said, his eyes bouncing from the map to his book. He made small scratches of adjustments to the drawing. 

"Ah. There." He closed the book around his pencil-root, and turned toward her. "Hungry?"

She nodded. His mood seemed pleasant enough. Had he forgiven her for the fracas with Margaret?

He removed the paintbrushes from the pots and sealed them with cork stoppers, wiping the excess paint on his sleeve. The brown, green and blue leavings were the only decoration on his dark attire, and Elizabeth wondered how long it would take before these streaks would fade to match the grey he seemed to favor. If the story was true, time was one thing Priest had in excess.

He led her to the far end of the barn, emerging into the room most distant from the tower. This portion of the building was homier, almost cheerful compared to the rest. A canopy bedframe supported a straw-stuffed mattress, surrounded by low, crowded bookshelves. The tomes varied from ornate to ones that were little more than sheaths of paper held together with twine. The wood was stained a deep brown, scratched and nicked to show the white underneath.

There was also a kitchen area with a black pot-bellied stove already lit, the smoke carried off to the outside of the barn by jointed pipe. Something boiled within a pail on the stovetop, emitting an acrid but hearty aroma that reminded Elizabeth of small Eastern-European restaurants where Graham had taken her and her mother, their dining rooms small as closets, the waiters having to perform contortionist acts to get from kitchen to table.

Priest produced a pair of blond wooden bowls and two mismatched metal spoons from a nearby basket, setting them on a low oval table whose broad surface had been hewn from a single tree. Using the free ends of his sleeves as oven mitts, he poured the contents of the pail into the bowls, unidentified chunks splashing down like flotsam over a waterfall.

The sight and smell of food redoubled Elizabeth's hunger. As she sat cross-legged on the floor, it was all she could do to keep from upending the bowl into her mouth and swallowing the meal in a single gulp. But she managed to maintain her manners, delaying until Priest had poured two glasses full of a milky liquid and sat down across from her. She thanked him for his generosity and sat trembling and drooling through a short grace. Then she dove in.

The meat was tough and the broth grainy, but the spices were wonderful, plowing through her mouth to wake up parts of her tongue she hadn’t known existed. She was scraping the bottom of the bowl before she knew it and mopping up the remnants with chunks of a blackened bread that Priest set out while she was distracted by the stew.

There were no napkins; she wiped her face on her sleeve. She looked up at Priest, meaning to thank him again, but stopped when she saw his look of bemusement. "Thank you?" she said, her voice lilting upwards in confusion.

"I'm sorry," he laughed, " I so rarely get to see someone so enjoy my cooking. Hunger's the best sauce, as the saying goes."

She nodded and tipped her cup to gulp the room-temperature liquid, which tasted like soymilk. She polished off the rest of the bread and, finally satiated, waited for Priest to finish his meal.

"So, can I start asking you questions now?"

He swallowed the last of his drink, then nodded. "I heard Grim reading to you. I imagine you have more questions now than you did before."

"Is it true?"

"The story? Some of it. Some is exaggerated, and some fiction squeezed in to fit the legend of Eliza and Silas. Storytellers take liberties. They didn't even get our names right."

"Which parts are true?"

“No.” He smirked, rubbing his jaw. "No, you don't get to know that."

Elizabeth was taken aback. "I don't 'get to know' that?"

Priest shrugged. "It's not necessary. After so much time, the legend is more important than the truth. The parts of the story that endure tell you more than I ever could."

"But...if it's true, if any of it is true, then, well, you must hate me."

He chewed thoughtfully. "It is true. I have spent many years hating Eliza. And more than a few thinking I could forgive her, if given the chance. Now that you are here...I am not sure. I could kill you, you know. Grim is too weak to stop me, and you are just a girl, weapon though you be." He tilted his head to indicate her left hand. "But, if you were dead, it would not change anything. Margaret would still be in that tower, and I would still be a fraction of what I once was."

He stood and opened the door to the stove, feeding a piece of split wood into its heart and stirring the embers with its end. Sparks wafted out over the table. "I don't know if true vengeance is still possible. Or wise. I have played my part in this war of gods and men, and I have paid a price. I am not so sure I wish to meddle in it further. Silas may rule this land, but Eliza still has friends here."

"Then why did you bring me here at all?"

"It was Grim who brought you here. I merely performed the task for which I was paid."

"Then..." She was afraid to ask this, as there had already been mention of her own debt to Priest. "Will you send me home?"

Priest gathered up the bowls and spoons. His eyes did not meet hers, and she could see his jaw muscles clenching and unclenching. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "It is not as simple as that. I do not control the doors, I can't just open one whenever the whim strikes me, not anymore. I have to watch for signs. I have to gauge the weather, the relationships of one land to another."

He swept one arm out indicating the expanse of maps that covered the majority of the barn's floor space. "I do not always have good information, or by the time I get it, the lands have changed. Not many travelers come through the middling lands anymore. And I dare not stray too far, for fear of not being able to find my way back." His deep-set eyes became watery, and Elizabeth knew he was thinking of Margaret left alone in her prison.

"When Grim first came to me, he waited through two winters for the passage to mature. Sometimes I can open a door within weeks of the last one, sometimes it takes years. Once it was over a decade." He sighed, and set the bowls and silverware into a wide pail filled with scummy water. "In my youth, with Margaret, we could open doors at will, all across Edge. None of the gods could do what we did...not the Eagle, nor the Lion, nor the Stallion. If we wanted tropical fruit, we would make a door just large enough for our hands, and reach through it to pluck it from the branch of a tree that grew a thousand leagues away. If we wanted snow, we would open a passage to the Winterlands of the north and scoop it by the pail-full...we had snowball fights in the most oppressive of the devil days of summer. If we had wanted to, we could have lived in The High Keep and been among the most influential persons in the whole of Edge. We could have ruled."

Priest's ancient eyes were unfocused within his youthful face, lost in recollection. "But Margaret wanted to live here, in the Lion's lands, far away from the High Court and all its politics. She loved the view. She used to wake before dawn to watch the sun rise through the mists of the valleys. I hope she can still sense it, some mornings, through the high windows of the tower." He pressed his lips together in a thin, silent line.

Elizabeth stood up and went to him, reached her hand out to take one of his. "I'm sorry," she said, genuinely.

He shook his head, as though clearing a cloud from it. "Enough of this. I apologize. I do not get to have many conversations, and sometimes I forget how to keep one on track." He pulled his hand from hers, unconsciously wiping it on his shirt. "I will not speak of opening a second door for you until the debt from your first is paid. Follow me outside. There is water to be carried and wood to be chopped."

"That's my debt?"

He managed a half-smile. "That is your debt for breakfast. This isn't a charity inn, and you have no credit in this land. We will speak of your debt for the passage afterwards."

*****

Having crossed the sky, the sun glinted through the windows at the back of the barn. Elizabeth surfaced from a deep bathtub filled with steaming hot water. It was nice to know that she was getting some benefit from the hauling she had done earlier in the day. Priest had granted her privacy, leaving her in a ceramic claw-footed tub that would not have looked out of place in her father's old farmhouse. The tub was freestanding, the drain stoppered and without a pipe to shuttle away the dirty water. Priest had told her to leave it, that he was due for a bathing as well, and, when she protested, insisted that the guest was always given the first bath.

The muscles of her back and shoulders were tight and aching; Elizabeth had spent the afternoon hauling water and chopping a felled tree into chunks for the stove. Both the spring and the tree had been deep in a ravine, and she had fallen several times climbing the steep sides.

Her hand had made the work awkward at first, but through experimentation she learned that, by force of will, she could dull the sharp edges to a smooth roundness, though as soon as she stopped concentrating the fingers reverted back to their prior keen state. This definitely made bathing less problematic.

On one of her trips up the precipitous path, she had seen Priest talking with a stocky young man, exchanging a sack of the orchard’s fruits for a cart of supplies. The man, whom Priest had later told her was called Yohn, reeked so strongly of alcohol that she could smell it when he passed, even hidden off the road as she was. The man drove his emaciated horse out of sight, singing off-key and casting suspicious glances behind him as he went.

Priest had taken her jeans and shirts to clean while she bathed and left her a set of clothes similar to his, only sized smaller. She hoped they hadn’t belonged to Margaret. They fit well, though the material was scratchier than she was used to.

Elizabeth traced the path back to Grim's alcove to find him asleep again. Priest had reported that Grim had been awake for a portion of the afternoon, had eaten some broth and some fruit, and was looking slightly better, and that it might not be too many more days before they were able to leave.

She found Priest outside the small back door of the barn. He sat on a patch of grass, puffing on a pipe that released a stream of dark-gray smoke in an unbroken line, as if from a passing steam train. Her wet clothes hung on a line that stretched from the barn to the nearest tree; she slung the towel over the line next to her sweatshirt.

It was dusk, the sky pinkening beyond the orchard and darkening to bluish-black behind them. The long shadows of the trees scalloped a pattern on the ground. Priest was camped in a rapidly shrinking strip of sunlight. He held his pipe between his teeth, his hands busy in small, squirrel-like motions. He held one palm cupped, and pinched bits of something from it with the other. He would then cast it into the air and follow its arc onto the track of hard-packed soil that wound into the orchard, straining to see where it landed, then repeat.

"It's like augeries," he explained. She hadn't realized he knew she was there. "But with less mess."

"Augeries?" She stepped closer, trying to see over his shoulder.

"A method of future-telling, most often done with rooster entrails. But any bird would do, if there were any to be had. Tea leaves work for some, but I've never had any luck with them. You look into the entrails, or leaves, or--", he threw another bit of something up into the air, "--seeds." He held out his palm for her to examine. This was what he was tossing, spherical dark-brown seeds, that landed and bounced and rolled on the hard ground until they found a resting place. "And you interpret the shapes that result."

"Are you trying to tell the future?"

"No." He rocked forward onto his knees, pointing at each fallen seed where it lay and mouthing silently and rhythmically, as though he were counting them. "The present."

He stood and kicked the seeds from the track with his bare feet, then dug in the pocket of his cloak until his hand emerged full of replacements. He poked around the collection, his finger burrowing into the pile until he selected one, then closed his eyes and held his face up to the slight breeze, his hair quivering in time with the grass.

"I...ah...have a question for you, when you have a moment."

Priest's eyes snapped open like window shades. He turned his head to the side and patted the ground next to him. She sat down, stretching her legs out in front of her.

"Can you tell me about the debt? Not the one from breakfast--", she pointed to the blisters on her hand, "--I think I have that one covered. The one for the passage."

Priest looked down at the seeds in his hand, twisting his wrist so they rolled around within his palm. "Well, what do you think you have that I want?"

She patted her pockets. Grim had told her not to bring anything but the knife, and she didn't even have that anymore, not in a form she could barter with. If she'd held onto her backpack maybe she could've wowed him with the magical properties of double-A batteries, but Priest seemed familiar with Central, so might not be as impressed as she would hope.

Anyway, all she had was her sweatshirt, t-shirt, jeans, socks and sneakers. And underwear. Maybe...no. She decided. Not an option.

"I don't know."

"Alright, then." He stood and motioned for her to follow. "This works better if the ground has been prepared, anyway. Can you stand over there?" He motioned her to the area he had used to cast the seeds. "Place your left hand within your right, palm to palm, and then draw your left hand out, quickly as you can." His face was stern, unmoving. "If you do it right, you will have drawn blood."

Elizabeth did as he asked, wincing and yelping as the razor-sharp edges cut across the palm of her right hand. Angry stripes of red welled up, dripping down her wrist and onto the soil. Priest handed her a white square of fabric from within his pocket that she pressed into her palm. A crimson flower blossomed on the pale square.

Priest's wooden face remained as before, yet still he managed to produce an air of satisfaction. "Very good."

He thrust his hands into his pockets again, slinging them into the air and releasing the seeds in one fluid motion. They arced to their zenith, then plunged to the ground where they stuck without bouncing, as though drawn by a magnet. Priest leaned over them. "Very good." He again pointed to each one and mouthed silently, finishing with another, "Very good." He turned to look at her. "Your debt is paid."

Her surprise overcame her pain. "That's it?!?"

He nodded. "I know what I need to know. Your debt is paid."

He turned away, gathering up the seeds, plucking them from the ground with considerable effort; they seemed to have been cemented to the soil. Elizabeth pressed the fabric harder into her palm, hoping to stem the bleeding, but was surprised that this pressure didn't cause the expected sting. She pulled the cloth back to check the wound; although some pain persisted, the bleeding had stopped. She pocketed the fabric, and gave her hand an experimental flex. Good as new. Except for the blisters. For some reason those hadn't mended along with the self-inflicted wounds.

"What about my passage home?"

"Ah." Priest finished collecting the seeds and tipped them back into his pocket. "I have been considering that."

"Well, what did you charge Grim?"

"That is between he and I. You may ask him, if you wish, though I cannot promise he will tell you. Shades are notorious for their privacy. I would bet he has told you little more about himself than his name. If 'Grim' is truly his given name.

"A passage back is a more difficult thing and would carry a much higher price. I asked you earlier what you had that I might want, and you were unable to guess. But I know more now than I did a few moments ago."

"My blood? Do you need more of that?" She wasn't eager to cut herself again, but if she was going to heal this quickly each time, she thought she could part with a few more drops. People gave more than that to the Red Cross, right?

"Not your blood." His eyes narrowed. He crouched down and scooped up a handful of dirt, letting it fall through his fingers. "The blood of your blood."

"What do you--" She stopped, realizing what he was referring to. "You want Silas's blood?"

"In a manner of speaking."

He picked up his pipe, knocked it against his hand to dislodge the ashes from its chamber.

"I want you to kill Silas the Pretender. Once you have done that, I will send you home."

Tenth

"You can't be serious!"

Priest had reentered the barn, moving swiftly while she stood stunned by his request. By the time Elizabeth passed through the small door, he was already two steps into the maze. He did not turn to face her pursuit, but continued to push his way in the direction of his living quarters. "You said you were done with--how did you say it?--these games of gods and men? And now you want me to kill a king?"

Priest did not stop walking; he brushed aside her concern as if she were a housefly. "I did not come to this decision lightly."

"But what about forgiveness?"

"I was talking about Eliza, not Silas. You may not be worth my revenge, but The Pretender is an entirely different matter."

"He's my brother!"

Priest had reached the end of the barn that held his kitchen and bedroom and, now that there was ample room, whirled to face her. "He is an evil old man whom you didn't even know existed until recently. He is a tyrant who treats this land like it is his gods-given playground. He has sent creatures into Central, into your home, to do gods-know-what to you and your family. He has killed more people than I have time to count, and I have nothing but time."

He accentuated these last words with a pound of a fist on the closest bookshelf; sheaths of paper slid onto his bed like fish from a net. "I have named my price. If you think you can find another gatekeeper, you may be my guest. Though I must warn you, all the ones that I know of have died. Many at the order of your brother. Many by his own hand."

"Then how did those birds get to my home? How did that shadow creature? There must be another gatekeeper. Or another way back."

Priest looked exasperated. "If you think you can convince a gatekeeper in the employ of The Pretender to send you back to Central, then you are a bigger fool than I suspected."

Elizabeth felt anger rising within. She had not chosen to come here, she had been forced to, to save hers and her father's life. And now this man was asking her to kill in order to return home? She reached out and grabbed Priest's sleeve, pulling him toward her. She raised her left hand high. "And what if I decide the price is too high? What if I decide we should renegotiate?"

They locked eyes, neither blinking. "You think you can threaten me? In my own home?" His hand was in and out of his pocket in a flash, a blade inches from her abdomen before she could react. "There's only one of us who can die, Elizabeth. Even if we both strike true, I will be the one standing over you while you try to stuff your entrails back into order."

"My hand healed within seconds."

"Your hand healed because it was your own blade that did the cutting. You will have no such protection from my strike."

She didn't know if what he said was true. Still, it would explain why her blisters hadn’t resolved. And the bruise on her backside from her fall off of the tower earlier.

"This will not solve anything." She whipped her head to the side, startled by the voice behind her, then cursed herself for her distraction. If Priest had been waiting for an opening, this would have been it. Fortunately, he too had turned to look at Grim.

The Shade stood supported by a makeshift cane. His clothes were soaked with sweat, his breathing heavy. He hobbled over to the table. Elizabeth released her grip on Priest's sleeve, and he in turn withdrew his knife from her abdomen.

Priest addressed Grim. "Your charge has threatened me. And has brandished her weapon within my home." Grim did not respond. "I will not stand for this, Shade. I will not harbor one who has held steel over my throat."

Elizabeth felt her face redden with shame. She had threatened what she had thought was an unarmed man, a mistake made in a moment of anger. "Priest, I'm sorry. It won't happen again. I promise."

He did not turn to look at her, remaining fixed on Grim. "You're right, it won't. If you're well enough to walk, Shade, then you're well enough to leave." Elizabeth started to protest, but Priest cut her off. "You may stay one more night, to gain further strength. But when noon comes, I will remove the protection I have placed on you. You had best have put miles between yourself and the site of your passage when that time comes."

Now he turned to Elizabeth. "Your presence is no longer welcome under my roof. You may sleep in the orchard, if you wish. If you sleep here, I cannot be held accountable if you never wake up." He huffed off into the maze.

She squatted down next to Grim. "I am so sorry, Grim. I don't know what came over me, I just--"

"It is all right, Elizabeth. We cannot stay here forever."

"He...he wants me to kill Silas. Otherwise he won't send me home."

"I heard." He exhaled audibly. "That is a high price to pay. Not an easy task, even if the one charged with it is willing." He looked at her, an unspoken question on his lips.

"There has to be another way. Another gatekeeper, somewhere."

Grim looked doubtful. "It took me years of searching to find Priest. Every other rumor or legend I chased down was false or turned out to be years too late. I do not think Silas likes to have rogue gatekeepers in Edge."

He motioned for her to help him up. She put her hands under his arms, using the backside of her left hand, and lifted him onto his feet. He felt too light for a man his size, as if he were made of matchsticks. "I can make it back to my bed by myself. You should start packing food for our journey. We will have to leave at first light."

"Won't Priest be angry if we steal his food?"

"He does not need it. And he will owe us this much after setting us so abruptly on the road. He wants you to succeed. If you starve before you reach Silas, it will not help him at all."

Grim hobbled away, soon disappearing behind the wall of maps. She could hear his labored breathing as he traveled through the twists and turns, interspersed with the thudding of his cane and the slow shuffling of his feet.

A burlap sack sat on a shelf near the table; she dumped out its contents and started packing it with the food that looked the least perishable: dried fruits resembling figs and raisins, preserves, some dusty jerky. She found two narrow-necked glass bottles with corks attached by leather thongs and filled them with the water she had hauled earlier in the day.

Elizabeth willed her left hand to maximum dullness and hoisted the bag to her back. Starting for the exit, it occurred to her that, weak as Grim was, she would be the one doing all the carrying. Unless he improved quickly, she might even have to carry him as well.

Priest waited at the door to the barn. She ascended the stairs and brushed past him, ducking through the diminutive doorway and trying her best to appear indifferent. He did not try to stop her, nor did he open the door.

The air was chillier than the night prior. A steady breeze, spiced with the smells of the orchard’s fruit, blew from the north. Patches of cloud cover blocked the stars in places, though the air did not feel like rain. The lights on the barn illuminated the first row of trees and some of the paths extending deeper into the orchard; beyond, the dark deepened rapidly.

"Elizabeth." She turned around; Priest looked out of the doorway. "I do not mind your taking of provisions for your journey, but you should leave them with Grim. Even dried food can attract wild animals."

She considered this; was Priest trying to get his food back without a fight? She thought back to Grim's statement, that Priest wanted them to succeed. She handed the sack off to him with a curt "Thank you." He withdrew and shut the door in icy silence.

She yawned, then realized it was a yawn of boredom, but not really of fatigue. Despite her aching muscles, she felt the way she did when she had just started a book she had been anticipating: full of excitement and wonder at the possibility of what would come next. She wished she had some task to do, even a mindless one. These hours of darkness promised to be long ones. And she was not looking forward to sleeping on the cold ground.

Maybe a walk would tire her out. She took a hesitant step toward the path into the orchard. Priest’s recent warning abut wild animals troubled her, though surely she alone wouldn't attract anything dangerous, or else Grim wouldn't let her stay out here by her lonesome. And it wasn't like she couldn’t defend herself.

She looked up at the tower, catching a flash of something pale within the windows at the top: Margaret. Spying on her. The idea of staying in sight of that woman filled her with more dread than that of chancing upon something unexpected in the darkness.

The path she walked seemed to draw her forward. In the dimness, it took her some time to determine what gave the path such an impression: the grass. The stalks all oriented in the same direction, as though they were underwater weeds tugged by a current. They swayed with each gust of breeze, but then immediately returned to pointing onward, undulating. Beckoning.

She followed the path down a gentle slope, then up another smaller one. The way was not straight, but wove through the trees, always leading her further from the barn. The light from the building grew faint, and her eyes became used to what little starlight found its way through the cloud cover. The grasses grew longer, and her walking became more like wading, each movement forward requiring more effort. The stalks didn’t grab at her, not exactly, but they seemed to clump and lean on her whenever she stepped into them.

The way opened into a glade, ringed by dark conifers. These trees were sharper than the fruiting ones, both in their canopy shapes, which ascended to needle-points, and in their foliage, which scratched at her face and arms as she entered the glade. Their densely packed branches were unmoved by the wind, as though carved from stone.

The opening in the orchard was not quite large enough to be called a field. It was brighter than the path through the woods, not because it had fewer shadows but because it somehow intensified the starlight, holding onto it and preventing escape. Elizabeth's left hand shone softly in the glow, the light lingering over its sharp edges.

A statue at the center dominated the clearing: a long, low figure on a pedestal that lifted it to waist height. At first glance, she thought it was a carving of a languishing man, but as she drew closer its true form became clear: a lion. Elizabeth circled the sculpture. At the short end of its rectangular pedestal, another, smaller pedestal sat, one carved from a lighter stone; a bird-bath filled not with water, but with some sort of dark particulate matter. For offerings, she realized. For sacrifices.

'The Lion's land,' Priest had said. Margaret had wanted to live in the Lion's land. In the story that Grim had read to her, too, she had heard mention of this Lion. Was Priest worshiping this creature? Even though it was the source of his misery?

She looked into the carved face.  The jaws rested partially open, but not in a roar. Almost conversationally. The teeth were as detailed as beach shells. The eyes were stern, unforgiving. They seemed to follow Elizabeth as she walked past.

She reached out and placed her hand on the side of the statue's body; she couldn't bring herself to touch its face. The stone was blacker than the night surrounding it, some sort of obsidian, and cool to her blistered palm. It was not as smooth as it appeared; small ridges could be felt, as though the surface of the stone had all the loops and swirls of a fingerprint. They tickled her skin as she drew her hand across the broad expanse of the lion's flank.

Words were etched on the base of the pedestal, words in English as well as those in the unfamiliar writing she had seen in the barn; she knelt down and traced them with her fingers. "I AM FRIEND TO THE SWIFT OF MIND." Well, if this lion had made this orchard-maze, that was certainly true. The strong and swift of body would be stymied by the tricks, but the clever had a halfway decent chance.

Elizabeth sat down in the grass, leaning her back against the hard stone. Her body was tired, but her mind skittered, and she feared sleep would not find her. Closing her eyes, she pictured her bedroom. She had been gone a full day here in Edge; who knew how much time had passed at home? Was her father awake yet? Was he investigating the damage done by the shadow-creature when it shook the house, or did his blind spot ensure his ignorance? Had he noticed her gone, or did he think she was out on a morning run? Had he called the police? Were he and her mother mourning what they thought was the loss of their only child, unaware that both of their children still lived in an inaccessible place?

Elizabeth wished she had never met Priest, or Grim. She wished she didn't have to choose between becoming some sort of pathetic assassin-for-hire and staying here forever. She wished she could still be ignorant of all this, these wars and deceptions and this whole world. Mostly, she wished she could know for sure she would see her parents again. She wondered how Silas felt, if he ever wanted to go home and put all this behind him, or if this land had twisted him so much he didn't even remember Central anymore.

Before long, her misery faded, and her breaths became deep and regular. Her thoughts succumbed to the depths, lost in dreams of forests and dark creatures. Numbed by sleep, her legs did not feel the tall grasses pressing in, laying over her in a blanket against the chill of the night. Her eyes did not see the figure of the lion, moving at an imperceptibly slow rate, turning its head to examine this girl, so much like the one who had betrayed it, so many years ago.