In the tree, Kenny whimpered like a kitten.
The wold opened its mouth wider and stepped forward, menace radiating from it like a foul corona. It wanted to murder her, to take a piece of her flesh and make it its own.
Rose raised her right hand.
The wold hissed. Its twisted limbs opened wide, releasing yellow claws.
A light sheen of magic coated Rose's fingers. The magic vibrated in her, straining to break free.
The wold ran at her, its black maw gaping, teeth and claws ready to rend.
Rose flashed. Magic shot from her hand in a glowing whip of white and struck the creature in the chest. The wold's momentum carried it another step, but the icy white flame of the flash burned it, burrowing into its chest, seeking its malice-coated core. Dismembering it wouldn't be enough. She had to kill the curse itself.
Chunks of flesh rained from the wold. Rose advanced, keeping the whip of light fixed on the creature. Her arm throbbed with tension.
The wold fell apart, revealing a small mote of darkness churning with violent red and purple flashes. Rose squeezed her fist. The white whip clutched at the darkness. She strained, squeezing tighter, her nails biting into her palm. With a sound like a cracked walnut, the mote collapsed in on itself in a shower of white sparks and vanished.
Rose let out a deep breath, stepped over the carrion littering the path, and walked up to the tree. "Come on," she said, holding out her hands.
Kenny stood frozen. For a moment she thought she'd have to go get his mother, but suddenly he let go and slid down the trunk, scraping himself against bark and all but falling into her arms. She had to drop him on his feet - he was too heavy.
"It's gone," she said and hugged him. "Dead and done. Understand?"
He nodded.
"It won't come back. If you ever see another one like that, you run to my house as fast as you can. I'll kill it. Go home now."
He peeled down the road at a dead run, veering left, toward the Ogletree house.
Rose looked back at the carrion strewn in the dirt. Only a handful of families could claim a magic user strong enough to create a wold, and all of those capable were older people and supposedly knew better. A wold couldn't be stopped. It was the kind of weapon that killed everything it came across. She hadn't seen one for years. The last time one popped up, it took a full-blown posse to hunt it down with gasoline and torches.
Something had to have gone seriously wrong for one of the locals to curse a wold into life. Something dire was happening. Cold dread settled in the base of her neck. For a moment she considered following Kenny Jo to find out if Leanne knew anything about it, but decided against it. Shortly after high school, Sarah had married well and moved to a nice house in the Broken. Rumor said, Leanne wasn't welcome at Sarah's new dream home, and it made her only madder at life than she already was. She and Rose hadn't spoken to each other since high school. She seriously doubted Leanne would suddenly open up to her.
Rose started up the road at a brisk pace. The faster she got home, the sooner she'd make sure that the boys were safe.
Few things happened in East Laporte without Grandma ElEonore's knowledge. She would just have to ask her about it.
"MEMERE?"
ElEonore glanced at Georgie's face. She never could get him to explain how he knew to call her that. She had never spoken a word of French to either of them. But Georgie started saying it when he was two, with a light Provençal overlay. She had a feeling he didn't know himself why he did it, but every time he said the word, it brought her back to dry, warm hills, where she sat in the sunshine next to her own grandmEre , nibbling on fougasse that left a faint orange taste on her tongue and watching the men down in the village play la longue with the grace of ballet dancers.
She smiled at him. "What is it?"
"Can we go outside?"
Two pairs of eyes blinked at her from angelic faces: Georgie's blue and Jack's amber. Hooligans, both of them. "Is it dark?"
"We won't go past the ward stones."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, and you think I was born yesterday, no?"
"Pleeease." Georgie's eyes would've done any puppy proud. Behind him Jack nodded earnestly.
"All right." She gave in before her heart melted. Rose would be none too pleased if she found out, but what Rose didn't know, she couldn't fuss about. "I don't trust the two of you. I'm coming out on the porch."
They were out the door before she got up off her chair.
ElEonore took her teacup to the porch. The old rocking chair creaked under her weight. The boys dashed into the yard.
Beyond the lines of the ward stones, the Wood shivered with life. The sky had darkened to deep soothing purple, and the leaves of the upper branches stood out, nearly black against it, rustling gently in the cool whisper of the night breeze. Here and there the white spires of nightneedle bloomed between the trees. Their stems, no more than green shoots during the day, released a cascade of delicate, bell-shaped blossoms with the first touch of darkness, sending a mimosa perfume into the night. ElEonore breathed it in and smiled.
So peaceful . . .
Unease flared at the base of her neck and rolled down her spine in a viscous wintry rush. She felt the press of someone's gaze pin her, as if she had a bull's-eye between her shoulder blades. ElEonore turned, scanning the ward line.
There. A dark spot hovered at the outer edge on her left. It stood on all fours, dense and impenetrable, like a hole cut in the fabric of the night to reveal primordial darkness. She could barely see it in the gloom, its silhouette more of a guess than a certainty.
ElEonore's fingers found the small wooden charm hanging from her neck. She gripped it tight and whispered, "Sight."
Magic pulsed from her in a flat horizontal fan, pulling the landscape and the creature to her eyes in a rush. She saw darkness and within it a narrow slit of the eye: pale, weakly luminescent gray without an iris or a pupil. She tried to reach past it and glimpsed a hint of a form, churning with unfamiliar violence. Her senses screamed in alarm. The eye jerked out of sight. She released the charm in time to catch a blur of darkness as the creature vanished into the underbrush without a sound.
The Wood was home to many things, but ElEonore had never seen one so disturbingly alien. She glanced to the kids on the lawn. Safe behind the protective stones. It will be fine, she told herself. The wards around Rose's house were strong and old. The spells had rooted deep into the soil. Besides, Rose would be coming up the road any minute now, and ElEonore pitied any beast that tried to stand between her and the boys.
It was probably just some odd creature the Wood had disgorged. The forest stretched west of East Laporte and all the way into the Weird. Perhaps some Weird beast had crossed the boundary into the Edge. Stranger things had happened. No need to tell Rose about it, ElEonore decided. The poor child was paranoid enough as it was.