Paul Kemp: Shadowbred

He leaned against Mother. Her warmth and smell-like fresh bread-comforted him. She crouched and put her arms around him.

A limb cracked sharply somewhere in the woods behind them. Both gave a start and looked about. Aril's heart raced anew. He saw nothing through the filtered moonlight but trees and undergrowth. Aril had heard that dwarves could see in the dark. He wished with all his might that halflings could.

Mother was breathing fast and Aril did not like it. He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry; he clutched a handful of Mother's cloak and bit his lower lip.

Another limb cracked behind them, in the dark.

Mother put her mouth to Aril's ear. "Quiet. We must hide."

He nodded.

He still saw nothing, but he knew something was out there. Mother was afraid-he could feel it. He started to shake and Mother hugged him tighter. He was breathing as fast as she.

"It will be all right," Mother whispered to him, but he was not sure if she was really talking to him. She half-stood out of the undergrowth and looked around the forest for a better hiding place.

Aril wondered if maybe they should dash for the village. Or shout for help? Surely someone would hear them. Maybe even Sheriff Bol. "Momma…"

He had not called her Momma since he was a wee, since Father had died.

"Momma, shouldn't we-"

One of the village's dogs barked. Another joined it. Soon it sounded as if every dog in the village was barking.

Aril looked to his mother for reassurance but she was not looking at him. She was looking through the trees, toward the village.

A shout of alarm sounded-a man's voice-then another, and another. Before Aril could ask any questions, a woman's scream tore through the night. Aril did not recognize any of the voices, but he knew they were his neighbors, his friends.

Growls answered the shouts-lots of growls. Worse than before. They sounded like Aril's stomach after he ate too much rhubarb pie, only worse. A man's voice shouted for arms and Aril thought it might have been Farmer Tyll. There was fear in his voice, and the sound made Aril's skin turn gooseflesh.

Mother squeezed him so hard that he could hardly breathe. Aril's heart beat so fast it hurt his chest. His stomach fluttered.

"What's happening, Momma?"

"We stay right here, Aril," she whispered. "No matter what."

The growls turned to roars and Mother paled. More shouts answered. The dogs barked themselves into a frenzy, doors slammed, wood cracked. Aril could not see it but he knew the village was in tumult.

"What is it, Momma? What is it?"

"I do not know, Aril. Cover your ears. Don't listen."

But Aril could not help but listen as the shouts turned more and more to screams. He heard a dog yelp in pain and go silent. A second dog did the same. A man screamed, then a woman. He thought he heard Sheriff Bol barking commands. And throughout all of it came the roars, the terrible roars.

He buried his face in Mother's cloak.

Mother picked him up, stood, and started back into the woods.

Fear seized Aril. He did not want to go back into the woods.

"Where are we going?!" he said, too loud.

From the trees behind them came another growl, almost thoughtful. Saplings snapped, and the sounds came closer.

Mother froze in her steps. Aril felt a tremor run through her body.

Something was moving through the brush toward them- something big, snapping trees.

"No," she said, so low that she probably had not thought Aril would hear. "Please, Yondalla, not my boy, not my son."

Terror rooted in Aril's chest. Whatever monsters were in the village, more of them were in the woods. He wrapped his legs around his mother's waist and buried his face in her neck. Tears filled his eyes.

"What do we do, Momma?" he whispered through his tears. "I want Papa. Where's Papa?"

The words made no sense but they poured out anyway.

"We must hide," she said again, her voice a hiss. "Yes, we will hide."

She whirled a circle and fixed her eyes on a stand of pines near the edge of the forest, off to the side of the village. A dead log lay near it-a good hiding place for them.

Mother balanced his weight in her arms and ran. She sometimes struggled to carry him lately, but at that moment she bore him as easily as a babe.

The creature behind them in the woods growled. Mother stumbled and Aril squealed in terror, but her grip on him never faltered. She kept her feet, crashed through low-hanging tree limbs and undergrowth, and fell to her knees under the pines, near the log.

They both turned to look behind them, breathing heavily. Aril saw nothing but trees and darkness. Perhaps the creature had not seen them?

Another crash sounded from the trees, so loud that Aril thought the creature must be not more than a stone's throw away. More roars from the village. Aril covered his ears and squealed.

Mother pried his hands away and put her mouth to his ear. She spoke in a whisper.

"I don't think it has seen us, Aril. Squeeze under the log and do not move. Like when you play hide and find with Nem."

Her voice calmed him and he nodded, though the screams from the village made him think of his friends. He was worried for Nem.

With Mother's help, he hurriedly squirmed under the log. It was a tight fit, but the hills and hollows of the ground gave him space. The earth filled his nostrils with their loamy scent. Dry pine needles poked his flesh and made him itchy. Mother laid herself behind him, like a pair of wooden spoons, sheltering him. She pulled armfuls of leaves and branches over them both. He could feel her breathing in his ear, feel her body trembling. He worried that she was not well hidden.

"Do not move, sweetdew," she whispered. "No matter what happens. No matter what. Nod if you understand."

He nodded and got a face full of pokey pine needles for his trouble.

"Momma loves you, Aril. More than anything. Papa did, too."

Aril tilted his head to get a needle out of his ear and saw that a thin gap between the log and the ground offered a window through which he could see part of the village commons. He pressed his cheek into the ground so he could see better…

… and wished immediately that he had not.

His view was limited but he caught a glimpse of long-limbed, lumbering creatures loping across the green, tearing at any halflings within reach. In the village torchlight, he saw flashes of claws, huge mouths full of teeth. He knew what they were, and the knowledge made him sick to his stomach.

Trolls. There were trolls in the village. And there were more trolls behind them in the woods, hunting him and Momma.

He knew what trolls did. He'd heard the stories. He knew they could smell as well as Farmer Tyll's hounds. He and Momma would be caught. He knew they would be caught.

And they would be eaten alive.

Tears flowed anew but Aril bore them in silence. He clenched his eyes shut and wished the horrible images away but the sounds coming from the village, the screams, the roars, preyed on his imagination. He saw with his mind what he no longer saw with his eyes: trolls killing and eating, claws and fangs dripping with the blood of friends and neighbors. He imagined Momma screaming…

He heard a rush of motion behind them, the slow footfalls of something large prowling the undergrowth nearby. He heard heavy respiration. It was sniffing for them; a troll was sniffing for them.

He felt Mother tense.

Aril felt dizzy. His heart beat so hard and fast he thought it might jump out of his chest. His breath left him. He could not breathe. He could not breathe! Panicked, he squirmed and his body pressed against one of the branches Mother had used to cover him.

It cracked.

The troll near them went still.

Mommas hand squeezed him. Both of them held their breath.