Paul Durham - The Last Reckoning

“Sorry,” she said, and examined the worn leather band strung with runestones in her hand. It was the collar Shady had worn all those years he’d lived with the O’Chanters. She gave him a sheepish shrug. “Wouldn’t it hurt your feelings if I didn’t at least try?”

There was a rustle from among the trees. Shady turned his chin to the forest with interest, but no alarm. His rough tongue licked a paw so thick it looked like it could belong to a bear cub.

“Who else is out there, Shady?” Rye whispered. “ What else is out there?”

Shady just blinked his yellow eyes in reply.

Rye sighed. “Oh how I wish you could talk.”

He stretched and casually strolled back to where another pair of eyes now waited. Rye knew it must be Gristle, the Gloaming Beast that had set out into the forest with Shady many months before. She seemed to want nothing to do with Rye or the Hollow.

Both Shady’s and Gristle’s eyes flickered, just an instant before an animalistic, beast-baby wail pierced the still air like an unseasonal wind. Rye jumped to her feet. The eerie sound came from close by, and she knew very well what had made it. It was the cry of a Bog Noblin. Quite possibly the one she’d encountered with the huntsman. She stepped back from the edge of the Rill.

Shady narrowed his eyes, glanced over his shoulder at Rye, and darted into the trees.

“Be careful out there,” Rye called. “And keep an eye on Mama.”

But Shady and Gristle had already disappeared into the darkness.

THE NEXT DAY, the hours seemed to crawl. Rye sat in the moss at the edge of the Rill, her arms wrapped round her knees. She’d paced the Hollow’s perimeter much of the morning, watching and listening for any sign of Harmless. But if he was still out there, the breeze brought no whisper of him. There was no sign of Abby either.

The only sign of life on the forest side of the Rill was Mr Nettle. He’d set the rowan-branch bridge across the stream and stood on the opposite embankment, his hands on his hips and his round belly jutting over his belt. Mr Nettle stared up at the limbs high above, trying to work out how the brindlebacks were getting over the Rill. He chewed his beard and scratched the curly hair that stuck up from his head. Lottie was using his horned skullcap like a makeshift net, trawling the gently flowing water, her small cage at her side.

“I think I see it,” Mr Nettle muttered, squinting. “That’s quite a branch that’s worked its way into the oak. No wonder those furry nuisances are making it across.”

He walked over the bridge, lifting it up after he’d crossed. He peered down and frowned as Lottie drained water through the hollow eye sockets of his skullcap.

There was little that the youngest O’Chanter could offer in her family’s search for Harmless, so instead she usually busied herself by searching the underbrush and streams for something that might replace her long-lost pet lizard, Newtie. Mr Nettle had helped twist branches and slender twigs into a remarkable replica of Newtie’s former wire birdcage. One day she had cheerfully filled it with some fireflies, two orange-bellied salamanders and a knotty-looking toad of poor temperament collected from the forest. But by the time she’d made it back to the Hollow, the salamanders had devoured the fireflies before disappearing themselves and all she was left with was a rather bloated, immobile toad that had apparently eaten itself into an early demise. She’d had even less success since then, and now the cage remained empty.

Mr Nettle dropped himself down on to the ground next to Rye.

“I’ve dwelled in these woods my whole life,” he said, following her gaze to the forest, “and I can tell you that staring at the trees won’t hurry along whomever you are waiting for.” He cocked his head back towards her. “It’ll just blur your vision.”

Rye looked over and smiled sadly.

Mr Nettle crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. Rye giggled.

“Oh,” he said, pressing his fingers to his eyelids, “I think I’ve made myself dizzy.”

“I’ll be glad when Mama’s back, and I can do more searching and less waiting,” she said impatiently.

“The forest moves at its own pace,” Mr Nettle said. “Live here long enough and you learn to take what it offers and ask nothing more. Those who try otherwise don’t live here long at all.”

Rye, Abby and Lottie had met Mr Nettle during their earliest days Beyond the Shale. They’d discovered a glade similar to the Hollow situated further north along the Wend. The tiny shelter there was run-down and looked to be abandoned, but they’d found Mr Nettle living in its remains. He didn’t say much at first but was eager to join them when they were leaving. They were lucky to have found him when they did. If not for Mr Nettle’s intimate knowledge of the forest, Rye doubted they would have lasted this long Beyond the Shale.

“What is Harmless like?” he asked, when Rye once again turned her impatient eyes to the shadows of the pines.

Rye pursed her lips in thought. Truth be told, she’d only really known Harmless for less than a year herself. It seemed like every time she began to get a clear picture of him, she uncovered some additional detail that blurred her vision like a half-remembered dream. That, or he up and disappeared altogether.

“He’s difficult to describe,” Rye began. “He listens more than he speaks, but he’s always answered every question I’ve asked of him. He can be funny and playful.” She raised an eyebrow at Mr Nettle. “Too much so if you ask my mother. But he’s been called an outlaw – and worse.”

Rye recalled some of the names Harmless had been tagged with: Grey the Grim, Grey the Ghastly, and, by the Bog Noblins, Nightmare and Painsmith. From what she had heard, those names had been well earned.

“And yet,” Rye continued, “whenever he’s near I feel safe. And the only reason he is out there –” she nodded towards the trees with her chin – “the only reason he exiled himself once again, to be hunted by Bog Noblins and men even more dangerous … was to protect me.”

Mr Nettle crossed his arms and furrowed his brow. “It sounds like what you have there … is a father.” He gave her a tight smile. “Their ways are riddles to all of us, whether we’re twelve or fifty-two.” He pushed himself to his feet and brushed off his crimped wool trousers with his palms.

Rye buried her chin in her hands and narrowed her eyes at the forest once again.

That evening, after finishing the remains of a sparse supper Abby had left behind for them, Rye and Lottie climbed into their blankets.

“Mama should have returned by now,” Rye whispered to Mr Nettle.

“I’ll keep an ear out,” he replied quietly. “Nothing to be alarmed over. You and your sister try to get some rest.”

Mr Nettle bid them good night and retired to his nest of loose bedding on the tree-house porch. But Rye was alarmed. Her mother wouldn’t leave them waiting without good reason.

“Buggle snug?” Lottie asked, tucking Mona Monster, her hobgoblin rag doll, tight under her arm. Mona’s polka-dot fabric was more grey than pink these days.

“Of course, Lottie,” Rye said. “We can do snuggle bug.”

Rye wrapped her own arm round Lottie and pulled her close, Lottie burying her head in Rye’s shoulder. Lottie had allowed Rye to tame her unkempt hair into a long red braid after a colony of ants had taken a liking to some sap stuck in her locks. It still smelled like pine pitch and cook smoke, but Rye didn’t mind. She just held her little sister tight until they both settled into a rhythmic breathing and eventually fell asleep wishing Abby was there with them.

Rye woke disoriented by the first voice of the night’s choir. Lottie’s eyes were still shut, her mouth open and drooling on Rye’s chest. The voice came again. But this was no growl or slither of an unknown beast. She recognised it as the sound of a far more ordinary animal – the whinny of a rather unhappy horse.