In the blink of an eye, day was over and it was full, pitch night. The temperature dropped ten sudden degrees, making me grateful I still had my coat.
I hate the dark. Always have, always will.
I fished out my MacHalo, dropped it in my haste, picked it up again, clapped it on my head, and began squeezing on the lights. Since the brackets had snapped off, I moved some of the lights around, wishing I’d made Barrons’ version of my creation, without brackets. I’d never admit it to him, but his was more efficient, lighter, and brighter. But, in my defense, it was far easier to improve upon an invention than to actually sit down and invent it. I’d made something from nothing. He’d merely tweaked my “something.”
I don’t know if I heard it or just sensed its presence, but suddenly I knew something was behind me, no more than a dozen feet to my right.
I whipped around and caught it in the harsh white glare of lights on the front of my helmet.
Squinting, it shielded its eyes with an arm.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure it was “my” monster. It had darkened like a chameleon from slate gray to coal black, and its eyes were now crimson. I might have mistaken it for something else, a distant cousin to the monster I’d been tracking, except for the pouch of stones tied to its black horns.
It snarled at the lights. Its fangs glistened ebony, long.
I shivered. It looked even more deadly than it had before.
I squeezed off the front light, and it lowered its arm.
What now? Why had it come back? It hadn’t seemed to want me to follow it, yet when I’d lost it, it circled back for me. Nothing about it made sense. Might it eventually weary of the pouch banging into the back of its head with every step it took and toss it away? Why did it still have my sweater? How was I going to survive the night? Would it kill me in my sleep? Assuming I ever managed to relax enough to sleep!
If it didn’t kill me, would something else? What was nocturnal here? What did I have to fear? Where would I dare try to sleep? Up a tree?
I was starved. I was exhausted and completely out of ideas.
The monster growled and loped from the shadows, passing within a few feet of me, and headed toward the river.
Chilled by such a near brush, I froze and watched my stones go bouncing by.
In another day or two, would I be so despairing and tired and fed up that I might just try to grab the thing’s head and wrestle them off it? If enough days passed without it trying to kill me, I could see myself getting desperate enough to risk it.
The monster paused on a mossy bank near the river and looked back at me. It looked at the bank and back at me. It repeated it, over and over.
It might not understand me, but I understood it. It wanted me on that bank for some reason.
I mulled my options. It took all of one second. If I didn’t go, what would it do to me? Was there anyplace else I could think of to go? I walked downstream to the bank. Once I was there, it lunged at me and herded me with snapping jaws into the center of the bank.
Then, as I watched in shock and astonishment, it urinated a circle all the way around me.
When it was finished, it rippled sleekly into the night and disappeared.
I stood in the center of the circle of urine still steaming on the ground, and comprehension slowly dawned.
It had marked the earth around me with its scent to repel lesser threats, and I was willing to bet most threats on this world were lesser.
Numb from the day’s events, exhausted from fear and physical exertion, I sat down, pulled out the remainder of my protein bar, made a pillow of my coat, then stretched out on the bank, set my MacHalo beside me, and left it blazing.
I chewed slowly, making the most of my meager meal, listening to the soft roar of the river’s rapids.
It looked like I was holed up for the night.
I had few expectations that sleep would come. I’d lost everything. I was stranded in the Silvers. My stones were gone. There was a deadly monster collecting my things and pissing circles around me, and I had no idea what to do next. But apparently my body was done for the day, because I passed out with no awareness of having finished my meal.
I woke in the dark heart of the night, pulse pounding, unable to pinpoint what had awakened me. I stared up through the black treetops at two brilliant moons, full in a blue-black sky, and sorted through dream fragments.
I’d been walking the corridors of a mansion that housed infinite rooms. Unlike my cold-place dreams, I’d been warm there. I’d loved the mansion, with its endless terraces overlooking gardens filled with gentle creatures.
I felt it drawing me. Was it somewhere in this realm? Was it the White Mansion the Unseelie King had built for his concubine?