The woods had seemed to skirt the limits of what darkness could be before. Now Annie knew that for the lie it was: the woods had been dark, yes, but they had been nowhere near as dark as they could become. Even with her lantern raised, they couldn’t see more than a foot ahead of themselves. Both of them had walked into the rough trunks of the clustering trees, stubbing toes and bruising noses. Sap trickled down her cheek, thick and viscous, like clinging mucus.
Tranquility was growling again. She had been growling almost constantly since they had passed the tree line. Her back was tense under Annie’s hand, all hard muscle and bristling fur. Annie dug her fingers in, clinging as hard as she dared to the big cat. Let Tranquility be the strength her shaking legs and trembling fingers lacked. Together, let them bring her daughter home.
“Find her,” she whispered, knowing that the cat’s ears were sharp enough to pick up the words. “Follow her scent, and find her.”
Tranquility made a chuffing noise and continued to walk deeper into the wood. Annie followed, leaning on the lynx, trusting her to know the way. She could feel Martin’s presence behind her, a comforting shadow. He was following her light, and she was following her cat, and together they were going to bring their people home. They were going to do it. Any other outcome was not to be considered.
“Ma’am?” Martin’s voice was shaking, querulous; the poor boy was terrified. And he was a boy—she had to remember that. Maybe when this night was over he would be a man, but the world had never given him that opportunity before.
Much as I was a girl when Michael took my hand and promised me the streets of Heaven, she thought, not without a certain wry bitterness. Aloud, she said, “Yes, Martin?”
“Do you … do you know where we’re going? There’s a lot of wood here, and there doesn’t seem to be a trail.”
“Tranquility knows where to go.”
“Begging your pardon, but would she even think to look for my Sophia? Or is she just looking for your Delly? Because I got to bring my lady home. I promised her, when we started stepping out, that she’d never need to worry about me leaving her alone.”
Annie strongly doubted that his promises had taken into account creatures from out of the deep wood—or perhaps they had. She didn’t really know what young people got up to when they were courting, or what people got up to when they were courting at all. She had been less “pursued” and more outright sold by her father, who had recognized the future in Dr. Michael Murphy and wanted it for his eldest daughter. Courtship was a poor woman’s game.
(She was not foolish enough to think that poverty was a desirable state, and especially not for a woman, who was vulnerable enough without adding such trials to her condition. But there was no denying that poor women were more frequently allowed to choose their suitors, marrying based on their own preferences, rather than the preferences of their families. She couldn’t envy that. Her own experience was too alien to it, and besides, her marriage had brought her Adeline, who was worth every trial in the world. But she could admire it, safely, from a distance.)
“If the creatures that took your Sophia also took my Adeline, we’re being led to the same place,” she said. “If not … there is no question that they’ll have left a blood trail, whether Sophia is hurt or no. They’ll break skin without meaning to. I am sorry to say it, but it must be taken as an undeniable truth.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Martin, voice gone sullen with dread.
“Tranquility can’t pass up a blood trail. She’s a wild animal, for all that I adore her, and she’ll bend us toward the beasts, if only to follow the scent of supper.”
There was a long pause, during which the only sounds were their feet crunching on the pine needles underfoot. Finally, Martin said, “I’m sorry I asked.”
“I have that effect on people.”
“Ma’am…”
If you’re so sorry you asked, stop asking things, she thought sharply. “Yes, Martin?”
“Do you think they’re alive?”
Annie was silent. Her shoulder struck a tree, sending a bright bolt of pain through her arm. It was almost welcome. It centered her in her skin, giving her something to focus on apart from the darkness that clawed at their skins, trying to pull them deeper into the wood. They were already going deeper. Why should they not be allowed to proceed there at their own pace?
Finally, she asked, “Sophia. Do you love her?”
“Yes, ma’am. With all my heart. I’m going to make an honest woman of her, soon’s I have the money for a wagon of our own. Maybe sooner, if she—” He stopped.
Annie imagined she could hear the boy blushing, bright enough that she should have been able to see it even through the treacly dark. He should have been a lambent beacon, glowing through the trees, leading their lost ones finally, blessedly home.
“Is there to be a baby?” she asked delicately.
“I don’t know, ma’am. I think there might be.”
“If there’s to be a baby, she won’t care about having a wagon of her own. She’ll care about giving that baby a name, one she can take to town with her when she goes to do the shopping. It’s a small thing, having a name for your child, but it opens doors that she won’t want closed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You needn’t sound so embarrassed. I know how babies are created. I have a daughter of my own, after all.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You love her. In all this world, she’s the one you’ve chosen—and you’re the one she’s chosen in reply. If you were to stand before God Almighty on Judgment Day, and Him ask who your family was, you would cleave to her.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you must believe she’s alive, even as I must believe that Adeline is alive. Love is a powerful thing. It’s a form of faith. We haven’t anything in this black and blasted land but love, which lifts us up and tears us down, and keeps us breathing even when we’d rather let it cease. If she is still alive, she’ll need you to love her, and if you love her, you’ll believe she lives right up until the moment you can no longer sustain the dream.”
Martin was quiet for what felt like an eternity but couldn’t have been more than a stretch of seconds. Finally, he said, “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Think nothing of it. You’re helping me find my daughter; a few words of pale encouragement are genuinely the least that I can do.”
The darkness pressing down around them was getting deeper with every step they took, until the faint rasping of the tree branches against one another started to sound like the breathing of some unseen beast, until Annie’s flesh crawled with the feeling of eyes upon her skin. Her own breathing quickened, matching the tempo of her heart, which was too tender to be sensible, and was speeding up in answer to the presumed threats around it. She tightened her fingers in Tranquility’s fur. The great cat’s growl changed timbres for a moment, warning Annie that she was hurting her companion, and she relaxed her grip before Tranquility could decide to shake her off. She thought that if she lost this last anchor to her life back at the circus, she might go mad.
No, she scolded herself silently, you won’t. You do not get such easy exits. No well-lit sanitariums and well-trained, efficient nurses for her! Those were the things that had tempted Grace Murphy, once upon a lifetime ago, when she had risen from her birthing bed and beheld her husband’s plans for their offspring. She had flirted with madness then, considering it as she might have considered a new bonnet or a trip to the dressmaker. It was a perfectly respectable state for someone with her standing in society, enough so that she suspected many of her peers viewed it as a vacation, or a vocation, both of which were often denied to them otherwise.
(She had seen true madness since then, people plagued by voices, or racked with anxiety to such an extent that they could not leave their beds come morning. They were playing at nothing. This was neither vacation nor vocation to them: this was reality, as undeniable as dawn, as brutal as nightfall. They got on with their lives because they had no other choice, and were they to be locked away by “concerned” relations, the sanitariums they’d be consigned to would bear no resemblance to the airy palaces of Salt Lake. She did not mean to belittle them when she thought of the form of madness she’d been raised to fear; she simply lacked the words to call it anything else.)
The branches continued to rustle, the illusion that something was breathing in the trees nearby becoming more difficult to ignore. Annie stopped walking. Martin, unable to see, stumbled into her before stopping in turn.
“Ma’am?” he asked.
“Shhh,” she replied. She lowered her lantern, making its light even more difficult to follow. She closed her eyes, shutting out the deep dark of the woods for the softer, tamer dark within.
Annie breathed, willing her heart to stop its pounding, willing her blood to move through her veins as it was meant to, and not to clump and creep under the influence of her terror. She kept her fingers laced through Tranquility’s fur, feeling the vibrations through the big cat’s skin as she continued to growl. That was important. Feeling the sound let her filter it out, removing it from her picture of the wood.
The susurration of the branches didn’t fade with her slow silencing of her own body. If anything, it got louder, until—
Her eyes snapped open, beholding only the dark ahead of her. “Run,” she hissed, and raised her lantern, and leapt forward, trusting Tranquility to keep pace with her as she fled. Martin was no fool, and more, he had been with the circus more than long enough to be in the habit of following orders; she heard his footsteps behind her, fast and heavy and so reassuringly human that she felt her own love for him swell. It was a maternal love, closer kin to what she felt for Adeline than to what she felt for any other human, and she decided that if they survived this night, she would do whatever was in her power to help him get his marriage wagon. The boy deserved to start his own life, indebted to no man, with Sophia by his side.
Then, behind them, came the sound of another pair of feet; the feet of a man tall enough to be the envy of every circus in the West, or of a beast large enough to be called the King of Bears. Annie ran harder, not worrying about where she was going, worrying only about whether her light was bright enough to show her the trees before she slammed into them. Martin was depending on her. Tranquility was depending on her. Adeline was depending on her, and that alone was enough to put fire in her feet, urging her onward despite the growing weariness in her bones. Let her body give out on her. She would find a way to keep running.
The light from her lantern seemed to be reaching farther than it had only seconds before. Annie’s eyes widened. “We’re coming to a clearing!” she said, not bothering to shout; Martin was too close to need that. She ran harder, and so did he, and they hit the edge of the trees at full speed, bursting out into the open.
It was hard to slow down when moving at such a speed. They stumbled to a stop halfway across the clearing, panting as they turned to face the trees. Martin swung his rifle down, getting it into position to fire. They did not discuss their next move; they didn’t need to. Both of them were worn-out, too winded to run any farther, and if there was an advantage to be had, they would have it only in the open. Once they went back into the trees—once they crossed the clearing—any advantage would belong to the thing that had been pursuing them.
Tranquility paced forward, putting herself between her mistress and the trees. She crouched low, paws spread so that her claws dug into the earth, lips drawn back to expose her blunted teeth in a snarl. The men who had doctored her for human companionship had thought that sanding the edges off her incisors would be sufficient to render her harmless. They had either never seen an adult lynx, or didn’t understand the atavistic terror most people would feel upon seeing a large predator.
Something moved at the tree line, too distant and shrouded in that all-consuming darkness to be clearly seen. Whatever it was, it was clearly larger than a man, larger than a bear; its outline was a shaggy slice of distortion between the branches, giving the impression of menace without leaving any details behind. It was terrible. It was deadly. Annie’s guts twisted, seeming to become a solid mass of frozen fear.
Tranquility’s snarl rose in volume and timbre, becoming a scream.
Annie realized what she was going to do a heartbeat before she did it. “Tranquility, no!” she shouted, lunging forward, grabbing for the scruff of the lynx’s neck.
It was too late. Tranquility ran, almost too fast for the eye to follow, her paws digging divots in the ground as she raced across the clearing toward the hulking shadow of the thing in the trees. She leapt when she reached the tree line, her body impacting with the shadow. She roared. It—whatever it was—howled, the sound chilling and cruel, not meant for human ears.
A hand grabbed Annie’s elbow. She whirled. Martin was there, staring at her, wild-eyed.
“She’s bought us time,” he hissed. “We have to go.” Then he ran, towing Annie with him, leaving her no time to argue or fight.
She stumbled at first, body heavy, inwardly screaming. Then she got her feet under herself and lifted her lantern, falling into step behind him. The thing behind them was still howling. Tranquility was still snarling. She might win. She might be stronger, or faster, or just plain angrier than her opponent. She would find them, if she won. She would—
There was a yelp from the trees, more canine than feline, the sound of an animal that had been grievously wounded. The howling stopped. So did the snarling. It was impossible to know, in that moment, which of them had won.
Annie was direly afraid that she knew anyway, and she mourned in her heart for a present that she had never requested, a gift that had saved her life and her soul a dozen times over.
“Oh, you mush,” she whispered. “You silly, silly mush.”
The woods on the other side of the clearing loomed, and they dove into them, continuing to run. The darkness seemed less profound here, less aggressive; it was the natural darkness that could be found in any body of trees or closed room, and not the all-consuming darkness of the trees between them and the circus. The rasping of the branches against one another was just that, with no secrets or hidden predators. They ran for another twenty yards or so, far enough that they felt safe to stop, panting.
Annie dropped to her knees, feeling the pine needles bite into her skin, and set her lantern carefully to the side before burying her face in her hands. Tranquility would have caught up to them by now if she had been the winner. She would have come to demand treats and fussing-over, to be told that she was a good mush, and a silly mush, and a mush deserving of all the good things that the world had to offer.
“Ma’am, we can’t stay here.” The voice was Martin’s, heavy with anxious concern. “We don’t know whether that thing is following us.”
“You must give me a moment,” she said through her fingers. They smelled of warm fur and musk, the way Tranquility had always smelled. If only she had held a little tighter, trained her a little more harshly to the ways of obedience …
Then Annie would be dead, her and Martin both. She had no doubt of that. Tranquility had saved them, and if she had sacrificed her own life in the process, well. It was an easy thing, to be a lynx, to have people to protect. For Tranquility, there had been no question of what was the right thing to do. The right thing was whatever left her mistress standing.
“I have to stand.” Annie lowered her hands, the enormity of the big cat’s sacrifice sinking in. Tranquility could just have easily have turned and run, choosing freedom over the human who had kept her captive for most of her life. Instead, she had given everything to save the woman who loved her.
For Tranquility’s sake, Annie had to stand.
She staggered back to her feet. To his credit, Martin did not offer to help her; he stood a few feet away, rifle in his hands, watching, scanning the trees for danger. The fact that she was a woman did not sway him from his duty. He was giving her as much space as he could, under the circumstances, and if it was not enough, well. When had the world ever been willing to give enough?
“We must be going the right way,” she said. “If that … thing was following us, it means we’re on the right track.” Her heart was a dead thing, hanging heavy in her chest, unyielding. Tranquility had been her friend. More, Tranquility had been the last living thing who’d known her—truly known her—in Deseret. Adeline had been a baby when they had fled from her father and his terrible intentions. To Adeline, “Deseret” was just a word on a map, the name of a place so inconsequential that they never bothered going there at all, choosing to stay instead in kinder climes and on fairer roads.
As if anything in the West had ever been kind. If humanity knew kindness, they had left it somewhere else. Somewhere more forgiving.
Martin nodded. “Seems right,” he said. His eyes were still on the trees behind them, searching for some sign that they were going to have to fight again.
This wasn’t over. Of that, they were both quite sure. The only question now was how long their window of escape was going to last. Annie did not think that it could possibly last for long enough.
“Come,” she said, touching Martin’s arm. “We have to go.”
He nodded—he had only, she realized dimly, been waiting for her—and turned to follow her deeper into the trees. They still couldn’t see. The branches still blotted out the moon and stars, casting them into an endless shadow that deepened with each step they took away from the clearing. Still, Annie’s lantern made it possible for them to walk without slamming into a tree, and the farther they went from whatever it was that had been following them, the better.
Annie’s free hand itched, fingers clutching reflexively at the air, only to relax when Tranquility was not there to bear her up. Sorrow had yet to find her; her eyes were dry, and while her heart still felt hard and dead, it didn’t ache. That would come later, once Adeline was home, when she had the time to think about what she had paid for this night, this search, this unwanted adventure.
“Ma’am?” Martin’s voice was soft.
Annie stopped, turning to face him. “Yes?”
“Look.” He was a dim outline in the gloom. Annie held her lantern out toward him, bringing some of the detail back into his silhouette. He was pointing at something on the ground.
She leaned forward. The light found a scrap of white fabric tied tight around a tree root, the stained ends fluttering in the soft breeze that blew across the forest floor. Annie gasped, moving quickly to kneel and rub the fabric between her fingers.
“Delly,” she whispered. The fabric was rough, but there was no mistaking it: this was a scrap ripped from the hem of Adeline’s gown, tied to mark her way.
“This is the way she went,” said Martin. “Ma’am, she’s been here. Maybe my Sophia’s been here, too.”
His desire to conflate their missing loved ones would put Adeline in the path of some terrible beast, something large enough to destroy a circus and carry multiple people away. Annie didn’t say anything. She was still willing to hope that Adeline’s disappearance was unrelated to the attacks on the show, but she was smart enough to know that she needed Martin, and his rifle, if she wanted to survive wandering through the woods—and more, much as she wanted to believe that she was wrong, she was becoming more and more convinced that he was right. It was too much of a coincidence, all these things going wrong on the same night.
Mr. Blackstone had spoken of disappearances in The Clearing. He had called them “rare” and said he doubted such things could be a concern for them. Annie suddenly wished that she had thought to ask him what all those disappearances had had in common. Had they all happened at night? Or after a child had gone missing in the woods?
Or after the mayor had warned them that the season was coming to an end, and that the roads would freeze over soon? Something was terribly wrong in this little town, with its surrounding bands of wilderness and shadow. Something here didn’t want them, or wanted them for reasons other than the strength of their hearts and the effort of their hands.
Martin and Annie continued moving carefully through the trees, through the shadows that only clung, and did not struggle to impede. They found two more strips of white fabric tied to tree roots, down low, where a child would have had no trouble placing them.
There was no sign of Sophia, or of the other missing members of the circus. But there were footprints pressed into the soft ground, fully twice the length of Martin’s not inconsiderable feet, and deep enough to make it plain that whoever had made them had been of substantial size. Martin said nothing when he saw those prints, only set his jaw and ground his teeth, continuing to walk deeper into the wood. Annie resisted the urge to tell him pretty lies. It would do neither of them any good to candy-coat what was coming.
If you died here tonight, my Delly, at least you died free, with the stars in your hair and the wind in your throat, she thought, and there was no comfort in the words. There was no comfort left in the world if her Adeline was gone.
They continued to walk, stepping on a normal stretch of ground. Martin gave a shout, half scream and half yelp, like he had thought better of it and tried to swallow the sound before it could be fully formed. Annie whipped around. A trap had closed on his foot, holding him fast.
The sound of a rifle hammer being cocked came from the trees in front of them.