7-year-old Taru had wandered across the main path and into the seniors’ section looking for daisies growing in the pavement cracks. Instead, she found a group of older children.

“What’s this?” one senior asked, looking at her with genuine confusion. 

“Looks like some little runt’s wandered on’t wrong side o’t road.” The second senior was bigger, broader, and snarlier.

“You oughtta go back,” said One, returning their attention to a small pair of bone-coloured cubes covered in patina dots. Taru watched them roll, liking the sounds they made against the wall and the ground.

“‘Eya, you got dirt in your ears or summat?” asked a third.

“Aye, runt. Sod off! This here’s for brown eyes only.”

Senior One looked up at that and pushed past Two to get a closer look at Taru. They flinched away when they saw, “Red eyes? That’s bad luck, that is. Get gone.”

“It’s not bad luck,” Taru said, “it’s just eyes.”

Senior Two rounded on her, snarling, “Don’t talk back at yer elders and betters.”

Taru frowned. “It’s not better, it’s just older,” she said.

“I’m gonna kill the runt,” growled Two, stalking towards her. Taru looked past Two to One, hoping for some kind of telling off for the errant senior.

Senior One glanced between Two and Three, then looked down at her and frowned. Then, they looked away and, as they rolled their cubes against the wall, told the others, “Don’t get caught this time, eh?”

Fear froze Taru. Then, she bolted.

She ran and ran, unable to feel the pain in her bare feet from rushing over dirt and pavement or the tiredness in her mind and in her legs. She could only barely hear the yelling behind her over the beating of her heart and the rush of air in and out of her chest.

“I’m gonna get you, you pale runt!” boomed Senior Two.

“It’s too quick!” Senior Three shouted. “How’s it so quick?!”

“Go round t’back,” ordered Two. “We’ll catch it ‘tween us. Show it what we do to red-eyed little freaks ‘round these parts!”

Now, tears and snot streaming down her face, she was tiring. 

“Bet your parents din’t even die!” yelled Two. “Bet they took one look at your ugly mug and just got rid!” 

“‘Eya, Ted, that’s too far, that!”

In the corner of her eye, Taru saw an opening in a section of the orphanage’s wall: a gap between the seniors’ building and the juniors’. It looked much too small for anyone to fit in. Just as she was about to run past it, another senior appeared ahead, grinning. Taru sobbed and darted for the gap, futilely clawing at the dirty walls, wishing they would open just a little more and let her in. As she felt the clammy touch of someone’s hand on her shoulder, a flood of fear poured from her heart. She slipped between the bricks. Falling forward, she turned back to see her pursuer narrowed to a thin strip of light and one glaring brown eye. The fingers of a hand wriggled uselessly between bricks.

*

~

-

Panting heavily, Taru wiped her nose on the back of her hand and watched pitch fingers wriggle around in the darkness. While she was almost certain the eldest couldn’t fit in after her, she didn’t want to test it. Instead, she rolled onto her stomach and crawled deeper into the darkness on her arms and thighs. Keeping the lantern ahead of her, she hoped she would get to stand long enough to at least straighten her clothes before meeting the elders. All she could see ahead, however, were more twisting roots and branches and vicious little wooden teeth that kept catching on her clothes.

Her muscles began to ache, her skin smarted with scratches. The lantern flickered. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, remembering how the light had protected her. When she opened her eyes, the flame was steady. A flash of movement ahead froze her in place. Swallowing, she tentatively moved the lantern forward. Its green glow caught the flare of eyes in the dark before catching the corner of a small, twitching nose. The almond-shaped head lifted as if to look at her, glossy whiskers moving back and forth as oval ears the length of its head flicked away from the ceiling of brambles. It turned away to flash its wings and tail—a fan of feathers unexpected on such a hare-like body—before disappearing to the left.

She’d seen creatures like it in Shude, usually at the other end of leads gripped tight in pudgy digits. Those creatures—wolpertingers and rasselbocks—didn’t look like this one. Both of those had deer-like antlers, and rasselbocks didn’t have wings. This was a skvader. But Enna said skvaders were extinct.

Curiosity urged Taru to follow. Before long, the dark ceiling of brambles began to lift away and she rose onto her hands and knees. Not long after, she was crouching. Finally, she stood upright. It took some time before she could lift the lantern over her head but when she did, she found herself on a dirt path winding through a forest of black trees tied together with brambles and embellished with bracken. 

The winged hare sat a short way ahead, alternating between cleaning its side and looking back at her. Waiting. She dusted herself off as best she could. When she looked back up, it was gone.

“Skvader?” she called. Moving the light around, she tried to catch sight of its pale tawny ears or tail flicking out from the shadows. But there was nothing. She lowered the lantern.

“What now?” she asked no one in particular. Her own voice echoed back at her, “What now?” made dense with the softness of her surroundings. She swallowed and stepped forward, then turned back. She couldn’t tell where she had come from, so she didn’t know how to move on. All around her was covered in an oozing darkness which dripped upwards through the vegetation. The only place the darkness was not, was the path.

With nothing for it but to pick a direction, she made her choice and set out. Perhaps if she could find the Dubh and walk upstream, she could ensure she was walking deeper into this place. She hoped she wouldn’t be here long. She hoped she wouldn’t need to eat Lady Hennessy’s rations.

Remembering Lady Hennessy triggered a flashing memory of Coraidh notching an arrow on his bow. Coraidh telling her to run. Coraidh turning away to aim his arrow at the shadows.

Her step faltered. Her knees gave out. Darkness drew in.

-~*~-

A low drone of sound caught her ear. She looked for it through the trees.

Silence fell, and so did she: deep into misery.

-~*~-

That distant drone filtered through the darkness. There was a melody to it, but also something uniquely harsh. As Taru realised it reminded her of the hissing of the pipes in engine 1, it trailed off into silence again.

She readied herself to return to her loss, but the ghastly noise once again blasted away the nothingness. She frowned into the trees, but the sound came no closer. And thank the gods. It wasn’t like any music she’d heard before. The coarse melody seemed to claw through the air over the persistent, underlying drone.

Suddenly—and utterly despite herself—she moved towards it, compelled along the twisting road deeper into darker forest. Occasionally, she wondered why she was doing this but, more often than not, she followed. She had followed the skvader, and that had brought her out from the brambles. Why shouldn’t she follow the music? This, too, would lead her to safety.

Darker and darker it grew as she went, until she could see little more than the lantern and its light upon herself. Then, even that began to falter. But as long as she followed the music, she was safe. She didn’t need the light any more. She let it go out. When she reached the source of the music, she would find Coraidh.

“It’s not real,” said a lilting voice in her head. “The music isn’t real.” 

Taru scoffed. Of course it was real. She could hear it clearer than she had ever heard anything. It was certainly more real than this Coraidh-sounding voice.

“But where’s the song coming from?” the impostor insisted.

The darkness, of course. The song was coming from the darkness.

“Then it can’t be good, can it?”

Taru felt her step falter in the absence of a retort.

“Nothing good comes from the darkness.”

The skvader had come from the darkness. Without knowing her own origins, she came from darkness, too. Perhaps this was just another lost creature.

“But why are you so drawn to it?”

Taru was—It sounded lonely.

“This goes beyond simple loneliness. You’re being manipulated.”

The clawing, droning song made more sense than anything had ever made.

“You’re being manipulated.”

It wasn’t manipulating her.

“You are being manipulated.”

But why?

“It needs you. It needs your sadness.”

Why? 

“It cannae exist without it.”

“Why?”

“It’s made of nasty things like that.”

“No!” Taru sobbed. “You don’t get it. Why are they gone?”

“Who?”

“Coraidh,” she gasped.

“Coraidh’s gone?” the voice, now whole and full and real and here, faltered with weakness. Then, it returned to its past strength, “How?”

But the effort of clawing back to consciousness had drained her. Taru couldn’t speak. She could only stare at her saviour, their face a golden heart, its edges bleeding into the swirling silver of her disappearing vision.

“It doesn’t matter,” they said, and the kindness in their fathomless eyes sparked a desperate trust in Taru. “Sleep now,” they said, waving long fingers over her face and whistling a tune that carried her into a dreamless, woven sleep.