The unmistakable sound of rushing water interrupted Taru’s forward momentum, knocking her back to a stop as effectively as if a wall had sprung up across the path.

“It’s this way!” she called, waving back at the green-lit figure of Bhaltair at the junction. 

They didn’t move, staring up at the lantern. 

“Bhaltair!” she tried again. 

Bhaltair slowly turned to face her, then jumped to attention. As they jogged up the grey path, they said, “Sorry,” and shoved the lantern back into her hands. “I got caught up. Remembering. Dangerous business, that. Ah!” Their head jerked up, ears a twitching frame around a triumphant grin. “See? I told you I heard something.”

Taru huffed as the pair began walking towards the river. “It would’ve been better if you could’ve heard what direction it come from.”

“I have very sensitive hearing.”

“Aye, not reet accurate though, is it?”

“Not always. But that’s because it’s so sensitive.”

Taru shook her head but said nothing.

“It’s true! You humans never understand, but we alfar hear a lot. Too much, sometimes, so we can’t always work out exactly what.” They sniffed. “Or where it’s coming from.”

Every few moments, as if there were a rhythm to it, the noise of the river abruptly stopped, leaving them in silence. Taru reckoned it was a cluster of trees or some other barrier—maybe a hill or another tree house—coming between them and the source of the sound.

“Did people really live here?” she asked, glancing up into the darkness to see if she could spy another fracturing house like one the pair had stumbled upon before the junction. Nothing.

“They do,” Bhaltair reminded her. “Though only a few, and we’re going to help them live again.”

Taru pressed her lips together. She liked Bhaltair’s positivity. She didn’t want to ruin it with her doubt. “How far are these elders, anyway?” She’d thought they would have reached them by now.

“It’s hard to say,” Bhaltair said.

Taru stared hard at their profile.

“Don’t look at me like that,” they complained with a chuckle, rubbing at the side of their neck. “Time has always run weird in the deep forest, even before the shadows. It’s gotten worse since they arrived, though. So it’s not my fault it chops and changes.”

“Then… how far in distance?”

“Does it matter? If the feeling of time is off, then knowing the distance isn’t gonna make a difference, is it? We can’t exactly measure how far we’ve walked in these cond—”

A low keen broke the air, carried on the sound of rushing water.

“What in Kasata?” Bhaltair murmured.

The darkness ahead was just as all-consuming as the darkness around them. 

“Do you see that?” Bhaltair asked, and Taru shook her head.

“What is it? Do we need to hide?”

Bhaltair laughed humourlessly, “Where?”

“In the undergrowth.”

“There’s no light here: no fire to calm the dark.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those shadows you’re looking to hide in are just the thing we need to hide from.” Bhaltair shifted closer to her, their brow pinched up and their eyes wide as they stared ahead. “Look, I don’t know what it is but it’s coming close—”

Overwhelmed with frustration, Taru grabbed Bhaltair by the collar and pulled them close, growling, “Then what can we do?”

The alfar’s eyes darted between Taru’s as they swallowed thickly. Then, they glanced behind her, to the undergrowth. “I… I guess we don’t have a choice.”

She let him go and lunged into the leaves. Throwing her coat over the lantern, she held it low as Bhaltair crouched beside her.

A sickly sweet odour teased at Taru’s nose. It was a body smell, familiar but distant enough that she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Not until it began cloying at the back of her throat.

“Infection,” she whispered.

Bhaltair nodded, fumbling with something inside their travelling cloak. They drew out a vial, popped out its cork and released a shroud of mint-smelling air. “Creatures turning can’t smell so well. Probably because they don’t smell good.”

Darkness drew in over the empty path. With heaving breaths, a colossal half-shadowed beast staggered over it. Taru realised then, with grave disappointment, that what she had thought was the rushing of the Dubh was actually this creature’s laboured breathing.

Bigger than any being Taru had ever seen while awake, the beast filled a space that had dwarfed the two of them. Dense black fur covered its vast body, shadows slithering through it, weighing down fur in one place and dripping uselessly from another. On its face, slivers of shadows writhed around and into its wine red eyes only to be blinked or swiped away by a paw the size of Taru’s leg.

She had just noticed a pair of thick horns curling out of the creature’s head when Bhaltair gripped her arm tight.

“Kludde,” they whispered.

Taru frowned. “Kludde?” she mouthed.

A flurry of furious swiping at its own face preceded a gargling snarl and a strange wet airy sound as a clot of darkness thumped to the floor. Then, tossing its head back, the kludde split the air with a wretched keen that pricked at Taru’s skin and twisted her heart before trailing off into a gurgling wretch.

She may have been losing her mind, but she could’ve sworn it was crying for help.

Before she knew it, she was upright, ready to take her coat off the lantern. Bhaltair yanked her back down too hard. She fell through the ferns and against the alfar with a great rustle, thump, and, “Oi!” 

Nothing happened. 

Then, two great red eyes fixed her over a mouthful of jagged jet teeth that looked to want her.

Bhaltair grabbed her hand tight and heaved her around the kludde’s back end. They ran the way the beast had come, sprinting so hard the shock of each step shot up through Taru’s bones, from her toes to her collar. No matter how much it hurt, she couldn’t stop. She could hear the snarling snapping at her heels: even imagined she could feel its hot breath on her ankles.

“This in’t working!” she cried. “We have to go through t’trees!” She saw Bhaltair’s head turn to look at the shadow-draped boughs. “Please, Bhaltair. It’s so close!”

Bhaltair spat a curse, then dove into the undergrowth, ducking under the first branch before scrambling into darkness. Taru followed. She was nearly through when something caught her ankle, pressing her foot into the dirt. Unwilling to look back, she wriggled madly to free herself before fumbling the rest of the way through the gap. The pair clambered over and under trees and ferns and brambles and rocks until they broke out into a clearing. 

Bhaltair stopped, their ears twitching before their entire body sagged downwards. They shook their head, pressed their hands into their thighs and audibly steadied their breathing. 

Taru fell to her knees as they gave out under her, her hands sinking into soft, cold moss.

“Apscondo’s vaulted dome,” she gasped, “that was too close.”

“Aye, but we made it,” they breathed.

“It…” Taru began, trying to piece together what she’d heard, “it sounded like… almost like it was… maybe…”

Bhaltair’s shoulders and head slumped. They cursed at the ground before straightening, a hand in the curve of their back. “Like it was asking for help?” they tried, staring up at the canopy.

Taru gnawed on the dry skin of her top lip and sat back onto her haunches, watching them. 

“It was,” they said quietly. Then, after a few more steadying breaths, “It was fighting them, the shadows. You saw it, didn’t you? The way it clawed at its face?”

Taru stared into Bhaltair’s miserably wide eyes, trying not to think about what that meant as they muttered,

“It was fighting the shadows and crying out for help.”

Taru tried, “But… could we? Really?”

Bhaltair stared at her for such a long time that it came to look as if they weren’t really seeing her. “I know a song,” they said.

-~*~-

“I got trapped in this place running after a friend of mine—a robin,” Bhaltair explained as the pair of them retraced their steps at a brisk jog through trees and ferns and brambles and rocks. “They got caught in the wall as it grew. The one you passed to get in here. Got consumed by it. Spat out on this side. The top of the wall was at the canopy by the time that happened, and I’d followed them through. But one wing was cut deep by the brambles that caught them. The darkness spread, and fast. I didn’t know what was happening at first, but I knew it was bad. So I used my pipes to heal them, only it’s a bit harder than it was to contact the weave around here. I passed out before I was done, or so I thought. When I woke up, my friend was healed, asleep on me, but my pipes were gone and…”

They paused, glancing around, sniffing. They turned a little to the left. “This way,” they said.

“What happened to your friend?” Taru asked, when it was clear Bhaltair wasn’t going to continue the story.

“Oh, they come back every now and again. Usually with some fresh mint or a sprig of clean berries. But we never spent too much time together before. It felt a bit weird to travel together here, especially when we both move at such different speeds.”

As they continued through the branches in silence, Taru now taking extra care to avoid the sharp ones, she found herself thinking about the oddness of their tone. It had a strange movement to it, too quick to be so well-rounded: too fully formed. Almost unreal. She supposed this was what happened when someone was made to continue a story they didn’t want to tell.

Before long, the familiar sickly sweetness returned to worry at the back of her throat. Only when she began feeling the urge to cough did she request another vial of mint. Once the air was made soft with herbal relief, they spied the shape of the beast through the thinning trees: big and black and squirming with shadows, one vast wine red eye flashing alight and out like failing dragonstone; it lay prone on the path.

Bhaltair bolted to it and, without a single care for their own wellbeing, lay their hands on its side. 

Taru sprinted after them but only saw their comparatively tiny brown hands for a moment before they sank into the slick fur. 

Bhaltair took a deep breath. Then, they began to sing in a sweet but powerful voice, made of light and courage. They sang in a language Taru didn’t know, but somehow the meaning reached her as clearly as if it had been sung in commonton.

You are not meant just for dark, dear friend,
you are not made just for sorrow.
You also are meant for when the night ends
and sunlight casts long our shadows.

Only a fool says the brightness of day
is not made moreso by the night.
Only they argue the blackest of shadows
is not brought to life by the light.

So one moment more I will grant you your grief,
this moment that you have not chosen.
But you will return to me, then: to the day,
and leave to the weave what is woven.

As Bhaltair repeated the verses, the shadows retreated from their breath as if repulsed by what it carried. Buffeted through the air by the song, many of them went among the trees. As Bhaltair began their second repetition, they stammered with uncertainty, then murmured into silence. Taru watched the alfar fall against the kludde. The remaining shadows rushed towards them.

She lunged forward, burying one hand into the kludde’s surprisingly soft fur. With the other, she gripped Bhaltair’s forearm. In barely tuned commonton, she sang,

“You are not meant just for dark, dear friends,
You are not made just for sorrow.
Now is the time for night to end
and sunlight to cast long our shadows.” 

She paused, self-conscious about her raspy voice—she had never been a strong singer. But when she opened her eyes and saw no change in the kludde or Bhaltair, she sang louder and further out of tune.

“Now, we all know the brightness of day
is made to be more by the night.
And also, it’s true that the blackest of shadows
is given its life by the light.”

She gripped tight the fur and arm in either hand, as the warm pull of the weave eased her mind into darkness. Soft and comfortable, this was her special space between dream and reality; not in this world nor the next; where Dragon had told her stories of all the things she could do if only she left Shude behind.

It was a long time since she had seen Dragon. Should she call sem Truce, now? Should she call Truce si?

She fought her way back to the waking world and continued, slurring, in what she hoped was a less mournful tune,

“There are no more moments left for your grief
without turning it into indulgence.
So return to me, friends; return to the day,
and leave to the weave what is woven.”

Taru’s lids were heavy but she fought to keep them apart as a strange cloying warmth crawled between her fingers. Just as she thought she would succumb, a white figure appeared on the other side of the kludde. She looked up to find a pale man, vaguely bearded with concern in his grey eyes, standing over her.

“Is this your dog?” he asked.