A Latent Dark (9 page)

It backed up and suddenly bolted away, taking the world she had just glimpsed with it as it hurled down the path. She was left standing there. The world seemed plain and boring again.

Orrin croaked in her ear.
“Follow.”

*

By late afternoon, the sky had become a monochrome watercolor and wind had begun to whip the tops of the trees. The forest thinned as the trail became wider and eventually Skyla found herself in a vast meadow with a clear view of the valley. A wide arc of sparkling silver, the Lassimir River, was still days away.

Her feet felt swollen inside her mud-caked, dirty school shoes, the soles cracked. Skyla sat on an axe-marked tree stump and looked out across the landscape. A slender column of white smoke stood out from the treetops. She could reach it in an hour. 

“I’m going to go to see who lives in that cabin,” she said to Orrin.

“No,”
he said in that eerily human voice. She had been expecting a squawk.

“No?” she said. “I can’t exactly live off berries for another day. I won’t have the strength to make it to the river. I’m going. You can eat whatever you want and I will meet you after I am done begging for food.”

“
Daaaanger
.”

“I don’t care,” she snapped. “I am in more danger from starvation—or thirst—than what’s in that cabin.”

“Skyla,”
he said.

“They would have killed you at the school, do you know that?” she hissed. “And I saved you from those boys throwing stones.
I did.
” She poked herself in the chest with her finger. “So I’m making the rules from now on and I’m hungry.”

Orrin launched from her backpack with enough force that it almost shoved her off the stump. He disappeared into the trees.

“Fine!” she yelled after him. “Go! Go choke on a nut!”

She only felt the slightest concern that he might never come back.

Her nose was the only thing telling her she was going the right direction. The smell became stronger, as did the growling noises from her stomach. By the time she reached the tiny crossroads, the wind had picked up and small raindrops began to peck at her face.

A modest but sturdy-looking wood cabin sat on a stone foundation. A crooked iron chimney crept up the outside of one wall, matched by ivy on the opposite corner of the building. A woodshed with halved and quartered logs stood to the side of the cabin. A nearby stump held an axe by its blade.

She was about to explore the other side of the building when a sudden rustling noise made her jump. Orrin landed a few yards away from her. He presented a gift. It was a lizard, still wriggling in his beak. Orrin hopped toward her and dropped it on the ground.

“Food,”
he croaked.

“I’m not eating that,” she said with revulsion. “It’s still alive!”

She looked about. The last thing she wanted was to be discovered trespassing, talking to a giant crow. She turned back to Orrin, who had pinned his writhing prey with one black scaled claw. He looked up at her.

“Food.”

“Food for you maybe,” she said. “I’m a person. I need a warm bed and a meal—a
decent
meal. I’m starving.”

She turned toward the cabin.

“Sky—la.”
It was a pleading, desperate cry.

She shushed him and turned on her heel, stomping toward the cabin at first, then softening her steps as she grew closer. The interior looked warm and inviting. A few antlers were mounted on the walls, along with clockwork rifles of various shapes and sizes. They were of the sort of guns that long-range hunters use, unfolded for display. The solitary, black metal stove cast an orange glow across the room. She saw nobody inside, but the interior of the cabin was surprisingly neat and well-kept.

She traced a path around the back of the house and found another trail lined with blood-red branches, their bark as smooth as flesh, the leaves a startling green.

A twig snapped and Skyla spun around to find herself facing a large, barrel-chested man. He looked down from dark, thickly browed eyes and a bushy beard, nearly black. He wore a skin cap with flaps that fell over his ears, his checkered shirt a wall of fabric. In one hand he held a rifle, in the other a pheasant. Blood dripped from the slain bird onto his large black boot.

Skyla let out a squeak of surprise, and then laughed in relief and embarrassment, simply glad to finally see another human face. The hunter however, did not seem the least bit amused. A suspicious scowl crept across his features.

Up until this point, Skyla had been rehearsing what she would say:
Hello sir or madam, my name is Skyla. I hail from Bollingbrook and I am lost. I am in need of food and lodging. What say you, good sir?

Instead, what came out of her mouth was a desperate, crazed gibberish. She stopped talking immediately and shrank.

“Who are you?” he asked. His dark green eyes studied her with distrust, his voice calm. There was a smear of blood on his shirt.

Skyla was frozen for a full minute before she finally found her voice.

“Please,” she squeaked out.

“Why are you here?” he asked, slowly this time, as if he thought she couldn’t understand him.

“I... I’m lost,” she said, forcing the words out. She felt as though her one opportunity to get a meal might be slipping through her fingers. “Me and Orrin… we—”

“Who’s Orrin?” he cut her off. His grip on the rifle tightened as he glanced over her shoulder and out into the night. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Oh! Neither do we,” she said quickly. “We just need a place to stay for the night before it rains.”

“You keep saying ‘we.’ I want to see who ‘we’ is before you take another step.”

Skyla was about to answer when Orrin landed on the tin roof with a loud squawk. The man dropped the pheasant and swung his rifle upward, taking aim at the raven. He muttered something about vermin as casually as if he were flicking a bug from his coat. Skyla screamed and launched herself into the man’s elbow as the gun discharged. There was an ear-ringing explosion and Skyla felt warm air next to her head as the smell of gunpowder and sweat stung her nostrils.

The man stumbled backward, disbelief in his eyes as he tried to gain his balance. The gun veered haphazardly off at an angle. He swore and looked at her as though she were insane.

“That’s Orrin,” she yelled at him, nearly in tears.

He glared a moment, before bending over to pick the dead pheasant up from the ground, his gaze never leaving her. Skyla was uncomfortably aware of the gun he held, wisps of smoke still rising from its barrel. It ticked mechanically, threateningly, reloading itself. The man walked over to a side door and kicked it open. He then hung the bird by its feet over a bucket where it drained. A wing outstretched elegantly as a paper fan as the bird bled out.

“You’d better check on your friend,” he said.

He walked through the door and closed it. Through the window, he pointed across the room to the front door and made a face at her as if to say,
Well?

Skyla walked back around the cabin, dreading what she might find. Her mind filled with images of a broken pile of feathers on the ground.

The light from inside the cabin spilled out onto the yard. Skyla scanned for any sign of Orrin, a feather or—even though she dared not think of it—a blood trail. She called his name and listened through the rustling trees as rain began spitting through the branches, hitting her face in cold droplets. There was a rustling above her in the pine needles.

“Orrin?”

There was a squawk above her. She could barely make out his black outline in the fading light, but he appeared to be all in one piece. He hopped down a couple branches and looked at her, but did not approach any further.

“Orrin, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I had no idea he would react that way.”

Squawk.

“Please come down. We can eat and spend the night here. I think he might let us in.”

Another squawk, but Orrin came no further. He climbed the tree again, stopping a few branches up. She could barely see him anymore.

“Eat,”
he croaked.
“Food.”
She thought she heard disdain in his voice.

Skyla glanced from Orrin to the cabin, and then back again.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”

“Eat,”
his voice was even further up the branches and it was hard to hear him in the strengthening wind.

“I’ll try to bring you something,” she said over the rustling noise and howling wind.

There was no reply but the sound of leaves. She turned toward the cabin.

She was greeted by an awkward silence at the door as the big man opened it and considered her for a moment.

“Did I get him?”

“No,” she said, scowling. “But he’s scared. He won’t come down.”

The man looked up into the trees. “Well, I imagine he’ll survive. I can never get rid of those things in the summer. Always tearing up my roof and getting into food storage.”

 “He only showed up because he heard us calling his name,” she said. “Otherwise he is very well trained—” She stopped herself short and the man gave her a curious look.

“I suppose you need a place to stay,” he said.

Her face brightened. “Is that okay?”

“You can sleep on the couch. I was about to eat. You can have some too.” He opened the door the rest of the way and stood aside as she entered. “There is a washroom in the back, through the door. You can clean your face.”

“Thank you so much!” She looked up at him, stumbling over her words. “I promise I’ll stay out of your way. You won’t get anymore trouble from me or from Orrin—”

“It’s fine,” he said, his expression softening. “What’s your name?”

“Skyla,” she said. The warmth of the cabin hit her with a luxurious embrace. “Yours?”

“I’m James,” he said, closing the door. “Go clean up. I hope you like stew because that’s what you’re having.”

Skyla had almost forgotten how amazing it was to have access to a washroom. A copper bathtub sat at one end of the small room. She glanced at the mirror and gasped at the grimy creature staring back.

This is what greeted him in the woods. It’s amazing he didn’t try to shoot me and mount
my
head on a wall
.

As the water ran, the sink quickly filled with dirt, bits of leaves and twigs, not to mention other things she didn’t wish to identify. She even had to scoop some of the elements out of the basin for fear of clogging the drain.

When she finally toweled off her face she was amazed that she could finally recognize her own reflection. Hazel eyes stared back at her from beneath a mop of damp—but clean—brown curly hair. Freckles peppered her cheeks and ran over the bridge of her nose.

As she opened the door, the smell of food overwhelmed her. James had already served himself and was seated, hunched over a bowl, slurping. It was the sort of table manners she had expected from a hermit.

“Dump your things over there on the couch,” he said between gulps. “You can stay here tonight.” There was something very final about the way he said
tonight.