I hadn’t had reason to use the servant’s stairwell since my arrival, but I was grateful for it as I snuck down the wooden steps and out the back door.
The sun was sinking low in the sky, coloring the horizon a deep orange, and I realized it was later than I’d hoped. Still, I couldn’t postpone.
The Wilds had told me the season was right for ghostly happenings, but tonight was special. Tonight was a full moon.
I didn’t know much about these things, but it seemed to me that if there had been strange activity out on the moors two nights ago, there was sure to be more of it tonight. And this time, I would not run away.
I crouched beneath a back window and slid my boots on. Then, I secured a knife I’d taken from the kitchen earlier in the morning to the inside of my leg with a belt. I felt foolish, like a child playing dress up, but I also felt more prepared. I knew that, if it came to it, I would use the knife to save my life. Without hesitation.
The ground was still soggy from the rain two days earlier, but not nearly as sopping as it had been the last time I’d headed out. My boots squelched in the mud, but I wasn’t sucked down to my ankles with each step. So, I made faster work of the beginning of the trail than I had the first time, which worked well since I didn’t want anyone in the house to see me heading out.
Once I reached the tree outcropping and the fork in the trail, I looked for the carved stone that would mark the easier of the two paths. I wanted to travel the same ground I’d travelled before, hoping to catch whatever figures I’d seen at their work again and, this time, unmask them. The rock was on the far-left trail, and I headed for it at once.
The trees and ground looked much the same at the start, but as I continued down the path, doubts began to creep in.
The trail had been difficult before, but the ground had been slippery and muddy. My boots lost grip easily, making me slide around the trail, and the rocks had been covered in moss that caused me to lose my footing. Now, there was none of that on this path, yet it still felt more difficult.
The inclines were steeper and the drops were more dangerous, and twice I nearly turned my ankle in a large fissure in the ground that I couldn’t see because of the setting sun.
I had never been someone inclined to spend time in nature, so I couldn’t be certain, but it felt as though I was blazing a new path entirely.
When I turned around to try and find the house to gain my bearings, I couldn’t see the roof through the treetops as I could before. I couldn’t see anything. And because I’d made so many different turns on different paths, without the peak of the roof to guide me like a star, I had no idea which direction to turn to start home again.
Panic began to tighten around my chest like a band, but I breathed deeply, fighting it off.
I wouldn’t be lost out here. At worst, I would be outside overnight. The thought did little to actually comfort me, but I pulled my coat tighter around my shoulders and assured myself I was ready for this. Catherine and Charles would notice me missing and come to find me. When they did, the sound of their searching would help me find my way home. Twelve hours wasn’t such a very long time.
Even though I wanted to turn back and start looking for home now, I pressed on. Because, up ahead, just over the green tops of the trees, I saw smoke.
More than the trail or what little instinct I may have had, the smoke guided me. It was a faint cloud of white against the ever-darkening sky, but I knew that where there was smoke, there would be fire. And where there was fire, there would be cloaked figures dancing around it.
At least on these moors, anyway.
So, I fought through my fear and panic and desire to flee until the trees began to thin and the ground began to feel familiar again.
The swells of the hills that would be covered in heather come the spring were the same I’d walked up the other night. Just from a different direction.
Even though I should have been terrified that I was growing closer to the smoke and the shadowy horrors I’d encountered before, I was relieved to know that I was in a place I’d been before. All I would need to do was find the other trail head from this wide-open meadow, and perhaps it would lead me back to the house tonight. If I knew where I was, I could find where I’d been.
The thought of home was still fresh in my mind when I crested a hill and saw the red and orange flicker of flames.
Then, every other thought disappeared.
An instinctual fear took over, chilling me to my center and wiping my mind. I dropped down to the ground, smudging wet grass stains across the elbows and front of my coat, and took shallow breaths.
The fire seemed larger tonight than it had before. It licked up to where the leaves began to grow on the birch trees, threatening to burn up the pile of wood in the center and all of the trees around the outer edge, as well. It seemed dangerously large. So large I wondered if it could ever be put out.
When the first cry rang
