“Hi,” he said, slightly breathless.
The girl turned and in the darkness, her face was largely covered in shadows that seemed to shift and writhe. “Hello, child,” she said in a surprisingly forceful, surprisingly older voice.
Matt frowned, hesitating from where he’d been walking toward her. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m just a child,” she said, “and I’m frightened. Please, will you help me?”
That sounded normal—at least, the voice sounded as it should, and Matt gave a soft laugh. “Gods, but it’s dark out here, isn’t it? And cold too. You must be freezing.” And that was true. In fact, the temperature seemed to have dropped since he’d stepped outside of the undergrowth and came to stand beside the stream. Even now, his breath plumed in front of him in great white clouds.
“It’s always cold here,” the girl said, her voice quiet and with a sort of sing-song quality to it. “I’m always cold.”
“Always?” Matt asked. “How long have you been here?”
There was a sort of shifting, a blur it seemed as if too much to follow, and the next thing Matt knew, the girl was standing, facing him, her hands clasped in front of her in a gesture that might have seemed sweet in other circumstances but somehow, in that moment, didn’t seem sweet at all, seemed menacing in a way he couldn’t define. “Me?” she asked. “I’ve always been here. Will you help me?”
The girl was acting strangely, that much was certain, talking strangely, too, but that was no great surprise. He’d heard of people caught in the elements acting strangely before, shock it was called, and was that any real surprise? The girl had been wandering in the Black Woods for the gods alone knew how long, in the cold, alone. Was it any wonder, then, that she was a little off? Matt had been wandering around for only a few minutes…he paused, glancing at the moon with a frown, a moon which seemed to have moved far in the sky, indicating that he’d spent far more time searching for the girl than he’d thought. An impossible amount of time. Anyway, he’d been out here for only a short while, however long, and he was already beginning to feel a little crazy. “Of course I’ll help you,” he said.
“You’ll take me?” she said, studying him with eyes that seemed almost too large for her face and in which, with the darkness, he could discern no pupils. “Out of the wood, I mean?”
“Soon,” Matt promised. “Only, I have a friend with me, and I’ll have to talk to him, to see—”
“The other you mean,” she said in what sounded almost like a hiss.
“Another,” he said, assuming he must have heard her incorrectly, “that’s right. We came here for a reason, but I know we won’t be staying long. We can meet up with him and—”
“Leave him.”
“I’m sorry—what?”
She gave him a small smile. “Leave him,” she repeated. “It would be better, if you did. Easier. Easier for everyone.”
Matt gave a soft laugh. “I can’t leave him he’s my…” Well, “friend” actually didn’t sound quite right, but he shrugged. “Anyway, look. I know you’re scared, okay?” he said, kneeling down in front of her and grabbing her thin shoulders, shoulders which, despite their small appearance, felt somehow strange beneath his touch. “But this man, he won’t hurt you or me…” Probably. “Besides, he can help me. Help us, that is. He’s been here before.”
“Yes,” she said, and for a moment he caught only a brief flash of her teeth, teeth that almost seemed sharpened, as if they had been filed down to points.
“Yes,” he repeated. “So you’ll come? To see my friend?”
“I will come,” she said, smiling, and this time, her teeth appeared normal. His mind, then, playing tricks. Perhaps he was not so far from that frightened child as he had thought.
“Will you hold my hand?” she asked. “I do not want to lose you.”
“Uh…sure, of course,” Matt said. He took her small hand in his own and instantly felt repelled, for it was clammy with sweat and cool to the touch with a strange, greasy quality to it. Still, touching a clammy hand was by far the least of his problems, so he did so, offering her a smile he did not feel. “Ready?”
“Ready,” she said, smiling again.
It was only then that Matt realized, looking down at her, that the girl wasn’t wearing any shoes. She must have lost them somewhere along the way, before or after she herself had gotten lost. That brought some semblance of thought back to him, and he shook his head. “I’m an idiot, sorry. Tell me, who were you here with?”
“I’m here with no one,” she said. “It is only me and you.” She finished the last in a voice that he would have almost thought sounded coy had it come from someone older.
“Right,” he said slowly, “that is, what I mean is who were you with before you got lost?”
Some expression—anger or annoyance perhaps—flashed across the little girl’s face but was gone in another instant, so quickly that he was left wondering whether or not he had imagined it. What replaced it was a look of confused terror, and her lip began to tremble. “I…I don’t remember.”
Fool, he inwardly scorned himself. Why not just remind her of her situation? “It’s okay,” he assured her. “I’ve got you. We’ll get you safe and warm, then we’ll find whoever you were with, how’d that be?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said seriously, the tears which had threatened nowhere in evidence. “I’ve never been warm before.”
Something about that sent an uncomfortable shiver down him, and Matt decided he’d had enough talking for now. Besides, if they didn’t make it back to Cutter by the time the man woke, there was no telling what he might do. Likely, he’d abandon Matt, leaving him alone with the girl. That, for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on, was a very frightening prospect, one perhaps even worse
