But no. That was something a child would do, something the frightened boy he had been a few days ago would have done, and he had promised himself that he would be that boy no longer. So instead, he kept the girl’s hand in his, took a slow, deep breath, and started back the way he had come. The undergrowth was as thick as he remembered—an oddly reassuring thing, considering how unusual the night had been—and his task was made more difficult by the fact that he could only use one hand, his other held in a tight grip by the girl. He tried to pull it away once so that he could heave a dead tree branch out of the way, but she refused to let it go, and he was forced to climb over the obstacle instead, helping her along a moment later.
As he worked his way through, the girl behind him, a silent presence, he began to think that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere, began to feel the first ticklings of panic as he imagined what it would be like to be lost in this undergrowth forever, stuck in the darkness with this silent girl and her cold, clammy hands. He paused, his breath rasping, and allowed himself a moment to rest. As he did, he caught a whiff of something foul.
Growing up in the wilderness, in a village like Brighton, a boy was, at an early age, disabused of certain sensitivities and notions that a city child was able to maintain. One of those sensitivities came in the form of butchering livestock. Often, Matt had helped do exactly that as someone in the village needed help with it, and therefore he was no stranger to the smell of dead flesh. There was a hint of that, in the smell, but there was something else, too. This was not just dead flesh, not just some beast that had recently died. No, this smell was different, worse. It was the smell of meat that had been butchered and left to bake in the hot sun until it was rancid and foul.
He glanced back to the girl who looked up at him from beneath her long dark hair with those big, wide eyes. “Do you smell something?”
She said nothing, only studied him, and so Matt grunted, turning back. It was a dead animal, that was all. That was not so odd an occurrence, surely, certainly not in the woods where some animals were predators and others prey. Likely a wolf or coyote had only been disturbed in his meal by some thing or another and had left the remnants of the unfortunate animal somewhere nearby. He told himself it did not matter, that it was no cause for concern. And, partly, he even believed it, enough, at least, to gather his will and continue on, pushing his way through the bushes crowding around them.
By the time they finally emerged from the dense thicket, his clothes, his arms and face were pocked and scratched by the many thorns and twigs he’d had to force his way through, and he paused, giving himself a chance to get his ragged breathing under control. “I just…need a minute,” he said, kneeling down and wincing at the cold rasp in his throat. He was surprisingly exhausted, likely not just from the exertion but also from the stress of being out here in the darkness, stress at the way it seemed to press in all around him, like some beast meaning to swallow him up.
Still, the girl would not let go of his hand, but he was too tired to care about that, was too focused on catching his breath. The only consolation he could find was that, soon, he would reach Cutter. Whatever else the man might be, he would be a great comfort now, and he was looking forward to hearing the man’s growling, gravelly voice, which normally sounded so menacing, but now would be a pleasure, even if it was used to scold him for his foolishness. A man like Cutter was not scared of the dark or of trees, that much was certain. A man like Cutter wasn’t scared of anything.
Matt found himself really looking forward to that, even to the man’s disapproving growl when he saw that Matt had gone off into the darkness and had come back with a young child. But when he finally got his breath back enough to glance at his surroundings, he realized that he—they—were not where he had thought they would be. “There’s…it can’t be,” he said softly in a breathless voice. He blinked, gave his head a good shake, but nothing changed.
The bank, where he had first found the girl, was only feet away, the stream gurgling past below it. The same stream which he was sure should be at their backs. But as much as he knew it was impossible, the stream did not move, only continued to be right in front of him, exactly where it should not be. “We must have gotten…gotten turned around or…or something.”
“Or something.”
He glanced back at the little girl who was standing there, smiling at him, not looking frightened in the slightest, not now. Maybe her calm, her smile should have reassured him, but it did not. There was something about that expression he didn’t like, something sly, knowing, as if she possessed some great secret that he did not. “Come on,” he said, starting toward the underbrush once more. He thought that perhaps the girl would let go of his hand—almost hoped for it—but she did not, only held on and allowed herself to be pulled toward the
