The Sorrows of the Present

The night air struck them like a slap. Behind them, the witch's shrieks still echoed, but they were already fading as they put distance between themselves and her.
Pally, the crystal ball tucked under his arm, out of breath, straightened up and looked at his friends. Merwinn, Ellendia, William. All standing. All alive.
"I know exactly where the creature is. Follow me."
They ran. Branches lashed their faces, the snow slowed their steps, but they ran. The mushroom-cottage receded behind them, its greenish glow vanishing between the trees like an eye closing.
Pally clutched the crystal ball against him. He didn't really know why he had taken it, it had been in the heat of the moment, but it seemed to guide him, as though the path were drawing itself out before him without his needing to think.
His short breath formed white clouds in the freezing air. The image of the witch, her hungry eyes, her laugh, all of it still spun through his head. But one phrase came back stronger than the others, like an echo that refuses to die.
The one you cherish most.
Merwinn, running at his side, looked at him and said between two breaths: "Pally... what she said about you... you know it's all nonsense, right? I'll never hurt you. You're my best friend for life, okay?"
Pally turned his head toward him and smiled. "Of course. I didn't believe it for a single second anyway."
But deep inside him, the witch's words had already lodged themselves somewhere, in a place he couldn't reach to tear them out. He shook his head as if to chase them away. He had other things to do. There was a creature to find, and he knew where.
They slowed after a few minutes, their breath burning, their legs heavy. No one spoke right away. They walked, one behind the other, in the oppressive silence of the Sleeping Woods.
Ellendia was the first to break the silence, her voice lower than she would have wanted. "Did we... did we really just do that?"
No one answered. Because there was no answer. They had stood up to a witch. They had fled a house that wanted to kill them. They were still alive, all four of them, when a few minutes ago it had all hung by a thread.
William walked a little behind, his daggers still in his hands, his gaze sweeping the trees. He had not uttered a word since they had come out. But his fingers trembled slightly on the hilts of his blades. He had seen the knife pass within inches of his head. He had seen the floor give way beneath his foot. And he knew, even if he didn't say so, that it had been by a hair.
Merwinn, walking near Pally, briefly laid his hand on his friend's shoulder. Not a word. Just a hand. And Pally, without looking at him, nodded gently.
They were different from when they had entered the cottage. They all knew it, even if they couldn't have said why.
Pally suddenly quickened his pace. "We don't have time to think about that. The witch isn't just going to let us leave like..."
He stopped dead. Something in the forest had changed. The silence was too perfect. Too heavy. The others stopped too, sensing the same thing.
Merwinn. Then Ellendia. Then William.
Behind them, in the darkness they had just crossed, eyes gleamed. Two. Four. Ten. Twenty. Dozens of luminous points, greenish, pulsing in the night like poisoned embers. And the sound that accompanied them, a low, collective growl that rose from everywhere at once.
The wolves.
"Run," whispered Pally.
They ran. But the wolves were faster. The growls closed in, branches snapped under heavy paws, and within seconds the first wolves appeared at their flanks, running parallel, their greenish marks pulsing in the darkness. They weren't attacking yet. They were herding. Encircling.
"They're cutting us off!" cried William, who saw the tactical move taking shape.
It was too late. The wolves surged up from ahead, blocking the way. Others closed in from behind. The circle tightened. The four found themselves back to back in the middle of a narrow clearing, surrounded by a pack whose numbers seemed endless. The greenish marks on their coats pulsed in unison, like a single organism, a single heartbeat.
"Stay together!" shouted Pally, his sword in one hand, the lantern in the other.
Merwinn immediately placed himself beside Ellendia, his sword raised. Ellendia drew her bow, an arrow nocked, her gaze sweeping the circle of wolves. William, daggers in hand, covered the rear, his eyes calculating every movement.
The first wolf leapt.
Merwinn drove it back with a sword blow to the flank. A second surged from the left; Ellendia struck it in the shoulder with an arrow. But they came from everywhere, in waves, and each wolf pushed back was replaced by two more.
William parried a first wolf with his crossed daggers, driving it back with a kick to the muzzle. But a second rammed him from the side and threw him to the ground. His back hit the frozen earth, the breath knocked out of him. The wolf was on him, its fangs inches from his throat, its burning drool running down his neck. William pressed both hands against the beast's jaws, pushing with all his strength, arms trembling, fingers slipping on the damp fur. He felt the fangs scraping against his palms, the power of the jaw pressing, pressing, closing in.
And in his peripheral vision, two other wolves were approaching, low on their paws, eyes fixed on him, their greenish marks pulsing in unison. They had spotted the prey on the ground. The easiest to eat.
William clenched his teeth. His arms were giving way. And a thought, cold and clear, crossed his mind: he was going to die here, in this forest, without having done what he had sworn to live for.
And suddenly, a light.
Pally saw William on the ground. He didn't think. He grabbed the lantern and shattered it against the blade of his sword. The glass burst, the oil spread across the steel, and flames leapt from his palm, bright, fierce. The oil caught instantly and a tongue of fire traced itself along the blade, crackling, alive.
His first arcing swing cleft the air, wide, powerful, dragging behind it a curve of fire that hung in the night like a scar of light. The blade struck the wolf holding William down, the snow melted around the impact, and the beast was thrown to one side with a howl, its greenish marks sizzling, its pelt smoking.
The second wolf leapt. Pally pivoted and launched a second arc, tighter, faster. The flaming blade traced a burning line through the night and caught the beast in midair. William, still on the ground, felt the wave of heat sweep across his face.
The third wolf hesitated. Pally took a step forward, his sword tracing a final arc, slow this one, deliberate, a curve of fire that drew a half-circle before him like an impassable boundary. The wolf backed away, ears flattened, fangs bared but paws trembling, and vanished into the shadows.
Pally stood still. His breath made steam in the cold air, but around him the air trembled with heat. The snow had melted beneath his feet, the earth was smoking, and the flames of his sword crackled softly in the silence that had just fallen. His gaze was fixed, focused, his eyes shining with a gleam that the fire's light alone could not explain.
William watched him from below, motionless, his breath still caught in his throat. The firelight played across Pally's face, hollowing his features, gilding his skin, and the shadows danced behind him as if they dared not come near. The snow melting around his boots formed a ring of water that reflected the fire, and for an instant he seemed to stand on a lake of light.
Pally looked down at him and held out his hand.
William looked at it. That hand. Pally's hand. The kid he had despised for years, who had soaked him with icy water that very morning, who called him "Goldilocks," who laughed with Merwinn at his misfortunes... that same hand had just saved his life.
He took it.
Pally pulled him up with a sharp, firm motion. Their eyes met for an instant. Neither of them said a word. There was no need. Something had passed between them, a silent and definitive something, that would change the way they looked at each other from now on.
Pally turned first, his flaming sword still in hand, his eyes already searching for the next danger.
Because the fight wasn't over.
On the other side of the clearing, the situation had shifted. In the chaos of wolves falling back before Pally's light, Ellendia had been cut off from the group. Three wolves had isolated her, pushing her toward the trees, cutting the distance between her and Merwinn. She fired her arrows, one, two, three, but her hands trembled and the beasts kept advancing, closing in.
Merwinn saw her. His heart stopped. No. Not her.
She was too far away. Much too far. At that distance, even running, he would never make it in time. The wolves were between them, and Ellendia was backing away, her bow almost useless at point-blank range. The largest of the three wolves gathered on its hind legs, ready to pounce.
Something rose up in Merwinn. Not fear. Not anger. Something deeper, quieter. Ellendia wasn't just his friend. She wasn't just the little girl he'd grown up with. She was... her. And if he lost her, there, now, before his eyes, because he hadn't been fast enough, he would never forgive himself.
Merwinn didn't think. His body moved before his thought.
He leaned forward, shifted his weight onto the tips of his toes, and felt something he had never felt before. A current. Not around him, not in the air, but within him. Like a breath that went out from his center and flowed down into his legs, his feet, the tips of his boots. Cirilla had shown him this technique dozens of times. He had tried it hundreds of times. He had failed every time.
Not this time.
He sprang forward. The ground beneath his feet burst into a spray of snow. The air around him compressed, a violent current formed in his wake, lifting the snow and dead leaves in a furious whirl. He crossed the distance in a heartbeat, his blade tracing an invisible line in the night, and when he reappeared on the other side, he was in front of Ellendia, his sword still extended, breathless from the speed.
The wolf that had been about to pounce lay on the ground. A clean gash crossed its flank, so swift it hadn't even seen it coming.
Merwinn trembled. His legs threatened to give way beneath him, his knees wavering as if they had carried too much weight for too long. He didn't understand what he had just done. He still felt the current in his legs, but it was already fading, leaving him emptied, almost hollow. And he knew, without knowing how he knew, that he would not be able to do it again right away. It had cost him something. Something he didn't have in reserve.
"I will never... let anyone... hurt you," he breathed, his voice broken by exertion but his eyes steady. "Never."
But Ellendia was standing, before him, alive, and that was the only thing that mattered.
She looked at him. And in her eyes, for an instant, she saw in Merwinn something she had never seen before.
She pulled him against her, her arms tight around him, both to protect him and because she couldn't help herself. Her bow had fallen to the ground. Her hands trembled.
"Oh, Merwinn..." she murmured against his shoulder, her voice barely a breath.
He said nothing. She added nothing either. But something had shifted between them, an invisible thread that had just pulled taut for the first time, and that would never slacken again.
The two other wolves were still growling around them. Merwinn raised his sword, more by reflex than by strength, his arms heavy.
The wolves were still too many. Despite Pally's flaming sword and Merwinn's speed, they would not make it.
And suddenly, a gunshot tore through the night.
The sound, sharp and brutal, rang out through the whole forest. The children all four jumped. None of them understood at first where it had come from. A wolf collapsed, a bullet in its head, its greenish marks snuffing out in an instant.
Then a second shot. Then a third.
And behind the detonations, a roar. Not a wolf's roar. A bear's roar.
Baloo burst out of the trees like a boulder hurled at full speed and slammed into the pack head-on, sending two wolves flying into the bushes. He rose up on his hind legs, his immense mass blocking off a part of the clearing on its own, and roared again, a sound that made the ground vibrate beneath their feet.
And behind him, advancing calmly as if he were strolling through his own garden, Durrin. His rifle still smoked in his right hand. His axe hung in his left. He took in the scene with a sweep of the eye: the four children, the flaming sword, the wolves, the chaos.
"Bloody blazes..." he muttered, shaking his head.
Then he looked at Pally and Merwinn. And in spite of everything, in spite of the danger, in spite of the wolves, a smile appeared in his beard.
"I shoulda known," he said. "With you two 'round these parts, trouble ain't ever far behind."
He shouldered his rifle and fired again, driving the pack back. Baloo charged, scattered, crushed. The wolves, caught between fire, bear and bullets, were finally beginning to break apart.
Durrin turned toward the children, his face growing serious again. He asked no questions. Not "what are you doing here." Not "where do you think you're going." Nothing. He just looked at Pally for a second, the crystal ball under his arm, his shining eyes, and something in the dwarf's gaze said that he understood perfectly. He understood, and he knew he could not stop him.
"Off with you now! I'll deal with these critters alongside Baloo."
Pally nodded, the crystal ball still clutched against him. He looked at his friends, who gave a nod in return. Ellendia helped up Merwinn, who had found the strength to rise, leaning against her. William stood straight, his daggers sheathed, his gaze briefly crossing Pally's.
They did not speak. They understood one another.
And they ran as best they could, exhausted but alive, leaving behind them the gunshots, the roars of Baloo, and the howls of the wolves dying in the night, plunging ever deeper into the heart of the forest.

They ran until the sounds of battle behind them were no more than a distant echo muffled by the trees. Then Pally slowed. Then he stopped.
The others stopped too, in disarray, like puppets whose strings had suddenly been cut. Merwinn fell to his knees, his hands on the snow, his breath wheezing in his throat. Ellendia let herself slide down beside him, her hand on his back. William leaned against a tree, his eyes fixed on the ground without seeing it.
No one spoke for a long moment. There was nothing more to say. Wolves. A witch. More wolves. And a demonic creature waiting for them somewhere in these woods. They were only children. And the night seemed bent on reminding them that they should never have left Sleepinwood.
Pally was the only one still standing, the crystal ball under his arm, the flames that had wreathed his sword now extinguished. His breath formed quick clouds in the cold air, but his eyes had not lost their gleam. He still had the flame. Not in his hand. In his chest.
Ellendia suddenly raised her head, panic in her voice. "Merwinn, Merwinn, look at me, are you all right?"
Merwinn attempted a smile that looked more like a grimace. "I'm fine... I'm fine... just... just need to catch my breath..."
But his legs refused to obey him. When he tried to stand, he swayed, barely catching himself on Ellendia's shoulder. She slipped her arm around him, supporting him as best she could. It was strange. A little earlier, he had been the one protecting her. The one standing in front of her. And now, she was the one carrying him. She carried him as one carries something precious that one has just come close to losing.
"I'm fine," breathed Merwinn. "Really. Don't... don't worry about me."
But Pally knew. He saw that Merwinn could barely stay on his feet. He saw that Ellendia's hands were still trembling. He saw William staring into empty space, he who usually analyzed everything, calculated everything, and who was no longer calculating anything now.
And in his hand, there was the crystal ball.
It was still warm. It shimmered faintly, and in its glow he sensed the path. Not far. The creature wasn't far. He could go now, while his friends regained their strength. He could find it, understand it, understand this bond the witch had spoken of. By blood, by night, by what was taken and what was never given back. He could know who he was. Where he came from. Why this fire within him. Why this dream. Why this silhouette behind the door.
He could know everything.
All he had to do was leave. Now. Without looking back.
He took a step forward.
And the witch's laugh rose up in his head. The one you cherish most. Hee hee hee. The cackle vibrated behind his ears, as if she were walking beside him. And what if it were Merwinn? And what if it were Ellendia? And what if it were William, now that he owed him his life? And what if it were all four of them, in one way or another, by his fault?
He took another step. Slower.
Images came back to him. Without him calling them. In waves.
Merwinn running through the forest, fleeing a cloud of enraged bees, crying "MAAAANUUURRE". Merwinn refusing to dance at the Sleepinwood festival, cheeks red, until Ellendia grabbed him by the hand and the three of them began to spin awkwardly in the middle of the square, under the garlands. Merwinn missing his target at the shooting stand three times in a row while Pally mocked him, and Ellendia ended up blowing everything up in a single shot. Merwinn defending him against William after a quarrel, "Leave him alone, William, he's not the one you should be mad at," when he didn't always deserve to have someone take his side.
And then the training on Cirilla's structures. Merwinn fell. He himself fell. But they always got up together.
Pally stopped dead.
His next step did not go forward, but back.

He looked at the crystal ball in his hand. It pulsed softly, patiently, as if it knew he would eventually give in. As if it were waiting.
No.
He clenched his teeth. This fight was not being waged in his fists or in his legs this time. It was being waged somewhere inside him, somewhere where no one could help him. On one side, everything he had been seeking since he had opened his eyes that morning. On the other, the three people who had fallen with him and who had gotten back up with him every time.
He took one last step. Backward.
And he opened his hand.
The crystal ball fell into the snow with a dull thud. It should have shattered. It was heavy, and the earth beneath the snow was hard as stone. But it did not shatter. It barely rolled, came to rest in a hollow, and stayed there, its pale glow intact, unshakable, as if nothing could touch it.
Pally looked at it for a moment. Then he turned his back on it.
"Let's find shelter," he said, and his voice was firm. "Merwinn needs to catch his breath. All of you need to catch your breath." He swept the trees with his gaze, narrowed his eyes. "There's a cabin over that way, not far. Five minutes' walk. We'll set down there, Merwinn gets his strength back, I stand watch. And at daybreak, we head back to Sleepinwood."
Merwinn looked up at him, brow furrowed. "And the creature?"
Pally shrugged, a quick and curt gesture, as if to brush the question away before it could take up too much room. "It'll wait."
He did not look at the crystal ball behind him. Not once. Even if a part of him was screaming for him to pick it up.
Ellendia blinked, surprised. She didn't ask any questions either. She simply helped Merwinn back to his feet, sliding her arm around his waist, supporting him with all of her slight weight. William pushed himself off his tree, silent, and fell in behind them without a word.
They set off into the night.
Ellendia walked slowly at Merwinn's pace, her head almost against his from holding him up. After a few steps, she whispered, for him alone:

"You know... what you did just now..."
Merwinn lowered his eyes, embarrassed. "Oh, it was nothing, I just..."
"No." She held him a little tighter. "It wasn't nothing. You crossed the clearing in a second. A SECOND. You looked like Cirilla in action, Merwinn!"
"Do you really think so?" murmured Merwinn, a small pride surfacing in spite of himself.
"Yes! It was impressive! You drew on your reserves and all that to..." She hesitated. Then she said it anyway. "To save me."
Merwinn did not answer right away. He walked, his arm around her shoulders, his legs trembling but his heart pounding for an entirely different reason.
"Thank you," he said at last, quietly, almost shyly.
Inside his head, however, it was another story altogether.

Oh good grief oh good grief oh good grief, she just paid me the most beautiful compliment in life and on Earth!! Oh dear and also she smells good! And her hair is brushing against my cheek there, oh dear! Stay calm Merwinn. Breathe. Don't say something stupid. Don't. Say. Something. STUPID. Do not think about how her hair brushes against my cheek. Do not think about how her hair brushes against my cheek. Do not think about how her hair brush-

"Are you okay, Merwinn?" she asked, worried. "You're all red and your heart is beating really fast, I can almost hear it, it's worrying me."
"No, no... don't worry, it's just from the running earlier... hehe," he answered a little too quickly. "Just the running."
Ahead of them, Pally walked in the lead, jaw clenched, eyes fixed straight ahead. He knew he had just made the right decision. He knew it. So why did he have the feeling he had left a part of himself back there in the snow, beside a crystal ball that refused to break?
William brought up the rear. He had not spoken since the clearing. And from the way his eyes kept scanning the trees, usually empty and calculating, now empty and lost, he had no intention of speaking anytime soon.

(After a few minutes of walking)

A wooden cabin soon appeared between the trees, small, low, built off to one side on the banks of a lake whose surface reflected the moon like a black mirror. It must have served as a trapper's refuge long ago. The shutters were closed but a glimmer of light filtered through the cracks.
Pally raised his hand to signal the others to stop. He approached slowly, his sword ready, and made a circuit of the building. Silence. No sound of footsteps, no voices, just the lapping of the lake close by. He came back to the door, pushed it gently. It wasn't locked.
He went in first. The inside was small, warm, cluttered. Shelves with jars of preserves. A hearth half gone out. An old rug. And no one. At least no one he could see.
He signaled the others to enter.
Ellendia came in supporting Merwinn and guided him to a corner, near the hearth. She eased him down carefully, her hands attentive, her eyes worried. "You stay right there. Don't move. I'll look for some water."
"Yes, chief," murmured Merwinn with a tired smile.
William entered next. He swept the room with a gaze that was trying to become methodical again, then let himself slide down against the back wall, his daggers set down beside him. He did not close his eyes. He did not look at anyone either.

Pally stayed near the door, one foot in, one foot out, his gaze sweeping the surroundings. The lake, the trees, the shadows. He listened. He sensed. He was the sentry, and he would be for as long as it took.
Ellendia searched the shelves, looking for something to give Merwinn to drink. She moved toward the back of the room, where the darkness was thicker, pulling aside a curtain that separated a corner from the rest of the cabin.
And she screamed.
A real scream, high and short. A cry of pure surprise.
Pally burst inside, sword raised. William shot up, daggers in hand. Merwinn stood up with an energy he shouldn't have had, leaning against the wall, out of breath, already near Ellendia.
And behind the curtain, huddled on the floor, trembling hands raised in protection, eyes wide with pure terror, was a man.
Ellendia took a step back, her heart pounding, her bow half-raised. Then she recognized him.
"Mr. Sylphin?"

The man blinked, took a long moment to recognize the little girl's face. His lips trembled. His cheek bore a fresh scratch.
"Ellendia... Ellendia, it's you... oh my God it's you," he stammered, his voice cracked like that of someone who hadn't spoken in hours. "Shh, shh, you mustn't... you mustn't cry out. Please. Not another sound."
He pushed himself up with difficulty, gripping the wall. The four children watched him, motionless. It was indeed him, Mr. Sylphin, the villager who sometimes dropped by the orphanage, the one whose wife embroidered the finest shawls in Sleepinwood, whose son was about Pally's age. But he was no longer the same man. His face was drawn, his beard two days old, his eyes red and shifty.
"What are you doing here?" he breathed, his gaze moving from one to the other. "You shouldn't... it's... it's too dangerous, children, you have no idea..."
He went to the window, eased back the shutter slightly, glanced outside, closed it hastily. His hands would not stop trembling.
"My wife... my Maura, she's very ill. A fever. A high fever. I... I was searching for a plant, a plant found only in these woods, it's the only thing that can save her." He swallowed. "But... but..."
His voice broke.
"But I saw something."
The four children froze.
"Something I had never seen before. Something that doesn't exist. That cannot exist." His eyes glazed over, as if he were reliving what he had seen against his will. "It's not an animal. It's not a man. It's... it's..."
He searched for a word he could not find.
"We mustn't make any noise," he whispered at last, his voice falling to a thread. "Above all we mustn't make any noise. It prowls. Here. It's hunting us. I think it can hear. I think it can hear everything."
He slumped against the wall, exhausted, as if those few words had taken the last reserves of strength he had left.
And in the silence that followed, the four children exchanged a look.
They knew.
They knew what Mr. Sylphin had seen.

They sat without moving for a long moment. Mr. Sylphin was huddled in his corner, his hands over his ears as if to shield himself from something only he could hear. The children looked at one another. No one dared break the silence he had imposed.
And then the silence was broken. But not by them.
It began like a rattle. A hoarse, dragging, wet breath, belonging to no creature known. Not the growl of a wolf. Not the snarl of a wildcat. Something that resembled a breath, but a breath that had forgotten how to breathe. That forced the air through a throat that should no longer have let any through.
Then a moan. Long. Hungry. That would not stop, that carried within it a bottomless hunger, a hunger no meal could ever fill.
Then a clack. The sound of a jaw snapping shut on empty air. Once. Then again. And again.
Pally and Merwinn looked at each other at the same time. Without a word. They had heard those sounds before. Not an impression. A certainty. In the Cavern of a Thousand and One Legs, when they were trapped among the spiders, those same rattles, those same moans, those same wet clacks had echoed somewhere in the distance, muffled by the walls of the cave. They had thought it was the spiders themselves, or an echo, or their imagination.
It was not. It had never been that.
The blue bee that morning. The restless spiders in the cave. The wolves with the greenish marks, twice this night. Durrin, at the Sleepinwood festival, with that grave look that didn't suit him: "I reckon there's a creature hidin' in the woods."
He had known. He had already known. He hadn't been able to name it, he hadn't been able to describe it, but he had felt it. So had the beasts. The whole forest had gone into a panic around this thing without understanding what was making it tremble.
It had been there from the very beginning. And from the very beginning, it had been hunting them.
The sound came from afar. But it was drawing closer.
Ellendia felt her legs turn to water. Her hand found Merwinn's without her thinking of it, and Merwinn gripped hers so tightly that his own trembling stilled for a moment. He could not say why, but that sound did something in his belly. Something that made him want to vomit and weep at the same time.
William had turned white. His daggers were in his hands without his remembering having drawn them. His eyes were fixed on the wall of the cabin as though the wall were going to dissolve at any instant. His body knew. His body had understood before he had.
But it was Pally who reacted most strangely.
Pally had not moved. Had not stepped back. Had not trembled. But he had paled. His breath had grown shorter. And in his chest, his heart had begun to beat harder, faster, but to a rhythm he did not know. Not a rhythm of fear. Not a rhythm of battle. A rhythm of recognition. As though a thing buried very deep within him had heard the call and was answering. As though that thing had said: ah, it's you.
The witch's words rose up in his throat. Something in you recognizes her. Something in you calls to her. And something in her... is searching for you.
He clenched his teeth and chased the voice away.
Mr. Sylphin, for his part, had snapped. He half-rose, eyes bulging, and began to speak too fast, too loud.
"It's her. It's her. IT'S HER. Hide, hide, put out the light, don't breathe, don't move, hide, hide, hide..."
He let himself fall back into his corner, curled up into a ball, arms around his head, his voice dropping to a murmur that would not stop, a litany he could no longer control.
Hide hide hide.
Pally looked at the door.
He looked at his friends. Merwinn on his knees, his face white. Ellendia holding Merwinn. William frozen against the wall. A grown man who had turned into a terrified child in a corner.
There was a moment in his head, a very brief moment, when he thought: I could hide too. Just close the door, blow out the light, hold my breath with the others, hope that it passes.
And it lasted a fraction of a second.
Because Pally had not left Sleepinwood, had not faced a witch, had not shattered a lantern on his own sword, had not refused a crystal ball that would have told him who he was, only to end up curled in a ball inside a cabin waiting for it to pass.
He gripped the hilt of his sword.
"There is no way I'm going to hide," he said in a low voice, more to himself than to the others.
He pushed open the door and stepped out into the night.

The cold air struck him full in the face. He took a few steps forward, stopped in the middle of the small patch of ground that separated the cabin from the lake. He turned his face toward the direction the sounds were coming from, toward the trees to the north. The moon was full. It poured over the clearing a white, almost silver light that made the snow dazzling.
In the distance, between the trunks, he saw it.
A silhouette.
It was coming forward. Slowly. Each step seemed both to cost it something and to drive it on. Its arms hung limp at its sides, then rose abruptly, then fell back. Its head lolled from one side to the other, as if its neck no longer knew which position to hold. It was making sounds. Always those same sounds. The rattle, the moan, the clack of the jaw.
Behind Pally, the cabin door creaked.
"Wait!"
It was William. He came out with his daggers, jaw clenched. His pride had not permitted him to stay inside while the kid he had still despised that morning stood alone against the danger. He came and placed himself to Pally's right, a few steps behind, trying not to show that his legs were trembling.
Then Merwinn came out in turn, leaning on Ellendia, his face pale but sword in hand. Ellendia let go of him in front of the door, an arrow nocked, ready, and they stayed there, two meters from the entrance, Merwinn propped against the frame to stay on his feet. They wouldn't advance further, but they wouldn't go back inside either.
Pally did not look at them. He could not. He was afraid that if his eyes left the silhouette for a single second, his resolve would collapse.
The silhouette still advanced. Fifty meters. Forty.
Pally's heart was pounding in his ears. He heard his own breathing, too fast. He felt his fingers trembling on his sword. He felt the voice of the witch cackling in a corner of his mind. You feel her, don't you? Hee hee hee.
Thirty meters.
He had to speak. Anything. Just to hear himself speak. Just to remind himself that he was still there, that he was still Pally, that he was still alive.
He forced a smile. He forced his old crooked grin, the one that drove Braum out of his mind, the one that made Merwinn laugh. He pointed his sword at the creature, and flung his voice into the night:

"Come on old creature, looks like you need someone to give you mouth-to-mouth, you seem a bit out of breath! I'm waitin' for ya, come and get me!"

His voice sounded false to his own ears. But he had said it. That was already something.
Twenty meters.
The silhouette stepped fully into the moonlight.
And Pally saw.
It had been a man, once.
You could still make it out. The remains of a tattered shirt. The remains of a beard. The remains of a face that had perhaps smiled, perhaps wept, perhaps loved someone. But of all that almost nothing was left.
The skin was gray, drawn tight over the bones like an old tapestry someone had forgotten to take down. It split in places, letting the blackness beneath show through. One cheek was half torn away, and through the hole you could see the teeth, all the teeth, upper and lower, in a permanent rictus that had not left it since its death.
Its eyes. Oh, its eyes. They were milky, almost white, but deep within there was a small glimmer. Not intelligence. Not humanity. Just that thing you see in the eyes of a starving wolf that has spotted a hare. Hunger. Nothing but hunger.
Its fingers opened and closed, opened and closed, as though already anticipating the flesh they would seize. Its mouth too opened and closed, producing those dry clacks, that wet gurgle in its open throat.
It was staring at him.
It had its eyes on him.
And in Pally's head, everything froze.
Because he had already seen it.
He had already seen it.
Not from afar. Not in a village rumor. Not in a story told by Cirilla one evening.
In his dream.
It was her. It was exactly her. It was the silhouette behind the door. It was that same thing, with that same face, with that same gait, that had laid its hand on his shoulder in the dream and that had seized him with a violence that had made him wake with a start that morning. The sensation of cold fingers in his flesh. The breath. The snap of jaws close to his ear.
It was real.
It was there.
And images began to explode in his head. Memories? He had no idea. But they were images he had never seen and which nevertheless belonged to him. A ground strewn with bodies. Blood in the snow. A child's hand that was not his own but was his all the same. A woman's cry that he did not recognize but that tore his heart. A smell of burning. A voice calling out a name, a name he could not hear but which he knew to be his own.
His legs turned to lead. His sword weighed a hundred kilos in his hand. His eyes could no longer leave the thing. They could not.
And the thing, for its part, kept advancing.
"PALLY!"
It was Merwinn.
"PALLY, MOVE!"
"PALLY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
It was Ellendia. Her voice broke, shrill, panicked.
But the voices reached him from very far away, as if through several layers of wool.

With a trembling hand, she drew her bow at full speed, her fingers finding the string by pure habit, and loosed an arrow at the creature. The point drove into its chest with a dull thud, up to the fletching, piercing clean through.
The creature did not even slow.

"But of course...",
William remembered. His mind, paralyzed an instant earlier, had recovered its faculties. He knew these creatures. They eat for pleasure and to multiply. These Demonic Creatures...

"LOOK OUT!" he yelled, trembling, and his voice tore through the night. "ITS BITE! ITS BITE WILL TURN YOU INTO ONE OF THEM! DON'T LET IT TOUCH YOU! RUN!"

And no sooner had these words left his mouth than he ran in the opposite direction, his daggers still in hand, without looking back. His instinct had spoken before his reason. You did not fight these things. You did not look them in the face. You fled. You fled, or else you became them.

Ten meters.
Pally still was not moving.
The images in his head wrapped themselves around him. The clacks of the creature's jaw set the rhythm for the flashes. The blood in the snow. A woman screaming. A name. His name.
He wanted to back away. His brain was screaming at his legs to back away. But they would not answer. They were anchored in the ground, like the brambles in the cottage. They were stuck again. They no longer wanted him.
Five meters.
The creature's gurgling filled all the space. Its smell reached him for the first time, sickly-sweet and rotten, nauseating, familiar in a way he did not want to understand.

Merwinn saw.
He saw his friend frozen. He saw the creature at five meters. At four. At three.
And something in him, something he should not have had the strength to do, something his emptied legs should have refused him, rose up.
"PALLY!"
He threw himself forward. He crossed the few meters that separated them stumbling, his sword raised, a battle cry choked in his throat. He came at the creature from the side, struck with all his strength. The blade struck rotten flesh with a soft sound, passed through, sank in.
The creature did not cry out. It did not even flinch.
It pivoted its torso with monstrous slowness, all its mass in motion like a flail, and its right arm, hanging like dead weight, whipped through the air in a wide and violent arc.
Merwinn had no time to parry.
The arm struck him full in the chest and sent him flying backward. He traveled through the air like a rag doll, his body bounced against the cabin wall with a sharp crack of mingled wood and bone, and he fell to the ground, stunned, the breath knocked out of him, unable to catch his breath right away.
"MERWINN!"
Ellendia dropped her bow and rushed to him, her hands on his face, on his shoulders, panicked. "Merwinn, Merwinn, look at me, can you hear me, can you hear me?!"
Merwinn looked up. His eyes were clouded. But beyond Ellendia, he saw Pally. Pally still frozen. The creature that had turned back toward Pally, once again interested in the prey that had not moved.
Merwinn stretched out a trembling hand in his direction, hot tears rising in his eyes before he had time to understand why.
"Pally..." he could barely articulate. "Pally, please... move... do something... do something, Pally... Pally..."
And something triggered in Pally.
Not courage. Not will. Just Merwinn's voice weeping his name. Just that. Just that sound.
He blinked. The world came back to him all at once, slow, muddy, but it came back.
He fell. His legs gave way. He collapsed onto his backside in the snow, his sword slipping from his fingers. He turned around. He began to crawl. Backward. On all fours. He wanted to flee. He wanted to crawl far away, very far, all the way to Sleepinwood, to the orphanage, to his bed, to that morning when everything was still all right.

But the creature was faster than it looked.
It hunched forward, like a wolf dropping to all fours to pounce, and in three strides it was on him. Its fingers, cold and hard as dead roots, seized Pally's blond hair from behind and yanked his head back sharply. Pally's neck arched brutally toward the sky. He saw the moon for an instant, enormous, white, brilliant. He saw the stars.
Then he saw the face of the thing above him, upside down, jaw gaping, teeth yellow and black, tongue gray, the breath pouring out in great clouds of putrid vapor.
And the teeth closed on his left shoulder in a violent snap.
The cry that came from Pally was unlike any cry he had ever made.
It was not a child's cry. It was not a cry of pain. It was both and it was neither. It was the sound of a human being discovering that he has a body, truly, with blood, with nerves, with bones, and that someone is taking it from him.
The teeth went through the cloth. Went through the skin. Sank into the flesh. Cracked against the bone. The blood gushed out, hot, black in the moonlight, spattering the snow, his shirt, the creature's face.
The pain was such that Pally believed, for an instant, that he was seeing white. Then red. Then nothing at all.
His eyes rolled back. His fingers opened in the snow. His voice broke in the middle of his cry. He heard his own scream from far off, as though he were watching himself scream from somewhere very high, very far. The cry was fading as his breath left him.
Merwinn, he thought somewhere inside. Merwinn I'm sorry.
The creature released his head. Its jaws stayed fixed on his shoulder. It was biting still, deeper, still more, wanting more, wanting everything.

And a light.
A white flash that lit up the whole clearing like a silent thunderclap, swift as a falling star.
A cutting arc, pure, almost sacred, passed over Pally.
The creature's head came away from the body. It was hurled upward in a geyser of black blood, spun through the air like a horrible comet, then fell back to the ground and rolled several meters before coming to rest in the snow, its eyes still open, its jaw still locked in mid-motion.
The body stayed upright for an instant, its hands still clenched. Then it toppled sideways and crashed limply into the snow.

Boots approached at a run.
Elric.
He reached Pally's side in a few strides, his hammer in his hand. His face, usually calm and measured, was twisted with worry. He dropped his hammer in the snow and fell to his knees beside the boy.
"Pally. Pally. Stay with me, son."
His hands, large and calloused, pressed down on the bloodied shoulder. He pressed with all his strength, but the blood kept coming, through his fingers, between his knuckles, hot and red in the white snow.
"Pally..."
But the voices were gone.

Pally heard everything as if someone had filled his ears with cotton.
Merwinn was crying out his name. Ellendia was weeping. Elric's voice speaking softly, softly, a reassuring voice, a voice he had heard somewhere before but could no longer place. And those voices were blending together, becoming a single voice, then no voices at all.
The cold was leaving him. It was strange. The snow was no longer cold. His shoulder no longer hurt. Everything was becoming gentle.
He saw blurrily. Three silhouettes above him. Four? He could no longer count. One of them had Merwinn's hair. He would have liked to smile at Merwinn. He would have liked to tell him it was all right. That it wasn't his fault. That it wasn't him. That the witch had been wrong.
He would have liked.
But his lips no longer answered him.
The last thing he heard distinctly, before everything went deaf, was Elric's voice, very far away, saying:
"Hold him. Hold him tight. We have to take him now."
And then the world went out.
It was no longer cold. It was no longer warm. It was no longer anything.
Just a soft, ethereal silence, where the only words now echoing in his head were: "Mama...".