Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
I tell myself that’s why he hates me … that’s why so many of the villagers hate me.
In his wake, Sallae Mae wafts past me in a cloud of perfume. Though I help her and the others on the sly with treatments for their various difficulties, none of them ever acknowledge me. But it’s better than the active shunning.
Loneliness is about so much more than solitude.
As I resume my needless duty, the stiff straw head of the broom whisks over boards smoothed like river stones by countless footfalls. The Gauntlet has been a fixture of my village since before the Great Containment, or so they say, so it’s got to be centuries old. I certainly feel as though I’ve been here forever, each night and day exactly the same, the grinding repetition a false sense of infinity.
With every step I descend, the time I’m being forced to waste is like someone screaming in my face. The medicine in the satchel is the last of the root I have prepared, and the pain reliever is more precious than any safety of my own. I tell myself that Mr. Lewis will soon get tied up with the other villagers, and that’s when I can—
A resounding clap cuts through the pub’s din, and I jerk my head up.
In the entry, standing in the pouring rain, the milkman, Mr. Cavenish, is holding up a cowbell that’s covered in blood. In his other hand, a fistful of animal innards drips a gruesome stew down his pant leg and onto his knee-high boots.
“Demons!” he yells as he comes inside. “The Fulcrum is failing and they are coming for us!”
People duck as he swings the gore around and stumbles over to a table. In the yellow light of the oil lanterns, his face is a grotesque distortion—but worse is what he’s saying, our collective, unspoken fears made manifest.
“Hunting in the gloaming, stalking us at night! She was snatched from the herd, her stomach clawed open—”
Villagers gasp and recoil as they’re speckled in the face with blood, and he wheels on another group who have traded forced joviality for the very sincere horror that’s been under all our awareness lately. “The demons are out of the Fulcrum and they’re hunting us—the Dark King returns! It is his star that has appeared in the sky!”
I trip down the stairs, called by the confirmation of what we’ve all been worried about since the first of his herd was killed. But I make sure that I stay on the fringes as the alarmed hush that follows is broken with someone speaking up.
“There are wild animals in the forest. Many things will attack a—”
“The carcass was set at the south,” Mr. Cavenish spits. “What animal slaughters cows at exactly the north, the east … and now the south! I warned you when this started two weeks ago! I told all of you! The wall that surrounds us will not hold—”
“Enough!” Mr. Lewis barks.
In the silence, clues tie together around a reality that surely will sink us—the slaughtered cows, the strange footprints … the pall of darkness that’s all around our village. The others are thinking the same thing, I can tell by the hunched shoulders, the lowered heads.
This is probably the only accord I will have with them, not that they’d care I’m scared, too. Probably more than they are.
“Magic is in use,” Mr. Cavenish lashes out. “The Fulcrum has weakened because of it, and the demons are harbingers of what is to come! The Dark King rises!”
Shrinking beneath my cloak, I step out of the lantern light. Not that anyone has noticed me.
Not that any one of them could point a finger at me without incriminating themselves.
“Get him out of here,” Mr. Lewis says with exhaustion.
As he sweeps his hand toward the exit, a couple of men jump up from their frozen stupors, and Mr. Cavenish returns to his ranting as he’s taken by the elbow and dragged back out into the cold rain.
“Magic has been used in violation of the law and all of Anathos will die because of it! You know this—”
Mr. Lewis himself closes the door and puts his boulder body against it. Though I’m careful to stay out of sight, it’s clear he’s looking around for something. I pray this is not the night I’ve always dreaded, the night when I’m banished, finally.
“We could go to the Sooths,” someone suggests. “They’ll know—”
“I already went,” somebody else cuts in. “They will not speak of—”
“G’on now,” Mr. Lewis interrupts. “Finish your ales. Next order’s on the house.”
This revives the mood a little, but he’s got to make them stay or he’ll lose the profit for the rest of the night—as opposed to them bolting home to their wives and children and securing their windows and doors. As Mr. Lewis waddles from table to table calming nervous chatter, I seize the opportunity. I scuttle off, shove the broom into the closet, and disappear through the empty kitchen and the rear exit.