without learning a degree of caution. She hadn’t lived within the safety of the seclusionary walls so long she had forgotten the habits learned during a rougher time. No, she would observe from a safe distance until she could ascertain whether this person was friend or foe. Only then would she announce her presence.
So she climbed down from the rise and trailed the dark shadow, mimicking his furtive movements, careful to keep a lengthy gap between them. Her progress was complicated by the occasional treacherousness of the marshy ground. At one point she sank into a mire, covering her boots and ankles in mud. In the process of wading free, she discovered the pale stick she grabbed for support was actually a bone. Possibly human. Dropping it with a shudder, she reassessed her surroundings. What was this place? A vast graveyard?
The rocks seemed to support this theory, for many of the shapes she had first took for boulders turned out on closer inspection to be manmade markers. The inscriptions were so weathered they would have been unreadable, even in better light. But she could make out enough to see they contained no familiar letters. Perhaps these were the runes of an ancient civilization. But there was no time to ponder that. She had to hurry on or she would lose sight of her quarry. The landscape was growing rockier and the ground firmer. Still, she knew now not to stray far from the path.
The moon scuttled behind a cloud, plunging the world into sudden darkness. Eydis froze where she stood, feeling exposed in the open, but unwilling to stumble on blindly. Though she strained her ears, the only sounds she picked up were the wind and the roar of the ocean waves tossing against the distant beach. Then there came a new sound. A blood-chilling howl she first mistook for that of a wild dog. But this wasn’t the cry of a beast, any more than it was the scream of a man. It was more like an uneasy combination of the two. And it was very near. Surely it hadn’t come from the man she was trailing?
Afraid of being caught in the open, she dropped to her belly, so when the moonlight returned it found her hugging the ground. She saw it then, a stark silhouette only yards away. The figure she’d been following was no man after all, and despite being covered with patches of mangy hair, it was no animal either.
“A minohide,” Eydis breathed, recognizing the half man, half beast commonly described in children’s stories. She had known the monsters were real but never expected to encounter one in person.
This one, although standing upright, possessed a bearlike snout and jaws. Its eyes glinted in the half-light like those of a wolf. For one breathless instant, those eyes seemed fixed on Eydis. But then they passed on. The creature lifted its snout, sniffing the air. Eydis saw it stiffen, growing suddenly alert, and she feared it detected her scent. When it pounced instead on something that moved in the brush at its feet, she dared to breathe again. The creature had captured a rabbit or a large rat and was devouring it on the spot.
Thinking fast, Eydis used this opportunity to make for cover, scrambling to her feet and running in a low crouch to duck behind the nearest screen. It was a stone structure of some sort—an oblong building about twice the height of a man. Considering her previous discoveries, she suspected its purpose could be the housing of a corpse. Whatever its intended use, it was the only place at hand for concealment. There was little hope of returning to the beach and the waiting boat without attracting the notice of the beast, and she wouldn’t have wagered much on her ability to outrun it. The best option was hiding and waiting for the beast to move on.
Exploring the rough surface of the stone, she found fissures in the rock that would serve adequately as hand and toeholds. Cautiously, she scaled the side of the tomb and dragged herself onto the roof. There she lay flat, watching from above as the minohide
So she climbed down from the rise and trailed the dark shadow, mimicking his furtive movements, careful to keep a lengthy gap between them. Her progress was complicated by the occasional treacherousness of the marshy ground. At one point she sank into a mire, covering her boots and ankles in mud. In the process of wading free, she discovered the pale stick she grabbed for support was actually a bone. Possibly human. Dropping it with a shudder, she reassessed her surroundings. What was this place? A vast graveyard?
The rocks seemed to support this theory, for many of the shapes she had first took for boulders turned out on closer inspection to be manmade markers. The inscriptions were so weathered they would have been unreadable, even in better light. But she could make out enough to see they contained no familiar letters. Perhaps these were the runes of an ancient civilization. But there was no time to ponder that. She had to hurry on or she would lose sight of her quarry. The landscape was growing rockier and the ground firmer. Still, she knew now not to stray far from the path.
The moon scuttled behind a cloud, plunging the world into sudden darkness. Eydis froze where she stood, feeling exposed in the open, but unwilling to stumble on blindly. Though she strained her ears, the only sounds she picked up were the wind and the roar of the ocean waves tossing against the distant beach. Then there came a new sound. A blood-chilling howl she first mistook for that of a wild dog. But this wasn’t the cry of a beast, any more than it was the scream of a man. It was more like an uneasy combination of the two. And it was very near. Surely it hadn’t come from the man she was trailing?
Afraid of being caught in the open, she dropped to her belly, so when the moonlight returned it found her hugging the ground. She saw it then, a stark silhouette only yards away. The figure she’d been following was no man after all, and despite being covered with patches of mangy hair, it was no animal either.
“A minohide,” Eydis breathed, recognizing the half man, half beast commonly described in children’s stories. She had known the monsters were real but never expected to encounter one in person.
This one, although standing upright, possessed a bearlike snout and jaws. Its eyes glinted in the half-light like those of a wolf. For one breathless instant, those eyes seemed fixed on Eydis. But then they passed on. The creature lifted its snout, sniffing the air. Eydis saw it stiffen, growing suddenly alert, and she feared it detected her scent. When it pounced instead on something that moved in the brush at its feet, she dared to breathe again. The creature had captured a rabbit or a large rat and was devouring it on the spot.
Thinking fast, Eydis used this opportunity to make for cover, scrambling to her feet and running in a low crouch to duck behind the nearest screen. It was a stone structure of some sort—an oblong building about twice the height of a man. Considering her previous discoveries, she suspected its purpose could be the housing of a corpse. Whatever its intended use, it was the only place at hand for concealment. There was little hope of returning to the beach and the waiting boat without attracting the notice of the beast, and she wouldn’t have wagered much on her ability to outrun it. The best option was hiding and waiting for the beast to move on.
Exploring the rough surface of the stone, she found fissures in the rock that would serve adequately as hand and toeholds. Cautiously, she scaled the side of the tomb and dragged herself onto the roof. There she lay flat, watching from above as the minohide
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