Rhiannon by Vicki Grove

concerned herself most with the two in front.
    They finally got nigh to the last big twist in the path, a zigzag through thick ash trees. Rhiannon hefted Daisy into her arms for safety, knowing that this stretch was especially treacherous but that once by it she could consider them past harm’s way. The ground would level out quite a bit then, and they’d be able to see the port and the castle in the distance, with watermeadows and fields stretching from them all the way to the town.
    â€œWhat was that?” Granna suddenly demanded, stopping in her tracks so quick, Jim ran right into her back, nearly toppling the both of them before he managed to right himself.
    â€œWoman give a care to signal ere you halt, please!” he complained. He reached his stick to retrieve his watch cap, knocked clean off his head by the force.
    Granna seemed not to even notice the small havoc she’d caused. “The woods be strangely changed right here,” she said in a quick, tight way, cupping her ear with her hand. “Do ye all not perceive it?”
    Rhiannon held her breath, listening. What with taking charge of Daisy last night and then all she’d had to think about this morning, she’d clean forgot about the stone folk she and Gramp had perceived on the beach yesterday. But now they came rushing back to her mind, clothed in their eery stillness. They’d been clustered on the part of sand that stretched just below this ashy part of the trail, hadn’t they?
    â€œThe wind is all it is,” she said quickly, swallowing her feeling of dread. “It’s died down so sudden, that’s the change. The stillness is all you hear, Granna.”
    But there was something amiss, and Rhia well knew it. She could hear a faint clicking, like locusts, only not really like locusts at all. And she thought she perceived ghostly shadows slipping through the new ash leaves, darting from tree to tree.
    â€œOr it’s red deer, mayhaps,” she added in a whisper, holding Daisy tighter.
    â€œWe’d best move on,” Jim said gruffly. “This steep ledge is no safe place to tarry.”
    Granna didn’t argue, but straightaway resumed her downward trudge. She wasn’t one to be bullied into speed, so Rhia was all the more certain that Granna suspected something fearsome in those ashy trees and had decided she must hurry them past it.
    Shivering, Daisy circled Rhia’s neck with her small arms and circled Rhia’s waist with her small legs and pressed her face against Rhia’s shoulder. The child felt it, too, then. Breathe in, breathe out, keep watch on your feet, keep your wits, Rhia cautioned herself.
    It seemed endless, that fraught trek through the shadows. But then suddenly as one wakes from a bad dream, they came from the dark shawl of woods into glistening sunlight and the last short stretch of the trail, which was none so steep as before and none so rugged. In the distance you could see the quay with its English boats and also several Welsh coracles, tiny craft made from oiled hide and shaped like tortoise shells. Rhiannon’s father had owned one for fishing and carried it to the water snugged onto his back. Rhia remembered laughing at that when she was small.
    Daisy lifted her head from Rhia’s shoulder and squirmed, eager to take her own feet.
    â€œNot quite yet,” Rhia whispered, holding tight.
    Before she’d let Daisy go, she scanned the part of the beach now spread on their left and a little below. The endless water lapped at the white sand like the large blue tongue of some huge dog, but where the stone people had stood yesterday, the shore was empty.
    â€œThe Lord be thanked,” she whispered, putting Daisy to her own feet.
    â€œI saw monsters in the woods,” Daisy mentioned in a tiny voice. “I did!”
    â€œYou saw red deer and squirrels.” Rhia forced a laugh. “Silly thing!”
    If only she could convince herself that