With rain imminent, Magda wanted to finish their business as soon as possible and get back to the shelter of the Keep. Since her encounter with Councilman Sadler, just before sunset, the clouds she had seen at the horizon had moved in to lower the sky into a brooding mass seething with flashes that revealed a menacing green cast deep inside. That color, she knew, often foretold especially violent weather. The arrival of the clouds had pushed out the hot, muggy air, replacing it with chill, gusty breezes.

The sudden bursts of lightning lit the towering pines all around in flashes of harsh, white light that cast bizarre shadows, making the journey through the dense forest unsettling. When the lightning abruptly cut off, it suddenly plunged the woods back into blackness. It made for alternating glaring light and then total blindness. The loud crack of thunder that followed each flash was equally unsettling. Sometimes a bright flicker of lightning and the loud bang were quickly followed by deep, rolling thunder that shook the ground.

Unlike most storms, this lightning became ever more incessant. As they made their way between the towering trunks of pines and occasionally followed the trail as it tunneled through thick foliage, the lightning flashed relentlessly in a nearly continual display of crackling intensity. In fact, the lightning was often so closely stitched together that she could almost, but not quite, have made her way without the lantern’s light. The intervals of darkness between flashes were surprisingly brief, but without the lantern it would have been like being blind as they went from brightly lit to darkest night.

The air smelled like rain was imminent. Magda was resigned to getting wet. She could also smell the dry pine needles matting the ground, along with the occasional balsam trees or swaths of cinnamon ferns beside the trail.

“How much farther?” Merritt asked as they descended the back of the low ridge.

Magda stopped and pointed off to the right. “If it was light, I believe you could see the pond through the trees, down there.”

Merritt cast out his hand, as if he were tossing a pebble. A flare of light, not unlike a tiny, solid bit of the colossal light show overhead, sailed out in the direction she had pointed, illuminating the dark trunks of trees as it passed. She saw the water reflect the light before it touched down on the rippling surface and was extinguished.

“That’s too steep and wooded here down to the shore,” he said. “We need to have some open space.”

“Just up here ahead is the place I told you about,” she said. “The trail just ahead will take us to the open area at the pond’s edge.”