Though never so near that Iseult or Owl had to sprint. Never so near that Iseult could sense what the creature actually was. It always remained just on the edge of her sensory awareness and moved only when she and Owl did. For some reason, that made it far more terrifying. Clearly it was sentient, clearly it was calculating.

While Iseult and Owl half walked, half jogged, Iseult told more stories. Long ago, when the gods walked among us, she always began breathlessly, before moving on to whatever tale she could remember best. Sometimes they were Nomatsi, sometimes Cartorran adventures that Safi had shared, about ghosts and ancestors and secret royalty stolen by kings. Iseult liked those stories best. She could almost pretend it was Safi sharing them. Safi hurrying by her side.

And those stories became Iseult’s grounding stone as much as they were Owl’s.

But as midmorning light began to suffuse the towering forest, the second sunny day in weeks, Iseult could no longer ignore two important truths. First, the unknown monster still trailed. And second, she and Owl could not continue this journey forever. Owl grew clumsier by the minute, the pain in her Threads seeping brighter, brighter, until all that remained was a thunderous, pulsing gray.

“We are almost to safety,” Iseult told her after checking her Hell-Bard map for the thousandth time. The crescent lake was only a mile away, and surely, surely they could find some way across. Some way that the silver-Threaded creature could not follow. “It’s like when Moon Mother and Little Sister got trapped in the storm. Do you remember that story, Owl?”

A muffled yes. A flare of interest in the child’s Threads.

“Can you tell it to me?” Iseult folded the map back into her cloak’s pocket.

“Long ago,” Owl said quietly, “when the gods walked among us, Moon Mother and her little sister got trapped in one of Swallow’s storms.”

“Oh no,” Iseult murmured, glancing behind them and reaching, reaching for the weave of the world. For the silver Threads they could never outrun. There. Several hundred paces away and to the right. “And how did the goddesses get free, Owl?”

“Little Sister turned into a bird that could fight against the raging winds, and she went to find Trickster.”

“Why Trickster?” Iseult pulled Owl faster.

“Because Trickster could travel without a body, and Little Sister Owl thought that he could enter the storm and save Moon Mother that way.”

“And did he?”

Owl hesitated. Umber confusion twined through her Threads. “I … don’t remember.”

“Ah.” Iseult pulled the girl toward a clearing framed by alders. So far, her game was working; Owl had forgotten her pain. “Trickster did go into the storm, remember? He turned into his soul form and found Moon Mother, clinging to a stone altar on the Windswept Plains.”