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09/19/09(Sat)23:26 No.5931342She popped the last bit of her meal into her mouth and chewed reflectively. "Like a person, if a person was small and covered with hair and shaped like Mr. Sticks."
"Ahh. Right." Shuck licked grease from his fingers, then picked up the map-slate and held it out to Mare. "Here. You know these woods better than I do, so you're the navigator, arrite?"
"Okay."
"How'd you figure out where we are, anyway? I haven't seen any landmarks but trees, and they all seem to resemble one another."
"The smoke, yesterday."
"The smoke?" They had passed through a clearing, and Mare had pointed to the north. A thick black plume rose high into the air, whipped ragged by the wind. "You know what that was?"
"There was a long, wooden house. Dark inside. A circle of tall stones, with a big, flat one in the middle. Auntie Shamari took me there."
"A witch place, right? They must have seen it from the sky. Burned it. I'm sorry, Mare."
"I learned to dance, there." Mare rose, kicked off her sandals, and took three steps forward. She bowed to an invisible partner, and raised her hand above her head.
"Mare? Why are we going to Silver Mountain? Do you have friends there?"
Mare took the hem of her dress in her left hand and slowly spun in place. "No one lives there. No one, for years and years. It's haunted. We can hide there."
"Because there's no one there?"
"Because it's haunted." She was swaying, back and forth, to music he couldn't hear. Wind stirred the treetops. "It's like fog, with things moving. Smoke, between your head and everyone else. You can't find people's thoughts, can't hear them or see them. It's too dark." |
