The Watchtower

fists away from her face. “You have to walk straight back to your hotel. Walk , don’t run. Do you understand?”
    She shook her head. “It wants me to run,” she gibbered.
    “Yes, it does,” I answered, feeling a chill at the truth of what she said. “But you have to walk. I’ll stop it and you keep walking. Okay?”
    She shook her head again. Maybe I could make her stay hidden … but then I heard the hoofbeats approaching and felt Sarah tense. She was getting ready to spring. I knew because every muscle in my body longed to do the same thing. The hoofbeats were in my veins, nudging my muscles to action. Every fiber of my being longed to spring from cover and race down the long, straight paths.
    “Listen,” I said. “Remember what your art teacher said about taking your line for a walk?”
    A little furrow appeared between Sarah’s carefully plucked and waxed eyebrows. I had a vision of who she was: a pampered daughter and good student despite her raucous laughter and bad language. She wanted hard to please. I just had to get her to please me and not the hunt.
    “That’s what you’re here to do, remember? You’re going to take your line for a walk. When I tell you to, you’re going to walk very slowly back up this path like it’s a line you’re drawing with your pencil. A long straight line. You’re going to make it perfect.”
    “Perfect?”
    “Yes, and you’re going to follow it.”
    “Like Harold and the Purple Crayon ? I love that book!”
    “Me, too.” I gave Sarah a hug. “Just think about Harold and his purple crayon and walk the line. Slowly. Okay?”
    She nodded. I had no idea if I’d gotten through to her. I didn’t even know if I was going to be able to keep myself from running, but we were out of time. The hoofbeats were growing louder. The hunt was on the road, almost upon us, and my feet were itching to hit the ground running.
    I stepped out into the middle of the path, holding Sarah behind me. Then I turned to her, looked hard into her eyes, and told her, “Walk,” uttering the command as I would to a recalcitrant dachshund. I was ordering myself as well as her.
    She turned around but I didn’t have time to see if she walked or ran. The hunt was upon me. I turned to face it, drawing Sylvianne’s branch from my pocket and brandishing it in front of me. Blooming out of the dust cloud I saw it. A team of horses lathered wet, flakes of froth like sea foam cresting the air. The lead horse reared, his hooves inches from my nose. A swarm of hounds surrounded me, their breath rising hot and sour around me, choking me, their noses nudging me, teeth clicking against my skin, urging me, Run! Why didn’t I run? They whimpered and scratched at my legs. I smelled my own blood and felt how wild the smell made the hounds. A satyr crept up on all fours into the throng of hounds and sniffed at my crotch. I pretended I was a statue—like Diana in the garden—and stared straight into the malevolent yellow eyes of the head steed, and then, when his rider mastered his horse’s head level to mine, I looked up at the rider.
    He rose off the back of his mount like a wave cresting a rocky shore, poised to crash over my head. He wore a tight-fitting, black suit stitched with red diamonds and a mask that divided his face into red and black. The eye staring out of the red half was black; the one staring out of the black half was bloodred. A multicolored, tattered cloak billowed around him, moving in a wind that stirred nothing else. The whole forest had gone still as glass.
    He licked his red lips with a blackened tongue. “Run!” he hissed. “Why don’t you run?”
    I held the branch up in front of me. It quaked like an aspen. “I’m not here to play your hunting game,” I said, my voice trembling like the leaves on the branch. “I’m here for passage to the Summer Country.”
    A great booming rocked the forest. For a moment I thought it was thunder, then I realized the rider was laughing.
    “Passage to the Summer Country? And who told you I could give you that?” Then, crouching lower over his horse’s neck; “Do you know who I am?”
    “I think you must be Hellequin, going by your outfit.” I paused, staring harder at that outfit. It wasn’t a harlequin’s suit he was wearing; it was his own skin, blackened by fire and tattooed in red ink … or blood, by the smell of it. And his mask was no mask. It was his face, half-blackened flesh and half …
    I reared back. There