Free Everville by Clive Barker

been good. The miraculous and the mundane lived side by side in this newfound land, and, in the person of Maeve O'Connell, were indivisible.
    Coker and Maeve lay in the shelter of the two rocks for several hours, resting bones, flesh, and spirits traumatized by all that the previous night had brought. Sometimes she would make little compresses of fabric soaked in melted snow, and systematically clean his wounds, while he lay with his head upon her lap, moaning softly. Sometimes they would simply doze together, sobbing sometimes in their sleep.
    There was no snow that morning. The wind was strong, and brought convoys of puffy white clouds up from the south west, shredding them against the peaks. Between them, sun, too frail to warm them much but reassuring nevertheless.
    The supplies of carrion lying on the slope had not gone unnoticed. An hour or two after sunrise the first birds began to circle and descend, looking for morsels on the battlefield.
    Their numbers steadily increased, and Maeve, fearful that she or Coker would have an eye pecked out while they slept, insisted they move a few yards into the cleft between the rocks, where the birds would be less likely to come.
    Then, sometime towards noon, she woke with her heart hammering to the sound of growls. She got up and peered over the rock. A pack of wolves had nosed the dead on the wind, and were now either tearing at the bodies, or fighting over the tenderest scraps.
    Their presence was not the only grim news. The clouds were getting heavier, threatening further snow. "We have to go," she told Coker.
    He looked up at her through a haze of pain. "Go where?" he said.
    "Back down the mountain," she told him, "before we freeze or starve. We don't have that much daylight left."
    "What's the noise?"
    "Wolves."
    "Many of them?"
    "Maybe fifteen. they won't come after us while they've got so much food just lying there." She went down on her haunches beside him. "I know you're hurting and I wish I could make it better. But if we can get back to the wagon I know there's clean bandages and-"
    :'Yes-" he muttered, "and what then?" 'I told you: We go on down the mountain."
    "And what happens after that?" he said, his voice pitifully weak. "Even if we could find the rest of your people, they'd kill us soon as look at us. they think you're a child of the Devil, and I'm-1 don't know what I am any more."
    "We don't need them," she said. "We'll find our own place to live. Somewhere we can build."
    "Build?"
    "Not right now, but when you're well. Maybe we'll have to live in a hole for a while, steal food, do whatever we have to do, but we're not going to die."
    "You're very certain."
    "Yes," she said quietly. "We're going to build a shining city. You and me."
    He looked at her almost pityingly. "What are you talking about?" he said.
    ,,I'll tell you as we go," she said to him, pulling on his arm to raise him up.
    She was right about the wolves: they had more than enough food to keep them occupied. Only one of the pack, a scarred, runty animal missing an ear, came sniffing after them. Maeve had armed herself with a short sword plucked from one of the corpses, and rushed at the animal with a blood-curdling shout. It fled, its tail between its legs, and did not venture near them again.
    The first flakes of snow began to fall just as they reached the forest, but once beneath the canopy of branches it was no concern to them. Getting lost, however, was. Though the gradient of the ground plainly pointed the way down, the forest covered most of the lower slope, and without Coker's preternatural sense of direction, Maeve would have most assuredly lost her way between the trees, and never have emerged again.
    they spoke very little as they went, but Coker-who despite his wounds showed amazing fortitude-did broach one subject: that of Buddenbaum. was he a Blessedm'n, Coker asked? "I don't know what a Blessedm'n is."
    "One who works with the spirit@'
    "Like a priest?"
    "And does miracles."
    "Priests