Free White Hart by Sarah Dalton

them to their gods for what they’ve done to me.
    “Mae! Mae!” I’m shaken awake by a rough hand. For a moment I think it’s Father, and the pain comes rushing back.
    “What is it?”
    Casimir pulls me to my feet. “Do you hear that?”
    “Hear what?”
    “Shh!”
    I rub the sleep from my eyes and listen to the forest. Anta chews on grass, and Gwen lets out a snort. The wind has calmed to a gentle breeze, and it allows me to hear creatures move through the branches, I don’t know what kind of creatures, some sort of nocturnal bird perhaps, but they are far away overhead so I don’t care.
    “I don’t hear anything,” I say. “Let me sleep.”
    Casimir raises his eyebrows and shoots me a stern glare that I imagine his servants receive when they disobey an order. I sigh, fold my arms, and wait for this mysterious sound.
    Then it comes.
    At first it sounds like the wind-up toys the carpenter made children back in Halts-Walden, the kind where you twist a handle to make them dance. The clicking drifts through the trees in such a way that you cannot tell which direction the sound comes from. One moment you snap your head to the right, but then the clicks sound louder to the left. It is as though I am being circled by an enormous wooden snake.
    “What is that?” I breathe. When the clicks speed up I notice how my skin prickles into goosebumps.
    “See,” he says. “I told you there was something.”
    We stand, listening, for what must be ten minutes, but whatever is out there doesn’t come any closer. Every now and then, Anta raises his nose and snorts into the night sky, his eyes rolled back, and great jets of steamy breath coming from his nose. He knows that something is wrong.
    “You should get some sleep,” I say eventually. “Whatever that thing is, it’s not going to attack us.”
    I sit back down on the leafy ground and lean against a rotting log. The clicks are beginning to fade into the night. They still make the hair stand up on the back of my neck, but it doesn’t seem interested in attacking us.
    “Don’t you want to know?” Casimir asks. His eyes shine in the moonlight, and his fists clench at his side. There is a rigidity about his features, a combination of utter fear and compelling curiosity. He wants to explore yet is afraid of what he might find. “Don’t you want to go and see what’s out there?”
    “You want to investigate the wood in the pitch black?” I reply. “Not knowing where you’re putting your feet? Not seeing what’s dangling in front of your face?”
    Casimir’s body ripples in a shudder. “Well, when you put it that way...” He settles down on the bedroll and props up his head to talk to me. “But have you ever heard anything like it in your life? Whatever that was, it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t flesh and bone like you and me.
    “The way it moved, the way it sounded... It was bizarre. There are so many things in this place that I don’t understand. Do you understand them, Mae? How deep have you gone into the woods?”
    Give me strength. I roll my eyes. This is going to be the longest night ever. If the Waerg Woods don’t kill me, Casimir’s incessant chatter will put me into a coma. “Would you please stop talking ?”
    Casimir regards me with narrowed eyes. “Fine.” He rolls over on his side so that his back faces me.
    I find no peace in the silence. The mysterious noise has made me alert to every rustle and every animal call. My eyes roam the woods, looking for the shadows between the trees. The campfire and tavern tales come to me like dreams, the stories of the leftover magic in the woods, magic that has created half-beings, not quite magical or mortal—twisted and sick creatures that lurk in wait for you, ready to consume your soul. I hadn’t truly believed the stories until we encountered the fog. I only hope that we make it to morning without being attacked.
    I sit and wait for dawn. In the distance, the clicking continues. It’s so far away,