A Rat on the Back, Part 3
Tilly was neither unusually religious nor superstitious, but in Thimblecross a couple of rituals struck the innkeeper as practical
A.N. Sorensen
Many of the trees of the valley were barren, but the sky was clear, the air was fresh, and the firs on the slopes of the Oggerspire range were a rich dark green. Tilly noticed none of this as she ran through the trees. Her breath came ragged, and her back and legs ached from the run. Although she spent many a day stalking through the down without a sweat, today she was slow, tired, and sore. Was she coming down with something? Tilly leaned against a tree.
The woods were silent, save the heaving of her breath and the caw of crows overhead. The air held no hint of a child crying and no echo of a worried mother's calls.
Tilly could see the gentle curve of Shepherd's Peak to the right, and the crags of the Shatterhorn loomed on the left, with Harrow Castle between them. Finding her way back should have been as easy as turning around and following the plume of smoke from Bram's forge from the village. The sky to the south was empty, however, and as Tilly staggered through the trees, the twin peaks of Thimblecross valley refused to stay at her right, or her left, or her back, or wherever she tried to put them.
The quiet, the missing smoke, the way the land seemed to move when she wasn't looking, it all meant one thing: the woods had her.