The Pass Phrase: Chapter 3

The next trip went perfectly smoothly. She delivered all of the walkers without any fuss or feeling that they were followed. Little felt very cheerful and comfortable on the way out of the church and to enjoy a few minutes at the market before she needed go eat lunch at the manor house.

A shiver traveled up her spine as passed underneath the shadow of the church spiral. Little shuddered and frowned. She looked around, but she didn’t know for what.

She had the oddest feeling that she was being watched.

‘No,’ she told herself later, once more eying the blue fabric that she wanted to buy and using it to bulwark her determination not to spend her money on a treat. ‘Nothing is following me. The one thing the city is good for is keeping out monsters. I’m just on edge.’ She walked a little faster on her way back to the house.

She couldn’t shake it. The eerie feeling remained. The next night Little felt the same sense that something was wrong when she stepped out for her nightly walk. She tried again the day after and the feeling was so intense that she gave up altogether and spent her free time in the servant’s hall with the others.

The next two rest days were her own. She waited and waited for the signal that she was needed to guide travelers, but it didn’t come until the third week.

It started off badly. Little was on edge when she met her group, 4 adults ranging from 20s to perhaps late 40s. There was eerie howling in the trees around them and the trip took an unnervingly long time. In order to avoid the calls, she had to guide them past the area where she had last lost clients. It didn’t smell like blood and death anymore. The people with her might not have noticed or understood the white splinters and the mangled metal of an indigestible clasp that were the only remaining signs of the slaughter.

She gritted her teeth and focused on the present. That hadn’t been her fault. The last man in line had fallen behind out of stubborn refusal to listen to her urging haste. Something had sighted him and it was just luck that Little had managed to grab and hide two travelers with her.

Ruminating on it was a bad omen. She did what she could, but she did it with a sinking feeling that she was being followed. She doubled back and jackknifed routes and the feeling persisted. The back of her neck prickled.

Her intuition said that she was seen, she was hunted. Her experience said that monsters didn’t hunt for long before leaping.

She was almost relieved when a familiar howl rent the air. She dropped into a crouch and urged the travelers to do the same. They obeyed, not quickly enough, but she caught all of them in a concealment charm.

Her heart thudded with adrenaline.

There was no slow, ponderous stalking. There was nothing that dropped down from the trees. Little had a sick, sinking feeling, as a particularly spindly monster blew through the clearing, cackling.

‘I don’t think that’s what was following me. That’s an opportunistic hunter. So… Did something else see us hide? Is it here with us?’

She shuddered.

And then she had to notice that one of the women with her was beginning to cry. She was letting out little gasping sobs. Little flung a hand out to smack her silently, giving the refugee a forbidding look. “Shut up,’ she thought, willing the other woman to understand her. ‘If you don’t shut up you will die. And I won’t let you kill the rest of us.’

The stupid cow picked up volume. Little grabbed the woman, bunching her fingers on the dress’s neckline in dire warning. She made eye contact, silently mouthing “shut up.”

The woman wailed. Something cracked, nearby, out of sight but near. And Little used her grip on the refugee to shove her back, onto the ground, out of the protective range of the concealment charm.

It took only a second for the hunter to find her. Little watched, teeth bared furiously at what she’d had to do. She could feel the others clutching at her clothing in naked terror. They’d probably never seen a human being eaten before. Little hadn’t until she was 11 years old. She remembered the shock.

But she also remembered that everyone knew the stakes and the traveler had been told exactly what to expect if she put the others into danger. That had been a woman comfortably in her 30s, who should have either been able to keep quiet or know that she couldn’t keep her own head long enough to risk the journey. Little felt very little sympathy.

‘I’m not going to die for you,’ she thought, scowling at the nightmare unfolding. The stupid beast was gleefully tearing into offals, having a cheerful feast. Blood spatter hit Little’s face and clothes, which would be a nightmare to conceal when she went back.

‘Is this the same one that caught us on my last trip?’ Little wondered, tilting her head at the monstrosity slurping and snapping bone. ‘This is the second time I’ve lost people in this clearing. Something might start hanging out here. It would be clever to. Some of them are clever.’

She thought practical, level-headed things until the monster was full and wandered away. It was difficult to weigh the pros and cons of using this area in the future.

When she felt it was time to move on, the remaining travelers were dead silent and perfectly obedient. She got them to the designated entrance. She nodded at Red on the other side. She closed it, she started off home.

And the pale monster was waiting for her at the entrance to the tunnel.