Boreal

Chapter Two

Ptarmigan's shoulder met the trapdoor with a hollow thud, forcing it open. The frigid warehouse was a welcome escape, after the stale air of the tunnels. He hauled himself up and rolled onto his stomach. Shyam was not a moment behind, slamming into his back.

"Tarm!"

She didn't need to tell him; Ptarmigan already had the trapdoor shut, throwing his whole weight on top of it. As though that would be enough to stop the thing behind the gates.

He'd never run so fast in his life, not even from the other children. His legs ached at the mere thought of getting up again and his heart was pounding so hard and fast he was sure Shyam could hear it. Both the boy and his wyvern were struggling to draw anything more than quick and panicked breaths. He kept his ear close to the rotting wood, listening.

Silence.

If the thing had tried to follow them, then they'd lost it in the dark of the tunnels.

Shyam pressed herself against the back of his neck, trembling. Her feathers were clumped with oil from the effort of flying, her warning crest stood to full attention. Ptarmigan fought back the urge to close his eyes and rest. He forced himself upright, picking her up in his arms. He ran his fingers across her back, holding her tight.

"What was that?" She whispered.

She stared up at him expectantly. Ptarmigan swallowed.

"I don't know."

"Do you think the stories could be true?" she continued, "about the Undercity being home to duppies and ghouls?"

"That wasn't a duppy, or a ghoul."

That much, Ptarmigan knew. Duppies and ghouls were all that remained of mounts and humans, when they died, and their Starlight couldn't escape Outwith. But whatever the thing behind the gates was, it was neither man, nor mount.

"It had so many eyes...." He trailed off as Shyam pressed her head into his shirt. "Maybe it wasn't real. Maybe we were just overthinking again?"

She pulled away suddenly, biting his fingers. Shyam gave an angry squeak, puffing up her feathers.

"Don't be a half-wit, Tarm! It was real, and I told you going down there was a bad idea!"

He didn't really know what to say to that. She was right, of course; Shyam was usually right. But she didn't have to deal with the other children – only their mounts. She could run and hide, and he'd wanted so desperately to see what had awaited at the end of the tunnel. He hadn't meant to upset her, really. His stomach twisted.

He'd just wanted an escape.

He did his best to ignore the seething mix of emotions in his chest, and the building tension between them. He needed to focus, work out where they'd ended up after their desperate escape.

The warehouse was old, timber walls creaking against the wind. In places, they'd been blackened with mould, laced with patches of white from Emergences' worth of dried sea-spray. Water trickled between gaps in the roof, pattering into large puddles across the hardpacked earthen floor. The soft song of the raindrops was broken only by the scurrying of unseen paws as the dock cats sought shelter from the elements, elusive as ghosts.

Given the state of things, they must have been in the lower throws, within Kyba's Dock ward. His stomach twisted a little; hopefully, they'd be close to the dockyard, towards the eastern edge. If they'd emerged within the confines of somewhere like Bowery Row...well, he wasn't sure if in this state he could outrun them.

The dock children, he'd very quickly learnt, did not like the racers.

His thoughts turned back to the thing behind the gates. It must've been huge, given the size of its fingers, and it had more eyes than any creature he'd heard about before. People had two, mounts had four...spiders, he remembered being told had eight, and the skivers of the Far Lands had even more than that. So maybe it was some kind of enormous spider, or a skiver – even though he knew neither of those creatures had fingers like the thing in the dark had.