Beidon repeated a single simple truth to himself as he ran, as if it were a mantra to grant him courage and endurance: Gordun and the mayor’s other creatures will have to search the whole town for Emlie. They know nothing. But me… I know her. I will go to her places. I will find her first. Then we’ll be together!

Emlie would NOT leave town… at least not straightaway. Of that Beidon was certain. Nevertheless, her ire and pride would push her farther afield than any of her haunts on the Hubbleton property would permit… those could be reliably excluded from consideration. She was unlikely to seek refuge anywhere as bustling as the Trademarket, or as public as the mercantile pub’s tale-hearth, or as exposed as the skyglass fields. In fact, the list of Emlie-places that offered sufficient seclusion was actually quite slim … but could a little methodical thought winnow it further?

Let’s see… Emlie would, as ever, seek a place convivial to her mood. What mood? She was isolated, alienated. We saw to that… her father and… and I. She would seek a refuge that exemplified that feeling. She had also been stymied in what he’d laughingly termed a ‘flight of fancy’ (and oh, how bitter the taste on his tongue as he recalled his blithe dismissals of the night before.) Knowing Emlie, those rebuffs would drive her to the heights of obstinacy; the venue she sought would also need to be simpatico with this stubbornly retained whimsical mood.

Some few of their secret places still fit this more specific bill. Masson’s blow-works had played host to them often enough of a recent afternoon (whenever, at least, Emlie could chide Beidon into grudingly accompanying her despite his forge-inculcated prejudice against soft-handed glassblowers). Masson and his ‘prentices made the most delicate, fanciful glassware in all of Clear Crucible. The decoration lavished on their pieces was the stuff of local legend, and Emlie loved to spend hours losing herself in the impossible fluted shapes, fanciful friezes and cameos, tiny glass gargoyle adornments, and fantastic abstract loops, whorls and lattices of time-frozen molten sand. In fact, Beidon had heard that obsessive pursuit of similar glass oddities had underlaid yesterday’s rift with her father.For a moment Beidon thought he had a likely candidate, and was tempted to act on it. But no. As indulgent as he might be towards the whims of the mayor’s daughter, Masson was ultimately her father’s creature. Even Emlie herself would not be blind to that. As a refugee from home she could anticipate no safe haven there. Besides, she has more important things on her mind now than chippy old glass.

There was their Cave of Mysteries… but that was actually an old mine producing limestone for the glassmaking, and crews still occasionally worked the place. The risk of discovery wouldn’t do for a girl on the run, and the miners’ incursions invariably destroyed the faerytale mood of the place anyway. Vernyn’s Bookshop or the Aberrations Collection in the Trade College’s library were both favored Emlie-haunts that were atmospheric and private enough once inside, but access to their shelves and stacks unavoidably necessitated encounters with Clear Crucible citizenry. Emlie would shun those too. The former gypsy camp outside the western walls would have been a viable refuge for Emlie six months ago - after all, those vagabonds had little truck with and less love for Emlie’s father, and she in turn romanticized their ritual and their fireside tale-telling with a passion normally reserved for her books. However, this past Spring her father had begun enforcing the Trade Barons’ twin mandates that all trade towns be rid of unguilded itinerant tinkerers and inveterate Old Ways adherents (with the gypsies firmly fitting both categorizations), with the consequence that scarcely any gypsies were to be found today within a day’s wagon-ride of town.

No, the more Beidon thought about it, the more there was only one of Emlie’s secret places that would fit her present need… the horseshoe-shaped town-girdling band of trees known as the Clearwood, and within it the waterside bower they’d discovered near where the eastern Tradeway crossed Clear Crucible’s modest river (stream, really) the Glazersgush. Emlie had always adored the mossy half-bowl ever since their discovery of it during a long-ago summer’s day foray. Beidon had determined that the depression had been excavated out of the stream’s high bank by the long-ago toppling of a great-rooted old oak, but to Emlie it had always been a place of magick and mystery. She loved nothing so much as to lounge upon the clover-strewn moss that carpeted the soil floor of the depression from walls to shore. In between swimming sorties, inspired by the isolation offered by the high fungus-riddled walls of the bowl, she’d spin wild stories of their relocation to some improbable far-off faeryland.

The romance of the setting, its secluded nature… the fact (and Beidon here swallowed down a doubled measure of shame) that his notorious inability to develop anything even remotely resembling a knack for swimming over the years spent at their swimming hole might appeal to her present anger towards him… the additional fact (and here the shame became a sudden nervous lump-in-throat) that it could serve as a staging area for true departure if Emlie actually did work up the gumption to leave Clear Crucible behind… all the requirements lined up.

It was exceedingly likely. It was perfect.

…Perfectly in the wrong direction, you fool! It struck Beidon that in fleeing out the rear end of the Hubbleton property, he had run off in the opposite direction from the one likely chosen by Emlie. He’d wasted yet more time, fallen even farther behind.

Groaning, teeth grit in stubborn denial of the stitch in his side, Beidon turned down the next alleyway he passed and doubled back at its far end toward the outgoing Tradeway…

Emlie and her book had spent the morning in retreat within her leafy streamside hideout, taking solace from the words, the water and the forest. Yes, the forest. “Toy wood” though the Clearwood might be to others, a small scenic forest remnant barely a furlong wide that had been left when all other nearby old growth had been harvested for kiln-fuel or building material, the Clearwood was nevertheless to Emlie the quintessence of all woodland mystery and wonder. The shallow stream passing through it was likewise aggrandized in Emlie’s eyes, becoming a grand and romantic flow. And despite the evidence that suggested that it might have on occasion served as a lovers’ lane or a drunkard’s refuge for other ‘Cruciblites, this bowl-shaped streamside bower beside it was nevertheless Emlie’s secret redoubt, her magick faery-bower.

The depression was shaded and comfortable: cupped by the fanning roots of the tree whose fall had excavated it, fringed by umbrella-like mushrooms and floored with soft green moss. It was dug into the far bank of the Glazersgush where that stream made its closest looping approach to Clear Crucible’s eastern flank, about a quarter-mile from the outer wall and a mere hundred yards upstream from where the Tradeway bridged the flow. It was a testament to the single-minded industry of the ‘Cruciblites (or, as Emlie would have it, their utter lack of off-the-beaten-trail curiosity) that she might not by loitering in this not-so-hidden place run any substantial risk of discovery.

Still, its isolation was sufficient to fire Emlie’s fancy. To either side, the earthen walls excavated by the tree’s toppling shielded her view, permitting her to envision herself as lounging deep in a fantastic primordial wilderness, rather than huddled a stone’s throw away from the town’s main commercial artery. The lush tree line across the stream occluded all but the highest of the town’s crystalline spires. With their crude commerce-dedicated plinths hidden from view, Emlie was free to imagine that the sparkling spires of her home were instead the spell-shrouded tower-tops of one of the legendary cities described in Enno: Avalon, or Dinas Emrys or Ys, or even the fabled metropolis of Lundinium of the Lost World. The panorama served as a potent aid to her imagination, stoking its fires as she lost herself in Enno and his marvelous catalogue of legend, song and half-concocted history.

Even here, though, her woes lay waiting in ambush:

Nobody in these stories has hideous mundane problems like mine, she observed while reading “The Marvelous Bishop and His Thousand Tasks.”

Laertiades the Wide-Ranging was never trapped in a dull, regimented world that a bunch of greedy Trade Barons had stripped of all whimsy and wonder, she mused discontentedly while thumbing through his eponymous epic tale.

The Faery Queen had better luck seeking the blessings of a fabled magickal realm that didn’t even exist than I’ve had securing even the barest whiff of magick, or the most trifling of fancies, she groused at the pages of “Gloriana And The Spoils Of The Lost World.”

Lizrael, Princess of Beauty didn’t have to face up to a father who needed her to be something that she could never, ever be, she mused discontentedly while following “The Three Spells of the Elvenking.”

Lovers’ love of old was eternal and all-effacing… not conditional, she groaned as she sloughed her way through “The Minstrel Who Dared Perdition.”

Oh, Forgers… to Perdition with Enno himself!

She slammed the book shut. Focusing on Historical Lore might have served as a marvelous escape from her otherwise endless brooding over the horrors and disappointments of the day before, except that she was bringing those woes with her into her reading. The cherished legendarium with its stark simplicities had consequently acted nothing more than a mirror by which the vagueries and shortcomings of her own life had stood out all the more sharply. Unendurable affronts took on something of the character of slightly silly snubs. Even recent sworn determinations, so faerytale-perfect when sworn by night, so grimly achievable by dawn’s first light, had begun to seem ill-planned and silly by the full light of day.

Would she really flee her home over such a thing? Or sit out here forever? And Beidon… was she really prepared to shun him on the basis of slights that, lummox that he was, probably had their basis not in cruelty but rather in ignorant crudity? It isn’t as if he can help it… Emlie reflected, and actually found herself verging on a smile.

Besides, by noon the girl’s mind had begun to wander for other reasons. She was restive by nature. She was also famished, and the basic fare in her bag appeared pretty meager compared to the rich repast she could easily scare up back in town. She might be proud and wounded and deeply affronted, but the practical reality of an indefinite stint sitting out in the woods was beginning to weigh down the other scale of the balance of her judgment.

In the end, the hunger decided her, persuading her to swallow her injured pride in anticipation of soon swallowing a hearty Trademarket lunch by dint of it. Determination made, she gathered her things and climbed out of the mossy bowl…

Beidon’s all-out run eventually had begun to make him light-headed. His head had lolled back, affording him a view of blue sky and passing Clear Crucible spires. The repetitious lope, the hypoxic trance, the mesmeric onrush of patterned brick and rippling glass… at some point he’d slipped through reverie into recollection.

Rhythmic flares of refracted sunlight dazzled him. Beidon blinked, and his vision flowed and changed. Now the hypnotic light was the dappled play of sunshine falling through the moving tree canopy. Lowering his eyes, young Beidon spied the last few tree trunks even as his flying feet passed them by and carried him into the secret streamside bower. A young girl of eleven waited for him there, her long blonde hair twisted into a ridiculous, adorable pair of braids that wrapped round her delicate ears. He grasped her shoulders as he went speeding past, using his momentum to spin her around in his arms as he orbited her, cackling. She giggled as they whirled, loose strands of her hair flapping behind her. A second later and she seemed to remember herself, however: her expression went cold and still, and she gave him a sudden shove. “Commoner!” He went sprawling on his behind in the moss, gazing up at her in confusion. She stared down, her face foreboding…until it was split by a grin like sudden sunlight breaking through clouds.

“You’re late to an appointment!” Emlie chided him.

Beidon heaved himself upright, dusting himself off and affecting his best ten-year-old approximation of wounded dignity. “To where? For what? Em, this is a hole!”

The little girl pouted. “No, it isn’t.” She gestured at the back wall, roots and dirt arcing high over their heads. “This, bogey-brain, is a magick faery-bower. A place of power!” Her eyes went wide. ”The spirits live here.”

“‘The spirits’?” he choked out. This was phantastic even for Emlie.

“Yes.” She could not have been more solemn. “The Ancient Spirits of the Pan-Baronies!”

Beidon’s face clenched with the effort of keeping it straight “‘Tis amazing, that. Will they return soon?”

Emlie replied, wide-eyed, “Beid, they’re here now. Can’t you tell?”

Maintaining a solemn veneer was one of the hardest things young Beidon had ever done. “No… how can you?”

“Why, by the sound of their chiming bells! Can’t you hear them??”

This was the last straw, he could stand it no longer. Beidon erupted into a gale of laughter. “N-n-nope! Must be one of those sounds that only… only…” he pointed an arm at his boon companion, the finger quivering with his guffaws, “-only dogs can hear! Hahahahahaha-”

Beidon barely saw the flattened hand arcing up toward his exposed ear. He heard those bells then, for real and true.

It was past noon before Beidon neared the “magick faery-bower”. Accounting for his delay: neither reminiscence nor light-headedness had lasted, and the heady flush of flight and freedom had given way to enervated, exhaustion-enhanced paranoia. His suspicions had not been limited to the uniformed town Constables… every adult he encountered had suddenly looked like a potential cat’s-paw of the Lord Mayor. Prudence had consequently tempered his reckless drive to reach Emlie’s presumed hiding spot, compelling him to take a circuitous route of back roads and long-cuts around Clear Crucible that eventually brought him back north to the Cropgate. He’d schemed to pass through unnoticed by diving into the back of a lumbering compost wagon headed towards the Communal Farm,but not before revealing some reticence to cover himself in the wagon’s contents. Come on coward, he’d goaded himself while fingering the straw still lingering in his hair, it’ll hardly be the first time today that you’ll be bathing in plant trimmings. And with that, in he’d gone. Once immersed, however, a few sniffs had given Beidon the awful suspicion that not all of the compost was vegetative in origin.

A quarter of an hour later, a soiled and smelly Beidon had dropped off the back of the wagon and rolled into a roadside irrigation ditch in case the driver should chance to glance behind. He’d sniffed delicately at the short-sleeved hem of his tunic, wincing at what he found there. Just because we smiths labor and sweat ‘midst coke and ash, the gentry ridicule our noses as no more developed than fieldhands’ or swineherds’. But proper forge work needs a sharp sense of smell as much as does any other trade, and clean honest steel-sweat whiffs a deal prettier than... than this foulness! He’d shaken an ineffectual fist at the departing farm-wagon. Then, glancing at fist and arm and sleeve, he’d dislodged more matter from them with a grimace. Embarrassment at the pathetic gestures had returned his attention the broader current circumstances.

Right... Emlie. Time enough for a bath once she’s safe. He’d risen from the trench and left the Cropway behind.

Over the following hour he’d performed a laborious circumnavigation of a quarter of Clear Crucible. Keeping first to the Farm’s irrigation ditches, then to the cover of the Clearwood, he’d relied for guidance on glimpses of the town’s spires caught over its walls and through the thinning woods to his right. He’d split his concentration between the tedious work of choosing his path and footing, and the more strategic consideration of minding the map in his head. His slow clockwise orbit was, he knew, bringing him through the treebelt between buildings and farmlands while keepnign him unseen from both. Rounding the town’s northeasternmost extent, he’d angled in slightly so as to approach the bower from its northern side, opposite the one flanked by the eastbound Tradeway. Not directly in, however; Beidon had intended to intersect and follow the Glazersgush upstream of the bower, thus ensuring that as he worked south, he’d be sure to encounter Emlie’s hiding spot before reaching the all-too-public road. Unfortunately this had pitted him against some of the desnsest brush to be found within the tiny wood.

After what felt like a brush-choked eternity later, he finally heard the gurgly splashing of the Glazersgush ahead and knew that he was close. Shouldering through a final briar of blackberry, he found himself abruptly hanging precariously over the edge of the stream. The bank here was high, a good five feet above the water’s surface. Beidon tottered, arms pinwheeling, before regaining his balance. Glances to both sides and at the town behind him confirmed his general location.

He started cautiously picking his way downstream. The stream twisted and turned, rendering quite treacherous his bank-hugging route and hiding all but the next hundred paces or so of its course from view. He made the distance in slow yards… ten… fifty… one hundred… When the first faint sounds came, Beidon, mistaking them for mere forest background noise, failed to respond. It took a second, louder burst of wooden cracking noises to catch his attention. When his head snapped up at the distraction it almost resulted in his toppling into the stream again. He flailed, regained his balance, then again leaned out over the stream, this time deliberately and with an ear cocked to listen.

The sound of breaking branches carried clearly over the water, originating from somewhere around the southwestward bend up ahead. The Clearwood lacked animals large enough to raise that much of a racket, meaning the sound was almost certainly of human origin. Emlie? Beidon tried picking up his pace, but his feet skittered over the bankside mud and rock, courting disaster. Cursing, he opted for speed over vision, turning away from the bank to cut across the hump of land separating him from the source of the sound.

The sound of his own crashing through the brush was nearly overpowering, but Beidon swore that he could still hear a distant tumult – snapping, scrabbling, and now a sound of splashing. As he drew closer, a new sound overlaid the others, a rasp-on-deadwood rumble that it took him a moment to associate with human voice. Specific recognition bolstered by recenty encounter followed an instant later - Gordun again! What was Grywald’s thug doing here of all places? Was he here for Emlie, for Beidon himself, for some other reason entirely…? Still separated by five score yards from the far tree line, he could only make out snatches of Gordon’s patter: “…melt in water …ee….ah?...” followed by intensified splashing. What in the Refuse Heap-?

Then came a clarion shout that stopped Beidon mid-stride: “Hoy GORDUN, you pig!” He froze up. Emlie! A flash of elation that turned instantly to horrified realization. First Forgers, Emlie is there with Gordun. Alone!

And then he was tearing through the remaining forest, heedless of the sticks and branches tearing at his exposed head and arms. His gritted teeth precluded roaring, but a battle cry sounded in his heart. HOLD ON EMLIE – I’M COMING!!

Emlie was picking her way back along the game trail that led from the riverside bower, following it toward its intersection with the broad, shallow ditch of the the Tradeway.

As she walked, she dipped into her kidney pouch to replace the book, and impulsively thought, there’s no reason to spend the walk back to luncheon hungry, is there? She felt around within the pouch in quest of a nibble for the walk. Her fingers ran over the sausages (not just now, too heavy to start with) and buns (I wouldn’t want to dribble crumbs on myself while walking) before trailing over the apples (hmmmm…)

The barely-there path demanded that Emlie focus her attention entirely on avoiding the numerous trips and snares hidden in the undergrowth beneath her feet… until a sudden great snapping of branches from directly ahead snapped it upwards. What she saw caused her to gasp out loud: a huge shape, a great ox of a man, was climbing out of the Tradeway and bulling his way onto the very track Emlie was following. Emlie could not identify the man for the same reason that he had not yet spotted her – his head was hidden by the body of the woman whom he held, kicking and flailing, crushed against his chest as he hauled her down the narrow trail. This captive would surely have been screaming but for one of the man’s huge, slab-like hands clamped tight over her mouth. Despite that obstruction, Emlie abruptly recognized the face under the hand. The face, the bone-and-bead necklace, the shoulder-sticks that were snapping off under the assailant’s crushing grasp… Maeve!

Emlie almost shrieked. Almost. However, multiple book-bound tellings of practically this selfsame scenario instantly leapt to mind, highlighting the folly of such an action. Instead, she mastered herself and silently stepped off behind a tree, clearing the trail before the villain could spot her. Several tense seconds passed with only the growing sounds of struggle to mark them. Then the huge fellow was barging past, frog-marching his captive before him. As the old woman was shoved past, Emlie got her first glimpse of the assailant’s face, and again had to stifle a giveaway gasp of surprise: Gordun!

Her father’s mountainous Bailiff drew even with Emlie… red faced, sweating, veins standing out on his neck… straining to quell the struggling of his uncooperative burden. Struck with a pang of sudden terror, Emlie held her breath, fearful that that huge square head would swivel her way. Fortunately, Gordun was a creature of utmost single-minded focus under the best of circumstances, and at the moment far too focused on his skullduggerous task to notice lurking girls on the periphery of his tunneled vision. As he puffed past, Emlie could hear threats and epithets addressed to his captive:

“Shoulda…huff… listened, shoulda…hunnngh.... left… town… when mayor sez you shoulda….huhhhf… Now’ee sends me… to make sure… you’s obeyed his order ta disappear… else I’m to… assist you.” Gordun let out a nasty rumbling chuckle. “Well, old frail… turns out… hunnnh… ol’ Gordun’s very…. VERY good at… hfffuh... helpin’ folks… ta disappear.” Perhaps thinking his meaning cryptic, he gave his burden a vicious shake as if to explicate it.

Gordun was a score paces back down the trail past Emlie now and fading from audibility. She explosively let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Oh Forgers, what do I do now? She stuck a noncommittal foot back out onto the path, still uncertain of her course, when a final overheard fragment drew her up short: “….an’ afore you go, you’re… gonna tell me… everything you know… ‘bout little miz Emlie…” He... he’s after ME, too!

Fearstruck, Emlie pivoted away from Gordun. The path in the other direction was clear now, all the way back to the Tradeway. She could slip down it and away, dash back over the Glazersgush bridge and all the way back into Clear Crucible. She felt a pang of shame, battled it down. It… it wouldn’t be fleeing! Surely once there, she could raise the alarm, and bring back help. Provided anybody would raise hand against my father’s will. Forcing that thought aside as well she continued, yet surely they WOULD, of course they would. I’d fetch help and we’d race back here and... she forced herself to turn back, to look at Gordun’s masive back. Already it was nearing the Glazersgush’s bank. ...and… and Gordun would be long done with whatever he has planned. It would be too late. A convulsive swallow. ‘Tis me, or nobody.

Emlie drew a deep breath. She pivoted, slowly and definitively, to face back in the direction she had come, the direction that led to Gordun and Maeve and confrontation. This is my fault. She took a step. My responsibility. Another. Responsibility is my birthright. Yet another. A last, longing glance over her shoulder. Laertiades wouldn’t run. Face forward, and the tremulous walk became steady. Lizrael wouldn’t run. A trot. Beidon wouldn’t run. With that, a full run – towards a very real and present danger. Emlie charged with forthright resolved impetuousness, dashing down the path to save her new friend from Gordun’s low thuggery.

Emlie’s heartbeat thundered in her ears, drowning out all other sound. As a result, she was quite close to the bowl in the bank before once again hearing Gordun’s growl: “…always heard that witchfolk melt in water. Lezzee, yeah?” There came a loud PLUNK of something hitting the watter, immediately followed by numerous ancillary splashes. Rounding the earthen-bank corner into the hidden depression, Emlie spotted Gordun crouched at the water’s edge with one of his massive arms thrust down into the flow, its hand clenched around the heaving crone’s throat. Maeve’s own hands were frantically alternating between equally futile attempts at levering her torso above water, prying lose Gordun’s viselike grip, and clawing at his upper arm. Her feet, the only part of her not extended over the water by the thug’s apelike reach, were drumming out a spastic military tattoo on the moss.

You bastard. You Bastard!

Yet if she was so enraged, why was Emlie not rushing toward the struggling duo? Why was she instead timidly standing her ground? Because five of me might stand half a chance at prying my father’s pet monster off of Maeve. Just the one will barely suffice to annoy him! A clever schemer by nature, she’d half-made half-a-dozen plans… made and discarded them as unworkable, in the few heartbeats it took for the utter futility of the situation –hers and the old woman’s– to fully sink in.

And why was she drawing this deadly blank? It was because Gordun defied the ordinary basis of her clever decisiveness. Emlie’s scheming, like nearly all else with her, derived from her appreciation of stories, and not just those found in the pages and covers of her beloved books. Her fellow citizens were likewise the subject of her tale-craving ear, and her confidence in negotiating dealings with them stemmed from what she thusly gleaned, surmised, imagined. Had the aggressor been Vernyn the bookseller, for example, she would have appealed to the longstanding obsession with reputation that his anecdotes revealed. Hornil of the legendarily checkered past would doubtless have responded to the threat of the Law. Applying the fruits of gossip, she would have put the fear of his own wife into cobbler Brax Two-Shoes.

But Gordun? Insofar as she’d in the past bothered to consider him at all, it had been as an automaton and tool – a will-less extension of her father and his policies. She’d certainly never bothered listening to him. And as for the various stories about him, well… the picture they painted was simply that of an unnuanced, unconnected monster. Consequently, out here face to face with his brute single-mindedness and cruelty… what was there for her insight to find purchase on? Face-to-back with sui generis evil, she had no angle from which to ply the lever that was her storybook-tinted knowledge of her fellow-folk.

She was stymied. And Maeve was drowning.

Desperation brought her an answer … one practically imbecilic in its primal simplicity. Not from any nuanced bit of townlore, but straight out of simple child-tales of taunting and pursuit: He claims to be seeking me. Why shouldn’t he FIND me? Before the utter insanity of her plan could hit home, Emlie acted.

She stepped into the clear and charged back down the path. Upon reaching the mouth of the bower she assumed a commanding stance, legs planted wide, and shouted, “HOY GORDUN, YOU PIG! Still assaulting women in states of indecency, eh?”

Gordun’s head snapped up. His clenched hands popped open in surprise, toppling Maeve’s body entirely into the stream. She disappeared with a splash. Emlie exulted, her plan a runaway success. Gordun had been distracted away from Maeve, who was now free and clear… provided she still lived, anyway. Now Emlie herself had but to sprint away from this lummox and obtain aid. She took a step back…

The great bald head rotated smoothly around as if it were mounted on bearings. His eyes locked with hers, freezing her mid-step. “Girl,” he growled. He straightened back up into a standing position, more smoothly and swiftly than she would have thought remotely possible for a man of his great bulk and gelid cognition. Emlie blanched. “Y-yes, Gordun. It’s girl. Me. Emlie.” She backstepped again, tried to fix her features into a stern, masterly expression. “Your master’s daughter.”

The Bailiff spun to face her directly. There was nothing clumsy in the motion, and absolutely nothing cowed about it. He was barely twenty feet away. “Master’s, yeh. Spoilt bitch. Nose in’er sodding books. Always treatin’ Gordun like part’uv the damn furniture. Well, Master wants’is daughter back home now, post-haste. Just like’ee wanted the witch-bitch gone from town yesterday, too.” He threw a clubbed thumb over his shoulder. “Funny thing, tho…” He took a step. “…didn’t say nuthin’ particular ‘bout what kinda shape either ought ta be in….”

Every innuendo she’d ever heard regarding Gordun’s dark past and darker exploits came flooding back to Emlie. She made to take another step back, but her turnshoe’s heel caught in the roots-and-dirt base of the embankment sidewall. An easy flight was looking less likely by the second. “S-stay away…!” Gordun’s only answer was an insolent smirk. He advanced a step toward her.

Emlie was suddenly very aware of her limbs, her inadequate, her useless limbs. She had to extricate her foot, had to turn and flee! But her feet were locked tight, the one caught fast, the other nightmarishly leaden… her hands, then?

Emlie plunged her left hand back into her kidney pouch in panicked search of her food knife. But the tiny thing eluded her, and she instead found herself once again groping the globes of the purloined apples. She groaned in dismay. Damn damn damn-

“No tricks, missy. Yer father’s in a state… don’t think a little…. incidental breakage… would bother him none…” Gordun raised his arms, reaching towards her, and crouched for an approach across the bowl.

“Don’t-!” cried Emlie. She gave up her futile search for the knife, grasped the apple. Better than nothing, barely. She yanked it out of her pouch with a snarl, wound up to throw. Her arm felt abruptly and alarmingly disconnected from the rest of her, all shivers and odd tingles; but nevermind that, she would not let this monster touch her. “I’m warning you-”

“HAR. The frail’s warnin’ me.” Gordun’s slablike face broke into a vicious scowl. He took another step forward. “COME HERE, you-”

Emlie flung the apple.

She had just time to track its arcing flight, and to note the shimmery glint as it caught and refracted the afternoon sunlight. Wait, that’s not right apples don’t glint that’s no apple, its- The throw fell short. Emlie, dismayed, felt her stomach drop along with the glass orb as it plunged past Gordun’s suddenly puzzled face to shatter harmlessly at his feet.

Light. Pure white light. For an instant she could discern the strangest negative impression in the midst of it, the shadow of Gordun’s face, mouth gaping in sudden terror, and below it his monolithic frame standing out in stark inkstain blacks against the blinding background. Then from out of the glare a hammer-blow of solid air slammed her backwards. She had a fleeting impression while tumbling of the concussion snapping branches as it ripped through the tree cover and displacing a hemispherical fan of water as it expanded out into the stream. Then her body struck the embankment and her wits were dashed out of her ears.

Beidon hurdled a bush. He caromed uncaring off a tree trunk, stumbled up, resumed. He shoved the intervening foliage aside with sufficient force to wrench it up by the roots. Moments and eternities later, the far side tree line appeared just ahead. Through the final trunks he glimpsed the scene beyond:

Foremost, rippling sunlight glinted off the Glazersgush. In the air over the far shore, sunlight glinted off… something else. A hurtling glass shape. It was mid-flight, arcing towards him, yet he perceived it as the central element of a flash-frozen tableau taking place across the stream. He took in Gordun, foremost and arms-upraised, striding away from the water with his back to Beidon. And rearmost, arm extended and dipping in the aftermath of the throw that had launched the sphere…

Even now with the streamside trees, Beidon drew breath and dropped into a sprinter’s crouch, perhaps as prelude to some impossible feat of hurdling. He’d save her. He’d warn her. He’d vanquish those threatening her. He’d redeem himself, he’d join her now and forever. His heart lungs voice aligned and he cried out, “EM-”

But time, the trickster, hadn’t really stopped, hadn’t even slowed, no matter what tricks his ‘mazed brain might play. The glass ball completed its swift arc, smashing down at Gordun’s feet.

There was an eerie instant’s sensation of omnipresent inhalation, the very air surrounding Beidon seeming to rush inward towards the impact point. Radiance brighter than a lightning-stroke suffused the scene, bright enough that in that instant the bones of Gordun’s simian frame stood out through their flesh-and-fabric shroud.

Then came sudden explosive reversal, an almighty thunderclap that put an abrupt end to Beidon’s headlong flight.

Next Chapter: 6. Emlie In The Aftermath