Even louder, she hollers, “I’ll call for you when it’s time to come back. Listen for me.”
“Thank you, Sister!”
A few minutes later, my legs are bent like the grasshopper’s, pulled in tight beneath me. My hands are planted in the dirt. It’s as close as I can get to mimicking him, this creepily strange insect before me with wings. Wings!
He tries, but he can’t truly fly. Or well, he can, but only for short bursts.
When he hops down the road, I follow, all the while cautious to stay far enough back that I don’t make him panic. Like before, when I first came upon him, and he nearly got away.
Seven more jumps. Then something bizarre happens.
The pebbles underneath us both begin to tremble. At first, only slightly. Then more.
They rattle. Shift. Bounce.
I pick one up, curious, and turn it over in my palm. It is still. Ordinary. Nothing but a normal rock in my dirty palm.
But the others are not.
They lift from the ground, rising higher and higher, dancing as though the earth has forgotten how to hold them.
While I’m distracted, my grasshopper friend takes off. He’s several leaps ahead, and before I can catch up with him, his momentary attempts at flight carry him off into the field, where he disappears.
The trembling beneath my feet intensifies.
The ground bucks, rolling in uneasy waves. I stumble and throw out my arms to keep from falling.
In the distance, the sisters cry out. My heart jumps. I turn toward them. Many have dropped their scythes, the blades half buried in wheat. Some point in my direction. Others hold their arms out, as if trying to steady themselves against the same shifting earth.
I follow their pointed fingers.
Above the road in the distance, the air begins to move.
At first, it is faint—thin currents twisting together.
Then it thickens into a dark, smoke-filled writhing mass, the wisps curling in on themselves like a small storm has been pulled from the sky.
The mass continues to expand until it reaches the far edges of the road. An opening forms at its center and widens as the seconds pass. A great white muzzle emerges—a nose, then eyes, connected to a long face.
Not human at all.
Animal.
It’s a brighter white than the cloud itself as it pushes through, taking the unmistakable shape of a large horse’s head. Beside it, another emerges, a jet black one, then two more—one pale grey, and one the color of red-brown scorched earth.
A hoof strikes the road.
More follow as each of them steps through.
At first, the creatures seem formed of the smoke itself—wispy, ghostlike—but as the vapor slowly peels away from their bodies, solid muscle reveals itself beneath their glossy hides, and their strength becomes visible.
The women of my Order scream in unison. It’s a cacophony of sound.
“It’s them! They’re here! Run! Get inside!”
Their terror prompts mine.
I turn and bolt toward them. Sister Odessa calls my name in such a high-pitched wail that my heart leaps in my chest. I trip. My hands slide out from under me as I hit the road. A pain-filled hiss leaves me as my kneecap makes contact with a rock.
