Page 29 of The Shape of Silence

“Voices,” she said over her shoulder, slowing just a bit until he drew closer. “Not close to the house, but nearer than anyone’s ever been before.”

He considered that. “Ye’ve had people approach before tonight.”

“I’ve heard things—horses...maybe voices before tonight, I’m not sure,” she said in her quiet voice. “But no one’s ever come so close before, not that I was aware of.”

They crept on, moving in the same stealthy fashion for another half a mile before they reached a shallow depression where the earth gave way to a rise of rock, and Avery altered their course again, leading him along the side of the stone rather than over it. Only when they were nearly upon it did Morggán see the narrow recess tucked beneath the overhang, concealed by shadow and a slant of bracken that obscured the opening from below.

Avery pushed aside the overhang and entered without hesitation, pulling the hound within behind her.

Morggán crouched and followed, both his thigh and chest arguing against those awkward few steps, using his hands to feel the space before him.

Inside, the space was dry and deeper than it first appeared, widening toward the back where the stone lifted just enough to allow him to nearly stand upright. It was not a cave formed by nature alone, but something closer to a shelter shaped by human patience, taking advantage of the natural overhang where two slabs of rock had settled against one another and left a narrow seam between them. Someone had cleared it long ago, hauling loose stone from the floor and packing earth against the back wall to level the ground. The entrance had been narrowed deliberately, branches woven and now overgrown with moss.

They settled near the entrance, having to lower themselves to their knees, where they could look out without being seen. Morggán and Avery knelt side by side, there being scarcely space for the both of them that her shoulder brushed his arm. Charlie sat obediently just behind her. The forest beyond, which had seemed fully swallowed by midnight only moments before, now appeared washed in gray, silvered by narrow strands of moonlight in contrast to the deeper darkness of the hole they’d crawled into.

“Ye’ve kept this in reserve,” he said quietly, as astonished as he was impressed.

She might have nodded, but he wasn’t sure in the inky blackness. “The man showed it to me years ago,” she said.

“The man,” he repeated, reflectively, having almost forgotten about him.

“The other man,” she said, seeming to want to clarify, to distinguish between him and ‘the other man’. “I’ve...used it a few times,” she went on, shrugging thinly. “Maybe more than a few, when I’ve heard things. People.”

She had not merely discovered the recess in passing, had been shown this and kept it in readiness. She’d listened for movement and retreated here when a threat came too close. She shaped her life around avoidance, moving always with the expectation that someone might come too near. She had avoided men—or mayhap all persons.

And yet she hadn’t avoided him. She might have left him where he’d fallen. A single glance would have told her he carried steel and what she might assume was trouble with him in equal measure. She might have turned away, and mayhap he’d never have known. Instead, she had hauled him into her house, tended his wound, and fed him from stores she guarded closely or hunted daily. That was not the act of someone who feared humanity in all its forms, but he wasn’t sure he could imagine a reason why she might have helped him—made herself known to him—and not another.

For a time there was only the soft movement of leaves and the distant stir of wind in higher branches. Then, faintly, something shifted below the rise—an uneven rustle through brush that did not match the wind’s rhythm. Morggán angled his head slightly, listening, his hand lowering without thought toward the hilt at his side.

The hound growled low again, but Avery bent over him, whispering something in the dog’s ear. The growling didn’t stop, but it did lessen.

Morggán inclined his head at that, listening intently. He might have supposed by the speed at which she’d ushered him out of the house that the threat was imminent, closer, but it appeared not. Still, it was too soon to relax his vigilance.

Outside, the forest continued its slow breathing, unchanged.

After a time, Morggán shifted carefully on his knee until he could let his shoulder rest more comfortably against the rock wall at his side.

When next she spoke, her voice held less certainty than before. “They haven’t found me in all this time.”

At first, he received the words as nothing more than an observation, spoken in the same practical tone she used for everything else. Only after a moment did their meaning shift. They.

He studied her profile in the dimness of the recess. “Someone is seeking ye?” he asked, his voice even, though his mind had sharpened.

“I—I don’t know. I always hoped they were looking for me.”

That answer bewildered him far more than anything else she might have said.

If she feared pursuit, her solitude made sense. If she fled danger, her vigilance was rational. But to speak of being sought as something desired rather than dreaded suggested something else entirely.

“Ye hoped to be found,” he repeated, trying to make sense of the very little he did understand. “Then why choose a life where no one may reach ye?” He might have asked, why run when someone arrived? but assumed that was only basic vigilance and caution. He shifted slightly, the movement deliberate enough to draw her gaze to him. “Speak plainly, Avery. I would understand what ye mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“Run and hide is contrary to hoping someone is searching for ye.”

A full half a minute passed before she answered. He felt rather than saw her gaze on him.

“I should have said, I used to hope they were looking for me—my parents.”