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“Maybe we should split up,” she suggests.
I swallow hard as a pang pulsates from my heart. The thought alone of wandering this place without Chesrie next to me makes my insides want to scream, but I try once more to suppress those feelings, though it becomes impossible when the echo of a light clicking sound on wood begins coming through a nearby window. I rush toward it and look down at the boardwalk. No one is there.
“Or maybe not,” Chesrie says much quieter.
Her eyes are on me, the smile she was previously wearing now completely gone. She gets up slowly and follows me as I walk with soft footsteps back out into the hallway and down the stairs. We
look out the windows by the front door, exiting the building when we are sure that there is no one around.
We move much more carefully toward the next promising-looking building. It is lifeless like the previous one, and I am no longer able to pretend that what we are doing now is anything like what we’ve done before. Still, I push myself, satisfied that if a few more places give us the good fortune that the last home did, we will have more than enough to be done.
Chesrie is also acting edgier as we go from house to house. She jumps at each noise almost as badly as I do. It’s hard not to. Being in such profound silence in such a dead place makes everything that creates a sound feel like it’s alive.
“Look at this,” she whispers, holding the pendant of a necklace out to me. “At first, it didn’t seem like much, but I’ve been seeing this strange symbol on a lot of things. What do you think it means?”
I take it from her hand and study it more closely using the white aura of sunless light pouring in from the window. A horizon line runs across the pendent. On top of the horizon is a black half-sun with the crescent moon hanging higher to its right. Below the moon and horizon is the other side of the sun, which is filled like a pool of blood. To its left is a black star, which is connected to the moon by a thin, curved line.
“I don’t know,” I answer, rubbing the embossed edges of the symbol, which I find quite beautiful, “but I recognize it from outside the inn. I think it’s also etched into the boardwalk in places.”
“Strange,” she mumbles, “but very elegant. I kind of want to keep it. It’s unique.”
“Yeah,” I agree, “but let’s worry about that later.”
The path we take through town leads us further inland, eventually ending at the edge of a forest. Several small to medium-sized huts have been built up against it and away from the rest of the town’s buildings. They appear altogether rougher and less refined than the homes we’ve been raiding, but I wander their way out of curiosity. Chesrie follows.
We approach the front door of the nearest one. I gently push it open, instantly regretting my decision to have come this far. A scatter of things line the floor, indicating a struggle of some sort, and a faint trail of blood streaks across the center of the room and out the door.
“We should never have come here,” I turn to Chesrie, whose pale face perfectly matches how I feel.
But then I hear a soft thud coming from inside of the home, like that of something light being knocked over. My impulse, however, is not to flee. I instead turn around slowly and step further inside. I can’t bring myself to walk away now not knowing what is going on or what actual danger we are in. We can’t flee blindly into the mist.
“What are you doing?” Chesrie chokes out.
I don’t answer, putting my finger to my lips. My eyes shift from one side of the room to the other. There are no hallways or other parts to the hut. It’s simply a large room with one bed. Whoever lives here, or lived here I hesitate to conclude, must have been alone, but where did the noise then come from?
Once that question enters my mind, I hear another muffled sound, this time from below us. It confuses me, that is until the sound repeats itself, allowing me to locate its source. It is coming from underneath a table that is tucked against the wall opposite to the front door. Beneath that table is a space just a couple of inches above the ground, and a subtle gap has been cut into the baseboard there.
“A trapdoor,” I say quietly.
Together, Chesrie and I push the table out of the way and open it. A faint flicker of light, like that of a lit candle, rises up from the darkness below. A sound accompanies it. The soft whimpering of a crying child.
Chesrie and I immediately climb down and find the child, a little girl, curled up in the corner of the surprisingly large hideaway that has been built beneath the hut. Chesrie puts her arms around her as I grab a blanket from the child’s bed and cover the two of them.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Chesrie says sweetly, hushing the little girl and rocking her back and forth in her arms.
I study the room more as the two of them sit there. It is framed and walled, which is not what I am accustomed to seeing in hidden compartments. Then again, this doesn’t seem like a normal hideaway. It is a bedroom, one for a child who for some reason needs to be kept concealed.
I glance up again toward the trapdoor, but the brightness pouring in through it makes it difficult to see Chesrie and the little girl when my eyes shift back down. I climb a few rungs back up the ladder to close it. Then, to my relief, I find a latch, which I use to lock it.
“What’s your name?” asks Chesrie.
The little girl looks up at her for the first time. Her eyes are green, greener than any I’ve ever seen, and glow even in the dim light.
“My name is Kindra,” she says.
Her voice surprises me. It doesn’t sound weak or childlike, though she appears to be quite young. Rather, it sounds mature. Had I not seen her and only heard her voice, I’d have judged her to be a teenager with how clearly she speaks.
“Do you know what happened to my mother?”
