Chapter 2, Scene 2

                                    

                                              


                          


                          
Her knuckles white around the leather strap of the map canister, she pushed through the thick underbrush clinging to her breeches, staying several yards from the cart-wide dirt track. It might have offered easy passage through the grove, but no cover and she had no interest in becoming a pin cushion again.

                          
She laughed quietly at herself as the sweet, heady scent rolling off the blooming orchard all around brought to mind a gnat being lured in by a carnivorous plant, with herself being the gnat. Ridiculous.
                          
Yet, her skin prickled and she picked up her pace, despite the growing stitch in her side.
                          
Longing to burst out of there, she paused at the edge, looking up at the fort's towers. If there were any guards waiting in the gloom, she couldn't spot them through the little, slit windows. All was silent. 
                          
Brisk strides carried her up the steep hill toward the gates and she  unslung the canister, pouring the map into her hands and unrolling it as she stopped just within range of the torchlight.
                          
Her eyes darted from dot to dot across the map, seeking out the one marked Ashdale, then the snaking line named the Tenri river. 
                          
From the position where she approximated falling in, she scoured the map's landmarks, searching for a fort city that could be the one before her amongst the generous speckling of cities and notable towns dotting either side of the river's banks.
                          
There were two that she found. One two miles downriver, the other seven. She chewed the back of her lip. If the rain didn't wash my trail away, they should know I made it to the river. But how far would they search after figuring out I didn't make it across? Two seemed reasonable, but seven might be stretching it, especially after having gone over the falls. If they didn't find a sign of her quickly they might believe her dead.
                          
Lifting her eyes to the gate, it boasted the name of the city, but she was still too far out to read it. Tiptoeing closer, she squinted up at the iron-wrought sign over the gates. Whitekeep?
                          
Checking with her map, she yelped as something zoomed in front of her face. Dropping the map and stumbling back, she raised the map's canister overhead- A hinkypunk?
                          
Eyes wide, Katherine froze, aware that it could do two very unfortunate, unwanted things to her, depending on whether it wanted to play or was angry.
                          
"What do you want?" she demanded between her teeth as it bounced agitatedly barely a hand's breadth from her nose. Tempted to swat it away, she reminded herself that the last thing she needed was to be bumbling around in a waking nightmare from its hallucinogenic defensive gasses. Based on the blue of its ethereal flame, it wasn't angry... yet.
                          
It flew up to the top of the gates and over, making its distant, echo-like cry as if calling her. 
                          
"I'm not going in there." She shook her head. "Go pester your owner."
                          
Bending with a grunt to pick up her map, she let out a curse as the hinkypunk appeared again suddenly, filling her vision with blinding blue. 
                          
Rubbing her eyes, she backed away, but it followed after her with an urgent burbling noise she'd not heard from one before. "No, no, shoo! I don't want to play right now!"
                          
It zipped around to the back of her and she spun with it, retreating back up the hill as it sped toward her. 
                          
Back hitting the gates, she had no time to do anything but squeeze her eyes shut as it bounced its warm against her nose.
                          
After a disorienting moment where her entire being were consumed by a frantic, buzzing sensation, she was spat back into existence like an inedible seed, dropped into the thorny embrace of a rose trellis that marked the entrance of a maze. As it smashed under her, the colony of hinkypunk clustered on it were sent scattering like so many floating lanterns.
                          
"What did you do?!" Struggling to extract herself from the pieces of broken trellis, she muttered another curse at the hinkypunk, when she found that the thorns were clinging to fur, not clothes. "What- how did you-?!"
                          
Worse still, peering past the hinkypunk, she cringed at the sight of the castle looming over her like a giant foot and she a bug. I have to get out of here! 
                          
The hinkypunk colony seemed utterly unconcerned with Katherine's predicament, settling back down on other parts of the maze. 
                          
She considered pouncing on one in hopes it send her back the way she'd come, but they were either already asleep or too disinterested to involve themselves.
                          
These were not the friendly, wild colony she grew up playing 'pass the sentient' with. Even if these were tamed out of their naturally unpredictable, mischievous ways and trained as familiars, none would likely appreciate the unexpected contact from a stranger.
                          
Trying to use one as a portal anyway... well, that was just playing with fire.
                          
The bossy one left its colony behind, swooping low along the side of the castle, then floating back toward her when she did not follow after a moment, burbling.
                          
With a wrinkled nose, she turned away from it, thinking to find her own way out of the mess it put her in, only to be intercepted, hints of red fluctuating amongst its blue.
                          
She tried to run, but it simply popped her back where it wanted her, beneath a castle window.
                          
Ack! Flattening her self to the ground, her ears pinned against her skull, hoping that she had not been seen. "What are you doing!? Are you trying-"
                          
She jumped as a crash came from within as though it were right next to her ear. Flattening herself to the ground, she heard urgent voices, muffled, as furniture toppled with muted cracks.
                          
What's happening in there?
                          
It sounded like a robbery going very wrong, but she dared not lift her head to see, instead crawling away on her now-healed belly. As the ruckus inside grew, her gut niggled at her to make sure someone didn't need to intervene, to raise an alarm, to do something. The hinkypunk seemed to agree with her gut, burbling with even greater insistence. "You're crazy," she muttered under her breath. "I can't go in there. In this form, I'd just be labeled a conspirator." No thanks to you...
                          
She might have had the energy to turn back, but she doubted it and wasn't about to take the risk. 
                          
Slinking away from the window and moving toward the front of the castle with the hinkypunk threatening to do something awful with the way the red in its body increased, she stopped dead in her tracks, gaze traveling up from a pair of boots to their owner.
                          
Draped in a loose, dark robe, they looked not unlike a priest of some ancient, forgotten belief.
                          
Her brow furrowed as a stiff breeze revealed that some of what she assumed was cloak was wings folded against their back, yet she saw neither a tail, nor were the hands clasped behind his back four-fingered, as a gargoyle's were. What in Saelhada? What other race-
                          
She started, scrambling back away from the corner and pressing against the cold bricks of the castle as the front doors swung open with a creak. More people in hooded robes strong armed someone out, she guessed a man, based on the lanky build and clothing. Covered with a flour sack, his head was bowed and he walked obediently as they led him toward the one that waited in the middle of the yard.
                          
 Katherine eased back a step, then another, the hinkypunk screeching in her ear. It had brought her here to rescue its master and wasn't about to be denied. 
                          
It slammed itself against her head, whisking her out of her hiding place and dropping her between those with its master and their leader. 
                          
For a heartbeat, time stood still and her hackles bristled under their hooded gazes. 
                          
The silence was broken with a single word echoing between them, creeping like a centipede in her fur. "Metivale!"