I hear her before I see her.

I’m making my way along the trickiest section of the path – a faint steep zigzag through the ferns and bracken – when the sound of a woman singing catches my attention.

The song is slow, sad, beautiful yet somehow broken – like the words are drowning in sorrow, too heavy for the singer to bear.

She can’t be far – just a few yards from the path – so I walk as quietly as I can in the direction the song is coming from.

As I draw nearer, I can hear the words more clearly.

Once again the threads pull tight

A promise made, an oath to keep

Rivers of song creep through the night

Flow like the bloodlines she must reap.

Hurry dear one, time is late

Slay him lest he steal your heart

Lay his wretched soul to rest

End the cycle at the start.

We’ll feast upon an apple red

And dance upon the silver shore

I’ll twine a red rose in your hair

We’ll be together ever more.

Your song is almost at its end

But first the -

“Bea?” I say, recognizing her as I stumble out of the undergrowth into a small mossy clearing. “What are you doing out here?”

Bea stops singing immediately. She’s sitting in the shade of a gnarled chestnut tree, the lowest leaves brushing her head like a bright green crown. A smart grey pin-stripe blazer and matching skirt seem to hang off her frail body, and her grey hair is neatly pinned up.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

She doesn’t look like she’s dressed for hiking.

“Are you ok Bea?” I say, taking a step forward.

Her face crumples in dismay, and she immediately shrinks back against the tree.

“I can’t...” she says, her voice a dry whisper. “Not now. Please go away.”

Her face has turned as white as a sheet. She seems to shrink in on herself, screwing her eyes shut as she clings to the tree.

“I can’t just leave you here,” I say, walking towards her slowly. “Let me help you. I’m on my way home. We can walk together.”

“No,” she whispers, her voice almost a whimper. “Just leave me.”

Like hell I’d ever do that. Some strange things might be going on right now, but she’s Bea for god’s sake. She was practically gran’s sister. I can’t leave her alone, confused and terrified out in the middle of the forest.

“Stay away from me,” she says.

I hesitate for only a moment, kneeling so that I’m on eye level with her.

“Can you stand Bea?” I say gently, reaching out to her. She’s shaking. “Let me – ”

“GET AWAY RIGHT NOW!” She screams, snapping her head around so that her face is inches away from mine, her eyes blazing. “RUN!”

For a moment I’m frozen in place. Bea's face seems to split open, imploding in on itself. I start screaming, but we’re too far from any of the main trails for passersby to hear.

Bea screams back at me – a bloodcurdling, forlorn sound, like a dying animal. I watch helplessly as her skin withers away; her eyes turn dark, blackness blossoming through her irises like two shadowy flowers. The darkness grows, and her eyes sink into hollow ebony pits. Her face splits open further – the skin pulling away to reveal a skeleton grin. She curls back her lips, now grey as ashes, to reveal a set of broken, slime-encrusted brown teeth.

Even her hair is different, suddenly wet and smelling of rank, briny seawater as it writhes around her shoulders like a nest of vipers.

The skeleton’s face that hovers inches from my own swells with darkness, bristling with thin wavy tendrils of shadow that drift slowly through the air towards me.

I hear a hollow, joyless sound emanating from the creature that was Bea.

She’s laughing.

A gloomy tendril of shade winds towards me, and brushes my cheek.

It burns hotter than fire, colder than ice.

In that moment, I snap out of it.

I spring to my feet, running to the edge of the clearing, just as Bea explodes in a ball of twisting filaments of black mist, like she’s being consumed from within by a crackling fire of darkness. The shadowy flames leap up, before dwindling, fading into thin air.

Bea is nowhere in sight.

THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM.

The words drift through the trees, more like the crackling hiss of the fire than speech, but unmistakable even so.

THE FIVE ARE GATHERED. STRIKE THE DARK HEART. END YOUR SONG, MOON DAUGHTER.

I stand transfixed as the last shadowy flame slips away into nothingness, and the fizzing sound of the fire-tongued voice sound melts into the air.

The spot she sat is perfectly empty, nothing burned, nothing to show that she was ever there in the first place.

It can’t be. It’s not possible. That thing wasn’t Bea. Bea’s at home in her little cottage right now, reading a book while Tiggy and Whiskers play with a catnip mouse at her feet. Or she’s in her garden, painting by the stream like we used to do back when gran was alive. She didn’t just burn up into nothing right before my eyes.

I could make a beeline for the cabin and tell the boys what happened. Calm sensible Elliot. Kitty and her no-nonsense attitude. They'll now what to do.

But as I think of the cabin, my heart clenches painfully, and I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are involved. They are the 'gathered five'. They must be. Do I risk going back to them, when I don’t even know who I can trust? So I pull my overnight bag closer, and run as fast as my legs will carry me.

To safety. To home. To answers.