Hina walked along the dirt road for a while in silence. From somewhere out of sight overhead, a crow cawed. She wasn't sure what to tell Kai. But he did have a right to know.

Effective Communication said that being direct was best for difficult news. And she had to say something. She had a flash of her hand on the knife.

Hina stopped walking.

"I killed him." The words just slipped out. Someone drove an invisible spike through her chest. "I killed Lagi."

"What?" Kai asked, startled. He limped to a halt beside her, standing before a solid wall of long twisting leaves. "I knew—it was something big, but—"

"I told him I was leaving and, he got so angry, Kai." Her mouth kept moving. "I thought he was going to... He hit me, a few times." Her face and her guts ached at the thought. "The last time, I picked up a knife and... I killed him."

Kai looked down at her, his narrow features were a blank mask. He didn't say anything.

"He died. On the floor in the bakery." She took a deep breath. The ache in her chest faded a little. "And then I took money from the register, and a creepy man walked into the bakery while I was doing it. He didn't see—he gave me this letter. Then I came to get you."

Their shallow footprints marked the loose brown dirt of the road. Kai's were bigger, and unevenly spaced. Would they turn around now, and leave hers to go on alone?

"I'm sorry," Kai said at last. "I'm sorry you had to do that."

"You don't—you don't think I'm horrible? That I was wrong—"

"No," Kai shook his head slowly. "Some people... Some people need killing."

"I'm sorry." Hina sniffed. "I should have told you, told you sooner. You can go back if you want to."

"No. I don't wanna go back. No." He paused for a moment, brow furrowed. "We've gotta keep going—they'll catch us if we stay here. We can talk about it later."

Kai took her hand and pulled her on. And Hina let herself be pulled along. He was right. They had a long way to go.

After walking a while, Hina felt better. Better with every step she took away from Grambe, away from her father and mother.

Better for every step she took away from Lagi. And for the feeling that she was heading towards something. A different life, certainly one in which she wouldn't end up married and raising children within a few years. A freer life.

Her left hand traced the comforting shape in her pocket—the letter that had started all of this. And then she remembered the other envelope, the one from the creepy man—Ivan—the one she hadn't already looked at. She fished it out of her pocket.

It was just like she remembered—thick paper with her name on the front and a seal with a strange symbol.

Alone and in private. Hina glanced back down the narrow road between the rustling plants. There was no-one in sight. Close enough.

Hina opened the envelope. The seal broke, and Hina felt a snapping tension within her chest.

"Did you hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?"

"Nevermind."

Inside the envelope was a single piece of heavy paper, which Hina took out and read:

> Mahina Gardiner,

>

> You are formally requested to come and dine with The Grove

>

> On any single night of your choosing

>

> Accomodations will be provided

>

> Be sure to bring a gift

>

> Regards,

>

> The Grove-keeper

She passed the paper over to Kai and looked into the envelope to see if she'd missed anything.

At the bottom was a little metal disc, the size of a penny, shiny and green. On one side, the image of a walled tower, and on the other, a tree. An olive tree? She couldn't quite make it out. It wasn't money—probably worthless.

"This was from the guy this morning? The one in the bakery?" Kai asked.

"The door was locked and he just walked right in."

"Was it," he waved his hands in the air, "a ghost?"

"A ghost?" Hina's heart lifted at the hint of a smile on his face. "He gave me the letter. I don't think ghosts can do that. Can they?"

"I dunno. Never seen a ghost." He looked down at the letter. "But no address. Not even the nearest town. How'd we—how would you take them up on this?"

"I have no idea." Hina shrugged. "I guess we'd have to ask someone. Or maybe the little disk that was in there does something."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Show me?"

Hina passed it over.

"Like a coin," Kai said. "But I dunno what it is." He shrugged and handed it back. "Except creepy. Let's never go there."

"Wherever it is."

He grunted. "So, they're gonna follow us?"

"At least until we're out in the wild."

"And then?"

"I'm not sure—it depends on whether they've found the body." She sighed. "Whether they've found it yet. I'm pretty sure they'll find it eventually."

"How long will that take? Did you hide it?"

"No. I thought about it, but he was way too big—I would have had to get help to move him. I figure it'll be a day or two at the most. He's almost never closed for a whole day, even if he sometimes opens late."

"And then what?"

"We keep going. Try to stay ahead of them, stay out of sight until we get to the city."

"But not after that?"

"I think if we make it to the city in time, they'll let us go."

"You think they'll protect us, even with him dead?"

"If not, we'll disappear into the crowds. Nobody will be able to find us."

"So we just go ahead with the original plan? Walk for six weeks and hope for the best?"

"Once we're in the wild, we move fast and avoid attention." Hina chewed at her bottom lip. "That's the main thing. And we stay away from other people. At least the first few days. If anyone asks, we're visiting family in the next town over. But, leave the talking to me, okay?"

Kai shrugged. "Suits me."

This would work. They wouldn't get caught, Hina wouldn't let them.

While the main roads weren't perfectly safe, they had a plan. They would be fine. If worst came to worst, Hina had her knife.

And there was more she could do to be prepared, when they were properly away from Grambe.

Ahead, the fields ended. There was no fence, just an abrupt line beyond which the crops no longer grew, like the sharp edge of... a biscuit.

Hina held up one hand and crouched at the boundary for cover. Half-hidden by the plants, she looked out.

The land was clear—grassy soil rose up to a huge wall of tangled brown and green, the Grambe hedge. Off to the side a stone cottage was dwarfed by the barrier plant.

Hina looked carefully, but nothing was moving out there. Hopefully they were early enough to avoid notice, and the guards were still searching through the fields, or on the main roads.

"Follow me." Hina walked out into the open, angling away from the caretaker's cottage towards an empty stretch of hedge.

The Grambe hedge was one of several key defenses against the wild, common to the towns and cities of the valley. Hina didn't know if people who lived elsewhere used hedges or not, now that she thought about it.

The lychfyr—the hedge—was covered in poisonous thorns, and grew to be very large with the right kinds of encouragement. The thorns weren't deadly to human beings, let alone to most of the beasts of the wild. But they were sharp enough to pierce through thick fur or scales, and the toxin was strongly soporific. The combination was enough to discourage idle exploration, even for many of the larger horrors.

With careful cultivation, the hedge allowed carts and people to pass through along hidden, winding paths. From the outside, these passages looked like nothing more than irregularities within a solid mass of angry thorns. Beasts on the ground outside couldn't see through the hedge, and the town itself was set far enough back from the border to prevent any but the loudest of sounds from passing over.

It wasn't a perfect system: the largest beasts could peer over the barrier. And sometimes others managed to follow travellers through. Occasionally the caretakers grew complacent, or hedges were destroyed, or—there were many possible points of failure.

Grambe hadn't seen anything like that in recent history, but it happened in other places. Sometimes whole towns were lost when the next lines of defence failed. The remains of one of them, Atherton, was on the route that Hina had planned to take them to the city.

They would be out there soon, in the wild with the monsters. Hopefully they could avoid attention.

The lychfyr was even bigger up close. It filled the sky, a wall of twisting branches covered in finger-length thorns and masses of tiny green-black leaves. A hint of decay was on the breeze.

There weren't any visible paths into the hedge. Not here, not anywhere in sight.

Last time they ran away—the only time that Hina had been outside of Grambe—they'd taken the main road, which was wider and much more obvious. But the two main roads out of Grambe were guarded, and those guards would be watching for them by now.

The main road wasn't an option. It hadn't worked last time, anyway. The guard had caught them only a couple of hours away from town.

The skin on the back of Hina's neck prickled. Where they were standing would be visible to anyone who came out of the fields—they needed to move.

"Keep an eye out for a way through," Hina said. "I don't know where the nearest path is."

She started walking along the hedge to her right, then broke into a jog.

The ground crunched, shifting slightly under her feet with every step. The dirt had a faint shimmer to it. Nothing else grew this close to the hedge.

More crunches came from behind her as Kai followed.

The edge of the thorns shifted back and forth as she jogged. With every dip and turn in the barrier, Hina was sure that this was the one, that this was their way out. Only to be disappointed when she drew closer and found another impenetrable wall of spines.

"There!" Kai called. "Quickly!"

It was a dark and narrow gap in the foliage, barely wide enough for a person, and almost too low for Hina to stand up straight. But it was there. A way out.

"Here!" A man's voice yelled from across the clearing behind them. "Found them!"

There were four of them in uniforms with spears.

And they were too late. Hina stepped into the opening.

She sucked in her breath, twisting her torso back and forth to avoid the thorns. The passage widened, just a little, the stench of rot intensified.

Her forearm caught on something, and Hina pulled it free as she pushed her way further in.

A thorn brushed through her hair, the roof of the passage lowered as it curved.

Hina hunched her shoulders to protect her head.

This wasn't one of the better maintained paths, the caretakers had let this one go to seed, for months or years. Hina half thought she should make a complaint: unmaintained passage hindered my flight from justice.

She only hoped that it went all the way through. The thought of having to turn around and go back was—she didn't want to think about that.

Light filtered through the foliage as the sun rose out of sight and overhead.

Something caught Hina's foot and she fell to her hands and knees. Her palms came down hard on the crunchy dirt, irregular shapes shifted under her weight.

The ground around her was scattered with them, pale things.

Bones. And wisps of fur among them.

Beasts of the wild. Beasts who tried to pass through the hedge and failed.

Hina lifted herself back up. She wouldn't be joining them. Hina wouldn't be feeding the barrier. Not now, not ever. She was getting out.

The roof lowered, and Hina dropped to her hands and knees.

She crawled, pulling her bag free where it had caught on the thorns above.

Hina's limbs felt heavy, the light dimmed.

Ahead, a gap. A way out of the endless tunnel.

She struggled for every movement now, forcing each limb forward as if against great resistance. She couldn't stop here, the bones under her hands and feet blending with the image of a knife and her hand on it.

Kai was—she hoped Kai was still behind her. Hina didn't have the energy to turn and look.

In a final burst of strength, she pushed herself through the gap and out of the hedge and into the dim morning light.

The thorny vegetation surrounded them on three sides, but through a gap directly ahead, beyond the shimmering dirt, grass extending down and beyond that, rolling hills.

The wild.

Kai pushed through the gap in the hedge behind her, bloodied but moving.

Hina collapsed to the ground and slept.