Derek stares at the pebbly beach in complete disbelief. He does not know what he was expecting, but it absolutely was not whatever that was. There isn’t even a mark to prove that the ground had recently swallowed a creature larger than a horse.

The water level in the pool has dropped enough that the ledge behind the fall is now a good two feet above the surface of the water. There is a clear path from one side to the other.

Derek doesn’t see his dropped bag of supplies anywhere. He must assume that it fell down into the abyss with the monster and half a lake’s worth of water. There really isn’t anywhere else to look for it.

On the other side of the much-reduced volume of water, Deirdre and the former sheriff stare in his direction with expressions of abject horror.

“What?” he asks, with an entirely honest shrug.

Deirdre slowly turns her palms open toward him in an expression of abject confusion.

“It made sense at the time,” he says, defending his action from an unspoken attack. “That thing wasn’t going to stop hunting even if it got what it wanted. We’d never be rid of it.”

“Yeah, sure thing,” Deirdre calls back, placing the butt of a bow that is almost as tall as she is on the ground and leaning on it. “You keep telling yourself that, Mr. Exorcist.”

Derek’s nose wrinkles in disgust at the thought.

Bootsie barks again, informing all who can hear about her current status. She clearly believes that her people abandoned her and left to her fate up at the very top of the cliff. It is a disgrace. A dishonor upon the house of Boots. All will rue the day they abandoned their bloodhound and went to face monsters without her fearless protection.

Or, that is what the barking sounds like.

Derek walks slowly across the exposed land bridge behind the waterfall in a haze of his own self-reflections. He does not know what to do next. Sheriff Burrows faints. Derek assumes that the man will probably die if they do not hurry back to town.

Bootsie, it seems, already does. Her wagging tail is an invitation and a reminder.

Derek and Deirdre prepare a litter out of branches and tall reeds from the now-more-exposed swampy end of the pool. They use it to drag the unconscious sheriff around to the opposite shore. There is no way they could haul him up that cliff.

As the least injured among the party, Derek is the one who climbs back up the cliff he has already traversed twice in one day. He scoops up the little dog and then scoots back down the cliff. There is nothing that could make him possibly care about how he looks to the only other humans for miles around. He sits his butt on the stone and scoots from stony turtle to stony turtle with his dog in his lap.

Once more holding her leash, Derek picks up the heavy end of the litter.

Sigismund wakes up as the makeshift carrying device gets jostled as they heft him across the exposed ledge.

He groans in pain and reaches for the injured leg. Derek looks at the damage, but the mud hides much. He splashes some clear river water to remove the grime and wishes he hadn’t.

Sigismund barely reacts to the sudden shock of cold. And that lack of reaction informs as much as the cleaning action reveals. The sheriff makes a high-pitched noise that could almost be mistaken for a whimper if he were anyone else.

Derek shakes his head sadly. That foot is going to be removed. That much is almost entirely certain. There is just too much damage. Everything that has not bruised purple has gone white with the cold. And the edges of the scabs have an unpleasant yellow colored goop forming on them already.

“There is another trail,” Sigismund says between gasps. His usually deep voice has traveled up an octave with the strain of holding himself together through the pain and exhaustion.

Deirdre takes directions from her cousin using landmarks. They most definitely looked different in the summer when anyone would have been using them, but there is a path through the woods that takes a much more gentle upward slope toward town. It leads across a small stream and through an old hunter’s cottage. The cottage appears to have burnt down ages ago. Derek does not remember visiting it when he was younger, but he was too young to be part of the crowd the sheriff spent his social time with.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Taking this path is almost like being a child again, traipsing through the woods without adult supervision. And dealing with what one encounters in the woods on one’s own.

But like children who have made mistakes, they must trudge home again in shame.

It seems fitting to Derek that the trio emerge from the woods at roughly the same place he entered them. The path exits near to the hangman’s tree. It is well past dark when he finally drags the injured sheriff past that ugly old thing.

If its branches shiver as they pass, that must just be a trick of the wind. The earth about its roots has been torn asunder. Giant claw marks mar the ground in deep furrows around the base of the tree.

Lights in all the town’s doorways glow a welcoming beacon for the exhausted trio. Derek takes the lead and Deirdre follows meekly behind.

This is a chance for her. Derek knows she could cut and run at any moment. It wouldn’t be a fast run, not with that injury, but it wouldn’t have to be with him feeling like the journey had replaced his bones with brittle glass and his eyelids with lead. He is so tired that it hurts. But he has done it. They made it back to town.

They only have a little further to go.

Faces appear in the lit windows of the residences they pass as they continue toward the center of town. People emerge after confirming that there is no horrible threat waiting for them in the darkness.

The crowd gathers in pajamas with woolen coats hastily grabbed on the way outdoors. They hold lit lanterns, previously burning expensive fuel to ward off the thing that ripped its way out from beneath the hangman’s tree. Derek sees his friends and neighbors. His mother cautiously approaches, her hair tucked under her long sleeping cap, but even she shies away from his grim visage.

With determination, he walks to the guardhouse where prisoners are kept and crimes are punished.

“You!” someone shouts. A handful of cow patty flies through the air and hits Deirdre squarely in the back. They fling profanity as well.

Derek drops the litter before anyone else in the crowd can join. He pushes Deirdre roughly aside to stand between her and the accuser. Its occupant protests weakly at the abrupt decline of his seat.

The woman burglar, who he has never known to show weakness in public, hangs her head in shame. A tiny sniffle escapes from behind the hand that hides her face. Derek realizes belatedly that she is weeping behind that meager shelter.

“No.” It isn’t exactly a verbose defense of the indefensible, but it is what Derek can come up with on the spot.

“The sheriff!” someone yells.

“Get away from there, that’s my boy!” one of the Burrows clan muscles his way through the crowd. “What did she do to him!” the wide man demands. The stripes on his pajamas do nothing to hide his girth.

“She saved my life, dad,” Sigismund coughs out from his decrepit heap of human parts. He might as well be a corpse for all he looks lively. “I owe her for it.”

The elder Burrows looks at his son in confusion.

“I owe her everything,” Sigismund continues, as if the speaking gives rather than takes his strength. “And I owe her an explanation most of all.”

His father rushes at him with raised fists, but Sigismund does not flinch. Derek discovers within himself a reservoir of energy that he did not know existed. The lawman intercedes, placing himself between the abusive man and his son.

“The magistrate will hear the confession,” Derek states firmly, “and none will stop it now.”

From the crowd, helpers emerge. Two sturdy youths from the dairy take the man by the shoulders and hold him back. Derek recognizes another of the Burrows clan, a tall man with one hand. He approaches carefully with a blanket.

Deirdre looks up at her father and sees him through the fish-eyed lens of tear-stained eyes. He drapes the warm blanket across her shoulders.

She hands him the bow and the broken arrow. He holds them for her with his only good hand. The arm that is missing its proper terminal points wraps around her in a sideways hug. There has rarely been a hug at this time of night that was more necessary than that.

Deirdre sobs loudly the rest of the way to the guardhouse. She makes no move to resist being sat down in a chair in an office.

A warm damp towel sits on the table in front of her.

Someone places a bowl of soup next to it.

Derek waits for her to process what it is for. He stands by the door patiently.

“What happens next?” Deirdre asks, looking up at him carefully. Her father’s blanket still drapes across her shoulders.

“I don’t know all of it,” Derek answers with complete honesty. “There will be questions, of course. You’ll have to account for all the wrong that was done and all the people who you hurt by planting the false evidence.”

“But?” she says, her eyes searching his. Her raised brows suggest a faint hope.

“But you can provide evidence that your cousin will corroborate that you were not the one orchestrating this.” Derek picks up a similar warm towel from a tray on the sideboard. “The magistrate may adjust your sentence considering the cost of your cooperation.”

Deirdre looks at the white linen towel, still steaming in the warm room.

Derek carefully wipes his hands clean of river grime. He picks up his own bowl of soup and sits down in the chair across from her to eat.

Deirdre carefully picks up the warm towel.

And washes her hands clean.