and streets, zigzagging and taking unpredictable turns, but he was bigger and he was faster and he was gaining on her. She couldn’t outrun a bearwun.
She had to outsmart him.
Morrigan’s brain went into overdrive, taking inventory of everything she passed, anything that might help her.
Brolly Rail cable. No platform, and you don’t have a brolly.
Tree. He’ll climb up after you.
Fire hydrant. No idea.
Tricksy Lane.
Wait.
Tricksy Lane. Red Alert.
A Red Alert Tricksy Lane meant High-danger trickery and likelihood of damage to person on entry. Morrigan had to make a choice: risk unknown danger down a Tricksy Lane, or the absolute certain danger that when her body tired out, she would be mauled by a vicious nine-foot bearwun with claws the size of pocketknives. She hadn’t learned enough of the Wundrous Arts yet to protect herself – maybe Inferno, but she had no idea what to do with that. Something was wrong with Brutilus. He needed help, not an errant fireball.
It really wasn’t much of a choice.
Without slowing down, she turned into the tiny street, ready to confront whatever it had in store. She was barely three metres past the Red Alert sign when water blasted at her from every direction, filling the alleyway and her nose and mouth and ears and tumbling her over and over like she’d just fallen from a ship in a storm. Wave after wave slammed into her, and every time she managed to get her head above the surface she was hit by another.
Morrigan had no idea if bears – or bearwuns for that matter – could swim, but she knew she had an advantage over Brutilus. She knew how Tricksy Lanes worked.
She knew that if you wanted to get through one, you had to lean into whatever horrible trick it tried to play on you. Let it happen, push farther into the lane until you could hardly stand it any longer, until you thought it might just about be the end of you … and only then would it let you go.
At least, that was how the Tricksy Lanes she’d come across before had worked.
She stopped trying to fight against the onslaught, stopped trying to keep her head above water. She swam into the tumultuous oncoming waves, not away from them, diving beneath them one after the other, feeling like she might be about to drown or be swept away. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to keep her safe.
Morrigan felt a sudden searing pain down the side of her leg and screamed underwater.
A flash of green light, a cloud of blood.
She kicked out and her foot met something solid. Brutilus Brown. His face loomed above hers briefly, all open jaws and enormous teeth and ferociously glowing green eyes, as they tumbled over each other in the water. He swiped at her again, missed, and then another wave hit and he was gone.
Morrigan tasted blood and salt. Her chest ached.
Her lungs had nothing left in them and her limbs had stopped working and she was sinking to the bottom of the alley like a stone and – oh, this was it, it was over, this was really it, and then—
Air.
Morrigan emerged, gasping, from the water at last. She slumped in a twisted heap on the cobbled ground as the ocean departed in a sudden, deafening whoosssshh.
Then silence.
She’d done it. She’d pushed through the trick.
And all she’d had to do was drown.
Every bit of her was heavy with saltwater – her clothes, her hair, her boots. She coughed up mouthfuls of it, choking and spluttering as she tried to heave air into her lungs. Her throat was burning.
But there was no bearwun in sight.
When she’d mastered her breathing, Morrigan forced herself to sit up, wincing from the pain and effort of that simple task. Her left trouser leg was torn. Big, deep claw marks ran from above her knee to halfway down her calf. She was still bleeding, and now that the adrenaline had worn off, her entire leg ached and throbbed. She wasn’t certain she’d be able to stand without help.
Even more worrying, Morrigan had no idea where she was. She couldn’t go back the way she’d come, that she knew. The streets were dark and she was shivering with cold and there was nobody around to help her …
And … and she’d just been attacked by a bearwun and drowned, for goodness’ sake!
Suddenly, Morrigan felt like crying. She thought she might do exactly that – just sit there on the ground, in her