when the cat is hunting.
Without ever making the decision she found herself running, half blind, crazed with an unreasoning terror. The path became a tunnel, roofed by low-hanging branches; then the tunnel became a funnel, one of those pens built to drive cattle into a pen, to meet the branding iron or the butcher.
She tried to stop her legs, to think, to plan, but she kept running, despite the pain in her chest and her side, the gasping agony of her breath, the aching heaviness of legs pushed past endurance.
Poe.
She looked back over her shoulder. No penguin.
Damn it.
Her legs stopped their frenetic pumping. She turned full around and retraced her steps, hands pressed to her aching sides, sucking in air in great burning gulps. Poe came around a corner at full speed, short legs churning, neck stretched forward, useless wings outspread. When he saw her, he emitted a pitiful little quawrk and ran full tilt into her legs, quivering, feathers ruffled, beak open and gasping.
A new sound now, in the distance. No mere breaking of twigs, but a cracking of branches. Treetops swayed, but there was no wind.
Vivian’s feet were glued to the path, bones turned to jelly. She was doomed to cower here like a frightened rabbit and let the thing get her.
No, you’re not.
Scooping the penguin up into her arms, she got herself moving again. This time she pushed her way off the path, forcing her way through a wall of undergrowth that scratched and tore and resisted her. She came to a barrier that wouldn’t let her through, solid interlaced thorns. Behind her a swath of swaying and falling treetops moved in her direction, a crashing and dragging growing ever closer.
Poe struggled in her arms, pecking at her hand. She released him and he dove forward onto his belly, wriggling through a gap, low in the tangle of thorns. Clumps of feathers caught on the branches, but he vanished from her sight and she flung herself down and followed.
Barbs tore at her shirt and into her back; she felt the sting, the wetness of blood, but she was moving through the barrier, grass and dirt cool beneath her hands, fingers digging down into the soil for traction, elbows pressed close to her sides. It seemed to last forever; wriggle forward, dig with her fingers, pull, push with her toes. Again and again, until her fingernails were bleeding and her back burned and bled.
When she broke through the other side, the wood had changed.
Here the trees were even taller. The tops of them formed a canopy that shut out the sky. As compensation for the gloom, the forest floor was relatively clear. No more thorn bushes, no brambles.
No more maze.
Something was wrong about this. All of her experiences with the Between had involved some sort of winding pathway or tunnel or corridor. But the pendant still hung around her neck, assurance that they hadn’t passed back into a dream, and this sure as hell wasn’t Wakeworld. Uneasy, she turned in a full circle, looking for any signs of danger. So far, there was no sign of a pursuit, nothing visible that was cause for alarm.
Poe huddled at her feet, running his beak through his feathers, nuzzling, preening. A smear of red marked his breast. Vivian knelt beside him. “Let me look,” she said, and he stood still and let her examine the gash in his chest. It was jagged but shallow. Should heal up all right, although she wished she had something to use as a disinfectant.
With no path to follow, Vivian struck out in the direction she hoped led away from their pursuer. The greater the distance they could put between themselves and the dragon, the better. It would have a hard time here, if it was of the size she thought it. Most of the trees were too big to push over, close enough together to hamper its progress. Birds twittered and chirped. A woodpecker pounded away at a nearby tree. Peaceful as it seemed, Vivian kept walking, still driven by a sense of ever-present danger.
At last she felt she couldn’t take another step. Exhausted, she sank down to the earth with her back against a sturdy tree trunk. The scratches ached and throbbed, but she couldn’t reach them, could only tolerate the pain and be grateful she lived to feel it. Poe settled down beside her.
Bees buzzed around a flowering bush. A squirrel scolded off in the distance. Vivian’s nostrils filled with the scent of