come, but the road was no longer empty—there was someone there, a figure standing on the road. Man or woman, I couldn’t tell, but they were coming toward me with long, purposeful strides. I turned, scrambling down the face of the hill instead. Pebbles shot out from under my feet, making a sound like rain. I had to get to safety. I had to get help. But where either of those things were, I had no idea.
I chanced a look behind me, slowing so I didn’t trip and send myself on a neck-snapping journey down the hill. My eyes scuttered over the dark and the mist, finding no purchase—but then the figure on the road moved. It was still coming for me. It let out a sound between a howl and a scream, and broke into a loping run.
I pelted down the hill so fast I almost overbalanced myself. I hit the base of the slope hard enough that pain lanced through my shins, but I didn’t break stride. I’d angled away from the road, heading toward the inward curve of the island. There: A house. Not Mrs. Popova’s. This must be where Mikhail’s house was, if it matched the real world.
I ran up on the nearest porch and hammered on the door. No answer. I tried the knob, and it turned. The door swung inward—but it was more like folding it inward on a seam, no hinges at its edge. I stared in from the doorway.
It was like a patchwork room. Parts of the walls were wood paneling. But there were gaps of bare, utterly featureless wall too. The rest of the room was the same way: a kitchen table set with a dinner of roast chicken and carrots—the far end of which ended abruptly, held up by gray, stony spikes instead of wooden legs. A door opened into another room, but there was only a crooked sliver of the room visible beyond and then—nothing. Solid, blank gray.
I stepped back, and back again. From here, all I could see through the windows was the normal-looking room, because that was all there was. There was only what you could see from the windows, as if it was a diorama created by someone who had never ventured inside. I backed away, swallowing hard and battling panic.
The ground thrummed. I could feel it through the soles of my feet, and the windowpanes rattled with it.
My pursuer was running down the street toward me. He passed through the oily circle of light beneath one of the lanterns, and I recognized him with a startled jerk. Bristling beard, huge shoulders. Mikhail.
I couldn’t outrun him, but I sprinted away, hoping the distance between us would buy me some time to find safety, find help. But I didn’t make it far. Two houses down, a buckle in the pavement caught the toe of my shoe and I sprawled forward, hands scraping painfully against the ground, and then the footsteps were on me. Blunt fingers dug into my arms. I screamed in raw terror as he flipped me onto my back, the bulk, the sheer weight of him seeming to crush all coherent thought from me.
A meaty hand closed around my throat. I couldn’t breathe. My limbs smacked against the implacable mass of his body. His breath washed over me. It was hot and stank of low tide: fish rot and brine. Spots of color burst in my vision. The strength leached out of me quicker than I could have imagined possible and then—
A horrible cawing screech and a flurry of black feathers signaled my rescue. The man reared back, letting out a wordless bellow and swiping at the air, but his avian attacker was already wheeling away into the sky, screaming right back at him. Moriarty. I didn’t waste the time it bought me. I scrambled upright, my limbs sluggish and my breath seeming to ooze back into my body reluctantly. My vision slewed over the landscape, searching for something, anything to tell me which way to run, and caught against the pale figure at the end of the road, standing in the center of a yellowed patch of light, mist coiling around her knees. The girl.
She beckoned. I went to her. I glanced back once to see Moriarty still harassing the giant, diving at him and then flapping wildly to gain altitude and avoid the swipes of those massive hands. Then I had reached the light, and the girl.