Written by Heather Arnold
Illustrated by Marian Crane
76 pages, comb bound, cardstock covers
Cat Dumas' family was a human rarity: magically gifted and aware of that gift. Until the day that gift became a curse in the form of a Sidhe mage, and Cat found herself alone and hunted.
"Papa?"
The old mage turned at the voice, the quavering child's voice. The room was dark-the shades drawn, the ceiling light long since broken in the heat of battle, but with cat-eye vision, the old mage stared in shock toward the door, and the whisper of life, human life, beyond.
"Papa?"
He could see the form in another moment, one thin arm feeling along the wall, big eyes wide, straining for absent light, face drawn in fear, as if she knew the horrors that lay masked by the blanket of darkness.
The child. The girl.
I had forgotten.
Leathery wings rustled just behind him, and he knew that his creatures saw her too, and waited in tense anticipation for him to signal an attack.
He smiled. Here was a plaything after all, and a measure of vengeance against the one who had thwarted him. Of course, she was a child of the infidel, and so he had no wish to capture her and preserve her weak blood. Terenel was right—they were human cattle. There were noble humans among the livestock, but none here—none worth his interest and respect.
Dumas' seed—she would die for the sins of her father, but she would not die quickly or painlessly. He meant to break this human thoroughly before he ended her life.
No mistake do I make this time, he thought. What surprise could there be in a child?
*****
The little red Honda Civic hummed contentedly down the road at sixty-five, just one car among many that shared the darkening road. To the girl inside, the constant, steady drone was the most comforting sound in the world, covering everything in a blanket of unfeeling. Driving along the Atlanta bypass, listening to the hum-and-thump of asphalt/concrete roads under the Civic's wheels, she hummed along with the nondescript rock tune.
In spite of herself, in spite of being a hard-core “outdoors type,” she'd loved the small part of Atlanta that she could see from the bypass, the graceful curves and great frozen arches of the highway bridges, the crystalline shining of the skyscrapers she had seen twinkling in the distance. Even the kudzu, by God—even that annoying, monotonous plant had its own grace in her eyes. It blanketed forests' worth of trees by the road in graceful, draping concealment.
Like snow. Like green snow—or a frozen waterfall.
Everything was muted, hidden. And hidden is what you want to be. Take a lesson from an old and obnoxious plant, Cat—there are always ways to hide what needs to be hidden, whether it's with graceful words or kudzu. You tried truth and no one believed you—now is the time to hide.
