Chapter XII: Ghost – Children

He was running, hunting in the night as he followed a stag through the dark woods his human cut down in the daytime. Ghost didn’t understand, but that was humans for you, always doing strange stuff. The stag was old already, and weakened, but after weeks of hares and squirrels, he felt his mouth water at the thought of fresh deer meat. In the back of his mind, he felt his human agree.

But then, suddenly, there was a different smell. It was old, musty and green, like decaying leaves on the forest floor further south, where he had been born.

I want to know what that is, the voice in the back of his head whispered.

He whined at the idea of missing out on the stag, at missing out on the thrill of the hunt and the taste of the meat, but he too was curious. Was it a danger, like the moving dead and the frozen men? Or was it a different kind of prey? And so he followed his nose, up a slope, then down another, weaving his way past trees and bushes until he reached the mouth of a cave and the little stream flowing past it. The smell was strong here, and fresh.

A splash, and he turned his head to look at the small creature filling a ceramic pot with water. It looked and smelled like a human, but also, not like a human. The skin looked like bark and the hair like leaves. Its eyes seemed golden in the moonlight. It smelled of earth and decay. He could feel his human recognize what he saw, but couldn’t make sense of it himself.

The creature too had noticed him and its huge eyes bore into him.

Go, a new, foreign voice murmured in his head. We have no quarrel with you. Leave us in peace, and it will stay that way.

For a moment, he hesitated. The creature was small. But it was old, and he had lived long enough to learn that things that small and fearless didn’t grow this old by being prey. He left, upwind, until he couldn’t smell the creature anymore. Then he tried to catch the scent of something else to hunt.

Fin

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