Chapter 131: THE LANE

"No."

It cost Aiden more than he expected.

He counted everything. Even his mother’s breaths coming shallower on her deathbed. Until no breaths remained to count.

He had counted his tears instead.

He’d felt Nyx go cold against his neck at night, warm again at dawn. He never counted that.

He chose never to. Not again. Not for those he loved.

And now, he couldn’t tell this woman one true thing about Nyx.

"No. I don’t."

"Mm." The woman didn’t look surprised. "What a man holds closest is what he’s looked at least. You’d be amazed how often that runs true."

She set another stick on the fire.

"The Academy wrote anomalous on that one. You know why?"

"How do you know about that? And what happens outside the fen? Who are you?"

"If the one who lives here isn’t enough for you, you can call me the keeper." She waved her hand, steering the discussion back where she wanted it.

"They wrote it because anomalous is the word men use for something that won’t sit in any of their boxes. Then you gave them D lineage. That’s the worst one. You needed a letter, so you picked the smallest you had, and the academy board went home to supper."

"It can’t be wrong." Aiden’s eyes flicked to his system, where Nyx was still listed as a D lineage.

"Of course it’s wrong." She nodded toward Nyx behind him. "Same lie the Association’s three surveyors wrote on their maps. When something won’t be measured, a man writes down the nearest false number and sleeps fine after. Your shadow there has worn a false letter since the day they judged it. You put one on it yourself. Everybody does."

Aiden held still.

The system can make mistakes. It just did by failing to assess the Fen’s area.

It did back then too. It had undercounted my lifespan during Miasma’s evolution in the unmapped sewer chamber.

It said it couldn’t read Nyx, then gave it D. Could it still have been wrong?

"Then tell me what Nyx is."

"I can’t." The keeper said it plainly, without shame.

Aiden clenched his fist in frustration.

She saw it. "I won’t lie just to please you. I don’t know what it is."

She looked at Nyx.

"But I can tell you I stopped hearing the fen the moment that one put a paw on the stones. First time it’s ever reacted to anything like that."

"Anything or anyone?" Aiden frowned. "Heard the church has kept watch around the time you settled."

"Both."

The keeper smiled. There was nothing warm in this one. She didn’t let him ask the next question.

"There it is." She wiped the spoon. "Four times a year one of them walks up to the fence. He stands there an hour and looks at the fen. Then he writes down that there’s nothing to report, and he goes home."

"So they’re surveying the ground?"

"They have never surveyed one foot of it."

"Then why do they come?"

"They’re waiting for the fen to go quiet." She set the spoon across the pot. "I don’t know what happens after that. Neither do they. But they know it means something, so they’ve kept a man at that fence for sixty years to make sure the Church hears it first."

She looked him straight in the eye.

"On your ground, son. Under your name. The next one who walks up to that fence is going to know, and then this stops being a claim nobody wanted. It becomes the most watched dirt in the province, and that little one at your feet is the reason."

Aiden’s hand had gone to the token under his shirt. He left it there.

We picked this place because nobody wanted it. That was the whole point.

The keeper stopped talking. She looked past him, down the slope, to the low ground where the fog turned thick and the firelight no longer reached. The bottom of the fen was pitch-black, the place Nyx had faced since they walked in.

Aiden turned to see what she saw.

Something was moving in the fog at the bottom of the slope. Shapes climbed the hill toward the fire, one after another.

They stopped at the edge of the firelight. None of them came closer than that.

Wool. Legs. Open eyes.

Sheep.

They looked like ordinary sheep, the same kind that had been grazing outside the stones two days ago.

Not one of them blinked.

Their sides rose and fell almost at the right speed for a sheep. Almost.

Six of them. Then nine. Then more.

Every one of them was looking at Nyx.

He looked at them through his Perception. Every living thing carried motes.

These carried none.

Behind Aiden, Cinder’s fire surged. Heat pressed against his back as her mane climbed higher. She had spent the whole night annoyed by the keeper. Now she had a row of targets to vent on.

Aiden patted her back without looking.

"Not yet."

Cinder held. Her claws worked the dirt. Her fire kept rising.

Miasma left the rock and set herself between Aiden and the row. The spines along her tail lowered, ready.

She had watched the keeper all evening and never made up her mind. She made it up now.

She turned her back on the keeper and faced the sheep instead.

You’ve decided what she is. She’s harmless. And she’s still being annoying on purpose with all her answers that go around in circles.

The keeper was standing. Aiden hadn’t seen her get up.

"Not once have they come up this hill in sixty years."

"They came for Nyx."

"They did."

Nyx left Aiden’s side.

It crossed the dirt toward the row, in no hurry.

Aiden moved to stop it.

The keeper caught his sleeve.

"Watch," she breathed.

"Watch what? I’m not letting Nyx go on its own to whatever this is."

Her hand was dry and hard, her grip stronger than he’d have guessed. He couldn’t pull free before Nyx reached the row.

The sheep parted.

They stepped aside, left and right, wool swinging. Their open eyes followed Nyx as they opened a black lane down the slope, toward the low ground that devoured light faster than it could spread.

Nyx walked into the lane.

The dark swallowed it a step at a time. The sheep closed the gap behind it, and soon Aiden could no longer see Nyx.

He pulled free, more worried for Nyx than angry at the old keeper.

Cinder lunged after Nyx before him, letting out panicked growls.

She bumped hard against the sheep, throwing them off.

Then she collided with something at the foot of the hill. She shook her head, looking for what it was. It was nothing she could find.

She backed and threw herself at the foot of the hill again, her whole shoulder behind it.

It held. She wasn’t getting down that way.

She let out a cracked howl. Fire stormed around her, lighting the upper slope behind her, where Aiden stood.

Below her, where Nyx had gone, the dark drank her light in a blink.

She glared at ten feet of ground she couldn’t cross, her mane guttering. She had gotten mad at the small dark pup yesterday. She had ignored its smug grin this morning.

But she wouldn’t let it fall into danger. Not when they climbed the fire country together and came down alive. Not after they managed to all stay together despite Percival’s trap at the Academy.

She turned. She set herself in front of the darkness that repelled her. She burned.

Even as the sheep thrown around turned into ash, she didn’t stop.

If Nyx rushed out chased by anything sent by the fen, she’d burn them before they laid a paw on her, on Aiden, or on Miasma.

The keeper spoke behind Aiden.

"You saw what the fen did to those sheep." She pointed down the lane, into the black. "At the bottom, it doesn’t stop at sheep. A person who walks all the way there comes back up as himself, or he doesn’t come back at all, and days later the fen sends something up the hill wearing his face."

She didn’t say which she thought he’d be.

"I know you won’t listen, and I’d rather not fight you. Go on. Your beast’s already down there."

Aiden glared at her. "If anything happens to Nyx, you’ll regret grabbing me."

He passed Cinder. "I’ll bring it back."

Cinder nodded, her rage charring the silver ground black.

He paused in front of the darkness, expecting to be stopped as Cinder had been.

Somehow, his hand passed through, then his chest. The sheep didn’t close on him either.

Three steps in, Cinder’s fire died behind him. The cold came through his boots.

The wrong breathing of the sheep stretched on both sides now, close enough to touch him. Dozens of them still formed two rows in here.

Not one head turned. They likely watched Nyx and let him walk down after it.

He couldn’t see Nyx anymore. He couldn’t see his own hands. He kept walking because the ground kept going down. There was nothing else to follow.

Whatever this place wants, it wants Nyx. I’m just luggage.