When the squirrel was finally cooked and had been left to cool, Jenifer removed the spear and began tearing strips of meat from the carcass. She handed a sizable portion to Lowen.

  “You leave none for the koskin?”

  Jenifer snorted rudely. “That is what children do.”

  It was a Scrat tradition when eating beyond the village to leave a tribute for the koskin, the small creatures of faerie often indiscernible from the trees and rocks of the forest—the true children of Nymed. That was if you believed in such things. In recent centuries, the koskin had been glimpsed less and less until even those who spent their lives hunting in the deeper parts of the forest often dismissed dim and distant accounts of mysterious forest creatures as little more than children’s stories.

  Still, Jenifer glanced again at Lowen, her forehead creased, before carefully reaching for the squirrel’s tail she had left discarded beside a pile of its greasy bones. She laid it out on a flat stone beside the fire. As Lowen watched it gleaming in the firelight—a long tapering plume the colour of an autumn sunset—she wondered what it was like to be Jenifer. To never see a giant’s face in a rock or watch for koskin in every flicker of a bright river on a summer’s day. Jenifer was firmly wedded to the rational world. She was only interested in what she could see, track and aim at with a cocked arrow.

  Later that night, after the sisters had spread their bedrolls beside the dying fire and drifted into sleep, a fleeting noise her dozing mind could not quite hold onto woke Lowen with a start. She lay listening in the purple dark, idly scanning the plateau of stars arching overhead. Aikana was waning—a thin purple sliver hanging suspended before the silver ghost of Mamai. A faint breath of wind whispered about the highest branches of the trees. She wondered what had woken her.

  Lowen lurched into a sitting position when a second ugly, throaty sound called out into the night. It sounded like an incantation. Then, beyond the line of trees surrounding their camp, deep in the thick darkness where her night sight failed, she heard the unmistakable sound of feet crunching on dry leaves.

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  Wild-eyed, her quickening heartbeat pulling every nerve in her body taught, Lowen reached for her sister’s turned shoulder and shook it firmly, rousing her from sleep.

  “What is it?” Jenifer grumbled, still halfway inside a dream.

  A soft, melodic chanting—half song, half lilting wail—cut through the clearing. Jenifer rose immediately, her face pale and stricken.

  “The keening wraiths,” she whispered. She was finding it hard to catch her breath.

  Lowen held Jenifer’s gaze as the long, low chant petered out. She knew of the keening wraiths, all the Scrat did. They were warned about them from childhood.

  “It is death to look upon the keening wraiths,” their mothers would say. “They will bind you with their bloody sheets and break every bone in your body. Before you have time to absorb the shock of your agony, they will drag you down into the black water and you will never be seen again. Run when you hear their call. Run and don’t look back.”

  Another barked, deep-throated incantation shook Lowen and Jenifer from their terrified stupor and they scrambled to their feet. Wordlessly, they reached for their weapons and packs, stowing as much gear as they could before turning from the hideous sound and ducking beneath a fringe of overhanging trees in what they fervently hoped was the opposite direction. They began to run, only stopping to speak to each other once they were a good distance away.

  "You scoff at leaving tribute for the koskin but you fear the keening wraiths?” Lowen said. It was a vain attempt to lighten the situation and dull her own fright.

  “The keening wraiths I have heard many times. The koskin I have never glimpsed.”

  Lowen wanted to question her sister further but thought better of it. She would rather wait until they were safe and warm, surrounded by the flickering lights of their village and the comforting presence of their kin. She concentrated on her feet, skirting stiff clumps of tall grass and stepping over tree roots. She imagined tripping and falling, perhaps breaking a leg or snapping an ankle, and shook the horrifying thought from her head, pushing herself to match Jenifer’s strident pace as they pressed on through the forest.

  They walked for another half a mile, the only sound the rise and fall of their own harried breath. When Jenifer stopped sharply, Lowen almost fell back into a shallow ditch filled with the last of autumn’s mouldering leaves.

  “What can you hear?” she whispered.

  The answer came before Jenifer could answer. The long, low song started again, the voice high-pitched like a child’s. It was coming from the path ahead of them.