the world is so wild, beautiful and terrifying, and everywhere we turn, a new atrocity. then, i close my eyes and picture joy. among things, there is this day. among faces, there is yours. and i am no longer afraid.
book i of ii ─ 'silverwood' duolo...
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CONTACT: EZRA SAVAGE
ABOUT THREE HOURS LATER they reach Pittsburgh. Annika's contact arranged for them to meet at Johnny's Diner. Johnny's Diner was a small, family-owned restaurant set along Saw Mill Run, a tributary named for a saw mill that once operated nearby where the run met the Ohio River. Annika liked cities that were by the water; Pittsburgh in particular was a confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, which together formed the Ohio. Pittsburgh wasn't unique in this particular geographical regard, but the thought of it—rather, the fact—comforted Annika as Steve drove them through South Shore into Ridgemont.
Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio. Annika held onto the words, the water, like a stone, a trinket, a talisman to turn over in her palm, over and over and over again. Over and over until she was safe; until the evil was warded off.
Or rather, the past.
It was a peculiar day in Pittsburgh. The afternoon sunlight barely bled through the clouds, but the trees of the city seemed to have missed the memo, their leaves like fire in the breeze. Flickering in burning shades of red, orange and yellow. Annika could close her eyes and imagine heat instead of the creeping chill of a world drawing close to winter, to the long dark. She could even trick herself into smelling smoke, a hearth stoked somewhere in the distance, a pillar of dark grey, almost black threading silky through the sky. Pale and insolent. Somewhere, a great shudder in the woods. The sound of steps, both human and animal, beating at the damp ground through leaves. Red and dead, Lettie used to say. Dead and red.
Annika could picture it. Following Lettie through the forest in search of her father, her eyes fixed on the back of the young girl's head and the braid she wore almost religiously. Tight, intricate, shiny as a spiderweb in the morning and the drops of dew that settle upon it in the night. Lettie looks over her shoulder to smile back at her keeper, adjusting her bow and arrow as she trudges through the leaf litter. She looks ridiculous; what little girl carries around a bow and arrow? What little girl knows how to use it?
It's hunting season. A dog barks, dry and guttural. Dexter's prize foxhound, no doubt: a marvel of an animal, all muscle and teeth, fur and ferocity. Both he and his owner are out for blood: deer, foxes, whatever they can flush out of the forest.
"Left here, right?" Steve asks, amidst silence, amidst memory.
I hope it's not another rabbit, Lettie says, frowning.
Annika's reply: It might be. I'll go first. She touches Lettie's shoulder, sidestepping past her, her expression dark, still. Like the forest air around them before the gunshot sears through the silence, shatters it. Shit. Don't look, okay?
"Annika?"
"Yeah, it's left here. Sorry."
The hunter doesn't discriminate. A kill is a kill. Prey is prey. Annika pulls away from Lettie and the forest, and returns to the present. She ignores the fall foliage that smothers Pittsburgh, and focuses instead on Steve. "We're only a few minutes out."
