Author's Notes: This is in indeed the last chapter of Out of Darkness. It's a little bit of an odd breaking point, but I knew I wanted to leave it like this fairly early on. I'm definitely not done with the series, though. Next up are a couple of one-shots to fill in the timeline a bit. We'll come back to this trio in a bit. o/

Chapter 4

All things end.

So too, eventually, did the snow.

It stopped falling after an eternity of frigid wind and muffled white, and three pairs of eyes lifted toward the sky that night, expectant and watchful.

The next day, leaves began to reappear on the birch trees. Wes plucked one with bare fingers – he'd long since relinquished his gloves to Wendy – and brought it before Mrs. Wickerbottom.

"It took them long enough," she said, inspecting it with pursed lips. "Well, off we go, then. All of us."

So the next day, off they went – all of them.

Wendy ventured south, with the fishing pole and her sister, to see whether the ponds had thawed. Mrs. Wickerbottom combed the plains for newly-sprouted grass.

And Wes turned east, past the rock field with its long-legged and ill-tempered birds. It was a grueling hike – a full day's trip in summer – but at the end of it was a pretty little meadow stuffed with berry bushes and carrots, and if the birches had returned, perhaps these had, as well.

Mrs. Wickerbottom had fixed him with a piercing stare when Wes first suggested it with a finger pointed east, a hopeful smile, and a gesture at himself.

"It's very far," she said at last, tone disapproving.

And Wes had indicated the ice box, where their jerky supply had dwindled to a few sad scraps. He'd lifted his eyebrows, as if to say: is there a choice?

And Mrs. Wickerbottom had sighed a weary sigh. "Don't be foolish and attempt to make it back tonight," she told him. "You'll freeze."

Wes had nodded, appropriately contrite. She'd packed a bag for him, with the wood for his fire, the fuel to keep it high and bright, and two of their remaining pieces of jerky. He gave one of the jerky strips back – offered her a smile and a bright wave – and set out before she had the chance to argue.

She would have done better, Wes reflected much later, to forbid foolishness in all its forms.

Perhaps that would have stopped him from attempting a shortcut between the nests of two of those cursed birds. He had done it before; there was a place where the boulders clustered in an ungainly line, pressed tight together, through which someone careful and quiet could slip. Going around one way or the other added hours to the journey, for you had to skirt the boulders and then the adjoining fissure leading down into the sea.

Wes did not relish the thought of the extra hours out in the cold – did not relish the exhausting travel, prudent but unnecessary. He had been as quiet as he knew how, crept between the massive rocks as he had so many times before. And then his foot had found a patch of ice and shot out from under him. He'd gone down in an ungainly pile, striking his head. And when he'd regained his feet, two of the massive creatures were looking his way, cruel beaks parted.

Wes had run.

And now, here he was at the meadow – late and bleeding and half frozen, not a single berry to his name.

Foolish, he told himself again, and probed a gash on his forearm: a present left by one of the birds, in payment for poor decisions. Wes grimaced. There were scraps of rabbit skin in camp that might serve as a bandage, but here he had nothing. It would have to wait for the attention it needed.

Above him, the sky had grown dark with the onset of night, and there on the horizon he could make out the black shapes of thick, foreboding clouds. With a thread of anxiety, he wondered if perhaps they had been too hasty to assume the return of spring. The snow might not be done with them yet.

He set his camp near a duo of straggling birches – bent to coax the fire to life with fingers that were nearly numb. When the first flickers of flame bloomed, he fed them carefully, protectively, and as soon as they grew high enough, he shoved his hands toward the offered warmth.

Night came, chill and unforgiving, and the wind whipped in off the boulder field like a line of knives cutting into his skin.

Wes urged the fire higher and huddled as close as he dared, tucking arms and legs in to preserve warmth. When he'd finally stopped shivering, and the stone tucked against his skin began to give off heat again, he fished the strip of jerky from his bag.

It was tough; he had to worry the meat with his teeth for a long time before it gave way, and once it was in his mouth, he left it longer still, sucking at the salty strands of it. It was not a lot of food. The longer he spent in eating it, the less time he would spend wishing he had more.

Across the boulder field, he could just make out a faint glow – the campfire where Wendy and Mrs. Wickerbottom would be gathered, safe behind walls of wood. The sight brought a smile to his lips, despite the cold. However unbearable this world might be, they made it worth waking each morning to see what yet lay in store.

The night crept on. The shadows grew longer, unsettling motion at the corners of his vision. In the darkness, eyes watched him tend his small fire, to keep it from going out.

And then came the noise.

No, not a noise. A noise was something for the ears alone. This was a full-body experience, a colossal impact that filled his awareness and shook the ground. Wes was on his feet in an instant, backpack in hand, waiting. The sound came again, nearer this time.

He had heard something like it once, he thought.

It was buried in the scraps of memory from the before-times, something to match this world-shaking cacophony. A distant image: wooden chests crumbling like dry kindling beneath powerful limbs. A half-buried recollection: the freezing wind sweeping in after, through the gaps in what had once been walls, to steal the life from him.

Wes pressed near the birches, trying to make himself small in their shadows.

And then he saw it: a great, shaggy beast, taller than the trees. Its horns were like branches struck by lightning, stark and bare and sharp; its hooves meeting the ground was enough to shake the world.

Wes watched it, eyes huge, heart pounding in his throat. Do not see me, he willed it, desperate. Mon Dieu, do not let it see me.

He crouched between the trunks of the birches, and his fingers shook as he bound twigs together, a quick twist and pull that had become second nature. The torch was a crude thing, but if he needed to run, he would be able to – flee blind into the darkness with all its horrors.

But the immense creature passed him, and with each footfall the ground shook less as it began to recede. It was moving away from him, into the boulder field. It had not seen his small fire, or perhaps had not seen him hidden there between the birches.

It was on its way west.

West, his brain clamored, in sudden alarm.

It had not seen him, no. But there in the distance, the glow from a much larger fire was still visible against the sky, the outline of the wooden wall hard and vivid among the natural shapes. Panic rolled over him in a smothering, icy wave. An invisible hand closed around his heart and squeezed.

Perhaps it was benign, some babbling voice inside him suggested, attempting to battle down the terrified certainty. Perhaps it would not care for the larger fire any more than it had his own.

But Wes did not believe that – not for an instant. He could not clear his mind of the thought of Wendy and Mrs. Wickerbottom, stretched around the fire on the fur roll, wrapped in rabbit skins. Could not shake the image of Wendy coming awake as those massive hooves began to shake the ground.

He shoved the torch into the remnants of his campfire and it burst into flame. He recalled Mrs. Wickerbottom's voice, mildly reproving: "Don't be foolish and attempt to make it back tonight."

For a brief, blinding instant, he was grateful he had no voice. He thought that otherwise, he might have laughed until it gave out, for he felt near the edges of hysteria.

Then he was moving, not giving himself a chance to second-guess. The darkness was complete, the circle of light cast by the torch barely enough to illuminate the ground in front of him. He nearly fell over the sleeping form of one of the birds, curled on its nest, and scarcely paused to spare it a glance.

He could hear the larger creature in the distance – the rolling crash of its footfalls, and then a bellow that split the air and rolled through his head like the thunder of a thousand storms.

It was slow, and that would help. It was slow, and perhaps the boulders would force it to take a longer route, for it could not fit through the path that Wes preferred. In the darkness, he found his shortcut – slipped through and stepped over the icy patch that had knocked him sprawling before.

Then the creature was behind him, and Wes did not waste to time to see whether it had become tangled in the maze of boulders. He ran. He ran until the muscles in his legs burned and his chest felt like it was on fire. The wind cut hard and deep, and he could not feel his fingers. He looked down, again and again, to ensure by sight that they still held tight to the torch.

He remembered a lecture on frostbite as though it was a distant dream, and he tucked his chin, and he kept going.

He burst into camp with perhaps a five minute lead, shaking all over, torch nearly burned out. Mrs. Wickerbottom was bent over her manuscript – the new one, on the properties of the feathers of winter birds – and she glanced up when he came in. Her eyes widened; her mouth fell open. "What on earth –"

Wes was by her side in an instant, pulling at her arm, pointing frantically into the darkness.

"The hounds?" she asked, and he shook his head, knelt by Wendy and shoved at her shoulder until she came groggily awake.

She was just a child, a bare slip of a girl, though the moment when she woke was the only time she let herself look it, face soft and unguarded. "What…?" she asked, groggy and thick with sleep, and Wes turned from her, sloughed off the backpack and began to stuff in whatever supplies he could put hands on.

Wood for a fire, the extra pairs of earmuffs, leaf-packets of healing salve.

Abigail was watching him, wide eyes pale and unreadable; the dead girl drifted higher, and higher still, so that she could peer out above the walls. She stayed there, looking into the darkness, and Wes wondered whether she could see it approaching.

Mrs. Wickerbottom began to move, seeming to catch his urgency. Into a second pack she shoved the remaining jerky and a handful of fresh fish, newly-harvested grass and a pile of twigs.

Wes was wrapping together a new torch when they felt it: that deep, bone-shuddering crash.

"That sounded big," Wendy whispered. Wes nodded, frantic, and the impact came again, nearer now, louder.

He lit the new torch from the fire pit, and now Wendy was moving, too, scooping up an axe and the rabbit skin blanket.

The next footfall shook the ground beneath them, and Wes began to drag Wendy toward the entryway. He shoved the torch into her hand, turned to take Mrs. Wickerbottom by the arm, and she was – not there. Was bent over the chest, salvaging her manuscripts.

He flapped his hands at Wendy – go – and she slipped out into the night, her sister in tow, as Wes circled back around. His free hand seized the partially finished treatise, and the other took Mrs. Wickerbottom's hand, and he hauled her toward the entryway with all his strength.

He was not fast enough.

For the creature had come, with its massive horns and its single, awful eye. It stood head and shoulders above their wall, looking in, and it opened its mouth and bellowed again.

Reality seemed to dissolve a little around the edges. Later, the events would come in jagged bits and pieces, as though they were the grainy, jerky footage in a film reel.

Now the creature was crashing through their walls as though it were a selfish child breaking a toy it no longer wanted, and Mrs. Wickerbottom, voice awed and afraid, was saying: "Laurasiatheria!"

Now he collided with the far wall and pain exploded, and Mrs. Wickerbottom went down badly, with one leg twisted beneath her.

Now a terrible certainty descended: they would die here, and Wes would begin again and wake to Maxwell's grinning face, and he would never find either of them, and that is how he would spend his days until the end of time.

Now a splintering noise rent the air as their drying racks came apart under a hooved foot, and he was hauling Mrs. Wickerbottom to her feet, getting one arm over his shoulders and taking half her weight. He led her, staggering, toward a flattened section of wall. Then they were down again, and there was blood, and he could not recall how it had happened.

Now Abigail appeared, her small, glowing form so tiny before the giant's bulk. They were moving again, somehow, disjointed and listing, but Wes did not know when they had managed to stand. He was gasping in great, silent, sobbing breaths, and there in the black of the night, Wendy was waiting with the torch.

Now darkness. Pain. Cold. Vague impressions – nothing more.

Then fire: Wendy's small hands urging one to life. Spreading the rabbit skin blanket for Mrs. Wickerbottom, and her awake despite the pain. A leg, twisted and bent, with a new joint formed mid-calf.

Sheltering the light of the fire with bushes and shrubbery, lest they be seen. Staring into the darkness, waiting for Abigail to follow, realizing that she would not.

Waiting for the night to end, the endless night.

And in the hours nearest dawn, small flakes of snow drifting down from a black sky.