AN: First, a big thank-you to all those who have taken the time to read and review; it's much appreciated! Second, I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news. Summer comes, and that means that I'll have no access to a computer. I plan to work on this story all summer, hopefully having it finished by the fall, but there's going to be a three-month-long hiatus in postings. I hate it when people do that. I'm sorry. I think it will be worth the wait, though. There will be one more chapter going up after this before I take my leave of absence (because leaving it here for three months would be *too* mean), and I'll try to get it to a good stopping point. Happy summer to everyone!

* * * * *

Sarah thrashed and sweated and gritted her teeth all through that night, trapped in the nightmare of another night nine years ago. This time she stood on a broad, straight road of gray cement, grinning skulls lining its length down to where she could clearly see the throne at the other end. *He* sat there, bouncing Toby on his knee and shaking his head, his silver voice filling the space between them as he whispered, "What a pity." Sarah started to run, but as often happens in dreams, the faster she went, the farther away they got. Sobbing in desperation, she reached out her hands to plead. She was too far away, she could never cross the distance, and Toby would be lost to the stroke of the hour.

The bong of the grandfather clock downstairs brought her bolt upright in bed, clutching the sheet to her chin. For a panicked moment she thought she really was back there, nine years ago, and then her eyes began picking out details from the pale light leaking in around the edge of the shade. It was her old room, but with none of the trappings of a teenager's refuge. The bric-a-brac was long gone, the first victims to fall before her reordered priorities when she'd come out of the Labyrinth. The stuffed animals had been given to goodwill when Toby outgrew them and her books had come with her to Virginia. She sat in a stranger's room, papered in the muted blues and whites of guest bedrooms everywhere.

She was grateful for the unfamiliarity because it was proof that she and Toby had survived that night, that she had won him back. Having fallen out of the habit of counting the strokes of the clock, she leaned over the edge of the bed and dug around in her bag until she produced a watch. It was just after seven and Toby would be getting up to go to his own last day of school. Sarah swung her feet into her flip-flops and went downstairs.

The smell of pancakes and maple syrup filled the kitchen. The rumble in her stomach betrayed her presence even as her eyes were drawn like a magnet to Toby's curly head, bent over his breakfast to give it the serious attention it deserved. Spatula in hand, Karen turned around with a bright "Good morning!"

Sarah helped herself to some orange juice and sniffed appreciatively. "Wow, this smells great! There's nothing like pancakes in the morning to tell you you're home. I'm lucky if I get a grapefruit most days!" As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she mentally kicked herself.

Lifting the edge of a pancake to see if it was done, Karen noted, "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Skipping it is so unhealthy!"

Sarah was quick to stick a finger in that particular dike. "I know, I was just kidding. I make sure to have a bran muffin and a glass of fresh orange juice every day." Karen flashed her a smile and handed her a plate of pancakes. Sarah bent her head over them to savor the aroma of buttermilk and joined her brother at the table.

She rode along with Karen to drop Toby at his school because she couldn't bear to let him out of her sight until she had to. Returning to find her dad ready with half an hour to spare before his drive, the three adults sat over coffee and discussed Sarah's drive up and how the weather was likely to behave in the coming week. After Bob made his farewells and left, Karen turned to Sarah and said briskly, "The ladies and I are having lunch in town today, and they would love to meet you. Would you like to come?"

To cover any hesitation, Sarah finished off her coffee in one long pull, and as she put her cup down she replied, "Of course. That sounds lovely. When do you want to leave?"

"Eleven-thirty will be fine," Karen said.

Sarah rose and started to stack dishes. "That's perfect. I was hoping to do a little work in the garden this morning."

Moving to the sink, the two women began rinsing and tidying. "I'm afraid it's gone quite to seed in your absence," Karen sighed as she started the dishwasher. "Both your father and I seem to have completely black thumbs."

"That's because you're too sensible to spend all your time on your knees in the dirt!" Sarah replied, and went upstairs to change.

Karen considered the crisp white knees of her trousers and nodded in agreement. "Be sure you're clean before we have to go!" she called in the direction of her eccentric stepdaughter.

It was cooler here up north, and Sarah enjoyed the feeling of sun on her neck as she dug through the weeds, uprooting them onto a pile that quickly grew to a discouraging size. Years of neglect had erased any semblance of the order she had imposed in high school, and several species had succumbed to competition with their neighbors or with wild interlopers and needed replanting. Only a major renovation would turn the savage plot back into a garden, but the sensations of trowel and earth in her hands and the smell of green things were familiar and peaceful, and Sarah felt her anxiety gradually slip away.

She made sure to go inside well before Karen might come looking for her, and they spent a pleasant enough afternoon in the company of mothers who ooh-ed and ah-ed appreciatively over the author of a much-loved book. One lady had even brought a copy to be autographed, and the sight of the crisp corners already becoming slightly dog-eared touched Sarah's heart. Of course, they all wanted to hear about her "young man," and Sarah silently apologized to Bill as she made blatant use of him to satisfy the gossips. As soon as she could, she nudged the conversation away from herself and back into its well-worn course on the personal life of the mayor and the general failings of school officials. By the end of the luncheon Sarah was perilously close to ripping her hair out, but the little group disbanded before she reached the crisis point. Karen was pleased with the outing, and that in itself was worth a few handfuls of hair.

When they pulled up outside of Toby's school that afternoon, Sarah dug her fingernails into her palms until she caught sight of him in the midst of the screaming swarm of children, and later that night she knelt outside his door long after the others had gone to bed, praying with all her might. Perhaps a benevolent higher power deigned to listen, for Toby bounced into her room at six-thirty the next morning, eyes shining and ready for summer fun.

With the horrid day behind her for another year, Sarah settled down to enjoy her family. She and Toby went swimming in the neighborhood pool almost every morning, and in the evenings they baked with Karen or barbequed with their father. Their nightly game of spades became a highly contested event, with Sarah and Toby emerging victorious as often as not. Sarah treasured those tranquil days, because as much as she hoped that this time things would be different, she knew it wouldn't last.

Sure enough, a week after she first arrived the bickering started. It began in small ways. Sarah left her gardening shoes by the door while she ran upstairs to put up her hair, and Karen snapped at her for getting dirt on the carpet. At the pool, Toby managed to get burned even through two layers of sunblock, and Karen mentioned the importance of proper skin care every thirty minutes for the rest of the day. Sarah started spending more time outside, and Toby looked at her with worried eyes and made her promise not to go away without telling him first. Both of them recognized the pattern, but neither of them knew what to do about it.

By the time they were well into the second week of her visit, Sarah was spending almost all her energy on maintaining civility to Karen. Saddened but not surprised, she dug out her hiking boots and took to the woods. Toby accompanied her once, but walking for a long time and then turning around and going back the way you came doesn't hold much appeal for the average ten-year-old. Before generalized war could break out, Sarah announced to the family that she had to leave that Sunday. The day before her departure, she spent the morning with Toby in the pool, then treated herself to an afternoon drive to the highest peak within fifty miles and set out to climb it.

The sun was past its zenith when she strapped on her day pack and set her feet uphill, and most of the people on the trail were headed in the opposite direction. The air smelled of sweat and sunscreen and leaves, and the breeze on her face was more than welcome. As her legs found their rhythm, Sarah let her mind wander. The state of affairs with Karen ate up a considerable amount of her attention, and she mulled the situation over and over in her mind without turning up any new answers. Every time she left after a fight, she felt like she was running away, but bitter experience had shown her the futility of staying. How ironic that the best way to keep their family together seemed to be for them to be apart most of the time.

Freed from conscious guidance, Sarah's feet brought her to a fork in the road and seized the opportunity to spurn the crowded path in favor of a quiet, narrow trail that wound back into the hills, away from the peak. She realized her mistake after about ten paces, but a critical glance cast at the steady stream of humanity hiking its way to or from the top of the mountain decided her. She wanted solitude more than she wanted a view.

The leafy canopy cast the side trail in permanent shade. The path was muddy and poorly maintained, fraught with exposed roots and nearly disappearing in several places. Keeping her footing required concentration and often a bit of scrambling, but it was cool and very peaceful. Sarah heard an occasional sharp birdcall above the ambient buzz of invisible insects and the gentle puffs of her own breathing. At length, the branches overhead thinned and pulled back, the trail widened into a respectable path, and she emerged into an empty picnic area that sat at the shores of a small lake, choking in water weeds.

Visitors were evidently sparse because there was no garbage to be seen anywhere near the weather-beaten tables, and no sign of a trash barrel. The sense of desertion was complete, and Sarah felt butterflies in her stomach as she approached the lake, already imagining the stories that might take place here. The water was shallow and brackish, the perfect habitat for a solitary water fairy who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. There would be a girl - no, a group of boys and girls who happened to stumble across its lonely haunt. . .

Deep in her invention, Sarah sat down in the long grass at the shore and pulled out a sandwich and a notebook. She wrote for a long time, taking frequent breaks to lift her head and gaze across the lake, lost in her tale. It wasn't until the sun shot its late rays into her eyes that she frowned, came back to herself, and noticed the time.

"Oh jeez!" she yelled, jumping up and stuffing the book into her pack. Because of her afternoon start she had counted on some twilight hiking, but that had been along the main trail which was open and impossible to miss. If the narrow track to the lake wasn't in the dark by now, it very soon would be, and she doubted that even the full moon would penetrate that thick canopy. She would have to hurry.

Sarah was fairly sure that she had come less than two miles, but the quality of the terrain made it rough going. As she loped into the forest, she saw that the light was still good but already threatening to fade. Lungs pumping, hands reaching for help from nearby branches, she planted each foot heavily so that she didn't slip in the mud. She wasn't used to running with a pack and the slick knobs of tree roots seemed to materialize maliciously underneath her. Focused intently on the ground beneath her feet, she ran until her toe caught an unseen edge that sent her flying forward. Slapping her hands solidly against a tree trunk, Sarah managed to catch herself and stay upright, but the shock of it jerked her into awareness of the gloom around her. The light was nearly gone, and she guessed that the main trail was still half a mile away at least. Haste would do her no good if it made her break a leg, but the idea of being alone in the forest at night was awfully creepy. She made herself continue at a cautious walk, but it wasn't long before her footsteps came faster and faster, and soon she was almost running again.

As the light sank to nearly complete darkness, each minute became more harrowing than the last until Sarah found herself groping blindly through the trees, praying that her feet stayed on the trail Countless awful, stumbling steps later, her sight actually seemed to be improving. She could see a silvery sheen on the leaves and weird, twisted shadows cast across the ground, and she assumed that her night vision had finally kicked in until a rare opening in the leaves showed her the night sky. Only a few starts could be seen against the indigo blue and she realized that the moon had risen.

At precisely the same moment, the forest around her changed. Sarah hadn't consciously registered the fact that she could hear the trees buzzing with busy insects until, one by one, their sounds dropped away. She could still make out the faintest hum of nocturnal activity far off in the distance, but a circle of silence had descended on the wood with Sarah at its center. The fine hairs at the base of her neck prickled as they stood on end and her skin broke out in goosebumps. The forest waited, holding its breath, and though she stretched her senses to their limits, she heard no other noise.

Taking a careful step, she held still, then took another. The soft squelch of her boots on the path seemed abnormally loud in the unnatural quiet. In front of her, a small animal suddenly darted into a burrow at the base of a tree, and all at once her instincts flared wide awake. She was being hunted. Something out there, in the dark, was coming to find her.

Adrenaline flooded her system and she burst into a sprint, no longer caring about the trail, simply flying headlong down the path of least resistance. Branches whipped her face and arms but she didn't slow down, didn't break stride. The trees became huge monoliths, blurring together as she ran for her life, and suddenly she saw the glint of moonlight reflecting off a shiny surface. Hurling herself in that direction, Sarah burst out of the forest, directly into the parking lot. The pregnant orb of the full moon hung heavy in the sky in front of her, a handbreadth above the horizon.

A few lonely cars remained, her own among them, and she ripped the keys out of her pack as she flew to it. Practically wrenching the door from its hinges in her urgency, she cast a panicked glance back at the forest as she threw her pack into the front seat. Dark and serene, the trees presented an unbroken wall against the moonlight, and there, magnificently illuminated, sat the white owl. Sarah hesitated a fraction of a second, then ducked into her car, locked the doors, and got the hell out of there, tires squealing against the asphalt. Behind her, the owl spread his wings and followed, a silent ghost riding the chilly night wind.

She was too shaken to do any real thinking until she pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. The sight of the house calmed the tide of her panic, and the ordinariness of the suburban scene made her reaction in the forest seem patently absurd. Of course forests went quiet sometimes, especially with a great noisy creature like herself barging around in them! Sarah closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the steering wheel, groaning aloud at her own paranoia. She hadn't even heard anything, not the slightest sound from her imagined stalker, not even when she'd taken off like a bat out of hell and had probably telegraphed her location for miles. If anything had wanted to find her, it certainly wouldn't have had to work at it. The plain truth of the matter was that she had gotten scared in the dark and had overreacted. Pulling down the rearview mirror to take a look at her stinging face, Sarah winced as she saw the scratches on her cheeks. A few drops of blood had welled up and crusted over, and she felt like kicking herself for her own ridiculousness.

Glaring at her reflection, she snarled, "You are a silly girl. There was nothing in the forest, there are no monsters in the woods, nothing is hunting you." Unbuckling her seatbelt, Sarah began to search her brain for an inventive excuse to give to Karen regarding her scratched face and hands. Knowing her stepmother, Sarah would end up going home wrapped in ace bandages, the mummy of the freeway.

* * * * *

The melancholy of their good-byes stayed with her for most of the drive back to Virginia, and solitude is never good for depressed spirits. Sarah began to shed some of her emotional heaviness as she rounded the last corner into her little neighborhood, anticipating a quiet evening curled up with a good book, or maybe a late movie. There seemed to be an unusual amount of traffic on her street. Brain numbed by the long drive, Sarah obediently sat in line for several minutes until she realized that none of the cars were actually going anywhere. A disproportionate number of them seemed to be black and white police vehicles. As curious as any neighbor, Sarah edged her car around the nearest and slowly approached her house.

The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach suddenly became a gaping maw as she saw the lights flashing in front of her driveway and the yellow line of tape stretched across her walk. She got out of her car and joined the bystanders, looking at the smashed windows and the door hanging crazily from its hinges but not really processing what she was seeing. A small knot of policemen came out of the destroyed entrance, clustered around a man on a cell phone, and Sarah seized on his familiar features.

"Bill!" she called, ducking under the yellow tape and running to the little group. "What happened?"

All heads immediately turned in her direction, and Bill dropped the phone and lifted her off the ground in a huge bear hug. "Thank god, thank god," he murmured over and over into her hair. "Thank god you weren't here."

She didn't feel anything. No anger, no sadness, not even the pressure of Bill's arms around her. Sarah let him hold her, staring dry-eyed at her home as he rocked her back and forth. "What happened?" she repeated.

Officer Harlow, whom she knew from his fire and home safety talks to her class, put a hand on her elbow and said, "Ms. Williams, someone broke into your house last night."

Sarah almost choked in order to suppress the high, hysterical laughter that suddenly threatened to spill out of her. The forced entry was, even to her eyes, a trifle obvious. "What did they take?" she asked, her struggle with her diaphragm making her breathless.

Regarding her with concern, Officer Harlow said, "It's a little hard to tell, but they don't seem to have stolen anything. TV, VCR, computer, it's all still in place. Ms. Williams, do you know of anyone who might want to harm you?"

"Harm me?" Sarah parroted. Her thoughts kept leaping from one thing to the next - her mother's jewelry upstairs, her passport in the desk drawer, her social security card - and she couldn't remember if someone might want to hurt her. She was a teacher in a public school and author of one children's book, and that was all. "I don't think so," she ventured dubiously.

One of the other policemen retrieved the abandoned cell phone, listened into it for a moment, then handed it to Sarah. "Your parents," he said by way of explanation.

"We've been trying to get in touch with you all day," Bill said into the top of her head.

"I left early," she said, lifting the phone automatically to her ear. "Hello? Hi, Dad. I'm fine, I just got here." As she listened to the concerned voices on the other end of the line without really hearing any words, the law enforcement team steered her into the house. Sarah could hardly believe her eyes. It looked like an express train had run right through her home from front to back, with a slight detour up the stairs. The banister was smashed, the kitchen table reduced to matchwood, and the bookshelf that used to stand in the center of the living room was pulverized beyond recognition.

The squawking in her ear stopped on an expectant note, waited a moment, then started up again, higher pitched than before. "Can I call you back?" Sarah asked, handed the phone to Bill without hearing the reply, then calmly went upstairs to check on her mother's jewelry. As Officer Harlow said, nothing was missing. She pushed the rosewood drawers closed, noting idly that her fingers were trembling, and tried to think of what to do. It was really very odd - items located on the periphery of the rooms were untouched, while those that had been in the center looked like a herd of cattle had stampeded over them. She looked up as Bill eased himself around the doorframe to her bedroom, and suddenly burst into huge, uncontrollable sobs. He put his arms around her and held her as her whole body shook from head to foot, then gently steered her back downstairs, murmuring comfort in her ear.

They sat on the stairs because all the sitting-down furniture had been more or less turned into scrap, and Bill held her on his lap as Sarah dissolved into a leaky puddle of shock hormones. She couldn't seem to stop the tears or the trembling, but all in all she felt pretty justified. It was so good just to be held. Policemen walked back and forth from room to room, and after about fifteen minutes Officer Harlow came up and said softly, "I know you're not feeling too good right now, but can you answer a few questions for us?"

Sarah smeared her arm across her face and took a shaky breath. "Sure," she said. "Just don't take any photos, okay?"

"No ma'am," Harlow said, smiling. "Ms. Williams, do you own a dog?"

"Um, no," Sarah said, thinking of her dear Merlin who had lived to a ripe old age. "I don't really have time for a dog. I'd been thinking about getting a cat, but I haven't started looking yet." The words came tumbling out one after the other, but the policeman didn't seem to mind. She guessed he was used to how people react to shock.

He made a note in his black book and said, "Do you know anyone who owns dogs? Big ones, like hunting dogs."

His choice of words made her shiver. "No, I don't know anyone like that. Why do you ask?"

"Your backyard is full of dog tracks," Harlow told her, "and your neighbor, Mrs. Ruhet, had quite an experience last night. She says she was woken up around three or four in the morning by a ruckus and went outside to see what it was. According to her description," here he began to read from an earlier page in his book, "an 'almighty huge fellow with a funny hat' came out of your front door and set his dogs on her. She ran into her potting shed, locked the door, and didn't come out until well after sunrise. The moon was full last night so she got a pretty good look at the dogs, though the man unfortunately stayed in the shadows, and they're a distinctive group. White bodies and heads with dark-colored ears. Ring any bells?"

Something about the description was vaguely familiar, but Sarah couldn't put a finger on it. She shook her head mutely.

Officer Harlow patted her knee and said, "Don't you worry. We'll catch him soon enough. In the meantime, do you have a place you can stay?"

Sarah hadn't given any thought at all to where she might sleep that night. The break-in was still overwhelming, and she just looked at the policeman helplessly. Bill came to her rescue once again with the soft, almost timid offer of his guest bedroom. "You'd have to come get your mail anyway," he said shyly. "Your mailbox was looking overburdened. I didn't think you'd mind."

"Darn. I forgot to arrange it with the post office before I left." Sarah looked at her knees, then leaned into him. "If it's not too much bother. . ."

"Not at all," Bill said firmly. Harlow noticed Mr. Cribbins' barely- suppressed enthusiasm and felt a slight twinge of nostalgia for his own early days of courtship. He escorted them to their cars, then prepared to wrap up the crime scene. Maybe he could find some flowers to bring home to Laura tonight.

As Sarah sat on Bill's couch and listened to him fetch extra towels from the linen closet, it seemed to her that everything had happened much too fast to keep up with it all. Barely an hour had passed since she pulled into her street, and now here she was, homeless for who knows how long, and staying with the one person who was most likely to be hurt by it. His offer of hospitality came with no strings attached, but Bill was the kind of person who would view her sleeping under his roof as a sort of intimacy.

The object of her worries returned bearing towels and a stack of envelopes. "Most of it's junk," he said, setting it down in front of her. "Certainly nothing that can't wait until tomorrow. Can I get you some tea or juice or something?"

"Some hot chocolate would be lovely, if you have it," Sarah said. Chocolate helped everything.

"Can do," Bill grinned, and vanished into the kitchen.

Sarah surveyed the stack of mail in front of her and reached for it with a sigh. A cursory sorting showed that most of it was, indeed, junk. She piled the bills to one side and curiously picked up the envelope that was left. It was made of padded brown paper into which her address had been heavily inked, and was easily two inches thick. There was no return information and the paper hadn't held the postmark, but the stamps proclaimed it to be of foreign origin. Mystified, she tore it open and pulled out a single sheet of paper. It felt rich and creamy under her fingers and smelled like vanilla, and Sarah immediately felt a kinship with the author's obvious love of the written word. As she set down the package, a bulky object inside shifted and clunked against the table. A crude drawing that looked like a map took up one side, and Sarah turned the paper over and read the first sentence.

The blood drained from her face and she put a trembling hand to her mouth. After a moment she recovered herself, gripped the paper in both hands, and raced through from beginning to end.

"Dear Sarah Williams," it read in a large, firm hand, "You are being hunted. An old enemy has woken the Horned One, who leads his pack to claim your life in the Wild Hunt. The years have taken the majority of my strength, but enough is left to give you some small aid, and I have bound him to his weakness. The Hunt will ride only on the three nights when the moon is at her full. At these times you must run, and keep running! A church with a good pastor will offer you refuge, as will the soil of an island where no man has set foot. When the wind blows from the west, know that he is close. Do not speak his name, for it will draw him to you. Come to me in Indrahan when you have found Lugh of the Heavy Hand, who freed our enemy, and his companion Belenus, whose laughter once brought light to the land. To guide you on your path, I give you Ghorrom. Cast him properly and there is nothing that he cannot find. Have courage, dear child, and come quickly, for the last days of her binding are at hand."

There was no signature at the bottom, just an intricate mark like some kind of knotty bush. Slowly, Sarah reached out and shook the package until the object hidden inside fell with a clunk onto Bill's coffee table. It was a knife, barely longer than her hand from wrist to fingertip, with a thin silver crosspiece and a slim blunt blade. It looked entirely out of place in the comfortable living room. Almost of their own accord, her fingers closed around the hilt and lifted it in front of her face. A series of orderly scratches marred the surface of the blade just underneath the crosspiece, shapes that stirred old memories. "Ghorrom," Sarah whispered, touching a fingernail to the runes. Was it her imagination, or did the metal become warmer against her palm?

The clink of cups in saucers alerted her a moment before Bill came back into the room. Quickly, she stuffed the letter and the knife into her pocket, even managing to produce a lopsided sort of smile as he set the hot chocolate in front of her.

"It's been a rough day," he said sympathetically. "You look really terrible, you know that?"

Startled into laughter, she put a hand to her cheek and said, "Being burgled really takes it out of a person." She sipped the chocolate and smiled at him over the rim of her cup. "This is really good. Thanks."

"Anytime," he replied softly. His meaning rang clearly in his voice, and Sarah dropped her eyes. The moment of uncomfortable silence was broken by a loud crack as two shutters banged together. They both jumped, then laughed at themselves.

"Shoot," Bill said, embarrassed, "I've been meaning to fix those for weeks. Wind's changed - it'll be a warm one, a westerly."

Sarah swallowed the thick taste of chocolate and said, "Excuse me?"

Leaning across the couch to latch the shutters closed, he replied, "Yeah, these ones always set up a racket when the wind's coming out of the west. Something about the angle of the house - "

Sarah put down her cup and raced to the door, flinging it open into the warm night. Yellow from the streetlamps and silver from the moon's fullness pooled together on the road. Air whipped past her face, stinging with grit. The wind had indeed changed, blowing down from the hills, and Sarah heard the dull thud of hooves in the dirt and the lonely baying of hounds, close and coming closer.