Black Halo

And yet, no matter how strong the reasoning, she continued to walk along the beach, staring out over the waves. And always, no matter what she hoped to see, nothing but empty shoreline greeted her.

Stop it, she snarled inwardly. Forget them. They’re dead. And you will be, too, if you don’t find food soon. This isn’t what a shict does. Look, it’s easy. Just turn around.

She did so, facing the forest.

Now take a step forward.

She did so.

Now don’t look back.

That, as ever, was where everything went wrong.

She glanced over her shoulder, ignoring the instant frustration she felt for herself the moment she spied something dark out of the corner of her eye. Tucked behind a dune, bobbing in the water, she could see it: the distinct glisten of water-kissed wood.

Her heart rose in her chest as she spun about and began to hurry toward it, despite her own thoughts striving to temper her stride.

It’s wood, she told herself. It doesn’t mean anything beyond the fact that it’s wood. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get too excited. Remember the wreck. Remember the Akaneed.

As she drew closer, the boat’s shape became clearer: resting comfortably upon the shore, intact and unsullied. She furrowed her brow, cautioning her stride. This wasn’t her boat; hers was now in several pieces and probably jammed in one or two skulls right now.

So it’s someone else’s, she told herself. All the more reason to turn back now. No one with any good intentions would be out here. It’s not them. It’s not him. Turn back. She did not, creeping around the dune. Turnback. Remember you’re alive. Remember he’s dead. Remember they’re dead. They’redead.

And, it became clear as she peered around the dune, they were not the only ones.

A lone tree, long dead but clinging to the sandy earth with the tenacity only a very old one could manage, stood in the middle of a small, barren valley. She peered closer, spying rope wrapped tightly about its highest branches, hanging taut. The grey, jagged limbs bent, creaking in protest as macabre, pink-ski

She recognised them, the humans hanging from the tree. Even with their throats slashed and their bodies mutilated, their blood splashed against roots that no longer drank, she knew them as crewmen from the Riptide, the ship she and her companions had travelled on before pursuing the tome, the ship whose crew was supposed to come seeking them after they had obtained the book.

Apparently, they had found something else.

About the base of the tree, they swarmed. Kataria was uncertain what they were, exactly. They didn’t lookdangerous, though neither did they look like anything she had seen before. She peered closer, saw that they resembled roaches the size of small deer, sporting great feathery ante

And then, in an instant, they stopped. Their ante

But Kataria came out around her cover, unafraid as she approached the whitetree. She was unafraid. She knew its name. She knew the men whose blood-drained bodies hung from it.

And she had seen this before.

‘They had swords.’

Kataria had heard such a voice before: feminine, but harsh, thick and rasping. Her ears twitched, trembled at the sound, taking it in. It was a voice thick with a bloody history: people killed, ancestors murdered, families avenged. She heard the hatred boiling in the voice, felt it in her head.

And she knew the speaker as shict.

‘Humans always have swords,’ this newcomer said, her shictish thick as shictish should be. ‘They always move with the intent to kill.’

‘You killed them instead?’

‘And fed the earth with them. And warned their people with them.’

Kataria stared down at the red-stained ground. ‘So much blood …’

‘This island is thick with it. That which was shed here is far more righteous.’

Kataria clenched her teeth behind her lips, stilled her heart. ‘Have you found others?’

‘I have.’

At that, Kataria turned to look at her newfound company.

She was a shict, as Kataria knew, as Kataria was. But in her presence, her shadow that stretched u

The shict’s, however, stood tall and proud, six notches carved into each length, each ear as long as half her forearm. The rest of her followed suit: towering over her at six and a half feet tall, spear-rigid and steel-hard body bereft of any clothing beyond a pair of buckskin breeches. Her black hair was sculpted into a tall, bristly mohawk, her bare head decorated with black sigils on either side of the crude cut. She folded powerful arms over naked breasts that were barely a curve on her lean musculature and regarded Kataria coolly.

And, as Kataria stared, only one thought came to her.

So … green.

Her skin was the colour of a crisp apple … or a week-old corpse. Kataria wasn’t quite sure which was more appropriate. But her skin colour was just a herald that declared her deeds, her ancestry, her heritage.

And Kataria knew them both. She had heard the stories.

She was a member of the twelfth tribe: the only tribe to stand against humanity and turn them back. She was a member of the s’na shict s’ha:headhunters, hideski

A greenshict. A true shict.

And Kataria knew dread.

‘I have found tracks, anyway,’ she said, pointing to the earth with a toe. Kataria glanced down and saw the long toes, complete with opposable ‘thumb,’ that constituted the greenshict’s feet. ‘There are other humans here, for some reason.’ She stared out over the dunes. ‘Not for much longer.’

‘Why would they be here?’

‘This island is rife with death. Humans are drawn to the scent.’

‘Death?’

‘This land is poisoned. Trees grow, but there is death in the roots. That which lives here feeds on death and we feed upon them.’

‘I saw the roaches …’

‘Unimportant. We come for the frogs. They eat the poison. The poison feeds our blood. We feed on them.’

‘We?’

‘Three of s’na shict s’hacame to this island.’

‘Where are the others?’

‘They seek. Naxiaw seeks humans. Avaij seeks frogs. I seek you.’

Kataria felt the greenshict’s stare like a knife in her chest.

‘I heard your Howling long ago. I have searched for you since.’ The greenshict fixed her with a stare that went far beyond cursory, her long ears twitching as if hearing something without sound. ‘You come with strange sounds in your heart, Kataria.’

Kataria did not start, barely flinched. But the greenshict’s eyes narrowed; she could see past her face, could see Kataria’s nerves rattle, heart wither.

‘What is your name?’ Kataria asked.

‘You know it already.’

She shouldknow it, at least, Kataria knew. She could feel the co

That same instinct that Kataria could now only barely remember, so long had it been since she used it.

But she reached out with it all the same, straining to feel for the greenshict’s name, straining the most basic, fundamental knowledge shared by the Howling.