A Latent Dark by Martin Kee

again!”
    She took her pile of clothes into the washroom. When the door slammed, the yelling ended as if a faucet was turned off. She dressed as fast as possible, her mind drifting out to the rucksack in the other room.
    He’s going to take it, she thought. He’s going to take it and try and return the goggles to wherever he thinks they are from…
    Rhinewall? There was that city again. She filed it away in the back of her mind and emerged from the bathroom. She was transformed into an urchin again, but at least she was fed and clean. Her shoes felt as though they had shrunk a size and creaked as she walked across the floor. James was a silent, brooding mountain in his chair. He did not look at her as she passed him, only stared at the dormant metal stove, his eyes wet.
    Skyla felt a pang of pity for the man. She opened her rucksack and exhaled as the goggles stared back at her. She patted her pocket and sighed at the comforting weight of the coin. Well at least he didn’t rob me , she thought.
    Or worse , a voice in he back of her head warned.
    She pulled the goggles out and placed them on her head, lenses raised. She tightened the chinstrap then turned to face him one last time. She jabbed a finger at the leather cap defiantly. “A gift .”
    The last time Skyla saw James before slamming the door, he looked diminished and ashamed. His red-rimmed eyes stared off into nothing. The only emotion they betrayed was relief as the door closed.
    Skyla stepped back out into the wilderness. Orrin called to her from a nearby branch and landed on her shoulder from behind. Without looking at him she raised a hand, which he gladly ducked beneath to receive attention. She stroked his smooth feathers. It was comforting to her as well as Orrin, who made little gleeful chirping noises whenever her fingers would scratch at just the right spot.
    “If anything happened to you,” she said, but didn’t finish the thought. I’d what? What could I do?
    It wasn’t clear if he had understood her—if Orrin ever understood her, or it was her imagination. Maybe everything, including the shadows was just in her mind, a child’s game that she might as well start growing out of. But, that didn’t explain what happened to her mother, or James for that matter. He had certainly seen something.
    The intersection greeted her with an embarrassing familiarity. The path you should have taken, chided the voice.
    She turned and drifted down the path again as the woods became dark with tiny shafts of light through the dense leaves. A low cliff emerged and flanked her along the trail, its walls covered in deep green moss, ferns sprouting from its crevices. Her footsteps sounded muted and dull.
    Even Orrin was quiet, which seemed odd for him. Usually he would be chatting with all the other birds in the branches above. It dawned on her that there were no birds chirping in the trees at all. In fact, the only sound was the monotonous shuffling of her tattered shoes in the gravel.
    She followed the edge of the cliff until the path narrowed between trees so dense she almost had to walk sideways to get between them.
    “Do you think we are even on a path anymore?”
    Squawk.
    As if to answer her question, the skull of a large cat appeared, pinned to a tree, staring at her with wide vacant sockets. Skyla looked around carefully. It didn’t do much good. The trees were so packed together, anyone could have been watching her and she never would have known it.
    Her toe caught an exposed root. She made a failed attempt to right herself, but her other foot caught on something as well. Orrin launched from her shoulder as she plunged into the soft earth hands first. There was instant burning pain in her palms where dirt embedded itself. She only managed a muffled squeak before the lenses slammed shut over her eyes from the force.
    The world went dark.
    Someone stepped over her. The first thought that went through her mind was how could anyone have been following her so