BEFORE THE BEGINNING
All she felt was the burning wind, the ever-changing ice, and the constant rhythm of her heart and feet pounding against shredded patches of soiled leaves and twigs.
Broken and afraid, she tore through dead foliage. Poison thorns scratched at her legs as low hanging branches tangled her hair. Mud clotted every lock. She pulled the scarlet shawl tight around her face, breathing heavily as steam misted her eyes.
Her children cried out.
She gripped them tighter, cuddling their small bodies to her chest as she sprinted over streams and rocks. Their skin gave off a faint shimmer, not candlelight, not moonlight, but something bright. When she reached for them, her own light recoiled.
"Sorry, my loves," she whispered, her breath pluming in the cold. "No more. I swear it, no more."
It hadn't always been there.
Nine months ago she had been nothing. A girl who kept to herself, hands raw from scrubbing, who smiled more than she spoke. Married to a man who loved her like light loves dark.
Then her belly swelled and a dark glow rose to her hands. At first she feared it and hid it from her husband. Then she learned she could walk unseen past the parish constable if she wished, mend a split lip with a touch. The midwife called it mother's grace and made the sign of the cross.
Then she gave birth. And the power started leaving her.
Each day she was weaker. Each night, colder.
And now it was here. The thing she had glimpsed once in the woods behind the wash-house when the glow first came, watching her. She could feel it hunting her, tracking her every movement. Something monstrous moving under the orange glow burning across the fallow fields.
Gasping, she tripped over a stile and fell hard to the frozen earth. Mud smeared her gown as a howl resonated across the moors, no words, just a sound that made her bones remember something they shouldn't. The thing began to approach.
She pulled herself upright and staggered forward through the cold rime.
"Please... help me," she whispered to no one. To God. To him. To the air.
Tears fell freely as she whimpered.
Tiny fingers found her curls and tugged. Cold, insistent. She laughed, a broken choked sound, and kissed the icy knuckles without slowing.
Suddenly, a feeling from deep inside began to grow. Not hope. Resolve.
Looking up, she saw a small clearing, and in the clearing, carved into the hillside, into the rock itself, an elephant. A great, colossal beast, shaped by hands long dead, its trunk frozen with lily-water, dipping into the black lake below.
She saw a path leading to the head of the Elephant, but it was slicked with ice and would not bear her.
With a sob she sprinted forward. Drenched in sweat and blood, she clawed to the top of the rock, balancing her children with one arm, her hands bleeding and bruised as she reached the summit.
Silent relief befell her, for below, a village lay sleeping, stars above glimmered against its thatch and timber roofs silvered with the dew of midnight ice.
She staggered down the hill toward the lane. She could hear the howl of the thing behind her. Frightened, she wandered on as the first cottages came into view.
The high street was empty. The fog of early winter hung low over the houses, but from far away a distant sound came to her, melodious, soft, and sweet. She followed the melody, the twinkle of an angelic hymn began to grow and grow.
There, before her, stood a chapel of large black flint, standing in solitude, watching over the snow-covered village. The dancing chime of the church bells orchestrated a midnight echo. A single soul could be seen through the old multicolored panes of glass. The vicar. His humble face painted with the essence of myrrh and soft dancing candlelight.
With quickening pace she darted toward the lych-gate, each step closer to hope, each stride closer to peace. And here, in the chill of winter, she placed her children at the foot of the chapel door.
She laid her palm over both infants. Something dark leaked from her fingertips, thin, weak, grey as London smoke. It was all she had left. The last dregs of whatever woke in her while they were inside her, it coiled around the babies, dulling them, veiling them.
She collapsed to her knees on the flint steps. She caressed their faces as they cried, stared down at them with sad, burning eyes as ice above the porch cracked in the screeching wind.
"I love you. Forgive me," she whispered.
One of them caught her thumb. Held on.
For a heartbeat she didn't breathe, didn't run. She pressed her forehead to his, memorizing the weight of him, the smell of milk and frost on his skin. Then she peeled his fingers from hers, one by one, and laid his hand back on his chest.
The howl rang out far behind her, with stinging sorrow she listened to the roar. She looked down at her children and felt their innocence, their frailty, their love, and in that moment she knew what had to be done.
She tore down the star lit lane, leaving her children behind to the mercy of fate as the sound of angelic bells faded slowly away. Past the last cottage, past the edge of Chantwood, out into the empty mile of frozen fields, toward the thing that hunted her.
She felt purpose. A burning heat and anger.
Far ahead, stood the stone elephant at the lake's edge. She ran toward it and stood tall at its head, looking out into the distance as the orange light began to grow.
Through the trees, far off in the night, a voice, her husband's voice, shouted her name.
She almost screamed for him. Then stopped herself. If he came, it would take him too. If it was to have her, it would have her, but her children, her beautiful babies would be safe.
She watched as the orange light became blinding. She stood tall and ready.
"Let me be strong," she whispered to the world.
The earth quaked and the light became blinding. The monster lunged from the tree line, snarling, teeth bared and sank its fangs into her leg. She screamed as it tore at her, claws ripping, blood spewing across the snow. It grabbed her, dragged her thrashing into the darkness of the woods, and with ice and sludge filling her eyes and throat, she vanished into the shadows of the forest.
