<Baking and paint smells, all mixed up together.> Mama would buy some scuffed up table or chair from a shop or another household and do a little sanding and fixing and painting.

Then she’d trade it to a store or direct to an individual for more than she paid for it.

Or sometimes she just did refurbishings for the same owner— any of which paid money that came in handy before he started bringing in money and fixed the place up.

Mama would be sitting there with the bread baking, all the while she’d be painting flowers on a chair—she liked that part—or sanding and swearing—she always swore when she sanded—<her hair trailing around her face, and flour on her chin.>

There was always some piece of furniture in the apartment that you weren’t supposed to touch or sit on, and it always made his nose run when she’d been painting.

But the bread-smell was over all of it, <smell of home. Smell of comfortable things.>

Harper never stopped watching him. Just watching.

They’d warned the village. They’d advised everybody lock the doors and the shutters and stay inside no matter what. People had guns. They had their storm-shutters locked.

The rogue-feeling went away and it came back, maybe two, maybe three hours into the night, as if it was feeling them over, and it wasn’t a thing anybody could catch with human senses. You didn’t know when you’d started being afraid. You just knew by the prickling terror behind you that it was there again. A shutter banging in the wind. Rattle of sleet against the roof. A sense of presence…

Something was near the walls.

“It’s Vadim,” Mina murmured as the three of them, sitting by their fireside in the shelter, listened. “God, it’s Vadim.”

“No!” Tara said sharply, because it was coming by way of their own horses now, she could hear them, could hear Flicker take up that <white, white, white> refrain. Mina shoved her chair back and Luisa grabbed her arm, arguing with her not to go outside, to stay with them.

“That thing could be anywhere on the mountain. It’s no good going out there. God, it’s echoing in every creature in the woods, can’t you hear it? That’s what it’s doing—that’s why it’s so damn loud—”

The whole mountain seemed to echo it, loneliness, mourning over something lost. It echoed failures, or things undone, a terrible melancholy. It gnawed, it burrowed, it ran, it flew, it crawled—it slavered with winter-hunter and ached in rut and leapt along the ground, aching with loneliness and fear—

Then it dissolved, flew apart in screaming rage.

<White-white-white.> Flicker was still there. Skip and Green were, Tara could feel them through Flicker’s noisy presence and, Luisa’s advice to the contrary, she went and snatched up her coat.

“Tara,” Luisa protested.

“I’m fine, dammit, Flicker’s not. I’m going out there.”

“We’ll all go,” Mina said.

So that was the way it was—they went out to the porch and down into the nightbound yard. Snow was gusting on a fierce and biting wind.

Then a presence came to them, <running, running in the wind. Holding tight. Snow stinging the face.>

<Damned fool,> Tara thought. <You little, damned … fool.>

She lost her balance—slipped and skidded on the ice. Mina had her arm.

A presence so… lost… so idly strayed from reality… came flitting through her senses.

<Flowers and snowflakes,> it imaged. <Sugar lumps. Biscuits.

Brionne with the horses. All the horses loving her. Brionne in the moonlight, in the snow… the numbing, gentle snow… >

“Get away from us!” Tara shouted into the dark.

<Wanting mama. Wanting papa… mama listening. Mama sitting with her Bible… thinking of Brionne. Papa… papa… papa—!>

<“ Tara!”>

Luisa hurt her arm, she grabbed it so hard. She slid on the ice and Mina grabbed both of them.

<Papa!> went out across the ridge. < Wanting in. Wanting in—>

“It’s her,” Tara said. “It’s the Goss kid—God, stay here. Keep the gates shut.”

“Where are you going?”

<Marshal’s office.> The ambient was so live it didn’t need a horse near. <Luisa and Mina taking care of horses. Gates shut. Gates slammed.>

< Mama,> the voice cried on insubstantial winds. < Mama, let me in… >

Tara ran, sleet stinging her face—she ducked through the village gate and let it slam behind her; she ran not for where instinct or whatever drove her told her to go: instinct was screaming at her to go the other way. She ran against it—ran for reason, ran down the center of a deserted, sleet-hammered street, all the way to the end of the street, her throat hurting with the cold air. She ran up the wooden, icy steps to the marshal’s office and pounded her fist on the door.

She heard someone coming, footsteps inside. The feeling of presence behind her all around her—was overwhelming, a wave of living anger rolling toward them, from all around the walls.

“Who’s there?” the marshal called out. “Who’s out there?”

“Tara Chang!” she shouted back, holding to the rail—resisting the impulse to look back and see if anything was in the street. “It’s here—” she said, and got a chill breath as the marshal opened the door. The marshal’s wife was holding a pistol aimed at her: she paid it only passing attention. “It’s the rogue. It’s the kid. Brionne. She’s with it. She’s wanting her mama and her papa. You’ve got to send word down to Tuck—keep those gates shut. No matter what!”

“It’s a kidout there,” the marshal began. “We’ve got to shoot that horse.”

“It’s hellout there.” She found herself shaking. “It’s my partners out there. It’s our men. It’s that kid. We can’t help them. We can’t do anything but hold that damned gate, do you hear me? Get out there! Keep that gate shut, I don’t care who wants in! That horse comes with her and everything in the woods comes next! Keep it out!”

The marshal went for his coat and his scarf and his shotgun. “Watch the boys!” the marshal said to his wife. “If it’s the Goss kid—she might try to get to the boys! Keep that door locked!”

Tara stood there shivering in the wind, trying to keep her hand from freezing to the icy porch rail—trying to be deaf and blind and numb to the ambient. Mina and Luisa were with the horses. She knew.

She knew that the Goss boys were still in lockup.

She knew that Brionne was with the rogue.

She knew that Brionne was calling to all that was hers—her mother, her father, her brothers, her friends and acquaintances… every one.

Brionne had never gotten on Flicker’s good side. But she was calling to <Skip> and <Green> in the lame way she’d always imaged their names.

She called to <Mina and Luisa.> But not to her. Notto Tara Chang. Brionne hated her. She felt the lost presence flit past her in anger, and she ran for the camp, assaulted by the <lost, aching> ambient.

<“Papa!”> it wailed.

Shutters were opening. Lights from those windows flared out onto the snow, here and there down the village street. A door opened, a larger spill of light.

Answering that voice.

That was the way they heard it. The town was ready and armed for a rogue.

They heard a lost kid. They heard Brionne Goss wanting in, wanting rescue.

“Stay inside!” Tara screamed at the tanner, who came out on his porch. “That’s it, damn it! Get that door shut!”

She didn’t know whether he listened. She ran for the only source of help, half-blinded by the sleet, through the narrow gap of the Little Gate, into the rider camp—and had a clear sense of Flicker’s sending, that <white-white-white> shutting out the world.

But Skip and Green were absent from the noise. There was only a darkness wanting <out,> wanting <running, all running.>