Methods of Inheritance
Here are the rules that every child learns in kindergarten.
One. Only an uncared-for child or a great fool is caught outside after dark on the equinoxes. (Fact: Harry is an A-average student with a knack for real-world applications and logical thinking. Appropriate conclusions may be drawn.)
Two. If you hear the Horns, you will run. (Fact: Harry has excellent hearing, and the Horns carry on the wind like ashes from a wildfire.)
Three. If you run, they have to chase you. (Fact: Harry does not remember when she moved, but her legs burn and each footstep seems to thunder like a drumbeat.)
The phone vibrated in her hand and she looked down automatically, thumbing open the text as a car barreled past at twenty-two miles over the speed limit and left the road empty in its wake.
From: Homeland Security
Number: [Restricted]
Attention. Your residence is in a region that has been flagged as High Risk for presence of the Fair Folk tonight, the autumn equinox. It is advised that you remain inside from sunset until sunrise. It is advised that you hang an iron horseshoe, supplied at your local city hall, over all exterior doors. It is advised that you close all windows and doors and lock them securely. It is advised that you do not listen to the Horns. It is advised that you carry an iron nail on your person if you are forced outside. It is advised that you do not leave your home in the event that you see someone wandering outside. It is advised that you ensure that you know where your loved ones are at all times. Thank you for your attention.
The text went out like clockwork, every year on the spring and autumn equinoxes. The same thing had been broadcast every hour, on the hour, on every radio and television channel. Some years were higher risk, others were lower risk—the year after the Folk came, the risk was always labeled ‘Near Zero,’ but the warnings still came and the doors were still locked up tight. It had been four years since the last time the Folk had swept through southern Minnesota, not quite enough for the global statistics to lean out of their favor again, but the per capita changeling population was uncommonly high in the Midwest, and like attracted like.
Harry picked up her pace, and she jabbed the Home button on her phone. At the upper left corner of her home screen, the time to dusk ticked down, one second after another trickling away as the sun sank past the horizon. Ten minutes, and it was just over a mile and a half to get home. If she ran flat-out, she could make it before full dark. She hadn’t meant to wander so far, but she hadn’t been able to stand staying home and listening to her aunt and her uncle scream at each other anymore.
“Should’ve done the mile instead of the hundred meter,” she muttered under her breath as she shoved the phone into her coat pocket. Harry was a marathon runner in exactly one circumstance, and that was the annual mile run in gym class. There was nothing like the impending threat of the Folk to motivate one, though, and she fell into a long-legged sprint as she cut through two yards and a parking lot.
Seven minutes later, she was breathless from running, home was still almost half a mile away, and dusk was coming on fast. Only the last scrap of the sun was visible over the horizon, and the sky was going inky blue overhead. Harry scanned the houses around her, one hand pressed just below her ribs as she pulled in slow, deep breaths to lower her heart rate, and darted toward one with lights glowing in the windows. She made a fist and hammered on the door, red pain smooth against her hand.
“Is anyone home?” she called. There was a quiet scuffle on the other side of the wood, quickly silenced. “I can’t get home before dark, please!” The curtains jerked closed, and the light that had fallen over the lawn from the window was gone.
Harry spun on her heel and swept her gaze over the other houses, and felt her heart stutter in her chest when more curtains closed against the sound of her voice. She would not be getting help here, from people who knew her only as the shadow-girl whose past was littered with uneasily close brushes with the Hunt and its trailing chaos.
Tugging her phone out, she peeked at the time. She had just under two minutes. If she was fresh, she might be able to make it home, or at least almost home. Close enough to hope for sanctuary with a neighbor who knew her, who remembered her mother or her father. As it was, the best she could hope was that she could get close enough that she would be able to call someone with a car to meet her in the middle.
She pulled out her phone as she started to jog again, cutting across two yards, a thin strip of field, and a parking lot.
Caught outside, please come get me, she typed quickly to her elder cousin, jumping over a concrete parking stop. She and her cousins got along about as well as your average feral dog locked in a small space with two territorial Siamese cats, but they didn’t actively want her dead.
Where? Kaela was never one to waste words with Harry, particularly in text. Under the circumstances, Harry appreciated it.
Trying to get home, she replied, silently blessing the inventor of predictive text algorithms. Running and typing was hard enough in strong daylight, and the settling twilight sent shadows skittering strangely across the ground, demanding Harry’s attention unless she wanted to break an ankle in a hidden pothole. On Seventh.
There was a beat, and another text appeared on her screen.
The sun is almost down, Kaela’s message said, and Harry stumbled to a halt. She could hear her cousin’s most dispassionate tone in her ears, and something heavy was settling over her shoulders. It felt like the weight of someone leaning on her chest, pinning her in place, and her muscles went leaden as the next text came in. I’m sorry.
Harry stared at her screen, her mind echoingly silent in the wake of the revelation that no one was coming for her. She hadn’t quite managed to shake the frozen shock out of her body when her phone buzzed again in her hand.
Sunset, the alert announced, and her head snapped up, eyes seeking the horizon. The last curve of the sun had slipped away, leaving the sky marbled between pale red and inky blue.
Movement flickered at the corner of Harry’s vision and she looked back down at the screen of her phone as it blinked out, falling black. White text scrolled down the screen, line upon line of letters forming an incoherent jumble. At first it was English, or at least Latin lettering, but as the text picked up speed other things were mixed in. Greek letters, Hebrew, kanji, the smooth arches of Arabic mixed with the sharp angles of Anglo-Saxon runes. It degraded as she watched, passing through Sanskrit and hieroglyphs to what looked dimly familiar as cuneiform. The last alphabet stuck on the screen for a moment, and the phone flashed to black, powering down completely. Overhead, the streetlights began to crackle and die as the moon went from a pale shadow to a bright curve.
Harry’s hands trembled gently as she pocketed the useless phone. It wouldn’t work again until dawn, and even if it did, she didn’t know if anyone would come outside on the night of the Hunt.
Taking a deep breath and clenching her fists until the tremors stilled, Harry took a moment to consider her options.
She could try another door, and almost inevitably get turned away.
She could try to hide and gamble that the Hunt would pass them by. The guarantee that the Horns would catch her if she was wrong wasn’t worth the risk.
She could try to get home, after the fact or not. If she hurried she could make it in minutes, even in the dark.
It wasn’t much of a choice, she thought to herself, and started home, picking her way carefully over the ground, treacherous in the darkening twilight. Curtains snapped closed and lights were doused as she passed, and she imagined that she could hear the people in each house holding their breath, waiting for the wandering form to leave them alone.
She almost made it.
She was standing in her own front yard when the music reached her ears, high and lilting, the sound of pipes drifting through the air like dye coiling through clear water. It sank through her skin and seeped into her lungs to bubble through her blood, passing through her ears as only the barest courtesy on its quest to burrow into her bones and set up a home in her marrow. Harry froze at the sound, weight balanced in the middle of a step, as if the world had been cast into glass.
The moonlight thickened, sliding across her tongue with a bright and wild taste, as of spiced wine, and it carried foreign thoughts like dust motes. Images of revels full of fire and figures dressed in gem-bright clothing burst behind Harry’s eyes. Great concentric rings of dancers spun, hand in hand, whirling until their flowing hair and garments blurred into a many-layered wheel. Fruits and meats spilled from platters on beautifully carved wooden tables, surrounded by crystal pitchers of blood-rich wine. Long-legged runners darted over unfamiliar hills and through sweeping woods, between trees that breathed ancient memories into the air, clear high laughter flying like a banner. And Harry, she could be one of them, she could be like them, free and wild and strong and—
She stumbled over a root and crashed to the ground, scraping her forearm shallowly against the dirt. The collision shook her free of the fading music and she sank her teeth into her cheek, the sharp start of pain scraping through her nerves like clean fire. She was shaking, she realized faintly, and she pulled her knees up beneath her, huddled on the ground in the shadows as she took stock.
The trees around her were made strange in the viscous light of the moon, but she thought that she recognized them as the woods outside of town, some twelve miles from where she had started. The call of the Hunt’s music did strange things to the land it fell over, forming wrinkles between places and attaching them in odd patterns for the duration of the night—judging by the moon, it had been less than an hour since her phone had died. Her legs hummed with the impulse to get up and follow the last threads of the music, and she sunk her fingers into the dirt to hold herself in place.
It was the sound of a voice that reached her first in the wake of the vanishing music, ringing as clear and carrying as a church bell. It was rich with laughter and as coldly liquid as the moonlight, and it was entirely too close. Harry pressed herself closer to the ground, her pulse rattling her bones in instinctive terror.
“Tonight, I rule the fae!” the voice called, as if speaking to a great crowd. The speaker sounded close at hand, close enough that Harry bit her lip in surprise. “Tonight, we have free rein over the land, and free claim over all who wander on it! Tonight, we hunt!”
The Horns roared like thunder, lancing through Harry and making her bones shudder as the call went on, and on, and on.
She blinked, and when her eyes opened she was running, the blind and fearful flight of a deer, and the Hunt was on behind her.
(Author’s Note: So, yeah, also, I write. I hope y’all like it. This is the first section of a longer story that I wrote for a class, so if you do like it, remind me that I put it up and I’ll post the next section. Also, do not take this, I have proof-positive that it’s mine, which I realize might be paranoid, but the world is a sketchy place.)
