“Wait!” he shouted irritably.
She slowed her pace and glanced back. Her shoulders slumped in her huge coat and she started to jog back up the hill towards him.
“We have to keep moving!” she said impatiently.
“I know, it’s just my knee,” said Sylas. “You’ll have to slow down – or go on without me,” he added reluctantly.
Simia looked down at his bloodied trouser leg. “What a mess,” she said, sucking her teeth. “Why didn’t you say?”
“You didn’t really give me a chance.”
She arched a ginger eyebrow. “If we slow down, we’ll almost certainly run into them, and that would be bad,” she said, with heavy emphasis. “I can’t believe we’ve even got this far. You’ll just have to keep up as best you can…”
Her voice trailed off as something seemed to occur to her. She turned and looked back down the hill. “Unless…” She glanced at Sylas. “I’m going to try something, but it may not work.” She looked unsure of herself. “Just… well, just... stand back.”
He took a step back.
“No,” she said, flapping both hands. “Further back.”
He eyed her warily and limped several paces backwards.
She turned her back to him, facing directly down the hill. She took a deep breath, pulled up the heavy sleeves of her coat and stretched her arms in front of her. Sylas looked at her tiny figure dwarfed by the vast tangled arches of the forest, wondering what new miracle he was about to witness.
Precious moments passed, but nothing happened. The forest fell silent.
Simia shook her hands and lifted herself up on her toes, as though a couple more inches of height might increase her chances, but still there was nothing. Her arms dropped to her sides and she shook her head. She adjusted her stance and her shoulders seemed to heave as she took in a lungful of air, then she raised her arms again.
“Come on, Simsi,” she muttered under her breath. “Concentrate!”
Once more Sylas looked out into the dense forest, waiting for something to happen. At first he saw nothing, but then something peculiar made him squint. Slowly he became sure that the forest ahead of them was shifting and changing. He blinked his eyes, but the shapes of the trees continued to alter and warp. It was as though he was looking through a lens that was distorting the light, blending the lines of one tree with another, stretching them and morphing them until he was unsure which was which. The ground too was shifting. Leaves blurred with moss and roots until the forest floor was a mass of melding browns and greens. All of this motion was focused directly ahead, between Simia’s outstretched arms: to the left and right, the forest looked as it had before.
Sylas started to feel a little dizzy as he watched, but he found it impossible to look away, so beautiful was this display of colours, so strange the spectacle. And the longer he looked, the more there seemed to be order in the chaos: the vertical lines of the trees seemed to be drifting left and right, leaving an open pathway in the centre. There, where the trees had stood, the battle between the colours of the forest floor was being won by the brightest of all the greens. Soon the movement slowed and, as it did so, Sylas began to understand what he was looking at: it was a pathway, bordered on both sides by the trees that had stood in their way, its floor carpeted with soft, verdant moss.
But Simia had not finished. She moved one of her arms out towards the passing stream and moments later the silvery flow of the water started to veer from its path downhill and turn towards the long line of moss. Before long it had reached her feet, where it turned again and started flowing over the bright green surface. Sylas watched in amazement as the stream gathered pace on this smooth, slippery channel and became a shallow film of water, cascading between the trees.
Simia’s hands fell to her sides and she gasped for breath.
“It’s called a Groundrush,” she panted. “It’s for...”
There was a noise somewhere further up the hill and a bird nearby launched itself into the air. They looked sharply in its direction, their eyes scanning the skeletal trees and the shadows between. A wood pigeon sped upwards towards the grey sky, slapping its wings together as it darted through the branches.
Sylas glanced nervously at Simia. Her bold grin was gone and for the first time there was fear in her eyes.
They heard footsteps pounding through the forest somewhere far behind. The sound was heavy and resonant – whatever was making them was huge.
In the next moment the silence of the forest was shattered by a blood-chilling howl.
Even as the terrifying sound met their ears, Simia was in motion, grabbing Sylas by the collar and dragging him to the edge of the streaming water.
“It’s them! The Ghor!” she hissed in his ear. “Do exactly what I do!”
Then, without warning, she leapt into the air, throwing her legs out in front of her. She travelled some distance with her giant coat flapping about her before landing with a great splash in the icy water. As the water rushed about her, she lay back and wrapped her arms round her chest. She began to slide forward, carried with ease over the slippery, spongy surface. She quickly picked up pace and in no time she was careering down the hillside away from him, swiftly passing out of sight as she fell away into a dip in the forest floor. Seconds later she was thrown into the air some distance beyond and he heard her cry out to him as she landed back on the slide somewhere entirely out of view.
Just then a great chorus of howls echoed through the forest behind him and he heard the footsteps – closer now – crashing through the forest. They were on his trail. He pulled the rucksack from his shoulders, clutched it to his chest and leapt into the air.
He splashed into the freezing stream and gasped as the cold made its way quickly through his clothes. There was a gentle jolt as he went over a rise, then suddenly his heart was in his mouth as he accelerated downwards. Tree trunks flew past him faster and faster and, when he looked upwards, he could see a flurry of bare branches silhouetted against the grey sky. On both sides a blur of rocks and roots whisked past his face and he felt a growing excitement. He tucked in his elbows and allowed the surge of the stream to take him. He went over a bump and was thrown up in the air – suddenly weightless, hanging some distance off the ground – and in that moment everything went strangely quiet: the sound of rushing water faded; the wind stopped roaring in his ears. As he turned through the air, he was able to look back up the slide, and his blood ran cold.
Where he had been standing only moments before were two gargantuan black hounds, sniffing the air and prowling through the undergrowth. He saw in them the features of the beast that had pursued him the previous night: the cruel jaws bearing rapier-sharp teeth; the immense, powerful shoulders; and the long, sloping back.
But there was one difference. They seemed almost twice the size.
Before he saw any more, the ground hurtled up at him and his pursuers disappeared from view. He hit the slide face first and water splashed into his mouth and nose, but he was quickly flipped on to his back as the mossy path banked left and then right.
Trees, leaves, bushes, rocks whisked past him in a stream of colour. He looked down between his feet and saw the bright green slide below him, turning this way and that, sometimes rising, the force pressing him down into the ground, other times falling away so that he was thrown into the air. The sound of wind and water became deafening and the Groundrush swerved ever more quickly from side to side, throwing him against its mossy banks.
Then, as quickly as this strange journey