Page 39 of Thornlight

Witch-magic.

It had first appeared some years into his climb, and now dangled from his neck, heavy and thumping, like the weight of a dead thing he couldn’t shake loose. Over time it had grown crueler and stronger. Every day, more of the else-hand’s dark magic trickled free and spilled out into the Break as shadows, and then the shadows climbed up and scuttled out of the Break, faster than Cub could ever go. And every day, Cub thought the world smelled a little more like blood.

As he climbed, Cub dodged lightning being thrown at him from above.

He could not always move quickly enough. Sometimes the crackling bolts struck him like hooves, burning his skin. Sometimes they tore loose boulders that slammed into him and knocked him flat.

Did the people up above know that the lightning they tossed at him contained witches?

Cub didn’t know or care.

Witches made the war, and the war had made Cub a motherless beast.

Whenever one of the lightning bolts hit him, he heard the tiny, trapped scream of the witch inside right before it died.Once, Cub would have wept to hear such fear and pain.

But Cub had kept his lonesome heart small and hidden for so many years that sometimes he forgot it was there at all.

He never forgot the else-hand.

It wouldn’t let him forget.

One day, so many years into Cub’s climb that he had lost count of them, the else-hand tightened its grip.

Cub lost his footing, and fell for miles. He landed hard on a bed of rocks that pierced his tough furry hide.

“Please stop,” Cub begged, but the else-hand never listened.

Instead, its cruel witch-magic hissed,You will never make it out.

“I will,” Cub cried.

For how long have you climbed? How many crawling years?

Cub buried his face in his mammoth paws, which ached with blisters. “Too many.”

The else-hand wriggled in delight around Cub’s neck.Beasts,it whispered,belong in darkness.

But Cub remembered otherwise.

He remembered the kiss of sunlight against the furry crown of his head. He remembered the soft blue world of the oceanfloor, where his mothers had taken him on adventures through forests of glowing coral. He remembered his mothers singing in booming voices about the first, oldest beasts, and the earth they had shaped into mountains.

“You’re wrong,” he told the hand around his neck. “Beasts deserve to see the light.”

Cub pushed himself to his feet, pulling against the grip of the else-hand as if it were a rope from which he could snap free. He pulled so hard he saw stars, and whirling colors in the darkness, and then—andthen...

With the else-hand sinking into his neck like a noose, Cub saw a thing of the up-above world:

A witch woman.

Cub knew at once that the else-hand belonged to her. He could smell her rotten-egg stink. He could taste the sour tang of magic moving through her blood. She sat on the edge of a cliff outside a small mountain cave, huddled over a pile of silver chains. She was very old; her veins were full of magic that burned like poison.

The witch peered out from her fur collar and watched a young woman in a pale gown climb up the rocks toward her.

“Queenie comes to say hello,” whispered the witch, cradlinga length of chain against her cheek. “Queenie gets knocked back down below.”

Cub struggled against the else-hand’s grip. It was an old hand, a cursed hand. It belonged to the witch, yes, but there was another chained to it as well—someone newer and younger.

As if it could hear his thoughts, the else-hand tightened its painful magic around Cub’s neck, cutting off his air.