Genna, Dan, Yarri and the cat travel the moonroad the old woman told them to seek.

We had barely caught our breaths than the cat said, “And now Coldfall,” and something in my heart contracted at the sight of the red sparks that spun around him, brightening and tightening until they coalesced into a terrifying spiral.

“I don’t want to,” Yarri whispered. Dan clutched my hand, and I grabbed Yarri’s arm, and I dragged the three of us forward and into that spiral before the road could slide away from us. And before I lost my courage.

Things moved around us as we fell. Creatures, shadows, glowing eyes that stared at us in bodiless pairs. Broken people, twisted animals. Monsters. They slid past us or dropped behind us as we raced by, and some of them opened mouths and screamed without sound, and others reached out to try to grab us, though their hands slid through us as if either they or we were made of nothing but smoke.

And some saw us and laughed, and even though I could no more hear the laughter than the screams, it was somehow worse. It was as if they knew—absolutely knew—what was about to happen to us.

I yearned for wings, or a way off the road. I wished Dan still had Papa’s sword.

I tried to breathe, but my terror clogged my throat. Hands grasping, and eyes staring, and shadows wrapping themselves around the three of us and trying to slip inside, as if they wanted our bodies to wear like coats.

We crashed out of the road, all three of us feeling filthy and ill-used, and the cat landed in a heap on us, hissing and spitting and with his claws out.

“Up, quickly,” he said. “The old woman said this was the way, though I didn’t want to believe her. This way, though, nothing good lies between her and what we seek.” He got to his feet, and stared over my shoulder, and puffed himself to twice his size.

“Run,” he whispered.

We did not look behind us. I could feel something there. Something big. Wet-mouthed. Hungry. I could hear the moist noises of its movement. I got to my feet and bolted after the cat that streaked away from us, and Dan followed me, and I hoped that Yarri followed him. I could not hear her when she ran, so I did not know, and I feared that if I looked behind to check on her, I’d see the thing making those wet, crunching, smacking sounds….and then Dan passed me and Yarri shot past Dan and I was the one at the back.

I’m not going to give too much set up here. My young heroes have made a life-or-death deal with the nightling Kai-lord, and have realized he doesn’t intend to keep his end of it. They’ve gone to visit an ancient audiomaerist—a woman who can track people through time and space from the words they’ve spoken.

And the old woman is studying the cut the heroine, Genna, received on her hand from the dream she was dreaming.

I held out my hand.

“Here are the bits of gravel I dug out of it,” Yarri said, and put her little handmade bag on the table.

The old woman ran one gnarled finger along the edges of my cut, and hissed. She undid the little tie on the bag, and touched the grit, and suddenly she wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes, and began rocking back and forth, making keening noises. Dan and I both jumped, but Yarri held out her hands, a calming gesture. “Wait,” she mouthed.

“He hunts the three of you, by the roads and also through the second world, the world that the wounded child has entered. He has set the silver women and with her blind hounds on you, and the bard with his harp strung with the hairs of long-dead warriors. When the bard’s harp sings on its own, the warriors come forth, and their eyes see through the worlds and through life and death and time.

“And the one you seek hides from him, and has hidden from him for a long time, bearing many faces and many names, and our enemy has only the one name to follow. You seek a trickster, and perhaps you will find him, and perhaps he will find you. And if he finds you first, you may face danger from all sides.”

She opened her eyes, and stared at my brother and me, and then at Yarri. And then she turned to her cat. “You’ll go with them, of course. They’ll be walking the moonroads, and we cannot think they’ll find their way without your sort of help.”

“I thought you’d want a favor,” the cat said, and I shrieked, and Dan jumped. “I might go with them, even if just for a while. I don’t like the silver huntress or her vile white-eyed hounds, but that old harp and I have crossed paths a time or two before. I might play with it again, just for the fun of it.”

Even Yarri looked shaken. “How did you make him talk?” she asked our host.

The old woman looked disgusted. “I have done nothing with him but feed him at night and listen to his long-winded tales. If you value your sanity, don’t let him tell you about the time he sailed all the seas.”

“I’ll take them along the moonroads,” the cat said. “But you’re the one who will have to tell us which roads we’ll need to follow.”

“Dare I say the name of the one they seek?” she asked the cat. “Though better you than them, better here than later. He can’t see them here. Or me. I always feel better when he can’t see me.”

“I don’t think he concerns himself with cats,” I said, and the cat turned all his attention on me, and looked straight into my eyes, and from his mouth I heard the words, “Neither do I,” while in my mind, just as clearly, his voice said, And you, Dreamer … do you think I’m a cat? Here, kitty, kitty, have some nice fish?”