Page 110 of Thornlight

Her father flinched, his eyes wide.

Brier whispered, “Thorn...”

“Don’t be angry with her,” Noro said quietly. “The Gulgot’s darkness has touched her. She’s... not herself.”

Thorn’s mother cried out. “Oh, Thorn...”

Thorn’s father turned away, a hand over his mouth.

Thorn didn’t care. Let them be upset. Let them cry for her and pity her and fear her.

She stared at Zaf’s still body. “No, I’m not myself,” she muttered, her fists clenched. “I’m better than myself. And I’m going to kill her.”

Then something shifted behind Thorn—a rough, resounding rumble, like great rocks rolling slowly down a mountain.

A gargantuan voice said, “Who?”

Thorn rose slowly, turned around, and bumped into a mammoth black snout. Two colossal gleaming eyes blinked above it.

The Gulgot.

She took two slow steps away, no more voice in her throat and no more air in her lungs.

The Gulgot’s face was a strange one—not quite a hound or a bear, and not quite like one of the sleepy tree skunks that hung from branches and moved slow as tar. Clumps of grass and clover and mud dangled from its ears and chin, like the moss that covered the trees of the Estar swamps when they had still been healthy and green.

Thorn gazed up and up andupat the beast’s hulking shoulders. “Papa...?”

“It’s all right,” her father replied. “Thorn, this is Cub. He’s a new friend of ours.”

Thorn heard the careful note in her father’s voice. He believed what he was saying, but he was a little afraid too.

She didn’t blame him. The Gulgot’s paws were so enormous he could have squashed them all flat with one step. And that was when Thorn realized, a bit dizzy, that the strange hairy forest she and Noro had walked through before had, in fact, been the Gulgot’s legs.

The Gulgot—Cub? He had aname?—blew a soft breath into Thorn’s face. “Who?” rumbled his scratchy, thunderous voice. “Who will you kill?”

Fern interrupted quickly, “No one’s killing anyone.”

“Well, actually,” interrupted Brier, “we’ve all been killing stormwitches for a long time, haven’t we?”

“Brier, I swear to you,” said their father, weary, “we didn’t know—”

“The queen,” Thorn announced, staring hard at the Gulgot. At Cub. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea of a monster named Cub. She felt very close to bursting out laughing or maybe just lying down and saying, “Forget it,” and going to sleep forever.

She pressed her hands against her legs. “I’m going to kill the queen.”

Silence. The Gulgot rumbled out a fetid sigh, watching Thorn keenly. “Why?”

“She killed all the stormwitches. She tried to kill Brier. She’s why Zaf is... why Zaf...”

But Thorn could no longer speak.

“Thorn of the Vale.” The Gulgot’s hot breath smelled worse than the gutters of Aeria, but the shell inside Thorn responded happily to it, rising up inside her like a shiny black wave. “The else-hand has you.”

A prickle unfolded along Thorn’s spine. “The what?”

“Cub, will you say that again, please?” asked her mother.

The Gulgot touched his neck with one leathery paw. “The queen’s hand. It pulls and chokes me. It keeps me from climbing.” The Gulgot blinked slowly. “The queen’s hand has Estar. The queen’s hand has Thorn.”

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