The entrance to the cairn looked as though an enormous maw had opened in the side of the hill, ready to swallow Bel whole. In the light of the nearly-full moon, she could make out the stone pillars that framed it, an obvious sign that this was not some natural cave formation. It was a clear night, and as the wind kicked up she could hear the strange, unmusical tones that gave the Whispering Cairn its name.

She, Sergiu, and Alina stood a dozen paces back from the gaping hole. Behind them, in a loose semicircle, were the rest of the eleven teenagers that made up the Night Walkers.

Sergiu pulled his arm back and then snapped it forward, throwing a dimly glowing rock right through the center of the mouth. Bel watched the blurry streak get swallowed by the darkness, heard the rock hit the ground and skip, then skip again, and again, and again, each one fainter than the last. Alina had assured her that they “never throw it far” and if that was true then Sergiu wasn’t sticking to tradition.

Alina turned sharply to face him, clearly furious. “What. The fuck. Was that?”

Sergiu met her gaze, with an annoying, see-how-clever-I-am grin on his face. “A lucky throw, obviously.” He shrugged his shoulders, trying apparently for sheepish, but he just couldn’t let go of that stupid grin. Bel didn’t believe a word of it, but said nothing. There was nothing she possibly could say that wouldn’t make this worse.

Bel knew he was both lying and not. No one’s aim was that good all the time, so yes, there was no doubt that it was a lucky throw. But he had also been trying to pitch it as far as he could. So lucky throw or not, he was deliberately being a dick, and he had managed to strike gold.

Alina had him pegged, too. “A lucky throw. You’re such an asshole,” came her retort. She turned to Bel and said, softly, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes! She does! If she wants to be a Night Walker, she has to do it.”

“Shut up, Sergiu!” Alina snapped, turning her head to glare at him briefly before facing Bel again. “You don’t. This is bullshit. We never do it like this and he’s being an ass. We’ll redo the throw.”

From behind them, a girl’s voice called out, “No redos! You only get one throw.”

Alina didn’t even turn around. “You don’t get an opinion, Neena! Stay out of it!”

“She’s right, though,” Sergiu said, smirking. “One throw. If it goes in, it’s good. That’s the rule.”

“We don’t throw past the first junction, Sergiu, and you know it.”

“But it’s not a rule, ‘Lina.”

Bel knew he had her there, and she could see Alina knew it too, the way her eyes sank, the slight–very slight–drop in her shoulders.

“I can bring them around. Trust me,” Alina said quietly, her voice gentle and encouraging.

The spats between Alina and Sergiu were all but legendary among the members and initiates. For the two years that the Night Walkers were a thing, they had argued and fought as if it were the whole of their existence. It was a power struggle in miniature, each jockeying for higher status in the family they had created, neither able to permanently usurp the other. Word was, one of the Walkers’ members thought themselves clever, and made a joke one day about Alina and Sergiu “bickering like a married couple”. Neither was amused, and they issued a scathing correction. No one had made a joke like that since.

Bel knew how this argument would end: Alina would lose by winning. If she convinced the others to do another throw, she’d be spending much of the capital she’d built with them. They’d think her going soft. Of playing favorites. Even if they never said those things out loud, the damage would be done.

Bel liked Alina. She was kind, she was smart, she didn’t mind hanging out with someone three years her junior, and she was loyal to her friends, even covering for them when they were in a pinch. And, most importantly, it was Alina that invited Bel to join in the first place. She didn’t want to be the one that cost Alina her standing.

Bel didn’t know for sure why Sergiu had a problem with her–he was the only one in the circle that voted against her initiation–but she could make a guess: it was probably her age. No one had joined before they turned thirteen, and Bel was barely twelve. Sergiu didn’t like it, and as one of the two de facto leaders of the group he was obviously put out. The rules of the Night Walkers were clear on this point, though: it took only a majority to bring someone in, so no matter how Sergiu felt about it Bel was in–assuming she passed the Rite of the Stone, of course. This was clearly Sergiu’s response to being outvoted ten to one.

“I’ll do it,” she said, meeting her friend’s eyes.

“Bel, it’s…” Alina lowered her voice further, speaking softly so others couldn’t hear. “Look, there’s a reason why we don’t throw the stone that far. Sometimes there are animals living there. They think it’s a cave. The farther back you go…” Her voice trailed off. It was a rare admission that what they were doing wasn’t exactly safe–far from it, in fact. Bel understood all that, but she was still determined to see this through. And she was eager to turn it into a victory for Alina.

“I’ll do it,” she repeated.

“If you do it, he wins.”

“No. If I do it, he loses,” she said slyly, and paired it with a matching smile.

Alina thought about this, then smiled back. “Okay. Go show him what you’re made of.”

Bel turned to face Sergiu and said, loudly, clearly, and with conviction, “Give me the lantern.”

Sergiu’s expression was one of disappointment with hints of frustration. Bel knew he wanted her to chicken out. Forcing Alina to ask for concessions would have been a silver medal. Now he had nothing. Slowly, and somewhat reluctantly, he picked up the lantern at his feet and handed it over.

“OK,” he said tersely, “You know how this goes. You get one turn of the sand glass. Find the stone, bring it out.”

The Rite of the Stone was ingenious. Bel didn’t know how it worked, whether it was magic or alchemy or something else, but it worked: Sergiu’s rock glowed faintly in the dark, but in the light it was just a dumb rock. Only it was more than that, too, because it was a rock taken from inside the cairn, itself, so you couldn’t tell it from any of the others. To find the right rock once you were in, you had to extinguish the light. This is where the Night Walkers got their name.

Bel opened the shutter in the lamp and let the red light spill out ahead of her. This bit was Alina’s touch: red light, she explained, didn’t interfere with your night vision, and some animals, including a few predators, had trouble seeing it. It was a lot dimmer than a normal lantern light, of course, but nothing about this was supposed to be easy. Bel didn’t want to know how much the red glass had cost. That was probably Sergiu’s doing. When he and Alina weren’t too busy arguing, they made a formidable team.

Bel had to admit that Sergiu was actually pretty cool for a boy, despite whatever issue he had with her, personally. He was the son of one of the mine owners, which meant his parents were ridiculously rich and in a position of influence that the others could barely imagine, and he certainly had no business hanging out with a bunch of teenagers whose families had to scrape to get by. Some of their parents probably worked in his dad’s mine, but he didn’t hold his family’s status over anyone, or flaunt his money, or even put on airs. He just wanted to hang with others his age that were like-minded, maybe interested in a challenge, open to some fun with a twist of danger and the unknown. He was just another teenager to them, and a pretty decent one at that. Sure, he could be irritating and obnoxious, but that was true of a lot of people.

Bel crept into the cairn slowly at first, picking her way carefully across the rocks and boulders. Once properly inside, the walls and the floor smoothed out, revealing the long hall of worked stone. She could see initials–some carved, some done in ink–just inside the entrance. These didn’t belong to Night Walkers, of course; theirs would be much farther in. Any idiot could make it this far, and they would still be in the light.

As she moved, Bel pictured the stone’s flight in her mind, imagining its arc as it fell. She saw the junction at the edge of the lamplight, bathed in red. The stone, she figured, struck the ground just this side of it, and its momentum carried it down the hall beyond. She closed the shutter as a test, and let the darkness close in around her as she turned her head from side to side. Nothing. Onward.

She re-opened the shutter about half way and pressed on. She stopped at the junction, closed the light again, saw nothing (as expected), then re-opened the shutter. The names carved here–if you made it this far, you made sure your record was permanent–were mostly ones she recognized. Shahab. Rita. Sveigh. Petre. Neena. And of course Alina and Sergiu. Those brave few who spent the night in the cairn also did so here (Bel hoped to join that exclusive club some day, too).

A breeze kicked up, and sent more of the atonal music echoing through the hall. The echoes were louder in here, and some sounded faintly like voices. Bel ignored them. Most other kids thought the cairn was haunted, but real hauntings were rare. Those rumors were probably started, and encouraged, by the Night Walkers, themselves.

Most kids in Diamond Lake ran with a group of some sort because there just wasn’t that much to do unless you were an adult who drank and gambled. Most were just social circles, but gossiping children wasn’t Bel’s idea of fun. A few were little more than gangs of petty thugs, which was absolutely not her thing. But the Night Walkers? They were something different. They did stuff. Stuff that mattered. And best of all, they did most of it at night. A lot of kids were afraid to go out in the dark. The Walkers didn’t merely embrace the night: they lived it. Scavenger hunts, capture the flag, exploration, hunting, all done by moonlight. Sergiu and Alina taught them real skills that few people had, much less kids, and did it in a way that was exhilarating. But doing that stuff in the dark took nerve, and that’s what the Rite was all about. If you couldn’t make it through this, you’d never make it through the rest.

The junction was far behind her now, and instinct told her it was time to check again. She closed the light, and turned her head slowly from left to right, scanning the darkness. Just as she was ready to move on, she saw it: a faint glow on the ground straight ahead, maybe another 30 or 40 feet away.

She cracked the light open just enough to see the floor in front of her, but not so much that she would lose the stone. She had maybe two minutes left to get this done, so there was no time to waste. She crept forward until the glowing stone vanished at the edge of the light, closed the shutter, and inched along the final few feet in the darkness, feeling her way ahead. The glowing stone had returned and served as her guide. She stumbled on her last step, but managed to catch herself using the wall on her right. And then she was right on top of it. She bent over carefully–it was easy to lose your balance with no reference point, as she had just recently learned–and her hand closed around the stone.

From up ahead, she heard a low, canine growl. Alina’s voice echoed in her head: Sometimes there are animals living there. They think it’s a cave. Bel froze. Then the growl came again. A wolf? A coyote? A wild dog?

She forced down her panic. It was pitch black: she couldn’t see it, and it couldn’t see her. It probably caught your scent when you stepped inside. And then you startled it when you almost fell. Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached into her pocket, dropped the stone into it, and pulled out a glass vial filled with cayenne, capsaicin powder and black pepper. It had cost her every copper she had, but it was her only contingency plan. She hoped she wouldn’t need it.

With the vial clutched in her right hand, she used the tips of her fingers to crack open the lamp’s shutter as she turned it around in her left. Dim, crimson light spilled out behind her, giving her the barest outline of the passage that would be her retreat. It was just enough to keep her footing as she slowly stepped backwards.

The growl came again, but softer this time. Less angry. It just wants you to leave. Keep backing away. Don’t. Run. Except she didn’t have time for this; she didn’t want to give Sergiu the satisfaction of seeing her fail (a part of her brain suggested that, perhaps, she didn’t have her priorities straight, but the rest of it was running on adrenaline and wasn’t listening).

The next growl was shorter, softer, less threatening, and with time running out she risked a faster step. This time there was no response.

Confident she was in the clear, she turned around and walked at a brisk pace, resisting the urge to break into a run. She slipped her hand back into her pocket, replacing the vial before she accidentally peppered herself, and pulled out the stone. You did it! You actually did it!

Bel exited the cairn with half a minute to spare. The group whooped and hollered as she casually walked up to a sullen Sergiu and dropped the glowing stone at his feet.

Alina was absolutely beaming, and laughed as she closed an arm around Bel and pulled her into a hug. “Welcome to the Night Walkers!”