The entrance to the cairn was an enormous maw 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cnever throw it far.\u201d Sergiu wasn\u2019t sticking to tradition.<\/p>\n
Alina turned sharply to face him, clearly furious. \u201cWhat. The\u00a0fuck<\/em>. Was that?\u201d<\/p>\n Sergiu met her gaze, with an annoying, see-how-clever-I-am grin on his face. \u201cA lucky throw, obviously.\u201d He shrugged his shoulders, apparently trying for sheepish, but he just couldn\u2019t let go of that stupid grin. Bel didn\u2019t believe a word of it, but said nothing. There was nothing she possibly could say that wouldn\u2019t make this worse.<\/p>\n Bel knew he was both lying and not. No one\u2019s aim was that good all the time, so yes, there was no doubt that it was a lucky throw. But he had also been\u00a0trying\u00a0<\/em>to pitch it as far as he could. So lucky throw or not, he was\u00a0deliberately\u00a0<\/em>being a dick, and he had managed to strike gold.<\/p>\n Alina had him pegged, too. \u201cA\u00a0lucky throw<\/em>. You\u2019re such an asshole,\u201d came her retort. She turned to Bel and said, softly, \u201cYou don\u2019t have to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes! She does! If she wants to be a Night Walker, she has to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShut up, Sergiu!\u201d Alina snapped, turning her head to glare at him briefly before facing Bel again. \u201cYou\u00a0don\u2019t<\/em>. This is\u00a0bullshit<\/em>. We\u00a0never\u00a0<\/em>do it like this and he\u2019s being an ass. We\u2019ll redo the throw.\u201d<\/p>\n From behind them, a girl\u2019s voice called out, \u201cNo redos! You only get one throw.\u201d<\/p>\n Alina didn\u2019t even turn around. \u201cYou don\u2019t get an opinion, Neena! Stay out of it!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s right, though,\u201d Sergiu said, smirking. \u201cOne throw. If it goes in, it\u2019s good. That\u2019s the rule.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t throw past the first junction, Sergiu, and you know it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s not a\u00a0rule<\/em>, \u2018Lina.\u201d<\/p>\n Bel knew he had her there, and she could see Alina knew it too, the way her eyes sank, the slight\u2014very slight\u2014drop in her shoulders.<\/p>\n \u201cI can bring them around.\u00a0Trust me<\/em>,\u201d Alina said quietly, her voice gentle and encouraging.<\/p>\n The spats between Alina and Sergiu were all but legendary among the Night Walkers. For two years they had jockeyed for status in the little family they had created, neither ever able to permanently get the upper hand.<\/p>\n Bel knew how this<\/em> argument would end: Alina would lose by winning. If she convinced the others to redo the throw, they\u2019d think she was going soft. Playing favorites. Even if they never said it aloud, the damage would be done.<\/p>\n Bel liked Alina. She was kind and smart, and didn\u2019t mind hanging out with someone three years younger. Most importantly, she was the one who\u2019d encouraged Bel to join. Bel wasn\u2019t going to repay her by costing her standing with the group.<\/p>\n Bel didn\u2019t know for sure why Sergiu had a problem with her\u2014he was the only one in the circle that voted against her initiation\u2014but she could make a guess: no one had joined before they turned thirteen, and Bel was barely twelve. Sergiu\u2019s had been outvoted ten to one, and this was his response.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll do it,\u201d she said, meeting her friend\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cBel, it\u2019s\u2026\u201d Alina lowered her voice further so others couldn\u2019t hear. \u201cLook, there\u2019s a reason\u00a0<\/em>why we don\u2019t throw the stone that far. Sometimes there are animals living in there. They think it\u2019s a cave. The farther back you go\u2026\u201d Her voice trailed off.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll do it<\/em>,\u201d she repeated.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you do it, he wins.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo. If I do it, he\u00a0loses<\/em>,\u201d she said with a sly smile.<\/p>\n Alina thought about this, then smiled back. \u201cOkay. Go show him what you\u2019re made of.\u201d<\/p>\n Bel turned to face Sergiu and said, loudly, clearly, and with conviction, \u201cGive me the lantern.\u201d<\/p>\n Sergiu\u2019s disappointment was obvious. Bel knew he\u2019d wanted her to chicken out; forcing Alina to ask for a concession would have been a silver medal. Now he had nothing. He reluctantly picked up the lantern at his feet and handed it over.<\/p>\n \u201cOK,\u201d he said tersely, \u201cYou know how this goes. You get one turn of the sand glass. Find the stone, bring it out.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rite of the Stone was ingenious. Bel didn\u2019t know how it worked, whether it was magic or alchemy or something else, but it worked: Sergiu\u2019s rock glowed faintly in the dark, but in the light it was just a dumb rock, and you couldn\u2019t tell it from any of the others. To find the right\u00a0<\/em>rock once you were in, you had to extinguish the light. This is where the Night Walkers got their name.<\/p>\n Bel opened the shutter in the lamp and let the red light spill out ahead of her. This bit was Alina\u2019s touch: red light, she’d explained, preserved 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\u2019t want to know how much the red glass had cost. That was probably Sergiu\u2019s doing. When he and Alina weren\u2019t too busy arguing, they made a formidable team.<\/p>\n Bel had to admit that Sergiu was actually pretty cool for a boy, despite whatever issue he had with her personally. As the son of a mine owner, he had no business hanging around with teenagers whose families had to scrape to get by\u2014some of their parents probably worked<\/em> in his dad\u2019s mine\u2014but he never held that over anyone or put on airs. Here, he was just another teenager, and a pretty decent one at that. Sure, he could be irritating and obnoxious, but that was true of a lot of people.<\/p>\n Bel crept into the cairn, picking her way carefully across the rocks and boulders. Once properly inside, the walls and floor smoothed out into a long hall of worked stone. She could see initials\u2014some carved, some done in ink\u2014just inside the entrance. These didn\u2019t belong to Night Walkers, of course; theirs would be much farther in. Any<\/em>\u00a0idiot could make it\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0far, and they would still be in the light.<\/p>\n As she moved, Bel pictured the stone\u2019s flight, imagining its arc as it fell. The junction appeared at the edge of the lamplight, bathed in red. The stone, she figured, had struck the ground just this side of it, then skipped down the hall beyond. She closed the shutter and let the darkness close in around her, turning her head from side to side. Nothing. Onward.<\/em><\/p>\n She reopened the shutter halfway and pressed on. At the junction, she closed it again. Nothing, as expected. The names carved here\u2014if you made it this far, you made sure your record was permanent\u2014were 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 did so here, too. Bel hoped to join that exclusive club someday.<\/p>\n A breeze kicked up, sending more of the atonal music echoing through the hall. The echoes were louder here, some sounding faintly like voices. Bel ignored them. Most kids thought the cairn was haunted, but real hauntings were rare. The rumors were probably started\u2014and encouraged\u2014by the Night Walkers themselves.<\/p>\n Most were just social circles, but sitting around gossiping wasn\u2019t Bel\u2019s idea of fun. A few were little more than gangs of petty thugs, which was absolutely<\/em> not her thing. But the Night Walkers? They were different. They did stuff. Stuff that mattered.<\/p>\n And best of all, they did most of it at night<\/em>.<\/p>\n A lot of kids were afraid to go out in the dark. The Walkers lived<\/em> for it: scavenger hunts, capture the flag, exploration, hunting, all by moonlight. Sergiu and Alina taught them real skills and made it exhilarating. But doing any of that in the dark took nerve, and that was what the Rite was really about. If you couldn\u2019t make it through this, you\u2019d never make it through the rest.<\/p>\n The junction was behind her now, and instinct told her it was time to check again. She closed the light and slowly scanned the darkness. Just as she was ready to move on, she saw it: a faint glow straight ahead, maybe another ten feet away.<\/p>\n She cracked the light open just enough to see the floor without losing sight of the stone. She had maybe two minutes left. She crept forward until the glow vanished at the edge of the light, closed the shutter, and inched the final few feet through the darkness. The stone reappeared ahead. She stumbled on her last step, catching herself against the wall, then bent carefully and closed her hand around it.<\/p>\n From up ahead, she heard a low, canine growl. Alina\u2019s voice echoed in her head:\u00a0Sometimes there are animals living there. They think it\u2019s a cave<\/em>. Bel froze. The growl came again. A wolf? A coyote? A wild dog?<\/p>\n She forced down her panic. It was pitch black: she couldn\u2019t see it, and it couldn\u2019t see her.\u00a0It probably caught your scent when you stepped inside. You startled it when you almost fell<\/em>. 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: mask her scent if something picked it up, or give it a faceful if that didn\u2019t work. She hoped she wouldn\u2019t need it.<\/p>\n With the vial clutched in her right hand, she used the tips of her fingers to crack open the lamp\u2019s shutter as she turned it around in her left. Dim, crimson light spilled out behind her, giving her the barest outline of the passage. Just enough to keep her footing as she slowly stepped backwards.<\/p>\n The growl came again, but softer this time. Less angry.\u00a0It just wants you to leave. Keep backing away. Don\u2019t. Run.<\/em>\u00a0Except she didn\u2019t have time for this; she didn\u2019t want to give Sergiu the satisfaction of seeing her fail (a part of her brain suggested that, perhaps, she didn\u2019t have her priorities straight, but the rest of it was running on adrenaline and wasn\u2019t listening).<\/p>\n The next growl was shorter, softer, less threatening, and with time running out she risked a faster step. No response.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0herself<\/em>, and pulled out the stone.\u00a0You did it! You actually did it!<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Alina was absolutely beaming. She laughed as she closed an arm around Bel and pulled her into a hug. \u201cWelcome to the Night Walkers!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The entrance to the cairn was an enormous maw 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aow-vignettes","tag-bel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5627,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions\/5627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}