Page 122 of Starside

I want a memory.

I should feel relief at the chance to get the hell out of this place, but all I feel is crushing sadness. My memories are all I have. “Why?”

His cape swirls behind him, melting into the rest of the mist.

When I feast on flesh and bone, I feel but a ripple of your life. Then it fades. But if you were to give me a memory willingly, it would last …

Ten. I have just ten happy memories. I could offer up another, but I know he means them. I just know it. If my mind is a room, these memories are kept in the drawers. Locked tightly. Guarded. “No,” I say, backing away.

He rushes at me, full force, that mist turning into a thousand claws and blades, all pointed toward me.

I gasp.

The mist settles, as if the weapons were never there at all. As if they could be summoned in half a second.

I grow hungry.

I can almost feel that hunger, as if the mist is an extension of himself, and it is also starving. I look around at the forest. Thousands of trees that must have been people at some point.

The creature is right. I’m not afraid for me … I’m scared I won’t be strong enough to make it to the end of this journey.

Give me the memory, and I will spare you.

I don’t want to. But if I don’t … if I die here, in the mists …

All of this will have been for nothing.

“Fine,” I say, my eyes burning.

He smiles, the bone of his face fracturing slightly with the movement. His longest metal finger reaches toward me, parting the mist. As he gets closer, that burning in my eyes intensifies, that sorrow distilling—until a single tear slips down my cheek. He presses his finger to it, the curious shimmering blade scraping against my skin. He pulls it toward him.

I jerk forward, hooked, then released, as something more than just a tear is taken. It sits on his finger, solid as ice, and as he brings it to his face, I can hear it. Laughter. Playing. Voices that I would give anything to hear again.

In a flash, the creature puts his sharp finger in his mouth, swallowing the memory, humming. Smiling. Tasting.

I collapse onto the ground, heart beating against the dirt. New tears turning it to mud.

It’s … gone. That tiny, bright pocket in my mind is dimmer. The drawer in my brain has been ransacked.

“Thank you, Aris Godslayer,” he says, before drifting away. Lost in thought. Lost in my memory. I look up at him from the ground, somewhere between cursing him for taking something priceless and thanking him for sparing me.

Before he fades completely, he looks over his shoulder. “I might be the oldest thing in these woods, but I am far from the deadliest. If you want to kill those gods … I suggest you run.”

He disappears.

And all the sounds of the forest hit me at once, like a veil has been lifted.

Scratches. Growls. Right behind me. As if there were beasts waiting on the fringes, scared of the Gardener. But now he’s gone.

I don’t look. I just bolt.

The Bone Woods thicken, closing in, and I duck below branches, jump over roots, chest heaving. But even through my panting, I hear them.

Growls, echoing from every direction. Thundering steps against the dirt. Panic pounds through my blood as I count several. Whatever they are … there’s a pack of them.

I push myself even more, not daring to look over my shoulder, hurling myself forward, but they’re faster. I hear their snapping maws, just feet away. Their hunger—I can feel it, like a second mist, closing in.

I can’t outrun them. They’re going to mow me down any second. So, when I reach a tree with branches low enough, I throw myself onto it and begin to climb.