The Spell of Rosette - Kim Falconer [6]
What was that? She froze.
It might have been a nightjar in the pine trees, or footsteps on the front verandah. Whatever it was, it stopped short, along with her breath. She swallowed, fighting the dryness in her throat, listening hard for the sound again. When it didn’t return, she crept out of the library to search the rest of the house. Room by room she went, looking for her family and any hint of what had happened; and room by room she found nothing unusual except for the emptiness, and the dark.
By the time she reached the kitchen she was shaking. What’s that smell? She held the light high over her head, peering in. The pantry shelves were full of jars—fruits and nuts, pasta and rice—all in their places. The spices sat in little wooden boxes, orderly and undisturbed, and the pots and pans hung in nested ranks above the stove, their copper bottoms glinting in the candlelight. She caught her reflection in one, and saw the others there too.
The blood drained from her face. She’d found her family.
Mama, John’ra, D’ran and two members of the household staff were laid out on the floor like freshly chopped wood. Glazed eyes stared at the ceiling and walls, necks at unusual angles, limbs askew. There were drag marks across the floor, leading out into the hall. Blood splattered their clothes, matting her mother’s hair and obscuring her face.
Kalindi looked away, unable to shut her eyes. They came to rest on the sink as she backed up. The basin was filled with a dark liquid, steam rising from the surface.
‘Mama?’ Tears spilled down her face.
A creaking on the verandah spun her around. It wasn’t a nightjar. Voices rose and fell, arguing in harsh, guttural sounds, like boots kicking gravel.
She dropped the candle and raced blindly down the hall, her footfalls silent on the thick carpets. Pushing through the back screen door, she vaulted over the railing and tore down the path, leaping the garden fence without breaking stride. Staying low, she kept to the grassy edges of the walkways so her boots wouldn’t tap out a signalling here I am! Circling wide, she crawled under the paddock fence and into the fields that bordered the estate. She ran, fell down, scrambled up and ran again.
She looked behind once. No light came from the house, its outline a black etch on the horizon, a dark shadow about to be swallowed up by the encroaching fog. The only sound she could hear came from the pigpens: distant grunts and squeals.
She kept running, legs working hard and eyes wide open. Darkness blurred the landscape until she could distinguish only the glistening of the cobblestones in front of her. She followed the driveway, heart pounding.
Kalindi had no plan. She couldn’t think to make one. Her pace slowed as she reached the entrance gate—the wrought-iron pillar cold to the touch. No-one was coming, at least not anyone with a light. Hesitating for only a second, she let her hand slide off the post and dashed out of the estate.
Her pace quickened as the road sloped down to the densely treed valley. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there, a dark outline against a deeper darkness—the forest of Espiro Dell Ray. If she could get to those trees that guarded the borders, she could disappear. She would be safe.
‘Assalo!’
She stopped suddenly, feeling the vibration of hoofbeats pounding up the paddock. They reverberated through the ground and up her legs as the tall black horse appeared. He halted above her, pressing his chest into the fence, soft wickers blowing from his nostrils.
‘It’s all right, Assalo,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll get you out of here, but we have to be quick and we have to be silent.’
The horse pawed the ground, churning up grass and dirt, his four white socks bright in the early night.
Kalindi Rose climbed up the embankment and stroked Assalo’s neck, flipping strands of his long black mane over to the other side of his crest. He lowered his head, pushing it between the rails to smell