Emma's Inferno

Emma kicked hard. A briar tore her flank. Pain flashed white through her body, and she sprang sideways just as the fox snapped at the place where her throat had been. Its jaws closed on empty air.

She ran.

The wood spun around her. Branches whipped her face. Her paws struck stones, roots, hollows. The hawk followed overhead, beating the air with slow, terrible wings. The hound crashed through the undergrowth behind her, close enough that she felt its hot breath against her tail.

Emma saw a break in the briars and hurled herself toward it.

The ground fell away.

She tumbled down a bank of black earth and landed beneath a dead tree. For one breath she could not move. The fox appeared at the rim above her. The hound reached the edge, claws digging into the soil. Overhead, the hawk descended.

Emma pressed herself against the tree’s roots.

Leo had once found her beneath a summer hedge when rain had frightened her from the garden. He had touched his nose to hers and said, “Stay beside me.”

But Leo was gone.

The memory hurt more sharply than the torn flesh along her side. She shut her eyes.

“I’m trying,” she breathed. “I’m trying to find you.”

The hawk struck.

A silver light burst between them.

The bird shrieked and veered away, its feathers scattering into smoke. The fox recoiled. The hound’s bay collapsed into a whine as a figure rose from the roots before Emma.

He was a hare, tall and slender, formed from a radiance that seemed to come from very far away. His fur shone like frost beneath starlight. His eyes held the grave patience of old forests, and a faint wind moved through him though the wood around them was still.

The fox snarled.

The luminous hare lifted one paw.

“Back,” he said.

His voice was quiet, yet the command traveled through the earth.

The fox fled first. The hound followed, crashing blindly into the briars. The hawk circled once, its cry thin and furious, then vanished among the upper branches.

Emma remained pressed to the root.

The hare turned toward her.

“Are you hurt?”

“Who are you?”

“A friend of the one you seek.”

Emma’s ears flattened. “Leo?”

The spirit lowered his head. “He sent me.”

Her breath caught. She rose too quickly and nearly fell. “Where is he? Is he alive? Did he come through this wood? Which way did he go?”

The hare watched the questions strike him one after another.

“My name is Virgil,” he said. “And Leo’s path has gone below.”

“Below what?”

He looked beyond the dead tree, toward a darkness deeper than the darkness around them.

“Below the world of grass and rain. Below the roots of morning. Leo has passed through the nine circles of Hell.”

Emma stared at him.

The word seemed too vast for the small clearing. It pressed against the trees until their branches bowed.

“No,” she said.

“His trail leads there.”

“Then take me to it.”

Virgil’s light flickered softly. “You do not know what you ask.”

“I know exactly what I ask.” Emma stepped toward him. Her legs trembled, but she kept them beneath her. “I want Leo.”

“The path will not return you unchanged.”

“I am already changed.”

For the first time, sorrow crossed the ancient hare’s face.

Behind them, the hound began to bay again, farther off but drawing nearer. The fox answered with a sharp bark. The wood had not released them.

Virgil turned. “Then follow closely.”

He moved through the briars, and the thorns bent away from his light. Emma followed, ducking beneath branches and placing each paw where his had passed. The air grew colder. The roots thinned. Yet the farther they went, the more the wood seemed to resist them. Vines dragged at Emma’s ankles. Dead leaves rose in spirals around her. Once, the hawk swept low enough for its wing to strike her back, but Virgil flung a pale arc of light upward, and the bird screamed into the canopy.

“Why did Leo send you?” Emma asked as they climbed a narrow ridge.

“Because he knew you would come.”

“He knew I would find him?”

“He knew you would try.”

That answer cut deeper than doubt.

At the ridge’s crest, the Dark Wood opened.

Emma stopped.

Before them yawned a valley filled with red-black vapor. A road descended through it, paved with stones that glimmered as if embers slept beneath their surfaces. At the far end stood two immense pillars of stone, joined by an arch. No torch burned there. No bird crossed the sky above it.

Still, Emma could read the words carved across the gate.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

Her paws went cold.

Virgil stood beside her, his luminous form reflected faintly in the polished black stone.

“Is he beyond that gate?” Emma asked.

“Somewhere in the depths.”

“Then why does it tell us to abandon hope?”

“Because Hell would have you do so before you take your first step.”

The wind rose from the valley. It carried distant cries, the grinding of chains, and a sound like countless claws scraping against stone. Emma’s nose twitched. Beneath the cold lay a foul sweetness, like flowers left too long beside a grave.

She looked back.

The Dark Wood had closed behind them. Briars filled the ridge from edge to edge. The fox’s eyes gleamed between the branches. The hound stood behind it, tongue hanging from its jaws. Above them, the hawk watched from a dead limb.

There was no path back.

Emma faced the gate.

Virgil said, “Once you cross, the descent will claim you.”

“Will it lead me to Leo?”

“If you endure.”

“And if I do not?”

The hare’s gaze held hers. “Then your grief will become the only name you have left.”

Emma lowered her head. She thought of Leo’s white fur beneath sunlight. She thought of the gentle pressure of his shoulder against hers, the way he had slept with one ear resting against her back. She thought of waking to find only emptiness where he had been.

Her fear did not vanish.

She carried it forward.

Emma placed one paw on the first stone of the road.

The gate groaned.

A darkness opened between the pillars, not empty but crowded with moving shapes. Faces surfaced and sank. Pale hands reached from the vapor, their mouths forming pleas no sound could carry. The stones beneath her paw warmed, then tightened, as though the road had recognized her.

Virgil entered beside her.

Emma took another step.

Behind them, the briars roared in the wind. Ahead, the abyss gave a long, patient breath.

She crossed the threshold.

The gate slammed shut.

The sound rolled through the valley and into her bones. Emma spun around, but the pillars stood seamless and black. No crack remained. No way back to the wood. The road beneath her paws sloped downward, and thin red lines began to glow between the stones, guiding her into the dark.

Virgil moved ahead.

“Come,” he said.

Emma looked once at the sealed gate. Then she turned toward the depths where Leo’s trail waited, faint as a thread beneath the world.

She followed Virgil down.

End of chapter one. 21 more chapters in the full book.