The Quadbrid

Prologue I explore the unfamiliar realm. It's foreign, and the moon hangs wrong in the sky, yet in many ways reminds me of my home. I can't go back there until my mission is completed. I've been searching for her. For 22 years I have followed every rumour, every whisper, every clue, trying to find the young girl. The others have given up. They think she's dead. But I don't. I can't. If I do, then I've failed. And I can't fail. I'm on my own now. My old bones can’t do this much longer. I haven't had a good rest since this mission started. I'm an old man, I can't do this forever. My strength is wearing down. My bones ache and I've been walking for days. It is Night. The stars are out and sparkling, reminding me of home, the full moon is illuminating the street I was wandering on. Then I stop. I hear something creeping around me, I feel unsettled. The wind picks up, it's howling and whipping the treetops in all directions, it made the trees lining the path look like they were going to snap. They scream like mourners who have only just learned of death. It starts storming, the clouds coming out of nowhere, spitting ice as big as cricket balls from the sky. I duck under cover so I don't get hit by any, as I'm sure a head injury would not aid my mission. The animals run in my direction at full speed. Deer, foxes, birds, wild dogs, wild cats and other creatures, all running down the narrow street but they don't seem to see me, like they had a destination in mind, And then, as soon as everything becomes almost unbearable, it stops. The wind drops to a more calm level, the trees stop shrieking. The moon reveals itself as the rain stops throwing ice from the sky, and the animals stop in their tracks as they look through me, as though getting a sense of who I am. Then I feel it. The spell. It broke like a rubber band stretched beyond its limits. I feel the recoil of the break and the general direction it came from. The spell came from the very direction the animals were running towards, as if they already knew long before I did. I look up. “I finally have a lead”.