8 Lyra
“Paulo, we need to stop.” Lyra pulls her horse to a halt. “We can’t keep going like this. It’s starting to get dark, and we still need to make a camp and figure out where to go from here.”
He sighs and turns his horse around to face her. “You’re right.” He glances at the forest that surrounds the clearing they find themselves in. “It just doesn’t feel safe here. You might think that I’m mad, but it’s my powers. I can sense it, this feeling like the trees are sick. They’re crying out for help.”
Lyra looks around, unease building in her shoulders. It feels like the trees are reaching, pulling themselves toward her, the thin branches spreading like fingers. She shakes her head. The branches aren’t trying to get her. “Okay, then what should we do?”
He dismounts from his horse and
