When the owl screeched again, Atlas was lying face down on the ground. A deep rumbling filled his ears, like enduring thunder. He lifted his head. Leaves and needles stuck to his face. Two white feet stepped into his line of sight, slender, elegant.
“Diana?”
He leapt to his feet, but she flitted into the forest and disappeared behind a tree. He hobbled after her, but when he got to that tree, she was a flicker beyond the next, and the next, drawing him forward, ever deeper, to a place he might never find his way back from.
“Diana! Wait,” he called, and she threw him a backward glance, her fine hair fanning out in slow motion. But she whipped her head away and disappeared behind another tree. Then another.
That low vibration, like thunder in the bones, resolved into the rumble of a truc
