“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive me.” She rested her now-bleeding hand against the raw wood, feeling the deep scars and notches she had left. “I’m sorry. They killed him. They took everything.” Sniffling, Dinah found herself looking again at the head of her father, the way his crown was dug into the ground, the way his neck bore the blunt cut of a sword. There was an aggressiveness to this statue that the others did not share. While the other heads were resting, his position was a punishment.
An unwelcome whisper was beginning to creep up her spine, a familiar, surreal feeling. It was the same feeling that she had awakened to that night in the palace, when a stranger in black was standing over her bed. She was being watched. Was it the heads? Dinah stared at the statues, her eyes jumping from face to face, but she saw no movement. They were not living things, only stone and metal. Dinah slowly picked up her sword from the base of the tree and held it in front of her, both sore hands clutched firmly around the hilt.
“Come out!” she screamed. “I see you!” There was only silence in return as the heads stared back at her, unmoving as the long grass waved in concentric circles around their necks. Dinah was backing up slowly, past one head, then another. There was something here, she could feel it. Had her father found her? Dinah spun around and her eye caught a glimpse of white moving swiftly through the high green grass. She took a deep breath as she drew her sword. She would never make it to Morte in time. It was time to fight, time to die. She would not end up in the Black Towers. Her eyes darted from head to head.
She didn’t see the bear at first, not until he was charging at her, letting out a roar that echoed off the metal heads and out into the wood. Dinah stood paralyzed with fear as the bear raced toward her. She felt like she was watching herself in a dream, unmoving, watching death race toward her. It was like she was underwater. I need to move, she told herself. Move! Finally, her feet obeyed and Dinah sprinted toward the nearest head—an upright Yurkei chief, whose fabric crown circled lazily around his head and then looped down low onto the ground. Without thinking, Dinah sheathed her sword and started her ascent, placing one foot onto his lips and pushing off the ground, grabbing hold of the chief’s long nose. The eyes didn’t provide anywhere to grasp, so Dinah moved sideways and pulled herself onto the man’s ear by holding the tip of the large feathers that rested against his temples. A spasm of pain ripped through her hands as she pulled herself up and over the heavy swath of fabric and beads that circled his head. She leapt off the tip of his fabric crown and tumbled onto the man’s head.
A roar came from below, so loud and terrifying that Dinah feared her head would rip apart. The bear had reached the head now. Dinah peeked cautiously over the edge. The bear was gigantic. He began pacing around the head, irately sniffing the ground where she had stood and pawing jagged trenches in the earth, feet deep. Rising up on his hind legs, the bear’s head was level to the chief’s eyes, just below Dinah’s face. He opened his wide jaws, lined with protruding fangs, and let out a bloodcurdling roar. Dinah felt a rush of hot, rancid air blow over her face and she gagged as she smelled his potent breath—a mix of decaying meat and death. It reminded her of the Black Towers.
The bear raked his huge paws down the statue’s face and the terrible screech of bone meeting metal filled the air. He was a daunting creature, tall enough that his head would brush the ceiling in her bathroom. His coat was two distinct shades of white—most of his fur was the shade of dirty cream, but the stripes that ran up from his stomach area to his visible spine were a bright, unspoiled white, a pure white, whiter than any garment or paint she had ever seen. His jaws snapped shut loudly as his milky eyes took in her face. Besides his massive mouth full of teeth, he also had two large fangs that rose up from the underside of his jaw. The head gave a tremor as the bear began rocking his weight against the statue. He means to knock it over, she thought with terror. The statue gave another tremble as the bear slammed his paws against the base and began digging in the mud around the chief’s neck.