Many years later \u2014<\/p>\n
A whole world later, really \u2014<\/p>\n
Bethany alights for a moment in Virginia. She stands and sways at the top of a tree and the nithrid rushes towards her.<\/p>\n
She smiles at it, though she\u2019s tired and her arms and hands are raw.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need a minute,\u201d she says to the sky.<\/p>\n
The nithrid skirls out. It plays for a minute around George Mason. It runs little rivulets of lightning up and down the river. It comes back.<\/p>\n
It is almost upon her. She is bracing for the dance.<\/p>\n
It does not reach her.<\/p>\n
Her life is left empty. She sits down numbly. She cannot even cry. Her garments of red are crumbling to show her stained and faded school uniform underneath.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndrea?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
That was the name of the nithrid.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndrea?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n And she knows in that moment that there is something worse than a wolf; worse than a nithrid; something worse than Hans or the Devil himself; and there is no reason to oppose it, because there is no thing good in all of life.<\/p>\n She drops to the ground. She curls over. She loses the memory of the lightning.<\/p>\n And there is no nithrid remaining at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many years later \u2014 A whole world later, really \u2014 Bethany alights for a moment in Virginia. She stands and sways at the top of a tree and the nithrid rushes towards her. She smiles at it, though she\u2019s tired and her arms and hands are raw. \u201cI need a minute,\u201d she says to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-11-66","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Hat_3a_nobg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5831"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5996,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5831\/revisions\/5996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5831"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}