The Devouring Gray
Christine Lynn Herman
After they found the third body that year, Justin Hawthorne knelt in his backyard and prepared to hear his future.
His sister, May, dealt the Deck of Omens facedown on the grass between them. The all-seeing eyes on the backs of the five cards stared emptily at the canopy of leaves above. Justin’s skin prickled as he studied their irises—white like the eyes of the dead.
He hadn’t seen the latest body, but the remains of the corpses spat out by the Gray always looked the same. Eyes bleached the color of milk. The rib cage inverted, bones slicing through bloated skin like antlers rising from the body’s back.
“I don’t have to ask the cards.” May’s voice didn’t lend itself well to gentleness, but she was trying. Justin hadn’t asked for a reading since he failed his ritual. She knew how much it had cost him to ask now.
Because it should’ve been him commanding the Deck of Omens. Him wielding his family’s abilities and protecting their town.
Yet he was helpless. A rotten branch on a healthy tree.
The Gray had grown bolder this year, luring victim after victim into its world, where the Beast hungrily awaited its prey. Justin had believed, foolishly, that he would be able to stop it when he came into his powers.
But he had no powers. And now another man was dead.
Justin wouldn’t sit idly by as others died. Powers or not, he was still a Hawthorne. He would find a way to keep Four Paths safe.
His fate lay in the cards.
“Show me,” he said, gripping May’s hands.
May shut her eyes. A moment later, he felt her familiar presence in his mind—sharp, clear tendrils of intention snaking through his thoughts. He knew she was feeling more than seeing, letting his past and present inform the patterns May could predict in his future.
She pulled away after a few seconds, exhaling softly, her eyes fluttering open.
“They’re ready,” she said hoarsely, turning the cards over so the all-seeing eyes gazed at ground instead of sky. Justin had barely glanced at the individual cards when his sister hissed with displeasure.
“What…?” A slice of fragmented sunlight turned the glass medallion around May’s neck from dull red to flaming crimson as she leaned forward, like a wound opening across her pale throat.
May had read his future dozens of times over the years, for fun, for practice. He had never seen her look so shaken.
His gaze darted to the spread of cards between them.
The Eight of Branches was centered, of course. Justin’s card, painted with the familiar art of a young boy perched on a tree stump, a bundle of sticks in his arms. He hadn’t noticed until he was older that there were roots wrapped around the boy’s legs, tethering him to his seat.
It only took him a second to understand May’s distress. Her card, the Seven of Branches, always sat at his left. But this time, it wasn’t in the reading at all. Instead, a card he’d never seen before was nestled beside his. The art was sharp and vivid: a figure standing in the Gray, ringed by trees. Its right hand was shrouded in shadow.
Its left hand had been stripped down to the skeleton.
The “Founders’ Lullaby” rang through Justin’s mind. Branches and stones, daggers and—
“Bones,” May said flatly, pressing the edge of her polished fingernail against the wood. Her hand was trembling. “It shouldn’t—I must’ve…” But she trailed off. Even a panicked May would never admit that her mastery of the Deck of Omens was lacking.
“We both know you don’t make mistakes.” Justin couldn’t tear his eyes from the card. “So tell me what it means.”
“Fine.” May snatched her fingers away. “You’ll find a way to help the town. But the process is muddled. Here you’ve got the Knotted Root, a series of choices with no good outcomes. Pair that with the Shield and it looks like you’ll be trying to mediate, as usual. Probably the Three of Daggers’s fault, because Isaac is always screwing up somehow—”
“You can’t pretend it’s not there.” The card between them almost seemed to glow, even in the shade. Flesh and bone entwined, a braided line between the living and the dead. “May. Tell me.”
May bundled the cards together with a single practiced flick of her wrists. She shuffled them into the rest of the deck as she gazed over Justin’s shoulder. Her light blue eyes were still locked on the trees behind him when she spoke again.
“It’s the Saunders family.” May rose to her feet. “They’re coming back, and I’m telling Mom, and you’re not telling anyone. Not even Isaac.”
“Wait!” Justin scrambled after her, but May was fast when she wanted to be. Her fingers were already wrapped around the handle of the back door. “What does any of this have to do with me helping Four Paths?”
May’s pink headband was askew. For his sister, that was disheveled, but she didn’t even seem to notice. “I’m not completely sure I understand,” she said. “But you’ll have a chance to make a real change in Four Paths once they’re here.”
This time, Justin let her go.
He stayed in the courtyard for a long while, staring at the hawthorn tree that rose behind him, its gnarled branches stretching across the gabled roofs of his family home like grasping fingers.