Adventure of Rowan

Rowan loosens her grip. The Bandersnatch surges upright, mud sliding from its moss-dark hide, then lurches away from Home into a narrow trail choked with thorns.

It does not flee toward the hidden glade now. It plunges deeper into the Hedges, glancing back between heavy strides as though expecting Rowan to understand.

The thought of the Human Girl cuts through the warning. Rowan turns from the beast's trail and searches the softer ground, finding fresh boot marks beneath the thorn-shadow.

A few paces on, the prints vanish. Nearby bark has been peeled into long, deliberate spirals, each curling upward around the trunks without a broken edge.

The marks suggest the creature pursuing the Bandersnatch passed this way, and Alyce's trail crossed its path. Ahead, the Bandersnatch waits beside the thorn-choked passage, looking back again.

The beast lowers its scarred head toward the spiraled bark, then toward the deeper trail. The Hedges hold their breath, leaving Rowan the choice of whether to follow.

Rowan steps through the spiraled bark. The living wood flexes around her shoulders, then settles; behind her, the Bandersnatch turns into its own thorn-choked trail and disappears without another glance.

Inside the passage, Rowan lowers her head and draws in the damp air. Alyce's boot leather, crushed fern, and the faint warmth of her trail cling to the roots beneath older scents.

Her Oath-Bound instinct drags every thought toward Alyce's safety, tightening her focus until the surrounding Hedges become little more than threats beyond the trail. The urgency makes the search harsh, but never unfocused.

Then Tracks the Unnatural answers. Beneath Alyce's ordinary scent lies a cold distortion, the same wrong pressure that curled the bark, flowing away from the passage toward the eastern hollows.

Rowan finds the direction plainly: Alyce passed east through a break in the thornroot, toward the hollow where the unnatural scent bends sharply north. Her packmate's trail remains fresh and certain.

Rowan drives east through the thornbreak, taking the shortest living route rather than the easiest. Tracks the Unnatural sharpens Alyce's fading trail, revealing where the cold distortion bends around roots and stone.

Her Oath-Bound instinct refuses every safer angle, dragging her straight toward the disturbance because Alyce stands beyond it. Rowan crashes through fern and briar at a speed the Hedges struggle to contain.

The eastern hollow opens beneath twisted branches. Alyce, a young human woman with wind-tangled brown hair and a green traveling cloak, her freckled face intent above a slim build, brown trousers, and mud-stained boots beneath it, stands at its center, one hand raised toward a rippling black seam in the air.

Rowan reaches Alyce and plants herself between her packmate and the seam. The cold pressure recoils from her arrival, curling around the hollow instead of crossing the space she guards.