Chapter 124

Dane Twenty-one years ago. The room was cold. Cold like a penetrating chill that flows into the marrow and settles down for a long. Bare stone walls, gray and unyielding, were an asset to my prison; only a flickering torch thrown high above me allowed light to spill away from them. I was a boy—some eleven or twelve years, maybe—with a pair of legs as white as the moon, suspect quaking with only the weight of manifest horror. The air was thick with dampness from the earth, mixed with something sharper, something that spoke of presence: in a far-off corner, a hare was hiding, matted brown fur streaked with dirt and large, wide round eyes that seemed to glint lithely in the darkness. It remained there unmoving, staring at me, the breath shallow, like the angry, heaving of a chest. I held it lightly, bow smooth and sturdy in wood, a challenge for my strength to draw it. An arrow lay there as if in its rightful place, worn and scuffed, dull but for a faint glimmer. Above, an eye-the camera-