She Walks in Darkness by Evangeline Walton

my face. My bruised chest ached and throbbed, but I was out of the Villa Carenni, out of all its terrors and traps. In the open, where there was no shelter to hide a pursuer.
    My exultation didn’t last long. Soon my run slowed to a plodding walk; the road stretched terribly, desolately, before me. I remembered how long and lonely a way Richard and I had come—was it only yesterday? I never would be able to make it unless I met another car.
    Keep going, keep going, keep watching. All my tiredness seemed to come upon me at once, like a physical weight. I wanted to cry.
    That was when I saw it—not another road, nothing that we Americans, used to super-highways, would ever think of as a road—but a kind of track, leading up into the hills. The way to the village! It must be that.
    That track wasn’t easy to follow. Several times I stumbled and nearly fell again. From continually looking back over my shoulder. The sky was bright now, with afterglow, but soon night would fall. There might be a moon, but that would help my possible pursuer too. If only I could be sure the murderer was down in the vaults, busy with his treasure-hunting!
    If he was above ground, if he knew I had gone, he must be following me. The person who had left the villa would represent the greatest threat to him.
    But gradually fear of pursuit faded, crowded out by sheer physical misery. The track rose steadily upwards; the hills closed in around me, silent, purple, without a sign of life upon them. The climb was hard. I was swaying a little as I went, panting. One step more, just one step more—you don’t have to think about the next step until this one’s taken. Keep going; just keep going.
    I couldn’t stop to rest. I must be within sight of the village before night came. I never could see to follow that track in the dark.
    I reached the top of a hill. From it I could see other hills, dark against the graying sky. I strained my eyes; hadn’t Richard said that unless you looked closely, you couldn’t see some of those old Tuscan villages from a distance? They had grown out of—and into—those hills that had held them from time immemorial.
    It was there. Thank God, it was there! Smoke curling up darkly into that faded evening sky. Even in midsummer heat, the people here have to light fires to cook.
    That last climb will not bear remembering. Once I did stop; surely it wouldn’t hurt to rest a little now; I was so near. A last flicker of caution made me look behind me, down those slopes where shadows were massing.
    Did one shadow move?
    I held my breath. I must have been wrong. No! One of the shadows was moving. A shadow too tall to be a stray goat’s....
    I scrambled up and ran. It may be just the goatherd. It may be just any villager, coming home. I kept telling myself that, but I never believed myself.
    Once I slowed down enough to look back. The shadow was no longer there, but a dark figure was climbing steadily, purposefully, behind me.
    But now I could see strange, steep old houses rising up ahead of me. Could I reach them before that dark figure reached me? With a final burst of speed, I ran, ran as I never had run before. Every gasping, sobbing breath seemed to tear my lungs.
    I was stumbling between pigsties now. I tripped over one pig and fell headlong into filth. I got up and nearly ran into some other moving object—heard a child scream.
    I swerved and ran on, came out onto what must be the village main street. A dirt track that ran between houses, out onto the cliffs. I was there! I was there!
    The child I had nearly knocked down was still screaming, dogs that looked half-starved were yapping, and now other children began to scream and run. Men stared at me, their jaws dropping. Women stared too, women whose dark dresses and still, carved faces made them look more like birds of prey than fellow women who might understand and help me.
    “Aita! Aita!” I stopped and moaned, throwing out my hands in the age-old gesture of