The shadow of Fable’s tree stretched over the field like a yawning cat in the afternoon light. There should have been bodies. Everyone agreed that there should have been countless casualties after all that fighting—and yet, impossibly, there were none. Dr. Fisher had busied herself to exhaustion over the past few days trying to keep it that way, treating burns and stitching cuts. Some of the elders found this happy fact unsettling. That much blood does not spill without catching Death’s attention. But so it was. The grass would grow wildly well the following season.
And so the only bodies occupying the field as Raina stepped gingerly into it for the first time since the battle were healthy and whole, sitting around a handful of dwindling campfires and sipping cider, telling stories, and laughing.
Fable held Raina’s arm to steady her. “I’ve got you, Mama.”
Raina breathed in the blending aroma of subtle perfumes, pipe tobacco, and pine needles, all dancing together in the air. “Okay, Little Queen,” she said. “Show me.”
“Oh! Do another!” Hana Sakai clapped her hands.
Tinn took a deep breath and concentrated. His chin wavered for a moment, and then out sprouted a big, bushy beard that consumed the bottom half of his face.
“That one’s Mr. Zervos!” Eunice called out.
“Too easy,” said Oscar. “Do another!”
“Do Mrs. Silva!”
“No, do Old Jim!”
It felt strange. Not the peculiar tingling that came with each transformation—Tinn was finally getting used to that—no, it felt strange to have the weight of his big secret suddenly gone. It felt impossible to be standing in a field in the center of all his classmates, not hiding anything.
Tinn had braced himself for fear and hate for so long—he had never taken the time to even consider the possibility of acceptance.
“Oh! That’s Sheriff Stroud!” Oscar yelled.
Even bratty Rosalie Richmond had joined the circle. “That was supposed to be Sheriff Stroud?” She rolled her eyes. “That was your worst one yet. It didn’t look anything like him.”
In that moment, Tinn could have hugged her. It was all so inexplicably, beautifully normal. Tinn was himself. No secrets. Everything out in the open.
He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. “Okay. How about this?”
Kull watched from the edge of the field. He could not stop smiling. Tinn was the rarest goblin in a generation—maybe the rarest in history—and he was finally giving himself up to it completely. He was showing the humans, and they were clapping and patting him on the back! It was more than Kull had ever dared hope for the wee changeling he had carried across the mire all those years ago. His heart swelled with pride.
“Go on, then,” said Chief Nudd beside him. “Say hello, at least.”
Kull turned toward the chief, horrified.
“Yer allowed,” Nudd assured him. “This place is common ground.”
Kull bit his lip. “I wouldn’a want ta ruin it,” he said. “I’d only embarrass him. He’s a right wonder, he is, puttin’ on all them faces—but I’ve only got the one face, an’ I’m fair sure it’s na one the lad wants his wee friends ta see.”
“Kull!”
Kull froze. Tinn had spotted him.
“I think yer lad might have his own ideas about who he wants his wee friends ta see,” said Nudd with a wink.
Kull’s legs instinctively prepared to run away, but a gentle push from behind sent him stumbling forward, instead.
“These are my friends,” said Tinn. “Everybody, this is Kull. Goblin parents are . . . more complicated than human parents, but he’s basically my goblin dad.”
Kull’s vision went blurry. He wiped his eyes with the back of his arm.
“Do you think it would be okay,” Tinn asked, “for us to show my friends a howl?”
Fable held her mother’s hand as they crossed the field. Raina allowed herself a smile as Kull and Tinn started in on a raucous old shanty about highway robbers and floating islands. It was all in Goblish, but the children huddled around them didn’t seem to mind.
Evie Warner was regaling a hob with the story of her very own honest-to-goodness adventure in the Wild Wood. She sketched the fellow as she talked, and every now and then he leaned in to see her progress. Raina glanced over the child’s shoulder. The face grinning up from Evie’s sketchbook was plump and wrinkled with a long, crooked nose. Beneath wiry brows, his eyes were kind and bright. It was a good likeness.
“Are you okay, Mama?” Fable said.
Raina wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “I was so worried I wouldn’t get to see the sort of queen you would become.” She put a hand on her daughter’s cheek. “You are a good Witch of the Wood, Fable.”
Fable leaned in to her mother’s touch. “Only for the time being,” she said. “You’ll be better soon, and then all these butts can be your problem again. Come on. We’re almost there. I want you to meet somebody.”
An old woman with wispy white hair sat waiting in the smooth roots of the Grandmother Tree. Her eyes twinkled as she watched a group of children race around the trunk with a pair of giggling wood nymphs.
She looked up as Fable and her mother approached.
“Hello, my little hazelnut,” the woman said. “Who’s this?”
“Hi, Maggie,” said Fable. “This is my mama. Mama, this is Maggie.”
Old Mrs. Stewart put a hand to her chest. “Oh, my word,” she whispered. “You do look just like her. You both do. I see it now.” A curious smile grew at the corners of her mouth. “It’s the eyes.”
Raina looked at Fable for an explanation.
“You should ask her,” Fable prompted, “about her lady.”
“Now, this is how it ought to be,” said Fable as Chief Nudd hopped up onto the mossy rock beside her. The two of them looked out across the field together. The sun was beginning to sink toward the horizon like a heavy head toward a pillow.
“Hm. Is it, though?” Nudd pursed his cracked lips.
Fable gave the chief a sideways glance. “Of course it is. Why? What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s nice,” he added. “Right nice.”
“It is nice.” Fable scowled. “You don’t think it ought to be nice?”
“Been in the world a long time, lass. I’ve known it ta be mad. Wicked. Beautiful. Never known it ta be nice.” He leaned back. “But if there was ever anyone in this not-so-nice world who could turn it inta exactly what she wanted it ta be—well, that’d be you.”
Fable stared across the field. Evie had finished her drawing, and the hob applauded. Fable’s mother and the old woman were still talking. “You can’t just change the way things are,” said Fable. “That’s not how magic works.”
“It’s na the way yer mother’s magic works,” Nudd said. “I met a rather cross tortoise earlier who might argue that yer brand o’ magic is a wee bit different.”
Fable swallowed.
“Things change,” Nudd said. “Big things. Little things. The whole world changes. All change is a sort o’ magic. It isn’a always grand, and it isn’a always quick. But that doesn’a mean it isn’a magic.”
Across the grass, Kull had begun coaching Cole through a valiant attempt at a goblin howl. It was terrible. Tinn was beside them, beaming.
“You, my wee witchy, are changin’ the people around ya in ways ya dinna understand,” Nudd continued. “An’ yer lettin’ them change you, too. Shifting of the tides.” Nudd looked at Fable. The chief had a faint scar across one eye, and his skin looked like badly tanned leather, but somehow his expression was still soft. “Yer na yer mother, Fable. I’m na my father. We’re the tides that they shifted. Now it’s yer turn.”
A game of checkers concluded and the gnomes cackled over their victory. Across the way, Hana’s mother called her to go home. She waved goodbye to Kull and th
e twins, and was shortly followed by Oscar and Rosalie and all the rest. One by one the forest folk slipped back into the trees, and the humans headed back down the road toward their houses. Fable’s mother and Mrs. Stewart looked like they were just about finished, too.
“I best collect Kull,” Nudd said. “He looks a bit light-headed after all that excitement. Give yer mother my best, lass. We’re all glad to see her on the mend.” He slid down from the rock, and then added: “Sorry. Not lass. I mean . . . Yer Majesty.” He gave Fable a cordial bow before padding away.
Fable breathed softly. The sky had warmed to a gentle orange-pink. She would only have to be queen for a little longer, and then her mother would be better. Until then, Fable was beginning to think that one day she really could do this queen thing—her own way. Maybe she really could make her world be what she wanted it to be.
Fable closed her eyes. She listened to the wind rustling through the branches, the chirp of crickets, and the hoot of an owl emerging for the evening. Fable listened to the forest—to her forest.
She listened. She breathed. She concentrated.
And she smiled.
Epilogue
Crickets chirped in the tall grass as the Burtons and the Witches of the Wood walked back toward town. Fable was asking Annie what sort of dress she was going to sew for her next, and Tinn was changing his skin color to match her descriptions. “Yeah, like that,” said Fable. “But more dots. And the buttons in the front this time!”
Cole slowed, letting them walk a few paces ahead. The queen glanced down at him. The boy’s brow was furrowed. “Something troubling you, child?” she asked.
Cole took a deep breath. “There’s a pond,” he said. “In the northern part of the Wild Wood. There’s a girl there who can turn into a frog.”
“Ah,” said the woman. She took a deep breath. “What did Kallra show you?”
Reverently, Cole drew the slim stone from his pocket. He stared into it as if it might whisper secrets to him at any moment. The woman watched his thumb trace the etched lines on the artifact.
“Fable says Kallra’s visions show the future,” said Cole. “Is it true?”
“It is not healthy to dwell on the past, young man, nor to obsess about the future.”
“But is it true?” Cole’s voice cracked. “Because if it is, my father is still alive out there.”
“I see.” Raina pursed her lips.
Cole gave the stone a squeeze and then handed it to her. “What can you tell me about this?” he said.
She took the talisman and turned it over in the dim light.
“Is it a place?” Cole asked. “Or the sign of some secret group?”
“I’m sorry, Cole. I deal with nearly every faction in the Wild Wood, but I’m afraid I don’t recognize this symbol.”
“Neither did Fable,” said Cole, sagging. Then, abruptly, he straightened. “But the spriggan did! The one I hit. He looked furious about it when he saw it. It meant something to him.”
“You struck a spriggan?” Raina said. “You struck an angry spriggan?”
“The spriggans have to know what it means.”
Raina regarded Cole’s expression with concern. “Listen to me, child. You cannot seek out the spriggans,” she said. “We have reached a truce in the wake of this latest catastrophe—but if you were to enter their domain, there is nothing either Fable or I could do to protect you. They may have called off the war, but their feelings about humans in the Wild Wood have not changed. You must know that it would be beyond reckless for you to intentionally enter their territory. They will kill you.”
“I need to know.”
Tenderly, Raina handed him back the stone. “I don’t think there is anything to know,” she said, softly. “I’m so sorry, Cole. If your father had been living somewhere in my forest for all these years, I would know about it.”
Cole said nothing.
“Please,” she added, “don’t do anything foolish.”
Cole nodded, but his jaw was set and his eyes were rimmed with red. He sniffed. Without responding, he stuffed the stone back in his pocket.
The forest trembled. Deep beneath the leaves and fallen pine needles of the Wild Wood—far below the reach of the winding roots and the sounds of chirping crickets, past the broken bones of slumbering giants, and deeper even than the ancient spriggan tunnels—Joseph Burton crept through heavy darkness.
Acknowledgments
I must acknowledge Kat, you beautiful weirdo, without whom I could not write any of these books. Thank you for ALL of the things, forever.
I would also like to express my appreciation and admiration for my Wicked, Evil Stepmother. For several years, life has not so much given you lemons as it has fired lemons at you from a modified T-shirt cannon. That you continue to lob them back with force, cackling all the while, is both terrifying and inspiring. Keep cackling.
William Ritter is an Oregon author and educator. He is the proud father of the two bravest boys in the Wild Wood, and husband to the indomitable Queen of the Deep Dark. The Oddmire is Ritter’s first series for middle-grade readers. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling, award-winning Jackaby series for young adult readers. Visit him online at rwillritter.wordpress.com and find him on Twitter: @Willothewords.
Also by William Ritter
Jackaby
Beastly Bones
Ghostly Echoes
The Dire King
The Oddmire, Book One: Changeling
Published by Algonquin Young Readers
an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
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© 2020 by William Ritter.
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