Into the Heartless Wood

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  “Death is too easy for you, little one. Do not think I will grant it to you. You will live to see my triumph. You will help to make it happen. When the boy comes, you will kill him. After he is dead, I will pluck your heart from your body, and tear you apart limb by limb, keeping you alive long enough to feel every possible ounce of pain. Then, and only then, will I let you die. Do you understand?”

  I am ragged with terror, every fiber raw.

  Her mouth twists. “Do not doubt I have the power to make certain one small human boy appears when I wish him to.”

  I reach out for his soul without meaning to.

  She is right.

  I can feel him, not far away.

  I shake.

  I weep.

  She grabs my chin and forces her claws deep, deep, down to the wood of my bones.

  Sap runs down my neck, sticky, warm. “You cannot make me kill him.”

  She flings me away, and I land

  on a corpse the earth has not yet swallowed.

  I cry and leap off of it.

  I try not to look.

  But still I see:

  a soldier,

  a boy.

  His neck is twisted.

  His eyes are vacant.

  The wind rises.

  My mother is still smiling. Her hand is amber with my blood. “Oh, daughter. When will you understand that your heart belongs to me? When will you understand that you will do whatever I command?”

  “Never.” It hurts to talk. I press one hand under my jaw. There is a feeling like fire in my throat, burning, burning. I choke.

  My mother peers at me. She closes the distance between us in two long strides. The heartless lion growls at her heels.

  She plunges her hand into my chest.

  The pain is

  sharp,

  hot,

  an all-consuming

  agony.

  She hisses in my ear: “I made you what you are. Whatever magic your wretched brothers worked on you has long since fallen away. They cannot save you now. You are my creature, and you will obey my every command.”

  I can’t see through the haze of sap and tears. My mother holds my heart in her hand. She always has. The pulses of my life are spent, one by one. “Please.” The word creeps past my lips. “Ple—” The word chokes off. I try again. I cannot speak.

  My mother taps one finger against my neck. A hardness comes into her eyes. “The Eater is working magic. But no matter.”

  She smiles again, that cruel twist of her mouth.

  She laughs

  as she sends her power searing into my heart.

  She laughs

  as she yanks her hand from my chest, and I collapse on the ground.

  She laughs

  as I writhe in pain and horror,

  as I feel her power flowing through me

  with every beat of my heart.

  Pulse.

  Pulse.

  Pulse.

  I am my mother’s monster.

  As I always have been.

  She mounts the heartless lion, her bone skirt scraping against the needles of its body. “Come, daughter. We have work to do. The Soul Eater is near. Let us go hunting.”

  The heartless lion leaps into a run.

  My mother’s power jerks me after.

  In the ruined wood

  I see her.

  Roses in her hair.

  Ashes on her lips.

  Agony in her eyes.

  I kneel beside her.

  My mother reins in the heartless lion.

  She looks at what I have found:

  my sister,

  dead at the Eater’s hand.

  My mother snarls in rage.

  There is something else.

  A shattered orb.

  It glimmers in the ashes,

  in the rain that drips

  through dead trees.

  It is jagged and sharp.

  It shines like he does.

  It shines like Owen.

  I am so afraid that he is gone.

  That this is the place

  where he died,

  and I cannot bear it.

  My mother spits: “He will pay. For the death of my daughter. For stealing the song I gave the rest of them.”

  I understand. Somehow, the Eater slew my sister to silence our song.

  He has robbed me

  of my voice,

  as my mother has robbed me

  of my will.

  There is nothing left to me

  that is my own.

  There is no part of me

  that does not belong to someone else.

  My mother hisses. The heartless lion leaps once more into motion.

  We pass through the ashes of the wood, out onto a grassy plain.

  Rain sluices off my face and my body as I run behind them.

  Saplings sprout up every place my foot touches, the wood growing and growing. Unstoppable.

  It is her power, flowing through me.

  I can still feel

  the prints of her fingers

  like bands of iron

  around my heart.

  Her will compels me on and on.

  The Soul Eater’s army looms close.

  He wars with my sisters and my mother’s trees.

  The ground is slick and muddy in the rain. There are bodies. Fire.

  The trees are burning.

  The heartless lion snarls as my mother jerks it to a stop. It is angry at being held back.

  I, too, grow still,

  the creature

  she shaped

  to take her form.

  To bear her heart.

  Lightning sears the sky.

  My mother says: “The Eater will come to meet me. And then the one who eats will become the eaten. My soul has fed him well for four centuries, but he should have chosen better than a simple dryad. Even dryads die.”

  He is weak enough for her to kill him. I sensed it in the palace, in the light of his dimming soul. My mother’s soul.

  When he is dead,

  she will grow her wood until it has swallowed the land.

  Then she will begin upon the sea.

  And when all the world is choked in her trees,

  when she has slaughtered every last human

  for the crime the Soul Eater committed against her—

  What will she do?

  Will she wander alone

  through her fathomless wood?

  Will she regret

  the things

  she has done?

  I will not live to see that day.

  My death will come

  before the night.

  I kneel in the muddy grass. I press my fingers into the earth. I reach out for my brothers. Pren, Criafol, Cangen. You have to stop her before she destroys everything. You are the only ones who can. Please. Do not leave me here to die for nothing.

  Another wave of the Eater’s army crashes into my mother’s wood.

  The trees snap their bodies

  and cast them aside

  like so many twigs.

  My mother waits quietly, a hard set to her eyes.

  The rain has washed the blood from her antlers.

  She gleams

  in the wet

  and the wildness of the storm,

  as strong and bright

  as lightning.

  Across the plain, my sisters and my mother’s trees rip the Eater’s soldiers apart.

  Bodies are strewn on the rain-soaked ground.

  Trees burn and burn.

  Still my mother waits.

  She turns her head and sees me still kneeling in the grass.

  She frowns. One crook of her finger, and I am jerked upright again, as if on an invisible lead. “It is time for you to prove your worth, worthless one.”

  I am dimly aware

  of the thud of hooves coming from the southwest.

  Of shapes coming toward us, mud thick and flying.

  I
blink the rain from my eyes, and the shapes come into focus: six horsemen, ragged and wounded.

  One of them is riding double with another soldier, his left arm pinned to his side in a sling.

  I know his shape

  as I know his soul.

  My body flashes cold with pain.

  My heart falls.

  My mother smiles her vicious smile.

  She clenches her hand, and my body jolts into motion.

  She orders: “Kill the boy. Kill him slowly. And when you have done it, bring me his soul. Perhaps then I will have mercy on you, and make your death swift. Go. Now.” She waves her hand.

  Against my will, I move to meet the riders.

  I raise my own hands,

  feel the power trembling inside of them.

  Tears pour down my face; they mingle with the rain.

  Lightning crackles just above my head, illuminating the ground, the mud flying up from the horses’ hooves.

  More of my mother’s wood has come behind us.

  The trees plunge their roots into the ground and rip them up again.

  Marching. To her.

  This is what she was waiting for.

  Reinforcements.

  She makes it look as if I am commanding them.

  As if I am the one

  compelling them to drag the soldiers from their horses,

  to skewer them with sharp fingers and cause

  blood to bubble up out of their mouths.

  That is what Owen must think.

  He is dragged from his horse with the rest of them, but the trees do not kill him.

  They drop him at my feet.

  He raises his head,

  looks

  into

  my

  eyes.

  His horror is visceral.

  His sense of betrayal

  acrid as blood.

  For he sees

  that I am

  at the last

  what he always knew I was:

  a

  soulless

  monster.

  I struggle against my mother’s will.

  I fail.

  I haul him up by his collar.

  I set him on his feet.

  I cannot even tell him I am sorry.

  I cannot even tell him goodbye.

  The Eater has stolen my voice.

  My mother, everything else.

  He will die

  thinking

  it was always going to end this way.

  He will die

  thinking

  the monster in the wood

  never lost her heart

  to the boy

  who is lost in the stars.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  OWEN

  SHE SHINES IN THE RAIN, SMEARED WITH BLOOD, WITH DIRT. FOR an instant, a crack of lightning illuminates her clearly. Her green and gold hair is knotted with burrs, the ragged remains of her maid’s uniform still clinging to her body. The violets in her hair have been shredded, the pieces of them that are left plastered to her head. Her silver skin is scored with dark wounds.

  She opens her mouth in a soundless scream and shoves me away from her. I fall backward into the dirt, landing on my broken arm. I yelp in pain. There’s a rain-slicked body beside me. Her cap has fallen off, and the singed edges of her hair still smell of smoke: Luned, dead. My throat closes. Four other soldiers lie tumbled on the ground like discarded toys. One of them is Baines. He clings to life, but barely, his breaths coming too shallow, too quick. The trees yanked him down from the horse we were riding, twisted his body with a sickening snap of bones, and flung him aside in their haste to get to me. The others weren’t so lucky; the trees killed them instantly. I am numb with shock, with horror. I don’t understand. They were alive mere moments ago.

  Now they’re gone.

  The trees didn’t harm me.

  The trees brought me to her. To Seren.

  I shake as I stare at her, as I drag myself upright again. The remains of Elynion’s army fight the wood mere yards away, but it might as well be a hundred miles. There is no rescue for me. I am at her mercy, and her mercy alone.

  But what is she?

  There is pain in her eyes. Rage. She trembles with it. But she doesn’t lunge for me. Just stares back, dripping with rain.

  “Seren?” I breathe.

  Past her shoulder the Gwydden looms. I gasp. She is crowned with antlers and clothed in bones, mounted on a nightmare creature. Her eyes meet mine.

  I thought I knew what fear was.

  I was wrong.

  I jerk backward, stumbling on Luned’s dead arm. My head wheels with terror, and Seren stares at me and stares at me, and I am trapped forever in an evil dream.

  The Gwydden’s voice bores into my brain like a steel screw, twisting and twisting. “Did I not make myself clear, little monster? Kill him. KILL HIM!” She waves her hand.

  Seren opens her mouth, but no song pours out. Elynion’s spell has silenced her, too. The realization wrenches me, wrecks me. He had no right to steal her voice.

  Yet somehow my senses are still assaulted with her magic, silvery, intoxicating, bright. It sinks into me with barbed fingers. I take a step toward her.

  “Seren,” I say. “You are not hers. You are not hers.” It’s a question, a plea.

  The Gwydden snaps her fingers, and a sword unfolds itself in Seren’s hand. It’s made of bone and birchwood, twisted together and honed to a spear’s edge.

  I take another step, and another.

  Seren waits for me. The point of her sword trembles.

  Her face twists. I realize she’s crying.

  And I know—

  She is not her mother’s creature.

  She does not want this.

  The relief, the joy, makes me ache.

  Her magic draws me to her, closer and closer. But the piece of my will that is still mine looses my own sword, readies it against her. Because I know, I know, I know—

  If I let her kill me, if I don’t even try to stop her, she will never forgive herself. She will never think she can be anything but a monster.

  I can bear many things.

  Not that.

  She lunges at me and our swords clash, steel on wood and bone.

  I think of the wonder in her eyes when she peered through the telescope. The pulse of her heart as we danced on the hill. Her rough hands, pressed tight over my ears, sheltering me from her sisters’ song. Her mouth on mine. Her body on mine.

  She strikes out again and I block her, the force of it reverberating through me. I am weak and wounded. I won’t be able to stand against her very long.

  Power pulses off of her, power that is not her own. Her movements are jerky and wild—she’s fighting the Gwydden for control of her body. She slashes with her bone and wood blade. I stumble backward. “You are not hers,” I say. “You belong only to yourself.”

  But Elynion’s spell keeps her silent, as the Gwydden’s magic keeps her fighting me.

  Her blows come fiercer and faster with every passing moment. I struggle to block them. “Seren. You are not hers. You are not hers.”

  Seren’s mouth opens, her jaw works. A voice tears out of her—but it is not her voice. It is her mother’s. “You are wrong, boy. She has never belonged to anyone but me.”

  The Gwydden flings out her arm and Seren hurls her sword into the mud. Her face twists. Vines sprout from her fingers, lash out at me. They coil tight around my body, drag me toward her.

  Then I’m pressed up against her, close enough to see the tears trembling on her lashes, the helpless horror in her eyes as branches burst from her knuckles and skewer straight through my chest. Sudden, agonizing pain makes my vision go white.

  Her mouth is at my ear. Her breath is warm. “She should have killed you the first time she saw you,” hisses the Gwydden’s voice.

  Seren’s heart beats quickly. Her body trembles against mine. Something drips into my mouth and I taste salt.

  “I know s
he’s making you do this,” I rasp. “But you’re stronger than her. Seren. You’re stronger.”

  Her vines coil tighter, choking the breath out of me. Blood seeps from the wounds in my chest, too much, far too much.

  But she doesn’t strike the killing blow. Just holds me there. She fights the pull of her mother’s magic; she trembles with it, as if the fighting is tearing her apart.

  Another flash of lightning splits the sky, and a cold wind rips between us.

  Seren sucks in a soundless breath, and the vines retract, leaving me to slump to the ground.

  I barely have the strength to lift my head.

  King Elynion rides through the ranks of his dying army, the rain rattling his gold plate armor. He pulls up short a pace or two from the Gwydden and her nightmare creature and dismounts. In one swift motion, he takes his helmet off. His dark hair whips in the wind and the rain, and he raises his hand to the sky. He snaps his fingers and light sears the ground, so close I feel the crackle, smell the sizzle of heat. He’s calling down pieces of stars.

  The Gwydden swings off her own mount, and strides up to meet him.

  Chapter Sixty

  SEREN

  OWEN STARES AT ME.

  His jaw moves, yet he does not speak.

  His eyes pierce mine.

  He implores me.

  But he does not understand.

  I can do nothing to help him.

  He is wrong.

  I do not belong to myself.

  I only belong to her.

  Were it not for the Eater, riding through the rain,

  she would have made me kill him,

  and he would lie even now

  in pieces at my feet.

  He might be dying anyway.

  There is so much red pouring out of him.

  My mother is distracted by the Eater.

  I should run

  far,

  far

  away.

  But I just stand here.

  Rooted.

  I will not leave him

  bleeding in the mud.

  I cannot.

  There is an undulation in the ground.

  Past Owen and the slaughtered soldiers,

  something new fights the wood.

  Dark creatures, fierce and tall.

  Their bellows fill the sky:

  Cangen, Criafol, Pren, drenched in rain.

  They wield stone swords that look as if they were hewn from their mountain. They drive the trees back. Drive our sisters back.

  If my mother sees them, I cannot tell.

  She faces the Soul Eater in the lashing rain. Wind rattles the bones of her dress.

  He is gold, and she is silver,