by K.N. Lee
I saw right away why Goodboy had not attempted to fly above the trees earlier. As she dived out from under the outcropping of rocks and up toward the treetops, the trees bent inward to block her way. Their branches reached toward her as if to catch her, clawing at her wings and body.
I might have stood there like a fool with my mouth hanging open, but Tor grabbed my arm and pulled me with him as he broke into a run, traveling in the opposite direction that Goodboy had flown. The summons chased us.
Aside from the pounding of their feet on the ground and the snapping of branches, the summons were eerily quiet.
“This way!” Tor jerked me to the right. The forest floor sloped downward. We stumbled and fell, rolling down the hill. I struggled to keep my sword away from my body as I slid so I wouldn’t cut myself on it. I crashed into a tree, legs first. Pain shot up my body. I almost dropped my sword, but I had the wits to cling tighter instead of letting it go.
Rather than attempt to struggle to my feet, I rolled forward, curling into a ball in the shadow of the tree. Once I had a steady footing, I twisted my body and found myself looking right into the murderous glowing eyes of a charging summon. Panicked, I held the sword in front of me and waited for impact. Maybe we would skewer each other at the same time. At least I would die knowing I’d taken one out with me.
The summon’s antler was so close it almost went up my nose when the tip of my sword struck it in the chest. There was a popping sound, and the summon shattered into shimmering dust. Tor wasn’t kidding when he said you could kill these things if you knew where to hit them.
That took care of one of them, but what about the other two? They had rushed past me in pursuit of Tor, who had rolled much farther than I had.
I couldn’t leave him to fight the summons alone, but my legs still ached from the impact. My bones felt like they had the consistency of pudding as I slowly shifted my weight. Behind me, down the hill, I heard the sounds of struggle.
Oh, please don’t die, I begged in my mind as I willed myself to move.
“Leave this place at once!” I froze at the sound of the familiar voice, both husky and shrill at the same time. It was Inejor. He was here.
Heart pounding, I leaned against the tree and rolled onto my side to peek around the trunk. At the base of the hill, half-concealed in mist, Tor stood alone with his sword in his hand, watching as the summons fled. Inejor was nowhere to be seen.
“Avery?” Tor called.
“I’m here!” I tried to walk toward him, but my legs gave out, and I fell.
“Avery!” Tor caught me and scooped me off the ground. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. I just hit that tree too fast. What happened?” I clutched Tor’s broad shoulders and peeked behind him, expecting to see another summon charging at any moment. There was nothing but the dark shapes of trees looming through the mist. The mist was much thicker here, making it hard to see much in any direction. I recalled the stories I had heard about the Forsaken Woods swallowing people and shuddered.
“I guess he called them off. We’re not the ones he’s after.”
“Kadria! We have to find her!” I flailed in Tor’s arms. He almost dropped me, but repositioned his hands to prevent me from falling.
“Stop wiggling! We can’t go back up the way we came. You can barely walk. We’ll have to find another way around.”
“What if they caught her? Put me down!”
“Stop panicking!”
Tor stubbornly held me tighter. I pummeled his chest with my fists. “Let me go! I have to find Kadria!”
“Calm down!”
When has a shouted ‘calm down’ ever achieved the desired effect? Rather than relaxing me, the command filled me with rage.
“No!” I bellowed. “I have to help Kadria!” I craned my neck around, as if Kadria was just hiding behind a tree, as if she would come toddling toward me at any moment.
Was this how Hannah felt when I threatened to leave and never return?
“You’re not going to help her by getting yourself killed,” Tor grunted as I took another swing at him.
“Stop telling me what to do! I’m not a baby. You command me around like I’m one of your guards, and I hate it!”
Tor stilled. “You hate me?”
“What? No. I don’t hate you. I hate the way you treat me. There’s a difference.”
Finally, Tor came to his senses and gently set me down. I tried not to wince when I put weight on my legs. He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The way he was looking at me made me feel strange. Flustered, I waved my hand to dismiss the conversation. “Just forget about it. We have to find Kadria.”
“I know how we can find her,” Tor said.
14
The mist was so thick in this area of the forest that I could barely see Tor, though he was mere steps ahead of me. He walked quickly and confidently, as if he had walked through these same trees before.
“Tor … are you sure this is the right way?” I hugged myself against a sudden chill. The locket grew hotter. Something dangerous was near. Big surprise there. The locket had been hot for a while now. It was almost uncomfortable to wear it, but I didn’t dare take it off.
We had been walking for a while now — just the two of us — mostly in silence. Tor was anxious. I could tell by the way he kept spinning his sword. It should have been morning by then, but it was still dark as night in this section of the Woods. The trees completely blocked out the light. I walked directly behind Tor, his big body creating a safer path through the tightly packed trees.
“Tor?” I almost had to jog to keep up with him. “I think we’re going the wrong way.”
“No. This is right. I know it’s right.”
“But how? How do you know this?”
Tor didn’t remember anything about his life outside the forest, yet he acted as if he had wandered through these very trees many times before. He knew which food was safe to eat. He knew what summons were and how they worked. He even knew more about Inejor than I would have suspected. He had treated Inejor as a stranger when he attacked us.
On the other hand, the only thing I knew about the Woods was that I didn’t know anything about the Woods. In the Forsaken Woods, everything was a trap. Everything was a monster.
Was Tor a monster, too?
No. I had to stop doing this. This place was making me paranoid. I knew I could trust Tor. I had trusted him all my life. My whole family loved him like he was one of us. Tor could be aggravating, he could be a tease, but he would never hurt me.
Unless this wasn’t Tor.
The trees ended abruptly. I almost tripped into the clearing ahead. I caught myself on a tree branch to regain my balance. Ahead of me lay a beautiful, misty clearing, like something out of a fairytale. Morning light streamed from above, lighting up the mist like magic. In the middle of the clearing stood a single stone, taller than I was, with a sharp point piercing up into the sky. The morning light cast a long shadow on the ground, like the hand of a clock. The stone appeared to be glowing, but it may have just been a trick of the light. The stone in its clearing in the middle of the Woods was somehow breathtaking, the kind of beauty that makes you melancholy.
Tor headed toward the stone, but when I lifted my foot to follow him, the locket around my neck burned so hot it hurt.
Danger.
“Tor,” I said. “Stop.”
Tor slowed to a stop. He stood only a few feet from the mysterious stone. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, as if it beckoned to me. The longer I stared at it, the more I longed to see it clearly, to feel its texture beneath my fingertips. I was overcome with a sense of loneliness that verged on urgency.
Trust nothing.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” he said, without turning toward me. “This is the heart of the Forsaken Woods.”
Where had I heard that phrase before? It was a line of the song Lucy had taught me and Bailey,
that one that was much scarier with the real lyrics. Softly, I sang the lyrics under my breath.
Follow me into the Woods.
Leave your life and family behind.
Find the heart of the Woods and lose your mind.”
The heart of the Woods. That was what Tor had called this place.
“It’s like a compass, a guide,” Tor said. “You just put your hand on it.” Tor lifted his hand, hovering just above the stone’s surface. “And it will show you the way to go.”
If he was right, then this was huge. This stone could lead us to Kadria. It could get us out of here.
“How do you know this?” I asked. The locket pulsed like a heartbeat. If I ignored it much longer, it would probably start burning my skin. I placed a hand over the locket as if to comfort it. Or was I comforting myself?
“I remember this. I’ve used this stone before. I was searching for something. For you.” He was so earnest that my heart fluttered. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
But how could he have been searching for me for so long, when I was always right there? He had seen me every day since I was a young child.
“Tor.” I forced an anxious laugh. “We’ve only been lost for a few days. It hasn’t been that long.”
Tor’s voice was wistful, as if he were speaking to himself more than he was to me. “You’re something I lost. And I finally found you. You’re a piece of me that was missing.”
This was getting weird.
Find the heart of the Woods and lose your mind. Those were the real lyrics to the song. Had Tor lost his mind? Was that why he couldn’t remember anything? What if we escaped the forest and he still didn’t remember?
What if he didn’t remember his life outside the Woods because he had never had one? What if the Woods were enchanted not to keep humanity out, but to keep the monsters in?
“You know,” I said, clearing my throat, “you always had the most incredible green eyes. Can I see them?”
He traveled the few paces to close the distance between us, blocking the large stone from sight. My heart skipped as he approached. He leaned in so close I could feel his warm breath on my face. His eyes were a brilliant, emerald green.
And that was when I knew he was lying.
Tor’s eyes were blue.
My pulse raced with sudden terror. I had to keep my wits. Maybe I was just remembering wrong. Maybe the Woods were finally getting to my mind, just like they got to Tor’s. I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat.
“Do you remember,” I whispered, my throat suddenly dry, “the time you cut your hand? You were sparring with Alistair. Bailey called your name, and you turned away, and Alistair got a good hit on you, right on your hand. You’ve had a scar there ever since, right across your palm.”
I reached for Tor’s hand. His skin was warm to the touch. I turned his hand over. There was a scar across his hand, exactly as I had described. There was one big problem.
That story wasn’t true.
I had just made it up. Tor didn’t have a scar on his palm.
I struggled to breathe. With a trembling hand, I traced the scar. It felt real. It all felt real. Just like the little old lady and the cottage. Just like the soup that hadn’t existed. And the warm bed that was really a trap. It all felt real.
But it wasn’t.
I kept falling for the same tricks.
“Once,” I continued, struggling to keep the tremor out of my voice, “I fell out of a tree. You heard me fall and came to see what had happened. I was crying. You knelt beside me and helped me assess the damage. You told me to wiggle my toes. Turn my ankles. Bend my knee. I was so scared that I just kept staring at your eyes.” This was the truth I told him. I really had fallen out of a tree. Tor had come to my rescue. The next bit was a lie. “Your eyes were brown, like chestnuts.”
This time, when I looked back into Tor’s eyes, they were brown. Just like chestnuts.
Now I understood why the locket had burned ever since Tor saved me from the spider-woman. I thought I was surrounded by invisible monsters. In truth, I was standing right next to one in plain sight.
In the Forsaken Woods, everything was a lie.
15
I stumbled away from Tor — or whatever he was — in horror. “Tor’s eyes are blue!” I yelled.
He blinked, and his eyes turned blue.
“No! Stop! You can’t do that. You can’t just become what I want to see. It’s all wrong. He doesn’t have a scar on his hand!” I drew my sword and held it between us. “You aren’t Tor! You’ve been lying to me!”
His face darkened with emotion. With resolve.
If Tor wasn’t Tor, who was he? Why had he saved me? Why had he comforted me when I felt overwhelmed? Was it all a ruse so that he could lure me here?
“Tell me who you are!”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t remember.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Tor wasn’t Tor. He wasn’t real. Nothing in this confounded forest was real. But this — this one hurt more than all the others. Tor wasn’t a random stranger. He was Tor. A friend. Someone I had known forever. Someone I would trust.
And I hadn’t even suspected that he wasn’t real.
Before my eyes, Tor changed, shifting from the large man in the rumpled guard’s uniform into Hannah. “I’m whatever you want me to be,” he said in her voice.
“What do you want?” I rasped.
Hannah reached for me. I stepped backward.
“I want you,” she said. “I want you to stay with me. I could protect you. I could keep you safe.”
“I try so hard to keep you safe,” Hannah had once said. This thing not only copied her looks, but also her mannerisms — as if it could see right into my mind.
It could be anything. It could become their anything’s fears. It could become something they knew. That’s how he had survived the summons. He had made himself look and sound like Inejor and confused them. For me, he had become Tor.
“Why Tor?” I asked. I needed to understand. Maybe if I could keep it talking, it would give me a hint how to escape.
It shifted instantly from Hannah back to Tor. “You wanted Tor,” it said. “You were in trouble. You wanted to be rescued. You thought if anyone could save you, it would be Tor. You think very highly of him. But he didn’t save you. I did. And I could save you again, for the rest of forever. Stay with me. I need you to tell me who to be.”
I couldn’t stay here. Not when Kadria’s life was in danger.
“I can’t stay with you,” I said.
“No.” It stepped toward me, almost impaling itself on the tip of my sword. “I need you, Avery. You remind me of before.”
“Before what?” It wasn’t making any sense. Could I outrun it? If I ran, would it catch me? It had that stone. If what it said was true, the stone would be able to find me no matter where I hid, as long as I was still in the Forsaken Woods. The heart of the forest put me as far from the edge — from freedom — as possible.
“Before I got lost. Before I became … this.” It tugged the front of Tor’s uniform. “I think I must have been somebody. But I don’t know who I was. This is what happens when you get lost in here, Avery. You change. You forget.”
Remember.
The locket had been protecting me all along, keeping me from becoming whatever Tor was now. He used to be someone. Who was he before the forest changed him? What was he now?
“I’m sorry. I won’t stay.”
It said nothing for a moment, just gazed at me with Tor’s face, it’s eyes changing colors every time it blinked. Then suddenly it was my sister Bailey.
“Do you like me now?” it asked with her voice.
I swallowed my horror, shaking my head.
Now it was Lucy. “Now?”
Then Bronsley, our cook. “Will you stay with me now?!”
“No!”
My breath caught when it transformed into Kadria. She held out her chubby little arms.
“Av’ry!”
“Stop!”
In a blink of an eye, it was Tor again. “I can be anything you want me to be. I can be Kadria. I can be Tor. I can be everyone you ever loved all at once. Why won’t you stay with me?!”
“Because you aren’t real!”
A vein in its jaw pulsed with barely concealed anger. Maybe getting it angry wasn’t the right way to handle this.
It raised an arm and swatted my sword out of my hand. I hadn’t expected it to move so quickly. I scrambled to retrieve the sword, but it grabbed me, lifting me off my feet with ease. Why had I wanted it to be a big, burly man? I should have wished for Lucy to save me from the spider-woman! She could never lift me like this.
“The heart will make you forget,” the shapeshifter grumbled in my ear, carrying me toward the softly glowing stone.
The locket grew hotter with every step.
“No! Put me down!” I beat at it with my fists. If I was hurting it at all, it made no indication of it. “Let me go!”
If it really cared about me, why would it want me to forget? To be as miserable as it was? This wasn’t love. This was selfishness. This was desperation.
What would be left of me if I forgot? The world “Silverleaf” would mean nothing to me. My sisters, my brothers, Kadria — everything that mattered to me would be gone. I had promised Goodboy that I would help her find her egg. Would she find it in time without me? Or would she lose her life protecting Kadria?
Would I ever know?
If I forgot, would I even care?
“No!” I struggled and fought and kicked, but it was just too strong. I remembered the way Kadria acted when she didn’t want to be held. Instead of fighting, I went limp and slipped right out of its arms. My feet hit the ground, but before I could run, the shapeshifter tackled me. We wrestled on the ground, blinded by mist. I took another nod from Kadria and screamed at the top of my lungs. My terrified voice echoed around the clearing and through the trees. But no one came to help.
The shapeshifter knelt, and with one final push, it shoved me against the stone.