by Brindi Quinn
“Careful, he’s hyper today,” Rafe said in passing.
Was that a jab? Of all the things Rafe was, playful was not one of them. Maybe he was warming up now that his secret was out.
“I’m not hyper.” Windley stretched. “I just happen to have an abundance of energy today.”
“I’m fairly sure that’s the definition of hyper,” I said.
“I was referring to the Queen’s stag,” said Rafe.
From the grove of willows, we traveled ever south. Rafe was right; Ruckus was hyper. Windley too. And even Rafe himself seemed reinvigorated. Why shouldn’t he? A great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, replaced by newfound hope that Beau was alive and that we were drawing nearer to her with every gallop. The widowbird from last night, which I had dispatched this morning, soared ahead of us in the distance, seeking to deliver my next message to the lost queen. Even if we wouldn’t be able to keep it in our sights for long, we could take comfort that it too was flapping south.
According to the map from Delagos, if we kept heading that way, the plains would transition to tall-reaching trees before long.
“Marked by a field of emerald moss, I think,” Windley said, rubbing his head. As it turned out, the memory of his youth wasn’t very crisp—the reason Albie had turned to Delagos for help in the first place. I didn’t press him because I figured it must be easy to forget things from eight years ago.
Even easier when there were things worth forgetting, I would come to learn.
Windley was right, though. Like waves washed up onto sand, emerald patches of moss began interrupting the mismatch of grass and dirt—the earliest signs of what was to come.
The first time Ruckus stepped on some, he recoiled as if he had stuck his hoof into mud. “Squishy, Ruck?” I patted him. “It’s okay. You won’t sink.”
He didn’t listen to me, though, and instead looked to Albie’s stag for guidance. Albie’s stag had spent many years with the knight and was therefore the most obedient of the bunch. Obeying the click of Albie’s tongue, the beast took the front of the pack, and the others followed.
“See, Ruck? Told you.”
But it was no use saying so. Ruckus wasn’t one to admit when he was wrong.
It wasn’t long after the moss washed over the land that we saw the tree line rise on the horizon, and I understood for the first time what Albie meant by ‘a forest of extraordinary heights.’
It was another of those moments you would have to live to understand. It can’t be aptly recreated in words, but I’ll try my best.
To say the trees were tall is an understatement of egregious offense; they were colossal, rising taller than any of the six castles I had visited and taller than the tallest structure in the Crag. I could tell it even from a great distance, for the lumber rose quickly on the skyline like an arboreal barricade to the lands beyond. The wall of green and brown seemed impenetrable from afar. It wasn’t until we were right up next to it that I realized there was actually quite a distance between each tree, allowing slivers of light to permeate through the thick canopy above, the trunks themselves so wide that they would have taken a dozen people holding hands to circle them.
Inside the wood, the world was silent, muted by the forest’s crown. Even being within, it was hard to fathom the size of the trees, but despite the intimidating heights, this forest wasn’t a dark and treacherous place; it was magical. The slices of light illuminated colorful mushrooms dotting the moss, and coils of vibrant vine wound over fallen branches. The air carried a similar earthy aroma to that of the Scarlet Wood.
In that sense, it almost felt like coming home.
I dismounted Ruckus and sank my feet into the mossy ground. Cool and moist, it was no wonder the stags had mistaken it for mud.
“Does the forest have a name?” I asked.
“The Emerald Wood,” said Windley.
I was too engrossed in our surroundings to catch his expression, but whatever it was prompted Albie to ask:
“You okay, son?”
I stopped gaping to get a better look at them, but Windley only brushed Albie off, looking fine. Maybe Windley had passed through this forest on his way to the queendoms eight years ago? If so, that would be a fearsome undertaking for a young vagabond. Maybe that’s why Albie seemed concerned.
We continued into the Emerald Wood, the moss welcoming our footprints with each step. Yes, this place reminded me of home, though home had nowhere near this caliber of trees. It was the scent, the serenity, the crisp of the air. And as I pulled it deep into my lungs, something occurred to me. If Beau had a secret relationship with Rafe, did he also know her deepest, darkest secret?
‘I can’t hear them anymore.’
I’ll admit, I had pushed it from mind with everything else going on.
“Hey Rafe?”
He was walking on ahead beside his stag, and when he turned to acknowledge me, I saw that he was rubbing his chest as though it ached. Obviously, he was experiencing extreme anxiety and heartache over Beau’s disappearance, which he had been suppressing for days. Was it causing him physical pain now?
“Your Majesty?” he said.
“Is your chest okay?”
“It’s fine,” he said, dropping his hand. “What do you need?”
“Right.” I stepped over a cluster of tangerine-colored toadstools and tramped up next to him, lowering my voice: “Beau didn’t happen to tell you anything strange before she was taken, did she?”
“Strange?” he said.
I thought over the best way to fish for information without betraying her. “Just… did she mention any changes? Or, like, any concerns?”
Just when I thought I might be digging in the wrong place, a spark of comprehension flashed over his brow. He lowered his voice to match mine: “Not now, Your Majesty.” He looked over his shoulder to Albie who was studying Delagos’s map. “Tonight.”
So she had said something to him. And judging by his furtive behavior, it was the same something she had told me. “Tonight then,” I said with a nod. In the meantime, I would set my sights elsewhere.
The moment I left him, Rafe resumed rubbing his chest.
Pay attention to that. It will be important later.
“Hey Windley?”
The other guard was sharing an apple with his stag as he meandered through the giant trunks. “At your royal service,” he said with a sigh.
“Geesh, don’t look so excited to talk to me.”
“No, we aren’t almost there. No, I won’t carry you. No, you can’t have a bite of our apple.” He wrinkled his nose at his stag nefariously.
“In that case—” I pretended to take my leave.
He hooked his arm around my neck. “Wait. Don’t go. I’m already bored of this place. What is it you really want?”
“Well…” How to start? “This forest reminds me a lot of the Scarlet Wood,” I said.
“Because it has trees?” he said dryly. “The two are nothing alike.”
“Are you kidding? It has the same smell and feel to the air.”
“It smells like dirt. So I suppose I misspoke. Trees and dirt. Two things in common.”
He was the worst.
And also the best.
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat. “As I was saying, the Emerald Wood reminds me of the Scarlet Wood, and it got me thinking—do the people of the southern wilds acknowledge the oracle and her echoes?”
He let his stag take the rest of the apple. “Yes, but they call the being who hears them something else.”
“They believe in all of it?” I said. “That calamity will befall the world if the oracle doesn’t whisper her own echoes into the echoes of the forest?”
“Yes, they believe it. But why are you worried? Queen Beau doesn’t need to be in the Scarlet Wood to do it. She’s done it from afar before, such as when we traveled to the Queendom of the Crystalline to see that tart Queen Esma. Are you worried she won’t be able to perform in captivity?”
Windley
clearly had no idea about his queen’s lost echoes. What’s more, even the southern stretches of the world, a people with no connection to our way of life or regard for our customs, believed in the power of the oracle. Troubling.
I had expected calamity to be a sudden impact, but maybe its onslaught was to spread slowly, like a disease.
Windley was staring at me, so I diverted with: “You said they call the oracle something different down here. What do they call her?”
“The nemophilist. It means a haunter of woods,” he said.
A nice chewy word. I liked it. It was more poetic than ‘oracle,’ though maybe not fitting for Beau. She was far from haunting.
Maybe Windley was right. Maybe Beau had regained her echoes while in captivity. Maybe even now she was working to keep calamity at bay.
Windley could tell I was mulling over something heavy. “You can tell me. As has been proven, I’m an excellent keeper of secrets.” But the way he gleamed wasn’t very convincing. More diversion was needed:
“Windley, has your hair color been changing more rapidly than usual?”
He straightened. “How would I know? I can’t very well see it, can I?”
Didn’t think of that.
“Well it is changing,” I said. “Yesterday it was white, and it’s already shifted to dark purple today. Will you tell me how it works?” I gestured to the forest stretching ahead. “We have time.”
“If you tell me how yours works,” he said. “Does it amass with the bodies of your fallen enemies?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Shall we add one more?”
“I don’t think Rafe deserves to die just because of a little canoodling, do you?” He showed off a catlike smirk.
I enjoyed his wit. Clever people were the most fun to be around.
“I meant you, of course, but I can see how you may think I meant Rafe. One’s mind does go to him first, what with his good looks and manners.”
“Cheeky.” Windley enjoyed my wit too. “Fine. If you must know, my hair sort of does its own thing.” He mussed his bangs. “I could force it into a color, but that would cost precious energy that I don’t care to spare.”
“So it just sort of lists from color to color? It isn’t based on moods or scenery?”
“I’m not a fucking chameleon, Merrin.” He hastily looked to see where Albie was before correcting himself. “I mean no, Your Highness.”
Last night may have been a dream, but him saying my name without honorifics had the same effect. My stomach did a dip before lifting back into place.
“But what’s the purpose of it?” I said, refusing to acknowledge the dip.
At this, he looked a bit uncomfortable.
“Hmmm?” I prodded.
Another large sigh from him. “You’ve heard of ignis fatuus, yes? Or I suppose northerners call them will-o'-wisps?”
I had heard of them. Beautiful balls of colored flame that floated through the northern forests, tempting travelers deeper into the wood. Legend was that they consumed the souls of those who followed them. Or at least that’s what Poppy had told me as a girl.
“They are made to be enticing, right?” said Windley. “Well, it’s kind of like that.”
Because his kind was once predatorial?
“In olden times, if I wanted to lure you away to steal your lifeforce, I could potentially change my hair color to make that task easier.”
There was something to the way he said ‘lure you away to steal your lifeforce’ that felt intimate… and dangerous.
“You said you have extra energy today. Will you show me how you change the color at will?”
“Only if you help me.” He reached out for my hand, eyes sporting sinful intentions. He was good at that. Because it was in his nature to be tempting.
I wanted to take his hand immediately, but something held me back. Pride or uncertainty or guilt, or maybe all three. I was a queen—a ruler of many. And you might not know it from the look of me, but I was good at being a queen. My people were happy, our relations well maintained with the other queendoms. I fought to improve the lives of my people, and I led a relaxed court.
I’m not telling you this to brag, but there were people out there who cherished me, same as Beau. Was it really okay to give my lifeforce to Windley so freely?
The first time had been a demonstration. The second, a dream. But this time… if I did it this time, it would be because I wanted to. It would be because I couldn’t resist the offer.
It might even be an excuse to touch him.
“You aren’t using your powers on me right now, are you?” I asked because it felt like a great pressure was trying to escape my chest.
His expression was odd—amused yet pained? “If I were using them on you, you’d know,” he said. “And I can’t do anything to you without touching you.”
Then why was that familiar flutter hitting me in the back of the neck?
He dropped his hand to his side, and with it, the blackstone ring on his finger. “I was worried this would happen. You’re wary of touching me now.”
He wasn’t wrong. For the last eight years, we had thrown arms around one another, played at fist fighting, pulled each other here or there. But now, I was fighting the urge to graze my skin with his.
“I can assure you, my people are no longer predatorial. They outgrew that long before I was born. I would never harm you, Merrin. Never.” He was looking at me in earnest, so much so that he forgot to correct himself.
Windley was one of my closest friends. I trusted him with my life.
I think this was the moment I realized—it wasn’t him I mistrusted; it was myself.
“I’m sorry, Windley. It isn’t because I’m afraid of you.” I was afraid because of how much I might like it, but I couldn’t tell him that. “I’m afraid to do it in front of those two.” I used Rafe and Albie, who were a short distance away with their stags, as scapegoats. “Albie would freak out if he saw me getting all woozy with you.”
“Oh yes. I forgot about those two.” Windley exposed his relief. “I’ll have to show you later then. If I do it on my own, I’ll want to stop and rest after. I’m out of practice, so it takes more out of me than it should.”
“You mean you haven’t been wooing Beau’s handmaids back at the Clearing?” I said.
“Only with my natural charm,” he simpered.
I reached up and tugged the lobe of his ear. “I’m not afraid to touch you. I promise.”
He brought his hand up so that it was almost cupping mine and drummed his fingertips once against my knuckles before dragging them down my wrist and arm. In the silence of the wood, the thudding of my own pulse was deafening.
I would like to keep going here and say that I finally came to terms with my evolving thoughts and desires, that I matured and realized that which is surely becoming obvious to you, captive ones, but I can’t. Because that’s not what happened.
Do you remember that otherworldly thing I mentioned? The one following us as we fled Sestilia’s castle?
It was about to make its first appearance.
As it did, my knees buckled, and I collapsed to the mossy ground.
Chapter 13
Nemophilist
I had never fainted before, but this wasn’t how I imagined it to be. And no, Windley did not make me swoon, okay?
I went from standing in a beam of forest light to swimming in darkness as though someone had blown out a candle. The darkness was airier than liquid and had movement to it. It was thick and milky in my lungs yet cool and wispy brushing past my skin.
I could feel my body, but it was more like the outline of a body. Ethereal, transparent, and flickering like shadow. I waited for something to happen. How long did a faint usually last? And was I supposed to be conscious within it?
From inside the darkness, I felt a hand on my form-devoid leg. Albie or Windley or Rafe? At first, I wondered if it was one of them touching me out in the real world.
But as soon as I thought it,
a dozen more hands swarmed around me, none connected to arms, all equally terrifying, with fingers that groped at my face, abdomen and breasts.
No. No, no, no, no. Faints were definitely not supposed to contain gaggles of bodiless hands!
I couldn’t move or scream. All I could do was exist in the whirling darkness as the hands probed all over me.
“Merrin.”
Out of nowhere, a voice said my name. I use ‘said’ only because there isn’t a more suitable word. The voice wasn’t audible, but I could sense it moving around me within the fluidlike fumes of darkness.
“MeRRin.” A second voice said, somewhat more disconcerting than the first.
“mErriN.”
“MErrIn.”
“MERRIN.”
All manner of voices appeared, some high-pitched, others whispers, and all enunciating my name in strange ways like they weren’t human but were trying hard to mimic human words.
It was the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced.
I couldn’t move or shut them out, so I just existed in the darkness, with a dozen hands invading on me and a swarm of creepy, disjointed voices saying my name over and over like a demonic symphony.
Then, the darkness changed. Though it is challenging to describe how it changed, exactly.
Sort of like trying to describe a color you’ve never seen before.
The darkness, hands and voices pressed into me with emotion. Though they didn’t speak, I knew what they meant to say:
“We will tear it apart. All of it. We will rip it asunder. We will devastate all who walk and crawl. Filth of the earth.”
As fear coiled me, angry, disruptive emotions pulsed in the darkness aimed at everything and nothing, and it felt as though I was the only barrier between the otherworldly cluster of hatred and the rest of the world.
“We hate them. Let them burn. Dry them out. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them.”
My first thought was to cower in fear.
My second was to do as I had been trained my whole life and speak for those who could not speak for themselves. Maybe obstinance had its advantages.