by Krista Walsh
“Me?” Jeff repeated, returning the push. “I charged him, didn’t I? I made the attempt to tackle the deranged serial killer for your sake. It’s not my fault he was faster. What else did you want me to do?”
Brady stepped between them and faced Jeff. “An interruption would have broken the spell. Ended their connection. Raul would have been stuck in the hall.”
“Then we could have taken him back to your apartment, and you could have dropped the news in Maggie’s head like she said you would,” Jayden said. “And Brady and I would have gone home happy, having found what we came for.”
Cassie rested her hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Instead we’re back here. Right where you don’t want to be.”
Wonderful. Just perfect. Just like last time around, Jeff couldn’t seem to do anything right. At least this time he wouldn’t have to share in his characters’ mess. All they had to do was find Maggie, and she would send them home. Right away this time. She had to be a pro by now.
Cassie spun in a circle with her head tilted back to face the treetops far above them. “Where are we, anyway?”
Jayden rested his hand on a tree trunk. “Nowhere close to home, I know that much.”
“How can you tell?” asked Jeff. Forest was forest to him. Impossible to tell one batch of trees from another.
Brady chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Because Feldall Forest is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Burned up,” Jayden said. “Part of Raul’s guards’ brilliant idea of keeping the family in check while Raul brought Cordelay to its knees.”
Jeff remembered Siobhan Connell’s words the day she told him that they had burned down the entire forest, and all the houses along the way. She said they left nothing for the families to come back to, even if Raul did decide to let them be. He had hoped she was exaggerating.
“How can that be?” he asked, another memory popping into his head. “I went through the woods around the Fountain. I passed through them back into the Keep.”
The hidden glen next to the Keep where the Sisters had brought him to recover. A small patch of paradise in the wilderness. It had been there, after Siobhan said everything was smoke.
“You mustn’t have looked very far when you came out,” Jayden said, running his thumb over the hilt of his dagger. “Once they reached the gate of the Keep, they stopped caring about the forest. Everything past that is a blackened mess.”
Jeff grieved for the families that had survived the siege who now had to rebuild their lives from nothing.
Jayden sighed and looked around him. “So we have no idea where we are, we’re stuck in these foolish clothes, and I don’t have my sword. I can’t say this is the best day of my life.”
“Hardly your worst, either,” Jeff pointed out, then bit down on his tongue.
Brady walked a slow circle around the edge of the clearing and peered into the depths of the trees. “I suggest we pick a direction and walk until we reach the edge of the forest. Even if it takes us a few days, it’s not likely we’ll starve. We can hunt.”
He pointed into the brush where light brown ears flicked towards them. Jeff caught sight of soft doe eyes behind the leaves.
“With what?” Jayden asked. “Are you planning to wrestle the creature with your bare hands? I’d like to see you try.”
“Hostility is not helpful,” Brady snapped.
The deer scampered back into the woods, taking the heat of their argument with it.
Brady looked up, shading his eyes against the sunbeams that made it through the trees, and turned east.
“Let’s just go this way. If we’re anywhere in Andvell, east will take us to the Margolian border if we don’t reach any other town first.”
“And if we’re not in Andvell?” Jeff asked.
“Then we’ll come across something eventually.”
With nothing better to suggest, they followed Brady’s lead.
“I suppose we could be in a worse position than lost,” Jeff said after a few minutes of quiet.
Jayden sniffed. “Oh yeah?”
“We could have travelled with Raul and been his guests for dinner. I imagine the results of that evening would be less enjoyable than a saunter through the woods.”
Cassie picked her way over the forest debris, the hem of her cargo pants catching on thorns. She tripped as she tried to tear herself away, and Jeff caught her elbow and helped steady her.
“Why did we end up some place different?” she asked.
“The same reason Raul landed somewhere else in Montreal, I suppose,” said Brady. “It could be that physical contact makes it more likely you’ll travel together. Unless everyone in the group is able to picture the same place. We’re still not certain how the Meratis incantation works, exactly.”
“Then isn’t it wonderful you keep using it,” said Jeff.
“To be fair, you were never supposed to come back here,” said Brady. “We were coming to you. You can thank Raul for this particular trip.”
“That’s all right. I’m sure he can sense my gratitude, wherever he is.”
Conversation fell away and they pushed on, no path ever appearing in front of them. Except for the flutter of birds, and the occasional snuffling of some unseen beast, no sounds reached them that would suggest a village, and the density of the wood never thinned out. If Brady weren’t the one navigating, Jeff would wonder if they were going in circles.
The sun shifted overhead, bringing them to mid-afternoon. Jeff’s stomach grumbled, but none of the others looked ready to stop and see about that hunting idea. Brady was too focused on making a path, Jayden concentrating on his balance over the uneven terrain, and Cassie still in too much awe to do anything other than gape at trees wider than an oversized car. So he pressed his lips together and persevered.
When the sun prepared to drop below the treetops, Jayden stopped. “We should set up camp here. Unless you want to gain another few feet going on by moonlight, I don’t think we’ll get much farther today.”
Brady swung his head from Jayden to the woods, uncertain. “We might be closer than we think.”
“Or another three days away,” said Jayden. “We’ll cover more land tomorrow if we get a good night’s sleep.”
“Sleep? Here?” Jeff looked around at the small patch of clearing they’d reached. Not enough for the four of them to lie down comfortably.
Jayden gestured towards the way they’d come. “We could always go back to that inn we passed a few minutes ago if you prefer. I hear their venison stew is superb.”
Jeff mumbled a few unfriendly words at his shoes and helped Brady collect firewood and scavenge for dinner while Jayden and Cassie cleared a bit of space.
The sky was a golden orange by the time the fire crackled and popped, and Jeff kept his eyes glued to the trees. He didn’t trust this forest to be any safer than the one around Treevale. Even without Raul’s mutated pets, regular wolves and bears were enough of a threat. He edged a little closer to the light.
“Now would be a good time for that hunting,” said Jayden, the growl of his stomach reaching Jeff’s ear across the fire.
Brady dragged his borrowed shirt across the ground, the centre filled with the results of his quest. “May I present the finest collection of nuts and fruit this forest has to offer?”
Jayden hmphed and reached for an apple. “Hardly enough to keep us going, but it’ll do.”
Brady popped some small berries into his mouth. “Just because it didn’t bleed first doesn’t mean it isn’t a meal.”
“So I’ve been told. I don’t buy it. Wish now we’d given wrestling that deer a try.”
“Looks like you’ll get another opportunity,” Cassie said, gesturing slowly to the deer as it padded out from behind the bushes.
Given the timing, the hour, and the circumstances, everyone watched the beast with wariness. The creature kept its eye on Jeff, taking a few hesitant steps towards him.
“What is it doing?” Jeff asked in a stage
-whisper. He tried to sit as statue-still as possible, uncomfortable with the attention Mother Nature had decided to bestow on him.
None of the others seemed to have any ideas of their own and watched on in silence.
The deer stopped half a metre in front of Jeff and lifted its nose towards him. Very slowly, Jeff reached out a hand, not sure what he was doing, but unable to escape the feeling that it was waiting for him to do something. Just as his finger reached the creature’s ear, it pulled back its lips and hissed.
Jeff jumped, lost his balance, and fell off the log, shuffling away from the beast. “What the hell kind of noise was that?”
The forest replied with a haunting laugh, and the sound circled his head like the hum of bees. Jeff groaned and buried his face in his hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What’s going on?” Cassie asked.
“Company,” Jayden growled, hand stretched towards his dagger. The blade leapt out of its sheath and flew backwards, lodged itself in the trunk of a tree.
Jeff looked back at the deer just in time to see it shimmer in his vision, its back legs elongating into creamy olive skin covered with a swath of sheer yellow silk. The snout shortened into a small nose, the eyes slanting upwards into exotic angles. Black hair rippled down its head and covered what the see-through material would have missed. In seconds, the deer had been replaced with a beautiful, familiar woman.
“Lan,” he greeted, with all the enthusiasm of a trip to the dentist.
“Storychanger,” she answered, the word rolling on her tongue with seduction in every syllable, pushing the flow of his blood downwards. “So nice to,”
“See you again,” came another voice behind him.
Jeff didn’t want to turn around and acknowledge the second witch. They were illusionists. If he didn’t believe in them, would they cease to exist?
He stared at Cassie instead, watching her reaction. Her eyes widened as she twisted slowly in three directions, all three Sisters present and accounted for. He expected to see the awe on Cassie’s face. What he didn’t expect was the flash of jealousy. Seeing it gave him the confidence to meet the gaze of the other Sister that had spoken.
“Hello, Aya,” he said to the black woman next to him, the scent of oranges and mint wafting from the waves of white hair pouring over her shoulders and the blue silk of her dress.
She smiled slowly. “We thought we might come and,”
“Welcome you back,” the third Sister said, approaching him. Kay’s cat-like emerald eyes held his gaze, her wicked smile made all the more tempting by the way her body swayed under the wraps of soft green. Her copper hair was pulled up and out of her face, revealing every detail of her figure beneath her dress.
Jeff swallowed. “You make me feel so wanted. Pity I’m not as thrilled to be back here as you are to greet me.”
Lan trailed her fingers across his back. “It seems our universe has not,”
“Finished with you, Storychanger. Your story,”
“Isn’t over yet.”
“Wow, they actually do talk like this? I kind of thought you made that up for effect.” Cassie came closer, edging Aya out of the way. The witch’s eyebrows shot up.
Jeff chewed his lips to hide the smile, amused just as much by Cassie’s bluntness as by the irritation that flittered across the Sisters’ expressions. During the few times Jeff had encountered these women, he knew their words were something to experience rather than understand, but Cassie didn’t seem interested in either.
In a heartbeat, the annoyance disappeared, and the Sisters focused their attentions on Cassie.
The air stirred with a sudden breeze, and Jeff picked up the scents of all three women: cinnamon, citrus, and vanilla—a hypnotic combination that made his mouth water. He swallowed again and glanced towards Brady and Jayden. The eyes of both men had glazed over, and drooped with fatigue. Jeff didn’t feel any similar lethargy, but neither did he have any interest in speaking, or moving.
“A sweet child. Innocent and brave,” said Kay, brushing her hand down Cassie’s arm. “You’ve,”
“Faced our world once and proved your strength.” Aya raised Cassie’s chin with the crook of her forefinger.
“Are you willing to do so again?” Lan asked, summoning a knife into her palm.
Cassie clenched her fists at her sides. “If I have to. We know what Raul can do. Brady told us what he’ll do if he gets his power back. If there’s anything I can do to help prevent that, I will. I owe the people of Feldall for their help when Raul abducted me.”
Kay cast a glance towards Jeff. “The sacrifice came not from—”
Panic roused him enough from their spell to shake his head, a subtle plea not to say anything. An eyebrow rose. Cassie noticed the look and an expression of confusion crossed over her features. Before she could ask, Lan caught her attention.
“Your word is your bond. Raul,”
“Must be stopped,” Aya stated, her fingers closing around Cassie’s arm. “The power he seeks will not crush cities.”
“It will destroy worlds,” Kay finished.
“How? What do you mean?” Cassie asked, but Jeff knew that would be as specific as they got. These witches were nothing if not a walking conundrum. He felt their spell lift away and a moment later they had vanished as well.
“Your path is clear,” came Lan’s voice on the air.
“Follow it, and the answers you seek,”
“Will find you.”
The forest shimmered and shifted, and a path that hadn’t been there a moment ago cut through the debris on the forest floor.
The quartet convened at the start of the path, staring down along it into the darkness. Overhead, a full moon lit the way, casting the forest with an eerie glow. Had there been a moon ten minutes ago?
“Do we have to?” Jeff asked.
“Do you see any other way out of here?” Jayden countered. He released his dagger from the tree and slid it back into the sheath. “Not so long ago you wanted nothing to do with his glen.”
“If it’s the choice between a natural glen we found in a forest, and a path hallucination conjured by the Sisters, I think I know which I prefer.”
Brady took the first step forward. “The Sisters’ motivations may be questionable, but they want Raul gone as much as we do. I don’t think they’d want to slow us down.”
His words didn’t do much to assuage Jeff’s fears, but when the other three started down the path, he saw no other option but to follow. He also couldn’t ignore the gust of wind blowing him forward. These women were nothing if not insistent.
An hour or so later, the path widened into a lane. Jeff sped up to walk abreast with Cassie. She kept her attention glued on the road ahead, not always easy to see with the moon blocked by the trees. He wanted to ask if she was all right, what she thought of their situation, but his mouth dried up, and no words fit, so he stayed quiet.
“I know this road,” Jayden spoke up after a time.
“Know it well?” asked Jeff.
“Well enough. I used to travel it often when … a long time ago.”
The unfinished explanation spurred Jeff’s curiosity, but Brady cast him a look that suggested it would be better not to push the issue.
Jayden, now that he recognised their direction, paid closer attention to the woods on either side of them, as if looking for something.
“There should be a road marker coming up,” he said. “If I’m right, we’ll be bearing left at the next turn.”
Before he could prove himself right, the sound of hoofbeats pounded the ground towards them. Jeff pulled Cassie out of the way and Brady jumped. Jayden lost his balance in an effort to stay clear and stumbled, taking a knee. He cursed as he got back to his feet, his cheeks tinged pink.
The horse spooked at the sudden chaos and reared back, the cloaked rider tumbling backwards, nearly out of the saddle. He managed to right himself without falling and tightened his grip on the reins. The horse tossed his head,
nearly clipping Jeff in the shoulder.
“Idiots!” the rider called out, the voice distinctly female. She fiddled with her hood and cape, which had fallen into her face with the jarring stop.
“Us?” Jayden yelled back. “Maybe you should watch where you’re riding, you fool.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t take up the entire blasted road. This roadway is for people with somewhere to go.”
Finally disentangled, the woman pulled the hood back from her face, a fair French braid falling over her shoulder, the colour almost silver in the moonlight.
Jayden went slack-jawed, and Jeff watched his reaction with interest. “Ana?”
Brady’s eyebrows shot up, but no recognition lit up the grey eyes beneath.
Jeff shifted his attention from Jayden to the woman. She carried a presence that was part beauty and part self-confidence, her back straight and chin held high. Eyelashes so fair they were almost invisible framed large brown eyes that at the moment were even wider with surprise.
“Well, well, Lord Feldall. I can say with absolute certainty you’re the last person I expected to find on this road.” She scanned him from head to toe. “What in mercy’s name are you wearing?”
Jeff wanted to applaud. He guessed from their interaction that it had been a while since this Ana woman had seen Jayden, and yet the black patch and empty right sleeve didn’t appear to faze her. Classy.
Jayden opened his mouth to reply, but the woman settled herself back in the saddle.
“Wish I had time to chat.” She paused. “Actually, no I don’t, to be honest. I assume you’re coming for a visit?”
Through stiff lips, Jayden replied, “Out of necessity.”
“I suppose we’ll meet again soon then. Must dash.”
She clicked her tongue, and the horse took off, a cloud of dust stirring up behind her, leaving the four of them watery-eyed and coughing.
“Who the hell was that?” Jeff asked.
“History,” Jayden grumbled. He continued to stare down the road long after the woman disappeared. “But no doubt you’ll find out soon enough. Come on, let’s go.”