by J. A. White
“Two down,” Taff said. He wrapped the shard carefully in a cloth and slipped it into his pocket with the other one. “One more left.” The venom was almost completely gone, however, and he was having trouble immersing the last shard without dropping it into the sphere. “It would be a lot easier if this place would stop moving.”
They heard the sound of footsteps. Dozens. Hundreds.
“The things that were following us before,” Kara said. “They’re here. We have to go.”
Taff shook his head, steadying his hand against the sphere. “I almost have it . . . ,” he said. “Just give me a little more time.”
“Now!” Kara exclaimed, grabbing Taff’s hand and yanking him away. He left the last shard behind, embedded uselessly in the sphere.
“Go,” Safi said, flipping through the pages of the grimoire. “I can stop them. All I need is the right spell—”
But Kara grabbed her hand as well, and Safi had to quickly get hold of the grimoire with her free hand or risk dropping it.
They ran.
Glancing behind her, Kara saw the horde of bone monsters slam into the tunnel, too many to count, an ever-changing army of ill-joined creations that was far faster than it had any right to be. Some were as large as cattle, but most were no larger than a skinless cat. Since there were no tongues with which to make sounds, their arrival was measured in clicks and cracks and snaps.
At first Safi’s and Taff’s hands tightened on her own, but they quickly let go, pumping their arms to better speed their flight. The tunnel split in two. Kara, following the tube along the ceiling, chose the passage to the right. It was narrower here, which seemed to slow their pursuers down somewhat as they struggled to fit into the smaller space. Kara did not waste any more time looking back. There was no need. She could judge the distance of the creatures from the sounds. Click, crack, snap! Click, crack, snap! More tunnels, more turns. Right, left. Left again. Then against her burning cheeks she felt cold air, the outside world. Kara reached out with her mind, difficult to do while running, and felt the creatures of the Thickety again, their comforting presence. She found the one she needed and built her mind-bridge, completing it just as two towerlike fangs came into view, hanging like stalactites. Behind them Kara saw the trees of the Thickety illuminated by faint morning light.
They were standing in Niersook’s mouth.
“We made it!” Safi shouted, sprinting toward the open air. “We’re safe!”
“Safi!” Kara exclaimed. “Wait!”
At the last moment Safi saw the fall that awaited her and came to a sudden stop, pinwheeling her arms. Kara pulled her back to safety. With cautious steps, the three children peered over the edge of the mouth. A gray, mossy tongue, as long as a tree, dangled lifelessly from the open jaws but came nowhere near to touching the earth, the hazy surface below more like a memory of the ground than the ground itself.
Click, crack, snap!
The bone monsters were coming.
“Did you bring rope?” Kara asked Taff.
“No,” he said. “Who said I was in charge of bringing rope?”
“A rope will never reach the ground!” exclaimed Safi.
“I know,” murmured Kara, frantically searching their surroundings. “I don’t need it for that. . . . Here!”
Something red and stringy ran along the floor. It could have been ivy. It could have been the petrified muscle of some unfortunate beast devoured decades ago. In any case, it looked strong. Kara grabbed it with two hands and pulled with all her strength. It didn’t break.
“They’re here!” Taff exclaimed.
The bone monsters spilled out of the throat and fanned across the floor of the mouth. They slowed down, understanding that the children were trapped. A ball composed almost entirely of teeth clattered over the others, eager to take the first bite.
“No time to explain,” Kara said. Standing on the very edge of the mouth, her feet balanced on a surprisingly dull molar, she looped the ivy around them and knotted it as tightly as she could.
“Hold hands,” Kara said. “In case this breaks.”
She wrapped her arms around the children and pulled them toward the edge.
“Wait!” Safi exclaimed, her eyes wide with panic. “We’re not going to jump, are we?”
“No,” said Kara. “We’re going to fall.”
She leaned forward and they plunged over the edge.
Free-falling was a lot louder than Kara had expected: the violent whoosh of wind, Taff screaming in her ear. At first she thought Safi was screaming as well, but the girl’s eyes were pinched shut and what emanated from her mouth was little more than a series of small whimpers. The one screaming was Kara.
Please don’t let me be wrong. Please don’t let me be wrong.
Their speed multiplied second by second. Green and black flashed by. The hilt of Taff’s sword dug into her stomach. Kara’s eyes had gone blurry with the wind but she still managed to see Niersook’s head poking out of the mountain, its tri-forked tongue unfurled like the banner of some lost civilization. From this angle she was unable to see the upper half of its face.
That’s too bad, Kara thought. I would have liked to have known what color its eyes were. . . .
And then the sky disappeared and everything was dark. The air around them turned warm and moist.
Thank you, Kara thought, and sighed with relief.
“What just happened?” Safi asked. “Where are we?”
“My friend caught us,” said Kara. “I reached out with my mind while we were in Niersook’s mouth and asked for its help.”
“Your friend?”
“A giant bird, more or less. We’re inside its bill.” She squeezed Taff’s hand. “You all right?”
“That was amazing!” he exclaimed.
“He’s all right,” said Safi.
Though it was too cramped to stand, they managed to wiggle out of the red ivy and crawl their way along the bird’s tongue. The beak was slightly open, affording them a view of the outside world. Leaning on their elbows, the children pressed their faces to the wind as the bird swept gracefully though the trees.
“We’re flying!” shouted Taff. “We’re really flying!”
“It’s wonderful,” agreed Safi, “but if it’s all the same to you two, I’d rather not be inside anything’s mouth for a while.”
Kara laughed and stroked the girl’s hair.
“I think I’ve had my fill of that as well,” she said.
The bird landed just outside Kala Malta.
The children rolled out of its mouth, a little shaky on their feet but otherwise unharmed. Kara turned to face their hero. Its beak was long in proportion to its body, like a gull’s, and almost perfectly circular. Black plumage allowed it to camouflage itself in the trees. A thin line of moss wound its way between three copper-colored eyes.
“I’m going to fix this,” Kara said, running her hand along the moss. The sharp tang of infection burned her nostrils, but Kara refused to embarrass the creature by holding her nose. “One way or another, the Thickety will be yours once again.”
The bird flapped its white-tipped wings and slowly raised itself into the sky.
“What now?” Taff asked, retrieving his sword from Kara.
She had hoped to return before dawn, but the canopy leaves had already begun to burn with morning light. Breem will have noticed we’re gone by now, but he might not have reported us to Sordyr yet. When we get back to the hut I need to convince him that everything is all right. Then I can take the cage down to Rygoth, same as always, and inject the venom directly into Sordyr’s roots. That would probably be the safest thing to do. And if that doesn’t work, I still have the second shard.
“We’ll have to come up with some excuse,” Kara said. “Safi, maybe you had a vision and couldn’t sleep, so we all went for a walk.”
“That’ll work fine for Papa, but not for Sordyr. The Forest Demon can’t know that I—”
“A nightmare, then,” Kara sa
id. “Or something. We’ll figure it out later. Right now we need to get back over the Divide as quickly as possible. If we’re found inside the village, that’s one thing, but if we’re found beyond the Divide, that will be really difficult to explain.”
“They already know we’re gone,” Taff said. Though he had not spoken loudly, Kara snapped to attention, hearing a rare note of despair in his voice. “Look at the gate.”
It was open. Around it stood a half-dozen Devoted, checking the ground for tracks. Even from this distance Kara could see the branch wreaths encircling their necks.
She pulled the children behind a large boulder.
“What do we do?” asked Safi.
“We can’t let them see us,” Kara said. “That’s the most important thing right now.”
“Maybe I can cast a spell to get us inside the village,” Safi suggested. Then she added in a softer voice, “Or I could make something bad happen to the Devoted.”
Before Kara could answer, a rising wail, like the whistle of a teakettle, shredded the quiet morning. Stupid, Kara thought, instantly realizing her mistake—she had been so worried about the Devoted that she had forgotten who else would be searching for them. The Divide. Hideous eyes framed by bark stared at Kara with malignant fury, while branch arms disentangled themselves and pointed in her direction. Dozens of twisted mouths wailed their alarm.
There was nowhere to hide.
“Give me the shards,” Kara told Taff, holding out her hand.
“You can’t touch them!”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“But—”
“Taff!”
He handed the crimson shards cautiously to Kara. She slid them into her pocket.
“We knew this might happen,” Kara said. “That’s why—”
A terrible squawk of pain shattered her next word. Kara followed the sound and saw, high in the sky, the bird that had saved them, caught within the clutches of several tree limbs. Kara heard its voice in her head—SAVE ME, WITCH GIRL, SAVE ME, SAVE—and then the limbs pulled it deeper into the black leaves and its voice stopped forever.
He knows, Kara thought, her grief for the bird overshadowed by more immediate concerns. Was it the trees that told him? Does he know what we’ve done?
When she turned her attention back to the village, Sordyr stood framed by the open fence, his orange cloak stretching back along the main road of Kala Malta. A dozen Devoted, most brandishing wooden spears, stood to either side of him. Other villagers, not directly involved but still curious, pressed up against the Divide. Breem was among them, holding an ax with two hands. His eyes fixed on Safi with a mixture of relief and concern.
“What have you been up to, Kara?” Sordyr asked.
“I went for a walk,” she said, trying to control the trembling in her voice. “Is that forbidden?”
“A walk,” Sordyr said in a mocking, childlike voice. “I don’t think so, wexari. We both know where you were. Not that it matters. The venom is so old, I doubt its magic even works anymore. But I’ll take it anyway. One can never be too careful.”
“What venom?” Kara asked. “I have no idea what you’re—”
From behind the Forest Demon’s tall frame stepped Mary Kettle.
“Oh yes,” said Sordyr. “The old witch told me everything. I’m disappointed, Kara. After she betrayed you once, you trust her again? I thought you were smarter than that.”
Mary was a teenager today, but there was no mistaking those slate-gray eyes.
Kara swallowed hard.
“I’m disappointed too,” she said.
“Let’s not prolong this,” Sordyr said. “You can still help me. Use the venom on Rygoth. Do this, and I will allow your brother to live.”
“And my daughter!” Breem exclaimed. “Right?”
The Forest Demon clasped his branch fingers together.
“The girl is from Kala Malta and should have known better,” Sordyr said. “An example must be made.”
Turning his attention back to Kara, Sordyr did not see the way Breem clenched the ax tighter.
“You will not harm her,” he said, walking toward the Forest Demon. A Devoted blocked his path and Breem slapped him across the face with the back of his hand. The man thudded to the earth like a sack of grain, blood gushing from his nose. Two other Devoted headed in Breem’s direction. The other villagers—and Sordyr—turned to watch, drawn to the promise of violence.
The distraction was exactly what Kara needed.
She stretched her mind across the trees, as far and as high as she could reach, calling forth creatures of every wake and description. I need your help, she thought. I can’t do this on my own. But I will not lie to you. This fight will be dangerous, and many of you will die. But if we succeed, the Thickety will be yours! It was the largest mind-bridge she had ever created, and it required a lot of building material. Kara dug through her mind. Since she wanted the animals to understand they shared a common enemy, she built the first part of the bridge from the hatred she felt for Sordyr, packing each wrong he had done her into an individual stone. She built the rest of the bridge from her love of animals. This was far more difficult, for she did not want to lose her memories of Shadowdancer or the grettin or the countless other friends that had colored her life. But she needed the Thickety creatures to know they could trust her, and sacrifices had to be made.
She waited.
Come on, come on. . . .
She could have forced them to come. But Kara refused to make the creatures do anything against their will, though she made it clear that once they crossed the bridge they would be hers to command.
Come on, Kara thought. She watched the skies, the treetops, the ground, looking for some sort of movement. Come on.
They came.
They came from everywhere, parting the trees with their trunks and claws, skittering through the undergrowth, slicing through the air on sharp-edged wings. A deafening storm descended upon Kala Malta: chitters and yaks, roars and squawks.
Sordyr took a single step backward.
A wolf with silver fur and a scorpion’s tail settled by Kara’s side. She stroked its head as she spoke.
“They’re with me,” Kara said. She pointed to her forehead. “In here. All of them. And they are so, so angry with you.”
“An impressive display, wexari. But I know you. Your goodness. You would never sacrifice their lives to—”
She sent the birds first.
A cloud of winged creatures wound itself around Sordyr, a flurry of talons ripping at his cloak and bravely dashing into the shadows of his hood in an attempt to pluck out his eyes. Over the fluttering wings Kara heard the whiz of Sordyr’s branch hands as they sliced through feathers and flesh with blinding speed. Kara felt the death of each bird as a clenching in her heart. Sordyr rubbed two branch fingers together, as though trying to light a fire, and from the canopy a storm of thorns was released. The ground was quickly covered with unmoving birds.
Before their numbers could be completely depleted, Kara sent the birds away. They left reluctantly. Despite Kara’s protestations, they felt like they had failed her.
There is nothing more you can do, my brave friends, she told them. Be proud. You have struck the first blow.
Indeed, Sordyr’s cloak was now torn and tattered, his hood pecked away in too many places to count.
In one motion, he pushed the hood from his face.
Sordyr’s skin was the striated bark of an ancient tree, chipped and pitted with years. A tangled mass of wiry branches crowned his head. Swampy eyes swirled with their own secret history, impaled by the two thorns growing from Sordyr’s eye sockets like ill-placed antlers.
These horrible eyes never left Kara as the Forest Demon slid a dead bird off his branch finger and tossed it onto the pile.
“Blood,” he said.
At first Kara had no idea what he was talking about, but then she felt the warm liquid running down her face. She placed a finger to her left ear and
it came back red and sticky. Frigid numbness spread through her head like a lake quickly turning to ice.
I used too much magic.
“You are still but a girl, wexari,” Sordyr said. “There are too many of them for you to handle. You will only kill yourself.”
Roots encircled Kara’s legs. She bent down to pull them away but their grip was too strong. She lost her balance and fell to the ground. New roots wrapped around her arms and pinned her to the dirt.
“I can still forgive all this,” Sordyr said. “It is not too late for us to help each other.”
Kara called forth parasitic worms with double rows of stone-sharpened teeth. They made short work of the roots, allowing her to rise unsteadily to her feet. Kara sent the rest of her creatures forward—save the wolf with the scorpion’s tail, who refused to leave her side. The animals charged like starving beasts suddenly uncaged. Several Devoted ran forward in an attempt to block the animals’ path. Most were trampled underfoot, though one was tossed like a bale of hay by a beast with a fiery horn.
They were almost on top of Sordyr. For a moment, just a moment, Kara thought she might win.
But then Sordyr raised his hands and from the ground burst fully formed trees, catapulting dozens of unfortunate creatures high into the air. Those that remained were confused and disoriented, and their rising panic made them difficult to control. It didn’t help that Sordyr was now hidden behind the row of entangled trees he had created. Natural enemies that had united against the Forest Demon were confused by his sudden disappearance and began to snap at one another instead.
I’m losing them, Kara thought as her spell began to fray.
She concentrated harder, trying to bring her army in line, and a fresh bead of blood leaked from her right ear.
They can’t get to him anymore, she thought. The trees are protecting him. . . .
Lightning flashed across the sky. A tree wavered for just a moment and then fell, crashing into the Divide and bringing that section down.
Kara turned to see Safi, her nose in the grimoire. She mumbled a new spell. A second tree fell, this one taking down two others and producing a large gap in the trees that revealed Sordyr. Kara’s creatures saw him, began to regain their focus.