by K. Ferrin
The mouth moved somehow, lips moving and rolling in unnatural ways. “Leave them,” he said. “You are not one of them; they are using you for your magic, Evelyn.” His voice was so familiar, and so forceful. “Run!”
She reacted without thinking, kicking her horse forward so harshly the mare squealed at her. Instantly she pulled back, settling the mare back into a walk as shivers climbed up her spine.
“What spooked her?” Fern asked, immediately concerned.
“Are you all right?” Drake asked as she rode up beside Ling. “You look terrified.”
Ling looked at the others, her confusion clearing just enough for her to mutter, “Fine, fine,” before turning back to look at the tree she’d just ridden past. Her father was gone. The tree was just a tree, bursting with vibrant purple flowers up and down its entire length. There was nothing menacing or strange or familiar about it. She shook her head and pushed her mount forward again. “I’m fine. I just dozed off for a minute there and almost fell off. I spooked her. No big deal.”
They believed her, but she could see the ease in which they’d been traveling had fallen away from them. They were all much more alert now, more in tune with her and with one another. But that fact did nothing to help Ling. As each minute of the day ground by, her hallucinations became more frequent and more compelling. Her horse became angered by her heavy grip on the reins and shook her head in frustration. Ling tried to act like everything was okay, but she couldn’t tell how much of it anyone else believed. She was barely aware of them at all she was so focused on fighting off whatever it was that invaded her mind.
So when the Woedenwoud finally awoke around them, she was so distracted by her own struggle she didn’t see what it was that attacked them until it was all over.
Chapter Nineteen
Her father was back, stretched and twisted like he had been before, but this time her mother was there too. Her mother loomed over her father, hands reaching into his distorted tree-belly, pulling out handfuls of trailing intestine. His body was contorted and woody, but his guts glistened just as real guts would, and Ling could see his blood cutting shining rivulets through the roughened bark of his skin. He was moaning, crying out for her, begging for help. She could hear her mother cackling, “Yes, Evelyn. Why don’t you come help your father?” She sang the words as if they were a lullaby, but their naked threat was clear. Ling had never hated her mother more than in that moment, not even when she had strapped Ling to that chair and given Hanner the order to proceed.
“It’s not real,” she said, sobbing the words out loud. She had to. She needed to hear something real with her own ears. She needed something to ground her in the physical world, to pull her out of the strange place her mind was getting lost in. Something to help her tell what was real and what was illusion. She leaned forward, releasing the reins, and put both her hands flat on her horse’s withers. She could feel the mare’s warmth seeping into her fingers, smell her clean horse smell, but the vision of her mother gutting her father persisted.
“Ling, are you—” Drake’s question was cut short. Ling looked up to see a large dark shadow with wings had grasped Drake by the shoulders, pulling her from her saddle and into the air. Drake must have been too heavy because the thing struggled to keep her up off the ground. It was half flying and half dragging her along. Ling could see her feet bouncing over rocks and the natural contours of the landscape, and then she could see them kicking with a great deal of intent. She heard Drake shout in rage, her face a deep red as she struggled against the thing that held her, and then she vanished into the forest.
Ling shook her head hard, trying to figure out if what she had just seen was real or another hallucination. But the way Drake’s feet bounced along, the fact that whatever had her couldn’t get up off the ground convinced her it was real. She’d not dream up such a weakness, would she?
A movement caught her eye, and as she spun, she realized whatever it was that had Drake must have first gone after Fern. Fern was off her horse, climbing to her feet. But three vines darted out from a nearby tree and wrapped themselves around her, sharp barbs burying themselves into her flesh as they entrapped her. She screamed in agony, a gout of blood flowing from the gashes left by the vines. She squatted down, and Ling could see light shimmering around her as she tried to shift her form.
With a bellow, Dreskin was after Fern, hacking at the vines with a knife as he tried to free her. Wounds opened up in his arms, on his face, as the vine lashed out at him, fighting back as viciously as any animal. Ling could see clearly he would fail. They would both die there, bleeding out in a tangle of barbs and vines. She didn’t know what to do or where to go first. She wanted to save them all, but she didn’t even know what was real and what was in her head. She could smell the mineral scent of blood, but couldn’t tell if came from her father, from Fern and Dreskin, or from somewhere else. This entire place smelled of rot and blood.
“Run!” It was her father, struggling to speak through his grotesque mouth. His teeth grated against one another as he talked, and the sound left Ling feeling sickened. He peeled his eyes from the trailing remnants of his innards and rolled them toward her. “Run!” He said again.
She looked at her companions. Fern had shifted form, but it had done nothing to help her. She was barely visible at all through the mass of vines that held her; Ling could only identify the spot where she was from the dark stain of blood spreading there. Dreskin was flayed to the point where he was more raw wound than intact flesh. He still swung his blade madly; she could hear him bellowing, though faintly, as if she heard it from far, far away. She couldn’t see Drake any longer, and Celene was walking quite calmly toward a gaping maw in the earth in front of a collection of trees.
She stared at her parents, at the images of her friends dying and struggled against the confusion that wrapped her mind. Her parents were not real—she knew that. They couldn’t be here. But the others? She suddenly knew with a cold-edged certainty that was real. The Woedenwoud had them. It was over. How had any of them thought they could journey through something even the most powerful Mari avoided? They were fools, all of them.
“And now we’re all dying a fool’s death,” she said. Fern had said it first, when they’d leapt the wall and hidden in the in-between place that wasn’t her world but wasn’t the world of the Woedenwoud either. She was right. She was always right.
“Run!” Ling watched as the tree that was somehow her father collapsed into a puff of wood chips and sawdust, the one that was her mother laughing as she ate the guts she’d pulled from her father. Her confidence shattered, her resolve to see this through to the end wavered and then collapsed. With a hoarse shout she yanked her horse’s head to the left and kicked her hard. She couldn’t watch it all fall so tragically apart. The mare leapt to obey, but was stopped so suddenly Ling was launched over her head. She hit the ground with one shoulder and rolled to her feet. Whatever had her horse was enormous. A rough brown shape wrapped about her horse’s midsection, and in an instant the entire beast vanished as if it had never existed. She heard a splash and a groan that sounded oddly satisfied, and then one of the trees behind her settled back into place, content. She wondered, briefly, how long that much horseflesh would keep the thing satiated. She shuddered, realizing the horse shared the same fate as all of her friends. She spun on her heel and ran.
She crashed through bushes and trees, puffs of smoke and dust rising from her feet as she stomped down on the flowers growing there. Something was chasing her. It was Hanner. Then her mother. Suddenly her father was beside her, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as if he were a dog, and then suddenly he was Navire, jogging easily beside her, until his flesh began melting from his bones. His skeleton continued to run for a time, until the small connective tissues that held it together finally gave. His bones scattered to the ground, and she left him behind once again.
The scarf fell from her face but she didn’t care. Everyone she loved was dead or would be soon. It did
n’t matter what happened to her. A crack opened in the earth in front of her, and she vaulted it, mad laughter erupting from her throat as she shouted at the forest around her, challenging it to try harder if it wanted to kill her. And then she ran into something quite solid; both feet caught on it and slid out from beneath her. She slammed into the ground face first, slid another foot, and then spun to look behind her, mouth open in surprise.
A small figure about three feet in height stood there, upright, but on four legs. It had a bulbous lower body and a shockingly narrow waist. The head had large insectile eyes, a very narrow chin, and a very human mouth taking up most of that narrow space. The creature’s head tilted to one side, both the antennae on top of its head turned toward Ling. Its entire body looked to be a hard carapace, like that of a beetle or other insect, and it was a shimmering black. It approached her suddenly and blew into her face with a loud puff. Ling sneezed, and the world snapped back into focus. The bloody, rotting smell of the forest was gone; the odd vibrations, as if her eyes were jogging in their sockets, vanished; and the cackling of her mother silenced.
“No,” Ling said, as she looked about her, searching for her friends. She didn’t know for certain if they were dead or if they were somewhere behind her in the forest, calling her name, struggling to follow.
A low growl erupted out of the foliage to her left, and a hulking insect came stomping into view. It looked like a bee of sorts, though it was easily six feet tall and scarlet in color. It, too, was upright, walking on four legs. It held Drake in one hand, shaking her at the small figure standing in front of Ling as it snarled and roared.
Ling’s stomach dropped. It was true, then. Her earlier certainty hadn’t been unfounded. If this creature really had Drake, then what had happened to the others must also be true. She cried out to Drake and moved toward her friend, but hands grasped her from behind, preventing her from approaching.
“Drake!” Ling yelled again, hoping to see some sign of life from the other woman. But Drake hung limp and still.
Two wings lifted from the small figure’s back. It rose a couple of feet off the ground and spun around so the rear of its body faced the hulking thing holding Drake. Hovering, it flitted its wings so fast they turned to a blur, and as it did so, the monster seemed to calm. It turned its head from side to side as if trying to catch an elusive scent. Ling supposed it must have caught it too, because its movements suddenly slowed, its entire body rocking steadily from one set of legs to the other in an easy side to side motion. It ceased stomping, stopped growling, and became intensely interested in the small figure in front of Ling.
The two approached one another, the smaller black one keeping its back toward the larger scarlet one, wings still a blur. They circled each other, moving ever closer, and the closer they got to one another the more enthralled the larger one seemed to get. It began to hum, a loud rumbling coming from its chest, so loud Ling could feel it in hers. The scarlet beast tossed Drake aside, and Ling found herself suddenly freed. She ran to Drake’s side, pulling the woman up into her lap.
She looked back and realized with a shock that they were surrounded by a number of the small figures, though these were black with scarlet bands wrapping their bodies. The creatures stood silently in a circle around the hulking giant and the small figure that was entirely black.
The smallish black insect, or whatever it was, landed on the ground and opened its wings wide. The giant one approached it from behind and wrapped it in a tight embrace. The humming jumped in pitch, and Ling suddenly realized what she was witnessing. She couldn’t be sure—she couldn’t even tell whether the two creatures were the same species—but it looked very much like they were mating. She watched along with the scarlet-banded figures. The entire thing took about ten minutes, and then the larger creature gave a roar, throwing its head back. As it did so the small black figure spun in his grasp, leapt into the air, and stabbed the larger one through the throat with one of her rear legs. Red blood rushed from its throat as it choked. It was dead in an instant.
The smaller black creature, who Ling had begun thinking of as female, turned away from the dead male and approached Ling, a smile lighting up her strangely angular face. Ling grasped Drake tightly, swearing to herself she would do whatever was necessary to keep at least Drake safe. She had failed the others; she’d not fail Drake.
“We get very few visitors here,” the black figure said. “Our forest doesn’t take kindly to strangers. How is it you are not dead already?”
Ling stayed where she was, Drake sprawled out on her lap, and said nothing. Ling didn’t know what to say. She tried frantically to think how to get the two of them out of this and away from these creatures, whatever they were.
“There are a number of them, and they are not far from death,” one of the scarlet-banded ones said.
“The forest has them,” said another.
“As it should be,” the black one said. “It’s a sign of the dying magic they got even this far.” She reached out one hand, a human hand for all its insectile narrow boniness, and touched Ling square on her forehead. Her eyes flew open in surprise a moment later. “Leave those that cannot be saved. Bring the rest,” she ordered. She leapt into the air and sped away.
Those that stayed behind immediately disbanded. Several went back in the direction Ling had fled from, while four of them stayed behind. Two of them grabbed hold of Ling, grasping her by the shoulders and pulling as the other two dragged Drake from her grasp. Ling struggled, but they were remarkably strong for their size and slenderness.
One held Drake down while the other stung her square in the stomach, punching a gaping wound into her flesh with one rear leg, just as the all-black one had done to the scarlet male. Ling shouted and fought, trying to get to Drake, but she was yanked upward, the two scarlet-banded creatures joining together to pull her into the air. Below, she could see the other two still working on Drake. They laid a wide purple flower petal across her abdomen, stroking it at the edges with their strange insect-human hands. Then they too leapt into the air, pulling Drake along with them.
They flew far and they flew fast. The forest blurred around her, and she lost all sense of direction. More of the scarlet-banded creatures began to join her though, and with relief she saw many of them in pairs carrying a burden as they flew. She counted four pairs total, and she hoped fervently that meant all her companions had been rescued from the forest. But as she thought of how easily the small creature had killed the much larger one, of how easily the spines of the others had entered Drake’s flesh, she wondered what good it would do any of them.
Chapter Twenty
She didn’t know what happened to the others. They had flown to a hive of sorts. Ling didn’t know how else to think of it. It was mounded, and though it was hard to tell from the air, she thought it must be the size of all of Meuse, maybe bigger. The lowest level was the largest of them all, and each higher layer was progressively smaller than the one below. It was big enough that Ling couldn’t see all the layers, only that it mounded quite nicely, and somehow hung midway up the trunk of a very large tree.
The two carrying her flew through an entrance at the top of the entire structure, while all the others peeled off and looked to enter the structure from somewhere far below. She’d expected darkness inside, but instead, the entire interior was suffused with a soft golden glow. They flew her in a dizzying array of directions before depositing her in a small room, a cell, really. It was made of the same golden material as the rest of the structure, and there was nothing in it.
The two that had transported her stood guard as five smaller figures, all scarlet-banded, closed up the cell. Ling was fascinated despite the precariousness of her situation. They seemed to pull flakes of the golden material right off of their abdomens, pressing layer after layer into place to wall her into the cell. She said nothing, didn’t try to struggle or escape. She was horribly outnumbered, and even if she did somehow manage to break past those closing her in, she would
never find her way out of this place. She had no idea where her companions were. Besides, even if they managed to get through all of that, there was still the Woedenwoud itself. She knew, now, they’d never make it through that endless wilderness alive without help. The creatures slowly shutting her up in this cell were the only things she could think of that might be able to provide it.
So Ling crossed her arms and watched as the entrance to her cell was closed up. After she was certain the creatures had left, she approached and put her hands on the door. The material was warm, soft to the touch, but unyielding. She would not get out until they allowed her out. She lay down, finding the floor of the cell soft and comfortable, and filled the grimoire with all the details of what had transpired. She poured all of her fears and hopes for her friends into those pages: her burgeoning relationship with Celene, the fact that Fern seemed to be willing to at least talk with her now, her guilt about Amalya…all of it. All alongside her plan, if you could call a vague idea to convince these creatures to help them get through the Woedenwoud a plan. And then she waited.
Three days passed, or at least three periods of unconsciousness and reawakening. The gentle glow of this place never dimmed or brightened, making the passage of time all but invisible. Late on the third day, the seal on her cell was opened, and two of the scarlet-banded creatures escorted her through their city.
And a city it was. There were thousands of the creatures, all moving with purpose, all seeming to have a job to do. Some were building more cells similar to the one she had spent the last three days closed up in, others seemed to be making stuff—whether for eating or building or something else entirely, Ling wasn’t sure. Others were transporting a variety of unidentifiable materials from some place to some other place. They worked steadily and with impressive focus. As far as she could tell they didn’t even notice the odd creature in their midst, but she found it impossible to read expression on their insectile faces.