“Whoa. Steady. Steady,” she said.
After a moment, the horse calmed down and she grinned at me. “See. I told you.”
I smiled back. I was proud of her. Despite SJ’s strong connection with animals (like her mother Snow White), horses had always disliked her. Harnessing the will to face her fears on her own terms was hard, but it looked like she was making progress.
We galloped out of the village and continued our journey toward the mountains. We covered ground much faster on horseback. At a brisk canter, we reached the base of the mountains by two o’clock and followed the map up the winding path.
Eventually we came to a tunnel that carved through the mountain. On the other side was an enormous gorge. The only way to cross it was a thin rope bridge that stretched about a hundred meters and swung uneasily in the breeze.
“This is where we leave you,” said the stables’ proprietor as he dismounted. “The Shifting Forest is at the bottom of the mountain on the other side of this bridge.”
“How much farther is the Passage Perelous entrance after that?” Blue asked.
“You misunderstand. The Shifting Forest is part of the Passage Perelous,” the man replied. “It goes on for miles and connects many of Camelot’s far-off kingdoms. But be warned, it is one of the trickiest, most dangerous landscapes you will ever encounter. The forest is built on tectonic plates that shift regularly. And the magic inside disrupts all kinds of technologies—from regular compasses to those Mark Two magic compact mirrors that just came out. It makes it very easy to get lost and disoriented, which in turn makes you an easier target for the monsters and villains that might be inside.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a way to get to the Isle of Avalon without going through there?” Daniel asked Jason.
“Sadly no,” Jason responded. “But don’t worry, Morgan said we would be fine as long as we followed her instructions. Plenty of people maneuver through the Passage Perelous. You just have to know what you’re doing and be able to defend yourself.”
We dismounted and the men from the stables began steering our steeds back through the tunnel. The five of us started across the rope bridge, which teetered beneath our footsteps. I was not afraid of heights, but the unfathomably big drop below gave me pause. A mass of sharp, unforgiving rocks pointed up at us. Falling into it would be like plunging into the open mouth of a dragon. I kept expecting one of the wooden planks to snap under our weight. It would be classic us. Thankfully, we touched down on the other side without anything horrible happening.
“Wow, that has to be a record,” Blue commented as she bent down to retie a loose bootlace.
“What?” SJ asked.
“We’ve gone nearly two-thirds of a day without being attacked. We should start taking bets about when it’s going to happen. Goodness knows it can’t be long now.”
“Real optimist, aren’t you?” Daniel commented.
I smirked as we continued on our way.
The journey descending the mountain was swift. It was a much more direct path than the winding one we’d taken to reach the bridge. While the majority of that travel was uneventful, there was one point that took my breath away.
Halfway down, we came upon a cliff ’s edge with an unobstructed view of what was waiting for us below. As we looked out at a rather intimidating ocean of trees, a sudden subterranean grinding sound emanated from the forest. That’s when we witnessed our first “shift.” Chunks of trees moved like they were on tiles being pushed around a game board. A flock of birds flew into the sky, angrily squawking from the disturbance. My friends and I exchanged a look but didn’t say anything. We continued forward.
When we reached the base of the mountain and were on the threshold of entering the grand forest, we saw a dirty wooden sign that rang a bell of familiarity in my head.
“Welcome to the Silva In Motu,” I read out loud.
“It’s Latin,” Jason explained. “Many generations ago that was Camelot’s native tongue. I studied the language a bit in preparation for this quest. Gwenivere confirmed that we might come across some signs in Latin in the Passage Perelous. ‘Silva In Motu’ loosely translates to ‘Forest in Motion’ or Shifting Forest.
“You learned Latin for this quest?” Blue exclaimed, impressed.
“Hold on,” I said. I took off my backpack, pulled out my dream journal, and passed through the pages quickly in search of a description of a dream I’d had not so long ago. I knew I’d seen it earlier while flipping through the text.
“Silva In Motu,” I read out loud, coming upon the page. “Tell the hunters to be waiting for her there. Then let’s see how strong Crisanta Knight is when her precious friends aren’t around to protect her.”
I shut the book. “Arian said this in a dream I had back at school. He was talking about this forest. Between that and Alex’s warning, I’m almost certain there will be magic hunters in there searching for us. They’re going to try to kill me for my magic and they mean to do it by separating us.” I groaned in frustration. “Every time I’ve been attacked by magic hunters, I’ve been alone. This is like really annoying deadly déjà vu. I’ve been lucky so far, but if history keeps repeating itself, I don’t know how long my luck is going to hold out.”
“History is not going to repeat itself,” Blue said assertively. “Like you said, all those times you’ve been alone. Now you have us. Nothing is going to tear our group apart, not Arian or this stupid forest. You’re not going to die here, Crisa.”
Blue wore a face of confidence and I nodded in agreement and fashioned one as well. We forged on. There was no other option.
The tips Gwenivere and Morgan had given us to get through the Passage Perelous had a lot to do with plants and colors. No matter how the forest’s tectonic plates shifted, moss always grew facing north, providing us with reliable navigation. If we came upon trees with a reddish tint, we were close to monster-dense areas. Mushroom circles meant we were near pixie or fairy habitats. And the leaves on the trees turned blue if a person had passed by recently.
Despite the perilous nature of the Passage Perelous, sometimes people did try to traverse it because it connected many kingdoms in Camelot. Cutting through it was much faster than going around, although your odds of dying were significantly higher. It was sort of a win-lose.
I was on my toes throughout the journey. On more than one occasion I instinctively reached for my wand when a deer or squirrel startled me.
These little surprises were nothing, however, in comparison to the jarring occurrences of the forest’s actual shifting. Sections of land—trees, rock, and all—would periodically move like we’d seen from the mountain. It would begin with a rumble. The dirt beneath our feet would tremor like an earthquake. Then, all of a sudden, the ground would shift in different directions. We’d stagger until we caught our balance, then stand still and ride it out until the episode ended.
Jagged cracks in the earth showed some of the boundaries of the countless tectonic plates in the forest. If any number of these tectonic plates moved at once, each shift had the potential to dramatically rewrite our route. Accordingly, every time the forest experienced a shift (which could last up to a few minutes) we had to reevaluate our position and reset our course. We’d gone through three shifts thus far and while we were getting used to them, that didn’t make them any more fun.
You know what else wasn’t fun? The monsters we ran into.
By late afternoon we were exhausted. I definitely understood better why no one had claimed Excalibur in all the years Arthur had been gone. We’d been in this forest for an hour and had nearly been killed a half dozen times, despite having a detailed map and the helpful advice of Camelot royalty.
First, we ran into a tribe of ogres twice our height and five times our weight. Next came an onslaught of green spiders the size of watermelons. They spun webs that froze anything they latched onto, making a high-pitched hissing noise that echoed through the forest when they attacked. After that there were the mega toads
—toads the size of small cottages that shot their long tongues at anything that moved. (We witnessed one latch onto the waist of a full-size Griffin that’d been taking a drink from a pond, and then swallow it whole.) After that, a swarm of possum bats arrived. Then, wrapping up the hour, a monster emerged from a pool of quicksand. That monster—you guessed it—was made of quicksand.
Avalon was still far away, and at this rate I didn’t how we were going to get there in one piece. The five of us only lost more energy with every attack. We were getting tired, but we trudged on.
The forest groaned. Another shift was starting.
Great.
Once again, the pebbles around my feet quivered and bounced as the tectonic plates picked up speed and power. I noticed a section of forest moving closer to us. The trees were gray and they had blue leaves on the branches. A lot of them. People had been through here recently.
“Whoa!”
I whirled around at the sound of Blue’s voice and saw that my friends and I were moving in different directions. Blue, SJ, and Jason were on one tectonic plate that was heading off to the left. Daniel stood on a plate that was being pulled deeper into the forest ahead. And my own shaking section was quickly shifting to the right.
I decided to try and jump over to Blue’s tectonic plate. I was about to make the leap when out of the corner of my eye I saw something spiraling in my direction.
Instinctively I ducked. My instincts were good. The object was a net that had been meant for me. It hurled over my head and caught SJ’s arm instead. I glanced over my shoulder and saw two men in grungy attire with rusty weapons standing beside a tree. What’d I’d been fearing had found us.
“Magic hunters!” I called to my friends. “Move!”
The hunters started shooting arrows through the trees. The shifting forest messed with their aim but also made their fire erratic and unpredictable.
Lapellius.
Shield.
I blocked as I ran and jumped onto the plate with Blue, SJ, and Jason. Blue was trying to free SJ from the net. Jason had activated the force field of his axe to protect them, but it wasn’t large enough to offer full coverage. A violent tremor caused him to stumble forward and his magical force field extinguished for a moment. That was the opening the hunters needed. Another weighted net flew toward us, entangling Jason and pulling him to the ground.
Knife.
I bent down and tried to slice through his net, but then another tremor threw me back, slamming me into a tree.
“The one in the green jacket!” one of the hunters called. “She’s the one with the magic. Kill her!”
I couldn’t see where the shouting had come from. The directions were all spliced together as the shift turned us around. This also made it difficult to see how many hunters there were.
“Daniel, watch out!” Blue yelled.
I pivoted to where Blue was looking. Her warning kept Daniel from getting hit with a net. I saw another coming at me from that same direction and leapt aside to avoid it, but I was caught by the ankles and taken down.
As I clambered to my knees, I saw three hunters fighting Daniel. His plate was moving closer to ours again. As he valiantly fended off the attackers with his sword, I spotted another hunter in the trees with a net launcher. He’d been the one to trap me.
How many of these guys were there?
I cut through the net around my ankles and got to my feet. Blue had freed SJ and was moving on to help Jason while SJ began to unleash the fury of her portable potions. The guy in the tree was nailed with a giant blob of slime. He looked like a fly trapped in a web of mucus. Another three hunters were frozen solid with one of SJ’s ice potions.
With Jason nearly free and SJ defending them, I rushed to help Daniel. I wasn’t sure how much more he could take. Two additional hunters had just crossed onto his tectonic plate.
I bobbed and weaved, swatting arrows away with my shield. I rolled to the ground to evade another net and saw a hunter closing in, knife in hand. I ducked low and spun, hocking his leg out from under him. Once he’d fallen, I lunged back down and punched him in the face so hard he was knocked unconscious.
The victory was short-lived. Two sets of hands grabbed my arms from behind and threw me to the ground. My knife fell out of my grip. One of the hunters lunged at me and I kicked him in the chest. The other hunter was too close for a kick so when he rushed at me I let him come. I grabbed his wrist when his dagger was eight inches from my nose and yanked him toward me. His blade pierced the ground beside my head and I used his arm as a boost to launch myself up. My eyes darted about in search of my wand.
“Knight!”
I turned, but the warning came too late.
As the bronze arrow flew through the air, and my mind registered it would strike true, I felt like I was watching it in slow motion.
The arrow pierced me in the chest right where my heart was.
I staggered. I barely had time to look down and see the blood soaking my top before I collapsed.
I tried to keep my eyelids open, but I faltered as life drained out of me. All that was left was the haziness of the forest, fallen blue leaves, and the smell of disturbed earth—the last things, I imagined, I would have to remember this world by.
expected death to be more permanent.
The last thing I expected after getting shot through the chest was to wake up again. But lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened.
My return to life was slow. Shades of black and red pulsed through the inside of my closed eyelids. I heard whispery, warbled voices. Eventually, I started to make out the words.
“What’s happening? She’s not breathing. The magic should have been released from her by now. What’s that glow?”
My eyelids snapped open. I was lying on the grass. My wand lay a couple yards away still in its knife form. Strength and vitality surged through me and a gust of air rushed into my lungs, causing me to sit up. I looked into the surprised faces of two dagger-wielding magic hunters standing over me. One held the arrow that had killed me. He’d pulled it from my body and its bloodied tip matched the arrow’s dark crimson tail feathers.
I glanced down at my chest where I’d been hit. A bright burst of my magic was shooting out of the point of impact like a ray of light, sealing the wound. The veins in my arms were glowing too. The brightness shone out of the sleeves in my jacket, and I could feel the stinging. It was a similar sensation to when I made contact with Poppies.
The hunters were stunned, but when the beam of light subsided so did their shock. One of them pounced forward, his dagger aimed at my face. My reflexes did not delay—I caught his arm and heaved my body back, twisting and throwing him forward so he landed beside me.
Hunter Two charged in. While I pinned Hunter One to the ground, I kicked Hunter Two in the side of the knee, causing him to buckle. I released Hunter One’s arm and forcefully hammered his bicep. He let go of his dagger. I grabbed it and stabbed him in the thigh, then sprang forward and slashed Hunter Two across the legs. Dropping the loaner dagger, I grabbed my own knife and ran. I ignored the cries of the hunters, the shaking of the shifting earth, and my own bewilderment at how I was still alive. I just ran.
I felt nauseous and disoriented. In the distance I heard shouts, but they kept changing direction and were getting farther away. Trees and stones blurred together and I found it impossible to tell whether this was due to my wavering perception or because the forest was shifting so fast that I was literally running in circles.
Where were my friends?
I considered calling out to them. But as Daniel’s name formed on my lips, I thought better of it. The hunters were probably a lot closer than my friends were. Calling out would give away my position.
I darted through the changing setting, jumping from one tectonic plate to the other, but soon the shouts were gone. I couldn’t hear my friends, or the hunters, or anything else except my own agonizing heartbeat. Pain pulsed through my body. My chest stung with every breath
. However, that was nothing compared to the fear and desperation that ached through me. I didn’t know how long I had been out, but in that interval of death I’d lost my friends.
The shifting forest came to a stop and I collapsed to my knees. I dropped my knife and slammed my fist into the dirt as I cried out in frustration.
No one responded. The forest was quiet and I was alone while Jason, Daniel, SJ, and Blue were out there somewhere, facing the wrath of the magic hunters Arian and Rampart had sent after me. Did my friends think I was dead? Were they dead?
The stinging in my veins felt like lemon juice in a wound. Golden light continued to pour out of my sleeves although the burst of energy emanating from my chest had long ceased. I pulled down my tank top to inspect the spot where the arrow had pierced me. There was a scar across my skin, but it was sealed shut. That’s when it hit me.
No, no, no!
At first, I was upset. I’d only promised myself this morning that I would avoid using Magic Instinct as a means to save myself. But my frustration dissipated when I appreciated the miracle of what had just occurred.
I’d come back to life! My magic, which I could use to give life to other things, had brought me back to life. I sat motionless on the ground as that fully sunk in.
Like Jason, I had theorized I might eventually get strong enough to use my powers to restore life to others. But I never thought I could … That my powers could …
I carefully touched the scar on my chest, but even the gentlest poke of my finger caused me to wince. Like a rock falling through the surface of a lake, a ripple of pain exuded from the wound and pulsed through me. When it subsided, I found my way to my feet. My chest still hurt bitterly, and now that the adrenaline was fading, I felt tired. Very tired.
Suddenly I had an idea. I slung off my backpack and dug around for Daniel’s Mark Two. I flipped open the compact and tried to call SJ, then Blue, then Jason. Unfortunately, none of the calls went through. Each time I tried to activate the compact, the ringing was drowned out by harsh static.
Crisanta Knight: To Death & Back Page 22