by Dawn Metcalf
She didn’t want to know. Joy took a hesitant step backward. He stepped closer. His eyes had turned a dark aquamarine, as if they were suddenly diving deep. Goose bumps pebbled her skin. It was suddenly cooler in the shadow of the oak—which split open—as something stepped free.
Tall, was the first thing in Joy’s mind, followed by: Brown. Beautiful. Smiling. Deadly. And Dead-dead eyes.
Her brain screamed. No! It’s not possible! It’s not!
But it was.
“There you are.” Her voice was honey-thick, maliciously sweet, and when she moved, it was with the sound of creaking wicker baskets. Fully healed and fully grown, Aniseed smiled, her mahogany eyes whirling maliciously in their sockets. She looked down at Avery. “Hello, little gosling. This worked out quite well.”
Avery shrank back. “I didn’t—!”
Joy whipped the tumbler sideways, splashing hot tea in Aniseed’s face.
“RUN!”
Joy took off across the field, Avery at her side, the wind buffeting against them as Aniseed’s shriek wailed behind. Joy couldn’t feel her feet touch the ground; she didn’t much care if she flew because nothing was going to keep her within arm’s reach of Aniseed.
Avery followed, purposefully pacing her escape. She wanted to scream at him to move faster, disappear, fly!
“Perhaps I was mistaken,” Avery shouted. “You’re still part-human and dryads have long memories for revenge.”
Joy gasped. “You idiot! That was Aniseed!”
Avery staggered, glancing back. “It can’t be—”
“It is,” Joy said, sprinting. “Trust me!”
The ground buckled and exploded in a tangle of thickets, a great snarl of crooked branches with long black thorns. Joy swerved to avoid them. She recognized the instant brambles. Briarhook! Terror crackled over her limbs. He’s here! They’re working together!
“Did you wonder how I did it?” Aniseed’s voice carried casually across the wind. “I assure you, it wasn’t easy. It was all meticulously planned.” There was a crackle and a ripping sound as the earth gave way behind them. “Even before I submitted myself to the graft, I knew that I would eventually need to escape the Grove.” Another burst of briars cut off their escape. Joy switched directions, swatting at Avery’s cloak as she fled past. Aniseed’s voice casually lilted behind her in casual conversation. “I needed to be lost in order to be found.”
A mass of wicked underbrush broke through the grass, obscuring the chiseled Glendale High School sign. This time, Joy launched, her legs executing a split leap, easily clearing the briars and a good stretch of earth. She landed and kept running, vaguely aware of Avery’s soaring flight. She had to keep moving—keep going—get beyond the hemmed-in maze. She ran knowing that she had no other choice, not knowing whether Avery protected or pursued.
Ink! she prayed under her breath. Ink! Ink! Ink!
“It was merely a matter of patience, a matter of will,” Aniseed crooned from a new direction—or was it a shift in the wind? Joy couldn’t see beyond the veil of hair and fear. “And I have the strongest will by far because I know what it’s like to lose.”
A jagged line ripped through the sidewalk, sprouting more bracken, more brambles, more thorns. Joy could feel the closeness of Earth, but didn’t dare slow enough to stop, to concentrate. No! She had to get away!
Circling the school, Joy and Avery cut across the back lot. Aniseed appeared along the tree line skirting the gym. Naked and shining like polished wood, she slid along the edge of cracked asphalt, loose-limbed and confident, sliding along the intertwined roots. She was younger, stronger, moving with a fluid grace she hadn’t had before. But this was a new body, a new life wearing an old face. Now everything had changed.
“Lost in the woods, I knew who would find me,” she said as if their conversation was ongoing while Joy and Avery raced to escape. “The Forest Guardian is loyal and hungers for revenge upon a certain young stripling.” Her spindly fingers beckoned Joy as she dodged the latest batch of manic plants. “And I grew under his hand and in so doing, I have bested them all.” She simpered in maniacal glee. “This is my Imminent Return!”
Joy staggered as Avery passed her, a pale blur on her left. She was flagging, gagging, desperate to get away, but the briars were closing, hemming them in. Another wall of thorny branches cut her off. She barely twisted away in time, feeling deep scratches score her arm. As Aniseed rose before them, Joy spied the sigil blazing on the segulah’s upper arm—a familiar, spiky flower, seared as if it had been branded there—a wildflower with bite.
Briarhook! The filthy hedgehog had found the tiny graftling and had claimed her under his auspice—those lost in the woods—just as they’d planned. He’d accelerated her growth, like the briar seeds, and now she was fully grown and at full strength. Briarhook was her perfect spy—he knew everything that had happened since her defeat on the warehouse floor, everything about Kurt and Graus Claude, the Council, the King and Queen, Ink and Joy.
Aniseed knew everything, and she’d outsmarted them all.
Joy floundered in panic. Aniseed hated her, but if Briarhook was here, he’d gut her alive.
The dryad raised a hand—the long, thorny fingers stretched and grew. Joy was trapped between rows of briars, exhausted and afraid. Avery pushed her roughly to the ground. He loomed over her, panting, his hair damp with sweat, his feathered cloak drawn about him.
“Your Grace?” he called out. “Is it really you? Have you come to lead your people to glory?”
Aniseed stroked her forearm with fingers like branches, nails like claws.
“I am the Undying Promise,” she said. “I am reborn. And I will lead the Folk to war!”
The wind whipped Avery’s hair and the feathers at his back. His cloak parted as he grabbed the hilt of his sword in his right hand and unfurled his left wing.
“By the authority invested in me by the Council of the Twixt, you are hereby ordered to stand down and cease your activities immediately, to stand trial for your crimes against the Edict—” he took a few shaky breaths, testing his courage “—or die.”
Aniseed chuckled. “I see we will have to teach you a lesson in politics and being politic.”
The ground erupted again. Avery unsheathed his weapon and charged.
Joy reacted before she could think, burying her hands in the upturned dirt, pulling the earth up to her arms. Earth answered, drawing her down.
The suction forced her into the briars, thorns scraping her face and piercing her chest. She felt one tear her cheekbone, just under her eye. Blood and heat and anger trickled over her limbs, the copper-salt taste of it flooding her mouth. She embraced it, skewering herself, shivering, as she reached for the taste of rock and metal and old, old ice.
The dirt flowed over her body, encasing her legs and hips. The ground hardened, clinging to her skin, searing hot and cold and then shearing off in great scabs of clay, broken clods that crumbled apart and steamed. She dived beneath the topsoil, feeling the foreign tendrils of the briar roots and snapping them, breaking their tender shoots and crushing them between fists of stone. She swallowed, leeching the moisture, feeling them shrivel into powder and die on her tongue. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, adding themselves to her—to her earth—becoming hers.
AND I WILL GROW AND SAVAGE AND TEAR DOWN THE WORLD! I SHALL HAVE MY REVENGE!
Joy’s lip split as she grinned.
She crouched waist-deep in mud, shedding broken pieces of earth as she moved. Blood dripped off her chin, salting the ground. She watched the dance of battle, a blur of red-brown and silver on the surface of the world. It no longer mattered. Only Aniseed mattered. Joy felt for where she was—the foreign bark, the oily wood—reaching across the landscape, sliding under the grass, Joy wrapped soil around her pretty ankles and pulled.
Aniseed sank up to her
armpits. Her arms shot out suddenly, bracing herself against the earth. Avery scored an unexpected hit that bled, sap-like and sticky. The segulah screamed in surprised outrage.
Joy smiled wider, salt painting her teeth.
It was almost too easy.
Baked clay flaked off her cheeks. Warmth covered her chest. She felt its pressure on her throat. Earth tried to claim her, but it couldn’t—wouldn’t—complete. She was trembling on the precipice, so close...so close...!
VINDICATION! ABSOLUTION! VENGEANCE IS MINE!
Joy felt the struggling dryad like a lump in her throat and all she had to do was swallow.
Avery grabbed Joy’s face. His wing unfurled, obscuring her vision, breaking her concentration with a fan of ivory feathers the size of swords. Aniseed snarled and grabbed the briars. Joy felt her flowing quickly through the black bark with the angry snap of felled trees, disappearing into the grain, siphoning into thorns, branches, the tangled root system, skipping through the subterranean forest network, gone.
Joy felt her enemy slip through her fingers.
NO!
Avery shook her, but Joy couldn’t feel it. She focused on the emptiness where Aniseed had been. She sifted through the dirt, scrambling, clawing, seeking, unable to snag even the hem of her gown as her enemy escaped.
NO!
Joy growled in frustration, a grinding noise of mountains crushed into sand. She was half buried, half lucid, her vision hot and streaming and salty red.
“Joy, stop. Please stop. Let it go. Let it fade.” Avery chanted a mantra from somewhere outside her skin. “You still have a choice. You can choose not to do this. Please listen. Joy? Joy!” Avery snapped, surprising her enough to focus on him. She was still breathing heavily through her teeth. She wanted to pursue, to rend, to burn—she wanted to obliterate everything in her wake and crush it into bloody paste—but she was stuck here on the surface in this wretched body, rejected by two worlds, defeated, denied...
“Stop,” he said. “Please. It’s not too late.” He sounded tired. “It hasn’t happened. There’s still time. It hasn’t happened yet.” His wing folded around her, covering her shoulders, sheltering her from the wind. He spoke quietly, like a secret shared. “You have a choice right now, and you have to take it, or I’ll have no choice but to stop you,” he said. “It will fade. I promise. Just stop. Don’t let it... Don’t make me...” He sighed, placing his human hand on her shoulder. “Please, just stop.”
She flinched. “Don’t—!” She touched her shoulder protectively, surprised at the sound of her own, tiny voice. She was no longer seething, no longer subhuman. She ran her thumb over her Grimson’s mark and it brought her back to her skin. Avery relaxed, disappointed or relieved.
“I didn’t mark you,” he said. It was such a minor detail in the face of what had happened. It was like waking up after a long, confusing sleep.
“Help me up,” she said. Taking his hand, he pulled her out of the mound of baked earth, still steaming through fissures. Joy wrenched her legs out, one by one. She staggered onto the grass. Her boots had split. Her nail polish was gone.
Avery dropped her hand and adjusted his cloak. He seemed reluctant to meet her eye.
“That was Aniseed,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Not a graftling or offspring or any relation—the Aniseed. The bringer of the Golden Age. The martyr of the Tide.”
Joy swiped the grit from her skin. “Yes. The graftling had Aniseed’s consciousness all along. She survived because of Briarhook, who has managed to make her fully grown. She now exists outside of the parameters of the rules, free to do whatever she wants, but she’ll keep coming after me in order to stop the King and Queen.”
Avery took a deep breath. “I did not know that she—”
“I know you didn’t,” Joy interrupted. He chanced a glance at her. “I know.” Brushing the last bits from her arms, she hugged her shoulders. “It was a good idea to bring proof that the First Forest is still alive.” But how did she know we would come here? Joy absently checked herself for any new marks, thinking of who might have tipped off the Tide.
“You will never bear my mark,” Avery said quietly.
Joy wiped a smear of blood off her face. “Why not?”
“Because I mark those who have been betrayed by their family,” Avery said. “And while I know a little of what happened with your mother, hers would not be considered a great betrayal in the manner of which I speak.” He draped his cloak back into place, covering his wing. “Although I could probably claim you under my auspice, should I make a case,” he admitted. “But I know that you do not wish to bear anyone else’s mark.”
Joy was curious. “You mean you have a choice?”
“No one has to claim all those who qualify under their auspice, although we realize that someone else surely will.” Avery scraped his foot through the dirt. “Everyone who carries magic will be safeguarded by one of the Folk,” he said softly. “And I know that you have already been claimed.”
The double meaning wasn’t lost on her. Joy sighed. “Thank you.” She shouldered her purse, checking her belongings and the precious cluster of oak leaves.
He nodded as if distracted. “The wind has changed,” he said quietly. “We should go.”
He retreated, but Joy snagged his cloak. Feathers bent softly under her grip. She tried to think how she could express that she understood the weight of what he had done, the choice he had made, the choice that he’d given her, that she’d noticed, that she knew.
“Thank you,” she said again. “Really. I mean it.”
He removed her hand, delicately peeling back her fingers, a gentle letting go. He inspected her palm, considering it, scratched and speckled with dirt and blood. He cradled it in his pristine palm, his fingertips enfolding hers. He stared at it a second longer and then dropped her hand and his gaze.
“Save it for your chair,” he said, raising the edge of his cloak.
Standing close as they swept out of the air, Joy wondered what had happened to Ink.
* * *
Joy stood in the shower, letting the hot water wipe away the sweat and the dirt and the fear and the questions that were raging inside her head on too much adrenaline and too little sleep. Aniseed. I knew it. I told them. She’s back!
Being paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not really out to get you.
She scrubbed herself with soap twice, scouring the crawling panic from her skin. Every time a memory shuddered to the surface, she cranked the temperature hotter, blotting out the thought.
When the water started getting cold, she relented, stepping onto the bath mat and wrapping herself in towels. She reminded herself that she’d have to replace the ones Graus Claude had burned before Dad found out. It was too much to hope she’d get another paycheck. She hadn’t shown up to work in almost a week.
After getting dressed, she brushed her hair and picked out a pair of mismatched socks. She placed the sprig of oak leaves inside her open purse. She checked her phone for texts and emails. She put away her laundry. She ate grapes. She convinced herself that the fact that she could do these ordinary things meant that she was safe, and if she was safe, then she still had a chance.
Her phone rang. She grabbed it.
“Do not answer it,” Ink said.
She spun around, first relieved then confused at his sudden appearance. The phone shivered in her hand. Ink barely moved.
“Don’t.”
Joy checked the caller ID: Cabana Boys. Joy hesitated. Luiz, Nikolai, Ilhami, Antony, Tuan—even Enrique when he’d been alive—she’d always answered their calls, and they’d always answered hers. It was a special bond between them, a secret order. Her fellow lehman understood each other in a way no one else could. They were there for one another. Even Raina, Inq’s Cabana Girl, had been t
here for Joy.
“Why?” Joy asked. Ink didn’t answer.
She did the unthinkable and let it go to voice mail.
Joy showed him the message screen. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
Ink’s thumb slid silently over his wallet chain. “Inq asked me to help her retrieve one of her lehman,” Ink said softly. “Again.”
Joy had one guess. “Ilhami?”
Ink nodded. “She did not want to involve you,” he said. “However, this time there had already been an exchange—Ladybird turned him over in exchange for information about how he might get to you, namely your address and the weakest point of entry.” Joy’s stomach clenched. “Ilhami allowed himself to be lured back and ransomed, even knowing how much he’d stolen from Ladybird last. And, because of that, Inq has decided that Ilhami must live or die by that choice. There will be no rescuing him this time.”
Joy twisted her fingers. “That seems...harsh.”
“Harsh?” Ink snapped. “He sold you out, Joy. He willfully put you in danger, giving Ladybird the means to enter your home!” Ink gestured angrily, helplessness and guilt tainting his words. “Ilhami cares nothing for you! He gave you up for lucid dreams, to escape his own skin!” He slashed the air in impotent frustration. “It is Aniseed and Briarhook all over again. This is what these people do! And if Inq had not done so, I would have condemned him myself.”
Joy knew he was right to be angry, to be frightened and hate Ilhami—and so should she—but she didn’t feel it. Her brother lehman had placed her and her family in danger, but he was a sort of family, too. Enrique had begged her to help rescue Ilhami last time and they’d succeeded—if only just—and then the eldest lehman had died. She felt she owed Enrique, to honor his memory. And now Ilhami was in danger again, and she couldn’t let it go.
“Where is he now?” she asked.