by Holly Hook
Maybe Stilt hadn't been willing to stick with his fate after all--but it sure seemed like he did, with the King deal and all. But what if he was right and it was just a past mistake that he couldn't escape from? "Is Stilt good?"
"He is, now. And he wants to stay that way," Sylvia told me, words heavy with a guilt trip. "He's not the same Stilt you met in your past lives, Brie. When he sought revenge on Henrik, he came to the lighter region and felt what it was like to be good. I think he liked you."
Her words spun around in my head.
Stilt. Liked me.
I followed Sylvia to where the carriage was parked on the outskirts of the village. I walked fast before King Franz or anyone from the castle noticed me. I had enough problems. I didn't need any more.
She tied the horses up and I didn't even have to help her all that much. I wondered why she traveled with Stilt, knowing who he was. "Are you from the dark region?" I asked.
"My sister and I went there after we lost our eyes. We thought that, being wicked people, we would have asylum there."
I tied the second horse to the carriage. Sylvia kept her hood down over her missing eyes. The woman functioned pretty well. "I wanted to see if I could get into King Henrik's favor and get some revenge on my stepsister," she continued, "but he rejected me. He knew I wasn't the girl who could spin gold. So I wound up in Henrik's kitchen, working for scraps."
"I'm not supposed to be able to do it, either," I said. "In my story, Stilt's supposed to be the one who can do it. But he didn't back there when that little boy threatened to blackmail us. He just looked at me and--"
I froze.
That same boy was walking up the dirt trail, pulling a few sheep by the leads. A huge bull walked beside him and he said something to it. He was so absorbed in talking to the animal that he hadn't noticed us yet.
I grabbed Sylvia's arm and pulled her behind the carriage.
"What's--" she began.
"Quiet. The subject of my last sentence? He's here."
Sylvia quieted. Stilt must have told her all about the boy who blackmailed me in order to get more gold out of us. I ducked and looked under the carriage. The kid must have been coming to look for me. I wasn't in the mood right now and besides, the bull was something I don't want to run into. Spin me gold, or I'm having my giant, vicious animal here run you down. I could see it now.
The footsteps all approached. The bull stayed quiet. I expected a snort or something, but it never came.
"There's the carriage," the boy said. "I don't see them. They must be in the village. We'll go and look for them there. They've got to be here."
Who was he talking to? The bull, still? It didn't make any sense. It snorted and it sounded angry, like it was chastising the boy.
There was more silence, as he was listening. Sylvia tensed next to me and grabbed my arm. She was shaking. Maybe she could hear something that I couldn't. Weren't the blind supposed to have other senses that were better than those of other people?
I held my breath.
"Okay," the boy said. "We'll look in the village for them. Just let me go home tonight."
And then his footfalls scraped against dirt and grass. He was heading into the village, leaving the bull here. But then the bull snorted and decided to follow. A shadow crept along the ground and away from us, leaving only the sheep.
Something was very, very wrong here.
We waited until the bull had gone before we said anything.
Sylvia leaned close to me. "We need to depart. Now."
"What's going on here?" I asked, climbing into the back of the carriage. Then I decided against it and climbed up onto the front to sit next to Sylvia. She might need some help with the navigating. "So there are talking animals here?"
"Once in a while." She cracked the reins of the carriage, the horses grunted, and we took off. The carriage started out slow, but then she cracked the reins again and we sped up. The wheels squeaked. "I could hear that one."
I checked the village to make sure the boy and the bull weren't coming back. A house passed. My stomach rolled over. "Is that bull from the dark region?"
"Yes. And he's not a bull. He's actually a man named Alric. He's a magic user that King Henrik has brought into his court. He's been known to ruin entire kingdoms."
My heart leapt into panic mode and I went to grab the reins, to make the horses go even faster, but Sylvia already had them.
"Your friend couldn't stay quiet about your gold," Sylvia told me. "He must have attracted the attention of this man. He usually disguises himself as a bull, so no one messes with him. You do not want to meet him. He likely threatened to turn that boy into a cloud of vapor, or to shut him up in a glass coffin, or to shrink him down and put him in a jar, if he didn't cooperate and bring him to you. We left just in time."
"Okay. It's official. These horses need to start rehearsing for a race." I couldn't even feel satisfied that the boy was getting a bit of justice. When we didn't turn up, Alric would probably turn him into a snake, or something. I didn't want to be around to see that.
"The noise will attract him." Sylvia's words were a tense piano string.
The trees drew closer. I held my breath, eyeing the village, and two houses parted and I caught a glimpse of the bull standing next to the boy. They were talking to the old woman, the one who let me into the inn last night. The innkeeper. Of course they'd go for her first.
She waved her arms, animated, but she was too far away for me to hear her words. The bull took a bold step towards her and she backed away.
There was a flash of golden light around the animal.
I watched as the bull changed shape before her eyes, shrinking and elongating into the form of a human in a matter of two seconds. The light faded and there stood a man in a black and red cloak and hood--the man who was driving King Henrik's black carriage the night I left the other world. It was him. I knew it. And now he'd almost found us.
The woman backed away, searching for an escape, but it was too late. The boy tried to run, too.
Another flash of golden light appeared around them both. Their forms shrunk. It cleared and--were those jars of fog sitting on the ground by Alric's feet?
I was not watching this.
"What's happening?" Sylvia asked. We were almost to the trees.
"You don't want to know," I told her. These people were getting punished because of me.
And then a huge rumble tore through the ground.
Everything quaked and our horses hurried in panic. The shaking masked their footfalls and the dirt shifted underneath, trying to carry us closer to the village. Screams cut over everything. The people were in a panic. And they should have been.
"Go! Straight."
She flicked the reins again, and the horses went into a full sprint.
We charged down the path and into the cover of the trees. The ground stabilized here and I craned my neck to look back. Alric stood there in the middle of the quake like a blood-streaked shadow while the buildings around him shrunk and drew closer together. It was if a black hole had opened in the ground and started sucking them all in. He was shrinking the entire town right along with the boy and the innkeeper. Even the castle shrunk and slid down the hill, turning from a grand tower to a chess piece in a matter of seconds.
The screams faded as the inhabitants either got to small to be heard or got crushed. The rumbling slowed and stopped as the trees blocked the last of the horror from view.
Chapter Seven
I didn't let out my breath until we were well down the trail. The trees grew thicker around us now, and the air, darker.
"What was that?" I managed.
"I'm not sure. I don't think I saw it."
I was glad for Sylvia's sarcasm. It made the nerves inside calm down a bit.
"Well, the entire town just shrunk." I wondered if Stilt had been there, but no. Not if Sylvia was right. He'd already left the village. But he might have seen it happening. What if he thought Sylvia and I were still in the town?
"What a monster," I said. If this was what a subject of King Henrik liked to do, what was Henrik himself like? It was a good thing that I argued with Stilt and sent him away and didn't go to meet King Franz. What if he was stuck inside a jar or a glass box with the rest of his kingdom? I'd never met the guy, but I felt bad for him.
The horses slowed a bit. I could no longer make out where the clearing began. There was no sign of Alric coming in bull form or otherwise. I knew he couldn't be too far behind us. He'd come as soon as he realized we weren't clouds of vapor inside jars or teeny tiny people inside that village. If we were lucky, he'd have to go through each jar and check.
"What are we going to do about that village?" I asked.
"There's nothing we can do. Maybe some prince will come by years from now and free them all. There is a princess back there, after all. Franz has a daughter."
"Maybe there's something in the mountain that will help them," I said.
"Maybe." Sylvia didn't sound too hopeful.
"Your sister might be imprisoned there."
"We might end up imprisoned there."
"Fair enough point."
Sylvia drove for another hour, and then two. I let her know whenever the trail curved so she could steer. The forest stayed quiet and once, I spotted the gray form of a wolf standing between the trees and watching us. The wolf didn't approach, but headed back into the trees. I got tense again. The air was getting thicker and the canopy above us, darker.
"We're getting closer to the dark region, aren't we?" I asked.
"Yes. We're not there yet, I can feel it in the air. It's a heavy feeling, like dread, hanging everywhere."
I agreed. This place made a tingle of fear rise up from the bottom of my stomach. It got worse and worse the farther we went, and I fought down an urge to tell Sylvia to turn back after a while. The rays of sunlight cutting down through the trees got farther and farther apart as if they didn't dare get any closer to King Henrik's lair.
We were getting closer to him, too.
I didn't like this one bit. But I didn't have any other good options.
"Does Stilt know where we're going?" I couldn't stop thinking about him. I wasn't supposed to want him to come back.
"I don't know. He may have seen us leaving this way. He wanted to vanish into the forest after we had dropped you off. I wanted to go and find a trade. Making baskets, maybe.”
A low hoot echoed through the woods and the path got narrower. The dirt got more grassy and overgrown. The horses slowed as if scared to move on any further. I didn’t blame them.
“How closer are we to the border?” I asked.
“There is no real border. Just a transition.”
“Well, it’s getting worse.” I saw one final shaft of sunlight up ahead, illuminating a patch of dried leaves on the forest floor, but nothing else. I wondered what time of the day it was. “And all this is so close to the other village where Stilt wanted to leave me.”
“Distance doesn’t matter here,” Sylvia said. “In Fable, you’re never far from the dark region. Even the lightest stories have dark sides to them.”
I thought of her eyes. “True.” I wondered how many other stories had gross things in them. How many stories there were. Weren’t there two hundred or so in the Grimm collection alone?
And what was I doing, traveling with one of the evil stepsisters?
Maybe she wanted to change her story, too.
I hoped.
The final shaft of sunlight vanished behind us. I couldn’t believe that we’d left that bright village behind only hours ago. This was a whole new world and one I didn’t like.
I scanned the trees as we passed. They got bigger. Closer together. Thicker. I swore a pair of yellow eyes peeked out at me from one as we passed. Even the horses drew closer together.
“Are you sure this is the way to the mountain?” I asked.
"Do you hear that?" Sylvia asked.
"No." I strained my ears, waited, and then I did.
Galloping horses, somewhere ahead and distant. The path curved up ahead so I couldn’t see who was coming, and it was getting so dark that I couldn’t tell anyway.
My insides curled up. “I think we need to get off this path.”
“I think you’re right,” Sylvia said. “Do you see any places we could hide?”
I searched around. There was an area of forest that was thinner, that might be able to fit the carriage. We couldn't leave it out here. Whoever was coming might be searching for us. They might even be heading out to back up Alric. “Right,” I told her.
Sylvia cracked the reins and the horses followed her orders. They walked right into the trees and one of the trunks scraped against the outside of the carriage. Branches slapped at my arms but I bit in a cry. The galloping sound got louder and louder and a male shout echoed through the trees.
Sylvia cracked the reins again. This was bad news. The underbrush got thicker and thicker around us. What if those riders came this way? We seemed to be on some kind of hidden trail.
“Right,” I said again, spotting a space between a few trees.
The carriage turned. Sylvia’s breaths got heavy, then quiet again. We had to stay as silent as we could.
The grass grew up around us as we veered off the smaller trail. The trees closed in around us and leaves swallowed us on all sides. Anything could jump out of here. I could barely see in this thick brush. I tensed, wishing that I was inside the carriage instead of out here, but I couldn’t leave Sylvia alone. She needed me to tell her where to go.
We walked further into the brush. I stood up, balancing on the bench the best I could, and checked behind us. I could no longer see the smaller trail. We were sitting in these dark woods, surrounded by who knew what.
“Stop,” I said.
Sylvia shook the reins again and the horses followed the order.
The galloping sound grew louder, so loud that I felt like someone was going to burst through the shrubs at any moment. But then the sound stopped. Whoever was coming had stopped out on the road.
“Is the trail clear up ahead?” a man asked.
“Yes,” another told him. “All clear. I see no travelers.”
“Not that many dare come this way,” the first man said. “Come on. Let’s dump our loot and leave before Henrik’s men learn what’s missing.”
And then the horses’ hooves grew louder again. They turned down the small trail and walked right past our hiding place. These were the bandits Sylvia mentioned, all right. I hunched down, grabbing the roof of the carriage as tight as I could, hoping that one of our horses didn't snort a greeting to the others.
Large shadows walked past us. There was a laugh. I counted four men and four horses. Something metallic clinked together. They had some kind of treasure.
But even if we were both trying to avoid Henrik, I didn't want to ask these men if they have any magical artifacts that could help me remove this curse.
The hooves vanished, leaving nothing but the sound of bugs chirping around us and more owl hoots. “They’re taking some of Henrik’s gold somewhere,” Sylvia whispered. “They might be taking it to that mountain.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t like what was about to come out of my mouth next. “There’s only one way to find that out.”
Sylvia grabbed my arm. “You’re going to follow them?”
“Well, you can come if you want.” I was hoping she would. I could use her ears. They were probably better than my eyes out in these dark woods.
“Those bandits will kill us.” She pulled her hood down, hiding her missing eyes. “I still think it’s a bad idea to go against our stories. Stilt regretted going against his."
I thought of his scars. “Look,” I told her. “My story is to get married to an evil guy and get killed, over an
d over. Stilt’s was to rip himself in half, over and over. Can you blame either one of us for going against our fates? There’s got to be another way.” I was going to pull a low blow here. “What do you think you have to look forward to if you don’t fight back?”
Sylvia raised one hand like she wanted to slap me.
Then dropped it.
“As you wish,” she said. “I will accompany you after the bandits.”
“We’re a lot easier to hide than the horses,” I said. "If they come back, we can duck down in the trees. Easy as that." If they caught us, I could use my ability to get them to spare our lives. Maybe Sylvia was better off with me after all.
We found our way back to the smaller trail and Sylvia kept her arm intertwined with mine. I got over the awkward sensation after a minute or so.
"You hear anything?" I asked her. The gloom had only deepened. What time of the day was it? Late afternoon? Evening? Nightfall? We had to hurry. Once night fell here, we'd be stuck in the same spot all night or risk getting lost. We couldn't risk lighting anything or starting a fire--not that I knew how to do that, anyway.
"No," she said. "I'll tell you if I do."
"Thanks." At least we were a team here.
The smaller trail stretched into the trees and seemed to form some kind of arching hallway through dark green. It was magical, but in some dark, creepy way. This reminded me of the dark forest from Snow White, the one where all the eyes were peeking at her and the branches were grabbing at her clothes. I hated that scene in the movie when I was little.
The dread feeling grew even stronger in my gut, almost to the point where it was screaming. "Do you think we're in the dark region yet?" I asked.
"Maybe. Maybe not. The border's always fuzzy."
An owl hooted again. Day or night, it was dim enough here for them to come out. Bad news. I looked around and up, and a pair of huge yellow eyes stared down at me. What was with the owls here? Were they all supposed to be creepy and follow you around?
"I hear something," Sylvia said.
"What?" I whispered, trying not to stare at the owl overhead. My skirt caught on some prickly bush growing at the side of the little trail and I about tripped on a spot where a hoof had dug into the ground.