Eyes of the Forest

by April Henry

  That left the window in his room. Now that blanket of snow around the house seemed like a good thing. If she could just get Bob out, at least the fire couldn’t follow them.

  Which was still a pretty big if.

  When she threw open the door to his room, Bob looked at her with wide eyes.

  “What’s happening?”

  She closed the door behind her. “I think Derrick left and then Joanne lit the house on fire and took off.”

  As she spoke, she tried to raise the window, but it was painted shut. Glad for the protection of her coat, she wrapped her hand in the blanket she’d slept in. She punched the window, but her first blow was too tentative. She had to repeat the move several times, each time with more force and a bigger wince, before it finally broke with a crack. Cold air rushed in as she knocked out the rest of the glass.

  “You’re bleeding,” Bob said.

  BOB

  Save Yourself

  Blood was streaming from a two-inch-long cut on the pinky side of Bridget’s right hand. It was clear to Bob that it was not going to stop on its own.

  She pressed it against her coat, but that wouldn’t work for long. And then Bob’s fingers went to the scarf around his throat, as they had so many times before. But this time he wasn’t hiding in the comfort of memories.

  He unwound it and held it out to her. “Wrap this tight around it. It will stop the bleeding.”

  Shaking her head, she took a step back. “That’s your special scarf. The one that Lilly gave you.”

  “And if she were here, she would tell you to use it.” The crackle of the flames was getting louder. “Hurry.”

  Bob ended up being the one to quickly wrap it, as Bridget could only use one hand. He finished with a square knot directly on top of the cut. He hated making her wince, but the pressure would encourage it to start closing on its own.

  When he finished, she looked at his ankle and then his face. “Do you think you could put any weight on your foot? Just for a second?”

  He shook his head. “Even if I wanted to, it wouldn’t hold me up.” Then he said what needed to be said. “Look, Bridget. You need to get out now before it’s too late.”

  “I can’t leave you.” Her voice broke.

  “But you can’t save me. I can’t walk. I don’t think I could even crawl. It doesn’t make any sense for us both to die when you don’t have to. Listen to me.” His heart cracked open. “Save yourself. I order you to leave me.”

  “I won’t.” She raised her chin. “Would Rowan leave Car Umass? Would Margarit leave Jancy?”

  “Bridget,” he said gently, “they’re imaginary. And you’re real. You’re alive. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

  “And you’ve made my life worth living. Just like you did for my mom.”

  He gripped her uninjured hand. It was warm and dry, a sharp contrast to his own cold, clammy hand. “And if your mom could come back, she would kill me for getting you mixed up in this. You can’t save me, child. Save yourself. And if you can, take the book. I’m not worth saving. But that book is. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written.”

  BRIDGET

  Until They Were Dead

  Two could play at being stubborn. Bridget set her jaw. “I won’t leave you. So you’d better help me get you out of here. Sit up.”

  Bob didn’t move. “I can’t walk, Bridget.”

  “All we need to do is get you outside. Then I can drag you on the quilt.” She imagined how that would work. How quickly the quilt would soak through. How the snow would start to stick to the fabric, making it heavier and harder to move.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “While I’m gone, sit yourself up.”

  With Bob still protesting, she peeked out into the hall. The smoke was thick as fur, but the flames hadn’t reached the hall quite yet. After closing the bedroom door, she scurried deeper into the cabin, doubled over and coughing. She trailed her fingers along the wall until she reached the bathroom. Gathering the shower curtain into her arms, she bent her knees to put all her weight on it.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! It tore from the rings.

  A second later she was running blindly back to Bob. When she opened the door, the fresh air made the flames leap forward with a roar. She slammed the door closed, knowing they only had a few minutes. Picking up the garbage bags, now filled with water instead of snow, she put them in front of the door. That might buy them a minute or two.

  Bob’s face was pale and damp with sweat, but he’d managed to sit up, his legs sticking off the side of the bed. His eyes were closed, his face drawn with pain.

  Leaning out the window, Bridget shook out the shower curtain until it was as flat as she could make it. She padded the sill with the blanket. Then she stood on Bob’s bad side. “Put your arm around me and your other hand on the table, and stand up. It’s, like, three hops, maximum, to the window. Then you’ll just sit on the sill and let yourself drop back into the snow.”

  No time to worry about how neither of them were dressed for freezing weather. How they didn’t have shoes. Tendrils of smoke were curling past the door’s outlines.

  His eyes opened, caught the light. They were watery, but suddenly his focus sharpened. “What about the book?”

  “You can always write another book. But there’s only one you. Now, on my count of three.” She bent her knees. “One.” His arm clamped around her shoulder. “Two.” His fingers tightened. “Three.” She groaned and he moaned as she straightened up and he put his weight on his left leg.

  He was standing.

  “Okay. Just a couple of hops. One!” His weight almost dragged her off balance as he barely moved an inch. “Two!” He moved his hand further up the nightstand and then hopped just another few inches. “Three!” Three hops hadn’t even cleared the nightstand. “Okay, just a few more and then you can sit on the windowsill.”

  Bob’s breathing sounded like a train trying to build up a head of steam. But finally they reached the window. Bridget tightened her arm around his waist as he took his hand from the nightstand and reached for the sill. But as he did, his bad foot touched the floor. He stiffened like he’d touched a live wire. With a shriek, he tumbled outside.

  Her stomach convulsed. Bob lay sprawled on his side, looking lifeless, only half on the shower curtain. It was a relief when he twitched. By now, flames were licking on all sides of the door behind her.

  Careful not to step on him, she climbed out after Bob, her stockinged feet punching holes into the snow. As gently as she could, she rolled him on his side and then straightened the shower curtain under him. After rolling him back, she grabbed the curtain on either side of his head. With a grunt, she walked backward, slowly dragging him away from the house and toward the road.

  Here was her dad’s car, covered with a foot of snow. But the keys were back in the burning house or in Joanne’s or Derrick’s pocket.

  Hunched over, she dragged Bob past it. Her back was starting to spasm, her fingers to cramp. The snow was as deep as her knees, and her feet were already numb, which was almost a blessing.

  The house was nearly engulfed in flames, but the snow should stop it from spreading.

  Finally, she reached the road, marked by the tracks of Derrick’s and Joanne’s cars. Her legs were trembling with effort.

  If she kept up a steady pace, her feet punching holes through the snow, it wasn’t impossible to slide Bob. Every time she paused, though, she lost momentum. To get started again, she had to lean so far back that she nearly fell over. And her steps were short, each one nearly overlapping the one before.

  They had only made it about a hundred yards from the house, and she was exhausted. The sweat on her clothes was turning into ice. They weren’t going to make three miles. They would be lucky to make another three hundred feet. How long until their fingers and toes were frostbitten? How long until they were hypothermic?

  How long until they were dead?

  She leaned down and touched Bob’s forehead. His eyes open
ed, but didn’t seem to focus. He was nearly as white as the snow, except for bright red cheeks.

  After letting out a sob of frustration, Bridget gritted her teeth, grabbed the curtain’s crinkling edge, and forced herself to keep moving. What choice did she have?

  When she’d driven out here the night before last, this stretch had been nothing but darkness. Not another dwelling for miles. The chance that anyone would notice the fire was minuscule.

  And then she heard something far off in the distance behind her. Was—was it a motor? She turned.

  A blue snowmobile was racing toward her, going so fast it sometimes caught air.

  And in the distance behind it was a white SUV, chains around its tires biting into the snow as it bounced and slewed over drifts.

  The snowmobile and then the SUV stopped just short of them. As the snowmobiler turned off his machine, people leapt out of the vehicle.

  Bridget must be hallucinating. An old man in clanking armor, a sword at his waist. A girl dressed like an elf and holding a mace. A man wearing wings and knee-high boots, hoisting a shovel like a baseball bat. All three turning their heads back and forth, like they were ready for a fight.

  And then the snowmobiler pulled off his helmet and Bridget knew this must be all a dream. Because it was Ajay.

  He ran to her, already pulling off his coat. He put it around her shoulders.

  “You came,” she whispered as he pulled her close.

  “I would have been here earlier, but you sent all that information in an email.” He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a sob. “What person our age actually looks at their emails?”

  Meanwhile, the fans—for that’s what they were, Bridget realized, fans—were kneeling in the snow next to Bob’s still figure.

  And far in the distance, she heard a sound. A siren.

  But were they all too late?

  SEVEN MONTHS LATER

  BRIDGET

  Freedom

  “Yes, the person in the pink wings?” Bridget pointed toward the back of the full auditorium. “What’s your question?” Forty-five minutes ago, when she and Bob had first walked on stage, she’d expected to feel nervous with hundreds of people staring at her. Instead, the experience had turned out to be oddly serene.

  “My question is for both of you. Was it hard to write Eyes of the Forest together?”

  She and Bob looked at each other. Portland was the first stop on the nineteen-city tour for the new book, which bore both their bylines. Eyes of the Forest had only been out for a few days, but it had landed on top of every bestseller list, lauded as the must-read for summer. Even the audiobook, which Bob had insisted Bridget narrate, was smashing sales records.

  But the book that had garnered eight starred reviews wasn’t the Eyes of the Forest Derrick had tried to sell on the dark web. It wasn’t even the book Bridget had read in the cabin, the one that had made her weep. The book Bob had urged her to save instead of him. The one that had burned up with the cabin.

  It was even better.

  Bob took the first crack at answering the question. “Obviously, for me, this was a new way of working. But it turned out to be exactly what was needed to finish the series. Normally in a coauthor situation, you’ll see one of two things.” He held up a finger. “First, a single writer—usually the less famous of the two—does most or all of the writing, while the more famous one takes most of the credit.” He added a second finger. “Or two coauthors will take turns writing from the point of view of a single character.” He turned his hand to cut it through the air. “But we didn’t do either of those.” He looked over at Bridget.

  She pulled her mic closer. “First we brainstormed an outline of the book. That was new for Bob, but he says it really helped.” Next to her, Bob nodded. “Then we each picked which chapters we wanted to write. Bob called it putting the meat on the bones, and that part went really fast. Once one of us had finished a chapter, we emailed it to the other, who then used track changes to suggest edits. It was a little complicated, but it worked for us.”

  Bob pointed at another waving hand. “The person dressed as, if I’m not mistaken, Prince Orwen?”

  The questioner, who looked to be in his late teens, grinned at being recognized. “How much did it hurt to have the books burn up in that cabin?”

  The audience murmured as the Powell’s events coordinator jumped to her feet. “I made it clear that they would not be taking any questions about what happened.”

  “I’ll answer this one, but after that, no more, okay?” Bob said.

  The police had asked Bridget and Bob not to speak publicly about the kidnapping. If they had been hoping to keep a lid on information, it hadn’t worked. The bizarre chain of events had been covered extensively in newspapers, magazines, and blogs, and on TV, radio, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, podcasts, and even TikTok. All six previous Swords and Shadows books returned to the bestseller lists. Five weeks after the fire, an unauthorized book about their kidnappings had been rushed out, filled with blurry screenshots from the Haldon Cam. And of course Reddit was overrun with threads about every conceivable aspect of the case.

  When Bridget had climbed on the treadmill desk to broadcast their plea, most people had thought it was just part of some elaborate joke or hoax. But a handful had called the police. Derrick had as well, with a slightly different and equally fantastic story. The police had eventually decided to dispatch a couple of officers to check things out.

  At the same time, a group of rabid fans who lived nearby and had an SUV with chains and four-wheel drive had decided to drive out and see for themselves. Believing it might be a secret fan cosplay event, they had dressed for the part.

  As for Ajay, he had borrowed his neighbor’s snowmobile and loaded it into his dad’s pickup, switching to it when the snow got too heavy. After at first dismissing Bridget’s emails, he had seen a screen capture of her desperate plea on Reddit and realized she was telling the truth.

  Now Bob said, “At the time, I honestly thought Bridget should prioritize saving the manuscript. I didn’t think I was going to make it. But thankfully, she had more faith than I did.” They exchanged a grin.

  Bridget saw a healthy Bob, one who finally no longer needed a cane. In her mind’s eye, though, she saw the cops trying to load a nearly comatose Bob into the back of their SUV, desperate to get him to the hospital.

  The physical therapists had credited Bob’s recovery after surgery to set the bone to the fact that he was in pretty good shape from Joanne and Derrick’s enforced diet and exercise routine. After he was discharged, he’d even bought a treadmill desk for his home office.

  Bridget had given police the tracker information for Joanne’s car. After being pulled over on her way to the airport, she had been arrested. Her trial was still months off. Derrick had accepted a plea deal that avoided jail time in return for his cooperation. He was now attending an alternative high school, in court-ordered therapy, and living with his dad. He was still allowed to LARP.

  Bridget chose the next questioner, a wide-eyed girl of about twelve. Even though the girl had dark hair, there was something about her that reminded Bridget of herself at that age.

  “My question is for Mr. Haldon. Where’s your scarf?”

  Bridget caught her breath.

  Bob put his fingertips to his bare neck. “I used to think I needed to wear the scarf to remind me of the person who it originally belonged to. But then I realized she’s always with me.” His smile was tinged with sadness. “And there’s a freedom in not always wearing the same thing. Not always writing the same thing.”

  He smiled and pointed at a woman in her fifties dressed in a sundress.

  “What’s next for you two?”

  Bridget answered first. “Well, I still have a year of high school. And I’m thinking about where I might want to go to college. Meanwhile, a friend is teaching me to cook this summer.” Her eyes went to Ajay, who was sitting in a reserved seat in the front row right next to her dad. Now he grinn
ed and gave her a thumbs-up. He was still a little bit in awe of how big a deal Bob really was.

  The woman in the sundress rephrased her question. “What about writing? Are you two working on anything new?”

  Bridget and Bob exchanged a look. “There might be a little something in the works,” he said. They had started brainstorming a prequel set in the same universe as Swords and Shadows, but featuring a seventeen-year-old girl. A girl who had no magic. A girl a lot like the one Bridget had started writing about earlier.

  At that, the woman started to clap, and soon the whole audience had joined in. Bob nodded at Bridget. Together, they got to their feet and took a bow.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I think every writer, if they write long enough, eventually writes a book where one of the main characters is a writer. Eyes of the Forest is mine.

  Bridget was named in honor of Bridget Zinn, an amazing young adult author who died from colon cancer at 33. Check out her lovely book, Poison. So many people helped me pull this book together. Any errors are my own.

  Joe Collins, a firefighter and paramedic, helped me figure out if handcuffs would melt in a fire as well as how to treat a compound fracture. Paul Dreyer, CEO of Avid4 Adventure (avid4.com), who was my wilderness medicine instructor when I was researching Playing with Fire, answered questions about fractures and infections.

  Robin Burcell, a former cop and now bestselling author, helped me understand how my fictional cops would view fans.

  Don Read at Pacific Typewriter did not even blink when I showed up at his shop with a pair of handcuffs and questions about whether it would be possible to snap off a typewriter part and use it to shim your way out of handcuffs. (The answer is yes, if you use the part called the ribbon vibrator.)