Willa of the Wood

by Robert Beatty

  Everyone watched in disbelief as Willa, with her hands still tied, leveraged herself onto her shoulder, got her legs beneath her, and slowly rose to her feet.

  A wave of murmurs and fear ran through the crowd.

  She stood a few feet in front of the throne and looked squarely at the padaran.

  The padaran stared back at her, his lip curling with malevolence. Unlike many of the others in the great hall, he didn’t appear frightened that she had risen from the dead. He seemed to be thinking through the best way to kill her in front of all the members of the clan, to make her an example of what happened to those who raised their voices against him. But he showed no signs of fear that she possessed some unnatural power that might actually be a danger to him. And it was at that moment that she knew for sure that her hunch about him was right.

  It’s all a trick, she thought, a disguise, a blend. It always has been.

  The padaran rose from his throne and stood to his full height in front of her and the onlooking crowd, the majesty of his glimmering quills raised around his head, and his steel spear of power gripped in his hand.

  “You dare to stand in front of me?” he snarled.

  “I stand in front of whoever I choose,” she replied.

  “You’re a traitor to the clan!” he roared, raising his spear at her.

  Willa tried to stand tall, but Lorcan struck the back of her legs with the shaft of his spear and sent her crashing painfully to her knees. “Kneel before your padaran, you vermin!”

  “She’s a traitor!” someone yelled from the crowd.

  “She attacked the padaran with the steel traps of the humans!” one of the jaetters hissed.

  “And she released the prisoners!” a guard shouted. “They’ve all escaped!”

  “Traitor!” people started screaming all around.

  “String her up!” Ciderg bellowed, raising his muscled arm.

  Willa scrambled back up onto her feet as a wall of enraged, mottled-gray faces and tightening fists came toward her. Gredic and his pack of gnashing, hissing jaetters surrounded her with the rest of the attackers. Gillen and a few others pushed toward her and struggled to help her, but they were powerless against the mass of bodies.

  The mob of people surrounded her, grabbing her on all sides. She felt hundreds of clawed fingers gripping her arms, her legs, her hair, her neck. Her skin crawled and twitched as their hands and bodies pressed against her. She tried frantically to escape, to wrest herself away from them, but they were all around her, drowning her in their grasping hands.

  She felt as if she was moments from death, but then a thought poured into her mind.

  The River of Souls.

  She could see it, and she could hear her mamaw’s voice in her mind.

  You are forever among your people, her mamaw had told her. The past, the present, and the future to come.

  Doing everything she could to steady her fear, she stopped struggling or trying to get away from the mob of Faeran around her. She looked into the grimacing faces of those trying to hurt her. And she looked into Gillen’s eyes as the girl fought to protect her. She looked at them all.

  Believe, Willa told herself. Believe in your people.

  Pulling in a deep breath, she stood in the middle of the thronging crowd, stretched her bound wrists above her head, and screamed in the old language, “I want you all to stop right now!”

  The startling sound of the Faeran words echoed across the hall, up into the decaying wings of the ancient sculpted birds that adorned the ceiling.

  Gasps rippled through the crowd: the little woodwitch had dared to speak the old language in the Hall of the Padaran!

  “Just stop!” she screamed again, this time in both the Faeran words and the Eng-lish, so that all of the people could understand her. “Just stand still and listen to me!”

  The crowd watched in awe as the vines binding her wrists began to move of their own accord, twisting and twining with life until they unfurled from her hands, and fell away to the floor.

  Lorcan charged forward to slam her with the shaft of his spear like he had before, but she caught the shaft of the weapon in her hand and instantly melted it into a writhing wooden snake and threw it to the ground.

  The crowd shouted in dismay and shrunk back in fear.

  “Listen to me,” she said as she looked out across the many faces. “You know my name is Willa, and I’ve been a loyal member of this clan all my life. I just need you to listen to what I have to say…”

  “Listen to her!” Gillen shouted.

  “She’s a traitor!” one of the jaetters hissed.

  “Let the little one speak!” yelled one of the other Faeran in the crowd.

  “I did not come here to die,” Willa said. “And I did not come here to fight you or harm you…”

  As she continued speaking, she felt many of the people in the crowd moving closer, trying to hear her. They were pressing in on her, but it had a different feeling now. They were listening, touching her with their hands, crowding around her.

  “I came to the great hall this night to speak to all of you about Naillic.”

  It was as if she had thrust a stick into a hornet’s nest. A buzz of whispers and agitation whirred through the crowd. Suddenly the movements in the room began to shift. She felt new forces driving toward her, others pulling away.

  “I’ve heard the word before,” someone said.

  “What does it mean?” asked another.

  “It’s forbidden!” one of the jaetters whispered.

  “Don’t say it!” another hissed.

  “Death will come!” one of the older Faeran shouted.

  “Don’t say the word!” someone warned.

  “But it’s not just a word,” Willa said. “Naillic is a name, the name of a Faeran boy who was born in this clan.”

  “Seize her!” the padaran screamed from the dais of his throne.

  Lorcan and the other guards shoved forward to follow his orders, but it was too late. The crowd had engulfed her in a river of Faeran bodies, a River of Souls.

  Willa pointed toward the padaran standing by the throne. “Those who knew the truth have been killed. Those who raised their voices have been silenced. The memory of the past has been pushed from our minds. But I came here to tell you that his name is Naillic. He is not an all-powerful, glistening god. He’s a normal, mortal Faeran just like the rest of us!”

  “Don’t let her speak another word!” the padaran screamed at his guards. “Kill her!”

  The guards pushed into the mass of people, shoving with their arms and stabbing with their spears, forcing their way toward her, but shouts of terror and anger rose up from the crowd. Gredic and many of the jaetters attacked, biting and clawing their way toward her.

  The mob of people around her rose up into a swarm, like bees around a developing queen of a new hive, pressing in on her, protecting her.

  “He claims to be the great leader of the clan,” she shouted above the rising clamor of the crowd. “He says that we must always stick together, that we must always care for one another, but has he cared for the ones we love?”

  “She’s a traitor!” Ciderg spat as he tried to fight his way through the crowd to get to her.

  “She speaks the truth!” one of the elders called.

  “Don’t trust her,” someone shouted.

  “She’s a woodwitch!” somebody else screamed.

  “Trust in the padaran!”

  “Let her speak!” Gillen shouted out. “Listen to her!”

  “Kill her!”

  Feeling the rise of the clan all around her, Willa turned toward the padaran and pointed at him. “We all know that all Faeran are born with a twin to whom we are bound and connected for the rest of our lives—the left hand and the right, the forward and the back. But where is your brother, Naillic? Where is Cillian? Where is the man who was my father?”

  She had finally said the words she had come to say. And when she said them, all of the Faeran in the great h
all stared up at the padaran in utter shock, slowly coming to realize the full meaning of her accusation. Hushed murmurs of confusion and uncertainty ran through the crowd.

  “She’s a traitor, kill her!” the padaran ordered his guards again, pointing his long, crooked finger at her, but hundreds of Faeran surrounded her, blocking the guards.

  Climbing up onto the base of one of the great hall’s old, rotted sculptures, Willa shouted at the padaran across the heads of the crowd.

  “My father was another traitor, just like me, wasn’t he, Uncle!” she yelled. “He kept clinging to the old ways, like so many of our loved ones who have gone missing.” She knew that many in the clan had lost people dear to them—those who had spoken up, who had resisted, who had put the love for their family before their obedience to the padaran.

  She wasn’t sure anyone was listening to her, but then a voice called out to the padaran from the crowd. “Tell us what happened to Cillian!”

  And then many of the Faeran started pushing toward the throne, anxious to understand. “Tell us!”

  “What happened to Nea and little Alliw?” someone else cried out from the back.

  Willa’s heart swelled when she heard her mother’s and sister’s name. Someone must have remembered her family from years before, but they’d been too frightened to raise their voices until now. Knowing brings death.

  “All my life, you told me that the humans killed my parents,” she shouted at the padaran. “But I suspect that the truth is that my mother and father committed a crime in your eyes, the crime of raising their daughters in their own way, speaking the Faeran language with them, and teaching them the lore of our people. And worst of all, my father knew your name, knew who you truly were, Naillic. He was a constant reminder that you were not the padaran, you were not a god.”

  As she spoke, the Faeran looked upon the padaran, and they looked upon her, and they whispered and discussed among themselves, trying to put the truth together.

  “You call me a traitor to the clan for what I’ve said and what I’ve done,” Willa shouted at the padaran and the guards surrounding him. “And you say I’m a traitor because I freed the humans from the prisons below. But I have never stabbed a Faeran with a spear, never punched one with a fist. I live in the old ways, where the members of a clan take care of each other and love each other.”

  Willa gazed across the faces of the crowd, all of them turned toward her now. “The padaran not only murders his own people, he traps and slaughters the animals of the forest who were once our friends and allies! He has abandoned the ways of the forest that keep us alive! He sends out his guards to kill innocent day-folk and capture their children! He poisons our ears with lies about the humans even as he hoards their machines in his private dens, trying to make sense of what they do!”

  “If we don’t adapt, we’re all going to die!” the padaran bellowed, trying to intimidate them with the force of his will, but turmoil swirled through the crowd, like hundreds of bees buzzing in a corrupted hive.

  She turned back to the padaran. “I ask you once again, Naillic. Tell us all. Where is your brother? Where is Cillian?”

  “Stop saying that traitor’s name!” the padaran spat, seething with venomous anger. His whole body seemed to glow with scintillating power as he pointed his spear toward her.

  “You killed your own brother!” someone screamed. There was no greater loss to a Faeran than losing a twin brother or sister. And there was no more heinous crime among the Faeran people than killing your own twin. It was the bond that could not be broken, and Naillic had broken it. The entire crowd erupted with rage.

  “He’s a twin-killer!” someone yelled in the old language, and it brought a burst of joy to Willa’s heart. She had thought she would never hear the language again, but now they were actually shouting it. The clan was rising up against the padaran!

  “Where is my mother?” someone cried out.

  “You killed my sister!” screamed another.

  “What have you done, Naillic?” yelled a voice from the back.

  “All the traitors of the clan must be killed!” the padaran shouted back at them, gripping his spear of power as if he was going to hurl it into the crowd. They shrank back in fear, but they did not flee.

  “All of you,” Willa shouted out to the Faeran people as she pointed at the padaran. “I want you to look now at Naillic with your own eyes. Can you see him? Can you truly see him? He’s not a shimmering god. He’s been tricking us all. He’s blending! He’s a woodwitch. He comes from a powerful family of woodwitches. He comes from my family! Even as he vilified the Faeran of old who built this glorious hall, even as he took this sacred place in his own name, he used his own Faeran powers to deceive us. He’s disguising himself to look like everything we want our leader to be. It’s all a lie!”

  As everyone in the crowd gazed at the padaran in amazement, the glistening of his face and body seemed to fade.

  “I see it!” someone gasped. Many of the Faeran maneuvered to get a closer look. Others pointed and whispered, their faces filled with suspicion and surprise.

  The luster of the padaran’s aura dimmed. The wrinkled, gray skin of his massive, old body started to become more visible.

  “I see it, too! He’s been tricking us!” someone called out.

  “The Faeran people of the past used their woodland powers to conceal themselves from our enemies,” Willa shouted. “Naillic is the first woodwitch to use his powers to conceal himself from his own people, to trick the eyes of all the Faeran who see him.”

  With the help of Gillen and several of the other Faeran around her, Willa quickly climbed down from the base of the old sculpture and moved through the mass of people toward the passageway that led into the padaran’s private chambers.

  “Stop her!” the padaran commanded, waving his hands frantically at Lorcan and the other guards.

  “We have to help her!” Gillen cried, rallying the Faeran around her. “We have to protect Willa!”

  “Everyone come with me!” Willa shouted above the commotion. “Come see what the great padaran has hoarded in his dens!”

  “No one gets through!” the padaran ordered his guards as he hurried to block the passageway.

  “Follow me!” Willa shouted again, raising her arm above her head, and suddenly the mass of the crowd rushed the dais of the throne.

  “I command you to stop!” the padaran roared.

  But the people did not stop. They poured around him like water around a stone. His skin was entirely gray now, his body dripping with sweat, and his face mangled from years of deception. The padaran lunged forward with his spear and stabbed one of the oncoming Faeran in the chest, sending him dead to the ground, then he lunged again and stabbed another.

  Lorcan grabbed a spear from one of the other guards and charged into battle. He thrust his spear into one rioter after another, sending them staggering back with bloody wounds. But then five of the rioters surrounded him and struck him down, wrenched the spear from his hands, and drove it into his heart. Lorcan, the commander of the padaran’s guard, was finally dead.

  The padaran grabbed a torch from the wall and blocked the entrance to his den.

  “Stay back!” he screamed at the encroaching mob as he brandished the burning torch from side to side. “I will burn anyone who comes near!”

  Leading a pack of jaetters, Gredic and Ciderg barreled into the rioters to take back the area around the throne and protect the padaran. Ciderg grabbed one of them by the head, and hurled him aside. A whole new wave of attacking guards and jaetters pushed into the crowd with their spears. But then the swarm of the angry mob fell upon Ciderg in force, striking him with many blows.

  “No!” Gredic screamed, trying to save his brother, but it was too late. Ciderg’s body toppled to the floor with a crash.

  A new storm of confusion and violence erupted all around as jaetters and guards fought against the surging crowd.

  “Stay out!” the padaran screamed as he grabb
ed two more torches and propped them up in the passageway to create a barrier of flame. The torches popped and smoked, and the flame burned high as he added more and more torches to the barricade.

  In the midst of the chaos, a group of three hissing jaetters shoved their way through the mob. One clawed Gillen across the face. The other two knocked Willa to the ground. The teeth of the attacking jaetters chattered with anticipation as they came at her.

  The flames of the padaran’s torches burned upward, joining together and scorching the walls.

  “If you try to get in here, you’re all going to burn!” the padaran shouted at the rioters as he retreated into his private dens.

  One of the torches fell and hit the woven-stick floor, catching it aflame.

  As the fire spread across the floor and walls, the great Hall of the Padaran began to fill with smoke, and screams of terror rose up from the chaos of the crowd.

  Willa found herself engulfed in a wave of running, screaming people and burning flames. A foot hit her in the head. Another foot stepped on her back. She tried to get up, but the running crowd trampled over her.

  Crushed to the floor, she looked over to see Gillen fighting to get closer.

  “Gillen!” Willa cried as she reached for her. For a moment, their fingers touched and they were almost able to grasp each other’s hand, but then the mob swept Gillen away like the current of a great river and she was gone.

  Filled with new determination, Willa growled and tried to get up, only to be knocked down again.

  Finally, someone in the crowd stopped to help her. He held her arm and pulled her up onto her feet. She could finally breathe. She got her legs underneath her and was able to stand. Someone was saving her life. She turned with hope in her heart, but then saw Gredic’s face and felt his hands clamp painfully onto her arms.

  “You’re coming with me, Willa,” he snarled as he dragged her through the fleeing crowd.

  Willa tried to yank away, but it made no difference. He held on to her tighter than he had ever held her before, as if he knew this was his last chance. He wasn’t going to let her go.