by Viv Daniels
“No,” he said softly. “There never was, was there?”
“And let’s be honest — what would you do with me, back in your forest?” She forced a laugh. “I am, as you say, a townie.”
“Yes,” he repeated, his voice flat. “You’re a townie.”
Maybe that’s what they both needed. To say these things over and over, loud enough to drown out the tiny drumbeat in her head that said him him him him him.
She led the way to the plot of redbells, tucked away beneath the spreading branches of a forest willow up near the far end of the dome, where the hot air of the greenhouse met the glass in smears of condensation against the window. Beyond the panes, the forest spread out, black and silent. Silent as it hadn’t been for years.
“Here they are.” She knelt in the flowers and took a bloom in the palm of her hand. He crouched beside her, closer than she would have liked. It was warm here, but heat still poured off him in waves, and she had to clench her muscles to keep from leaning into it, from leaning into him. She could hear him breathe, and she knew, she just knew if she touched him she could hear everything else besides.
“You can have half the crop,” she said, instead of all of the things she wanted to. “And most of my tea supply.” She’d have enough for her clients until she rebuilt. She’d give him everything she could, if it would save his children, and the others from the forest village. “You can take it all. You don’t need me.”
“No,” he agreed, and cupped a redbell blossom. “I don’t need—” But his words cut off as the flower withered and blackened in his hand. Hissing, Archer dropped the burnt flower to the ground and stood.
Ivy looked at him in shock. “What did you do?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Archer jerked his head and looked away. “It’s nothing. It’ll fade.”
“But what happened?” Ivy went on, staring at the destroyed redbell in horror and disgust “Is it from coming through the barrier?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
She nodded in understanding. “It’s the magic, isn’t it? Whatever dark rites you performed to silence the bells. It still courses in you.”
Still looking away, he replied. “Yes. But like I said, it’ll fade. Though I shouldn’t touch your crop until it does.” He picked up the wilted flower again. The blackened edges burned and crumpled until nothing remained but a handful of ashes. He clapped his palms, and then the ashes, too, vanished.
A shiver stole across Ivy’s skin, a whisper of darkness, like she, too, could scorch if she dared to get any closer to Archer. “When? When will it fade?”
He stared down at the smear of dirt still blackening his hands. “I don’t know.” He was silent for a long moment. “It’ll fade. It has to.”
“You don’t know?” she blurted. What had he done so dark that he had no idea when the curse would leave him?
“No.” Archer still stared into the plot of flowers, his jaw set, his eyes distant. And then, abruptly, he plopped back on the ground, sitting beside her and pressing his forehead to his knees. “No one has ever done this before. No one has ever made it through the barrier and survived.”
Her hand hovered over his shoulder, afraid to touch, as if she too would blacken and blow away. He looked at once like the boy she’d known. No longer terrifying, no longer other. He looked young. Scared. “Archer…”
“What you do is, you start small,” he said into the ground. “Little rites, tiny curses. They curdle your heart, but I had no choice. You have to build up to the type of darkness what can kill the bells. That’s where the others went wrong, I thought. They went too dark, all at once.”
“The others,” Ivy murmured, half to herself.
“Every solstice for three years.” He raised his head and looked at her. “The things I did—I sacrificed animals, I cast curses. I didn’t want to— I couldn’t bear to hurt others, so I cast them on myself. It was the only way. Curses of pain and anger and despair.”
Are you Archer, or are you some dreadful thing made to look like him?
I ask myself that every day.
Since he’d awoken, brimming with dark magic, she’d allowed herself to believe horrible things, to picture blood-soaked rites or unspeakable deeds. But somehow knowing the truth was even worse, that Archer—her sweet, loving Archer—had been so unwilling to let others suffer for the power he hoped to gain that he cursed himself. She remembered the new scars on his skin, recalled the angry words he’d thrown at her and the sadness that filled his face when he spoke about the past.
What memories, what dreams had he sacrificed to bring down the bells?
“I thought I was going to die tonight, like the others did. When I woke up and you were standing over me, your hair all white and glowing in the firelight—” He reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. It tingled against her skin, but did not burn. “You looked like an angel, Ivy. I wondered if I was dead after all.” He leaned in.
Ivy shot up and strode into the flowers, the scent of redbell filling her head and hopefully driving away whatever dark magic Archer wove with his words. Forest tricks, forest tricks. She was always such a sucker for them. Ivy didn’t stop until she reached the glass, and she rested her cheek against the frozen pane, icing away the memory of Archer’s touch.
“Hoped I was, even,” he called after her, his voice booming through the greenhouse like wishing for death was something to admit out loud. “I didn’t like the person I was becoming, all these months. All this dark magic. I don’t love the memory of the things I did to get here, of the sacrifices I’ve made.”
She should send him away. Home to his forest woman and his sick children. They could wrap her redbells in packs of greenhouse moss — it should protect them from whatever curse lay upon her old lover, at least for long enough for him to bring the life-saving flowers back to his home.
“Ivy.” The whisper felt close enough to come from inside her own head. Her eyes flew open and met Archer’s. He stood half a pane of glass away, leaning against the outer wall as if for support. “Don’t you see? It was all worth it, to be here with you.” He touched her again, and a vision bloomed in her head—the perfect summer night where they’d given themselves to one another beneath a fat, white moon.
She pulled back. “Don’t you dare.” That memory was hers to savor, not his to manipulate. Hers to keep and cherish, no matter what else had followed. Losing him, her father, losing everyone, the bells, those bells, those awful years of bells. And tonight, worst of all, with the bells gone and Archer here and knowing he still wasn’t hers, could never be hers. Magic or no, bells or silence, Archer was forest and she was town and that was the way it was.
“I thought I’d die tonight,” he said. “Die without ever seeing you again. I thought I’d convinced myself that I didn’t care, that you were just some townie who’d abandoned me.”
“Abandoned you?” she whispered, as angrily as she could whisper. He’d never know what she went through the night the barrier went up.
“You were my first great curse, you see. Trapped away in the forest, my love for you was a flower caught in amber, ever safe.”
She sealed her lips over the choking, little cry that erupted from her throat. That couldn’t be true. What about the woman? The children?
“Until last year, when I knew it would have to be me to take on the bells this solstice. I killed animals, burnt living trees. I cast curses on myself, spells of sorrow and rage. I left the village, was shunned by the others…”
Unbidden, the image of Archer wreathed in firelight loomed up in her mind’s eye. Laughing, lighthearted Archer, who loved chocolate and tree-climbing and being kissed in the hollow of his throat. The forest folk must have been desperate indeed, to turn to him to save them.
“By the equinox, I was ready, and I knew which curse to choose.” He reached for her, his fingers hooking round a curl of her blonde hair. “You were a golden gem, hidden away in my heart, but I had the tools to smash yo
u into shards. It gave me power; to hate you, Ivy Potter, it made me strong.” He released the strand of her hair and stared down at his ashen hands. “But it made me hideous, too. It’s a wonder you can’t see it. There has been none but forest folk to lay eyes on me until tonight, and they never did it unless they had to. I came to think I was as ugly as I appeared, until…”
Until she looked at him. Ivy and her unmagical eyes. How silly, to think that it was the Archer free of glamour who was the more beautiful. But she supposed it made sense. After all, the enchantments he wore were reflections of the darkness in his soul. To forest folk, the fact that she couldn’t see how horrible he’d become within was the fault, his skin-deep beauty the disguise.
The darkness buzzed around him like angry gnats, and she was sure that if she were magic, he’d look terrifying indeed. “You did look scary to me,” she admitted. “When you first woke up. Your eyes were black, all black, like a frog or a spider’s eyes.”
He blinked at her, his eyebrows arching over green eyes wide with surprise. “And they aren’t now?”
She shook her head. “No. For a while, in the shop, they changed back and forth, but—” She shrugged. “It’s just traces of my forest blood. Don’t mind me.”
“I always mind you.”
Now, she shut her eyes, squeezed them tight, because it was her only choice. Her ears, sensitized to silence after years of the barrier din, thrilled at every syllable. She couldn’t shut him out, his soft, whispered words. No matter how much she wanted to, needed to, in order to keep to the path she’d started down all those years ago.
She replayed the night in her mind, trying to make sense of it all. “When you first woke up,” she said, eyes still closed, “you looked wrong. But then, after you…” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “After you kissed me, I thought it must have been a mistake, because your eyes were green again.”
“And they stayed green.”
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her intently. “No. They… they flickered for a while.” She tried to back away, to find the curve of the glass against her back. “What does it matter, Archer? Must you know exactly how blind I am to your forest enchantments?”
He contemplated her. “You are not blind—not exactly. To someone like me, you are nearsighted. You only see the greatest, most blatant of magics. Perhaps the curse that enveloped me when I attacked the bells is already fading.”
She glanced out the window at the silent forest. “Does that mean they will start to ring again?” There was a catch in her voice that betrayed her, though she wasn’t sure of its cause. Did she fear that Archer would be trapped here with her, or that he’d be unable to carry her off?
Impossible options, both.
“No,” he said. “The spell is broken. The forest is free… for now.”
Meaning until the townsfolk chose to the raise the barrier again, of which Ivy held little doubt. A wild, wicked, bloody forest man who broke through at midnight and freely boasted of the dark magic he’d wrought to thwart them? They as good as had a new face for their posters.
“The forest is free,” she repeated, “but you are cursed.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “More’s the pity for those I force into my company.”
Her gaze shot back to him, her mouth a thin line. “I will not go with you. You can have my flowers, nothing more.”
Archer pressed closer, trapping her between the glass and the planes of his chest. “I will have what I say.”
His voice made her weak; her body quaked with desire. But it was impossibly wrong to listen, to even so much as imagine. Ivy swallowed, tilting her chin up to give him a fearful glance. “Please. I cannot help you by going with you. Just take my redbells and leave.”
“And I cannot bear to leave you here.” The words tore out of him. “Don’t you see? I cannot even curse you away, Ivy. I tried, and it is clear to me I failed. All the blood and sacrifice, and the dread I cast upon my soul… do you know what the darkest wish in my heart is right now?”
The moment stretched out like eternity. Ivy didn’t want to know.
But Archer spoke anyway. “I would trample your entire crop if it meant I had an excuse to haul you back into the forest and keep you there forever.”
She shoved at his shoulders, panic overtaking all her good sense to avoid his touch. “I will not! Go away, Archer. Go home. You have a wife, you have children.”
He stared at her for a second, confused, and then his expression softened. For a second, she thought he might laugh.
“What?” she asked, appalled. She stopped shoving, but her palms remained on his chest.
“Nephews,” he replied, leaning in. “And the girl I guess you saw was my brother’s.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You said they were yours!”
“They are. My responsibility, I mean. Everything I’ve done, it’s for them. My brother’s dead. He was the last to attempt the solstice rites.”
Ivy vaguely remembered Archer’s older brother. Solemn and serious where her lover had been bright and charming. Like Ivy’s own mother, he’d been a ranger long before Ivy and Archer had gone from childhood friends to something more, and she’d only met him a handful of times.
And now Ivy knew they both had lost someone at the barrier. But then why had Archer made her think the children were his? “Forest tricks,” she mumbled. She had to remember. “Forest tricks.”
“I do not lie, Ivy. You know that. The children you saw in my vision… how old are they?”
Ivy blinked. That was a good point. She wasn’t good with estimating the age of kids. There were so few in this neighborhood, after all. But the ones she’d seen in Archer’s memories weren’t babies. And they would have to be, wouldn’t they? Three years wasn’t enough for Archer to have anything older than a toddler, even if he’d started right away.
Forest tricks, indeed. No wonder he was laughing at her mistake.
“But they are still my responsibility,” he said. “I cannot leave them to their fate in the forest.”
What would his responsibility have been to children he left in town? Her mother hadn’t seemed to mind leaving Ivy there. Forest folk weren’t very consistent when it came to such things. “And what would have happened to them had you died during your ritual tonight?”
“I would have died trying to save them,” he pointed out. “As my brother did. That’s different.”
She didn’t need to hear his forest folk logic. Dead was dead, and alone was alone, no matter what lofty ideals had preceded the action. It didn’t matter if her father had been despairing of the loss of the forest, or reaching for a flower, or if he’d just tripped and fallen into the barrier. He was gone, either way.
“You liked making me think they were yours,” Ivy accused Archer. “Admit it.”
“Fine.” His jaw was set. “I was less than forthcoming. Does it make you happy I’m still bitter you chose your precious town over me?”
“You chose the forest over me!” she snapped at him. “You could have left back then. My father warned you all—”
“More lies!” he replied. “And you accuse me of trickery, of treachery? Your father told us nothing. We had no idea we were about to be trapped. Remember how I said I came looking for you the day after the bells began to ring? Would I have done so if I’d known there was no way across the barrier?”
Ivy felt like she might choke. Her arms dropped to her sides. Her father had told everyone he’d gone to the forest people and presented his case. Why would he lie? She remembered how heartbroken he’d been that they rejected him. He’d told her how they’d laughed at him, rebuffed him, called him a silly townie. He’d explained how even his wife—even Ivy’s mother—had chosen the forest over her own safety.
He’d told her all of this, and Ivy had comforted him. It had to be true. The life she’d lived, the duties she’d upheld, the torture she’d suffered and the feelings she was even now at this moment fighting to deny—it had to be true. The fores
t was evil, the folk there were fickle, the town was safe, and her choices were right.
Archer leaned in now, his hands braced above her on the thick, wavy glass. “Don’t you think if he’d warned us, I would have run to town to be with you? Ivy, Ivy, did you think so little of me as to believe that?”
She swallowed, hard, the council’s posters flashing before her eyes. The vine-wrapped girl sentenced to a life of forest drudgery, the men with eyes of violets, the roar of rumors in town warning of forest men and forest tricks. The words of her father, echoing in her head every day and night as she tried to convince herself he was right. The forest folk are different. The forest folk cannot be trusted. They don’t think as we do, don’t live as we do, can’t love as we do…
“I would have given up everything I’d ever known to be with you,” he cried. “But you… you, who knew the barrier would go up, did you come for me?”
Ivy hung her head, miserable. That awful night. She hadn’t even heard the bells start to ring, she’d been so encased in her own despair. This was the problem with having a boyfriend who had no email, no cell phone, not even a real address. She couldn’t tell him that even as his cage lowered, she was trapped, too.
“I tried.”
“What?” It was more a breath than a word. She couldn’t face him, though he was only inches away.
“I tried, Archer. I would have given it all up, too. My father had to lock me in my room the night the bells began to ring.”
Silence fell, a quiet more complete than a snowy night, unbroken by the jangle of silver bells. Blood rushed in Ivy’s ears, her heart pounded, but she didn’t breathe. Neither did Archer.
Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and three years of waiting crashed down around them both.