It took a minute for Wynn to remember where she was. She rubbed her eyes and blinked up at Flame. It didn’t seem like morning. It was still very dark. Wynn got to her feet. Mildred pecked at one of the bulby fruits near the fire. Wynn motioned for her to follow, and the hen trotted to her heel. As Wynn came to the door, she saw the heavy dark clouds hanging over the trees.
“The air is too cool. You can feel the charge of lightning in the air. A storm is coming,” Flame said as she leaned on her staff. “We have to get you home.”
Flame crept down the path that led out of the ruins. She hunched over low, swinging her long staff in front of her. Shadow joined her with long strides. Flame reached out to grip Shadow’s thick ruff. Together they climbed down the hill. Wynn did her best to follow. Mildred flapped and clucked along. She pecked at several fluttery bugs along the way.
Flame stayed silent, and Wynn did the same. Flame knew these woods, so what she did was probably wise. As they wandered farther from Flame’s home, the woods grew heavy. The forest felt dark and bitterly cold and damp. The trees became twisted and ugly. The bark on the trunks was as black as the crackled husks of old logs that had burned through the night.
There were no more colorful mushrooms here with pretty white spots. The mushrooms that grew here looked like dripping trenchers of moldy stew, sickly and brown. No white flowers shone in the dim light. Wynn didn’t see a single flower at all. The sweet purple fruit was different. Wynn saw the fruit hanging from the trees. It was black and wrinkly, and looked as bitter as it probably tasted.
Whatever beauty she found in the Nightfell Wood faded with every step they took away from the ruins. And yet, as they walked, the forest seemed to be trying to be pretty. Wynn spotted tiny sprouts pushing up through the leaves in Flame’s footsteps. But they wouldn’t last long in the dim light of this part of the Nightfell Wood. The cold, wet air clung to Wynn’s face and neck, chilling her. Every once in a while, a heavy droplet of water would hit her on the top of the head.
Wynn followed Flame as she marched through the woods. Her smoke-and-shadow dress billowed around her, and Shadow stayed close to her side. Mildred hopped up on Shadow’s hindquarters and settled down to roost on the tigereon’s backside, but Shadow turned around and hissed at her. The hen jumped off, flapping her wings in a very insulted sort of way.
Every once in a while, Shadow lifted her head and sniffed, then swung her tail and let out a low growl. Flame dropped down next to the tigereon, and Wynn tucked herself down too. Even Mildred would hunch down over her feet and coo softly. They would wait for a moment or two, before Shadow would twitch the tip of her tail and lead the way forward again.
“What is out there?” Wynn asked.
“There are elves nearby,” Flame whispered. “Stay close and be careful. They are cunning creatures.”
The path twisted through the gnarled trees. Wynn couldn’t see the shield. It blended with the stormy sky through the gaps in the leaves. Mildred came close to her ankle, and pecked at her bare foot. Wynn picked the hen up.
“What is wrong?” Wynn asked the hen. Mildred looked back over Wynn’s shoulder and let out a cautious clucking sound.
Shadow stopped too. The tigereon lifted her head and sniffed the air. Flame prodded the ground with her staff. She took a cautious step, testing the ground before shifting her weight forward. Shadow crouched low and crept up beside her. Her tail slashed through the darkness, the white spot on the end of it looked like a warning flag.
“Flame?” Wynn had a bad feeling. She could feel it crawling on her skin, like an oily slime oozing over her.
“There’s something here,” Flame said, letting go of Shadow and taking a few careful steps forward. “The ground doesn’t feel right.”
Wynn placed Mildred down. Thick, dry leaves crunched beneath her bare feet. They weren’t wet and slimy here like the rest of the trail. She didn’t like this.
Flame jabbed at the ground again with her staff. Something cracked. It sounded like an old branch. The ground beneath Flame gave way, and she sank down several inches. “Wynn, stay back!” Flame shouted.
Shadow snarled and leaped forward to reach Flame.
“Shadow, stay!” Flame called. But the tigereon didn’t listen.
Shadow landed in front of Flame. The ground beneath them buckled. Wynn ran as fast as she could and grabbed Flame’s outstretched arm. She pulled them both backward toward the roots of a thick tree.
Flame landed on top of Wynn, knocking her down on the solid ground, but Shadow wasn’t fast enough. The ground fell away from beneath the tigereon. She jumped, her enormous claws outstretched, and caught the twisted roots near Wynn’s feet.
The great cat screamed as she clawed at the ground, desperate to pull herself out of the pit that had opened up beneath her. A vine pulled taut, shaking several broad leaves away from a large bell. It sounded above them, tolling with a dark and grim sound.
“What just happened?” Flame asked, pushing away from Wynn. “Where’s Shadow?”
“Oh!” Wynn crawled forward, reaching the edge of a great pit. Sharp wooden pikes had been buried in the bottom of the trap, but the tigereon had managed to avoid falling on them. Her claws still clung to the tree’s roots, while her tail thrashed over the sharp pikes. “Shadow fell!”
Flame prodded the ground with her staff, but as soon as she came to the pit, she fell to her knees. “Shadow!” she called. She clung to her staff. “Is she hurt?” she cried.
“No,” Wynn answered. But Shadow was in danger. The spikes were very sharp. They would hurt her. The tigereon needed something to climb out with. Wynn looked around. There had to be something she could use to help.
A part of the top of the trap hung on the far side of the pit. It had caught on the vine that rang the bell. It looked like a lattice of branches tied with ropes. It didn’t look very strong.
“Do something!” Flame screamed. She reached down the pit with her hand, and Shadow tried to claw up toward her. “Please!”
Wynn grabbed the piece of lattice and dragged it over to the side of the trap where Shadow clung to the wall of the pit. She had to use her whole body to drag it. Flame stayed on the edge of the pit. She knelt along the side, reaching down into it with her staff a few feet away from Shadow.
Wynn pulled the lattice over to the tigereon by herself. “Help me,” she called to Flame. She looped a section of the lattice over a thick root. It swung deeper into the pit, but didn’t fall.
Shadow’s enormous claws caught on the lattice. They sliced through a piece of rope, and part of the lattice crumbled. Shadow hissed.
“Help!” Wynn called as she clung to the lattice and fell back, bracing her feet on the curled root holding the lattice. Flame slapped Wynn on the shoulder, then felt along her arm until she too grabbed the lattice and braced.
Shadow tried again, reaching with her large paws. This time the lattice didn’t break. Slowly the tigereon dragged herself out of the pit. Her paw reached the top of the trap and Wynn grabbed it. Shadow’s eyes blazed with amber fire and she snarled. Flame grabbed the cat’s ruff and pulled. Finally Shadow dragged herself to the top.
Flame wrapped her arms around Shadow’s thick neck and cried into her fur. Shadow panted, then looked toward Wynn and squeezed her eyes shut.
“You saved her, Wynn,” Flame said. “You saved her.”
Wynn came forward and stroked the cat’s shoulder. Mildred trotted over and sat on the tigereon’s paw. Her stripes shimmered with pretty lavenders and yellows. Wynn knew, even though she couldn’t hear Shadow talking, that she was grateful.
A whistle floated over the air somewhere behind her. Wynn turned. That was a strange-sounding bird.
Shadow stopped panting and her stripes immediately faded to dark green and brown, until she nearly disappeared into the forest floor. Another whistle answered it.
Flame’s eyes went wide. “The elves. They’re here.”
Flame swung herself over Shadow’s back. The cat got to
her feet. Flame reached back for Wynn to help her climb up on Shadow’s back too. “Come on!” she shouted. Wynn tried to swing her leg over Shadow’s hip. But then Shadow bounded forward, and Wynn tipped backward. She rolled off Shadow’s back and hit the ground hard.
“Wynn!” Flame cried. But Shadow did not stop. “Wynn, run! Hurry!”
Wynn scrambled to her feet and chased after the tigereon, but it was too late. Shadow charged forward with Flame riding her. The two of them disappeared into the woods.
Wynn bent down, panting. Mildred had disappeared. She had to find her. She straightened and began calling for her, but Mildred didn’t come out from under any of the bushes. Wynn was alone again. She lay down and curled into a little ball as the woods teemed with movement.
Suddenly an enormous boar emerged from the underbrush with a loud squeal. It had been harnessed to the strangest wagon that had been camouflaged with thick leaves and branches. The wheels had pegs jutting out around the tread that looked like severed boar’s feet. They left boar prints on the trail instead of wagon tracks.
The driver of the wagon rode high on a crafted seat. He wore a simple brown robe with a heavy hood. He pulled on the reins, tied through a ring in the boar’s nose, and his hood fell away from his face.
His skin was a vivid green, with patches of lighter green skin that swirled in complex patterns over his bald head and cheeks. The same curling patterns covered his hands. He had a narrow nose, tall pointed ears, and deep-set eyes that glowed orange.
Another wagon approached. The man in front of her tipped a contraption with a sharp spear point toward Wynn’s throat. She batted it to the side, but he frowned at her, and pointed it even closer to her neck.
“Quis es?” he said.
She looked at him, puzzled. “I don’t know,” she said. She had never heard those words before.
The other fearsome green man murmured more of the strange words in confused whispers as they attempted to rein in the restless boars. The beasts swung their heads and squealed. The second man pointed a terrifying contraption with an arrow toward her. She recognized it from the scary picture on Flame’s wall.
“You speak the Saxon language of the Otherworld?” one of the strange boar riders asked. He said the words funny. They sounded very different. He peered at her with those burning orange eyes. “What is your name?”
“My name is Wynn,” she said. “I need to go home.”
More murmurs in strange words.
“You are to come with us.” An elf motioned behind him. Two more green men, and one green woman jumped out of the strange wagons. They rushed to Wynn’s sides. They hurt her as they bent her arms together and tied her wrists tightly with a rope.
“No!” she cried. “I don’t like that.” She couldn’t say anything else before her throat closed up and her thoughts didn’t come to her mouth anymore. She wanted to go home.
The man in the front leaned very close to her. She saw his orange eyes flash as his mouth set in a grim line. “You belong to us now.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Elric
TWISTED TREES LOOMED OVER ELRIC on the edge of the Nightfell Wood. Cold mist rose from the damp ground. He could feel the wetness of the air on his face and couldn’t fight the urge to shudder. It was still very early, and not yet fully light. Elric wasn’t sure bright light ever made it through the thick canopy of leaves above them. It felt very strange here, like the trees could reach down and steal any happy thought from his head. He tried to imagine Wynn laughing and singing in this place as she chased after Mildred. It didn’t seem possible.
He peered through the shield. On this side, the surface of it looked like a storm of dark clouds that washed everything within the shield with bleak gray. It was as if the light, magic, and vibrant colors of the fairy realm simply didn’t exist at all. He could see the great tree in the distance, but it appeared as dark and lifeless as the trees around him. No blue lights shone in the stone towers surrounding it. The fields of colorful flowers looked like barren winter fields.
Osmund brushed his shoulders, as if shaking spiders off his vest. “Well, this is awful.” He gave Elric a hard pat on the shoulder. “Let’s get moving.”
Elric shook his foggy head. “Right,” he said. “You’re right. Are you any good at tracking?”
Osmund made a wobbly motion with his hand. “I didn’t really have a need back home.”
Elric nodded. “Then I’ll lead the way.” He’d often had to track lost sheep through the woods, or hunt down the predators that stalked his flock. He tried to push the bad feeling out of his mind as he looked to the ground for clues. The dirt was soft, which was good for tracking, and the soil held a lot of clay. Tracks would be deep and clear, and they would hold their form.
He immediately found several footprints. One a muffled shape of a foot, and the other distinct with toes. He also found chicken prints. But there seemed to be two sets of them, and they scrambled all over. He also found the long, twisting whiplike marks of the belly of a snake.
It looked like Wynn had found trouble almost immediately. His heart sped up. He couldn’t let his imagination run away with him. Too much was at stake. He had to look only at what was in front of him and follow the clues she left him. Her footprints crisscrossed the clearing, but then led into the woods. “This way.” Elric pointed through a gap in the trees. He couldn’t really call it a path.
Osmund swung his ax and lopped off a branch. He pulled a crystal out of his pocket and set it in a split in the wood. It glowed with a soft light.
“That’s one of the starlight crystals.” Elric came closer. He had several of them embedded in the wood of the tree above his bed. “How did you get it out from the wall?”
“When you live in a tree”—Osmund gave a half shrug—“an ax comes in handy.”
“You didn’t!” Elric stared at Osmund.
“Let’s not worry about that now.” Osmund lowered the stick to the ground to better illuminate the tracks. “I’m sure it will grow back. . . .” He took a couple of steps forward, concentrating on the tracks. “Eventually,” he added. “I knew we would need a light under the canopy.”
“How?” Elric asked.
Osmund looked up at him and grimaced before inspecting the ground again. “Because I’ve been here before.”
“What happened?” Elric asked in shock.
Osmund bent to pick up one of Mildred’s dark feathers. “It was foolish, and Zephyr’s fault.” Osmund sighed. “No, it was my fault.”
He searched the ground for another clue, twirling Mildred’s feather between his fingers. “When I was about your age, Zephyr and I were stealing pies from the kitchen. I told him I wanted to see what was on the other side of the shield. He was livid. He said he wouldn’t help me. I threatened to tell Lord Raven about some terrible prank he had pulled. He still insisted he wouldn’t help, said it was too dangerous. I called him a coward. I’m sorry for that.
“That night Zephyr woke me up. He stayed silent and motioned me to follow. He led me out to the shield and I stepped through, thinking he would be there to help me back. But he disappeared, and I was trapped.” Osmund tossed the feather to the ground and peered more intently at the path.
“Zephyr just abandoned you?” Elric couldn’t believe his friend would do such a thing.
“I confronted him about it when he caught me trying to undo the spell on your door. He swears he never saw me that night. He claims he never knew what happened. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be held responsible for my disappearance, but it bothers me that he won’t admit he made a mistake.” Osmund faced Elric. “I hope he’ll be there when we need him.”
“He will be,” Elric insisted. He couldn’t believe Zeph would leave Osmund in the Nightfell Wood alone. Something wasn’t adding up.
“How did you end up in the Otherworld?” Elric asked. Maybe Wynn could find a similar way to escape this place.
“There was a reaper in the woods. I hid in the ruins of the lost
elf city, but was chased by the Grendel.” Osmund rubbed the back of his neck. “He surrounded himself with shadow and smoke and kept a fearsome striped beast at his side. I came upon the old portal that had been used by the elves. As soon as the Grendel stepped on the seal, it glowed, and I fell through to the Otherworld. It was a narrow escape.”
“Why would you want to see the other side of the shield?” Elric asked. “This place is terrible.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Osmund insisted.
“Of course I wouldn’t. The shield is there for a reason. It keeps everyone safe.” Sure, he had felt trapped while he was locked in his room, but now that he was beyond the shield, he wanted to run back inside it. Elric didn’t like feeling so exposed. There was a reaper somewhere in these woods. He had seen it.
“Yet here we are,” Osmund said, motioning around. “Wonderfully unsafe.”
“I had no choice,” Elric protested. “The queen forbade me from finding Wynn.”
“Well, maybe I didn’t have a choice either.” Osmund’s voice was tinged with a very old anger and frustration. He let out a sigh and shrugged. “I was a foolish kid, what can I say?”
“It had to be hard, when you discovered what the Otherworld was like.” Elric remembered how difficult it was to survive on his own with Wynn, with no one to look out for them. “The Otherworld has so many bad things.”
Osmund gave him that disbelieving look that he had given Elric when they first met, and Elric underestimated the man. “You can be truly terrible as seeing past your own nose.” He motioned to the woods with his glowing rock. “I liked the Otherworld. I had a home that I built with my own two hands that suited me, the woods gave me what I needed, and for the most part I endeared myself to people.”
Elric gave him a skeptical look.
Osmund bent to examine a broken stick. “What? No one can resist my sunny personality.”
If they were anywhere else, Elric might have chuckled. Here, he didn’t have the spirit to give Osmund anything more than an exasperated shake of the head. Osmund walked ahead. “When I lived here, I knew I was growing older, but I wasn’t sure if I was growing up. Make no mistake, I’m not glad to be back.”
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