The two elves nearest her lunged for her. She couldn’t escape them because she was sitting. Strong hands gripped Wynn by the shoulders and hauled her to her feet. Wynn shouted and kicked out, hitting one in the shin. He stumbled to the side. Hob bounded through the room as another elf chased after him.
“Run, Hob!” she cried. Hob dashed about, bouncing as quick as lightning. His red fur looked like blurred streaks as he darted through the legs of the confused elves. The elves wrenched her arms back. Wynn stomped on the foot of the one to her right, and he let go enough for her to yank one hand free. She lunged forward and grabbed the net wrapped around Mildred.
She pulled it away from the elf holding it, and it loosened enough for Mildred to push her way out.
Elves scrambled around the hall as the hen darted between their legs and managed to slip out the door.
“Run!” Wynn screamed at both of them, before strong arms wrestled her away from the hall. Mildred was free! She was a clever hen. She’d find a way out of their nasty village. Wynn wanted to follow, but the elves holding her dragged her down a narrow hallway and through a doorway to a courtyard in the back of the throne hall. A pen of snorting boars grunted and squealed as they passed. She couldn’t see Hob or Mildred. She hoped they would escape. Hob could find help.
“Get on, you troublesome creature!” the elf dragging her shouted as he kicked open the wooden door to another building partially built down into the ground like a cellar. They carried her down a narrow and dark hallway with crossed timber beams overhead. An elf in a simple brown hooded robe used a key to unlock a narrow door. The elves holding her tossed her in a dark room, and shut the heavy door.
Wynn struggled to her feet. Her arms burned where they had held her. She pounded on the door and screamed at it. It wasn’t any use. It didn’t matter. She pounded and screamed at it some more because she wanted to. She was angry. She carried on until her throat felt raw and her fist burned with pain and splinters.
Finally she collapsed on a framed rope bed in the corner. Wynn hugged herself as she sat on the lumpy mattress. The ropes creaked beneath her as she rocked herself to soothe her fear and her anger. Mildred and Hob were gone. That was good. She didn’t want them trapped too.
It was very dark in the room. There was no window. Just bits of streaky light shining in between the planks of the heavy wooden walls. She was completely alone, and she didn’t see any way out.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Elric
ELRIC PUSHED ASIDE A SMALL pile of leaves on the trail he had been following most of the day. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake, even if it meant the hunt for the reaper lasted until they lost the light of day. He would search all night if that was what it took. Each moment that ticked by was another moment that his stomach twisted into knots and the bile rose in his throat. Wynn was in danger, and he couldn’t find her.
They had tracked the reaper back toward the stormy shield. “Elric! Over here!” Osmund called as he stood on the root of a large tree and stretched upward to get a closer look at something on the trunk. Elric ran to him. There was a dark stain above the bushes. He reached up and touched it. His finger came away smeared with old blood. Small red hairs had caught in the bark.
Hob.
He was wounded.
Elric searched the bush below. He saw broken leaves and twigs, but he didn’t find Hob’s body. He couldn’t locate Hob’s tracks, either. Blood stained some leaves beneath the bush, but Elric detected no signs that he was still alive. Elric’s heart pounded harder as he searched for signs of Wynn. Footprints, bits of cloth, anything.
“Over here,” Osmund called. He held up Wynn’s crown.
The dangers of the wood faded away. He took the circlet in his hands. It was a simple crown, a silver band engraved with stars, where his had leaves. It was bent in on one side, like it had been stepped on. Now it was nothing more than a fragile broken circle that had once sat on his sister’s head. Words didn’t come. Thoughts wouldn’t come. Even his feelings seemed pressed under a weight so thick and terrible it seemed like he could drown in it.
The terrifying monster had his sweet sister. He had only had the courage to face one through the safety of the shield. There was no safety here. Those claws, those teeth, those burning eyes.
A creature like that could kill Wynn in a second. It had no mercy.
Elric gritted his teeth. And Master Elk said that a reaper would drag him back to the Grendel. They didn’t kill outright.
“He’s taking her to the Grendel,” Elric said. “We have to stop him. Follow me.” Elric ran down the narrow path.
“Elric, wait!” Osmund demanded.
He clutched Wynn’s crown, following the path of the reaper like a hound on the scent of a wolf. His rage drove him forward as he climbed over the twisted roots of the trees, and leaped over ditches filled with slimy leaves.
Osmund did his best to catch up, but an unnatural determination had come over Elric. He wanted to destroy the foul beast for daring to touch his sister. He had to find and stop the creature before he could deliver her to the evil fairy who waited in the shadows.
The Grendel had caused the fairy realm endless misery. No more.
Elric blazed forward, but the trail was becoming harder and harder to follow. The ground was firmer here, the tracks less evident. Under a bush he found a piece of bright silk, Wynn’s slipper. He was going the right way.
Just as he was about to run forward again, Osmund caught him and spun him around. He fought to catch his breath, but his expression looked as if he were about to breathe fire.
“You have to slow down,” he panted. “We are going to lose the trail, and then we will be turned around in these infernal woods.”
Elric paused enough to take a quick glance around. The trees had grown thicker, their branches hanging with heavy vines, turning the forest into a maze beneath the dark canopy. Cold water dripped on his shoulders from the edges of serrated leaves. Every feature of the woods looked the same until he had a hard time distinguishing the direction they just came from.
“We can’t let him get away,” Elric said. His throat burned, and he, too, struggled for breath. “She might still be alive.”
Osmund put a hand on Elric’s shoulder. “I know. But now is not the time to lose your wits. Your sister needs you, and the queen needs all of us.”
“I don’t care about the queen,” Elric said.
Osmund took a step up the path. “Yes, you do. And you care about the people beneath that shield. They would be in terrible danger if the queen died. The best thing you can do right now is keep your head.”
“The queen doesn’t care about me,” Elric said. “It’s Wynn she loves. She wanted to use me as bait for the Grendel to keep the reapers away from Wynn.”
Osmund’s eyes widened. “That can’t be true.”
“Look, I don’t mind,” Elric said, starting off down the path again, knowing each step brought him closer to battle with a terrifying monster. “Wynn needs to stay safe, and if I have to sacrifice myself, then so be it.”
Osmund grabbed him by the sleeve. “Listen to yourself,” he said. “What would Wynn think about what you are saying right now?”
“Wynn wouldn’t understand.” Elric hung his head. “Back in the Otherworld, Mother kept her. I had to go with Father.”
It wasn’t exactly a pleasant life. Father hardly ever talked to him growing up. When he did, it was to complain about the weather, or the fact that Elric smelled like wet sheep. Mostly he just barked at Elric to do chores and accept his lot in life. He knew his father cared for him in some way, but he was only focused on their survival.
Mother, on the other hand . . . their mother was different. Elric wished sometimes that he could have stayed with his mother all the time the way Wynn did. It was no use thinking this way. Elric sighed. “Wynn had to be cared for. I was fine on my own. I didn’t need that love. I could get by.”
And yet, the times in his childhood when he had bee
n the most happy were the ones when he could sneak away from his responsibilities and spend a few carefree hours with his mother and sister singing songs and playing silly games that Wynn made up using sticks and rocks.
Osmund rested his hands on his ax handle. “You don’t give Wynn enough credit,” he said. “Or your mother.” He used the ax to push himself up an embankment. “Or the queen, for that matter. She may have been overprotective, but I never doubted that she loved me.”
“She barely knows me,” Elric complained. They had only been living in the Between for a few months.
“She has watched you from afar for over ten years,” Osmund stated. “She gave you her silver branch and showed you the gate. Don’t take those actions lightly. It means she believed in you.” Osmund let out a sardonic huff. “I sure didn’t.”
“She showed Wynn the gate,” he said. “Wynn was the one who knew where to go.”
“Did she?” Osmund asked. Now that Elric thought about it, when the gate appeared, Wynn was unconscious. Osmund took a cautious step forward toward a deep ditch. Something caught his attention in the bottom of it. “Come look at this.” Osmund got down on his belly and reached into the ditch with his ax. He hooked something with the curve of his blade, and lifted it up.
It was the sash from Wynn’s dress. A dried brown stain marred most of the material.
Elric’s hands shook as he lifted it off Osmund’s blade. “She’s bleeding.”
“It’s dried,” he said. “This probably happened not long after she entered the wood.”
Elric bit his lip to keep his emotions from overwhelming him. He needed a clear mind. He inhaled deeply to calm himself, but the scent of rotting meat entered his lungs. “Do you smell something?”
Osmund got to his feet and lifted his nose to the air. “Faintly, but I never had a very good sense of smell.”
Now that Elric could smell it, the scent nearly overwhelmed him. It reminded him of the animal carcass pit on the edge of the town near where Osmund lived, but there was a fouler scent that clung to the rotting odor, something oily and acrid.
Elric followed the scent under a low-hanging branch. He nearly got sick again, hoping against all hope that he wouldn’t see what he thought he might see when he ducked under the branch. In his mind he pictured a crumpled body in a ripped and dirty white dress.
When he looked up, he saw something else entirely.
The body of a pale gray reaper lay on the ground in a pool of sticky black blood. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth between its fangs as large dark flies buzzed around its dead eyes.
Osmund stepped up next to Elric and caught sight of the beast. He made to say something, but ended up gaping at the dead creature. “I don’t think Mildred did that,” he finally said.
Elric cautiously stepped forward. He poked at the creature with the tip of his sword. “Its throat has been ripped out. What could have done this?”
Osmund approached with cautious steps. “I don’t know. This is definitely not the handiwork of elves. They use much cleaner and more sophisticated weapons.” He looked at the claw marks raking the reaper’s side. “Whatever creature attacked him, it had to be enormous, at least as large as the reaper itself.”
Elric had watched the finest warrior in the queen’s guard battle this monster, and he nearly lost his life in the struggle. The only wounds he had been able to inflict had been in his animal form. “Could it have been a fairy, one who was in the form of a large animal, like a bear?”
Osmund rubbed his scruffy chin. “I’m not sure how much has changed since I left. Do fairies enter the woods now?” he asked.
“No,” Elric answered. “Never. It is forbidden.” For a brief moment he hoped against hope that the fairies had changed their minds and sent their fiercest warriors into the wood in search of Wynn and killed the reaper. But judging by the smell, the reaper had been dead at least a full day, and there was no possible way a fairy rescue party could have stumbled upon this place before him.
Osmund pinched his nose closed and looked around. “Let’s keep searching for Wynn,” he said, his voice sounding funny with his nose closed.
Elric bent and took a closer look at the creature. “This isn’t the reaper I saw attack the shield. The one at the shield had black fur and a black mane. This one is gray all over.”
Osmund stilled, dropping his hand. “If this isn’t the same reaper you saw, there must be more than one in these woods. It will seek to do its master’s bidding.” Osmund gripped his ax. The fading light was masked by heavy clouds. A storm was on the horizon. “We’re being hunted.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Wynn
WYNN FELT HER WAY TO the corner of her prison and sat in it. Sometimes she could hear voices from the elves passing by on the other side of the wall. Sometimes she heard voices through the door. When she did, she pounded on it and told them to let her out. But they spoke in strange words and ignored her.
The light streaking in through the planks of the wall lit up little bits of dust floating in the air. They reminded her of the fairies, and she desperately missed the palace. She was sad. She needed a hug, so Wynn cried. She cried loudly. It made her face wet and nose runny. She started to hiccup between sobs, and her body felt out of her control. She didn’t care if the elves could hear. Her heart felt broken.
The light from outside faded, and she was left in the complete dark. She didn’t think that she’d ever been in a place so dark. When her eyes were open, it looked like they were closed. Wynn wasn’t sure if she had them open or closed anymore. The noises died down. The elves went to go eat supper or sleep. She should be sleeping too. She was very tired, but she was cold, and it was hard to sleep without Mildred.
Wynn hugged her aching knees. Just then, she thought she saw something strange. She blinked, then she saw it again. It was a light, but it was underneath the floor? Wynn crawled forward, placing her hands on the planks of wood beneath her. She leaned all the way down so she could peek with her eye through the crack. Her forehead pressed against the grainy wood. She heard something. Something whirred beneath her, and softly clanked.
The light flickered. Then Wynn saw a hand reach up and cover the crack right where she was peeking. Wynn pulled her head up. Someone grumbled something in another language below her. That’s when she felt something beneath her hand wiggle. One of the planks pushed up into her palm, then collapsed back down. Wynn pulled her hand up, and backed away.
Slowly the plank rose and slid to the side. She saw small hands push another plank, then a third. The hand appeared again, lifting a small lantern into the room. Wynn had to blink because the lantern light seemed very bright. Wynn had never seen anything like it. Light was trapped in a glass globe, but it didn’t look like it was on fire. It wasn’t a glowing magic rock, either. It was very strange. Green hands reached up, bracing on the floor. An elf in a long black robe pushed up through the hole and sat on the edge.
Wynn scurried backward like an upset garden spider until she felt her shoulders thump into the wall. What did this elf want? They weren’t very nice. She didn’t know if this one would be nice, either. She didn’t want to be alone with one.
“Hello?” The elf lowered the dark hood, and Wynn stared at her. She was young. A child just like her. She had a bald head like the other elves, and a soft, round face with long eyelashes framing her eyes. The lighter green marks on her skin made looping patterns that reminded Wynn of flowers, and she wore a necklace with a large amber pendant. A spider was caught inside. She dragged up a sack after her. “I thought you might want this,” she said in a high, sweet voice. The way she spoke was a little clearer than the man elves, like she said her words carefully.
The elf girl opened the top of the sack, and a leathery red chicken comb popped out, followed by a rumpled hen.
“Mildred!” Wynn scooped her chicken up and gave her the biggest hug. Mildred cooed at her, and rested her head on Wynn’s shoulder. Wynn’s body shook, overcome with her happiness.
“They caught her in the village. She couldn’t jump over the wall. She led everyone on a big chase for over an hour. Father put her in a cage and told me to feed her. She looked sad to me, so I brought her to you.” The girl looked down and twisted her fingers. “The elders don’t understand about pets. I have a turtle. I call him Turtle. It’s not a very good name.”
“Thank you,” Wynn said. It was hard to say the words even though she knew them so well. She had been wrong. This elf was very nice. “Thank you so much.”
The girl brightened. She scooted forward on her knees, pulling the sack into her lap. She smiled. It was a nice smile. The light caught in her eyes and they looked gold, like her amber necklace. “I brought you some food. I thought you might be hungry.” The girl pulled a couple of the dark fruits out of her long robe. They were purple, and looked tasty. “Here, take them.”
Wynn took one and bit into it. She enjoyed the sweet taste of the spongy fruit, and even liked the bitter taste that followed this time. She was so hungry. She ate the fruit quickly, shoving as much of it into her mouth as she could. The elf girl giggled, and covered her smile with her hand.
As Wynn swallowed the fruit, she thought hard. “You’re nice,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” The elf girl’s face fell. “I’m not supposed to be here. Please don’t tell.” She looked back down and tugged on the hem of her robe.
Wynn didn’t say anything. She felt very confused. Finally the girl looked her in the eye. “You live with the fairies, don’t you?” the girl blurted out.
Wynn nodded.
The girl stared at the torn skirt of Wynn’s dress. “Are you magic? There isn’t much about magic people in the Otherworld in my books.” She reached into her sack and pulled out a strange object. It looked like a small box with a leather wrap around most of it.
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