Izzy swallowed, unsure if she should say what she was thinking. She was afraid of Rine’s sharp flashes of anger. But his shoulders were curled in. He looked pitiable, sad. Maybe if she said the right thing, she could use his feelings for his friend to turn everything around.
“I don’t think Sasha wanted to hurt you,” said Izzy gently. “He was hiding the clue from you because he was afraid you might hurt someone on Earth. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want you to hurt yourself. I think he kept it a secret because he cared about you.”
Rine bowed his head, staring at the forest floor. “When Peter selected us for the Exchange, he promised us we’d have a better life in Faerie. But our lives were nothing but sorrow. Work and sorrow. And then Sasha died.” He lifted his face, and his eyes gleamed bright again. “And for what? For the sake of two worlds that didn’t want us?”
Rine spoke louder now, biting out the words. “With Sasha gone, I have nothing. No one in this world or any other. Earth and Faerie could burn to ashes, and I wouldn’t shed a tear for either one. In fact, I’ll gladly be the one to do the burning.”
Rine surged forward. Izzy froze, too surprised to keep him from grabbing her wrist.
Marian rushed in front of Rine as he pulled the shadow blade back. “Stop it, you fool. You’ll ruin everything! You can’t get the clue by cutting it out of her. It has to be removed the same way it was put in. I know the spell. I can do it.”
Hyan looked Marian up and down. When she noticed Marian’s pointed ears, she curled her red lips in disdain. “A fairy? Casting spells?”
Delin sneered. “What do you know about witchcraft, old woman?”
Marian glared at him. “I know it’s caused more trouble than good,” she said gruffly. “And I know the spell to get that poem out is a tricky one. You get one chance, and if you botch it, she’ll die, and you’ll never get the last clue to find the King’s Key.”
Rine let go of Izzy’s wrist and stepped back, sweeping his arm in a low bow. “Be my guest,” he said without lowering the dagger. “I’m intrigued to see a fairy who can do any more with witchcraft than dye a shirt.”
“First, you have to let me help the child,” said Marian, nodding down at the place where Selden and Lug knelt beside Dree.
Rine stepped back to let her pass. She hurried to Lug and handed him a jar from her satchel, whispering instructions. He took the jar and swiped a finger through a thick black paste, then gently dabbed it onto Dree, feeling for the place where she was wounded.
Marian stepped in front of Izzy and took both her hands, squeezing them tight. Izzy could feel everyone watching them. The old woman pulled the crumpled spell out of her pocket and read it to herself one more time. Delin snickered.
Marian held her hands in front of Izzy’s heart. They were steady this time. Her mouth was closed, but her jaw bobbed up and down, forming the unspoken words of the spell.
Again, Izzy felt a warm flutter in her chest. She kept breathing steadily as the feeling grew stronger and stronger. She shut her eyes, trying not to let the pain show on her face. She didn’t want to mess Marian up. The scratchy flutter tugged on her, like Marian held a thread tied around her sternum and was pulling, then releasing it, over and over. And then there was one long, painful pull. The warmth in Izzy’s heart blazed white-hot, then went out.
Slowly, Izzy opened her eyes. In her fingers, Marian held a single clean white page ripped along one edge.
Izzy rubbed her sternum. The pain was fading quickly. Everyone stared at the page in Marian’s hand. Izzy couldn’t read it from where she stood, but she could tell it was written in Ida Green’s swooping handwriting.
She couldn’t believe it. There was her poem. That was her, written down in six lines on a sheet of paper.
“Well done, hag,” said Rine coldly. He snatched the paper out of Marian’s hand. His eyes scanned the words, then darted to Izzy. “What is this supposed to mean?”
Izzy brought out the verse of clues from her own pocket and held it out to him. “It’s a poem from The Book of the Bretabairn. When you arrange the titles in the right order, they give the clues to find the King’s Key.” She nodded at the page Rine held between his fingers. “The title of that poem is the last clue. The one we were missing.”
Rine looked back and forth between the two papers as he read them together. He smiled and read the last lines aloud.
Knock thrice with a feather
And say, “I am home.”
“I am home?” whispered Izzy.
Rine walked toward the boulder and the tree. His smile turned bitter as he ran his fingers along the side of the rock.
“Tree and stone. So fitting,” he said in a mocking tone. He turned around and held his arms out wide. “We all get along so well, don’t we? Fairies and humans, tied together by such strong bonds. Bah.” He slapped the rock with his open palm. “I don’t belong here. Neither did Sasha. We never should have been brought here. And you?” He pointed to Izzy and swept his arm out to the other Changelings. “You think you belong on Earth? You don’t! The worlds split for a reason. We were never meant to be together. When I’m done, all this stupid mixing, this stupid Exchanging, will all be finished.” He snapped his fingers, motioning for Izzy to come closer.
Izzy hadn’t taken her eyes off the piece of paper in Rine’s hand. She could see the scrawl of ink through the thin paper, but she couldn’t read it.
Rine caught her looking at it. He balled the paper into his fist and threw it onto the ground.
“Enough stalling. Time to get that Key. I’ll let you open up this treasure box,” he said, patting the boulder. “You can say those ludicrous words. This place isn’t my home. But first, it sounds like we need a feather.”
Izzy reached into her back pocket where she had kept the crow feather that floated into her lap on the day Peter left them. She smoothed out the ragged barbs between her thumb and forefinger and walked up to the boulder.
Izzy held out the feather and tapped it three times on the face of the boulder. She swallowed and placed her open palm against the rock. “I am home,” she whispered.
For a long moment, nothing happened. The woods were still, and it seemed that everyone, Izzy included, was holding their breath.
And then the stone moved under Izzy’s hand. A cut in the shape of a large square ran over the face of the boulder where it had been seamlessly smooth seconds before. Izzy pressed gently, and the square slid inward with a soft swishing noise, as if it hung on well-oiled hinges.
Rine ran his hands along the edges of the doorway. A soft glow lit up the space within. “Keep watch over them,” he called to the other witches as he ducked inside. Izzy followed him.
A small room had been carved out of the boulder, not much bigger than Izzy’s closet back home. The walls and ceiling had little hash marks all over them where the rock had been chiseled away. The roots of the tree emerged here and there, flowing in and out of the walls. Opposite the door was a rough ledge, about shoulder height with Izzy. A candle on the ledge flickered, though how it could have been lit, Izzy didn’t know.
Rine walked up to the ledge. It was covered in a woven brown cloth, like the burlap sacks used on slides at the county fair. Lying on top of the cloth were the most exquisite treasures Izzy had ever seen.
A pale-blue jewel the size of a chicken egg sat on top of a heaping mound of other gems and stones. There was a polished silver apple that reflected a distorted image of Izzy’s face, a stack of thick coins a dull gold color stamped with the symbol of hands clasping, and a thin gold crown set with bloodred stones. Izzy recognized it as the crown worn by King Revelrun in the painting at Netherbee Hall.
Rine looked over the treasures, breathless. But he didn’t take any of them or pick them up. His hand went straight for an object in the center of the ledge. A tiny silver key with an intricately carved handle gleamed brightly in the can
dlelight.
Rine picked up the key carefully. “The King’s Key,” he whispered, holding it up in front of his eyes and turning it back and forth.
He was so mesmerized by the object in his hand that he seemed to have forgotten Izzy was standing behind him. She stared at the other beautiful objects on the ledge. They all looked priceless. All except one. Curious, Izzy took a step closer.
Nestled at the bottom of the pile of precious gems was a plain gray rock.
Rine walked out of the secret room and back into the clearing. Izzy picked up the rock and held it close to the candle. It was about the size of a sugar packet, oval and somewhat flat, like a pebble tumbled smooth by a river. But when Izzy looked closer, she realized it wasn’t just plain gray. Ribbons of golden brown rippled through the stone.
They were thin bands of wood. Wood embedded in rock.
Its worth you must measure.
Izzy quickly slipped the stone into her pocket, then turned and followed Rine outside.
Rine held the silver key up as he walked toward Hyan and Delin. The key glowed brighter than seemed natural in the fading dusk, like it had its own tiny flame inside.
“Now we just need a road to travel down,” said Rine. His eyes drifted to the flute in Hen’s hands. “You’ll oblige us?”
Hen planted her feet defiantly.
“Now!” shouted Rine.
Hen glared at him. She lifted her flute and played a simple melody that reminded Izzy of the song Peter had played when he showed up at Camp Kitterpines. When she was finished, she lowered the flute.
“Well?” snapped Rine. “Where is it?”
In the tree behind you, thought Izzy.
Hen held her chin high as she walked past Rine. She pointed to a standing dead tree. What before had seemed like a shadow on the trunk had become a dark hole as wide and tall as Hen.
Izzy saw the hole before her sister pointed it out. In fact, when she looked into the woods, she saw dozens more.
The Edgewood was full of passage openings, narrow ones sized for tiny pixies and wide, gaping entrances big enough for a horse-drawn carriage to enter. When Izzy squeezed the stone in her palm, she could see all of them. It was just like Hen had described. Their edges glowed as if ringed in Christmas lights.
The openings weren’t the only things Izzy could see clearly now. She glanced at the wadded page Rine had discarded. The desperate need to read her poem was gone.
Who are you, Izzy? Who are you really?
Izzy smiled. It now seemed ridiculous that she hadn’t known the answer before. She didn’t need a poem to tell her who she was. There was no secret, hidden Izzy waiting to be revealed. She was herself, as ordinary and extraordinary as that was.
She was like the stone in her hand: part of Earth, part of Faerie. They all were: the Changelings, Hen, Tom, Marian, even Peter who had left them without really leaving them completely. Why had she ever doubted where she belonged? She belonged with them. And right now, they needed her.
Izzy backed up slowly, careful not to draw Rine’s attention. It wasn’t difficult, because he was so focused on finally getting what he had wanted for so long. He walked up to the dead tree and put his hands on the rim of the opening, setting one foot inside. He paused.
Spinning around, he held the key out to Delin. “You take the honor.”
“Me?” Delin stepped forward and pinched the key between his fingers. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Delin placed his hands on the tree and ducked his head down inside the passage. He lingered in the opening with one hand still on the outside. He turned and looked worriedly at his companions.
“Go on,” said Rine. “You have the key to protect you.”
Delin nodded. He stepped farther in, and his entire body disappeared into the dark passage. His excited voice echoed inside. “I’m walking in… This is incredible!”
Izzy continued backing up, taking small unnoticeable steps.
Hyan ran to the dead tree. She started to duck inside when the ground began to shake like the rumble of an approaching train. Hyan stepped back. She called into the opening. “Delin! Come back!”
The entire clearing shuddered. Everyone braced themselves, holding on to each other or kneeling on the quaking ground. Hyan fell onto her hands and knees as the ground surrounding the tree that held Delin cracked and sank.
When the quaking stopped, the dead tree leaned at a sharp angle. Hyan ran her hands over the bark where the opening had been. She tried to reach into the hole, but it was closed. “Delin?” She dug her fingers at the trunk, scraping away the dark wood with her nails.
Hyan turned to Rine. “What happened? I can’t get back in!”
Rine’s lip curled beneath flared nostrils. He spun around.
Izzy held up the gray stone, wagging it back and forth as she backed away from him. “I think you might have picked the wrong key.”
She put the stone in her mouth, Changed into a fox, and ran.
26
In Between
Rine bellowed. Without turning to look behind her, Izzy knew he was chasing her. She bounded through the woods, springing lightly over fallen logs on her nimble paws. With her keen fox hearing, she heard branches snapping and boots pounding the ground behind her.
Straight ahead, three Unglers emerged from the trees. They caught Izzy’s scent and squatted down, ready to spring at her. Izzy put her head down and ran straight for them.
When she was ten yards from the bony creatures, Izzy dipped her snout down, then snapped her head up, flinging the stone into the air over their heads. She leaped up after it and swept her forelegs back.
The Unglers’ wart-crusted heads craned up as Izzy flew over them in her blackbird form. She followed the arc of the stone and caught it in her scaly feet. The weight of it pulled her down, but with another pump of her wings, she was high in the air again, flying through the trees.
Rine shoved past the confused Unglers and tore through the woods after Izzy. She risked a quick glance behind her. As he ran, Rine pulled in shadows from the woods. The sun had begun to set, and the growing darkness gave him plenty to work with. The shadows trailed out behind him, dangling off the hem of his shirt, dripping from his fingers. He formed needle-sharp darts and flung them at Izzy.
But she had the reflexes of a blackbird now. She saw the darts in her wide peripheral vision. With a tilt of her wings, she dodged the darts with inches to spare.
Izzy rocketed through the trees with no fear that she would lose this form—or any of her forms—ever again. This was different than any other time she had Changed before. She knew who she was now, and she had no intention of forgetting again.
She could have soared straight up into the sky, where Rine couldn’t follow. But she needed to keep him close. Entrances into Earth lit up all around her. Another hundred yards, and she spotted a large passageway, the entrance rimmed in stone. The opening was wide enough for her to fly through and for Rine to follow.
Izzy folded her wings back and dove at the passage. She landed inside on a dusty floor and Changed back to herself. Clutching the stone in one hand, she stood panting, catching her breath, her heart hammering so hard that it felt like it would break out of her chest.
Torches set in the walls flared on ahead of her down the passageway. This wasn’t the same road Peter had brought her down. Thankfully, this one was shorter. She was too tired to run far.
Rine’s silhouette appeared on the outside of the entrance. He stepped inside, looking overhead warily. He grasped for Izzy with one hand, but she stayed just beyond his reach. Cautiously, he stepped inside. He stood there a moment, catching his breath. With a snarl, he lunged at Izzy.
She jumped back—but not too far back. The earth rumbled, and the opening to the Edgewood began to buckle. Rine cried out and held his arms over his face. Izzy held the
stone out toward him, and the cave-in stopped. The King’s Key formed a dome of protection around him, holding the passage open.
“Give it to me,” demanded Rine, his voice ringing off the passage walls.
Izzy backed up slowly. Rine followed her as more of the tunnel caved in behind him. She kept backing down the tunnel, luring him farther and farther inside.
Rine’s breathing was ragged. Izzy could see his frustration boiling over. “Enough!” he cried. “Give me that key!”
He sprang at Izzy. She turned and ran, stumbling over the shuddering ground. Rine ran after her, the walls crashing in behind him.
Up ahead, a bluish-white light pooled on the walls. Earth.
Izzy sprinted toward the light. She was almost there. If she could get the King’s Key out of the passageway, she could stop Rine forever. But twenty feet from the opening, Izzy tripped over the cracking floor and landed hard on her stomach. She turned her head and saw Rine closing the distance between them.
Wasting no more time, Izzy flung the King’s Key as hard as she could out the passageway into Earth.
Rine’s eyes widened with the realization of what she had done. But it was too late.
The sound of cracking stone was deafening. Izzy curled into a ball and covered her head with her arms, clenching her jaw to stop it from rattling. She shut her eyes.
She heard Rine scream, and then the cave-in became so loud that she couldn’t hear anything else. Stones fell onto her. The passage closed in, tighter and tighter.
And then everything became very still and very dark.
27
The Most Common
The world was breaking.
Izzy kept her eyes shut tight, her body curled in on itself. She squeezed her jaw to bear with the horrible sounds of scraping and crunching around her. In the midst of the cracking and groaning of stone, Izzy dreamed. She faded in and out of consciousness. In her dream, she heard a familiar song. She couldn’t place where she’d heard it before. The notes grew louder and louder. When they finally quieted, she heard voices, low-pitched and warbled, like they spoke underwater.
In a Dark Land Page 21