Hush, the woods are darker still

by L. V Russell

  “I don’t ask twice.”

  “Demand your payment then,” Laphaniel hissed, pulling me tight against him. “What do you want from us?”

  Arabelle clicked her long fingers, and Bethany came stumbling over, her chains dragging behind her. “What would you give for your freedom, little worm?”

  “Anything, mistress,” Bethany said, her eyes firmly on the ground. “I’d give you anything.”

  “Would you gut these two if I asked it?” Arabelle sneered, twisting Bethany’s head around, so she was forced to look at us. “Would you skin and tan their hides if I demanded it from you? Would you do it for your freedom, Bethany Wilkins?”

  Bethany looked up, hope flaring behind her miserable eyes. “Oh, I would, mistress. Yes, if you willed it. Anything.”

  My heart twisted for the girl, even as she contemplated murdering us. I knew how quickly that spark of life…that fragment of hope long thought lost, could diminish forever. Arabelle’s next words ensured it did.

  “Your freedom is not up for sale, my little worm,” Arabelle said, her hand going to Bethany’s cheek. The girl let out a long howl of grief. “Never will you know anything but this life. As will your children, and your children after that and all who follow, until this world is no more.”

  “Mistress…please…” Bethany begged, tears making filthy tracks over her face. Arabelle wiped one away and brought it to her lips.

  “Away with you,” Arabelle said, turning away from the girl to face me. “Do you understand what price my little worm would be all too willing to pay? Just to save her pitiful self? What would be sufficient payment for the two of you to get what you wish? Bearing in mind what a big wish it truly is.”

  “What do you want?” I demanded, my voice echoing around the cottage. I silently vowed never again to deal with another witch for as long as I lived.

  “I want your spark,” Arabelle hissed, spittle flying from her mouth. “That vain hope you both cling to, thinking one day it will bring you joy. I want the misery that seeps from your marrow, the fear you reek of. I want to watch the love you share decay and rejoice as it buries you.”

  I cringed back when Arabelle lunged for me again, sharp nails dragging across my skin before Laphaniel caught her.

  “Leave her!”

  Arabelle swung around, a snarl ripping from her lips as she whirled on Laphaniel. “I can sense the horrors on you, boy! The shadows and the monsters. I can hear your heart shrieking!”

  Arabelle slapped Laphaniel’s hand away, and as quick as an asp, she grabbed him, dragging him close to her. “What blackness is there for you, lovely one?”

  The candles all spluttered out, the room suddenly only illuminated by grimy sunlight struggling through the blackened windows. A gasp slipped from Arabelle’s lips before the witch began to scream.

  “What have you done?” Bethany demanded, running to her mistress. Arabelle’s screeches tore through the small cottage, her neck straining back, mouth agape.

  Laphaniel was desperately trying to prise his hand from the witch. Blood seeped over his skin as Arabelle’s nails dug in, her grip relentless.

  I grabbed at the witch. “Get her off of him!”

  Arabelle’s screams grew hoarse, milky white eyes seeing something none of us could fathom. Foam dribbled from her lips. Red snaked down her nose to mingle with the spittle on her chin.

  “Don’t you touch her,” Bethany snarled, sending me sprawling across the floor as she backhanded me across the face. “Let her finish what she is seeing.”

  “Laphaniel?” I called his name, but he didn’t answer. His eyes were closed, squeezed tight. The slices in his hand opened further as he continued to pull away. Blood began to pool upon the table. “Laphaniel!”

  At last, the witch drew away, her words a scratch against the darkness. “Impossible.”

  She sat up slowly, smearing blood, and spit across her face with the back of her sleeve. Her breathing rattled. Arabelle eyed Laphaniel with her teeth bared, eyes once again pits of shadows. She stood, bracing herself against the table.

  “What did you see?” Laphaniel asked, enticing a hollow chuckle from the witch.

  “Here.” Arabelle twisted her hand in mid-air, conjuring a sphere of gleaming glass that floated inches from her fingertips. “Take your boon and leave this place.”

  “What did you see?” Laphaniel repeated, kicking his chair over as he stood. “Tell me.”

  Arabelle shrunk back, not even glancing my way as I snatched up the glass ball. “I cannot speak of what I saw, lest it changes things. I am bound by my oaths.”

  “Like hell, you are, witch.”

  Arabelle sneered. “You will tear this world apart.”

  Dread coiled in my stomach, heavy and unyielding. “In this war?”

  Arabelle spared me a fleeting glance. “Not in this war, little lovely. Perhaps not the one after that or the one that follows the one before. Know this though, all you hold dear will go down screaming.”

  “You give us prophecies and half-truths?” Laphaniel asked, a growl slipping into his tone. “An open destiny you cannot reveal, for fear it will force me on a different path?”

  “I gave you what you came for and took no payment.”

  “You will allow us to leave here without an exchange?” I said, looking down at the ball in my hand, its smooth sides cool to the touch.

  “I ask for mercy,” Arabelle said, looking back at Laphaniel. “When the time comes, I ask for mercy.”

  “You’re just planting nightmares,” I said. Arabelle gave me a chilling smile. “You revel in chaos.”

  “I will tell you something.” The smoke in her eyes twinkled. “I will tell you of a hunger both desperate and consuming, an air heavy with lust and the tang of flesh. I can still taste the sorrow, the pain, and the rich scent of filthy bodies entwining together.” Arabelle pointed an elegant finger at Laphaniel. “I can see him, but not you, my little lovely. In your place, I see a vision of midnight hair and cold eyes.”

  The dread in my stomach curdled. Niven.

  “You’re lying,” I said, the words a breathless plea.

  “You know well that I cannot,” Arabelle replied, raising a finger and pointing it at us. “Nothing good will come of the love you two share.”

  “We’re leaving, Teya. Come on.” Laphaniel grabbed my arm, his hands rough. “You can go to hell, witch.”

  Arabelle grinned from the shadows she was steadily retreating into. “We may all end up there yet.”

  Laphaniel said nothing while he pulled me away, his fingers tight around my wrist as he took three long strides towards the door, his other hand curled around the handle.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Arabelle whispered from the darkness. Laphaniel paused, tensing. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

  “What of it?” Laphaniel hissed through gritted teeth, keeping his back to the witch.

  “You wear death like a cloak.”

  Laphaniel shook his head, yanking my arm as he flung the door open and stormed out. Arabelle’s last words followed us as if she had spat them in our ears.

  “But you wear it well.”

  Laphaniel didn’t stop until we reached a stream, tall willows banking each side like long-limbed guardians. Only then did he release my hand, not noticing the way I rubbed my throbbing wrist.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Arabelle’s ominous prophecy echoed around my head, planting fear and doubt deep into my mind.

  Laphaniel held a bloodied hand out for the sphere in my pocket. “You know better than to trust the words of witches, Teya. Arabelle picked pieces of a vision and used it to frighten you.”

  “It worked,” I said, passing him the sphere. “She saw you with Niven.”

  His eyes flashed. “You believe that?”

  The thought of it was unbearable. “Arabelle can’t lie.”

  “She has had centuries to hone the skills of manipulating truths, Teya,” Laphaniel began. The anger ebbed
from his eyes, leaving them cold. “Fey learn how to distort the truth from a very early age. Don’t dwell on the nightmares of witches, they trade them as currency.”

  “And the rest?” I asked, rubbing my hands over my arms.

  Laphaniel barked a hollow laugh. “I highly doubt I will cause the end of the world, Teya.”

  I bristled. “Don’t mock me.”

  “We do not matter to this world,” Laphaniel hissed. “It cares not if we live or die or fall in love or hate each other. It is huge and unwavering and constant. Witches speak in metaphors and riddles because it brings misery.” He took a breath. “Creatures a lot wiser than you have driven themselves mad attempting to decipher the prophecies the witches spit out. The world is still spinning.”

  I nodded, wanting to glean some comfort from his words, but Arabelle’s warnings bore hooks and were not so easily dislodged. “She knew you’re not meant to be here.”

  “But I want to be.”

  With those words, he twirled the sphere in his hands, balancing it for a moment on his fingertips. He threw it against the trees where it shattered.

  The trees bent and bowed, branches growing and twisting until they knotted together. Flowers bloomed and burst, spitting their petals down upon the ground where they curled and died. The trees creaked as they moved, groaning as they worked to form the shape of a doorway.

  Laphaniel held out a hand, face unreadable. “To the Unseelie.”

  “To the Unseelie,” I echoed, and stepped through the doorway.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The doorway decayed and crumbled the moment we stepped through, leaving us standing upon a cliff edge with the light of twin suns beating down upon us. Stark, silvery trees swayed around us, though there was no wind. Branches stretched up into points, trying to pierce the sky.

  A light frost covered the bleak landscape, no snow to be seen as if winter had yet to seep into the Unseelie. I wondered if it too was wary of slipping in uninvited.

  Grass crunched underfoot as I took a step forwards to peer over the edge, down to the swirling waters below. Foam crashed against the rock, the swirling black waters cascading over boulders to tear down the riverbed. The waves screamed against the stillness of the clifftop.

  “So, this is Unseelie?”

  Laphaniel nodded, joining me to look across the water. “On the boundary line by the looks of it—not as far as I had hoped.”

  “How do we get down?”

  “We jump.”

  My stomach dropped. “Of course, we do.”

  “Watch,” Laphaniel said, picking up a rock to launch into the furious waters. It didn’t even ripple. “The River of Tears runs from the furthest reaches of the Seelie lands, all the way up into the Black Mountains to the north and to the Wyld Woods to the south, ending up somewhere at the end of the world. As far as we know, it travels the entire breadth of Faerie. It is endless.”

  “Does Faerie really have no end to it?”

  “None that anyone has ever found,” Laphaniel replied, shoving the hair from his eyes and eyeing the waters like they would rise and take him. “I don’t know what you will see in the waters, Teya. It will try to keep you, you need to remember that whatever it is you see, it isn’t real.”

  “What do you mean? What’s in the water?”

  “Just keep fighting for the surface, okay?”

  It wasn’t okay, but standing at the edge, I curled my fingers around his and swallowed back the fear rising inside me. I couldn’t break my gaze away from the churning waves. “We jump together.”

  Laphaniel squeezed my hand, locking our fingers as we stood on the precipice. The roar of the waters bellowed at us, daring us to jump.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  Laphaniel braced himself beside me, but I tugged him back. There was every chance we would plunge into the swirling void and never surface again. “Wait.”

  “There is no other way down.”

  I closed the small gap between us, keeping my hand tight in his. “I know. I was just thinking about what Arabelle said about you and Niven…”

  “Teya.” My name was a warning on his lips.

  “I don’t expect you to spend eternity alone, if after everything, I don’t make it through this. I just need you to promise me it will never be Niven.”

  “Never Niven,” he snarled her name like a curse. “If I lost you, know that I would never give my heart to another. All that I am would be lost with you. Without you, I would burn this world to the ground and turn everything to ash and dust.”

  “Perhaps that’s what the prophecy foretold?” I said, leaning into him in a brief embrace.

  “I would tear this world apart for you.”

  I smiled. “I believe you.”

  We stepped off the edge together, plunging so fast my breath was stolen away. Laphaniel’s hand wrenched away from mine when we hit the water. There was no splash.

  An invisible current swept me along in thick smog that sounded like crashing waves but was no more substantial than cool mist. I was weightless, drifting along on some riptide that dragged me further and further under.

  I couldn’t breathe. I opened my mouth to call out for Laphaniel and choked on nothing. My lungs screamed for air. Kicking upwards, my hands fumbled against the fog as it dragged me down. I kicked and struggled and gasped, desperately fighting against the blackness that began to creep in. A wordless exhale of mist bubbled up from my mouth and drifted away. Blackness seeped in, and I carried on sinking.

  “Teya?” My name punctured through the black, sounding too far away. “Teya, wake up.”

  I opened my eyes to Laphaniel shaking me gently. Bright light stung my eyes as he moved from over me, and I squinted at the deep blue sky overhead.

  “Oh, that wasn’t so bad,” I said, pushing myself up. A dull burning lingered in my chest, an echo of nearly drowning. “Are you okay?”

  Laphaniel smiled, sprawling out beside me, and stretched his arms high over his head. “You’ve been asleep for ages.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be, you look lovely when you’re dreaming.” He moved closer and rested his head against my shoulder, his hand seeking mine. “What do you want to do now you’re awake?”

  “What should we do?” I asked, sitting up. The warmth of the sun settled upon my face, the trees around us sang in the breeze. The scent of wildflowers, moss, and pine overloaded my senses with a familiarity that brought tears to my eyes.

  “Where are we?” I dared ask.

  Softly, so softly, Laphaniel cupped my face in his hands and kissed me. It was a kiss I had almost forgotten, one without fear or hunger. A kiss heavy with the promises of so many more. It didn’t feel like the last one, as many of our kisses had.

  “Where are we, Laphaniel?” I asked again, pulling back enough to see the wonderful violet of his eyes, void of darkness and shadows.

  He pointed to a gap in the trees, and I turned my head, my heart breaking. “Home.”

  Standing tall and proud and untouched by flames was Laphaniel’s house. The stone gleamed white against the sunlight, the wild blossom around the doorway bursting open at the warmth.

  “Do you want to go in?” Laphaniel asked. “We don’t have to stay long if you don’t want to.”

  I hesitated, staring at his outstretched hand. “I don’t think I should.”

  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you did?” he said. “If only to refresh your memory.”

  I swallowed. “Just a quick look?”

  “Stay as long as you like,” Laphaniel replied. My blood froze at his choice of words, words he had uttered to me once before, and I had danced the seasons away.

  I wanted to leave, a nagging voice at the back of my mind urged me forwards…but I would never get to see his house again. I stood before a ghost of a life I still longed for with every fibre of my being, a life free of fear and pain and bloodshed.

  “I just want to say goodbye.”

  �
��Do you want me to come with you?”

  I stood, brushing the grass from my clothes. “Yes.”

  The house stood perfect. Soft candlelight bathed the rooms, all ignited with a wave of Laphaniel’s hand. The branches winding around the walls stirred, blossom stretching open into pink flowers that rained down from the boughs overhead.

  I climbed the stairs, blinking petals from my eyes as they fell around my feet into a gloriously scented carpet. My feet knew the way to Laphaniel’s bedroom, the one I had shared with him when he enchanted me. Throws and furs and threadbare blankets covered the large bed, all smelling of spice and liquorice…of Laphaniel. Of home.

  Streams of light flooded through the open window, catching the dust motes dancing on the air. Thick, twisted branches covered the ceiling, coiling out from the walls to drip more blossom onto the bed. Slowly, I walked to the window and gazed out over the forest and to the lake beyond.

  I didn’t hear Laphaniel come up behind me, and I jumped slightly at his arms wrapping around me. “Stay.”

  “Don’t.”

  Gently he turned me, so I faced him, hands soft against my face, kisses soft against my cheek. “Stay with me.”

  “I can’t,” I choked, feeling the bitter words on my lips again, the same argument we’d had all that time ago. I couldn’t believe I was giving the same answer, one I had regretted ever since.

  “Why?”

  The torment on his face almost broke me. “Because this isn’t real.”

  I tore my arm free of his grip and fled the room and the memories it brought with it. Laphaniel called after me, his voice raw and broken.

  I stopped running in front of what had once been Lily’s room. Soft yellow paint shone from the door; a garland of wildflowers hung in the centre all tied up with a ribbon that blew in the wind. It looked nothing like the dank dwelling of the faerie who had once tried to kill me.

  With my curiosity getting the better of me, I pushed open the door. Inside stood a smaller bed, the posts carved with little creatures that leapt from the wood. A patchwork quilt pooled over the mattress, a worn stuffed bear sat propped against the plump pillow, gazing up at me with black eyes.