The other competitors had already passed through the gate, and all eyes were on Orin and me. My heart sank, and I kicked myself for my hesitation. I’d missed my chance. I’d actually have to go through the gate and compete in the race.
Without waiting for Orin, I tightened the straps on my backpack and stalked through the gates.
With a crackling boom, the magical force field closed behind us, leaving us at the very edge of a dark forest. The canopy of trees cut out most of the light, leaving me on edge. I could feel the magic here, its presence crawling over my awareness. That, compounded with the eerie silence, was doing nothing for my nerves.
Ben kept his red-blinking camera trained on me as I surveyed my surroundings, struggling to keep the rising panic off my face and the thought of Cass from my mind. She'd been brought here against her will. I was sure of that now. The dreams of her being taken by the fae had gotten stronger over the past month, though I was yet to see the faerie's face. I always woke before he completely turned to face me. I wondered if this was the same view Cass had seen when she first came to Faerwild. Was she as intimidated by it as I felt? Had she been terrified? Was she still?
At least, most of the other competitors looked equally unnerved by the strange silence and faint crackle of magic, standing stiffly, heads swiveling around.
Duncan and Yael wasted no time and broke into a run, heading into the woods. Within a moment, the dark shadows of the forest swallowed them up, and it was like they’d never passed by.
I pulled my face into what I hoped looked like an expression of excitement rather than fear and took a step forward.
“There will be traps out there,” I heard Dulcina whisper to her partner, Phillip. “I think we should hang back and let the others get caught up in them first.”
I watched as Phillip rolled his eyes. “That would have been a good plan if you didn’t have the voice of a foghorn.”
She looked embarrassed as she realized everyone had heard what she’d said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“It’s fine,” huffed Orin. “We’re competitors. If someone else gets slowed down by a trap, I’m not going to waste any tears.”
Dulcina’s cheeks reddened, offsetting her purple locks.
I stepped forward. “I think what Orin means is that it might be wise to stick together for a bit while we get used to our new surroundings.”
I saw a few others nod their heads which told me that I wasn’t the only one feeling nervous.
Goth girl and sexy incubus (I really needed to start calling them by their real names…Molly and Ario) took the lead with the rest of us trailing behind. As I stepped deeper into the woods to follow them, Orin hissed in my ear. “That’s not what I meant at all. I’m not following these idiots for long. I don’t know about you, but I came here to win. That means leaving everyone else in the dust, including you if you can’t keep up.”
I opened my mouth in shock as he stalked off in front of me. Great. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, my own partner was just as willing to work against me as with me. It was with this thought in my mind that I stepped into the inky blackness of the woods in the footsteps of my fellow competitors.
The tension of the first moments over the Hedge faded as we continued into the woods and nothing untoward happened beyond Phillip tripping and scraping his knee.
As we walked, I checked out the contents of my backpack. I had a knife, some string, a pair of binoculars and a water canteen that was unfortunately empty. I also had a thick cream envelope, sealed shut with a wax seal. The seal of the Obanstones. It was the first clue. Pushing it to one side, I scrabbled about in the rest of the backpack, hoping to find some food, but that was it. We were going to have to hunt and forage for food ourselves.
The hours passed, and we’d done nothing but walk. I could picture John’s face as we cut through the darkness. This didn’t make great TV at all.
The cloying darkness and quietness of the woods made me feel more uneasy with each step. Something was going to happen soon, I could feel it. They wouldn’t let the first episode go to air without something dramatic happening.
I was just about to voice my opinion to Molly when I heard a scream up ahead. My heart began to hammer in my chest, but I was ready. I pulled the knife out from my belt where I’d fastened it, and held it out, ready for whatever was going to come my way. The darkness of night had settled over us like a heavy blanket; I couldn’t see who it was that had screamed. Whoever it was, they needed help.
Without considering the repercussions, I ran forward past Molly, Orin, and Ario.
The scream rang out again as I pelted through the darkness towards the sound. I skidded to a stop as I reached the source.
It was Sophie. I found her struggling against a large mass of whipping vines that were entwining themselves around her wrist and legs.
Tristam was beside her, throwing purple light unsuccessfully at the vines.
The more she tried twisting and turning her body, the tighter the vines became.
The panic in Tristam’s face was apparent as his magic had no effect at all. Purple light bounced off the vines in all directions, causing me to duck, so I didn’t inadvertently get hit.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Tristam looked my way, and the purple light stopped.
“What are you doing?” screamed Sophia. “She’s on another team. She wants me dead.” Tears streamed down her face, and her voice was hoarse with the effort of screaming.
Tristam looked at me uncertainly as I shook my head.
I held up my knife and lunged at her. From behind me, someone else screamed, and a flash of blue light hit me in the side, sending me careening forward right into Sophia and causing pain, unlike nothing I’d felt before.
She spit right in my face as I lifted the dagger towards her.
“Kill me if you want, but Tristam would never go for the likes of you.”
Another flash of blue light and the pain in my side was joined by a pain in my left leg.
I bought the knife down on the nearest vine and blood spurted everywhere, covering both Sophia and me, and yet I still hacked away, despite the shock on her face.
The vines were not a plant at all, but some kind of living breathing monster in disguise. As I hacked off limb after limb of the disgusting green beast, Sophia finally realized I was trying to save her, not kill her, and pulled against the limbs.
The searing pain in my back and leg burned white hot, but I didn’t stop until Sophia fell forward and the beast was dead. I collapsed to the ground beside Sophia.
“What happened?” Tristam asked.
Sophia grabbed hold of him and sobbed into his shirt, smearing it with the monster’s blood. It was like a scene from a horror movie. In the corner of my eye, I saw Ben and another cameraman filming everything.
I should have stood up and acted all heroic for the public, but my entire being burned like I was on fire and I couldn’t move.
“I’m so sorry!” I heard a small voice say. I recognized it as Zee’s high-pitched singsong voice. “I thought you were trying to kill Sophia.”
I felt a hand on my back, and for a second, it felt like my skin had peeled right off, but then sweet relief set in as the pain was sucked out of me. Seconds later, I felt the same thing on my leg.
I took a deep breath and sat up. Zee gazed down at me with concern in her eyes, her mouth open slightly, displaying two curved canines, like a vampire. The tattoos on her face glowed faintly with the afterglow of the magic she had used.
“I wouldn’t have hurt you if I’d known you were trying to help. I just thought…” She trailed off. She’d always seemed so tough during the training, so it was a surprise to see tears welling in the corners of her eyes.
“It was an accident,” I said, reassuring her.
She gave me a shy smile as she helped me up off the ground.
“There’s a tower in a clearing up ahead,” Phillip pointed out. “I think we’ve all had enough excitement fo
r one day. Let’s camp there.”
I’d not realized how exhausted I was, but as I stood on shaky legs, the idea of settling down for the night consumed me.
I let the others walk ahead and followed them to the tower Phillip had mentioned, my feet dragging. The tower was an ominous looking place with some freakishly large birds circling the top of it.
“I’ll get us some food,” Zee said, eager to make up for what she’d done to me.
“And I’ll start the fire,” added Tristam. He waved his hands, and a flame erupted from the ground. All around me, people were catching small animals and finding berries to eat, leaving me feeling useless.
I sat down next to Tristam, mainly to keep warm next to his fire. At least, that’s what I told myself I was doing. My ass had barely touched the leaf-covered floor when Sophia sidled up to me.
“Can I have a word with you?” she asked. She shot a warm smile at Tristam as I stood.
I followed her to the opposite side of the tower. From here, I could barely hear the others, and the flames of Tristam’s fire didn’t shed enough light for me to see her all that well.
A flutter of nerves flooded through me as I wondered what she had in store for me. I’d thought she wanted to thank me for saving her, but now that we were out of sight of everyone else, I wasn’t so sure. She could murder me in a second and tell the others a beast had taken me. Though Ben and his camera were watching.
I was struck by the fact that out here, far from the reach of the studio executives or even the Faerie King, it was every man, woman, and faerie for themselves. Patricia and Gabe and the others had warned us that the dangers over the Hedge would be real, but still. I hadn’t been prepared. No one had stepped in to save Sophia, other than me, that was. No one stopped Zee when she’d injured me. No producer jumped out of the bushes and called a time out.
Of course, they didn’t, I schooled myself. They wanted ratings, and so that meant the bloodier, the better. Sophia was covered in the stuff. I could still see it glistening in the low light. With a start, I realized that I must be covered in it too.
I moved my hand up to my face where I’d felt some of the splatter and wiped my sleeve across it. When I pulled my arm back, I could see the dark reddish brown of the monster’s blood.
“Don’t worry,” Sophia remarked, seeing the dismay on my face. “I’m sure Tristam will help take the blood out of our clothes. It’s only a little spell. I’d do it myself, but I’m still tired from fighting the monster, and you can’t can you?”
I listened to her words carefully. She sounded like she was being nice and sincere, but already she was asking me if I truly belonged in here. She was sniffing for information. It seemed that saving her hadn’t made us friends. Not that I was surprised.
“I’m tired too,” I said, affecting a yawn to add weight to my argument.
“Ah, well,” she singsonged. “I just wanted to thank you. I’m sure Tristam will too. He was just telling me earlier how glad he was to have me as a partner, and I wouldn’t want him to lose me. I think we’ll be good friends by the end of this.”
My dislike of the woman slid into the loathe category at her false words. I sputtered out a you’re welcome and headed back to camp.
The others had caught a couple of those weird birds and were busy roasting them over the fire. I sat back, not wanting to talk to the others, and listened to Phillip telling the rest of the contestants that there was no door to the tower. Apparently, he’d walked around the whole thing. Strange, I’d been around the other side and I’d not seen him. Not that I’d seen a door either. The grey stone tower was nothing but a marker, but something about it gave me the creeps.
Talking of giving me the creeps, Orin sat down beside me and handed me a bit of the cooked bird.
“It’s not poisoned,” he said when he caught me looking at it suspiciously. I wouldn’t put it past him to kill me off. The list of people I didn’t trust was growing at a rapid rate, and I’d only been over the Hedge for a few hours.
I took a bite and chewed thoughtfully on the cooked meat. It was good. Better than I’d expected it to be.
“What did Sophia want?” Orin whispered.
I looked over at her. Her face was lit up from the glow of the campfire. As I watched, she laughed at something Tristam said and ran her hand down his leg. I noticed that she no longer had any blood on her. Tristam must have performed the spell, after all. He’d just forgotten to do it on me.
Never mind. A bit of blood on me would make me look fearless. I leaned in towards Orin and whispered back at him. “She wanted to be my friend.”
He huffed beside me. “I don’t trust her. She’s no friend of yours.”
As I looked back at her, she caught my eye and smiled through pursed lips. It was not a friendly smile.
I shook my head blackly. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think you might be right.”
Orin raised an eyebrow. “Do tell?”
How could I tell him that I thought Sophia might be jealous of me? Ok, not jealous as such, but she must have seen Tristam and I talking back in Wales. Plus, she never took her eyes off him for more than a millisecond, so it was conceivable that she’d seen him use his magic to knock the apple from his father’s hand in the trial.
“She’s a bitch,” was what I actually said.
Orin nodded and conjured up a sleeping bag which he slithered into. His velvet voice was low as he leaned in to whisper to me. “We set off when everyone else is asleep. Get a jump on the competition. I don’t trust anyone else. Duncan and Yael had the right idea by going off alone.”
“Fine,” I conceded. I didn’t trust half the contestants either. Not that I trusted Orin, but I was stuck with him. I trusted him to, at least, try to keep me alive. He needed me to get past the checkpoints with him, or he’d be disqualified.
I pulled my knees close to me as the temperature dropped, tucking my frigid fingers into my armpits. How gentlemanly of Orin to offer to conjure me a sleeping bag. He probably expected me to keep guard over him. I snorted at the thought.
Well, there was only one person I’d be keeping guard for. And that person was me.
12
Someone kicked me awake just before dawn. I cried out in disorientation, and a cold hand slapped over my mouth.
“Quiet,” someone hissed in my ear.
I struggled to turn and saw Orin’s dark eyes. I relaxed slightly and raised my eyebrows.
He removed his hand from my face. “Everyone’s still asleep. Let’s go.”
I nodded. It’s not like I had a cozy sleeping bag to cuddle up in.
I got to my feet and found I was stiff with cold with a crick in my neck and dried blood covering me. I probably looked like a wild animal.
“Let’s go,” Orin repeated with some urgency. I turned, and a blinking red light greeted me. I squinted and saw Ben’s curly head peek out from behind the camera. He waved. It seemed it would be the three of us.
I followed Orin, and Ben followed me through the trees silent as a sentinel. I could just see through the watery gray light of dawn, but still, my feet seemed to find every root and stray branch.
Orin walked before me like a lord of the forest, his FFR uniform neat, his dark hair combed. I glowered at his back. Whatever grooming magic he had, would it hurt him to share it with his partner?
I trudged behind him, and Ben sped up until he was walking beside me. I felt a nudge in my side, and I looked down to find a protein bar being waggled at me. An illicit protein bar! The camera crew wasn’t supposed to share their food with us. But…my stomach rumbled. If Orin and Ben were both walking in front of me, there was no one to see my transgression.
I snatched the bar from him and opened it as stealthily as possible. It tasted amazing. It was the best thing that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours. I wanted to spring at give Ben and give him a hug.
Orin came to a stop before me at the shore of a tinkling stream. He pulled off his backpack and
retrieved his canteen. “We should fill up.”
“It’s safe?” I asked. After the weird vine monster, I wasn’t taking anything for granted. For all I knew, this river was going to morph into a tsunami and sweep me out to shore.
He nodded. “Rivers are usually home to water nymphs. They can be mischievous but likely won’t cause permanent harm. You want to stay away from lakes, as they’re more likely to be a habitat for water horses.”
“Water horses?” I said as I leaned down to lay my canteen into the water. “Like the ones Liv Tyler conjured in Lord of the Rings?”
Orin blinked at me like I was a complete moron. “No. Like the kind that pull you into the water and eat the flesh from your bones.”
I froze, my mouth aghast. “Oh.”
“This isn’t Hollywood anymore. You should assume everything in faerie wants to eat you or kill you.”
“Are you included in that?” I countered.
“Depends on if you slow me down. Keep up, and we’ll be fine.”
I sat my full canteen on a bed of pine needles on the riverbank and plunged my arms into the frigid water. I scrubbed my arms and my face, letting the monster’s blood color the clear water.
Dawn had broken, and birds chirped on nearby branches. It was almost like camping back home. If you ignored Orin’s tipped ears. And that glowing purple cluster of flowers. And the monster blood I was rinsing off.
“I think I’ve figured out the first clue,” Orin said, pulling out the envelope that had been placed in each of our backpacks. The clue to the first checkpoint. I hadn’t even looked at it yesterday; I’d been so set on (a) not dying, and (b) collapsing into a freezing uncomfortable sleep on the rocky forest floor.
“What’s the clue?” I asked, doing my best to wipe my face dry with my jacket.
“It’s a poem,” Orin said.
* * *
Who’s riding so late through th’ endless wild?
The father ‘It is with his infant child.
He thinks the boy’s well off in his arm,
He grasps him tightly, he keeps him warm.
The Sorcery Trial Page 9