Bryn reached up and swatted her cheek, then scratched at the tickle. She waited for the numbness of drugs to dull everything. Waited to open her eyes, back in that hospital.
But it never came.
Her body was a mass of aches and pains she didn’t want to contemplate. Not acknowledging them meant she wouldn’t have to think about how she’d gotten each one. The tickle on her cheek was almost…nice.
A footfall landed right beside her face. She flinched and opened her eyes. Flat on her back in a tunnel, she returned to awareness so fast she sat up gasping.
The distant echo of a tortured scream rang through the dim light.
Children in ragged clothes wandered past, as though she wasn’t even sitting there. Eyes unseeing, they moved by her. A steady pace that swayed the skirts a few of the girls wore. Dirty hair. Dirty faces. Their clothes were a mixture of styles ranging from contemporary, to Amish.
Bryn grabbed a hand. The little girl’s skin was clammy and cold. Her legs continued to move, eyes straight ahead, as though she were still walking. After a few seconds Bryn let go and the girl moved on. Like her progress hadn’t just been stalled by the woman on the ground.
Bryn started to get up, winced and sat back down. After she’d mustered enough gumption to fight the pain she managed to stand, then immediately swayed and touched her hand to the wall.
Not a dream.
A hallucination then.
It certainly felt real. Everything that had happened since she’d left the mental institution had, even the crazy stuff. How was she supposed to tell the difference?
Real or not, she was stuck here.
The children still walked around her. Brushed past her. Ignored her. Bryn walked with the flow and tried to count how many there were. It didn’t surprise her that the children were part of her delusion. She’d been looking for them when all this started, so it stood to reason. At least as much reason as a crazy person could have. They played a role now. Her mind must be fixated on the fact she hadn’t found them, because they were here. She might still be able to help them.
That hope was all the dissonant fragments of her mind needed to find peace. To see a reason why she’d been brought here.
She needed to finish what she’d started before all this happened.
The tunnels stretched out like a maze. Or a warren, they were underground. And she’d had a couple of rabbits as pets when she was a child. Until Erik got a puppy. Bryn shook her head, dispelling the thoughts.
She walked faster than the children. They all headed in the same direction. She tried talking to some, but it was like they were in a trance. Had the druid done this? If so, what benefit could it possibly have to him? She didn’t know how a bunch of kids could help the druid destroy the All Tree.
If that part of the delusion was set to happen shortly then her brain had better figure it out. Otherwise she would be walking through these tunnels for eternity, searching for Daire. Probably that was why she’d made him up. An immortal man would make a great companion if she was going to be in her head forever. Locked here with someone who couldn’t die. Someone who could fight off every foe she faced. In her mind she had created the ultimate darkness, and then brought to life a noble good to combat it.
As far as heroes went, Daire was a pretty good one. Even if he wasn’t real. Assuming she could find him. Maybe she never would.
Bryn bent forward to suck in breaths. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. She fought away the despair of being trapped here endlessly, with no help and no way out.
A tiny hand touched her shoulder.
Bryn lifted her head.
The little boy’s eyes lit. “Come on.” He turned away before Bryn could even process what had just happened. She followed him around a corner into another tunnel. The walls of this one were laced with branches. Each one was intertwined with another, woven together.
She ran her hand across it and hissed. She touched her pricked finger to her lips and sucked away the drop of blood.
The walls shuddered.
Branches grew across the open space behind her. Bryn ran to it, but the wood latticed across the opening too fast. And then she was trapped. The earth moved under her as the whole tunnel shifted. She was standing on the same interwoven foliage as the walls, the ceiling, and the space behind her.
It shifted like a moving sidewalk—but the whole tunnel. Bryn adjusted her stance to keep from falling. The end in front of her was open. She trotted toward it, but made no progress forward. The kids had gone that way. None remained here with her.
There was only darkness.
Then the tunnel contracted, and the ceiling sank to barely five feet. Bryn hunched over, her head and shoulders bowed. She moved faster, trying to get ahead of it.
With a great shift the tunnel upended. She fell to sitting on her behind where she had previously tried to get out, but it had closed on her. As though the tunnel itself simply stood up. Righting itself. What had been behind her was now beneath her.
And then it moved. A great step, like a leg—a foot. She held on while it settled, then moved again. Walking. Like she was in a leg, and it was walking.
Bryn tried to grasp for something to hold onto.
The…thing…kept walking. She could hear children whimpering, but couldn’t see anything. If they were in the same thing she was, they’d have fallen down the way she had, right? And yet she was all alone. Trapped in a moving thing made of branches.
The druid. It had to be. Every other time branches had acted of their own accord, it had been because of him.
Bryn gripped the walls as best she could and held on as it moved. A lumbering motion headed…she didn’t know where.
The branches under her hand grew hotter. As though flames licked the other side. Smoke laced the air. Thicker and thicker, until she couldn’t breathe. Bryn coughed. She lifted the collar of her shirt to cover her mouth and nose. Her eyes stung and each breath cut its way down her throat like road rash.
With a cry of pain she removed her hand from the wall. Blisters covered her palm. Underneath her was growing warm as well but she spread her feet to hip width, the same way she’d done on subway trains. It was the only way to stay upright when there was nothing to hold onto.
A whimper rolled up her throat. Bryn wasn’t going to give in to it. She wasn’t going to allow emotions to control her. They had overtaken her mind and she’d succumbed to the fear. That was why she was here, after all. All of this was about escaping the real world because she couldn’t handle reality. What was the point, if she then needed to escape the delusion? It should be a better place, but the truth was it had become a nightmare. Whether this life was in her head or not, Bryn couldn’t seem to escape it.
The lumbering stopped. Flames roared.
In the distance she could hear laughter.
The sound of children screaming.
Branches splintered. Flames spread across everything. Whatever Bryn had been inside broke apart around her. Children fell. Two landed on her, and she shifted to catch the next one. They all screamed as heat rose all around, encompassing them.
Bryn wanted to wake up now, more than ever. She wanted to sob, but there was no air. Only smoke. Flames.
Fire.
And then he came. Roaring through the smoke, swinging his sword. Daire’s gaze locked with hers as he slashed at branches and cut down the structure. His eyes were wide, almost frightened. Like he’d seen things he couldn’t fully believe.
He hacked at the branches. The smoke dissipated enough she could see they were in a huge room. A cavern. Two trees, one on either side, stretched up to the ceiling. Dead branches hung down on either side, and across the ceiling.
Flames rolled up the tree behind her. The branches stretched up in a familiar shape. A man, made of woven foliage, probably thirty feet tall. The children had been inside, just like her. Some were on the ground, unmoving.
Bryn crawled to the closest one and tried to find a pulse.
“Come on.” Daire grasped her elbow.
He started to lift her up, but she shook her head and said, “What’s going on?”
“We have to get out of the way.” He pulled her up this time.
Bryn winced. She hurt in so many places it was hard to say which was the worst. She locked her knees. “We have to get these children out of here.” She expected a solution. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind there was a part that would provide the information she needed.
Daire tugged her out of the way. “What are you talking about?”
“Those children.” She waved toward…nothing. They were gone.
“The mist will be back soon. But first I have to find Amelia. I lost her when that thing you were in showed up to burn everything.” He shook his head, all the while tugging her along.
“Amelia?”
“She was here. Pinned to that tree.” He pointed to the wreckage of whatever she’d been in—a thing, constructed of branches—now lying against a decaying tree. “And then she was gone.”
Bryn tugged her arm from his grasp. “What? No.” She rubbed both hands down her face, irritating the blisters on her palms. “Amelia was taken from the truck. She isn’t here.”
“She was. I saw her.”
“That isn’t right.” She shook her head. “We’re here, and there was a dragon. Right?” He looked at her like she’d lost her marbles. Truth. She looked at her hands. “It burned me.”
“I need you to focus right now,” he said, his tone short. “We aren’t going to finish this if I have to coax you through it.”
“Well I’m sorry I’m having a little trouble with this,” she shot back. “But it’s a lot to take in, okay? A druid. Missing children in a burning…thing.”
“I never saw any children, but the thing was a wicker man.”
“Like that freaky movie from forever ago that I really shouldn’t have watched because it gave me nightmares for a week?”
How on earth had her mind conjured that up? This whole situation was beyond insane. Like anything and everything from her mind had been pulled into this delusion until she didn’t know what would come at her next. Maybe she didn’t want to know.
One eyebrow lifted. “A few of the more off-the-wall druids put human sacrifices inside giant men made of woven sticks. They set fire to them.”
She just stared at him.
“He’s trying everything he can to destroy that tree. Including blood and fire.”
Bryn still stared.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” she said. “I’m completely seriously not okay right now. This is insane.” She lifted both hands and let them fall to her sides. “Literally everything that comes out of your mouth is nuts. Considering the fact that I’m the mentally unstable one, that’s saying something.”
“I need your help, Bryn.”
“I’m sure you do.”
He cocked his head to the side and studied her.
“This is my delusion. Of course I’m supposed to ‘help.’” She made quote marks in the air with her fingers. “It’s part of the journey.”
“O-kay.” He dragged the word out. “Can you help me find—”
The entire cavern shuddered. She could hear chanting in a language she didn’t know. From a voice she only heard here, in her nightmare.
Daire took half a step closer, shielding her with his body. “That’s him.”