Sunshine poured through open windows while I worked the next day, leaving a polished cottage in my wake. Freshly-washed sheets fluttered off a tree branch to dry in the wind. Bundles of dried vermillion thistle hung from the rafters by twine.
Routine, warmth, home.
The stability of my cottage soothed my soul while I thought about Gelas’ warning over amulets, Papa courting Regina, and what the demigods would do next. Pattering feet on my rooftop, followed by a quick, obnoxious chatter, broke the stillness.
I froze.
The sound faded as quickly as it came.
Five minutes later, an ear-splitting scream stood the hair on the back of my neck up. Viveet slipped to my hand with a spell as I whirled around. My front door slammed against the wall with a crack.
A gnarled creature stood in the doorway. Hairy, dirty, and naked, like a recently-pulled turnip. Mud smeared a fat brown face, curled into a snarl. Two pointed fangs poked out of wide lips, while beady black eyes glared from beneath a shaggy head of hair. It toddled a few steps forward, legs too short for the squat body. In one of two equally-short arms, it gripped a spear the size of a letter opener. A screaming gnome in the flesh.
The spear pointed at me.
The gnome shrieked.
My lips rolled together to hide a giggle. Chattering, screaming, burrowing, and falling gnomes lived all over Letum Wood. They filled it with the strangest sounds. Chattering gnomes were the most common forest gnomes. They lived in trees, scuttled around branches, and threw Leto nuts at potential enemies.
Annoying creatures, all of them. They tended to eat most bugs and hunt smaller rodents, but terrorized gardens. Their particular love for garlic meant that my grandmother, Hazel, had waged an eternal war against them.
All gnomes held similar characteristics—chubby, naked bodies. An obsession with rolling or digging through the dirt. All of them were small and ornery, resentful of witches and anything that wasn’t gnome. They didn’t speak with words, but communicated through clicks and grunts.
I tilted my head a little.
The gnome bared its teeth and did the same.
When I made a clicking sound with my tongue against the top of my mouth, the gnome straightened. Slowly, I reached an arm to my table, grabbed a piece of bread, crouched lower, and extended it. The black eyes regarded me, then the bread.
It screamed.
Four other gnomes popped into sight from beneath my porch, cracking boards as they emerged from underneath. I gritted my teeth. Another chore to put on my list. Could gnomes do magic, or were they strong enough to break wood?
Neither answer worked in my favor.
All four new gnomes toddled closer, bearing similar weapons, in a barbaric group that muttered, grunted, and clicked. In the repetitive rhythm of their sounds, I detected a subtle pattern. A symphony to presumed chaos.
Carefully, I lowered onto my knees. They shrieked, jumped. I sent Viveet back to the holder on the wall, her blue glow smoldering away. When I put my bare hands on my knees, the gnomes visibly relaxed.
Two of them stared at the bread.
The other three stared at me.
“Merry meet.”
The first to arrive—the presumed leader—shuffled forward. He made a noise like a low whistle, a dropping sound. Three clucks followed. The tiny, thick features of its face had screwed up, as if it asked a question.
One of the other gnomes scuttled toward the proffered food. It dropped the spear, picked up the bread, and exclaimed with an oooo. The leader smacked it on the head, barked a command, and the other gnome grabbed its spear and retreated—bread in hand. Moving slow, I nudged another piece of bread their way.
A gnome war commenced.
While the four gnomes shredded the bread, each attempting to gain control of the largest piece, the irate leader advanced closer to me. He stayed out of arm’s reach. The dark color of its rough skin was due more to dirt than pigment. Underneath, he seemed to have a yellowish tinge. More gold than earthy, speckled with dirt.
“Shall I call you Goldenrod?”
His eyes shuttered.
With another scream, all five gnomes disappeared in a shocking pop of sound. I blinked, astonished. Crumbs littered the floor. I gasped.
They could do magic!
That indicated an ability and intelligence beyond anything I’d heard of before. Historical texts postulated that witches who studied gnomes never saw magical use amongst them. Not once.
A chorus of familiar voices broke into my thoughts.
Come to us.
We find the ill-fated.
She belongs to us.
I only had time to gasp before the forest whisked me away.
* * *
Letum Wood deposited me in a hushed copse of trees. I landed invisibly, thanks to Letum Wood, with my back pressed to a trunk. Bushes hid where I stood, while branches shifted ahead ever-so-slightly, revealing a gap.
And demigods.
A string of fingernail-sized amulets in a tight necklace caught my attention first. With little difficulty, I recalled the list of amulets Baxter had given me. This one was Herimolodikus, perhaps. One of Tontes’ amulets known to have mid-level power.
A woman with white hair, streaked by dove gray, wore the amulets in glittering bangles around her neck. Alternating smoky purple-and-slate colors glimmered. A daughter of Tontes.
She stood near a fallen tree, freshly cut. Splits in the wood indicated broken grains from falling, yet the trunk cracked unevenly. A nearby ax must have started the process, but the tree looked as if it had been pushed over with god magic.
A tree of that size was a sapling only as thick as my arm length. Immediately, I understood it to be several decades old. Life drained from it slowly, a gradual loosening of power. Low, panicked cries with hysterical notes set my hair on edge. Saplings.
The female demigod spoke to a male with no visible amulet, but he looked too healthy to be a mortal. His golden eye color gave him away. She swept her fingers along the ground, then brushed her arm toward the higher canopy. With god magic taken from me, I couldn’t understand what they said.
Other bodies bustled in various stages of busyness. Mortals, I guessed for most of them, though they looked far more healthy than Ventis’ mortals. They labored around different trees. Three of them drove long, hollow spikes into the ground with giant hammers. Five mortals dug a steep trench around another tree, backs glistening with sweat.
Flecks of bark flew out of another sapling as a different demigod stood nearby. His concentration, and the manipulation of an amulet under his shirt, seemed to indicate that he attempted to drop it with magic.
Another mortal held what appeared to be a glass timer, filled with sand, and a piece of paper. The sand dribbled out of one side into the other. Once it ran out, he flipped it, and noted a mark on the page.
I watched, breath held.
Like an army, they moved together. Silent. Each methodical movement had a purpose, and every mortal and demigod had a job as they attempted to destroy Letum Wood. They tested methods to kill the forest. Saws. Axes. Potions. Magic had pushed that other tree over. The thought that they might try to bring down Letum Wood one tree at a time brought a dying scoff to my lips. Insane. Letum Wood had millions of trees.
Mournful wails returned. Beyond physical hearing, they rang up from the depths of soul instead of mind. A removal of life. Dying throes. At once, I understood it to be the trees, just toppled or about to be. The pathetic mewls, a desperate gasp of life and sadness.
Go in peace, I said.
The narrowing whisper washed away. Others filled its place, equal parts sober and frightened.
They kill us.
We protect each other.
The ill-fated have returned.
I pressed a palm into the tree.
I’m here.
Ferocity welled up inside. Barging into a scene of demigods wasn’t going to help, not until I knew what they were doing. If they left when I arrived, we’d gain no answers. Mortals carrying giant black cauldrons of a bubbling liquid approached the demigod driving stakes into the ground.
A call from deeper in the woods must have come, because the female demigod turned, neck taut. Her lips moved.
Demigods couldn’t sense goddess magic at work, so I used a spell to help me climb the tree. I scuttled to a branch that stretched toward the female demigod. The mossy arm held my weight as I walked along. Not a leaf stirred.
Vines retracted out of the way as I crept forward. Other operations with mortals revealed themselves. Attempts to saw into trees with long, floppy blades. Sharp spikes drove into trees with mallets. Boring holes through branches. More timers.
The female demigod stopped to speak to another demigod with a rectangular amulet in his ear. Gaudy and thick, it tugged on his lobe, stretching it farther down his neck than the other side. Meloduncanate. One of the only amulets used as an earring.
The female’s contemplative face, attentive expression, led me to think she was the leader here.
Three amulets, likely twice as many demigods, and maybe forty mortals here. A bit too much for me to tackle alone. A slinking motion just beyond the demigods drew my eye higher. Shadows. Changing darkness, yet nothing definite to see, indicated one thing.
A forest dragon.
The resurrecting voices in my mind confirmed my growing suspicion.
The fire breathers arrive.
They protect us.
We fear them.
They protect us.
The alternating messages didn’t surprise me. Tinny voices, typically the saplings, squeaked their fear of the dragons, while mellow responses came from the older trees. Greater questions stirred in my mind with their arrival.
Could the trees speak to the dragons?
By extension—could I?
The female demigod stepped out of the way of three mortals carrying glass vials that smoked. She stood below me again. For several minutes, all other mortals and demigods cleared. Alone, she stood in a slight opening between trees. Her gaze had narrowed on the ground, lips puckered in thought.
How easily I could drop on top of her, wrestle the amulet free, and disappear. Just as I crouched, a young woman and a younger male who appeared to be siblings stepped out of the trees. The smoke vials had disappeared. The two of them motioned toward a tree ringed by gray-and-yellow fumes. They curled up from the base of the trunk.
With a thought, I tuned back into the voices of the trees.
It burns.
They maim.
The ill-fated kill.
The demigod female followed the two mortals, her burgundy skirt billowing as she strode.
Another shadow moved in the distance.
Then a flash of fire.
A wash of heat brushed past from the right. Ah . . . several forest dragons had come.
My heart raced as the demigod female stopped at the smoking tree, regarding it with a hand on her chin. A line of wet, putrid liquid ate away at the bark, which crumbled to the ground in piles of mustard-colored ash. Her lips moved. The mortals turned to face her. My gaze darted from her, to a nearby mortal, then back to her. A plan began to form.
I didn’t have much time.
The forest dragons would attack soon, I imagined. Sanna had once called death by forest dragon, a blanket of fire or a basket of teeth. Today, I hoped that would be true.
I transported to the forest floor, only a few paces away from the demigod female, and slipped behind a tree. The Volare leapt to life again. I climbed on top, one hand on Viveet’s hilt.
The Volare inched forward a breath at a time. Though the mortals and demigods couldn’t detect goddess magic, and wouldn’t be able to see me, that didn’t make me undetectable. Sounds would be my first mistake. Breathing too loud, exclamations. For this to work, timing needed to be just right.
My stomach clenched when we hovered just behind her, so close I could touch her hair. She quieted, then waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. The mortals turned away.
Collected parchments lay in her hand, filled with indecipherable Alaysian words. A distant shout, then a deafening crack, preceded the crash of a falling tree. A tremble rippled through the ground. A violent uproar from the nearest saplings raged through my mind. She made a noise in her throat, stepped back.
The Volare shrank, preventing the demigod from jostling into it.
I crouched.
The demigod female lifted her head, nostrils flaring. She turned to the right, nose in the air, and sniffed. The faintest hint of sulfur trickled by on a breeze. Brimstone. Heat wavered close, looming.
She tensed. I tipped my head back ever-so-slightly to see the darkness of unfurled dragon wings as they cut overhead. Fire built in a half open mouth, then disappeared. My stomach clenched. A flare of flames brightened nearby.
I jumped.
The female crumbled beneath my weight as a roar sounded overhead. My fingers closed around the necklace as we toppled to the ground. She bellowed something. I ripped the chain free. Links disintegrated in my hand like smoke as the demigod female rolled onto her knees, back, and popped upright with stunning velocity.
She snarled at me as I removed my invisibility spell, disdain coating her angelic features. Her eyes were dark, a stark contrast to her graying hair. In the background, mortals screamed. Fire flashed from all directions, punctuated by the thud, thud, thud of forest dragons stomping.
“Amulet-breaker,” she muttered in the common language. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“What a delightful surprise for you. Please, call me the Lady-witch of Letum Wood. You’re not welcome here.” My voice hardened. “Get out of my forest.”
Her naked neck drew my gaze momentarily. The amulet had disappeared into smoke. An illusion? She smiled, a coy curl of lips, when she saw my attention divert.
“I’m not a fool that wears my amulet in the open like the rest,” she hissed. “I think we’ve learned at least that much.”
A scream cut short came from behind. She glanced back, stepping away from me. I advanced, but she moved faster. Before I could get another word out, she disappeared.
“Jikes,” I muttered.
Mortals disappeared in the trees, some of them mid-cry. Others lay on the ground, necks snapped, faces burned, bodies torn open from talons. My nose wrinkled as I turned away from the wretched sight. The demigods didn’t even take the bodies back with them.
Forest dragons and I had never seen eye-to-eye. They didn’t like me, and I didn’t particularly care for them. After Mama died, my out-of-control emotions had led to violent magic, which made the giant lizards uneasy. They weren’t overly fond of magically potent beings outside of themselves.
Though I had far better control these days, we carefully avoided each other.
In the short chaos of the dragons arrival, the trees had quieted. A dark shadow flew overhead. Forest dragons expertly navigated between closely-packed trees with such massive wingspans, it defied logic. Logic didn’t matter in the world of Letum Wood. Despite tightly-packed trees, the dragons always fit.
A dragon stomped into view. The red, a smaller female dragon, seethed while she glared at me. I held up a hand in a gesture of peace.
“We serve the same goddess!”
The red snorted fire. A pile of cinders landed on the ground in front of me. I stepped back, wincing from the heat. She grunted and shoved off the earth. Her giant talons scored the soil in deep gouges as she took to the sky.
As quickly as they had come, the dragons left, devastation in their wake.