| |
The bark is lighter once we’ve broken off the outer layer and folded it into loose packets, but added to the weight of our already overflowing baskets it means I’m already sweating before we’ve even lost sight of the harvested trees. The torn blisters on my fingers sting, and the relief I’d felt at leaving behind all the nosy strangers on the other side of the wall is ebbing into frustration. The forest is dirty and busy enough in its own way.
I bump into Grace’s back and nearly drop my basket. “Don’t tell me you forgot something.”
She cocks her head, listening to the wind tossing the branches, or maybe it’s small, scurrying animals doing whatever mysterious rustling-type things small animals do, or—
Oh. I can’t believe I forgot to worry about the locked-from-the-inside gates.
I square my shoulders and plant myself in front of Grace. I might not have my powers at the moment, but I’ve certainly been in more fights than her.
Or maybe not. There’s a burst of pain and my knees buckle. Did she just kick me?
She hits the dirt beside me, reaching to drag me down again when I try to rise.
“Just stay down and shut up,” she hisses.
“. . . Cadence?” I try, but she doesn’t answer.
I twist my shoulders to free myself from Grace’s death grip.
She pinches me hard. “Seriously. Stay. Down.”
I glare, but she’s too busy staring past me to notice. Her pupils dilate.
It’s too late. Whatever was coming for us is already here.
I screw my eyes shut for a moment, wishing. Hoping. Magic, Ash, weapons—oh, if only I had my threads . . . Then I turn to face the nightmare.
Only, it’s not.
It’s not Mara or any type of water monster I’ve seen, which makes sense since there’s no body of water in sight.
It’s hard to focus on it. The sunlight filtering through the trees seems to fall right through it, dancing as the wind tosses branches and shivers leaves.
Its flesh is a rich, ruddy brown and mostly hidden under shifting layers of green. Its head is covered with more of the same—a matting of leaves and twigs and moss softening its form. What face it has is broad, with gnarled, uneven features, and a seamed grain like exposed wood in place of pores.
It blends so well with the forest that it seems to step into and through the trunks of trees and thickets of undergrowth, as if it’s a ghost. Or, as if the forest is the ghost and it's the only real thing here.
It looms over us, wafting sap, and pollen, and pitch, and moss, and the dry decay of last season’s leaves, and—
I sneeze. Leaves shower over us—a swirling whirlwind that first whispers and then tickles, and any moment now will scratch hard enough to draw blood.
I snatch Grace’s basket up and hurl it at the creature. It bounces off and rolls away, scattering its harvest.
“What are you doing?” Grace wraps her arms around my waist and drags me back down.
I struggle, trying to stand, trying to face down the monster. To at least do that much.
But it doesn’t seem interested. It leans past to peer at the length of inner bark now splayed over the ground, unraveling from our tumbled baskets. It drifts off to examine the tree we harvested from, running what seems to pass for a hand over the fresh, weeping wound.
Grace’s grip loosens. I wriggle out of her grasp and lunge for the blade that must have fallen out of her basket when I threw it. I plant my feet and hold the short, sharp-edged tool out in front of me with both hands, baring my teeth to keep them from chattering.
“You don’t understand,” she shouts over the whirlwind of leaves.
The green and brown thing looks from the tree to us. I brandish my makeshift weapon.
The leaves swirl faster, blocking my view. I slash, backing toward Grace, uncomfortably aware just how much longer that creature’s reach looked than my own.
Then the leaves drop, all at once.
I twist, dancing in a circle to try to get eyes on the monster. I narrowly avoid slicing Grace’s cheek.
“Give me that!” Grace wrenches the blade away. “Idiot. What were you going to do with that? Hack it to pieces?”
Her eyes are almost clear with fury—or, no, that’s not it at all. She sinks to the ground, still gripping the blade, tears streaking her cheeks.
“Um,” I look away, embarrassed for her. “It’s okay?”
“No, it isn’t,” she wails. “You—you thought it was a monster, and you were going to fight it for me even though you can’t fight and—and—you could have killed each other!”
I lean over and pat her on the head. It’s awkward. I pull my hand back quick.
“Lame,” says Cadence. “Your people skills are the worst.”
“Shut up.”
Grace cries harder, pulling her knees in and making muddy splotches on her increasingly dirty outfit.
“Oh. Not you. Cadence was being a pest.”
“Just saying it like it is,” Cadence snipes.
“What did I just say?”
“Like that tone’s ever worked for you in the past.”
“Could you not? It’s not a good time, okay?”
“It’s never a good time with you. You never listen, even though you know less than nothing, and all you ever do is make it worse, and—”
I ball my hands into fists and focus on the sharp pain of dirt ground into raw flesh.
“Don’t you shut me out—” she starts.
“Or what? What’ll you do, Cady. Oh, right. Nothing. Because you can’t. So, just. Shut. Up.”
“Are you guys always like that?” Grace is staring open-mouthed, tears forgotten.
I shift my weight. “Um . . .”
“So you don’t get along at all? That’s gotta suck. But I kind of get it—like me with my sisters.”
“You have siblings?”
“Duh,” says Cadence. I ignore her.
“Two older sisters,” Grace says. “Jess is your age. Banshee, you know? She got sent out with Ash the day you guys got back, which must’ve made her year. She’s had a thing for him for ages. And then Steph’s a little younger. She just got back from a training mission today—I was camping out at her place in the dorms while she was gone, remember? They both suck, in case you missed that. Actually, you—uh, well, Cady— hated Jess when she was a kid.”
“Yup,” says Cadence. “Not too keen on Steph, either. Gracie was a little young to hate, though.”
Grace turns her basket right side up and starts repacking its scattered contents.
I follow suit haphazardly. “I can’t believe you guys bring kids out here. It’s like you’re trying to get them eaten.”
“Um,” Grace delicately tucks a bundle of curly fern heads to one side. “I think you’re misunderstanding something.”
“I’ll say.” Cadence sounds amused. “Go ahead. Why don’t you explain yourself?”
But Grace just shrugs and finishes filling her basket. She hefts it easily, but I groan when it’s my turn. It’s a good thing we don’t have all that far to go.
Twigs crack, each footstep rustling through drifts of old leaves and new growth overtaking the path. My skin itches with drying sweat and the dirt kicked up by the whirlwind. The basket feels heavier with each step. The adrenaline that propelled me between Grace and that monster is draining fast.
“You know I fought back home, right? In—in the city, I mean.” I plod along for a bit before continuing. “Ash explained how there are different monsters, how they emerged as the time before ended. How they were tied to the damage we caused—people, I mean. Back home, we have the Mara—dream-eating monsters—that live in the fog, and other water monsters too, though I don’t know as much about those. We saw some more on the journey out, different kinds of water monsters, I mean, but I haven’t actually seen—what do you call this kind? A tree monster? A forest monster?—well, I haven’t seen that before, but the ones I have seen . . .”
“What?” Grace says after a few moments, a few more steps closer to people and protection.
“I’ve seen them kill people. Lots of people. Strangers and—and not-strangers. Um. Friends. Or something. And I almost got more killed the last time I tried to fight, which is why I’m here, to get those abilities back. But when that thing came at us, I just—I couldn’t watch them take one more. Not in front of me like that.”
Cadence snorts. Grace is silent. I can see the wall through the trees now.
“Thank you for telling me.” Grace pulls the key over her head, and pauses until she has locked up and replaced it on the hook on the other side. “I feel kinda bad for saying this now, but you should know—that wasn’t a monster.”