Shhhhh, a hundred voices seemed to murmur as she drifted, unsure if she was dreaming or awake. Shhhhh, young one. We have you now, after all our years of waiting. We will heal you.
You are ours and always have been.
It was too much for her tired brain to untangle. Letting out a long, defeated sigh, Cordelia fell the rest of the way into deep sleep, cradled by the rustling green forest. In her dreams, the hundred voices kept on whispering to one another, but this time they were too low for her to make out any words. A giant heartbeat drummed deep in the soil underneath her, keeping perfect time with her own. Green grew up through her body, spreading rich, vibrant tendrils along her limbs. Birds kept watch in the trees, guarding her rest, while insect sentries buzzed through the air.
She was loved. She was safe. She was part of a whole. She was …
She woke with a sudden jerk of warning. The insects’ hum had halted.
Her eyes snapped open. “Something’s coming,” she said with flat certainty.
Rosalind had been pacing a silent perimeter around the space where Cordelia slept, while Giles sat nearby, his fingers tapping a pattern in midair as if he were strumming an invisible lute. His hand stilled as he repeated blankly, “‘Something’?”
“The forest isn’t happy.” Cordelia wasn’t even thinking about her words; she was straining with all of her senses for clues as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her side ached when she moved, but not as much as it had earlier. The pain was much better. Surprisingly better.
But Giles sounded even more alarmed than before. “‘The forest isn’t happy’?” he repeated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Your magic,” Cordelia said impatiently. “Is it still going, drawing those knights away from us?”
“Ah … no. It ran out, actually. A while back.” His shoulders hunched. “Well, that’s the problem with not training, I guess. I can’t keep it under control for very long. But they were running in the opposite direction, so—”
“I can’t hear anyone.” Rosalind had found herself a new and thicker stick while Cordelia was sleeping. She held it like a club as she drew closer to the other two, standing between them and the nearest trees.
“The animals can. They’re hiding.” The world had rebalanced itself around Cordelia while she’d slept; the ground stayed perfectly steady beneath her feet this time as she stood, without any need for a stick’s support. She rubbed hard with one foot at the bent grass where she’d lain, trying to hide the evidence from their hunters.
Then her eyes narrowed.
There hadn’t been any flowers growing there before. Now a curving arc of small, white starflowers blossomed like a map, outlining exactly where her body had curled.
Goose bumps prickled across her skin as her left hand rose instinctively to touch her waist. Her injury wasn’t burning anymore. In fact, she could have sworn that it had actually healed.
What sort of dream had she just had?
Giles was jittering nervously in place, a distraction in the corner of her vision. “If those knights are back and heading our way—”
“Can you tell how many of them are coming after us this time?” Rosalind asked Cordelia.
There was something tingling at the edge of her hearing, almost like a whisper—more than one?—trying to reach her from far away, but—
“No.” She tore her eyes from the white flowers and let out her held breath in frustration. “I just know they’ll be here any moment.”
“Then we need to go. Now.” Rosalind thrust out her old sword-stick. “Here. Use this again—”
“No. I don’t need it anymore.” It felt like a wrench to turn her back on those starflowers. They meant something; she was sure of it. But there was no time to explore that mystery now. Cordelia waved off her sister’s offer and pointed. “The forest ends that way. It’s our closest path out.”
“Connall really let you explore all the way to the edge of the forest?” Giles frowned.
“Of course he didn’t! I just …” I just know it was the honest answer, but none of them had ever seen a map of the forest. She couldn’t know.
And yet …
“Well, it has to end eventually, no matter which way we go,” said Rosalind, “and that direction leads away from home, so it should take us away from the knights, too. Let’s do it.”
Squaring her shoulders, she lowered her head like an angry goat and waved her stick-club threateningly at her siblings. “Go!”
They went. Cordelia’s side didn’t even twinge as she launched herself forward. The ripped sides of her gown flew out around her as she ran. Giles’s legs were the longest by far and the fastest, too, but he slowed more and more after the first minute, staring at her instead of at the trees and brambles that blocked their way.
“Why aren’t you bleeding through your bandage?” he demanded. “How are you even—?”
“Run!” Rosalind snarled at both of them.
The whole forest was urging them on now. Cordelia could feel the air thickening behind her, trying to press her farther from the danger. A sudden cacophony of angry birdcalls sounded behind them.
“They’ve reached the stream,” Cordelia panted to her triplets.
“How do you know?” Giles’s whisper sounded like a shriek as he leaped over a fallen tree trunk, gangly legs flashing in midair.
“Faster!” gritted Rosalind.
Up ahead, bright golden light lanced through the canopy of leaves, painting long, vivid stripes along the ivy-covered tree trunks. There was more space between those trees ahead, more room for light to fall. The air tasted different, too: like distant smoke and strange, enticing new scents.
They were nearing the end of the forest. They had to be.
Not far behind them, something crashed.
“You two keep going.” Rosalind skidded to a halt and swerved around, brandishing her stick-club. “I’ll slow them down.”
“No!” Giles staggered, eyes wild and long legs tangling as he spun around midleap. “Mother said to stay together, remember? We’re family!”
“I’m defending the family,” Rosalind gritted, “and this time, no one is stopping me. Go!”
There was no use talking to Rosalind when she was in a battering-ram mood. Cordelia didn’t even try. She just lunged forward and grabbed, ready to change shapes in an instant if she needed to force her stubborn sister forward.
Before her hand could land on Rosalind’s arm, though, a sudden trill of music lanced through her.
It wasn’t coming from the air. It was a flute piping directly through her veins, high, eerie, and hauntingly familiar. As if—
“Mother!” Cordelia grabbed both of her triplets at once. “She’s here. Run!” She swerved to the left, tugging them with her. For once, they didn’t even try to resist.
“What are you talking about?” Giles panted.
“She’s here?” Rosalind’s head swiveled as she ran. “Where—?”
“It’s her song!” That was how Cordelia had recognized the melody. How many times had it rocked them to sleep when they were little? It was the same song Alys had hummed in the garden only yesterday—but Alys couldn’t send songs by magic. Only Mother could.
“I don’t hear anything,” Rosalind said.
“Just trust me!” Those other messages had streamed through the trees and the earth, as if the forest itself were whispering through her skin, but this song was different. It came through her bones with a magic that felt inescapably familiar. She knew it every bit as firmly as she knew that their hunters were nearly upon them now.
“Wait.” Giles was still panting for breath. “I can hear it now, too. Cordy’s right. It’s—”
“Our lullaby!” Rosalind finished on a sudden gasp—and sped up to run by Cordelia’s side, no longer waiting for directions.
Another five feet, over the brink of a large, grassy clearing, and—
Snap! The air closed behind them.
Rosalind whirled around, raising her stick-club. “What was that?”
“We’re safe.” Cordelia slumped to a halt, breathing hard. “Can’t you feel it?” A blurry, translucent wall of air had formed at the edge of the large clearing, closing them in. “We’re shut off from all the rest of the forest now.”
Giles poked one finger at the shimmering air, eyes wide. “I can’t break through this.”
“Neither can they.” She hoped not, anyway.
Six bear-knights hurtled into the trees they’d just run through, followed by a thin, panting man in a strange crimson robe. Cordelia braced to find out if she’d been right.
Their blurred heads turned, visibly searching. Their voices were muffled by the wall of air. The man in the crimson robe shook his head, his gaze skating past the triplets without a single pause. One of the knights scowled and slashed an arm furiously through the air.
All six knights and their companion turned in unison … and ran in the opposite direction.
“You see?” A warm, confident voice spoke just behind the three children. “You’re perfectly safe now, my dears.”
That wasn’t Mother’s voice.
Every sense prickled with warning as Cordelia turned.
In the center of the clearing, where she’d seen nothing but green grass before, a small white cottage rose up before them. Ivy climbed its plastered sides; wide, dark timbers framed the open door.
Standing in that doorway, a tall, dark-haired woman smiled out at them.
She had Mother’s eyes and her hawklike nose. But silver threaded through her hair, which was perfectly smooth and sleek, not wild and curling like Mother’s. It wasn’t even trying to burst free from the beaded net that held it back.
Giles gulped audibly. “You—what—?”
“Oh, really.” Tsk’ing disapprovingly, she took a gliding step forward, like a swan crossing water. “You poor children. Hasn’t your mother told you anything about me?”
“We thought you were Mother,” Cordelia said hoarsely. “That song—the one you sent us—”
“That was always her favorite lullaby, wasn’t it?” The woman’s full lips curved wider. “She sang it to Connall so often, I knew you’d recognize it, too.”
“But … how?” Rosalind’s stick-club sagged along with her shoulders, her whisper a bare thread of sound.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’ve been waiting for years.” Her voice was rich with satisfaction as she looked from one to another of them. “Finally—finally!—I’ve been allowed to meet my youngest grandchildren.”