I STARE UNHAPPILY AT THE DEAD END and wait for something to change. Nothing does. Agonizing minutes pass.
I can’t go back. I can’t stomach that crawl again.
Which means I can’t apologize to Willow. I wonder if she’s still waiting for me to turn around and follow her.
I pick myself up from the ground and carefully probe the wall in front of me. I’d sooner hack my way through the spike-infested forest with my bare hands than brave that claustrophobic passage again.
The thorns here are huge—a hand’s span or more. They stick like sickles from the wall of thorns, jutting out from between the black leaves. I carefully run my fingers along the edge of one. It’s wickedly sharp, and even that ginger contact draws a few droplets of blood.
“It’s easy,” a reedy voice whispers.
I whirl around, but nobody is there.
“Oh, so easy,” the voice coos softly. “Our thorns are sharp. So sharp.”
“I—” Oh, for fuck’s sake. No. I’m not going to start talking to trees. I’m not going mad.
“So much easier.” The vines before me wriggle with the words, like a nest of snakes.
“Jesus Christ. What are you?” I take a step back.
“The way out,” the woods around me whisper. “I’m the roots, and the boughs, and the curtain before the gate. I’m black leaves and red thorns. I’m here to help you escape.”
“Escape...?”
“It’s so easy,” the woods creak. “So easy.”
The vines hanging in front of me stretch out as if for an embrace. Their thorns glisten like a hundred bloody fingertips as they stretch out to take me into their midst.
“No.” I take another step back. “Not that way.”
“Escape,” the wood drawls. Is that laughter I hear in its voice? “So easy.”
I pause. “Did you say ‘the curtain before the gate?’” I ask.
The clutching tendrils fall abruptly back against the wall. The voice stops teasing me.
Aha. Nothing for it, I suppose. I march forward and wrap my hands around a thorn attached to a dry and brittle vine. The thorn sinks deep into my palm and sends blood trickling down my arm. The vine quivers at my touch.
Then I rip the thorn off. A shrill scream echoes through the forest around me, and a syrupy red sap spills from the broken plant, as if it too bleeds.
The vine moans out, “Perché mi schiante? Perché mi scerpi?”
I ignore the talking plant. I ignore my bleeding hands. I ignore everything but the wall before me. I wield the thorn like a scythe and bring it sweeping through the vinous growth.
“Isn’t there any pity in your soul?” the vine wails as the wall begins writhing.
I stab, saw, and slice at vines thicker than my leg. I lop off long vines even as they try to impale me, and leave them flopping on the ground like severed tentacles. Still, some find flesh, and I’m left with long gashes across my arms. I fight through the pain and carry on with my grisly reaping.
I cut a hole through to the other side. I roar as I cut through the final tendril with its own vicious spike. The last vine falls to the forest floor and then wood around me goes still, save for the sound of weeping in the distance. Or am I imagining that?
I drop the severed thorn onto the crimson earth and then step through the new curtain I’ve created—long tendrils of sticky red sap, spilling to the forest floor. I wipe my sticky, stained hands down my muddy shirt, and I realize that I can’t tell my blood apart from the plants’.
Through this gate, the path runs wide and clear. The path ahead slopes downhill, and the vine’s sap has already traced a crimson line between the roots for me to follow. I can see the setting sun in the distance, as it peeks between thinning trees and heavy clouds.
Then, from behind me, I hear heavy breathing and the thud of hooves walking slowly over tree roots. Something is coming through the forest—the vines around me begin rustling again in anticipation, and I hear bloodlust in their voices.
“Impossible,” I mutter, but fear lances up my throat.
The leaves around me ripple and it sounds like laughter.
Not again. Not this shit again. I run and the sound of hoof steps follows me as I race through the forest corridor.
When I finally slip and fall, as I was bound to on a rain-slicked decline, I slide haphazardly past roots and vines. Red sap and rain-water run beneath me and carry me down, down, down.
I splay my arms out as I’m carried downhill, desperate to catch myself before I’m crucified on the laughing vines. I scream, but even over that I can hear the hooves bearing down on me from behind. I crane my neck to look back, but can’t see my pursuer.
Ahead, the trees disappear and I see a city. It’s lit up like a Christmas tree and plumes of smoke stretch into the grey sky. People! Civilization! Am I finally free?
And then the slide disappears. I spill over a precipice and plunge into a turbulent river that sweeps me away downstream.