Eight

Eleanor had been trying for half an hour to open the Wending again. All she’d gotten out of it was a headache.

“I think I wore out the world-walker’s world-walking,” she said, slumping in defeat.

The hedgewitch let out a noise of frustration. “Ripping your way through the Wending—what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking we were going to die,” Eleanor snapped.

The hedgewitch huffed. “Well, you didn’t. And now we’re all stuck here until you recover.”

“Where is here?” Otto asked, looking around at the anemic woods. “I mean, a forest, obviously. But what world?”

The hedgewitch gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll go and see if I can find out,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere without me.” She turned on her heel, stalking down the road.

Pip squinted after her. “Your mom’s kind of terrible.”

“Says the girl whose mom tried to ritually sacrifice us,” Otto pointed out.

Pip shrugged. “I said terrible, not evil. There’s a difference.”

Eleanor sank down onto the squiggly end of a root and stared out at the forest. Pip sat next to her. She wrapped her arms around Eleanor, resting her chin on Eleanor’s shoulder. Otto sat on the other side, leaving a bit of distance between them, but that was a sign of how much he cared about her, too. She’d started to feel overwhelmed when both of them hugged her at the same time, like she was getting claustrophobic. So now they took turns.

Eleanor stared straight ahead, eyes focused on nothing. A stranger was in her mother’s place. And the same thing was going to happen to Pip. To all of them. It was all too much. If she thought about it for even a moment, she was afraid she might break apart.

“We’ll find a way to get her back, you know,” Pip said. “We’ll stop Mr. January. And the Stories. And we’ll go home and everything will be great.”

“Since when are you an optimist?” Otto asked, lightly teasing.

Pip scrunched up her nose. “Ugh. It’s Jack. The warrior, I mean. It’s not even a little bit cynical. It’s constantly convinced that we can save the day and live happily ever after.”

“How dare it rob you of your doom and gloom?” Otto asked, and Pip chuckled.

“What about you?” Pip asked, squeezing Eleanor’s shoulder. “Feel anything changing?”

“I don’t know,” Eleanor said. “I can’t open the road, but if I really concentrate there’s this sort of . . . shimmer.” It was like a hum in the air—but also like her fingers were brushing against strings that were threaded between everything. There was one running between Pip and Otto. She wasn’t sure what it was, except that it was strong and bright and loud. But when she tried to reach out, like she had when she opened the road . . . nothing.

She sighed.

“You probably just need to rest,” Otto reassured her.

“It feels like trying to work a strained muscle,” Eleanor said. She rolled her shoulders.

A strange sound came from the direction where the hedgewitch had vanished. A metallic scrape, and then a cut-off yell. Eleanor was on her feet before she fully processed what she’d heard.

“What was that?” Otto asked.

“Nothing good,” Pip said, rising as well. Her hand on Gloaming, she advanced down the road. Eleanor and Otto stuck close as they followed. The road wound around the side of a small hill, blocking their view up ahead. They rounded the corner slowly—and froze.

The hedgewitch was on her knees, hands held up in surrender. Around her stood four figures clad in dark gray armor that was pinched and twisted in strange, thorny shapes. Each of them carried a long, jagged spear—and the tip of one was pointed right between the hedgewitch’s shoulder blades.

One of the armored figures turned its head toward the trio. His lips parted, and he inhaled deeply through his nose—as if smelling them. The hedgewitch, her hair wild around her face, looked at them with wide, frightened eyes.

“Run!” she called, her voice harsh as the caw of a crow. Otto seized Eleanor’s arm, turning to flee—but Eleanor stood rooted to the spot.

She couldn’t leave her mother there. She couldn’t abandon her.

“Run, you fools!” the hedgewitch shouted, but it was too late. Two of the gray-armored soldiers closed the distance in a few long strides. The jagged tip of a spear hovered an inch from Eleanor’s throat, and cold, empty eyes stared into hers. The other spear was leveled at Pip, who grimaced and threw down Gloaming, raising her hands in surrender.

“I’m sorry,” Eleanor said softly as a soldier’s hand closed around her arm.

Their captors said nothing at all.