A small part of Serilda wondered if it would be best not to follow. This cave looked dark and dank and all manner of unwelcoming.
But she had heard, and told, enough stories to know that it was never wise to ignore the summons of a magical creature. Even a lowly, peculiar one like this little river monster.
As the schellenrock crept into the mouth of the cave, Serilda hastily tied back her braids and followed.
Chapter 42
Her initial reaction had been accurate. The cave was dark and dank and entirely unwelcoming. It also smelled of dead fish. She had to stay crouched the entire time and her legs were aching something terrible; and there was standing water on the cave floor that the schellenrock kept kicking up behind it and splattering into Serilda’s face.
And she couldn’t see. The only light came from the schellenrock’s faintly illuminated eyes, which might have let it see well enough, but left Serilda in the dark.
The path was mostly straight, though, and Serilda could tell that they were traveling beneath the city. She tried to gauge how far they had gone, and wondered how long this tunnel went for, and very much hoped that it had an opening at the other end and she wasn’t being led to an unsavory death.
Just when she was beginning to think her thighs couldn’t take any more and she would have to start crawling on her hands and knees—not a tempting proposition—she saw a spot of light up ahead and heard the burble of water.
They emerged.
Not in the town or out in the fields?…
But in a forest.
Serilda had no sooner marveled at how gratifying it could feel to stretch one’s legs after they’d been crouched for far too long, than a shiver prickled along her spine.
The creature had brought her into the Aschen Wood.
They were standing in a shallow creek bed, surrounded by ancient trees, their boughs so thick she could barely make out the sky above, sheltering them from the rain. The air was still damp and chilled, and great globs of rainwater fell from the branches.
The schellenrock hurried off down the creek, its webbed feet splashing in the shallow water, part hopping, part hobbling, leading Serilda deeper into the wood.
Her boots squelched with every step. She knew she should be afraid—the woods were not friendly to humans, especially those who entered them on foot or ventured off the road, and she was definitely off the road. But mostly she was curious, even excited. She wanted to pause and drink it in, this mysterious place she’d been dreaming of her whole life.
The one time she’d ever been beyond the edge of the woods was a few short months ago, on the night of the Hunger Moon, when the king had first summoned her and the carriage traversed the little-traveled road through the forest, when it had been too dark to see anything.
Papa had never dared enter the woods, not even on horseback. She doubted he’d have traveled through the woods if he had an entire royal guard to accompany him. His fears made more sense to her now. The Erlking had lured away her mother, and most people believed that the Erlking still resided in Gravenstone Castle, which lay deep in the heart of the forest.
Regardless whether the king now called Adalheid his home, the Aschen Wood remained a treacherous place. Serilda had always feared it, just as she’d always been drawn to it. What child could resist the allure of such magic? The image of fae creatures dancing on toadstools and water sprites bathing in the brooks and songbirds with glowing feathers alighting on the branches overhead.
But it was not quite the landscape of evocative color and song she’d always pictured. Instead, everywhere she looked there was a chorus of gray and green. She tried to think of it as pretty, but for the most part, it struck her as a palette of uninterrupted gloom. Spindly black tree trunks and branches drooping with strings of lichen and fallen logs crumbling under the weight of thick moss and fungi the size of wagon wheels.
There was a sense of eternity here. This was a place where time didn’t exist, where even the smallest sapling might be ancient. Unchanged and unchanging.
But of course, it wasn’t unchanging. The forest was alive, but in quiet, subtle ways. The fat spider spinning its intricate web among a patch of bloodberry thorns. The rumbling call of toads along the banks of a murky pond. The haunted cry of crows eyeing her from the boughs, occasionally answered by the lonely song of the warblers. Together with the incessant rainfall, it made a somber melody. The quiet drumbeat on the canopy overhead, paired with steady drips pummeling the lower leaves, thumping down into the bed of undergrowth and pine needles.
Serilda’s nerves tingled with imagined threats. She kept a close eye on those crows, especially the ones who landed overhead and waited for her to pass underneath, watching like greedy scavengers. But they were only birds, she assured herself again and again. Not bloodthirsty nachtkrapp, spying for the Erlking.
The coat of the schellenrock jangled loudly, startling Serilda. She realized it had gotten quite far ahead and was standing on a fallen log, eyelids alternating in slow blinks.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling.
If the creature could smile, it didn’t. But that might also be because a fly had started to buzz around its head, catching its attention, and while Serilda made up the distance, the schellenrock stuck out a whiplike black tongue and swallowed the fly whole.
Serilda buried a grimace. When the creature’s gaze returned to hers, she had found her polite smile again. “Is there a place we can rest? Just for a few minutes?”
In answer, the schellenrock hopped off the log and headed up the bank of the creek, where the foliage was dense and the ground was a patchwork of gnarled roots and ferns and brambles.
Sighing, Serilda grabbed hold of a thick root sticking out of the clay and hauled herself up after it.
Yes, the forest was bleak, she thought, weaving and ducking around the branches that clawed at her as she passed. But there was a serenity to it, too. Like a sad concerto played in a minor key that made you weep just to hear it, though you could never quite tell why.
It was the smell of earth and fungi. Of that damp, sodden smell after a good rain. It was the tiny purple wildflowers unfurling near the ground, so easy to miss among the prickly weeds. It was the fallen tree trunks that were rotting away, giving life to new saplings, wrapped up in tender, spindly roots. It was thrumming insects and an entire menagerie of croaking frogs.
The path, if it could be called a path, curved along the edge of a swamp overrun with swamp grass and weeping willows. A pool speckled with algae and enormous lily pads was fed by a small brook. The schellenrock clambered over to the other side, its shells clinking merrily, but when Serilda went to follow, her foot slid ankle deep into the mud. She gasped and threw her arms wide, barely managing to catch her balance before she fell into the swamp.