I was wrenched upward and into a darkness so dense, it seemed to leech the blood from my veins and peel the skin from my flesh. Tumbling, falling—endlessly falling—through a living entity of blackness. It surrounded me. Choked me. The nightmare tree rose up before me. Black spiky branches reached down to stab at me. They snatched me, hoisting me high into an inky sky. I crashed through the branches, frozen wood slamming into my flesh as it stuffed me into its mouth. I was back inside. Things crawled in my hair and down the back of my dress. I shrieked. I screamed and sobbed and fought. But no one could hear me.
Then my descent halted sickeningly. Before I could orient myself, I was hurtling backwards. Faster and faster. My hair lashed at my face. My stomach heaved as colors and spears of light surrounded me. Shades of plum and green and yellow. The colors of death and decay.
Faces appeared and disappeared. Fat-cheeked babies that morphed into crumbling skulls in an instant. Millions of faces. An unending stream of shrieking mouths on either side. I closed my eyes, or thought I did. But death was everywhere.
I scrambled for something—anything—to hold on to. But there was nothing. I was nothing. A microbe. A grain of sand on a beach surrounded by a dry ocean.
Then, the pain, as I slammed through what felt like the world’s largest plate-glass window. Except I was the one who shattered into a million pieces.
Blood boiled in my veins. My joints flexed into unnatural poses. The pain . . . Oh God, the pain.
Help me. Help.
Everything sped by in swirls of green and white and brown. Cold air washed my skin. Seared my lungs.
My lungs! I’m breathing.
I filled my chest with the glorious taste of air. Blessed oxygen raced to my starving cells, and slowly I became aware of cold, hard earth beneath my back.
I cracked an eyelid. Stark, rosy light sliced into my skull, and I squeezed it shut again. Groaning, I rolled to my side and puked till I thought I might die.
When the heaving slowed, I peered through watering eyes to see Collum crawling across a bare forest clearing toward me. A strange purple light flickered over him, dissipating as I watched. Closer to me, Phoebe lay splayed on the ground, the same lavender haze fading from her skin. As I inched across the cold earth, the last remnants of the tinted light arced off my fingertips, then disappeared.
When I reached my friend, I swiped at the blood beneath my nose and shook her. “Phoebe! Can you hear me?”
She moaned and began to stir. I rolled her away just in time.
“Ugh.” Wiping her mouth, she scooted away from the disgusting mess, moaning, “Hope? You all right, then?”
I collapsed onto my side, arms no longer able to hold me up. “Yeah. Though it would’ve been nice if someone had warned me”—I shuddered as my gut gave a final twinge—“about the rotting baby heads.”
Phoebe peeked through one bleary eye. “Uh . . . rotting baby heads?”
“No one’s experience is the same,” Collum explained, his voice hoarse. “That’s why we didn’t warn you. But the first time is always the hardest. The next time won’t be quite so bad.”
“Well, jeez,” I muttered. “Thank God for small favors.”
Chapter 17
FINALLY RECOVERED ENOUGH TO STAND, we retreated from the eerie glade and began to slog through the snow-laden, primeval forest. New sunlight glittered pink and gold on chittering limbs. I breathed in the forest scents of ice and wet wood and stillness. So fresh and clear, I tried not to think about how no one in a thousand years had tasted air like this.
I looked back only once. The little rise, surrounded by a perfect circle of ancient oaks, pulsed with a sleepy power. Nothing littered the bare earth inside. Not a weed. Not a leaf. Not even a fleck of snow, as though it didn’t answer to natural law.
“According to the research, the locals believe this part of the forest is haunted,” Collum said, noticing my look. “Which is good for us.”
I’d read about places in the woods where even today people didn’t venture. I wondered if some of those dark areas were nodes, other places where ley lines crossed. Maybe the spooky feelings people reported were the unseen power of the earth warning them away.
Collum forged ahead, breaking a trail. I followed, zombie-like. Sure, my cheeks were already burning from the cold. And snow squeaked under my boots. And I could hear the birds waking in the dawn light. But none of it seemed real. How could it?
“I know how you feel.” Phoebe’s breath puffed out in a white cloud as she stomped along beside me. “Bloody bizarre, right?”
I snorted. “You could say that.”
“Well, I cried like a baby the first time, so you’re doing better than me.”
I felt like crying. But Collum had set a brutal pace, and it took all I had to keep up.
At the rutted road that twisted through the frigid forest, we hitched a ride with a farm family headed for London. It took a lot of coaxing, and some coins had changed hands. But soon we were perched on a wagon laden with winter root vegetables. Collum did all the talking at first. But gradually I joined in. When the “thees,” “thous” and “wherefores” sprang naturally from my lips, I felt a pang of gratitude for my mother’s insistence that I master all those archaic languages. Still . . .
If you’d just told me, Mom, maybe it would’ve been different. Maybe I would’ve been different.
We had so little to go on.