We did not go girded for war. Had we been in the castle, we might have: the servants would have whisked armor around us, finding pieces that fit just right and required no effort to lift or move in. But despite being placed near the heart of an enchanted forest, the hunting lodge was only that, a lodge meant for ordinary people doing ordinary things: it had no armor, no swords, no shields. Just three sisters determined to do right by one another, and a worried family to leave behind. We gathered outdoors, beside the roses, for our leave-taking. I had the mirror at my hip, and removed it to hesitantly offer it to Maman and Father. "I don't know if it works here—show me the Beast, please, mirror?"
The reflective surface swirled, but rather than my Beast, I saw only roses and thorns plundering the palace gardens. They slithered like snakes, and although the mirror carried no sound, I felt like I could hear them moving, hissing against one another as they grew and explored. Maman reached out and pressed the mirror down, shutting its pictures away. "I'll need to fight with the forest, from here. If I have that to watch, I'll be too caught up in fearing for your lives. All of yours. Take it with you, Amber. Maybe it will guide you."
Opal tucked bay leaves all about her person, into her bodice, into her sleeves, even made a wreath of them for her hair. Glover, who had done so much for us, who had gotten us through our first year in the lodge and helped us thrive in our second, stood by helplessly, despair written across his features. Opal, once satisfied with her leaves, extended one hand toward him, and with the other touched the small glimmering opal necklace at her throat. "This is how I know I'll be safe," she said easily. "The Beast's opal is a thing of his palace, and for all I know, it might shatter under the pressure of enchantment there. But I carry yours with me, and its only enchantment is love. It will keep me safe." She pressed a kiss against his lips, leaving him stunned as she said, "I'm ready," to Maman, and walked confidently into the forest.
Pearl had been murmuring to her pearl for some time, a quiet discussion with it and the sliver of a daytime moon; tomorrow the moon would be new, and this venture, too late. She said no goodbyes, merely left moonlight shining under her feet.
To my surprise, the boys fell on me with hugs and tears. "You've already been gone for ages," Flint whispered. "I don't want you to go away again."
"I know, but I have to." I kissed his hair. "I'll come back, I promise."
He nodded, but looking at his face, at Jasper's—even at Maman and Father and Glover—it was clear that the only one who believed I would return was Jet, whose three years were not enough to inure him to falsehoods told to ease the heart. I hugged them all, hard, before facing the roses. Maman asked, "What will you do?" and I discovered I had to act, rather than lose my nerve by answering.
I knew they would respond to me, that they seemed to want to touch me as much as I had always wanted to touch their velvety petals as a child. It felt vulnerable, reaching for the roses—even thornless roses—with my scored arms and the blood-flecked amber that had dried on them. These roses were my roses, I told myself as fiercely as I could. These roses, I had paid for with my freedom, with my blood, and, I was prepared to accept, possibly with my life. They were made of my mother's faery magic, born of her rage, bent to my will, shaped by my love. I knew what could be done with roses by a true faery, and I knew what could be done with the land by a mortal woman, and I knew that somewhere between those things, an answer would be met.
They grasped me, the runners and the petals and the leaves. Not as Eleanor's roses had done, not violently, not snatching me away from the person I had come to love, but eagerly, a lover's touch in and of themselves. They ran up my arms, engulfing me, and grew up my throat and cheeks and hair. Too late, I thought that Jet, especially, shouldn't be there to see this, but I could do nothing about it now, as the rose plants writhed and wrapped themselves around my legs, fitted themselves to my groin with breathless intimacy, and wound around my torso to make a bodice of their branches. I caught a last breath, quick and shallow, and then the roses drew me in.
I lost all sense of self: I was not an I, but a them, rooted in the earth and reaching for the rain and sunshine. My roots traveled underground, finding new places to send shoots upward. I reveled in the magnificence of it, of the life that pounded through the earth, and I felt, in the distance, a darkness. A place of no life, or stunted life, and I remembered myself, and my mission.
The roses had no desire to curl in on themselves, to dive deep into the earth and race toward that dark place, but I whispered to them the truth: that there were other roses there, and that they were dying.
I didn't know how long I traveled through the soil. Far less time, certainly, than it should have taken a wandering rose to cut its way through miles of forest in search of an enchanted garden. I burst from the ground like a sapling unfurled all at once, shaking dirt from my hair and shoulders and gasping for air that I hadn't realized I missed.
Night had fallen while I was underground, the moon high in the sky. But then, the moon had risen in daylight anyway, and its placement was of no particular help to me in judging the time. Nor did it matter: late was all that mattered, and I had a fear in me that I wastoo late.
I stood before the palace gates. Their copper roses were all tarnished now, much worse than they should have been even after months of neglect, and I doubted they'd been neglected at all until the past ten days. Real roses throttled the copper ones, with pieces of metal already crumbling beneath the pressure. I stepped forward, and unlike the first time I'd encountered them, the gates did not swing open, silently welcoming. I pushed, then put my weight into it, and earned a reluctant, creaking handful of inches just enough for me to squeeze through.
Runners sprang to seize my legs. I spread one hand, hissing at them, and they backed away in angry confusion: I was clearly not meant to be able to command them, yet they were obliged to heed my wishes. It was more difficult than with my roses, and every step I took had grasping thorns tearing at my ankles.