“Emma,” he tried again. “It’s me.”
She walked away. Not a moment’s hesitation. A path led deeper into the Northern Forest, and she seemed to glide upon it. He followed her, trying to think of what else he could say. The only reason he held on to the suitcase—dragging it behind him in the dirt—was because his right hand had stiffened so badly that he couldn’t let it go.
The path wound first up a low slope of tulip trees and red oaks, a handful of black walnut. As the climb became steeper, the hills taller, there were tall black oak, black birch, and pignut hickory trees. The black birch gave off the smell of wintergreen. The witch led him deeper into her forest. He followed her blue light.
The path became less and less clear. The trodden dirt gave way to grass and moss and fungi underfoot. Earthworms, millipedes, and sow bugs lived below the forest floor. Apollo could almost sense them down there, feel them far underfoot. The Northern Forest was home to moles and shrews, gray squirrels and cottontail rabbits, chipmunks and raccoons. The moles and shrews survived the winters in the subsurface tunnels that ran throughout the park. Worlds upon worlds upon worlds hid here.
As Emma reached the top of a sharp slope Apollo called out again. “You were right all along, Emma.”
No response. No acknowledgment.
“It wasn’t a baby.”
Just like that she turned to him for the first time, looking down the sloping hill. Her eyes appeared so dark, she actually looked blind, blinded. She didn’t open her mouth, but around them the entire Northern Forest rose into a shout.
“The goblins were real!” Apollo shouted. “I couldn’t see them.”
In that moment the cloud of energy, electricity, that surrounded her parted, and she became a thin woman wearing a ragged maroon puffer coat holding a pewter serving tray. In the moonlight he saw her cracked lips and puffy, yellowing eyes. She became a portrait of anguish.
The forest fell into true silence.
“Emma,” Apollo said.
She looked down at her hands and marveled at the serving plate she carried, as if this was the first time she’d even noticed it there. She went down into a crouch and set it on the forest floor, its thin layer of snow. She pawed at the ground, hands grubbing through the leaves.
“It’s Apollo.”
Emma Valentine stood. She had something in her right hand. She cocked her arm back, grunted once, and threw a stone the size of a softball. It hit Apollo right above the knee. A cold, sharp stab ran up his thigh. He went down like a chopped tree.
She lifted the tray.
She turned away.
She went over the other side of the hill.
Apollo lay in the dirt looking up at the canopy of trees. His leg throbbed so badly, he felt as if it would swell and burst through his pants. He lay there gasping, then pushed himself over onto his stomach. He couldn’t stand, not yet, but he could crawl, drag himself through the underbrush and snow. He left the suitcase where it had fallen beside him and mounted the top of the hill.
The hill fell sharply, and the forest became even denser down below. Apollo crawled until he could walk. When he could walk, he rose again. In the Northern Forest there were two layers of trees, the tallest and oldest, and below that the second canopy of newer growth, younger trees. Even though their branches were bare, they crowded together and blocked out the moonlight. He was on the path, faint as it was, but couldn’t be sure to stay on it in the dark. The solution waited in his coat pocket. His cellphone. It held a full charge. The small screen glowed. No signal, but what did that matter? The only person he needed to reach was already here. He held the phone out in front of him like a torch. He found Emma’s footprints in the snow.
Apollo followed the path.
THE LAND FLATTENED again, and the trees spread out slightly, and the undergrowth became more tamped down. He’d reached a clearing, the forest floor so trampled it had gone smooth. The trees that ringed the clearing tilted at angles as if they’d been bumped aside by something as large as a truck or a tank.
“Jotunn.” Apollo remembered Jorgen’s voice. “Trolde. That’s how we say it in Norwegian.”
Apollo stood in the clearing, under the moonlight. He could see clearly so he turned off his phone. Emma’s footsteps continued back into the woods, so he went that way, too.
Onward like that for another fifteen minutes that felt like two hours because of the cold and the ache above his knee. She’d pegged him hard and hadn’t hesitated. What had he been expecting, hugs and heartfelt kisses? Maybe so. Maybe so. But reconciliation never came easy, not with the things that mattered.
The tree cover here became sparse, and moonlight made the snow on the ground glow. The path grew wider and split in two. Two paths curled away from each other in either direction like a pair of enormous ram’s horns. Easy to see which one Emma had taken. Partway down the path to the left, the pewter lid lay on its side. In the dark, under the moonlight, it looked like polished silver. When Apollo reached it, he picked it up. Instinctively he held it in front of him like a shield, scant protection. And on he went, around the curve.
The cleared land opened even wider, like marching into a bowl. The word that came to him right away was quarry though really the space wasn’t quite that huge or deep. Still, compared to the rest of the densely packed Northern Forest, this pit of stones seemed as wide as the Grand Canyon. There were rings and rings of gray stone and rubble leading toward the bottom of the pit. At the very bottom he saw a gaping black cave opening. Emma Valentine sat at the lip of the pit, peering down at the cave, her back to him.
Apollo stopped moving and watched the cave, too. He’d been cold for a while now, but a new kind of frigidness froze him at the core. It had been one thing to hear Jorgen spin a story but was another to see the cave, for the tale to turn true.
“Agnes,” he whispered.
“You’re supposed to save the eye for last,” Emma said.
She didn’t look up at him, but her words drew his attention back. Apollo waited there with the serving lid still in front of him. What would stop Emma from picking up another one of the thousands of stones all around her and strafing it at him? Her aim had been excellent. Maybe this time she’d get him in the head. He moved toward her cautiously even though no storm of blue magic swirled around her now. He moved closer.
Emma watched the cave. She sat hunched forward there on the stones. She creaked forward and back faintly. Apollo realized she was eating. The serving plate with the sheep’s head balanced on her lap. He reached her side. He stood, and she stayed cross-legged on the ground.