“Shouldn’t you hate me, though? It’s my great-grandma who dragged you into all this.”
“She, not you. Even her I did not hate. She didn’t know what they would do to me.”
“That’s true. I don’t think she would’ve done it if she knew.”
“She told me so once, years ago. I have forgiven her. But I am still here, of course, and am always looking for ways to lessen the cruelties we commit. I’m usually powerless to stop them. If anyone is coming tonight to save your tribemates…” She waited for Kit to confirm it. He didn’t move, still not daring to give anything away. Flowerwatch let her head droop. “I would be glad to see your two friends get away, that’s all. Glad for you, and for them.”
“What could the locals even do to you guys? I thought you were immortal.”
“Yes, but if we transgress, they can steal property from us. Some of our gold. Or they can take one of us and transform us into their kind, so that we will not be goblin-kind again.”
“Isn’t that exactly what you want?”
“Me, yes. Most of my tribe, though, they would hate it. Or at least, they would choose not to be transformed, but once they were, they would become tranquil enough. Therefore I do wish it…if help were coming tonight, perhaps…”
“Yeah, well. That isn’t looking too likely. But thanks for trying.”
Flowerwatch nodded unhappily.
“Flowerwatch!” Redring’s voice sliced through the noise.
Flowerwatch jumped, pushed the gag back into Kit’s mouth, and looked up.
Redring scrambled over. “Why do you linger over this useless lump? Come celebrate.”
“Yes. Yes.” Flowerwatch hunched down, hands splayed on the deck. “I was merely making sure his bonds were tight. So he will not disturb our revels.”
“If he does, we’ll kill him.” Redring honestly sounded like she didn’t care one way or the other, like these years of liaison interaction meant nothing to her. It chilled Kit’s blood. “He’s so nasty and rude, I wouldn’t mind an excuse.” She smiled at him, baring her pointed teeth.
Kit glared back, then recalled his desired future of staying alive alongside Livy, and dropped his gaze.
Redring sneered in triumph, kicked him in the thigh, and pulled Flowerwatch away toward the dancing tribe.
Climbing a hundred-foot-tall tree without any safety gear would be hard enough. Climbing a frozen tree, Livy found, was even harder. Frost and ice clung to the bark, making her boots slip on the skinny branches. She had managed not to fall, hanging on to branches with her gloved hands, but she squeaked in alarm at every slip, and shook from exertion and that special fear she got when she looked over the railings of high bridges.
She didn’t look down often on this ascent. She had made that mistake once so far, and it had felt like all her insides plummeted back to the ground. The snow made it worse, because she could see the whitened ground, and how far away it was, too clearly. Much better to only look upward, at the line of glowing blue mushrooms guiding her.
She estimated she was halfway up by now. The tree remained thick in circumference, the handhold branches still solid enough even if they did bend more than she liked when she hung her weight from them. The higher she climbed, the more the wind buffeted her and made the tree sway.
Air fae, meanwhile, swished by as fast as the wind, ghostly wisps that changed shape like puffs of mist, hovering for a second now and then to look at her. Some took the forms of birds or other flying creatures: she spotted a raven, a white owl, and a brown spotted moth, all of which she would have taken for ordinary animals except that they dissolved into clouds and blew away among the snowflakes.
She reached the canopy, or at least its underlayers. Here the cedar stretched out wide branches with scaly green needles. The path of glowing mushrooms ventured off the trunk and out along a branch as thick around as her waist. Livy climbed until the branch was at chest level, wrapped both hands around it, and with a whimper of reluctance, pulled her knees up on top of it.
Now she had no choice; she had to look down. It was practically impossible not to when you crawled along a horizontal branch. Her gaze locked onto the forest floor so far below, past the hundreds of dark branches she had climbed. Snowflakes tumbled in the vast space between her and the earth, their motion making her so dizzy that she dropped to her belly and twined all four limbs around the branch.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m going to fall. If I fall, I’m off the path, and that’s it.”
“Keep going.” The whisper was aloof, but soothing. “Our path is safe.”
Livy opened her eyes to find the hummingbird hovering next to her. It darted back and forth, hanging in mid-air like any hummingbird, but when it moved it left a temporary sparkling trail in the air. “How long till dawn?” she asked it.
“Not long. You can still get there if you keep going.”
She turned her head forward. The mushroom path led along the branch, disappearing several yards ahead under the hanging green fingers of the branch above. The canopy blocked most of her view of the goblin hideout, but through gaps between branches, she caught sight of the lanterns. The wind blew laughter and guttural voices to her.
Skye was there. In their hands.
Livy began inching along the branch on her belly. “I sure hope you have a plan for getting us down, that’s all.”
“The way will depend on the outcome.” Having delivered that enigmatic pronouncement, the hummingbird zoomed away.
Moss and lichen carpeted the top side of the branch; a soft surface to crawl on, at least. It was also frosty, and thus more slippery. Soon came a dreadful moment: the branch narrowed, and the path hopped down onto a different branch, a Douglas-fir this time, some five feet below Livy’s branch. It was time to switch trees.
“No,” she begged.
But she couldn’t crawl back down this branch, descend the tree, and leave Skye to an endless fate as a goblin. So although every part of her body trembled, she lowered her legs into the air, hanging onto the cedar branch. It felt like she was dangling above the Earth from a satellite. Her shaking feet touched the fir branch, which sagged alarmingly under her.
“Oh God. Please don’t let me fall.”
Snowflakes and air fae flitted past her face. The goblins caroused loudly, a few trees away.
The fir branch steadied. Livy settled her feet, let go of the cedar branch, and let herself drop onto the new branch on her front. She flung both arms around it. Christmas-tree scent from its crushed needles engulfed her face.
“Okay, tree. Don’t drop me.” After her trembling had subsided a little, she focused on the glowing mushroom path, and started scooting along, ankles locked around the branch.