The pain lifted from Nick’s mind and his pocket fell flat and empty.
Stay on the path. Do not stray. Do not stop until you reach the protection of the standing stones. And she was gone.
* * *
“Where is my gown? I must have my gown for dancing tonight!” Queen Mab screeched loudly.
Jane thought her shrill voice must rattle the battlements of Nottingham Castle.
“Here, Your Majesty. I have just completed the repairs.” Jane stood and held up the gown so that the Faery Queen could see the invisible mending and elegant embroidery. The embellishment looked incomplete to Jane, but she’d broken the silver needle before she could sew another trail of flowers and vines.
The queen opened her mouth in a joyful “oh” of delight. Then she clamped it shut again and assumed an attitude of offense. “You took too long, and this spray of flowers is off center.” She waved a hand in dismissal.
Jane bit her tongue, drawing a drop of blood. Then she relaxed her jaw and nursed the slight wound against the roof of her mouth. Even as a serf in Sir Philip Marc’s village, she had not been insulted and humiliated as she was as a slave in Mab’s household.
“Well, it will have to do. I have no other gown worthy of dancing with Bracken. He is such an outrageously funny partner, laughing and turning the most mundane stories into jokes. Certainly, he will find a way to make your clumsy sewing into sarcastic praise.” She looked around at the faeries milling around the great hall, nodding as she noted each individual and mouthing their names: Rose, Hellebore, Lilac, Dogwood, and others.
She craned her neck and fluttered her wings to lift free of the floor by a hand’s breadth. “But where is he? Surely he must know that I have selected him to partner me tonight.”
Jane peeked through the maze of flowing fabric that draped her captors. Lots of vibrant green and soothing pink, but none of the darker, grayer green Bracken favored, near identical to his namesake plant. She could only shrug. The young and bouncy male could be anywhere in the vast underground cave system. Often the courtiers—except for the five ladies who attended the queen night and day and never dared sleep or do anything but shower all their attention on her—sneaked off to a sleeping chamber to couple or to one of the secret exits to play tricks on unwary humans without telling anyone.
But Bracken had helped her when she’d fallen on May Day. He’d smiled and encouraged her and promised that not all faeries were as mean-spirited as Mab.
Perhaps he’d had enough of the queen and refused to return.
“Your Majesty.” Lily, dressed in white that shaded into pink and pale green, bent into a deep curtsy, the only proper posture when interrupting the queen. “I have not seen Bracken since we returned from the May Day celebration in the village.” She scuttled back and away from Mab. The enraged queen raised her hand. Her fingers became bent twigs barren of bark as she curled them into her palm. As she opened her clenched fist, she sent a bespelled bolt of flame after her handmaiden. Lily scooted out of the way. The bolt continued onward, flaring and passing each of the Faery courtiers until it collapsed into dust beneath the opening in the ceiling.
Mab straightened her hunched shoulders and swallowed a look of outrage.
An emptiness invaded Jane, akin to the sadness she’d endured back home when her friend, a girl of her own age, had died in childbed. She couldn’t even remember the girl’s name or that of the boy who’d married her.
“May Day was only yesterday. He’s probably off beguiling some upstart butterfly pixie. He’ll return by tonight to renew his powers beneath our Faery Mound. All of the men do.” Mab dismissed the speculation that Bracken might be in trouble—on his own without much magic . . .
Yesterday? Jane counted on her fingers the times the light through the chinks in the ceiling had waxed and waned and came up with . . . she ran out of fingers. But the faeries had slept only once and eaten berries and juicy roots and flower pollen only twice. If Bracken had truly been missing for as long as she thought, he’d be starving by now, without enough magic to find his way home.
Then Jane remembered her kitchen garden at home. There was a patch of bean plants that never matured, never set fruit. Had the faeries robbed the blossoms of pollen, never spreading it, but consuming it and thus blighting the patch?
Mab retreated to her wardrobe chamber with her repaired gown. Her ladies gathered in a whispering knot behind Jane. A few lines of conversation slipped through their guarded secrets.
“No one willingly stays away from our protections for so long,” Lily said, a little louder than her companions so that her words cut through the tangle of hissing whispers.
“Something must be terribly wrong,” Rose echoed the sentiment.
“The forest is dangerous even for our kind,” Daffy-down-dilly said, hand to mouth, smothering any further words.
“With the Church gone away, we are not the only ones free to roam more openly,” Lily reminded them.
Jane began to tremble all over. She had to sit down again, but she couldn’t find the low stool that had supported her so recently.
The Church gone?
It could not be. How could the world find order and balance and connections to God without the Church? How could people know right from wrong, sin from blessing?
Her foot smacked against a leg of the stool, sending ripples of sharp pain up her leg. She plunked herself down, hard, just as the world seemed to tilt to the left: the sinister side . . . of life.
Nineteen
“I think we should turn back,” Henry said. His hand clenched tighter on a fold of Nick’s robe.
“Which . . . which way . . . which way is back?” Nick asked, lifting his chin in stubborn defiance of his fear. Maybe if he said it loud enough, Elena would give him a direction. He saw no hint of a break in the sparse undergrowth, nor the depression of a foot or hoof. No glimmer of a way forward appeared to him.
He paused to ask himself what Elena would tell him to do.
Look for landmarks. A triad of saplings? There were none that he remembered for a long time. All the trees looked the same: huge, half-rotten, their gnarled bark twisting into gnomish faces.
A spring? The only sound he could pick out over the rush of wind through the treetops was the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. But the ground was soggy as if it had not seen the sun in a year or more.
He clenched his teeth and stiffened his spine to keep from trembling before he melted into a puddle of weeping despair and merged with the sodden ground.
“Why did we come this way?” Henry’s voice choked on a sob.
“We have to find Brother Luke. I was directed this way as the shortest path to where he has gone to die.”
“Directed by whom?” Henry asked. He broke away from his fear to look around for someone—anyone—who might help them out of this hopeless tangle.
“I can’t say.” Nick lifted one foot to place it directly in front of him. His sandal broke free of the muck with a screech of sucking, cloying, wet.
Something tickled his ankle.
With one foot in the air, he bent lightly to brush away an intruding insect or maybe a fern frond.
A blackberry sent thorns as big as his thumb deep into his vulnerable ankle.
Instinctively, he set his other foot down only to find a dozen thistle plants waving their bristly stems at him. Not the small tame English thistles. These were the huge, menacing Scottish thistles. The ones that nearly had a mind of their own and did not take kindly to intruders.
Meanwhile, the blackberry wound tighter and tighter around his foot, climbing his leg and tugging him down, and down, and down into the drowning mud.
“Nick!” Henry called, clasping his arm at wrist and elbow. Small and wiry, Nick’s friend braced his feet and held on, yanking Nick back from the yawning hole that spread out from beneath the tangled mass at the base
of a gnarled tree stripped free of bark. The knotholes, where ancient branches had broken off, took on the configuration of a face with scrunched eyes, eldritch nose, and a mouth permanently frozen in a gasping and twisted “Oh.”
“You are not a friend of the Green Man!” Nick yelled at the roots that opened to reveal a gaping hole between them.
“And you are a friend of his?” The deep, sonorous voice came from every direction and pounded into Nick’s mind as well as his ears.
“He calls himself Little John, when he steps free of his tree,” Nick said, gaining confidence when the roots and vines paused and loosened their fierce grip. “He helps all those who reside under his authority in the forest.”
The deep voice grumbled and mumbled to itself.
“I am no friend of the Green Man. But he does hold mastery over all the trees within his realm.”
Henry crossed himself and recited a prayer for preservation from all things heathen.
A tremendous crack echoed around them, much like thunder loosed on a hot August afternoon, only louder, followed by the thrash and crash of a heavy limb breaking away from the tree.
“Duck!” Nick yelled. He reversed his grip on Henry’s arms and dragged him backward.
“You may pass for now, only because the Green Man has befriended you. But do not invoke the name of your foreign god again!”
Thistles, blackberries, and roots retreated like someone rolled a tapestry tightly.
The path opened, showing a clear passage past the tree.
“Don’t leave me! Help!” a tiny voice cried from the depth of the tree. “I’m trapped and alone. Help me!”
* * *
Hilde trod around the cloister behind Sister Marie Josef, head bowed, wimple hiding every tendril of wayward hair, hands tucked into the gray folds of her formal robe. Her knees and back ached from two turns of the hourglass on her knees. Her head ached from the heavy incense the sisters burned in the chapel to ward off the demon of temptation.
None of the other girls had to endure this treatment. They’d all been dismissed to dig in the garden, clean the chicken coops, or whitewash the interior walls. Any of those chores would be preferable to Sister Marie Josef’s special attention.
“You met with a boy last night. A boy who was not your brother. The brother is almost forgivable, though you should have broken all ties to him when you entered this holy place,” Sister Marie Josef repeated over and over again. “But I have made certain that not you, or any of the other postulants will ever use that door to succumb to the temptation of a man.”
Hilde almost believed that the stern sister listened to her dreams and knew she planned to make a break for freedom soon. She need only wait for the waning quarter of the moon.
“Pay attention!” Sister Marie Josef spat her words. “You must constantly meditate on the nature of your sins. Wayward thoughts open a door for evil to invade your soul. Before you know it, you will be forced by demons to leave the safety of our sanctuary and give your body to men. Your soul is only safe here where no one can violate you.”
“Yes, Sister,” Hilde murmured. A tremble began in her middle, climbing to her throat. Suddenly breathing became difficult, and her knees turned to water.
“A few hours in here should help you focus your thoughts on Holy Mother Mary, forever virgin, impregnated only by the Holy Spirit of God and never any other.” Sister Marie Josef grabbed Hilde’s arm sharply and thrust her forward into darkness.
Hilde had only a brief glimpse of a half-empty storeroom before the heavy door slammed shut behind her and the sound of the crossbar dropped into place.
Then she heard the scratching of a rat in the back corner behind a crate of withered apples and a sack of grain ready for milling.
“Help!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “Help me! I didn’t do anything.” What if the sisters forgot her? What if the rats bit her, started eating her before she was fully dead? What if she missed her appointment with Nick who would rescue her?
“Help me,” she whispered, heart full of despair.
The sound of her words echoed within her own head.
* * *
“Who?” Nick and Henry both stopped and asked. They stared at each other a moment, then both shrugged and turned back toward the malevolent tree.
“We can’t just leave him,” Nick said on a sigh.
“But we have to get to Brother Luke,” Henry said, sounding equally resigned.
“Brother Luke will die in his own good time. Our being there won’t help him. He will be among friends.”
Henry look skeptical with his head tilted and his eyes half closed.
“I promise, he is among friends.” Nick said. Keeping his back to the gnarled and twisted wood and his motions small so the malevolent spirit would not notice, he crossed himself. At the same time, he imagined, Elena and the Green Man standing beside the old man’s body, lying in repose beside. . . . There his imagination failed him. He’d never seen standing stones, had no idea of their size, color, or positioning. All he could see in his mind was the tall circled cross standing at the crossroad.
Perhaps that was best. He turned around to face the tree once more. “Who are you?” he called, raising his voice to help it penetrate layers of dirt or bark, or enchantment.
“Halloo! Are you still there? You have to help me. She’s coming back any moment now.”
Nick and Henry exchanged another telling glance. “His voice is so close and yet so far away, I wonder if the tree’s magic is holding him captive,” Henry asked. He took a step backward, away from the tree and magic and his own fears.
“Only one way to find out.” Nick stepped up to the tree in the region he thought he’d seen a face hiding in the twisted wood. “Sir, we need to ask you if anyone else fell into your trap and you are holding him hostage in some secret chamber.”
Henry inched away, keeping his eyes trained on the ground that had recently opened into a black and bottomless pit.
The tree remained dormant and still.
“Help me. I have to get out of here! The ground is draining me, sucking my life and magic out of me.”
Nick looked around hastily, seeking the source of that little voice that sounded so desperate.
“Who are you?”
“Shouldn’t you ask where he is?” Henry asked, remaining solidly beyond the reach of the tree and its grasping roots.
“Knowing who he is gives us a clue as to why he was captured, and perhaps by whom,” Nick insisted.
“Logic means nothing to me,” Henry snorted. “Where are you?” He cupped his hands around his mouth.
“I’m here.”
“Where is here?” Nick joined Henry in squinting to try and focus on tiny imperfections in the tree bark that might hide an entry point.
“Here is here. Where else would she imprison me?”
That didn’t make much sense. Henry looked as puzzled as Nick felt. They both shrugged.
“Please, sir, describe your prison,” Nick suggested.
“It’s a prison—dark, damp, and cold.”
Nick shuddered with new chills from the fearful tone of the prisoner.
“Are the walls dirt or dressed stone?” Elena had described Lady Ardenia’s tower cell in Nottingham Castle. Dressed stone with large, arched windows that let in a lot of light. He’d heard about the underground dungeons in the castle, also dressed stone within the foundations. The upper levels of the undercroft might have a tiny window opening into the forecourt. No light at all in the lower levels that led to the labyrinth of natural caves beneath the city.
“What kind of walls?” Henry asked. He stepped closer to Nick and raised his voice, much like he did when speaking to Brother Luke, as if yelling very slowly would penetrate his diminished mind.
“They’re dirt, with a lot of stray roots keeping them from coll
apsing.”
Nick shifted his gaze to the protruding roots at the base of the tree. With the spirit of the tree withdrawn and no longer masking the ground with darkness, he spotted some gaps. Gingerly he stuck his hand into the largest one, ready to snatch it back out of the hole if the tree should change its mind.
“Hey, you’re blocking my light!”
“So how do we get him out?” Henry asked, scratching his head. “We are supposed to help those less fortunate than ourselves. Abbot Mæson preached about that a lot, not so much Father Blaine, but a little from Prefect Andrew—it’s as if he obeys the abbot but doesn’t quite understand why.”
Before Nick could form an answer, a tremendous groan rippled through the ground and it fell away at their feet.
“Noooooo!” Flailing his arms and stumbling, Henry tumbled downward.
Nick grabbed for his feet. His fingers brushed the leather strap of his sandals. Then the ground crumbled beneath him and he fell, too. The mat of dirt and roots snapped back into place, and a hidden latch clicked closed, sealing them in.
Twenty
Little John stopped his determined march at the verge of the meadow at the exact center of his forest. Ahead of him, three stones stood upright, reaching for the sky, like three fingers thrusting above the crown of Mother Earth in a solemn salute. His head barely reached a third of the way to the rounded peak of the shortest of the stones.
He drew in a deep breath of air freshened by a stiff breeze originating in the North Sea. The cold, enhanced by the mere presence of the three great stones, flooded his lungs with strength and renewed his agility from his fingertips to his toes.
Little John bowed his head and murmured ancient words of respect in a language long forgotten. He didn’t know the meaning of the words, only that he must say them before approaching the stones.
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