by Kwame Mbalia
All the fetterlings turned to me.
My eyes stayed on the spot where the fox had disappeared. He’d been taken to the Maafa, and I hadn’t been able to stop it. Once again, I’d failed to save someone who had needed my help.
I thought fairy tales were supposed to have happy endings. What was the moral of this story?
Rustling noises pulled me from my daze as the other fetterlings approached me.
Eddie’s journal began to flash in my pocket.
Green light pulsed quicker and quicker until it surged in a hot white flare that blinded everyone in the clearing. When the light faded and my eyes adjusted, my heart leaped into my throat. A rusty fetterling collar hovered inches away from my neck, looking rough and sharp. But that didn’t matter.
Hundreds of pages were floating in the clearing.
The leather binding of Eddie’s journal lay open and empty on the ground. How had it gotten there? I tried to feel my pocket, but the fetterlings still had my arms and legs pinned. They rattled as I struggled but otherwise didn’t pay me any mind. The wondrous display had them riveted, like cats watching a laser pointer.
The journal pages spun and coiled in the air until they formed a humanoid figure. It stood between me and the mass of fetterlings. One arm reached up and touched its featureless face, as if it was adjusting something. It was a gesture so familiar, so routine for anyone who’d ever worn glasses, that my whole body locked up like cement, then went limp.
“Eddie?” I whispered.
The paper giant raised its arm.
If you’d been in my place, you might say you saw a casual wave. I saw my best friend’s fist raised, his standard greeting when he couldn’t be bothered because his nose was buried in a book. A tear rolled down my face, followed by another.
The fetterlings screeched their challenge, and the forest swelled with the harsh sound.
The ones holding my arms and legs let go. They rattled and clacked their manacles, and then charged the paper figure. But the iron monsters couldn’t get a grip on any of the pages. I worried as more and more fetterlings rushed to enter the battle, but the giant just kept swinging blow after blow, scattering monsters to the trees. Still the chain creatures swarmed.
I stumbled backward.
Several fetterlings had managed to coil around Eddie’s page giant like a python, but huge paper fists were hammering them left and right. The minions surged in a frenzy around the figure’s legs, snapping and clamping, snatching pages with each attack. The battle edged closer to the trees, and I realized the fetterlings were dragging the giant away, back to wherever they had taken Brer Fox.
“No!” I shouted, sprinting after them. Fetterlings broke off to attack me, and I punched them like I’d never punched before. My knuckles had no protection, but the pain didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except reaching my best friend. He’d returned when I needed him. He’d come back for me, to save me from a nightmare, just like he’d said he always would.
Losing him again would destroy me.
“Eddie!”
The battle moved into the forest and I followed.
“Tristan!” Ayanna called to me from across the bridge. I’d forgotten about the Midfolk before. I ignored them now.
A fetterling reared up in my face. I ducked its attack and slammed home an uppercut. Another slithered up and I snapped two quick jabs and a hook. Dad would’ve been proud.
“Eddie!”
I couldn’t see the giant or any fetterlings now, but I could still hear the rustling, rattling skirmish. I scrambled after it, but soon the sounds faded away, too. I tried to follow the signs they’d left behind. Broken branches. Crushed logs. Then even those disappeared. I spun in circles, tears flowing, searching for a trail, for any clue that would give me hope.
Nothing.
I staggered up to a tree and collapsed under it in the deafening silence.
They found me there some time later. Crying. Knuckles bleeding. Sitting in mud. Knees drawn to my chest, my back against some dead tree.
Alone.
I WOKE UP IN A panic, drenched in sweat.
A voice echoed in my ears. Thanks for the book, boy.
Uncle C.
As the shadows and whispers faded, everything seemed fuzzy and distant, like a dream dissipating in the morning, but a throbbing pain in my knuckles quickly brought me back to reality.
I was tucked in a small wooden bed beneath soft covers that didn’t reach my feet. My current sanctuary was a room with thorny branches covering the walls and the ceiling. Not little thorns, either, you get me, but knife-size prickles that looked like they were daring you to test them.
I didn’t, of course. Even if I’d wanted to, every inch of my body hurt.
Not to mention my heart.
That hurt worst of all. I’d lost Eddie’s journal to monsters, monsters serving something called a Maafa. And now it was in the hands of a haint—one of those evil spirits Nana had mentioned. Was Uncle C the Maafa? There were too many questions and not enough answers. None I liked, anyway.
I squeezed my eyes shut, sending the tangled nightmares back to the corners of my mind, then opened them to continue to examine my surroundings. Sunlight trickled in through gaps in the ceiling. The room was warm—and cozy, despite the thorns. My bed and a rough wooden chair beside it were the only pieces of furniture. The walls were made of branches as thick as my arm, woven together like wicker baskets. Vines with tiny wildflowers crept up to the ceiling, filling the air with the scent of summertime fields. And the floor…I leaned over the side of the bed to get a better look.
Yup.
Dirt. Dark as night, soft and crumbly, with tender green shoots poking through. With a start I realized that the bedposts and the legs of the chair were growing out of the floor, thick at the base like roots, and coiling together.
Something rustled as I tried to make sense of everything, and a small circular door I hadn’t noticed opened across the room.
“Hello?” I called when no one appeared. I sat up a little. “Gum Baby?”
“Oh, you’re awake! Good. They were getting worried.”
The voice came from the end of the bed, light and energetic, like a child’s. But it wasn’t the doll.
“Who’s there?”
“You can’t see—? Oh, right, sorry.” There was a struggle, like someone wrestling with something heavy, then a sharp intake of breath, and the smallest rabbit I’d ever seen hopped onto my bed. “Hi!”
She had deep brown fur with a splash of white on her front paws, and one of her hind legs was bandaged tight. She sat back gently, twitched her nose, and waved. I found myself waving back.
“I’m Chestnutt,” she said.
“Tristan,” I said slowly.
“I know. I’m supposed to come fetch you. Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“Everyone’s at the meeting. We have to decide—well, not me, but they have to decide who’s going to go. No, wait, first we have to see if we are going to go, and then, if yes, who’s going to go. I hope it’s me. It sounds really exciting and—”
“Wait, wait,” I said, hopelessly lost. I wriggled up into a fully seated position and rubbed my temples. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A day.”
“A whole day?”
Chestnutt nodded. “Yup, yup! They carried you in night before last. You slept all yesterday and most of this morning. Do you always scream in your sleep?”
“What? I don’t know. No,” I said. “Why does it matter?”
Her nose twitched and her ears went back at my defensive tone. “It doesn’t. Sorry. Brer Fox says I should try and hold back all my questions. Says they make everyone angry.”
At the sound of Brer Fox’s name, the memory of him fighting beside me—and losing—crashed my senses and I had to take a deep breath. I balled the blanket in my fists, and my arms trembled.
Chestnutt watched me. “Do you know him?”
“Sort of. Not real
ly. We escaped through the forest together. He fought and distracted the…He fought so the rest of us could escape.”
“Really?” She leaned forward on her front paws. “He hates violence. BF says it never solves anything, and only spreads more violence and hatred.”
I pictured the fox leaping, snarling, into the midst of the iron monsters, and I frowned, but Chestnutt didn’t notice and kept talking.
“He says wounding or hurting someone else leaves just as big a mark on the attacker,” she went on. “You can’t see it, but it’s there.”
I remembered the bundle Brer Fox had carried on the boat, before gently handing it over to Ayanna. Make sure Chestnutt gets home safely, he’d told her.
“How did you and Brer Fox…How did he become—?”
“My guardian?”
“Yeah. How did that happen?”
Chestnutt sat up and twitched her ears proudly. “Well—”
But she never finished. Something rustled in the walls, and her ears stood tall on her head and flicked to the door.
“Oh, I was supposed to fetch you! The meeting’s started. Come on, we have to hurry.” She hopped down from the bed and bounded through the small round door, her voice fading as she disappeared into the shadows. “Hurry!”
The childlike insistence in her tone had the blanket thrown aside and my feet hitting the cool soil-covered floor before I could think. What was it with me chasing weird little talking creatures into dark spaces? First Gum Baby, and now this.
As I stood, I thought about refusing, maybe playing up my injuries until I could figure things out, but I quickly dismissed that option. If I wanted to get back home and leave this nightmare behind, I’d need help, and it sounded like this meeting was a step in the right direction, even if I had no idea who was going to be there.
My shoes were dry and waiting for me by the door, along with my socks. Both had a slightly mildewy odor, and I sighed as I slipped them on. It had taken me seven Sundays’ worth of chores to save up for those Chucks. The sacrifices we make for the greater good. Boy, I tell you….
I squeezed nervously through the thorny door, ducking and holding in my stomach, and entered a long, twisty hallway made of woven branches still carrying leaves and flowers. It smelled refreshing. There was more than enough room for me to move easily, but a thorn jabbed me when I got too close. I hunched over, sucked my injured thumb, and limped on.
Chestnutt waited for me around a curve. The corridor split, and she twitched her ears at the path on the right. “This way,” she said, hopping ahead.
“What is this place?” I asked, staring at the grass growing underfoot, a living carpet that felt as soft as anything you could buy in a store.
“This tunnel?”
“All of it. This whole inside forest-like thing? Where are we?”
“Oh, that’s easy. You’re in the Thicket.”
“The Thicket…Ayanna mentioned that name. Is this like some sort of hideout?” And speaking of my savior, where was she? Would she be at the meeting?
“Yup, yup.” Chestnutt wiggled an ear at me. “It’s a good thing Ayanna found you. And Gum Baby, too, I guess. She’s good at that sort of thing—finding, rescuing. I want to be like her when I get bigger. Or Brer Fox. Or both. Yep, both. That way I’ll be superstrong and I can protect all of Alke.”
“Alke? Not MidPass?” I ducked a particularly nasty collection of thorns dangling from the ceiling. All the place names were starting to run together, and I’d never been good at keeping details like that straight.
“MidPass is in Alke, silly! I want to protect everyone.” She stopped and thought for a second. “Though things aren’t that great between MidPass and the rest of Alke right now. But you didn’t hear that from me!”
“Um…”
“BF says not to mention it to strangers, on account of we shouldn’t be worrying everybody, even though the Thicket is under siege, and it’s our last hideout, and if anything happened to it we’d all be lost, and the M—”
She stopped and I nearly stumbled over her. Chestnutt flicked her ears in worry.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m doing it again. Talking too much.”
“About the Maafa? That’s what you were going to say, right?”
The little rabbit shivered violently, as if she was seconds from falling apart—literally. I gingerly sank down to one knee, keeping a close eye on a thorn at butt level, and said, “Hey, hey, it’s okay. Forget I said that, all right? I’m new here, and everything’s kind of freaking me out right now.”
Chestnutt’s chest fluttered in and out, and she shook her head, continuing as if she hadn’t heard me. “Brer Fox says not to say that name. Talking about it gives the iron monsters strength, and then nobody will be safe. And I’ve been blabbing, and now we’re going to get attacked, and it’ll be all my fault, and why do I do that? Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid—”
“Hey.” I reached a hand out but paused just before I touched her. Some people didn’t like to be touched, and I figured animals might feel the same way. “Hey, that’s not true.”
“It’s not? How do you know?”
“Because someone once told me it isn’t.”
“They did?” She sniffed.
I remembered one of my first sessions with my counselor, Mr. Richardson, after the bus accident. “He said we can’t hide from our fears. We have to be able to talk about them, or else they’ll fester like poison, eating us from the inside.”
Chestnutt began to calm down. “BF says I have to work on not panicking so much.”
“Brer Fox has told you a lot, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he has.”
“You two were—are very close?” Did Chestnutt know that Brer Fox was gone? I had to choose my words carefully.
Chestnutt began to hop forward, and I stood up and followed. “Yup, yup. He rescued me when I was a baby, you know? A couple of those stupid monsters attacked my family’s burrow. Brer Fox says I was the only one left, and he carried me back here. He taught me everything.” She hopped on. “A lot of lectures, though,” she added.
I grinned. “Yeah. Grown-ups will do that.”
We continued on in silence. The tunnel started to widen and lighten, and the buzzing noise of a large crowd floated down. Just before we reached the exit, Chestnutt slowed to a stop and looked back at me.
“It’s not your fault, you know, what happened to Brer Fox,” she said.
That took me by surprise. So she did know.
“I…I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “If I had been quicker, or stronger, I might’ve been able to reach him. He might still—”
Chestnutt shook her head. “Brer Fox told me we can’t harp on past mistakes. He said a lot of stuff like that. I don’t remember it all, but what I do remember, I keep telling myself so I won’t forget it. Keeping someone’s words alive is like keeping them alive, right? I know you tried, and I know what Brer Fox did, and I know he’s gone, but as long as I have his words, I’ll have him. So it’s okay. Right?”
“Right,” I said softly. Eddie filled my mind, and the loss of his journal stabbed my heart anew. I’d lost his words. Did that mean he was completely lost to me now?
Chestnutt hopped on out into the noise. “Come on! It’s starting.”
I followed, still sorting through a heap of feelings, and not sure if I’d ever untangle them.
We entered an amphitheater-like space and I stumbled to a halt.
“Sweet peaches.”
Above the humongous oval-shaped room, thorny branches arched like the roof of a dome, with creeper vines and yellow seed pods hanging down like streamers from rafters. To my left, thick roots were layered on top of one another, going up and back like stadium seating, which, I realized while looking around, was exactly what it was.
Brown-skinned people of all sizes and ages sat among woodland creatures. All of them huddled in groups.
All of them bore scars on their necks, wrists, and ankles.
>
“Survivors,” Chestnutt said quietly. When I looked at her, she twitched her nose sadly.
I almost asked Survivors of what? but I already knew. I could still feel the bite of the fetterlings on my wrists. “Where did they all come from?” I asked.
“All around MidPass. Once the iron monsters started terrorizing us, John Henry convinced Brer Rabbit to open up the Thicket. But if someone was too sick or too old—”
“You all would go find them,” I finished, and the pieces came together in my head. “That’s what Ayanna and you all were doing. Rescuing those who couldn’t save themselves.”
Chestnutt beamed. “Yup, yup! People like Ayanna, we call them pilots! BF used to be one, but he started getting aches, so Ayanna became his student. I was going to be next….”
She trailed off, and I swallowed a sudden lump. Her ears sank and I heard her sniffle, so I looked away to let her mourn privately.
The larger-than-usual animals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians scattered among the people in the stands were also grieving. A turtle with a gash along his shell comforted a weeping older woman who was clutching a child’s doll. Two rabbits sat on either side of a boy of about five or six. He stroked their fur gently with each hand.
“Come on,” Chestnutt whispered, and she hopped away to the right.
“This isn’t the meeting?” I looked back over my shoulder at the sea of faces, so different and yet all sharing something familiar: fear.
The other side of the amphitheater was set against what looked like a giant, wrinkled brown wall. Thick knobby whorls of the same brown extended from the wall’s base. A giant stone was nestled between them, and they curled around it to form an elevated stage of sorts. I jerked in surprise. Roots. I was looking at roots. Which meant…
“That’s the bottom of a tree?”
“That’s the tree,” Chestnutt corrected. “The Tree of Power.”
She hopped forward, but I stood there and craned my neck as far back as possible, trying to take in the incredible aura. The giant oak tree felt ancient, like the Bottle Trees on my grandparents’ farm. But while the Bottle Trees were guards, making sure evil spirits like Uncle C didn’t escape, the Tree of Power seemed like it wanted to protect you.
