by Holly Hook
"I respectfully agree," Mary said. "I may be able to secure a carriage."
Macon turned. He held up a finger. "A carriage might draw a lot of unwanted attention to ourselves. Thieves target them. They make more noise and might attract the very things we are trying to avoid. They're much harder to hide than you think and almost all of them are open and vulnerable at some point. We have a three-day walk to the cottage where your grandmother is supposed to live. A lot could happen between now and then."
"A long walk," I said under my breath when Macon turned away again.
We reached the dirt road, and I faced the forest. It seemed a tiny bit darker now, but maybe it was because the sun was at a different angle. The shadows under the trees were longer. The underbrush, thicker. Macon faced it for a long time like he was sizing it up. He still said nothing to us. The guy was going to be such great company.
But it was better than nothing.
“Red,” Mary said from behind us.
Tate and I turned. Mary stood there, holding my red hoodie and—oh, crap—a picnic basket.
“I don’t think I should take that,” I said. “If Alric’s looking to have me killed, I don’t think it’s a good idea if I look the part. I’d rather not be noticeable if you get what I mean.”
But Mary handed me the stuff, the hoodie in one hand and the basket in another. “You’ll need your supplies,” she said. “It gets cold at night here.”
“But my hoodie is bright red,” I said.
Mary frowned at it. “Stilt!” she called, searching the small houses behind her.
Macon stood there like a statue and waited while Stilt emerged from behind a house and walked towards Mary. “You need to change the color of this,” she told him.
“To anything but that,” I said.
Stilt took my hoodie and studied it. Then the elf faced me. “Yes,” he said. “This is not the color to wear into the dark region. I’ll change this for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. Meanwhile, Macon shifted leg to leg. "The dark region? Is that where we're going?"
Macon was happy to provide me with information. "The dark region doesn't have a specific border," he said, stressing every single word. "It's more of a transition zone. According to Mary, your grandmother's cottage is on the border of it. Which makes sense, considering that part of your story is very dark."
Stilt held the hoodie and stared at it for a long time. While we waited, a slight tingling sensation filled the air around him. And at last, a dark green splotch appeared on the hoodie and grew until it had turned the entire thing to the color of pine. "Is this better?" he asked me. "I could have made it bright yellow."
“Much better,” I said. I took the hoodie and put it back on. It would at least blend in with the forest, and Tate wore leather, so we were more of a matching pair. The hoodie still had the Disney castle embroidered on the front, but I wasn’t going to ask Stilt to change that. It was good enough.
“It was no problem,” Stilt said. “Changing clothing is easy magic. Much easier than changing your shape. There are stories behind that, too, that I’ll need to tell you guys if you return.”
If. I didn’t miss the way he said that.
Mary had that sad look again. It made me feel so much better. “Good luck,” she told me, handing me the basket. “You'll know you're getting into the border zone when you feel the dread in your stomach. Stay on the trail. Don't let the evil wolf consume you."
Why wouldn’t she just come out and say if the wolf eats you? If you die? We all knew what she was talking about and I wasn’t a two-year-old. But I took the basket from Mary and thanked her again. She was helping us, after all.
“One more thing,” Mary said.
“Which is?”
“Fairy tales aren’t always truly the way people think they are. There are sometimes other interpretations."
“Good to know.” My story was simple, right? Girl goes to visit grandmother, wolf tricks her into leaving the trail, wolf eats grandmother—
I had to stop thinking now.
I turned away from Mary and followed Tate and Macon towards the darkening forest.
Chapter Six
I had Tate carry the basket as we entered the forest and left the village behind. I waited until we were out of view of Mary so I wouldn't hurt her feelings.
"I'm just not comfortable carrying this," I told him.
"I get it," he said. "I wouldn't be, either. At least it's not decked out in flowers." It was a big picnic basket, too. What had Mary given us? But Tate opened it and grinned as he peeked inside. "Ohh," he said, smiling at me. "I'm sure your grandmother never let you have wine in the other world."
"Wine. Are you kidding me?" I asked. I had to look. Tate was right. The basket was full of cookies, biscuits, jerky, and right along with all the food was an old bottle of wine.
"Actually," Macon said, drawing closer. "Mary said that the wine has a sleeping draught in it. You drink it, and you aren't going to be waking up for hours."
"Why would Mary do that?" I asked. Was she trying to sabotage our rescue mission?
Macon raised his voice as if trying to get the entire forest to listen to him. "She wouldn't tell me, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it. You see, in Fable there are lots of uses for such a thing. There are lots of magic artifacts here and dangerous creatures of all kinds. There are also some magical creatures that are only dangerous when they're in the dark region. Stilt's one of them. Did you know he's the elf who used to be able to spin gold for Brie? Mary said he's a character in the story Rumpelstiltskin."
"Are you kidding me?" Tate asked, shaking his head. I wasn't sure if he was trying to distract himself from Macon's overbearing presence or if he was just overwhelmed with all of this.
"No," Macon said. His face showed no emotion. I felt like he was trying to lecture us. "He's good now because he's in the light region, but Stilt used to live in the dark region, and he was a bad guy. Magical creatures change depending on where they are."
"Got it," I said. I searched the forest around me. Right now, most of it looked bright and cheerful. It was the kind of place you'd see in a Disney movie with singing birds and happy rabbits hopping around. The trees were all perfect and green, and soft grass grew in between them. Flowers of every color popped up, and every art student would be thrilled to see the palette here. A pair of bluish birds stood together on a branch, and a bumblebee flew past us, on the way to a large red flower next to the trail.
We walked in silence for a long time, and the light got longer. This place didn't feel dangerous at all. "Mary said something about dark spots," I said at last.
"There are dark spots out here in places," Macon said. He searched left and right. "There's one now. If you look to your right, you'll see one way off the road."
I did.
And it wasn't pretty.
Way off the road, there was a spot that was just...different. The sunlight coming through the trees had grayed, and some of the trees had lost their leaves, turning them into clawed skeletons. Brambles grew around the trunks, and the trees that did still have their leaves were almost black and very, very thick. Ponds of deep shadows hung under the living trees, and I didn't want to imagine what could be lurking in them. It was as if a mansion-sized blob of evil had seeped from the ground there and poisoned everything.
That was a dark spot.
Okay.
I just hoped we didn't see any more of those any closer than that, but I had the feeling that we would. We had three more days to walk.
We left the dark spot behind. It was close to the village. Mary had said something about them growing slowly. I hoped it was at a glacial pace.
But the longer we walked and the farther we got from the village, the more dark spots I saw. They came in patches, some closer to the trail than others, but they were there. No birds dared land in them. It was as if someone had taken a paintbrush full of despair and darkness and dabbed it in random places. I only spotted a dark spot every
thirty minutes or so, usually in the distance, but they were there. Some were the size of garages while others were a bit bigger. Tate was checking them out, too.
"I don't like this," he said to me. "Am I the only person seeing a weird change here?"
"Here's the thing," Macon said. He was going into lecture mode again. "The forest wasn't like this before. I've been here many, many times and I know the forest like the back of my hand. That dark spot over there? It used to be a den where a bear would sleep in the middle of the day. Even they don't want to linger in those places."
I thought of Stilt and tried to imagine what he'd be like evil. He must have been at one point. Would he turn back into a bad guy who wanted firstborns if he hung out in a dark spot for too long?
"This will continue to get worse the farther we go down this trail," Macon continued. His bow bounced on his back, and he got in the lead. The guy checked the make sure his ax was still swinging off his belt. It was. I didn't want to see him cut open any living creature with that. Grandma would freak if she knew about it.
"Did my grandmother always live on the border of the dark region?" I asked.
"Yes," Macon said. "She always has. And you have always gone there in each of your lives, over and over. I found her cabin a few years ago when I was hunting in that area with my father. It was empty, but when I told Mary about it, she said it was hers."
"Good for you," Tate said under his breath.
"Then why do I keep doing this over and over if I know how--"
"Actually," Macon interrupted. He lectured as loud as he could without yelling. So much for keeping the noise level down. "Legends do the same things in each lifetime because it's our story. Your story always tries its best to follow you. Until Mary got here and figured it all out, none of us were even aware that we've been here over and over, acting these out. Well, King Henrik was the first to learn the truth about Fable, but Mary did find all this out on her own."
I turned to Tate. We sighed at each other. Macon was getting more annoying with each step we took into the forest. The trail stretched out ahead, and I saw no sign of civilization. Grandma was down there somewhere, and Alric had some plan to make sure we couldn't save her...or me.
"My story is to be the one to save you each time," Macon continued. "I've been hunting with my father for several years, and I've even killed a couple of wild boars on my own. I've hunted foxes. Even a few wolves who were taking off with the farmers' sheep. I've gained a lot of experience out here. Some people say you can't hunt bears, but I've proven them wrong. I've gone out and..."
Tate and I faced each other. I nodded.
We walked slower, letting Macon go ahead. His voice got lower and lower as he unknowingly put distance between him and us. It was a huge relief.
"That guy is so full of himself," Tate said. I could hear a bit of jealousy in his voice.
"And clueless," I said. Macon walked ahead, bragging into the trees about his hunting conquests. "I wonder if he has trophies of all his kills. They're probably all rabbits and squirrels. I feel safe with this guy."
"Or mice," Tate said. "Maybe not even that. Anything could hear him from a mile away."
Macon kept talking for several minutes and his words blended into the chirping of the birds and the forest noises around us. I caught a fox darting between two of the brighter trees. Its puffy tail vanished into the underbrush. Macon didn't even notice it. At last, he glanced back, and his eyes widened when he realized we weren't there. "Come on," he said. "We don't have time to waste. Why are you hanging back?"
Yep. The huntsman was clueless.
We said nothing and caught up. Thankfully, Macon shut up, and we walked in silence for a while. The shadows got longer under the trees, and I watched Macon's ax swing back and forth as he walked. How good was the huntsman with that? But I knew if I asked, we were in for another long lecture about ax throws and swings and how good he was at it.
And besides, it was starting to dim in the forest. We didn't want to attract attention to ourselves. I didn't need to get Macon going for that reason alone.
I pulled at my green hoodie, and a leaf fell on it. It was brown with ugly spots of black on it. I pulled it off, and a sense of dread filled the bottom of my stomach.
"You feel that?" Tate asked.
We stopped. Macon looked up, and I couldn't help but follow his gaze.
The tree hanging above us was dying, losing its leaves. Its branches resembled fingers and claws. A hornets' nest hung from one of them, and a bunch of scary-looking yellow and black bugs darted in and out.
Macon waved us on. "We're standing in a dark spot," he said. "And we need to move out of it. It wasn't here before."
I wanted to ask him why he hadn't noticed it before this but didn't. One of the wasps buzzed down towards us and zipped around my head.
Yes. We were going to move.
Tate and I followed Macon out of the dark spot. It was making my skin itch. The grass around the trail had turned dark, almost black, and the light grayer, but I spotted lighter vegetation up ahead. We crossed the threshold and the dread feeling in my gut dissipated.
And then I felt the sting on my back.
"Ouch!" I yelled. Then I bit in all the curse words trying to come up.
"Keep going!" Macon shouted. "Just keep walking. Don't yell, or they'll all come after us."
I bit my lip as pain surged through my back. I felt as if something had injected me full of venom and to make matters worse, Tate slapped his hand on my back and pushed me along. I groaned as the green grass, and the golden sunlight surrounded us again. We were out of the dark spot. I waited for more stings to come, but none did.
At last, the burning, throbbing pain faded to the point where I could remove my teeth from my lips. I sucked in a breath. "That felt great."
"Sorry," Tate said. "About slapping you on the back."
"It's okay," I said. "You didn't get stung, did you?"
"No," he said. "We didn't even do anything to provoke them. It made no sense."
"Actually," Macon said. Great. Here we went again. "Those hornets are aggressive, but only if you get close to their nest. You only find them close to the dark region. It looks like they're spreading out and colonizing these dark spots. You probably lingered under it a little too long."
"Well," I said. "I wasn't anywhere near that nest. It was twenty feet above our heads. Did I look at it wrong or something? Was that like one of those neighborhoods where if you look at someone the wrong way, they kill you?"
Macon didn't have an answer for that one. Even though the sting felt like it was turning into a tennis ball under my skin, I let myself feel a bit of victory.
We left the dark spot behind us. There would be more of them the closer we got to the bad region. We just had to keep walking. So far, the dark spots weren't getting any bigger or any more frequent, but I knew that would change.
And the light overall was getting dimmer. It must be dinner time by now, with the sun's rays just starting to grow long and orange through the trees. We had come across no clearings and no houses. There had to be something out here if there was a road. I'd seen a man on a cart earlier today driving out of it.
I didn't want to ask Macon any more questions, but I knew I'd have to. Even if it was true that I'd spent all my past lives here, I couldn't remember them. I didn't want to recall them.
We passed another dark spot, one that was only feet from the dirt road. I spotted a couple of huge rats foraging through some underbrush, and one of them stared at us, training its black-red eyes on us for a moment before it went back to eating. I looked closer and regretted it. The rat was chewing on a dead bird, a dead raven. Macon was right that the different regions changed creatures. I wondered if that applied to people or just magical beings and animals.
I walked faster just in case the rats wanted to chew at my ankles.
"Alric might have ordered those hornets to come after me," I said to Tate. I kept my voice low so Macon wouldn't hear. N
o doubt he'd go into another lecture. "Maybe he's trying to make me run into the woods and off the trail."
"We need to stay out of the dark spots as much as we can," Tate said. "I didn't like the way it made me feel."
We stayed quiet for the next twenty minutes or so. The light got longer. More orange. I kept searching for a cabin, or any buildings off the road that Grandma could get stuffed inside, but there was nothing but trees and an occasional hunting shack that was falling apart. Macon would go into a lecture about the history of each hut as we passed. He told us all about how the one way back in the trees had been built forty years ago by his great-uncle, even though the thing was getting consumed by hungry vines by now and no one cared. But at least Macon seemed to know these woods.
And then he stopped.
"What?" I asked.
"There's another dark spot ahead. This one goes right across the road. We need to walk through it quickly. Don't linger. Especially you, Red."
He was right. The whole world seemed to darken ahead, even more than the rest of the forest in the dying light. The grass almost looked black, and a couple more hornet nests hung from the bare branches above. It was a forest after a nuclear holocaust, one dying from radiation. Even the sky through the trees appeared gray like a storm was approaching, but I heard no thunder.
And something rustled through the dark trees up ahead. Twigs snapped, and Macon reached for his bow.
"Good idea. Walk right through," Tate told him. "There's no way around?"
I checked. It almost looked like a river of dark and depressing had frozen across the road. I couldn't see where the river ended, but I could spot bright green and flowers on the other bank.
"Maybe we should run across?" I asked, eyeing the hornet nests. They seemed to have it out for me.
"Actually," Macon said, "when you run, you attract more trouble. The creatures in the dark region are attracted to fear. Being afraid does not help you in the dark region or these dark spots."
"They seem to be attracted to me no matter what," I said. The trail cut right under the nests, and there were sure to be worse things in there. "Alric might have something to do with that."
