by Holly Hook
The tree landed with a deafening crash. A dead trunk complete with moss and bright white mushrooms rolled towards us and stopped. Shorty jumped over it and his shoe caught bark, sending it flying.
I followed. My leg scraped a cluster of the white mushrooms and a burning sensation spread through the front of my thigh. I ignored it and kept going. We were almost out of the dark spot. There was clean sunlight and green grass dozens of feet ahead.
“Come on!” Shorty grabbed my hand and pulled me over the border.
The dread feeling in my gut dissipated as Shorty and I crashed down together on fresh grass and dirt. We got back up and moved farther down the road. I glanced at the water of the dark spot and saw the dark, hooded figure growing fainter the farther we got from the swamp. We’d made it out. Alric had lost connection.
Shorty and I collapsed back on the ground.
I caught my breath. My sides felt ready to split. “That was close,” I managed. “Real close.” And then I laughed. We'd made it.
“I agree,” Shorty said. He flopped down on his back, chest heaving. “I don’t think we can survive another dark spot if it’s any bigger than that.”
Watch out, Lawrence thought. You almost crushed me.
Dry forest surrounded us on all sides. We had reached safety. For now.
Lawrence scrambled out of Shorty’s shirt and stood there on his shoulder as he sat up. He glanced down at something with his big, yellow eyes. They burned with disapproval.
Then I saw. Shorty and I still held hands.
“Oh,” he said, letting go. Blood rushed to his cheeks.
I turned away.
It was rushing to mine, too.
I got to my feet and busied myself brushing off. That’s when I realized that the front of my thigh still burned.
And the sensation was getting worse.
“What happened?” Shorty asked.
“I brushed some of those white mushrooms.”
Shorty paled.
“I take it that’s bad.”
“Candice, the poison in those—it’s acid.”
My heart sank, and I glanced down at my jeans. If they had holes before, they were worse now. The fabric on the front of my thigh just above my knee was smoking. White residue spread over the spot and it was liquefying.
And the burn grew bad enough for me to curl my toes.
I searched around for a body of water. Something. But there was nothing except for the swamp we’d left behind. I glimpsed the murkiness beyond the trees. It was deep, grimy and deadly.
But the burn was worsening.
I had no choice.
Shorty shook his head. “Take off your pants!”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. The burning turned into an inferno on my thigh and overshadowed the heat in my face. The acid was eating at my skin and the fabric of my jeans. It might eat all the way to bone and there was no hospital here in Fable.
“Alric uses those mushrooms to make poisons. Take those pants off!”
I hesitated for a split second. The pain grew to a scream.
And I bolted for the swampy water.
“No!” Shorty shouted. But I was too far gone. All that mattered was the pain. It had to stop even if I passed out and drowned. All thoughts of what could happen flew from my mind. Only one primal need remained. I barely noticed the dread hitting me as I crossed back into the dark spot.
And I splashed right into the disgusting water.
“Candice!” Shorty yelled.
Cool relief washed over me. I didn’t care about the horrible smell. The slime wrapping giant hands around my feet. The green scum floating on the water next to me. All I cared was that the pain was fading, fading away like a horrible dream. I reached down into the water and felt my thigh, making sure that my skin was still there. I pulled out a piece of fried jean fabric, but no skin.
No skin.
I was alive.
Shorty splashed into the water next to me. “Get out. Now!”
Then I remembered.
Alric.
But it was too late.
I looked up.
And in the shining murkiness stood a man in a black robe and a red-trimmed hood.
He was clear now. Clear as he'd be if he was standing right here. I could sense the hate washing off this man.
And then he turned to face Shorty. The air filled with a cold, deadly magic.
The water rippled. And Alric took a bold step forward.
Chapter Nine
We scrambled out of the water. Shorty had a lump under the shoulder of his shirt again. Shorty kept a hold of my arm and I struggled to pull my feet out of the muck and onto dry land.
Behind us, the water made a strange parting sound.
He was coming out. Alric.
Into the trees, Lawrence said.
“This way,” I breathed, pulling Shorty out of the dark spot and towards the thick cover of the woods. We wouldn’t make it far on the open road. Only concealment would save us here.
We crashed into the trees. The parting sound intensified, and I dared to look back. Twin walls of water grew farther apart where I stood seconds ago, leaving a greenish, slimy floor dotted with sticks and weeds. The air rippled and shimmered right above it and I caught the outline of a black-robed man forming there.
“Keep running,” Shorty said. “He’ll kill us. He’ll kill us both.”
I did, keeping the wand clutched in one hand. Lawrence remained a bump in Shorty’s shirt. The trees thickened around us and I lost sight of the road. I crashed through a patch of yellow flowers and through a ray of sun.
“Shorty!” Alric shouted behind us.
His voice was like a black void. A wave of cold energy washed over me as if the wizard had sent a dark ripple of it through the world. How could Shorty have come from someone so evil?
My sides felt ready to split. I kept going. Shorty released my arm and pumped his arms faster. Leaves slapped at my face. He was out. It was my fault.
And I couldn’t even use this wand.
“Shorty!” Alric shouted again, fainter this time. We were leaving him behind.
“Don’t stop,” Shorty said. He was hoarse. “He doesn’t know where we are. But he will look.”
We didn’t slow until I was so out of breath I couldn’t go anymore and my heart felt ready to explode. I stopped and leaned against a tree. Where were we? The forest all looked the same.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped.
“Don’t be,” Shorty said. He sucked in breath after breath. “I shouldn’t have asked you to take off your pants. Great move.”
“What choice did you have?”
The wind blew through the trees and Lawrence emerged from Shorty’s shirt and perched back on his shoulder. His throat moved in and out. Even he was gasping for breath. Lawrence would have been the first to die.
And we still weren’t safe.
Not with Alric within even a few miles of us.
“What’s he capable of?” I asked.
Shorty glanced at the tree next to me. He didn’t want to look right at me. Shame burned in his eyes. "You don’t want to know. Shrinking whole kingdoms and imprisoning them in boxes, for one. The kingdom my mother was living in is being held hostage right now."
“Along with your mother.” I remembered the boxes. The tiny villages and castles in them along with the glass containers of vapor.
“Shorty!” Alric shouted in the distance.
I jumped. Lawrence made to crawl inside Shorty’s shirt again, but he clamped it shut and prevented entry. “We need to go,” he said. “He knows I’ve turned on him.”
Satisfaction punctuated Shorty’s sentence. But then he hiked up his pants and waved me deeper into the forest. “Come on.”
I followed. “Where are we going?” I couldn't tell where the road was anymore. We had left it far behind.
“I don’t know.”
“You know Fable.”
“Not every forest. No one knows all the forests.�
��
“Isn’t getting lost a thing that happened a lot in fairy tales?” We walked in the opposite direction of the castle for all I knew.
“Shorty!”
Alric grew more faint. We were putting a distance between us and him. He might even stand at the swamp, hoping that he could intimidate Shorty into emerging from the trees. Maybe he wasn’t that powerful after all if he had to do that. At least it seemed like he couldn’t materialize out of thin air in front of us or he would have done it already.
A deafening crack went through the air, echoing off the surrounding tree trunks.
Shorty paled. Lawrence jumped and about fell.
"What's that?" I asked.
"I've never heard that sound before," Shorty said. "It can't be good."
And then a stiff wind blew through the trees.
"I don't think so either," I said. "We need to keep running."
I sucked in a breath, wheezing, and picked up my pace. Tree after tree passed, and they got thicker and closer together. There was no one out here. No one except for us and Alric.
The wind blew again. Was it picking up?
And with it came the odor of smoke.
"Something's burning," I said. "Shorty?"
"Yeah?" He kept going, not looking back.
"Did Alric set the woods on fire?"
Shorty stopped and so did I. Lawrence's yellow eyes got huge as he peeked into the green behind us.
Yes, Lawrence thought.
I followed his gaze. I saw nothing through the trees, but Lawrence must be able to see with those huge eyes of his. The reek of smoke returned, stronger than ever and riding on the wind.
"You win," I told Lawrence, heart racing.
Alric was trying to burn the whole forest down.
He wanted all three of us dead.
I gasped for air as I ran. Shorty led the way in front of me. He didn’t look back. He ran faster. And faster. I struggled to keep up. “Wait,” I said, hating that I wasn’t more athletic. “We can't get separated.”
But Shorty didn’t respond. He pumped his legs so hard that Lawrence struggled to hold on.
The smoke smell grew stronger and the air, hazy. I glanced back.
And regretted it.
An orange glow peeked out from between the trees far behind us—all the trees. It flickered and grew stronger by the second. Closer.
A wall of flame.
Trees popped hundreds of feet back and the wall towered over the tops, reaching for the sky. The wind blew harder, and the wall raced closer, brightening by the second.
“Shorty—look!”
He did.
And cursed.
“Run!” he shouted, grabbing my hand again.
I huffed and huffed, but a roaring sound grew louder and louder behind us. The wind grew hot. Unbearable. The wall was gaining on us and we were all about to die a horrible death.
I kept a death grip on the wand as we weaved through trees. Embers rained into the surrounding foliage. Rabbits bolted ahead of us, trying to escape. Birds shot into terrified flight. I wished we could join them.
The heat seared my eyeballs. The cold magic of the wand did nothing to cool me down. An orange glow fell on the trees and grass around us. I hoped this would be quick. That we wouldn't suffer for too long.
Then a thought hit me.
“Shorty,” I managed. “Hold the fire back!”
I held out the wand the best I could in front of him but he kept running.
“Shorty!” He had to do this. I was useless here.
Then he stopped. Grabbed the wand from me.
And turned towards the fire.
I screamed. The wall of flame closed in, ready for the kill. Behind it, trees burned and snapped and underbrush turned black. It was the apocalypse.
And it was only a few house lengths away.
Shorty raised the wand. He was shaking. He shouted something into the oncoming fire and I closed my eyes, waiting for the burning death to hit. The air grew to an oven and a deafening snap sounded.
And then it cooled.
I didn’t open my eyes for the longest time.
“Candice,” Shorty said. “It’s retreating.”
I opened my eyes. Cool air caressed them and I blinked, letting moisture return.
We were alive.
The wall of fire was still there, but it was surging away from us, retreating over the black ground and death. Only about twenty feet away, the grass had curled and blackened. Trees had turned to skeletons. The fire had come that close to us. If Shorty hadn’t done whatever he’d done, we’d be burnt alive.
The air cooled more, and the wind calmed. Shorty let his hand slap to his side. He still clutched the wand and breathed faster and faster as if the terror of the situation were catching up with him.
“You saved our lives,” I said.
Shorty faced me for a second, made a disgusted face, and threw the wand down on the ground.
“Leave that there,” he said. “We need to go. Now.”
I’d never heard him so angry. “We might have to use it again. I’m taking it.”
“Leave it!” Shorty yelled.
I backed up. “I know you don’t like to use magic. But we have to fight magic with magic.”
Shorty said nothing. Lawrence was still on his shoulder.
And then Shorty stalked off, deeper into the forest.
“Shorty!” I said. “We’re alive. Why are you so upset?”
I regretted it big time.
“Honestly,” Shorty said. He picked up a stray branch and cracked it across his knee, then threw the pieces down. "You’re wondering why I’m acting this way?"
“I know why you’re upset. Sorry,” I said, searching the grass for the wand. I found it lying there underneath a red tulip. The poor tulip was turning black from the magic and the surrounding grass darkened to a sinister green. A new dark spot was forming here. This wand carried evil with it everywhere it went.
I picked it up.
Shorty could do magic. This might even be the first time it had happened.
And he hated that he could. That he'd inherited something from the man who just tried to kill us.
"Sorry," I repeated, catching up with him. But Shorty said nothing. I kept the wand out of his view and tucked it back into my pocket. "I am. Alric—he's the worst person I've ever met."
"Tell no one."
"About what?"
"About what I did. I want no one to know." Then he glared at Lawrence. "That goes for you, too."
Lawrence said nothing. He turned away from Shorty's face the best he could.
And he was silent.
Chapter Ten
The forest only got thicker the farther we went in. The beams of sun got farther and farther apart, but at least we didn't run into any more dark spots. I knew the one I'd left behind us was growing and would one day get as big as the one we'd run through.
My jeans flapped over the hole the toxic mushrooms had left on them and my skin was a little red, but otherwise I was fine. I was glad I had a hole in my jeans. The less like royalty I looked, the better. Franco would love this. We'd match.
Shorty grew more sullen the more we walked. He needed to think and nothing I said right now would make him feel better.
Excuse me, Lawrence thought. Shouldn't we find our way back to the road?
I hadn't heard him in forever and it was the most polite question he'd asked us so far. Shorty's mood had a lot to do with it.
But Shorty stopped. He perked up, maybe glad for something else to think about. "I like that idea," he said, "Except that Alric might wait for us to appear there. He might even realize we're headed to the castle. We should keep leading him off the trail."
"I like Shorty's plan," I said. "Except that we're, you know, lost."
I agree, Lawrence thought. However, this is my kingdom. I once hunted foxes in these woods.
I knew where this was going.
Don't you want to know the way to
the castle from here? How to evade Alric?
Neither Shorty nor I said anything. I still held the wand. Lawrence knew Shorty could use it now. I had made things worse.
This is a big forest, Lawrence said. And you still have the wand. If you can release my curse, I can show you the way out.
Shorty and I stared at each other. If we released him now, things would be all over. I'd be his, and he'd take me to his kingdom right now. How dangerous was Lawrence in human form? He could attack us both. He'd turn on Shorty.
"I don't trust you," I said. "I think we should find our way out ourselves."
But Alric nearly made our story fall, Lawrence thought. He trained those big, yellow eyes on me. They were hateful. Condescending. Do you not realize what almost happened to both of our kingdoms? You are shirking on your responsibility, Candice. Abandoning your people.
"But we survived," I said. "I don't want these kingdoms to fall. I don't want you in my life. Ever. We'll find another way to make sure you get the ending you want." I could hold this off for a while.
But it is your story, he thought. You must love a prince. The frog prince.
"And this whole responsibility is mine?" I asked. "I'd rather have any other prince. Any other frog prince. There's got to be more than one of you in this world. I'll find one!" I was losing it. The story was closing in tighter and tighter and I was fearing that there was no escape.
Shorty jumped back and glared at Lawrence. "We'll keep you a frog for a while," he said. "I know what you're up to. Candice and I will find our way out of these woods ourselves. It's not like we're back in that swamp."
And then Shorty smiled at me.
He was on my side with this. I had an ally here. One that could use magic even if he didn't want to.
One that would help both me and these two kingdoms avoid the worst.
"Let's go," I said.
"You still have that wand?" Shorty asked. This time, he wasn't upset.
"I do. You want me to guard it?"
"Yes. If we need it again, hand it over."
Lawrence said nothing and looked right ahead while we changed direction and continued to walk. "You know," Shorty said. "If these are the woods Lawrence here used to hunt in, we must be close to his old castle. And Mary."
