by Holly Hook
At last, it caught on a cluster of smaller branches and stayed there. I now had a rope with which to climb.
It wasn't easy. My braid had stuck in a spot that didn't make the journey up the thick trunk easy. I had to grab onto my braid with one hand and wrap my hand around the trunk with the other. It was the most grueling thing I had ever done. I thought about giving up and finding another tree, but remembered that my braid had gotten caught here and the only way I could free it was to get up there and untangle it. Or wait for someone to come by and cut it off. That someone might be Alric. I'd made myself a prisoner here all over again.
Sliding back down the trunk, I watched my braid swing like a clothesline between my head and the branches. I pulled at my braid, but it stuck.
Yes. My hair trapped me here until I got up.
The surrounding woods grew darker, so much that I couldn't make out the trail anymore. The light illuminating the clearing was meager and the dread feeling rose in my gut all over again. Night was so much worse out here. Day was bad enough.
And this time, no fireflies blinked. A hornet flew past my ear and around my head, so I kept still until it decided I wasn't a threat and buzzed away. Even the bugs had changed.
Somewhere, a twig snapped.
And an animal screamed.
I didn't know what kind it was, but the sound wasn't far off at all.
I wrung out my arms, grabbed my braid, and climbed again.
Mother wasn't here to tell me nothing would get me. The only safety I knew was off the ground, and there I would stay for the night.
I clung onto the bark with my bare toes and pulled on the braid until the branch above me creaked and my head hurt. And at last, I grabbed the large branch and hoisted myself up. Something pulled in my calf and I bit in a scream, but I swung myself up onto the branch and sat up against the trunk, breathing a sigh of relief.
I untangled my braid from the branches, which took minutes, but at last, I was free.
And safe.
It had grown so dark out there that the ground looked like a black expanse with knives coming out of it, not grass. With bony hands reaching out everywhere.
This was how Mother had told me the world was.
And now, at least, she was right.
Mother.
I'd left her to suffer in darkness. She hadn't wanted to harm Henry. She was dark at the time and couldn't control herself. As soon as Alric left, I'd have to help her.
Something else screamed, but it was more distant this time. But not distant enough.
The dread grew. My back prickled as if someone were watching me. I'd never felt fear like this. Night used to be beautiful from the tower. Out here it was dangerous and scary.
I might never see the sun again even if I made it to daybreak.
But my limbs trembled and my eyes drooped.
I had never been more tired in my life.
And sad.
Despair gripped me even stronger than the dread had. I had no one. Nothing. I was nothing out here and I might even die from hunger, like Mother said sometimes happened to those who didn't have enough money or whose farms failed. It was supposed to be a painful way to die. There was no food out here.
None I knew how to get, anyway.
A tear rolled down my cheek, landed on my bare arm, and fell onto the tree trunk below. I held down my sobs and leaned back against the bark. I had to sleep and conserve energy as much as I could.
The noises and distant sounds all drifted away as I floated through the darkness behind my eyelids. The dread remained in my stomach, but it seemed to fade away as strange images and toppling towers played out in the void.
Chapter Eight
I woke.
I wasn't sure where I was at first and the first thing that hit me was the burning, gnawing hunger in my stomach. My butt had gone numb, and I sat in a tree. Bright green leaves blew in the breeze over my head and made a soothing rustling sound.
The second thing I realized was that the dread feeling had gone away.
I shifted and cursed my aching limbs. Memories rushed back. Yesterday. I'd crawled into a dark tree and spent the night there and now sunlight peeked in through the leaves, making strange patterns on my dress.
I was alive.
And this tree didn't look like the same dark one I had climbed into the dusk before.
"Huh?" I asked, searching around it.
The tree seemed to have healed overnight, and its leaves were bright and alive as they must have been before Alric's evil took over this forest. Hope rose inside me despite the terrible hunger and I turned my head, checking every branch. Yes. The entire tree was bright and the most beautiful green I had ever seen. Maple leaves reached down and tried to tickle my nose as if the tree were thanking me for something.
I sat sideways on the huge branch and faced the ground.
Some clearing below had turned bright green, too, as if lightness had spread out from the trunk of this lucky tree and spread through the rest of the forest. A few star-shaped flowers had dared to peek up around the trunk and a butterfly even appeared to sit on one of the red flowers.
There was life here.
But then I saw the rest of the forest.
Still dark. Still dead and depressing and gray. This little circle was the only sign of light as far as I could see.
And I sat in the middle of an island of it. It was an island about the size of the inside of the tower.
I sucked in a breath.
How had this happened?
I might be full of light magic, just like that plant that Alric had stepped on. That Mother had sought. I shared properties with that plant.
It was no wonder the man wanted me dead.
I scrambled down from the tree, which was much easier than climbing up, and gathered my hair. I even seemed cleaner this morning, almost as if I had never waded through that disgusting pond back near the tower. The sun shone down on me and I looked up to see if peeking through some puffy white clouds.
That was an island, too. The rest of the forest kept its gray, sad light. I stood in a golden beam.
In the middle of all this darkness, a light spot had formed.
And somehow, I'd done it.
The trail waited ahead, snaking into the dark. I didn't want to leave this tree, but I knew I couldn't stay. If Alric came down this trail searching for me, he would spot this. Crush it. He would also know I came this way.
And I was still hungry.
Even more so than I had been yesterday. My limbs ached and my entire body was sore. I wasn't used to doing this much.
I had to keep going.
With one last look at the tree, I ran for the trail and checked to make sure that no one was waiting. I crossed the threshold of the light spot and back into darkness. Back into reality. The dread hit me full force again. I gasped. While sleeping in the tree, I had forgotten what it felt like.
And I walked down the sloping hill.
* * * * *
I saw no more light, but the trees got farther apart about an hour later. Maybe it was an hour later. There was no way to tell as the position of the sun was a mystery with this gray sky. I stumbled over a root and landed on my face once. When I spotted a few more of those deadly brambles in the distance, I got up and kept going.
I had to or I would die out here.
But I also sensed I was coming out of the forest. Trees remained as tall and imposing as ever, but they came in clusters now and I walked through a world of tall, dead grass. Ravens gathered in groups, pecking at bugs in the clearings. I kept checking behind me to make sure Alric hadn't appeared on the packed dirt trail. He hadn't—yet. I hoped that the man had to stop and camp for the night just like I had, or he could be much closer than I thought.
I walked through this for some time. The ravens and crows stared at me with beady black eyes that held traces of angry red, just like the rat had. Some of them pecked at a dead deer which lay on its side in the distance. I hadn't seen a living deer since the day be
fore the darkness took over. The sight saddened me. I wondered if I could heal it, but perhaps it was too far gone.
But I had healed the dead grass in the clearing.
Somehow.
The clusters of trees grew farther apart and at last, I came to a field that had a neat border of trees like I had never seen before.
The field was all tall, dead grass with only green thistles growing out of the death occasionally. It was a large field with a low building in the distance that looked low and dilapidated.
Creatures I had never seen before milled around on the grass, trying to eat whatever green left there was. They were smaller than deer but bigger than foxes and they looked like little puffy clouds grazing. Most of them were white, but a few were brown and one even appeared pinkish. Mother had told me people kept animals at farms and it looked like these might be some of them. One of the cloud animals looked up at me and went back to trying to chew a thistle. The creature didn't look thrilled. These animals were facing starvation out here once all these thistles vanished. I wondered how much longer they had.
I walked up to one. It looked up at me, grunted, and walked away.
Well, they weren't friendly, that was for sure. I wondered if people killed them for meat or if they had another use. Mother rarely brought home meat unless it was jerky. She said it spoiled too fast. I wanted nothing more than to pet one these and see what all the puffy hair felt like. They were the first light thing I'd seen since leaving the tree this morning. Not everything had turned dark.
But I had to keep going. I stared at the building in the distance, but it seemed too rickety to shelter anyone. I remembered how the tower had crumbled. This building looked ready to do the same.
Or maybe all buildings looked like this now.
And I didn't know what people lived here. They could be just as bad as Alric for all I knew. Maybe I should get to the village before asking for help. At least then, there would be others around me.
I gathered my braids and kept going. The trail got wider as if hundreds of feet had stomped it down. I passed a wooden post sticking out of the ground that reminded me of the ones Mother had around the garden until she pulled them out one year. I was getting much closer to civilization, but the grass stayed as dead as ever and the shrubs looked no better. The people in this village might starve, like me. I might get there and there could be no food.
I saw the village half an hour later after passing a couple more fields filled with rows of dying plants.
It sprawled out downhill, surrounded by dying farms and yellows and browns and grays. The only green in the world was an occasional dark tree or shrub and I glimpsed some brambles on the far side of the village, hugging the corner of a brick building. The buildings themselves were squares and rectangles and I spotted no towers except for one on the front of a large building. Even that was nowhere near the size of the one I had inhabited until a full day ago. There must be dozens of buildings here. I hadn't imagined there could be this many. I had thought villages were only a few buildings with carts out where you could buy food. Wasn't that what they were for?
But people lived here.
People.
They were dots from up here, but they stayed away from where the brambles were and gathered in the village center. They moved around in a hurry as if terrified, and they had every right to be. I’d seen what was out there.
I stopped there on the trail, hating that I was so open. Mother had told me there were bandits and pickpockets hanging around in the village, but I had nothing but the purple blossom in my pocket and my long braid. I had no money to buy food. What if I had to steal? If there was any food left.
But I had no other options. I had to get down there. The only alternative was to wander around until I collapsed of hunger and exhaustion or ran into another bunch of those brambles.
I took a step towards the scary village, and then another.
I was walking right towards the place I had feared since I was eight years old. Leaving my mother behind to dwell in darkness and guilt. But I couldn’t go back to her now. Not with the man in black with her.
If something happened, it would break her heart.
The village got clearer the closer I got. The people became specks of black and brown and purple and green, and even the occasional yellow. They came in all sizes and shapes. Large men. Tiny women and children staying close to their mothers. So Henry was right. Children left their homes.
Or maybe they had just because those brambles were hugging their houses.
No one stared at me as I approached, descending the hill with my braid in my arms. I by far had the longest hair of anyone here. The women all had hair the length of Mother’s and some even had gray or white hair which was short. The ones who had gray hair also had wrinkly faces. Maybe they were older than Mother and that was what happened when you got older. I couldn’t stop staring at the variety here.
I searched the crowd for Henry, but he wasn’t here. He knew the trail and the area. But if he had lost his eyes, he might be lost, period. Henry wouldn’t be able to find his way back to the village if he’d wandered in the wrong direction—and I hoped that Alric hadn’t found him.
The desert.
He would head there if we were part of a story.
I had to find out where that was.
The ground flattened out around me, packed down by many feet like the space around Mother’s garden used to be. The earth had cracked here, too, leaving almost no green around me. A few weeds had struggled out of the cracks between the houses ahead, but I spotted nothing else.
And then the sounds hit me.
Talking. Lots and lots of hurried talking, and the voices all sounded scared and worried. A small child cried somewhere. At least, I thought it was a small child. It sounded a lot like me after I had taken a bite from the rat.
I walked between two houses and passed a small box garden with dead, blackened flowers inside of it. I imagined this village had once looked different. Two desperate white birds with strange red growths coming out of their heads dodged out of my way and pecked at the ground. One extracted a worm and gobbled it down. Some animals here still had something to eat.
Three rows of small brick houses later, I emerged into what I guessed was the town square. It was where Mother said the market was.
I felt surrounded by buildings. The ground turned to brick itself, reddish like hardened clay. I stood between a pair of carts that held rotten vegetables that gave off a horrible smell. The cucumbers lay in neat rows, ready for sale. Or, they had been before the darkness swept through this area. The other cart held ears of corn and one farther away from me held moldy bread. These people’s food had decayed when the darkness rolled in. They had nothing to eat unless they wanted to kill the strange birds walking around and the walking clouds out in the fields. I sensed it would come to that.
A man in black stood on a platform in the middle of the village. He was waving his arms, trying to round up the dozens of people. Maybe he was the leader or something. Mother had told me that towns had leaders, and this man, who had more wrinkles than most here, looked just as scared as everyone else. I stopped there between the carts and waited for something to happen. The panic kept me back. I had spent the last day fighting enough of mine.
"Attention!" he yelled. "Attention!"
The people continued to chatter, and the children kept clinging to their mothers and crying. These people were just as scared as me. No one here had any collection. I searched around for someone to flag down, someone who might be harmless, but most of the women were huddling closer to the platform and many of the men held long tools with three points on the end. I took a step back. Those could hurt.
"Gather around!" the leader man kept repeating. A small child broke away from his mother and ran through the houses. The mother sent an older boy chasing after him.
And then I spotted something odd.
Two other people, standing on the other side of the courtyard as me.
>
A girl. And another young man who looked odder than everyone else here. The girl wore a long, plain green dress and the young man had overalls—the same type Mother had worn in the garden a few times—and a pointed leather hat that had flopped down to one side. He had messy dark brown hair and his eyes locked on me. There was something odd about him. He had a strange inner glow and made me feel funny inside much the way Henry had.
And they were the only people not milling around in panic.
The two of them spoke to each other and circled around the courtyard towards me.
I froze for a few seconds, not sure what to do. These people might be robbers. Bandits. I spotted no knives, but they had pockets. I searched around for a place to escape to. If they were approaching me, it couldn't be a good thing.
I dodged between two houses like the little boy had. No one was here, but I could tell I was running even deeper into the village. I passed an open doorway which had an old woman sitting in a chair inside, who stared after me with despair. I left her behind and turned a corner between a couple more buildings, one with a lot of straw on the floor and another that had ashes. Shops, maybe. Mother always said she bought our supplies from shops.
I had never been in a village before. My heart raced, and I stood at the intersection, surrounded by tall buildings. Another one of those strange white birds walked past, bobbing its head as if it didn't have a worry in the world. Which way was out? Left. Yes. Left. I turned.
And ran right into the girl and boy.
"Hey," the boy said. He held up his hands as if to say stop. "Where are you going? We were looking for someone like you." He gave off a warm, almost tingly feeling. It was the same feeling I got whenever Mother braided my hair. And his eyes were deep blue and warm even though they held a trace of darkness like Mother's had before Alric's influence had spread over the area.
"Huh?" I asked, backing away.
The girl was about my height and she took a step forward. She eyed the braid I still held coiled up in my arms. My knees trembled and until now I had forgotten all about my hunger. "Is that your hair?" she asked.
