Shadow Forest- The Complete Series

by Eliza Grace

  “Goodbye, Tilda,” the boy who knows my name says. And then he flashes away in a blur. He wasn’t human. So very fast. A vampire. My mother has taught me about vampires. I am so lucky to have her. She and Jen had to learn everything on their own; the powers skipped a generation. But they had Elisabeth’s grimoire to guide them.

  Thinking of my mother sends me down the hall once more. I don’t stop until I get to the room that she and my father stay in when we visit Aunt Jen and Uncle Archie. Though we do not live far across town, these family sleepovers are a tradition. I love Uncle Archie—he’s the one who introduced me to Hoyt last summer. I haven’t told Hoyt what I am yet, but I will. And I think he will accept every part of me, even the bits that are far from normal.

  The room was my mother’s when she was a child. It looks much the same, she tells me—except for Jen’s paintings all over the walls. Aunt Jen will use any surface she can to hang paintings to dry.

  “Mom,” I breathe out happily when I find her sitting near the window gazing out over the meadow.

  She turns and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. We have the same crow-dark hair and eyes, at least that’s what dad says. “Hi, my little witch,” she says in her beautiful, calming voice. I say nothing back. The world is shifting again. Shifting and turning. I look down at the images, but they are not changing any longer. Everything is stable and settled. But what is stable and settled? “Come here, babe.” Mom speaks again.

  I go to her, falling down onto the floor and immediately resting my head in her lap. She strokes my hair. “Something is different, Mom. I’m not sure what, but it’s like the whole world is play dough and it’s changing into a new shape and I can feel it, but I can’t change it and I don’t know why it’s happening.”

  She says nothing, only continuing to stroke my hair.

  After a great while, she breaks her silence. “It sounds like time is a changeling, my little witch. And you have been in the middle.”

  We hear a jovial, loud voice boom from the kitchen and my heart leaps. It is my father, back from town. He’ll have the popcorn and candy for movie night. It is my favorite night of the week—when we all gather together and stay up late and watch terrible films.

  “Come on,” I coax Mom. “Let’s see what awful movie Dad picked for tonight.”

  She smiles at me. “Do you think he picked up the water bottles Jen asked for?”

  Disposable water bottles are a running joke in our family. I can still recall almost everything Mom and I said during our epic argument over recycling last year.

  “No way,” I poke her side. “Plastic kills the planet.”

  We get up together and leave the room arm-in-arm, even though that means we have to shove really close together to keep from hitting the walls. Almost to the kitchen, I realize we’ve left the lights on in mom’s room. I turn around, lifting my fingers for a quick snap. “Out,” I said simply. And the room we’ve just left is bathed in shadows.

  Magic is… amazing.

  I laugh a little when I see the movie Dad’s gotten. It’s one my mother absolutely hates, because of how it portrays those with magical power. I, for one, adore Binx the black cat and Billy the clumsy zombie and watching it reminds me of a cautionary story Mom used to tell me when I was little. The bedtime tale was a lesson in respecting our magic, I guess. Just like the boy in the movie, the little girl in Mom’s story only did magic once. It wasn’t a lit candle that released sadistic sisters, but it was reckless nonetheless. And because of her error, she put her family in danger and she could never use magic again. She could never even think about it.

  Not even once.

  Epilogue

  It has been a year since repairing the barrier spell. A year since the effects of messing with time have finally settled down and molded back together to make sense again.

  Weeks after everything happened, I began to have dreams… sometimes nightmares. I’d see this boy I did not recognize; he’s trying to reach for me, talk to me. He kisses me. And then there is the fire—an unfamiliar house burning. My family dying. My body breaking. I woke up sobbing so many times that my mom and dad began to worry. Mom talked to me again about the paradox of time and how I seemed to be caught in the middle of ripples that my brain could not comprehend.

  She and Aunt Jen perform a memory spell to unlock anything that might be haunting me from past and other lives.

  We are all mortified to learn that there was a world in which mom and dad and my brother were all dead and I was a broken bird. But we also come to know that there is danger in the woods, danger that has never touched us in this new timeline. They too perform the spell, ingesting the truth frame-by-frame.

  Our family will protect the barrier spell. We will watch the forest, and contain Elisabeth’s good work.

  Still though, I cannot forget the fairies and the vampire boy. Arianna and Jon are bright spots in another wise dark recollection. I miss them and I know they must be trapped in the forest once more.

  I want to see Arianna’s tiny, shining face. I hate that I have not seen her again, not since I’d nearly killed her and her kin. And Jon… how many times did he save me? Against the werewolf, against the harpy, against the shadow beasts?

  Fast forward.

  It is my birthday. And I have worked for months to create a spell that is so specific it cannot fail, because I will it to be so. The shadow forest is full of unspeakable horrors, ones I never wish to see again.

  “Are you ready?” Jen and Mom are standing, holding hands and looking out past the ancient fence line. I nod.

  Walking forward, I drip candle wax onto the wood. The wax is a seal, containing my intent. I leave the candle burning, a flickering dance in the darkening air. When I am finished, I will blow out the candle and peel the cooled wax off of the fence. I will wash away any magical remnants with boors root, marigold, and persimmon. Using the ingredients takes me back to that little house deep between the trees, with its apothecary cabinet and ever-burning fire place and witch lab in the attic. Will I ever see it again? I stand, swiping my hands down my pants to dislodge the bits of wax that have singed my skin as I poured.

  “Are you sure about this, Tilda?” A figure comes up behind me; he wraps his arms around my body.

  “I’m sure, Hoyt.” I lean back into him. Hoyt and I are stronger than ever and I fully disagree with that saying about how relationships built during stressful situations can’t last. But maybe we don’t fit that warning. I knew I loved him before the witchfinder tricked me and the monsters escaped and he doesn’t have the memories that I do. Not in full technicolor, because the human mind cannot take the intrusion the way a supernatural one can. I’ve told him everything now. He has taken it in stride. Though, I can tell that he still finds the fact that the woods are full of monsters unbelievable and it is even harder to accept that they once escaped and demolished our town to the point of being empty and ghostly.

  Of course, they didn’t escape. Not really. Not in this timeline.

  “He’s in there for a reason though. Why would your ancestor trap him if he wasn’t bad?” Hoyt turns me to look at him. I tilt my head up and his face is bathed in golden rays from the fading sunlight.

  “I think Elisabeth may have been wrong. About him. Maybe about others. And Arianna and the fairies…they don’t deserve to be in there, Hoyt. They’re absolute goodness.” I smile at him and he lifts his hand to gently push hair away from my face and tuck it behind my ear.

  “You look like an angel right now,” he murmurs. “You’re surrounded by light like a halo. I trust you, Tilda. If you think this is the right thing to do, I’m with you. Always.”

  He leans down and I rise up on tiptoes. I can remember when I couldn’t do that, when I was relegated to a wheelchair. There is a small sliver of me that misses the way we really met—him my physical therapist, me his patient. There was a different feeling between us then, one of reliance and care. The me of this timeline is strong. She can fend for herself. H
oyt doesn’t need to be a knight in shining armor typically. Though he would be; I know he would be.

  When our lips meet, it is familiar and the butterflies only dance softly in my stomach. I am okay with the electric beginnings of new love fading away. I am okay with this quiet waltz into forever.

  I pull away. “It’s time,” I say, watching the sun dip below the trees. People believe the witching hour is midnight, but I say it is this waiting place between night and day when the world is changing and anything is possible.

  I walk over and join hands with mom and Aunt Jen. Dad, Uncle Archie, Hoyt, and my brother gather behind us to watch the show. Magic is a family affair now; we are stronger together—witch and human alike. I look down to find two sketches on the ground. I smile at the familiar faces that Jen has captured so well.

  “A good deed it does plant a seed. It wakes the world from complacency. A savior in a monster’s guise. We call you out, be free this night.” We chant together, all of us picturing Jon’s face thanks to Jen’s beautiful drawings. Again, I think, knowing the others can hear me. “A good deed it does plant a seed. It wakes the world from complacency. A savior in a monster’s guise. We call you out, be free this night.”

  The barrier spell flickers and the true woods behind the fence are revealed. Shadows dart between trees. I see the distinct shapes of rock trolls rolling in the distance. I wonder if it has not worked. Jon should be here now; he should be waiting on the other side of the fence.

  I release mom and Aunt Jen’s hand and I walk until I am only a foot from the barrier. “Jon!” I yell out. “Jon, hurry! The spell won’t last.”

  He won’t remember me. I know that. Maybe that’s why he has not come. But the spell will fix it. As soon as he crosses over the wax seal, he will be flooded with the memories from the other timeline. “Come on, Jon,” I whisper. “Come on.”

  I jump back when the vampire boy I so desperately have missed appears in a flash. He looks up and down the barrier curiously, and then his eyes lock on me. He is his original self—cocky and devil-may-care. And he has not been softened by a mother’s touch in the forest; he has not loved my mother like a son. In this timeline, he is more a bloodthirsty vampire than I thought possible. “Serving dinner at the barrier now? How obliging of you, witch.” He gives me his half-smile, boyish and yet threatening, because it clearly reveals growing fangs.

  “Come and get me,” I taunt, stepping aside and waving a hand.

  “And get zapped by magic?” He scoffs. “I think not.”

  “Oh, it won’t hurt you. See?” I point at the wax. “I’m letting you go.”

  He quirks an eyebrow in disbelief. “And you would do that… why?”

  “Because,” I say seriously, “You’re not the big bad vampire you want people to think you are, Jon.”

  “About that,” his smile deepens, his eyebrows knitting together villainously. “I most certainly am, witch who knows my name.”

  With that, Jon comes flying over the fence, teeth barred and body poised for attack. I hold up a hand and I call the magic. Golden light beams from my palm and knocks him to the ground. It should only take moments for the memories to set in.

  When he looks up, tears stream from his eyes. “Tilda,” he says quietly. But then he looks past me and finds my mom. He stands, body shaking, and he runs to her. They hug, both crying now. Jon is part of us. He’s family.

  Eventually, Jon must give way to the second part of our spell. He stands with our human counterparts as me, mom, and Aunt Jen hold hands again.

  “Full of hope and light and power, we call you in this witching hour. Wings of stars and songs and life, we call you from the woods of strife. We call you and your kinfolk. Come. Come and see what has been done.”

  Arianna is a painting in my mind—wings fluttering and small body hovering. I see the colors of her move, creating prism paths through the air. They do not take long to arrive—the flying creatures that look like dancing stars. And they do not hesitate at the border of the woods. They fly through the barrier spell with ease and delight.

  And it is time to close the spell.

  I walk forward quickly, retrieving the cleansing liquid from my pocket. My eyes find the shadows between trees. Smoke tentacles are curiously coming forward. They should not be able to use my spell to exit, but we cannot be too safe.

  I peel away the wax seal, rolling it into a ball and sprinkling the cleanser over it and then I pour the rest of the contents onto the fence where the wax once was; I erase the magic and the barrier spell hums to full strength once more. The reality on the other side of the boundary fades away into illusion.

  Arianna and the fairies look like oversized fireflies now. The sun is set and the world is dark and the moon is full and intoxicating. The fairies begin to sing in their wind chime voices and the sound carries up into heaven and makes me feel light as air.

  Everything is right now. Everything is fixed.

  **continue for a short bonus scene**

  The Witchfinder & Elisabeth

  -The Neverwhere-

  I see it. Though I do not see her.

  Of course, I am nothing more than a length of shadow pouring into the dark world Elisabeth has called home for so very long. Her carefully-curated eternity of monstrous trees with bony-fingered branches reaching towards the oblivion of nothingness that stretches above. A sky without stars, without a moon, without proof that there is any existence beyond the reaches of her Neverwhere. I have often wondered if this afterlife is her own guilt come into reality. She is a witch. She is unnatural.

  The portal slams behind me. The link is fully broken. I am a sentient gas, quickly added to the fog that perpetually hovers above the ground in this place. I roll with it, undulating against blades of gray grass that should not be alive, yet somehow are. I move over and under twisted vines. I feel a force in the distance, familiar and painful. I move towards it. I have no choice.

  The heart I no longer have thumps in the chest that no longer exists.

  What I feel for Elisabeth, what I always feel, is a stew of emotions. Hate. Lust. Pain.

  Love.

  Guilt.

  It is strange to be outside of the little witch’s head. At times I pitied her. At times I envied her. Now, I wonder if still being connected to her would calm my soul. If I have a soul. I have done so many dark things in my living days… and unliving ones. I am no better than the witch I love and hate.

  How my mind has changed.

  At the end of our joining, I almost respected the naïve strength the little witch carried like a shield. Oh, Tilda had fallen prey to my urgings so easily, but she’d recovered. She had beaten me. It is important to know when you have been beaten.

  Elisabeth said that to me once.

  There. There she is.

  She is resting on a bed made of gnarled, thorny bushes. There are black and burgundy dahlia flowers weaved into the posts and canopies. They mean betrayal. I know this, because these are the flowers I placed on the unmarked graves of each ‘witch’ I hunted and slaughtered before she tricked me into my prison.

  My ‘body’ moves as a whisper beneath the bed. The skirt of her gray dress hangs down and I brush against it. Sensation rockets through my body, firing each and every nerve that cannot possibly exist now that I am only fog and smoke and air.

  “So, you have found your way to me, Matthew.” Elisabeth stands, a shadow goddess in this monochrome nightmare. She is queen witch of this realm. “299 women who were not witches. Their lives you took, Matthew. Witchfinder. Murderer of the innocent. How long I watched you. How many times I told myself that I could not expose myself to protect the life of non-magical beings. 299. That girl you were watching. I could not let her be your 300th slaughter. The year 1646… do you remember it? How I came to you. How you felt, that first moment you clapped eyes upon my form?”

  I swirl about her, a hurricane against the ground.

  I look up at her. How am I seeing her without eyes? Smoke does not see…


  “You see because I allow it,” she hisses sharply. And then she begins whispering, waving her hands gently. As her fingers move, I too move, following the invisible track she traces through the air. I begin to slowly feel dimensional, gas skipping condensation and moving straight into solid. I stand on legs, though they felt strange. Arms hang at my sides, though I cannot yet move them.

  I come together, not like a paper puzzle, but instead like I am being knit together. Row by row, purl by purl, various hues taking shape. Sleeves and pant legs. Yarn hair… a cottony mouth.

  “I’ll ruin your peace,” I choke out, my throat dry.

  “You’ll ruin my peace?” she laughs out the question. “This is my creation, Matthew. You are nothing save for an ornament in my collection now.”

  I gasp as her hands move through the air once more and I am lifted violently into the air, my new body jerks around like a rag doll. Her magic is not a graceful dance of fingers this time; it is fierce and relentless.

  Let me be fog again. Let me be smoke. Let me have no body.

  Elisabeth flips me until I am horizontal above the ground, facing down towards the roots and undead grass. I float through the air until I hover above her bed. And then I am moving higher, my back pressing into the thorny vines and black flowers.

  I scream as my back and shoulders are shredded by the sharp points of the plants.

  The vines move, snaking around my ankles, wrists, throat.

  The body Elisabeth granted me stiffens as the bed continues to welcome me into the fold. No blood drips from the thorn wounds. This body does not bleed.

  When the vines become still against me, no longer clawing at my skin, Elisabeth stretches out across the mattress below. She gazes up at me with calm, satisfied eyes. The scent of the flowers around me is heady and disorienting.