The ground turns uneven, and the horse slows a bit.
“We have to keep moving,” says Constance.
A feeling of foreboding permeates the forest as the light in the sky fades, ushering in shadowy darkness all around us. Constance stares behind us as we descend farther into the trees. When she is certain we’re not being followed, she whips her head around.
“Were you trying to choke me back there?” she asks.
“I thought you were one of the guards,” I say, heat rising in my face. “I’m so sorry.”
“You can’t choke a full-grown man. You have to stab him or run him over with your cart. Come on now, Sophia.” She straightens her jacket and leans back on the seat, grinning.
Something wings out of the trees, swoops over the cart, and lands on a branch just off the side of the road. It’s the biggest crow I’ve ever seen. Its midnight-black wings stretch nearly as wide as I am tall. Its beady black eyes shine in the dark. I cringe. “I don’t even want to know what other kinds of creatures are in these woods.”
“Me either,” Constance says. “Unfortunately for us, our destination is at least another four days’ travel into the heart of the forest.”
That is not what I want to hear. “Four days? We can travel that far in and not come out the other side?”
“It seems impossible, I know. But that is where the heart of the forest lies. The last place the fairy godmother was thought to be. If that’s where she went, she picked a perfect spot. No one in their right mind would have bothered her in there. Except the very desperate.”
“And now we’re headed out there,” I say. “So what does that make us?”
“I’d say we’re plenty desperate.”
A chill moves through me as a gust of wind splits the air. The trees along the trail shudder, sending a shower of leaves down onto the ground, red and gold and brown, the familiar hues of autumn blanketing the forest floor. But just ahead, the tree trunks turn black, and their branches are devoid of leaves. Constance takes a short, quick breath as we roll past the demarcation in the trees.
“I lost my temper back there in the alley. I’m sorry.” She’s trying to distract herself from whatever feeling had come over her.
“You don’t have to apologize,” I say. “Did your mother teach you how to use a knife as well?”
She nods. “She wanted me to be prepared for anything. I can teach you if you’d like.”
I’ve always wanted to know how to use a sword, a dagger, anything that might help me protect myself. My mother might have actually fainted if I was both in love with a girl and thinking of learning to use a sword. “So you’ll teach me after we survive this little jaunt through the most terrifying place in the land? Seems like I might need to learn sooner than later.”
A hoot comes from the trees, and Constance’s eyes grow wide. “You’re probably right. But you’ve been inside the palace. This place can’t be as bad as that.”
She has a point.
A rustle along the path almost makes me jump out of my skin. I peer into the darkness ahead of us. “When we need to go back, how will we get into Lille?” I ask, trying to keep my mind occupied. “I don’t suppose you have another bomb lying around.”
“I do, as a matter of fact.” Constance grins mischievously. “But I don’t think it’s wise to set off an explosion every time we cross the border. We’ll stay hidden, but next time, it’ll be in plain sight.”
Constance reaches back into the bed of the cart and rummages through her burlap sack, pulling out a small envelope. She hands it to me.
“Is this what I think it is?” I’ve never held, or even seen, an official pass from the king. A part of me thought they were just a myth, something parents tell their children to give them hope that there is something beyond Mersailles’s borders, far from the king’s oppressive rule. Constance takes the reins as I turn the letter over in my hand like it’s made of glass. The envelope is similar to the one my invitation to the ball had come in. I open it and remove the folded piece of paper. The words are written in the same billowy black script, and they list two names: Martin and Thomas Kennowith. Details of their approved course follow. They left Lille to pick up a new cart and will return at a later, unspecified date. At the bottom, a sentence in very small print reads, “Failure to adhere to the parameters of this pass will result in imprisonment and a fine.” Two boxes are next to it, the red wax stamp of the royal crest in one and nothing in the other.
“We can use this to get back in. Save our bombs for another time,” says Constance.
“Where did you get this?”
“I stole it,” Constance says rather flippantly.
“You’ve got everything covered,” I say.
“Well, not everything,” she says. “I haven’t figured out how to make you look at me the way you did when I was standing by the fire back at the house. I don’t know that anyone has ever looked at me that way.” She bites her bottom lip as if she’s said too much.
My heart speeds up. I guess I’ve been more obvious than I thought. I avoid her gaze. “I doubt that no one has ever looked at you that way. You must know how other people view you.”
“I don’t care how I seem to other people,” she says, leaning in very close to me. “But I would very much like to know how you see me.”
She is direct. I don’t feel like I’ll be risking anything by being honest. The warmth of her body so close to mine makes me forget where we are, what we’ve witnessed. “You’re smart. Funny. You knocked out a man with one blow—”
“A shining example of who I truly am,” she says in a half-serious tone.
“I think you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”
“Interesting?” She sits back, a little smirk drawn across her lips. “Care to elaborate?”
Now it feels like a game. A little push and pull between us. “I feel like you looked at Lille’s decrees and decided to do the exact opposite.”
“That’s not quite true, but not so far off. What about you? Is that what you did?”
I shake my head, taking back the reins. “No. I tried to go along with what everyone wanted. I guess I just wasn’t very good at following the rules.”
“Looks like we’re the same in that way,” Constance says. “Maybe in a few other ways, too.” I almost steer the horse right into the ditch.
As we head deeper into the woods, it is as if we have entered a windowless room. The trees become so tightly packed that the only way through is to stick to a path that barely accommodates the width of our cart. The wheels ride up onto the embankment, and we almost tip over several times, causing us to have to back up and realign with the road. My teeth chatter together, and I stare straight ahead, fearing that if I look to either side, I might see some nightmarish creature. Constance hands me a lamp and a small box of matches. The light illuminates only the area of the cart where we are sitting and does nothing to penetrate the curtain of blackness in front of the horse.
“At least if something attacks us, we won’t see it coming,” Constance says.
I turn to stare at her, but she only shrugs.
We clip along at a steady pace for hours until the growls—not from a bloodthirsty creature in the dark, but from our own stomachs—force us to stop. We make camp the first night right in the middle of the pathway. Constance is certain no one will be coming this way, and I refuse to go into the woods. She builds a small fire while I make a terrible gruel in the small cast-iron pot we’ve brought with us. Constance manages to ladle spoonfuls of it into her mouth without gagging. She smirks up at me.
“We’re camping on a road in the middle of the White Wood. The very least of my worries are your cooking skills.”
As we sit by the fire, I think of Constance and her family, living on the fringes of society, just out of the king’s grasp, and how they’ve preserved the truth, hoping they’d have the chance to help the people of Mersailles. I can’t keep myself from wondering if I even deserve to be here wi
th her.
“There you go again,” Constance says. “Lost in your thoughts.”
“I was just wondering if you think I’m some fool,” I say with a twinge of embarrassment. “I grew up in Lille, and I’ve never known any other way of living except by the king’s rules. And then here you are, with all these revelations and all your skills, and I feel like I’ve been living in the dark.”
Constance stares at me across the fire, stirring something foreign inside of me. A fire, but not one made of anger. It is something else entirely.
“I don’t think you’re a fool,” she says. “We come from different places. I grew up knowing all of this. You’re just starting to understand it. But it’s okay.”
“How?” I’m not convinced. I should have trusted my gut about Cinderella’s story. I should have known it isn’t the whole truth.
“Because I value your perspective. You grew up in town, right in the center of the cruelty and chaos. That could be important when we’re figuring out a way to stop Manford.” Constance shifts on the ground and lies back against her burlap sack, closing her eyes and crossing her legs. “Give yourself a little more credit. You’re beautiful, brave, and you knew something was wrong in Lille before anyone confirmed it for you.”
Again, her candid conversation comforts and intimidates me at the same time. I haven’t missed that she called me beautiful either.
I wait to see if she is going to say anything else, but the slow rise and fall of her chest tells me she’s drifted off. The fire starts to die, but I can’t settle my head enough to sleep, so I replay Constance’s words in my mind, hoping they’ll keep the images from the market away. As I wait for morning to come, the crow returns and sits perched in a tree just off the trail. While it’s there, I don’t sleep.
20
Constance is much more adept at knowing when the day is done, so I follow her lead for three days. Sleep had eluded me the first night, but in the nights that follow, I’m lost in a deep slumber, sometimes unable to wake on my own. In the mornings, Constance gently nudges me awake, and hours have passed when it feels like only seconds.
On the fourth day, the path we’ve been traveling ends abruptly, its continuation nothing more than a narrow trail disappearing into a twisted wall of trees.
“The cart can’t go any farther,” Constance says. “We’ll have to walk from here.”
“And the horse?”
“We’ll bring him with us. If we leave him alone, the wolves will be on him in no time. He can traverse the terrain better than we can.”
The trees are more densely packed than any I’ve seen up to that point. I can fit through if I stand sideways, but I can’t imagine making the rest of the trip that way, and as much as I want to bring the horse, I don’t think he’ll fit.
Constance climbs down from the cart to transfer a day’s worth of supplies, a large book, and several stacks of paper bound together with twine into two leather satchels. I unhitch the horse, preparing myself to push through the massive wall of trees in front of us, even though everything in me is telling me to turn and run. I hold tight to the reins and take a step forward. The horse doesn’t budge.
“It’s all right,” I say to him, rubbing his nose, trying to comfort him with a lie. Just then, my inner ear pops the way it does when storm clouds rush over the mountains. The pressure in the air around me changes, muffling all sound. My skin prickles as the horse rears up, huffing and snorting. I try to pull him back down, but the reins tighten painfully around my hand.
The horse rakes his hooves across the ground and whinnies, eyes wide, puffs of moist air spurting from his nostrils. He jerks his head away, and my hand folds inside the tangled rope. I cry out. Constance grabs her dagger and cuts the rope. Once it’s severed, the horse breaks free.
“Are you all right?” Constance asks as she takes my hand in hers and examines it by the light of the lamp. A ragged swath of skin has come away from the outside edge of my palm, and blood trickles down my arm. Constance rips a length of cloth from the bottom of her tunic and quickly binds the wound. The blood soaks through the makeshift bandage. I steady myself against a tree trunk and take a deep breath. Constance grasps my arm, a look of genuine concern on her face.
The horse circles in front of us, huffing and whinnying. “What’s wrong with him?” I ask.
“Something’s spooked him,” Constance says, an uneasy ring in her voice. “We’ll have to leave him if he won’t come willingly.”
As I pick up the satchel, a long, low, almost sorrowful howl cuts through the air, sending a chill straight through me. I angle my head to the side as another call—this time from a different direction—echoes the one that came before it.
Constance’s hand moves to her dagger, and I kick myself for not insisting on having a weapon before we came into the forest.
“They’ve caught his scent,” says Constance. She turns to me, her brown eyes gleaming in the dark. “The wolves.”
I saw a wolf in town once. It wandered in with a broken leg and was put down in the street. Seeing it lying there, I was sure its paw was the size of my head, maybe bigger. If the wolves in this part of the forest are even half the size of that one, the horse doesn’t stand a chance, and neither will we if we run into one.
Branches snap just off the pathway. Constance brandishes her dagger. I search for something to use as a weapon and spot a large branch that has been broken off at the end, creating a jagged point.
A hulking figure emerges from the tree line to our right. Growling and snarling, it slinks along the ground. It is a wolf, twice the size of the one I’d seen in town. The top of its head is chest height, and even in the dark I can see its mouth open just enough to show its yellow teeth. My breath catches in my throat. I hold the branch up, gripping it with both hands.
From the left, another wolf emerges from the trees. This one is smaller and gray in color. It snarls loudly and the horse rears up. The wolves circle him, snapping and snarling. The smaller wolf swipes at the horse’s leg, opening a gash. He huffs. Clouds of white steam puff out of him; his eyes grow wide. I lift the branch and bring it down hard on the back of the smaller wolf, and it yelps like a hurt dog. It whips around and snaps at my foot. Constance pulls me back, and we tumble between the closely packed trees. She kicks the wolf in the snout as it bears down on us.
The larger wolf has opened a gash in the horse’s side, and blood spills onto the ground. The gray wolf turns and joins the other in bringing the horse down in a chorus of howls and grunts.
“Move!” Constance shouts.
She slings her bag over her shoulder and grabs the lamp as I scramble to my feet. We rush forward. The trees are nearly touching in all directions. Their branches intertwine with one another like interlaced fingers. The thorny, low-lying underbrush scrapes at my ankles and tears at my pants. The snarling of the wolves fades, but I still risk glancing behind every few minutes to make sure nothing has followed us.
Constance holds the lamp up, but it’s constantly snuffed out by strong gusts of wind that come from nowhere. The air smells of rotted leaves and dirt. I try to ignore the new sounds I hear—not from animals or insects, but whispers, so faint that I think maybe I am imagining them.
“Constance, how much farther do you think we have to go?” I say, trying to quell my increasing sense of dread. “I thought I heard—”
“I don’t know. We should be approaching the heart of the forest but—” Constance stops and holds up her hand in a plea for silence. The wind brushes past me, and in it, a faint noise. A melody. I look at Constance, who presses her finger to her lips. The sound comes again, and this time, I hear something like words.
“Who could be singing out here?” I whisper. The sounds of the night creatures have ceased altogether, leaving only the haunting melody in the wind. The trees move high over our heads, their naked branches twisting around each other to form an impenetrable canopy. I cling tightly to Constance’s jacket for fear that if we are separated, we wil
l not be able to find each other again. The song wafts in and out as we push on. Again, I lose track of time. My legs ache, and my hand throbs.
“How long do you think we’ve been walking?” I ask.
“I—I don’t know. Maybe hours, maybe …” Constance’s uncertainty unsettles me even more.
The melody suddenly echoes and becomes louder, building to a crescendo before ceasing altogether. Movement in the shadows catches my eye. Grunts surround us on all sides.
“The wolves,” I whisper.
Constance grabs my hand and takes off. We can’t run, but we move forward as fast as we can. Something pulls at my shoulder, and an earsplitting cry erupts from my throat. Constance slashes at the dark just behind me with her dagger, then yanks me forward through a thick clump of trees where my foot catches on a root, causing us both to fall. Scrambling to my feet, I pull Constance up beside me and we stumble into a large clearing where the night sky is visible. Someone has felled the trees in a perfect circle. In the center stands a small house. I take a deep breath. Relief washes over me. We are out of the woods, but fear rushes in again as I realize we are not alone.
21
A woman emerges from the shadows of the covered porch. She stands on the stoop like a ghost, melding with the dark. The enormous crow that has been following us sits on the broken porch rail next to her. She runs her hand down its back, and it takes off, winging its way over the treetops. Constance steps in front of me, hand on her dagger. The old woman hums the haunting melody. Her eyes, black as coal, move over us. Her withered skin creases as she smiles wide.
“You’re a long way from home,” she says, her voice raspy and low. “I can always tell when someone is close by. The wolves begin to howl. They’re quite hungry this time of year.”
Neither of us move. The woman walks to the edge of the porch. She keeps her eyes on me. Something rustles in the trees behind us. At any moment, the wolves might burst from the tree line and tear us to pieces. Snarls and snaps in the distance draw closer.
Cinderella Is Dead Page 13
