Myths and Magic: An Epic Fantasy and Speculative Fiction Boxed Set

by K.N. Lee

  Then again, so was I.

  I stumbled through the underbrush, panting with exhaustion and fear. Kadria raised the volume of her cries another decibel or so.

  “Shh! Shh!” Holding her over my arm like a ragdoll, I spun in a circle. The spider monster hadn’t pursued us. Maybe Tor had won. Perhaps we were safe.

  Or maybe she was too distracted eating him.

  “Shhhh. Kadria. Please stop crying. We don’t know what else is out here. Shhh.” I set Kadria down before my arm gave out. My lungs burned, and I doubled over, bracing myself with a hand on my knee.

  The locket around my neck began to pulse again — just as it had when the spider-monster was near.

  I stood up straight, holding my sword ready. I couldn’t see or hear anything. Kadria had quieted her cries to a few rasping hiccups. My whole body tingled with anxiety and anticipation.

  Something was coming. But what?

  In the Forsaken Woods, it could be anything.

  8

  Tor crashed through the underbrush, startling us both.

  He looked a little roughed up, with a bruise on his forehead and dirt and blood smudged on his face. He had lost his helmet. Some of his brown hair had fallen loose from its usual ponytail at the nape of his neck. But he still had all his limbs and the familiar big smile that made me want to cry with relief.

  “You’re alive,” I gasped. I was so relieved I could kiss him.

  He cleaned his sword on his tunic. “What are you two doing in this place? It’s too dangerous here.”

  “I … we were attacked. You were there. Remember?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “There was a sorcerer and these awful monsters. He was after Ariana and Kadria. We escaped and ran toward the Woods. You were right there. Tor?”

  He shook his head. “I — I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember?” How could he not remember? I would probably spend the rest of my life trying to forget!

  “I don’t recall anything from before I came here.”

  Oh dear.

  “You don’t remember anything? Ariana? Silverleaf? The guards? What about Alistair?”

  Nothing registered. “Who?” he asked.

  He had forgotten Alistair. His best friend.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  He glanced at Kadria. “Av’ry?” He pronounced my name like she did, dropping the second syllable.

  “Avery,” I corrected.

  “Avery,” his face split into a smile that lit up the whole Woods. Why had I never noticed his incredible smile before? “Your name is Avery,” he said. Proudly. Like a child trying to impress his teacher.

  He knew my name, but he didn’t remember me.

  Tor had only been in the Woods for a few hours, but already the Woods had changed him, twisted his mind. Made him forget. Was this the reason people got lost here so easily? They wandered into the trees and simply forgot who they were?

  I touched the locket at my throat.

  Remember.

  That must be the magic of the locket. It kept me from forgetting. Ariana must have known that the only place for me to run was into the Woods. She must have given me the locket to protect my mind. So I could protect Kadria. So I wouldn’t become like Tor.

  But if I was the one wearing the locket, what about Kadria? Would we escape the Woods, only to have her not recognize her own mother?

  Assuming, of course, that her mother was still alive.

  Kadria had finally stopped crying. She watched us both with big eyes. When I looked at her, she ducked her head shyly. She was never shy around me.

  Was she forgetting?

  A lump rose in my throat. “Kadria? Do you know who I am?”

  She nodded.

  “What’s my name?” I prompted.

  “Mama,” she said.

  Fear grabbed at my heart until I noticed the mischievous smile teasing the edge of Kadria’s mouth.

  I put my hands on my hips. “I’m not your mama, silly.” Kadria giggled. “Who am I?”

  “Av’ry.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good girl.”

  “Avery,” Tor said.

  “Yes, you know my name, too. Good boy.”

  “Avery,” Tor repeated.

  “What?”

  Tor held up his hands to silence me. I fell quiet, listening. Now I could hear it, too. A high-pitched, messy noise. Like someone was ripping pages out of books and throwing them in the air. Hundreds of pages.

  “What is that?”

  “I don’t know. But here it comes!”

  Bats. It was a whole swarm of bats — so many that they blocked out what little of the sky we could see. They congregated above us with the thunderous applause of hundreds of little wings. Each bat had three glowing, green eyes. Three. Didn’t anything have the normal number of eyes in this blasted forest?

  Maybe they just ate bugs. Maybe if we stood very still, they would leave us alone.

  But of course not.

  Kadria wrapped her arms around my leg. The bats swirled through the trees above us, chittering in a rising chorus. Tor held his arm out as if to protect us, but there were too many of them on all sides.

  “Ouch!” I gasped as one of the bats dived down at me. Then there were more bats, each dive-bombing us from the sky with their sharp claws ready to draw blood.

  Kadria pierced the night with a toddler-specialty ear-splitting scream.

  “Get down!” I yelled.

  I tackled her to the ground, throwing my body on top of her. The bats continued to collide with my back, tangling in my hair, assaulting every bit of my body they could find while Kadria blew my eardrums out with screams you could sell as a weapon.

  Above us, I could hear the whoosh of Tor’s sword cutting through the air.

  It wouldn’t be enough.

  Kadria’s cries were joined by another shrill noise. Despite the onslaught of bats, I looked up to see what might have caused the sound. Something big hurtled toward us. Tor ducked just in time as the big creature threw itself into the mass of bats, growling, hissing, screeching as it fought them off, plucking them out of the air with a wickedly curved beak or swatting them with a sharp talon.

  Huge, feathered wings unfurled from its back, making it appear even larger. The bats began to scatter, but not before more of them were snatched from the air by the big creature. Soon the sound of the bats was nothing but a memory. They seemed to melt away into the night as if they had never existed.

  I stood up on trembling legs. Was this new creature friendly? Or was it going to try to eat us, too?

  In the slivers of moonlight that streamed through the trees, I could make out a few more details. A head like a giant bird, but with ears like a cat. Front legs that ended in talons and back legs like a lion. A sleek, furry, feline body with feathered wings. This was—

  “A gryphon,” I whispered.

  I had only ever seen pictures of gryphons, illustrations in books. They were another beast I had assumed was a fairy tale. Yet, here one was in the flesh.

  Tor stepped between me and the gryphon, his sword raised. The gryphon looked from me to him with golden eyes that almost appeared to glow in the darkness. Then it pounced. It dove past Tor, plucked Kadria up by the fabric of her shirt and swung her away from me.

  “Kadria!”

  9

  “Unhand her, foul beast!” Tor raised his sword, lunging toward the gryphon.

  “Wait!” I grabbed his arm. “Look. It’s not hurting her.”

  The gryphon sat with Kadria curled in its arms. It watched us like a mother cat protecting its kittens.

  “These Woods are full of monsters, Avery. You can’t trust anything.”

  “I trust you,” I said.

  “I don’t count!”

  The gryphon hissed. Tor took a daring step closer. The gryphon stood, a low warning growl emanating from its throat. Sure, Tor was tough and talented with a sword, but this gryphon looked like it could rip him in
half with those mean talons.

  “Stop! Kadria could get hurt! Stop!” Panicking, I reached up and flicked Tor on the ear.

  “Ouch!”

  He cupped his ear as I darted around him, planting myself between him and the gryphon.

  “Sit!” I commanded.

  The gryphon sat.

  “Did you just flick my ear?” Tor whined. I couldn’t tell what was more hurt: his ear or his ego.

  “If you are going to behave like dogs,” I said, “then I will treat you like dogs.”

  “Good boy, good boy,” Kadria whimpered, stroking the gryphon’s feathered front leg. She must have thought that the gryphon was a really, really big dog. She addressed it the same way she addressed the cook’s mutt, calling it “good boy,” even when it made her nervous.

  The locket I wore around my neck wasn’t pulsing, nor was it burning into my chest as it was when we were being attacked. It was simply warm, as if it was alive. Maybe the gryphon didn’t want to hurt us. It had only hurt the bats, which it was now eating.

  Gross.

  I took a hesitant step forward. The gryphon raised its head and stared at me. I moved a little closer, and its ears twitched toward me. A few more hesitant steps and its ears flattened. A threatening growl emanated from its throat.

  Tor readied his sword again.

  “Alright,” I said, taking a step back. “I won’t come any closer. I just— I just don’t want you to hurt her.”

 

  I blinked in surprise.

  “You can speak?”

  The gryphon tilted its head with a bird-like trill.

  Tor glanced at me with a questioning look. Had he not heard the voice? Maybe I was losing my mind.

  Comfortable that I wasn’t coming any closer, the gryphon returned to eating its dinner of demon-bat bodies.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t exactly leave Kadria in the grips of this beast. But for now, she didn’t seem to be in danger. In fact, she appeared to be quite comfortable. She was nestled against the gryphon’s feathered chest, petting her new friend.

  I tried one more time to get closer. The gryphon dropped its food and glared at me, ears flat against its head.

 

  I heard it again, like my own thoughts were talking to me.

  “You can talk!”

  Again, I received a questioning look from Tor.

  “You didn’t hear that?”

  He looked around. “I don’t hear anything.”

 

  “It just did it again! You can talk. I know you can.”

 

  “It’s speaking to me — in my head.”

  Tor slowly lowered his sword.

  I swallowed. “D-do you have a name?”

 

  “Good boy?” I glanced at Kadria.

  “Goodboy,” she chirped. That was what Kadria had called him. Good boy. Now he wanted it to be his name.

  “Alright,” I said. “I’ll call you Goodboy.”

  Tor snorted. “Goodboy?”

  I held up my empty hands. “We’re not trying to hurt her — or you. We’re trying to protect her.”

 

  Ouch.

  “Yeah, I know. I’m not very good at this. We don’t really belong in these Woods.” I placed my hands on my hips and considered the big winged animal before me. No glowing eyes, a body built for big open spaces, for flight. “You don’t belong here either, do you?”

  The gryphon’s ears drooped. It turned its head and nuzzled Kadria.

  “Goodboy!” Kadria giggled.

  “Are you lost?” I asked.

 

  “Searching? What are you searching for?”

  This time it wasn’t words, but an image that appeared in my mind. <>

  “An egg?”

 

  “Oh.” So Goodboy was a girl gryphon. A mother, searching for her lost, unborn child. I translated for Tor. “Her egg is lost.”

  “Why is your egg here?” Tor asked.

 

  Before I could speak, more images ran across my thoughts as if I was remembering them.

  <>

  Oh no. I recognized that man, the one who had stolen Goodboy’s egg. He was the same reason we were here. Though, unlike Goodboy, we were running away from him, not trying to seek him out.

  I touched Tor’s arm to steady myself.

  “It was Inejor. He has her egg.”

  10

  “Inejor?” Tor asked.

  “The sorcerer who attacked us. He has her egg. But why would he want her egg?”

  Goodboy spoke as if reading my mind.

 

  So gryphons didn’t usually have golden eggs. But Goodboy had laid a golden egg, and then Inejor stole it. That must have happened before he attacked our procession. Maybe he still had it. But what if he wasn’t in the Forsaken Woods anymore? What if Goodboy had followed him here only because he was on his way to attack Ariana?

  “Do you know your way out of these Woods?” I asked.

 

  “What if we help you find your egg?”

  Goodboy’s ears twitched. Now I had her attention.

 

  “Not a chance!” Tor interjected. “We are not going closer to the warlock who attacked you over some silly egg!”

  I bristled. “Goodboy will help us get out of here if we help her find her egg. That’s the deal. Do you have a better idea?” I didn’t give him a chance to respond. “This is Goodboy’s child we’re talking about. I can’t save one child and leave another to die.”

  “You’re still a child yourself,” Tor muttered.

  I stomped my foot. “I am not a child!”

  Tor held up his hands to declare his innocence. “What would a warlock want with a gryphon’s egg, anyway? Maybe he doesn’t even have it anymore. Maybe he sold it. Or made an omelet.”

  Goodboy snorted, insulted.

 

  “Golden eggs grant wishes?!”

  That was bad. Very bad. Inejor was dangerous enough without a wish-granting golden egg. He had stolen Goodboy’s egg and then attacked Ariana. He needed both for whatever he was planning.

  “That egg will grant a wish,” Tor mused. “And right now, it’s in the hands of a dangerous warlock. What does he want?”

  My eyes widened in horror.

  “I know what he wants,” I said. “He wants Kadria.”

  Tor and I both turned to where Kadria had been sitting in Goodboy’s arms. She was gone. Goodboy stood up, spinning in a circle. Kadria’s clothes were all that remained of the child. She must have taken them off. Or maybe she was spirited away, right out of her britches.

  “Kadria?” Where could she have gone?

  “Bunny!” I heard her voice in the distance.

  Tor and I exchanged a look of alarm. We vaulted in the direction from which her voice had come, Goodboy right behind us. I stumbled through the misty darkness until I came upon a clearing. Without as many trees above, I could sort of see in the moonlight. In the middle of the clearing was a certain naked toddler, happily following a furry creature that was definitely not a rabbit.

  The creature turned on her with a hiss. It looked like some kind of wild cat, though its face looked more like a boar, with big tusks, a snout, and beady little eyes.

  Kadria gasped, tried to take a step backward, stumbled, and fell. The creature made a sound like a gurgling bleat and charged at her.

  Before I had a chance to react, Goodboy sprinted past me and leapt over Kadria, colliding with the small beast before it could hurt her. I scooped Kadria up and pulled her away as more of the creatures appeared, snarling and grunting. Tor appeared through the mist, his sword gleaming in the moonlight.

  Kadria watch
ed the fight with wide eyes. Since leaving Silverleaf, Kadria had seen more violence than any child should have to see. There were some things I just couldn’t protect her from.

  Three more creatures leapt from the shadows, aiming their nasty tusks at us. Tor and Goodboy were both engaged on the other side of the clearing. I put Kadria down behind me and drew my sword. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it. Maybe the sight of the weapon would be enough to scare our attackers.

  It wasn’t. They kept coming.

  I side-stepped and jabbed the sword at the nearest creature as it drew level with me. My teeth clenched as I felt the edge of the sword hit flesh. The creature squealed in anger and pain.

  I planted my feet, spinning toward the second pig-cat before it could dodge past me and reach Kadria. But just before my sword connected with the creature, it was swept off its feet by the vines it was trampling. I heard it squeal as it was tossed into the air. The third creature skidded to a halt. We made eye contact and both tilted our heads in confusion. I looked down at my legs and realized the vines were wrapped around my calves.

  I raised my sword to cut them, but before I had a chance, I, too, was swept up into the air. My stomach somersaulted as I was tossed heavenward. I caught a brief glimpse of the hulking creature crouched just outside the seemingly innocent clearing. But, of course, nothing in the Forsaken Woods was innocent. This was yet another trap by something else hunting for food.

  It looked like an unassuming pile of rocks, except for the big glowing eyes. I saw all of this in the fraction of a moment before more vines wrapped around me, catching me mid-air and drawing me toward the stone monster. The monster opened an impossibly large mouth lined with jagged teeth. I swung the sword in a panic, severing the vines that held me. I dropped straight down.

  Winded from the impact, I pushed myself onto my arms and saw the remaining pig-cats fleeing at the sight of the big monster, which had just eaten two of them. Goodboy struggled to untangle her legs from more of the vines. Tor held Kadria with one arm and whacked at the vines with his sword. But it was a losing battled. They wrapped around his legs and arms faster than he could cut them.