“We came all this way,” Harlow states, referring not just to our trek through the woods but to the voyage across the sea, “and now we’re going to let crickets stop us?”
She picks up a stone and hurls it at the daisies. It strikes the flowers, then bounces and slides to a stop. No crickets leap from the meadow floor. Jamison edges forward, peering at the thrown rock. He takes a pine cone and tosses it in the same direction. The pine cone lands near the stone, again without disturbing the crickets.
Nothing on Dagger Island is as it seems.
Sheathing my sword, I speak to the group. “Everyone collect stones and pine cones. There may be a path across. We just have to find it.”
They all listen except Harlow, who crosses her arms over her chest. Jamison removes his cloak, turns it inside out, and folds it into a sling. We load our pickings into it.
“Harlow Glaspey,” Markham says, his arms full of pine cones, “help us or be gone.”
She stomps into the trees and returns with a bundle of sticks. Once the sling is brimming, I grab a handful of dirt and sprinkle it on the closest flowers until I find a section where no crickets hop out. I expand the width until they do.
“This area is clear,” I say. “It must be our way across. We’ll use the pine cones and stones to test which direction to go.”
“I’ll go first,” Markham says.
He hefts the bundle of rocks, stones, and twigs over his shoulder and steps into the field. His feet crush the dirt-covered blooms. No crickets are riled. He casts a handful of stones ahead of him until he finds the next clear patch of land. Over and over, he uses the ammunition to test and mark a zigzag path. More than once, he disturbs the crickets and suffers their wrath. He does not let their bites slow him down.
Halfway across the field, he pauses to consider the sky. I was so intent on his progress, I did not notice the light changing. The gray dims rapidly, spreading out from an inky cloud hanging over the gate.
“The curse is trying to keep him out,” Tavis says. “We need to cross now.”
Markham begins to toss stones and pine cones haphazardly. Harlow embarks down the established route, then Jamison and I follow. Claret holds on to Laverick and they enter the ankle-high daisies, followed closely by Tavis.
The field is wider than it appeared from the outskirts. Winding through the switchbacks goes on forever. By the time we close in on Markham, the murky heavens have deepened to onyx. We catch up to where he stopped, over halfway across, and view the problem. He has run out of ammunition.
“Find things to throw,” I say. “Anything you can spare.”
“We’ve no time,” Markham counters, gesturing at the sky.
He lunges for my sword, knocking Harlow out from between us. She stumbles toward the edge of the path. I grab her before she falls in, and Markham gets ahold of my sword.
Jamison grabs the back of Markham’s shirt and swings him around. Markham jabs the blade at Jamison. He staggers back, letting go, and Markham sprints into the field.
Crickets explode around him, bouncing and flying.
“Killian!” Harlow shrieks.
He doesn’t stop. The wave of agitated crickets sets off ripples of jumping and chirping that spread across the meadow. The insects rain down on us.
“Get to the gate!” Jamison shouts.
We dash into the fray. My brother streaks after us, the Fox and the Cat holding hands while running. Harlow reacts the slowest, her figure speedily masked by the swarm.
Crickets crowd the sky, obscuring the failing light and blocking our view of the gate. They land in my hair and on my clothes. More crunch under my feet, the whir of their wings deafening.
Pain erupts from my scalp, my ear, my back. I battle down my revulsion, my ticker driving into my sternum. They are feeding on me.
Jamison and I run headlong into clouds of them. His knee gives out, but he catches himself before he falls. I throw my arm around him and we stagger through the wall of insects. More crickets bite through my clothes. Jamison and I arch in agony.
“Everley! Jamison!” Tavis calls for us from ahead.
We follow his voice to the gate. Midnight swirls around us, pushing down from the deadening sky. Markham yanks at some sort of square lock with tiered inner dials, a cipher of peculiar digits inset in the metal around them. The mechanism binds the gate shut. He gives up on solving the cipher and strikes at the lock with my sword.
Jamison swings his pack at the crickets. Out in the field, they form shifting flocks that swoop over the flowers. Harlow breaks through the curtain of crickets, batting wildly. Claret and Laverick appear in front of her. One of them trips and they both fall. Harlow speeds right past them. A barrage of crickets descends, covering the Fox and the Cat. Tavis plows back into the field for them. At the same time, Harlow arrives.
“You left Laverick and Claret,” I say.
Harlow leans against the wall, winded. “I made it. They can too.”
“Everley!” Markham calls. “The lock is unbreakable. We must cipher the code.”
Welts spot his forehead. I would be glad that his good looks have been spoiled—punishment for this brutal chaos—but the same bites cover me. Unlike mine, his heal soon after they rise.
I inspect the keyless lock and twist its three-tiered dial. “What are these signs?”
“Our calendar. Year, month, and day.”
“It’s a clock,” I say. The workmanship is unlike any I have seen. This timepiece was crafted by someone with a very complex understanding of time. “The cipher must be a date. Try when you were locked out of the kingdom.”
Markham turns the dials until the correct year, month, and day line up with an arrow at the top. He wrenches down.
The lock does not open.
Tavis calls out from close by. Through the cloud of crickets, I discern pillars of shadows. My brother carries Laverick on his back, Claret lurching alongside him. Jamison shouts their names and guides them to us. Bite wounds riddle the trio. Laverick’s injuries are the worst; her face is so swollen, I would not recognize her if not for her reddish hair.
Markham curses. He attempted another date on the dial and failed.
“Try a date you spoke to my father about,” I say, striking at crickets. “He unlocked the gate with information you gave him.”
Markham stares sightlessly at me while he scrolls through his memory. “I told him about the day I entered the Everwoods and met Amadara.”
Harlow blanches. The date of significance involves his beloved. It is also the day the prince took Amadara from Father Time, who I am almost certain is the craftsman of this lock. Markham spins the dials to line up the numbers. Tavis and Jamison knock crickets off Laverick, who can scarcely stand. More insects leap from the field onto us. An immense swarm heads our direction, a shifting haze in the night.
I back up against the gate. “Markham, hurry!”
The swarm barrels toward us, their beating wings thunderous. Jamison and I swing at the first arrivers. Our whole party retreats to the gate and presses against the ivy-draped bars.
“Markham!” I yell.
Darkness descends in a blinding barrage of wings. I shield my face from the chomping crickets. Just as all the light has been taken, the gate behind us opens, and we pitch backward into oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’m weightless, neither falling nor flying, standing nor sitting. My limbs and hair float around me, my body suspended in a blinding wash of light, not sunshine yellow but silver like moonbeams. I smell pine and moss, wild berries and fresh dew. And I’m warm, warmer than I’ve felt in years. My fingertips are toasty, the normal tingling replaced by a generous current of heat.
The radiance fades and I return to the ground.
A bed of moss cushions my landing. I clutch at my chest, gasping. Warmth lingers in my hands, similar to residual heat from a hot bath. My ticker vibrates against my palm. I close my eyes and savor the rare seconds without wintery pain.
“Everley?”
I roll onto my side. Jamison is lying next to me, and our wounds have healed. His eyes are the bluest I’ve seen, as vivid as blueberries. I could stare into them forever.
Forever.
The word resounds through me. I scan the leafy canopy, mottled moonlight streaming through the branches. Markham blocks my view, the sword of Avelyn in his grasp. I prop myself up onto my elbows, feeling a fool for ever doubting his birthright. Standing before me in this lush forest, he exemplifies the prince of legend.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“The Everwoods. The tunnel to my kingdom is on the other side of the garden. Get up. We need to move.”
Markham goes to rouse the others. The entirety of our group made it through the gate. Each of us is still on the ground, staggered and awestruck by our surroundings.
Moonlight twinkles across the tender greenery. Starflowers decorate the forest floor, their pastel petals every color of a sunrise. Majestic elderwood trees tower over us, their boughs leafy and their wide trunks a russet hue. I have seen depictions of them in books, but they are much taller in person. A breeze streams through their branches, wind song as gentle as a lullaby. As the name suggests, seasons do not visit the Everwoods. These waxy leaves are everlasting.
Butterflies dart around the climbing blossoms, radiating sparkling light. One flits past us and I see its body is shaped like a woman. They aren’t butterflies or moths, but sprites. This one has long green hair, horns like a caterpillar, and twisting purple veins throughout her iridescent wings. The sprite blinks her doe eyes at Jamison, then darts off into the night. Even the darkness between the trees is welcoming, cozy pockets of shadow.
Something small runs past us. Jamison bends forward and picks up an orchid. Someone laid the azure bloom on the ground near my feet, and that person is still nearby.
A little man, no taller than the length of my foot, peeks out from behind a knoll of tree roots. He wears a robe of leaves over his portly body and a crown of twigs on his bald head. The second our gazes connect, the gnome disappears.
I’ve scarcely accepted what I saw when the petals of the orchid Jamison is holding open. The blossom transforms into a tiny young woman with a pointy chin and ears.
“A pixie,” Jamison says.
Pixies are common creatures in stories. They are to myths what clouds are to the sky. She has two smaller wings that are turned downward and a set of larger wings angled up and out from her slender back. Though the pixie is blue, wings and all, she has more childlike features than the sprite’s, as well as short hair and a mischievous smile.
“She’s lovely,” I say.
Jamison extends a finger to touch her. The pixie trills a string of high notes, her tone unmistakably indignant, and zips off.
These creatures belong in storybooks, to worlds beyond our own. Myths say that the Everwoods is an ingress to the seven worlds. Some say this bridge to all life exists on the moon, others in the heart of an acorn, while most say this eternal garden of creation is all around us, veiled from sight, and only the pure in heart may see it.
Jamison picks a fat raspberry from a briar-free bush and pops it in his mouth. He moans and immediately grabs another. “You must try this.”
“Are those safe to eat?”
“Where else can you trust a berry than in the Everwoods?” He offers me one. The sweet sourness permeates my mouth.
“It tastes like a perfect August day.”
“Didn’t I say?” Jamison picks more and eats them, staining his lips red.
I inhale the moonlit air. It smells fresh without being musky and frosty without being cold. “Can you believe we’re here?”
He touches a pink carnation. The blossom transforms into a pixie that flies away. “It’s better than a dream.”
Now that I have seen the Everwoods, I appreciate why Princess Amadara wished to roam here and never leave. But I myself don’t want to linger. Until moments ago, I thought this place and its Creator were an allegory for how life came into existence. I’d rather not be found trespassing in Eiocha’s domain.
Claret and Laverick help Tavis to his feet and take turns thanking him. They have healed as well, which above all, Laverick is thankful for. She was in an awful condition when we left the meadow. Jamison and I get up next, him still favoring his bad knee. Only the wounds we sustained in the Thornwoods, those inflicted by the curse, have vanished, which makes sense. If old injuries had healed, I would not still need my clock heart.
“The little imp snuck into my pocket and stole my fire striker!” Harlow says. She runs past us to a tree and sticks her arm down a burrow at its base. A second later, she yanks her hand out. “It pinched me!”
“Gnomes are fond of shiny things,” says Markham. “I’ll replace your striker.”
“The striker was my father’s. It’s irreplaceable.” Harlow revolves on her heels and stalks off to kick at flowers. Pixies flee the path of her rampage, shooting away to safety.
Harlow’s mention of her father stuns me. She never speaks openly about her family or upbringing.
“Who was her father?” Laverick asks. She, of course, is swift to meddle.
“He was my former assistant,” Markham replies, his tone grief-stricken. “We were mates in the navy. He passed away from illness while we were at sea. Years later, I heard Harlow’s mother had been arrested for streetwalking and had died in prison. Harlow had been living on the streets for months.”
“You saved her,” says Claret, commending him.
Markham answers loudly, so everyone can hear. “Harlow was succeeding on her own. If not for her aid guarding my secrets, my identity may have been found out.”
Harlow doesn’t respond, though she does quit stomping on the helpless flowers.
Markham gestures with my sword. “This way. Stay close.”
He tromps into the trees, scrutinizing every shadow. Though I cannot tell what has agitated him, he must be anxious to find the doorway to his world.
We navigate through the pathless underbrush farther into the forest. Claret and Laverick walk close together. The humming pixies and countless pairs of eyes observing us from every level quiet them. Harlow maintains her distance from Markham, who plows through the undergrowth unaffected by her coolness.
Tavis and I gawk at every wonder. The ancient elderwoods are colossal. Nothing could feel more indomitable, yet they shrink from us, lowering their roots to the ground and lifting their branches to evade our touch.
“Do you think we’ll see Mother Madrona?” Claret asks Laverick.
“I should hope not.” The Fox gives the next elderwood a wide berth. “She could be any of these trees.”
“Maybe she’s listening,” says the Cat. “Maybe the trees and animals do have spirits. Do you think so?”
“I think I’ll never eat meat again.”
I would laugh, but making light of creation power would be disrespectful, especially here. I cannot refute the elderwoods’ eminence. The warmth I felt upon arrival radiates from their spirits. They are filled with the call of life. I hold back from my party and lay my palm against a tree’s velvety bark.
Anguish pulses from its core, so strong my head reels. The sadness flows to my chest and pools around my heart. I distinguish a single sentiment in the deluge of emotions—the elderwood tree is in mourning.
More trees lend their voices to the one I’m touching, all imparting the same sorrow. The conclave of trees seems connected and unified. I rest my cheek against the gentle bark. Why are you in pain? Who hurt you?
Shadows stir in front of me, and in them, a young man appears. All but his face is concealed by the dim. I step back, meaning to run, but stop. The austere gentleman, so grave and serious, is not a stranger.
Father Time I know, and he knows me.
He knows my woes and scars, my past and present, and more intimately, my clock heart. His attention ensnares me. His all-seeing stare probes past flesh and machine, cracking open my soul and exposing
my innermost secrets. My lust for vengeance is plain for us to see. I joined this trek to discover answers about my father and prove I can be courageous like he was, but my bigger incentive is to punish Markham.
I cover my chest to conceal the ugliness. In this spotless bridge between our world and the next, the intent of my heart has never felt more monstrous.
Jamison jogs back to me, our other packmates gone ahead. Father Time vanishes as though the wind picked him up and swept him away.
I check down the neckline of my shirt. The crack in the glass face of my clock has spread. More alarming is the minute hand spinning like a windup pocket watch. Earlier, when I felt my clock’s vibration, I thought nothing of the absence of its ticktock. My clock heart is pushing onward. It is time that has stalled.
Jamison adjusts my shirt and waistcoat to cover my ticker. “Are you all right?”
“Well enough. We need to go.”
I do not add where the inner warning stems from. All I know is that Father Time didn’t collect on the years I owe him. I don’t want to give him a second chance.
We hurry to catch up to our companions. They are too engrossed by the animated garden to notice our temporary absence. As far as I can discern, I’m the only one who saw Father Time. He must be whom Markham is wary of. The last time they saw each other, Father Time banished him.
My brother treads to my side. His approach wakes a group of sprites from a shrub, and the dainty creatures shoot off into the night.
“Father walked here,” Tavis says, contemplating the flowering vines cascading down an elderwood’s trunk. “He must have been fascinated, the explorer that he was. I understand his desire to return here now.”
I prefer to think our father viewed the forest as I do. He would have known as soon as he entered that he was unfit to dwell here. Every regret, every misstep, every transgression against another, would have been a needle in his soles. We all fidget and glance around with the same out-of-place feeling.
Before the Broken Star (The Evermore Chronicles Book 1) Page 21
