When the man finally turned and headed in a different direction, Willa thought, Yes, go. Take your killing-stick and your hatred away from here.
Luthien’s hackles lowered, and Willa sunk back down into the water.
The bears, too, returned to their wallowing in the nearby shallows as the white bear watched over them.
She liked how the white bear was older and stronger than the other bears, but he was serving them, helping them, protecting them. Her mamaw had told her stories about how it had once been the same with the Faeran, that all the members of the clan would work together, protect each other, take care of each other.
When the lake had finally stopped the bleeding and soothed the pain of her wounds, Willa climbed back up onto Luthien’s back.
“I wish I could stay here,” Willa said in the old language, “but I need to get back to my clan. They’re going to be looking for me.”
Willa noticed the white bear watching her as Luthien carried her out of the water and up onto the shore. She knew that this bear had seen so many things with those eyes—the time of the first Cherokee long ago with their skin-piercing blow darts and their spear-slinging atlatls, then the homesteaders hacking their way through the wilderness with their sharpened blades and their killing-sticks, and now the newcomers with their smoking metal beasts. As the white bear looked at her, he seemed to be thinking, And you see it, too, don’t you, little one? You understand.
As Luthien and Willa rejoined the pack, the wolves circled around them in greeting, and then they all headed off together, with Luthien leading the way.
They traveled for several hours, up into the dark realms of the Great Mountain, following secluded ravines along rivers that washed the stones bone gray, and up through chutes of ancient rock where once the water flowed.
Willa and the wolves came to a gorge where a gigantic skeleton of a dead tree hung upside down, wedged between two rock faces where a rushing flood had deposited it years before. Its roots reached up into the air and its branches hung down to the earth. The water had receded long ago, but the bare gray trunk and limbs of the tree remained. Her people called it the Watcher, for it loomed over the winding path that led up through the rocky gorge to the entrance of the Dead Hollow lair.
When Luthien came to a stop, Willa climbed reluctantly off the wolf’s back.
Glancing up into the gorge in the direction of her clan’s lair, Willa felt sick to her stomach. She didn’t want to return to her clan. She wanted to go back to the lake of the bears. She wanted to stay with the wolves. She wanted to do anything other than return. But she knew she couldn’t. A Faeran could only survive through her clan. The padaran had told them many times, “There is no I. There is only we.” She belonged to her clan. And more than anything, she had to get back to her grandmother. Her mamaw needed her and she needed her mamaw. There is no I, only we.
As the wolves of the pack gathered around her to say good-bye, she knelt down in front of Luthien.
Willa knew that to be touched by a wolf was a privilege, but to actually be carried by a wolf like Luthien was a great honor. Luthien had saved her life, and risked her own life to do it.
Willa wrapped her arms around Luthien’s neck and hugged her, feeling the thickness of the wolf’s fur against her cheek.
When Luthien nuzzled up against her, Willa knew the wolf understood. Willa felt a loyalty toward her that she vowed to remember.
“I will never forget what you’ve done for me, Luthien,” Willa said in the old language. “May your pack run strong.”
In the moments that followed, she watched Luthien and the other wolves turn and slowly disappear into the forest.
When they were finally gone, she felt a lurch of loneliness in her chest. She didn’t want to be left behind. She wanted to cry out to them, to raise her head up and howl for them to come back for her.
As she turned and looked toward the path that would take her back to Dead Hollow, the lair of the clan into which she had been born, she felt a lump of dark fear growing like black roots in the pit of her stomach.
Before she went home, there was one more thing she had to do.
When the jaetters went out thieving each night, they usually went out in small groups to keep an eye on one another, a rule the padaran had established long before she was born. Nothing in the clan was ever done alone. But more and more, she’d been sneaking out by herself, and the other jaetters didn’t like it. They often lay in wait for her return.
She looked around at the surrounding forest to make sure she was alone, then went over to the Watcher, the tree wedged upside down in the gorge. She grabbed on to the lowest branches and started climbing, wincing from the pain in her shoulder. She knew that the movement of climbing might tear open the wound that the lake had soothed and begun to heal, but she had no choice.
She scaled the branches hand over hand, following the tree all the way up until she came to a large, oblong hole that had been dug into the trunk. Looking down inside the cavity, she saw the tiny, sharply angled faces of five baby pileated woodpeckers looking up at her.
“How are you this morning, my little ones?” she whispered.
But it was a careless mistake. As soon as she said hello, all the babies started squawking and cackling, excited to see her.
“Shh, shh, shh,” she whispered. “Just soft now, don’t give me away. I need you to hold on to something for me.”
But as she pulled the satchel off her shoulder, the mother woodpecker came flying in with a burst of black and white feathers and clung to the trunk of the tree with her powerful claws. Willa was startled to see that something had happened to her since she saw her last. The area around her left eye was bleeding and her wing was badly bent, crumpled close to her body. It was a wonder that she could fly at all.
“Come here…” Willa said, clinging to the tree with her legs as she reached out and took the crow-sized bird into her hands. “Let me look at you.”
The woodpecker knew she was trying to help her and did not fight her or try to fly away. A tangle of fibrous twine had wrapped tightly around the wing and body of the bird, biting cruelly into her skin and binding her movement. But as Willa investigated more closely, she could see that it wasn’t just bits of string, it was pieces of a net of some kind.
“Oh my, who did this to you?” Willa said as she carefully unwrapped the bird’s wing from the twisted fragments. It would have taken days to kill her, but the woodpecker would not have survived this, nor would her starving babies. “You must have fought very hard to get out of this net!” Willa said, the woodpecker watching her with its rapidly blinking eyes as she worked. “There you go, you’re all clear now. I hope you feel better.” The woodpecker bobbed its head, then tended to her babies.
Why would someone be using a net in the forest? Willa wondered. Is this some kind of cruel new weapon or trap the day-folk are using?
Knowing that she needed to get back to what she’d come for, Willa scanned the area below her one last time to make sure no one was watching. Then she stuffed her satchel into the cavity with the baby woodpeckers, careful not to block them or hurt them in any way.
“I know it’s crowded in there,” she told the little ones, “but I’ll be back for it very soon. Don’t worry.”
Hiding valuables in trees was a trick she and her sister had learned from playing games with the ravens years before, but Willa was pleased with her cleverness. Even the mighty ravens wouldn’t think of using an occupied woodpecker hole as a hiding spot.
What she was bringing back to the lair in her satchel was a good take, something she should be proud of, but she knew she was too tired to defend it from Gredic and her other jaetter rivals.
As she climbed down the tree, and the sunlight peaked into the gorge, her gut tightened with worry. If the sun was already in the ravine, that meant it was late in the morning. The padaran was going to be angry that she’d been gone all night and that she wasn’t at the morning gathering. The other jaetters would co
me looking for her, sensing her weakness. She had to get back to the lair as soon as she could.
“What are you doing?” came a hissing voice from behind her, as soon as she stepped foot on the ground.
The quills on the back of Willa’s neck went straight up as she spun around to defend herself.
Four jaetters surrounded her with their long sticks.
“Don’t try to get away, Willa,” Gredic hissed in the Eng-lish words, the only language he knew, as he shoved her hard up against the rocky wall of the ravine.
Years before, she and Gredic had been initiated into the jaetters at the same time, but he was a year older than her, and at least six inches taller than her now, with clawed, grasping fingers, and slimy, mottled gray skin. Like most of the Faeran of her clan, Gredic’s skin didn’t change color to match his surroundings. Blending—or weaving, as her mamaw called it—was a fading remnant of the past that had been dying out of the clan. Her mother, father, sister, and mamaw had it. And she had it. It ran strong in families. But few of the other Faeran had the ability. And the young jaetters of her clan never let her forget how different she was from the rest of them.
“Look at her, she’s going all stony brown!” Gredic’s twin brother chided her as he pushed her head against the stone. “Let’s make her face change color, too!”
His name was Ciderg, and he was the largest and most brutal of the jaetters. The crooked nose and crushed cheekbones of Ciderg’s mangled face were remnants of the savage fight the year before that defeated his brother’s rival and put Gredic in charge of the jaetters.
But it was the nasty Kearnin and his brother, Ninraek, who scared Willa the most. “I think you’re frightening her…” Kearnin rasped in snarling, fidgeting pleasure from behind the other two jaetters as he wiped his nose with the back of his gnarled hand. Kearnin and his brother were sniveling creatures with black, needy eyes that oozed a sticky, sap-like substance. Fascinated with everything Gredic did, they liked to watch, whether he was pulling the wings off a sparrow or pinning Willa against a rock and making her twist in pain.
Willa squirmed and tried to yank away, but Gredic gripped her arms with his clenching hands. It had always frustrated her that he was so much stronger than her.
“Where’s your satchel, Willa?” he hissed, leaning his face so close to her that his foul-smelling breath crept into her nose like leeches.
“Yes, yes, where’s your satchel?” Kearnin rasped from behind him, always repeating Gredic’s words.
“Are you scared, Willa?” Gredic whispered into her face. “Can you feel your heart beating and your blood pumping?”
“Let’s take her blood!” Kearnin shrieked.
“She’s already bleeding!” Ciderg said, jabbing his stick at the wound on her back, as his brother held her.
Gredic wrenched her around by the arm and looked at her. “You’re hurt…” he said in surprise, his eyes narrowing at her suspiciously.
“The little beastie is hurt…” Kearnin hissed.
When Gredic dug his probing fingers into the bloody wound, it sent sharp bolts of pain roiling through her back. She tried to squirm away from him, but he gripped her arm even tighter and shook her. “Where did you go, Willa? Tell me!”
“Leave me alone,” she said, as she tried to pull away from him.
But he held her tight and his voice went quiet as he pushed against her. “What did you do, Willa?” he whispered. “What are you hiding?”
Gredic was far smarter than the other jaetters, and she could hear the fear seeping into his voice. He often used his anger as his power, shouting at her and the other jaetters to get what he wanted. But just as often, he was kind to her, almost gentle with her when he felt sorry for her, or was helping her—when his power was secure. But his kindness vanished when he thought she was slipping away from him in some way, or getting an edge on him. He knew that this wound from a different place meant that wherever she had gone that night, whatever she had done, she had done it without him. And this he would not allow.
She and Gredic had gone through the starving nights and beating blows of the jaetter initiation together, and in the years since, when the jaetters went out thieving, he had made sure the two of them were in the same group. There is no I, only we.
Gredic yanked her around to face him again and pressed her back against the wall with a harsh shove.
“Tell me what you did!” he demanded again, crushing her with his weight as he slipped his long, bony hands tightly around her neck.
She struggled against him, but Willa knew she couldn’t fight Gredic. She couldn’t overpower him. She couldn’t strike him with a blow to defeat him. He was far too strong. And with his brutish brother, Ciderg, and the nasty Kearnin, and all the other jaetters who followed him, he had far too many allies.
As he pressed her up against the rock wall, the jagged edges of the stone jammed into her shoulder blades, driving a slash of pain into her wound. He pushed against her so hard that she could barely expand her chest enough to take a breath. But as the grip of Gredic’s fingers slowly squeezed her throat shut, she pushed out a few last words.
“Let me speak, Gredic…” she wheezed.
Gredic leaned his face close to hers and looked into her eyes. “I’m warning you: no tricks, Willa. Don’t try to run!”
“I will not run,” she said, her voice thin and raspy through the grip of his fingers.
“Swear it!” he demanded.
“I swear that I will not run,” she said.
Finally, Gredic loosened his grip on her throat and stepped back away from her.
“Now, tell me what happened to you last night. Where’s your satchel?”
At that moment, Willa blended herself into the color and texture of the lichen that clung to the rock. She wove herself so completely into the world around her that she disappeared. Her skin, her eyes, her hair…she vanished.
Although they’d seen her do it before, the Faeran boys gasped, as much in anger as in surprise. Gredic immediately reached out to grab her again, but she had already dropped to the ground and curled into a little ball at the base of the rock.
“Where’d she go?” Ciderg shouted, sweeping his stick back and forth through the open air where he’d seen her last.
“She’s tricked us!” Kearnin shrieked.
“Just find her!” Gredic screamed in frustration, as he searched the ground around him.
Willa had promised she wouldn’t run.
And she didn’t.
She crawled slowly and invisibly away from the jaetter boys.
They searched frantically for her, flailing their arms around them and poking with their sticks. They stabbed into the ground and jabbed into trees. They rustled bushes and kicked up dirt, but their efforts were useless. They couldn’t find her.
Finally, Gredic said, “Come on. She’ll have to come back to the lair sooner or later, and we’ll catch her then.”
“We’ll catch her then,” Kearnin repeated, dragging his hand across his nose as they headed off.
“The padaran’s gonna be burnin’ that she didn’t come home last night,” Ciderg said, seeming to relish the thought. “There’s no slinkin’ away from that.”
“Maybe not,” Gredic said. “But whatever we do, we need to get her satchel before she sees the padaran. She must have something good to be doing all this.”
As the jaetter boys climbed up through the rocky gorge, following the path that led beneath the Watcher hanging between its stony walls, they finally disappeared into the distance, but she knew she hadn’t seen the last of them. They’d be waiting, ready to filch her satchel and drag her empty-handed before the padaran in shame.
Her mamaw had told her that many of the jaetters had no parents or grandparents to raise them, and that they had lost their way. And just as with the humans, that which the jaetters did not understand, they destroyed. And that meant her.
When she was certain the jaetters were well gone, and she thought it was safe for he
r to come out of her hiding place, she climbed back up the giant tree and retrieved her satchel from the woodpecker’s hole. She knew it was dangerous to carry it, but she realized now, more than ever, that she was going to need it as soon as she returned to Dead Hollow.
Just as she began to start her climb down, she heard voices below her. She gazed from her bird’s-eye view down into the gorge to see a band of the padaran’s guards winding along the path and going out into the forest. They were moving quickly and with purpose, carrying their spears as well as other equipment she couldn’t make out. She’d never seen anything like it. The guards seemed to be in some sort of hunting party, but Faeran didn’t hunt the animals of the forest.
She knew she couldn’t take the main path into the lair, so when she finally climbed down she took one of the side routes, then split off on her own through the steep and rocky forest.
She climbed up and over a thicket-strangled ridge, her arm and shoulder hurting all the way. The healing lake of the bears had stopped the bleeding and saved her life, but the jabbing sticks and probing fingers of the jaetter boys had reopened the wound. She could feel the sticky blood oozing down her back.
Finally, she could see the lair of her people. From a distance, the part of the Dead Hollow lair that was visible on the surface of the earth looked like a vast hornet’s nest, with the same rough, gray-brown, irregular shape, but instead of being made from the hornet’s sticky paper, the walls of the lair were made from a mesh of thousands of interwoven sticks. The walls had once been green and alive, woven together and sustained in life by the woodwitches of the Faeran past. They had used the same powerful woodcraft her mamaw had taught her, the same language she used to ask the trees to help her cross the river or intertwine around her when she needed to disappear. But the lair’s walls were long dead now—dead for more than a hundred years, her mamaw said—the sticks twisted and rotting, blackened by age, their roots decayed, for the woodcraft needed to keep the walls alive had long faded from the ways of the Faeran. There just weren’t enough woodwitches to keep the lair green and alive anymore. The very name woodwitch had become a title of scorn, even fear, to many in the clan, and the padaran had forbidden the old ways.
Willa of the Wood Page 4
