Willa of the Wood

by Robert Beatty

  Hialeah stared at her, still holding her brother. “I want to run,” she said.

  When Willa extended her hand, Hialeah took it. She pulled the girl and her brother out of the cramped confines of the cell. As Hialeah rose to her feet, Willa saw she was surprisingly tall, with a long, lean body, and arms and legs to match. She had long, straight black hair that fell down to her waist, and her face was filled with stern determination. Her little brother, Inali, clung to her chest, looking around with bewildered eyes, but he’d stopped crying. It seemed as if Hialeah had been holding and protecting her little brother for weeks. It was the bond that could not be broken.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Willa said, leading them up the corridor.

  When Willa began to run, Hialeah ran with her. The girl had been resistant to trust her at first, but now that she understood what they needed to do, she was moving quickly. When Willa ran faster, Hialeah stayed right with her. The girl’s legs were strong, and pumped hard. She and Willa ran side by side, both of them scanning ahead and looking behind them, ready for the worst.

  “Just hold on, Inali, I’ve got you,” Hialeah whispered to her brother as they ran. “We’re getting out.”

  When they came to an obstruction in their path where part of the old tunnel had caved in and blocked their way, Willa climbed up on top of it and then reached down. Hialeah handed Inali up to her, climbed up herself, then took her brother back into her arms on the other side.

  As they ran through the corridors past the other prison cells, Willa could see that they were all empty. She had freed every last prisoner she could find.

  She, Hialeah, and Inali ran down winding tunnel after winding tunnel.

  “It’s not much farther,” Willa told them.

  As they turned the final corner, Willa saw the last of the escaping children at the end of the corridor. They were getting down onto their hands and knees and crawling frantically into the hole. Only one small face remained peering out.

  “Iska!” Hialeah cried out with relief.

  Willa’s heart swelled with hope. They were going to make it! They were all going to make it!

  But then a rushing sound rose up behind them, the pounding of many feet and the clatter of weapons.

  “Run!” Willa screamed at Hialeah, then turned to stand her ground against the coming guards.

  The first guard charged toward her and thrust his spear. Willa leapt back just in time. But another guard attacked from the other side. There was a swarm of at least a dozen of them.

  “It’s the jaetter!” Lorcan shouted, looming above the other night-spirit guards as he pushed through them to reach her. “It’s Willa! Get her!”

  Two of the guards charged in, stabbing frantically. Willa dodged and dodged again. She glanced back behind her to see Hialeah running for the hole with her brother in her arms.

  A guard lunged forward and grabbed at Willa, but Willa leapt out of his grasp. Lorcan jabbed in with his spear. Willa tried to leap to the side, but the sharp tip grazed her leg and sliced through her skin with a painful, ripping tear.

  That’s when Willa realized that Lorcan’s spear wasn’t just a wooden stick like it had been before. The tip had been equipped with one of the flint arrowheads that she herself had provided to the clan, so sharp that it could easily slice through muscle and bone.

  One of the other guards thrust his spear and stabbed her in the arm. Bolts of pain radiated through her shoulder and hand, driving a scream from her lungs. She tried to dodge the next stab. She tried to fight them all. But it was no use. She couldn’t hold them off any longer. She turned and fled for the hole.

  She could feel herself getting farther away from them with every step she took. Her heart swelled with hope that she was going to make it. But as she ran away, Lorcan pulled back his arm and hurled his killing spear like a javelin. It shot through the air and struck her in the neck with a shocking blow and knocked her to the floor.

  She looked down toward the end of the corridor, and the last thing she saw was Nathaniel’s children disappearing into the escape hole.

  Her body lay facedown, flat across the floor. Searing pain throbbed from the wound where the spear had cut through the flesh of her neck. She couldn’t lift her head to see the guards charging down the tunnel toward her, but she knew they were coming. She could hear their shouting. She could feel the pounding of their footsteps in the vibrations of the floor. She had seconds to live. And after stabbing her in the heart with their spears, the guards were going to grab Iska, Hialeah, and Inali as they tried to crawl to their escape.

  Somehow, some way, she had to stop the guards. Nothing else mattered to her.

  She closed her eyes, pressed her hands to the woven-stick floor, and conjured up the darkest woodcraft she had ever used. She had grown up asking the tendrils of the plants around her for their gentle assistance, and she had learned how to move the living trees with the force of her will. But this was different. To bring these old sticks back—to waken the dead—she had to infuse them with her own blood, her own life. She had to let the vile black twigs absorb the nutrients of her soul. It had weakened her every time she did it, dragging the life from her body. But she had no choice. She pressed her bloody neck wound against the floor, infusing it with the last of her living power. She could feel it sucking the life from her blood so rapidly that she flooded with cold. As the guards rushed forward to grab her, the floor beneath them erupted into a slime of black and twisting undead sticks.

  The first guard screamed in horror as he fell through the wormy floor. The writhing, grasping sticks sucked the life from his withering body as he plummeted into them. She gasped in astonishment when the wave of his energy coursed back through the floor around her. And then something jolted up into her body, filling her with a surge of strength she’d never felt before. For just a moment, the floor had become the roots, and she the tree. The remaining guards recoiled in shock and fear.

  “She’s a woodwitch!” one of them screamed, as they all backed away and fled.

  Gasping for breath, she climbed up onto her feet, her arms and legs shaking, not just from exhaustion but from the pulsating force that had wicked up into her body. She pressed her trembling hand to the bleeding wound at her neck as she stumbled toward the hole in the wall.

  All the other children had crawled through the hole and escaped the lair. Only Iska, Hialeah, and Inali remained. They were waiting for her. When they saw her coming, they rushed forward to help her.

  “Your wound is bad,” Hialeah said, quickly tearing pieces of fabric from her dress and beginning to work on Willa’s neck. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

  “I gave us a few seconds, but Lorcan and the other guards will go around to the other side and find another way through,” Willa gasped. “You need to crawl through that hole and don’t come back.”

  “But, Willa—” Iska tried to interrupt her, but Willa kept talking.

  “On the other side of this hole, you need to run as fast and as far as you can. Climb the ridge, and then head west through the forest until you reach the creek.”

  It hurt to talk. It hurt to move. Her neck throbbed. She could see that blood was all over Hialeah’s hands as she worked on the bandage—but unlike Iska, who was just shaking his head in refusal, Hialeah was listening intently to every word she said.

  “When they realize what’s happened, the night-spirits are going to send out search parties looking for you,” she told Hialeah. “They can see far better than you can in the darkness, so don’t travel at night. Follow the creek downstream, and look for a very small cave in the rocks. Crawl inside and get down into the water to hide your scent. Stay quiet and hidden until morning. When the sun rises, many of the night-spirit guards will return to the lair. That will be your chance. Follow the creek the rest of the way downstream until it joins up with the river, and then follow the river all the way home. The journey will be difficult, Hialeah. Many hours and many miles. But you can do this. Get your brothers home
to your father. That’s what you need to do. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Hialeah said, looking at Willa with steady eyes as she tied off the last of the bandage. “I’ll do it.”

  “No!” Iska said, grabbing both of them. “You’ve got to come with us, Willa!”

  “She’s not coming,” Hialeah said, her voice grim and steady.

  “I’m sorry, Iska, she’s right,” Willa said. “I’m not going with you, and you’ll not see me again after this. I’m going to stay here. I’ll close this hole behind you and lead the guards away so they won’t know where you and the others have gone. Now that they’ve seen me, they’re going to be looking for me. The one who kills or captures me will gain great pride in the clan. In the meantime, if you and the others can get far enough away, then you’ll have a chance.”

  “You can’t give yourself up,” Iska said, shaking his head.

  “You’re not listening,” Hialeah said. “She’s made her decision. She doesn’t want you with her.”

  “I only need one more thing,” Willa said, looking at the two of them. “Your father taught me some of the letters of the Eng-lish words, but we weren’t able to finish.”

  “Tell me what you need,” Hialeah said.

  “While I was at your house, I learned how to spell my mother’s name, but not my father’s. How do you spell ‘Cillian’?”

  As Hialeah quickly spelled out the letters for her, Iska tried to keep arguing. “Willa, no, don’t give up on us. Forget about all this. Come with us.” But even as Iska said the words, Willa’s mind focused on the sounds of her father’s name, and she heard the echoes of the distant past, of the forward and the back, the left and the right, and the River of Souls. She turned back to Iska knowing more than ever what she had to do. “No matter what else happens, Iska,” she said, “the most important thing to me is that the three of you get back to your father. He loves you and he needs you. Do you understand? You must get home.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Iska cried. “You can’t fight them all alone!”

  “I’m not going to fight them,” she said. “And I’m not alone.”

  The last she saw of Iska, Hialeah, and little Inali, they were crawling through the hole and escaping into the darkness.

  The moment they were gone, she pried and twisted the sticks at the edge of the hole with her fingers, pushing and pulling them, weaving one stick into the other, her bloody fingers dancing across the old rotting bark until the sticks began to move on their own, sucking the life force from her skin and her bones, intertwining like black, slithering snakes until the hole was closed and the snakes went still.

  As she lay crumpled against the wall, trying to keep herself steady, she imagined Iska and Hialeah escaping from the lair with their little brother, running through the forest with the other children. Keep running, she told them in her mind. Keep running.

  A roar of sound came rushing down the tunnel from the upper part of the lair. Pounding feet and pumping legs, laboring breaths and shouting voices, clattering spears and chattering teeth, and a thousand other sounds, all crashing toward her.

  Holding the blood-soaked bandage to her neck, and knowing what she must do, she slowly rose to her feet to meet them.

  Her eyes glazed as she waited for them.

  She could see it in her mind. She could see it all. The long withering of the Faeran race and the rise of the padaran, god of the Dead Hollow clan. The steel traps, the captured children, and the glistening face. The words of guiding wisdom, the towering strength, and the missing voices. The running parents, the screaming sister, and the red flowing stream beneath the lair. She could see it all.

  But even through the winter of all of this, there had still been a trace of hope in her mamaw’s voice when she taught her the lessons of old, and there had been a glare of anger in Gillen’s eyes when she saw the injustices in the padaran’s hall—and these were the saplings that might someday grow into the light once more.

  When twenty guards came charging down the corridor, she couldn’t help but suck in a startled breath. She wanted to run, to blend, to hide, but she stiffened her legs the best she could and made her stand.

  In her mind and her spirit, she detached herself from the world, like a branch broken from a tree, from the sound, from the fear, from the pain that she knew was to come.

  Lorcan charged forward and slammed the butt of his spear into her face with a battering blow that knocked her to the ground.

  She lay flat out, facedown on the floor, spasms of excruciating pain radiating through her head and neck.

  She lay there on the floor very still.

  She closed her eyes.

  She slowed her heart.

  She stanched the bleeding of her wounds.

  And she stopped breathing.

  “Is she dead?” one of the guards asked, jabbing at her limp body with his spear.

  Lorcan crouched to the floor and clamped onto her neck with his hand to hold her securely in place as he leaned down and listened for her heart.

  He listened for ten seconds.

  And then thirty seconds.

  And then he rose back up to his feet.

  “She’s dead,” he said.

  “Tie the body’s hands,” Lorcan ordered bluntly.

  Two of the guards immediately knelt down and bound her wrists with vine.

  “Now drag it,” Lorcan said.

  As they dragged her down the corridor, Willa let her body fall limp and her head hang low with her hair covering her face.

  As they pulled her along the floor, she took a quiet, unnoticed breath and slowly released a few beats of her heart, pumping just enough blood through her body to stay alive.

  She knew where Lorcan and the other guards were taking her.

  Time was all she needed now. Time for children to run. Time for children to hide. Time for children to escape out into the world and return to the arms of their mothers and fathers where they belonged.

  She heard the hisses first, then the snarls and the jeers, and she felt the air change as the guards pulled her into the Hall of the Padaran, which was already crowded with hundreds of the Dead Hollow clan.

  The other Faeran spat at her and shouted at her, enraged with her treason against the lair.

  Her fellow jaetters were worst of all, snapping and biting at her as the guards dragged her through the clamoring crowd, her legs scraping along the floor.

  “Traitor!” Kearnin and Ciderg shouted as they leapt forward and struck her limp form, sending bolts of pain through her body.

  As she glanced through the narrow slit of her eyes, out through the tangled fall of her hair, she saw Gredic watching, too stunned to speak or move, as they dragged her dead body past him. She could see her old friend Gillen, too, her face filled with despair. And many of the Faeran in the crowd stood in aghast silence at the sight of a dead girl being brought before them.

  Finally, Lorcan grabbed hold of her and threw her body brutally onto the floor at the padaran’s feet.

  The slamming pain reverberated through her bones, but she did not cry out, and she did not move.

  “The woodwitch is dead!” he declared. “May the wisdom of the padaran always guide us.”

  The padaran sat on his throne staring down at her body with grim satisfaction, his shoulders hunched and his quills raised all around his neck and head, making him seem even more massive than he was. There was a bandage wrapped around his right foot, but the skin of his face and arms glistened with the bronze, sparkling colors of his divine power, and his eyes blazed with certainty.

  As she lay there on the floor, Willa thought that she had been here before. She had been dragged. She had been kicked. She had been hissed at and attacked. But she knew that this would be the last time she would ever be hauled before the padaran. This would be the last time she would ever see the ancient Hall of the Glittering Birds.

  Through all the strikes and all the pain, Willa had pulled herself inward. She had n
ot fought back. She had not cried out. She had taken the punches and the kicks, the bites and the spits. She had taken it all. She knew that death was near. But when it came, it was going to be in her own way.

  All she needed was time.

  She lay wounded, tied, and beaten on the floor in front of the padaran, but she did not feel defeated. She had given Nathaniel’s children a hole to crawl through and the time they needed. She imagined Hialeah leading her two brothers through the forest. She could see them climbing through the rocks of the creek. They were going to make it home.

  “Nothing has any meaning anymore,” Nathaniel had said to her, but now it would. She had saved his children. She had saved Nathaniel.

  She slowly released the muscle of her heart, and let it start beating again. She felt the blood beginning to pump fast and strong through her veins. She began to take air into her lungs, in deep, steady breaths.

  As she lay on the floor, she slowly lifted her eyes and looked around her at the padaran and the jaetters and all the members of the clan.

  It was finally time to do what she had come to do.

  Lying crumpled on the floor of the great hall, with her hands still bound at the wrists, Willa slowly raised her head and began to gather herself together.

  Gasps of shock and confusion erupted from the crowd as they saw her moving.

  “She’s alive!” Gillen yelled, rushing through the other jaetters to try to help her, but the massive Ciderg grabbed Gillen and shoved her back.

  “Willa is moving!” someone in the crowd yelled.

  “But she was dead!” shouted one of the guards who had seen Lorcan strike her down. “Her heart was stopped!”