by Viv Daniels
She zipped her coat up to her chin and avoided his gaze. “You sound ridiculous,” she said. “What do you take me for, some idiot townie girl who rolls over the second a fickle forest man snaps his fingers?”
The old man chuckled. “No, Ivy girl. You’re the one who keeps saying ‘townie.’”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ivy walked home slowly, marveling at the sound of her boots crunching through snow, of trees creaking beneath the weight of ice, and local birds chattering away in the boughs, the rare, crystalline silence of deep winter. It was all quite perfect, until she saw her house, and the yellow plastic tape stretched across her yard.
She ducked beneath the tape and stomped across the wintry lawn toward the greenhouse, heart in her throat as a series of horrible scenarios flashed through her mind. They’d found Archer. They’d killed him. Or maybe he’d called up his dark magic again and set it after the men of the town.
A dozen people milled around the door to the greenhouse, which lay splintered and hanging from the hinges.
“Hey!” she shouted, and they whirled around, ducking their heads in guilt as they caught sight of her. “What the hell did you do?”
“Hell, indeed.” Deacon Ryder strode out of the group to block her path. “The council thought it prudent to do a thorough examination of the property after the demonic possession we witnessed here earlier.”
“You broke into my greenhouse!” she spluttered, shocked into ineloquence by the violation. Would they have done the same to her father, or did they still think of her as a child, whose rights they could trample whenever they wanted? She drew herself up straight and when she spoke again, her voice was firm. If she could stand up to Archer’s curses, she could stand up to men from the town council.
“What are your plans to repair my door? I have fragile plants in there that will be destroyed by the cold temperatures.”
“I wouldn’t describe the plants you have in there as fragile,” said Ernest Beemer. “We’ve been at them for nearly an hour with axes, and we’re hardly making headway.”
“You’re cutting down my crop?” she craned her neck to see over the crowd. “You have no right—”
The redbell. Her customers, the forest folk who needed her medicine…
“We’re just trying to get in,” Beemer said. “You’ve blocked the door.”
“I have not—” She cut off as she caught sight of the wall of brambles filling the doorway, a knot of thorns as thick as her torso. Several branches had been sheared off but the entrance was completely closed.
“When was the last time you were even inside this place, Miss Potter?” Beemer asked from behind her.
“This wasn’t here,” she gasped. “I swear this wasn’t here…” Last night.
“Don’t you see, Ivy?” the deacon counseled, putting his hands on her shoulders. “There is magic coming from the forest again. We need to see what’s inside the greenhouse and what danger it might pose to the town.”
Archer. Archer must be inside the greenhouse. No wonder he didn’t want these men searching. And Ivy didn’t want it either, but they were all staring at her, as if she had the ability to make the brambles part.
“It’s a greenhouse,” Ivy said, giving her voice just a touch of derision. “Did no one think to break a window?”
“Gee, why didn’t we think of that?” Shawn stood off to the side, bandages wrapped around his neck and arms. He looked eons away from the fellow who used to lob spitballs at her hair from the back of math class.
Don’t touch me, witch. The whispered memory of forest-lover loomed large in her mind.
He pointed at one of the panes, which she now realized was broken, not that it made much of a difference, as brambles spiderwebbed thickly across the opening.
Ivy peered closer to see the tangle of thorns spread over every pane in the dome, completely blocking the view of the interior.
“There’s something hiding in there,” Shawn said now. “I know a nest when I see it.”
“What have you got in that greenhouse, young lady?” Beemer demanded.
My forest lover, of course. There was nothing she could say to make them believe her. They knew who—and what—she was. “Plants?” she offered.
Someone came back with a chainsaw and no one even bothered to ask Ivy’s permission as they buzzed through the brambles. The thorns had created a wall several feet thick, until it was as if they were drilling a tunnel, rather than a door.
Archer, be careful, she found herself begging, her hands squeezed into tight fists inside her coat pockets. When it was just two men, he’d set a dog on them. What would he do if a dozen penetrated the fortress he’d built?
The quality of the chainsaw’s whine shifted as it finally broke through to the interior, and everyone stepped back, as if expecting something magical and horrible to burst forth. Nothing happened, even as the man working the machine carved out an opening big enough for a person to crawl through. It was dim inside, shadowy, as Ivy had never quite seen it. Like the inside of the forest itself.
All the men looked at each other. No one seemed ready to climb through. The air that floated out smelled of midsummer, green and brown and hot against their faces.
“Well?” Beemer crossed his arms and glared at Ivy. “What have you got in there?”
“My answer hasn’t changed in fifteen minutes.”
And still, no one moved, which just proved to Ivy that they had no plan at all. They’d expected an attack, and when none was forthcoming, they were at a loss.
“Gentlemen,” she said, making her tone as authoritative as possible, “I believe you are mistaken. These are some overgrown brambles, nothing more.”
“Thickets do not grow overnight, Ivy Potter, not even in your mother’s enchanted greenhouse.” Deacon Ryder peered into the depths. “This is forest magic.”
“Maybe it’s just the barrier,” she suggested weakly. “The trees by the barrier died from the sound of the bells. Maybe it didn’t kill the plants in here, protected as they were by the glass, but it… stunted their growth. And now that the barrier is gone, they are…making up for lost time? They are forest plants.”
Shawn gave her an incredulous look. Okay, so it wasn’t very well thought out.
“There is something making up for lost time,” said the deacon, “and it’s dark magic. Ready your weapons, boys.”
“No!” Ivy held out her hands. “I won’t have you all shooting up whatever is left of the crops in my greenhouse. I will go in.” She straightened her coat and stood tall. She might be the only one safe to enter.
“Be careful, child,” said the deacon. “You know not what might lie within.”
He was right about that.
“Are you kidding me?” Shawn sneered. “She knows exactly what’s in there. That forest-lover probably planted it herself. She’s just been waiting for the barrier to go down so she could unleash whatever she’s been cultivating in that greenhouse.”
Ivy whirled on him. “Why would I need to wait for the barrier to go down, dimwit? The greenhouse is on this side.”
“Settle down,” the deacon placed a hand on her shoulder. “No one thinks you are doing dark magic, Miss Potter, regardless of your forest blood.”
“Speak for yourself, Ryder,” grumbled Shawn. “She sicced that dog on me this morning. I saw what I saw.”
Ivy ignored him. This was the kind of guy who lived in this town. Was it any wonder she’d been celibate all this time? She put one booted foot inside the tunnel of thorns, but she didn’t catch fire or turn to stone.
The hair on the back of her neck was standing at attention, but she refused to turn back. She had beaten Archer at his game of questions. She knew the rules of the forest. She was Puss in Boots and Jack the Giant-Killer, and she could do this. A few crouching steps, and she was through.
Okay, Archer. Where are you? Afternoon light filtered dimly down through cracks in the thicket, which had spread over the entire inside of the dome. She
felt as if she stood inside a giant tumbleweed. She headed warily down the main path, keeping half an eye on the brambles above. Though they’d spread thickly over the surface of the dome and the entrance itself, the actual space of the greenhouse looked the same as always, like a terrarium of the forest frozen in twilight. She passed the spreading branches of the trees and turned the corner, well out of sight of anyone who might be watching from the door.
“Archer?” she whispered loud as she dared. And then, louder, “Everything looks in order. There’s nothing out of place here except the brambles…” And then she caught sight of the redbell patch, far in the corner, and trailed off.
This was the origin. A great, gnarled bramble root spread from the center of the patch, straining against the curve of the dome and spreading up and outward. The root pulsed slightly, sending out curling shoots at intervals as regular as a heartbeat.
Ivy swallowed. “Archer…” Deep shadows lay at the heart of the plant’s trunk, buzzing the barely-there black-violet of evil magic. Ivy shivered in the warmth of her greenhouse. Everything within her told her to stop, to run away, but even as she watched, she saw the roots hardening, thickening, and reaching farther into the patch of redbells and crowding out the flowers that her friends in town needed so desperately, that Archer had risked his life to gather for the forest folk.
So whatever this bramble-tree was, it couldn’t be connected to him, unless he brought it out accidentally, a stray seed carried with him like a burr on an animal’s coat. Perhaps it fell from him last night, and took root in the soil.
A seed…
She peered more closely, at the center of the tree, as memories of last night rose up before her, the way Archer had pulled away from her at the last moment, the way the dark magic that held him seemed to vanish in the night.
This bramble was not only Archer’s fault, it was Archer – the surplus of his evil enchantments she thought had drained away.
Her stomach turned; her blood chilled. The thorns enclosing the space creaked and groaned as they grew, choking out even the slivers of light that remained. The twisted branches of the bramble thicket took on sinister shapes in the shadows – torsos and heads, half-formed limbs, and knots like eyes. The greenhouse—her parents’ precious greenhouse—was no longer safe.
One step back, then another. Bramble-vines twisted across the floor, heading her way, five-fingered shoots reaching out like grasping hands.
Ivy tripped over a root and stumbled, and a dozen figures snapped to attention. For a second, everything was silent, and then a great roar as the bramble bent the bronze rods. Glass panes shattered, showering glittering shards all around her. She threw her hands over her head and sprinted for the door.
Flanking the opening they’d cut into the brambles were two humanoid shapes, bark and branches twisted into the shape of men, twigs curling like Archer’s hair over thorny ears, facing each other and thrusting their woody hands into the space. Already, it was smaller than before, the brambles twisting to take control.
Roots seemed to rise on the path, and the leaves shuddered above her as she ran. New shoots erupted from the freshly-shorn edges, tightening the tunnel, and the creatures on either side seemed to glare at her with wood-knot eyes, as if daring her to try to make it through.
Distantly, on the other side of the hole, she saw the men backing away as twigs and thorns sprouted before their eyes.
“Help me!” she called to the men in the snow. “Keep it open!”
She squeezed her eyes shut and dove for the hole, not even caring when the thorns caught her clothes and hair and skin, crawling through the prickles and scrambling over the twisting vines. Words seemed to whisper along the bark, just out of range of her hearing, or maybe in a language no human could understand.
She felt them reaching — no, it was the men from the town, they were pulling her out—hacking away with their axes and saws.
Ivy fell to the snow-dusted ground, and ice stung the scrapes on her skin. But she was out. She was free.
Pressing a hand to her chest, she rolled over to look back through the hole. The brambles closing in, shutting the greenhouse away in darkness once more.
“The redbells,” she said softly, to no one in particular. Her entire crop was in there. With those… things.
“Do you see why we must be on our guard?” Ernest Beemer announced. “One day without the protection of the barrier and look what has come to pass. Animal attacks, the forest takeover of the entire Potter greenhouse… this must not be allowed to continue.”
There was a murmur of agreement among all the men gathered there. Ivy pushed herself to her feet, unable to find her tongue or take her eyes off the place where the door to her greenhouse used to stand. The bramble vines bulged outward, cracking the frame and slithering like living snakes over the concrete threshold.
Everyone stepped backward, staring in a mix of horror and fascination as the vines advanced at their impossible rate, hardening into brown, woody branches before their very eyes.
Was it ever going to stop?
“Get back!” someone shouted. There was the sound of metal scraping concrete, and the men dragged up a piece of wrought iron fencing from the yard. They shoved it up against the opening, wedging the sharp edges into the crack where the threshold met the concrete of the path. The wood shrank back, scarring beneath the touch of iron, and stopped its spread.
“How long will this hold?” one of the men asked.
“You never know with magic,” said Deacon Ryder. “We should set up a perimeter of guards to keep watch over—”
“Over my property?” Ivy cut in. “This is my land. I didn’t invite you here, and whatever is growing inside there, it was contained until you took off the door and attacked it with a chainsaw. If there’s a problem here, you caused it.”
“Oh, so we should leave you alone to grow God knows what kind of forest plants?” Shawn asked. “People like you are a menace to the town, Ivy Potter. Your greenhouse should have been shut down years ago.”
“I grow medicine inside,” she snapped at him. “Medicine the people of this town need because of the side effects of the barrier.”
“I don’t need it,” he scoffed. “And if that barrier is so difficult for you people, why don’t you move away? Save us all a lot of trouble.”
You people? She was so sick of hearing that. She’d heard it for three years, from neighbors and tourists and inside her own head. The bells weren’t the problem, just the people affected by them.
They had it backwards, the tourists and the townies. Maybe they should all move away, and just let the forest—and the forest folk within— be. She was moments away from speaking the thought aloud when Deacon Ryder stepped between them.
“There, there,” he said. “Every soul in this town has reason to wish for protection from the forest and its enchantments, and that holds especially true for those who are marked by birth.”
“That’s not what I meant—” Ivy began.
“This greenhouse is the least of our worries tonight,” said Beemer. “Who knows what other breaches may have come from the destruction of the barrier. The Potter greenhouse is lost, that much is obvious. Let’s use what resources we have to make sure other businesses in town aren’t compromised. I want at least twenty men at the quarry.”
Everyone started shouting about their own security needs, and eventually wandered off her property. Ivy made sure they were all gone and her gate was locked, then escaped into her house.
The shop looked exactly as she’d left it, so at least they hadn’t gone into her home while she was away. She ran from room to room, checking in closets and under beds.
“Archer!” she called, no longer caring who heard. “Where are you?”
She couldn’t believe he’d abandon her there, without even saying farewell. Unless last night was nothing more than a forest trick, and Ivy was nothing more than a fool to imagine anything else.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
What had happened in that greenhouse? What had happened to the man she spent the night with?
Ivy was shaking, shivering with a cold that went beyond her wet and icy clothes. It seemed to come from her bones, from her blood. When she’d been with Archer last night, he was her Archer. No matter what she’d seen when he first woke, no matter what kind of dark magic he’d confessed to, she believed he could keep her safe.
But one look around that greenhouse and Ivy was no longer sure.
In the bathroom, she ran the taps as hot as possible until steam filled the space so she could hardly see her hands in front of her face. She stripped and stepped beneath the shower, wincing as the scalding spray hit her skin, scrubbing as if you could wash off magic like it was mud. When she finished, her skin was pink and her hair was plastered to her neck, but she felt no cleaner than before. Long bramble scrapes on her arms and neck and torso were proof enough of what she’d been through. Her fingers trembled as she touched them, and she shuddered as she toweled off and shuffled into her empty bedroom to dress, her mind whirling.
Ivy couldn’t stop thinking about the stories she’d heard in the town square the summer the barrier was raised. The bramble men and the babies who weren’t babies, the whispered rumors and the things that made even her father fear the forest…those things were real, they were growing in her greenhouse, and this time, they were Archer’s doing.
And hers, too.
Yet Ivy couldn’t regret any of the things she’d done. If the alternative was to abandon Archer to evil magic, she’d risk a hundred bramble trees. If it was to spend another night pouring tea and pretending her life hadn’t ended at seventeen, she’d brave a thousand demon dogs. If everyone in this town was going to hate her anyway, she might as well be the forest-lover they all thought she was.
Another knock at the door. Ivy sighed and pulled a sweater dress over her head, scraping her damp hair back into a clip.
Deacon Ryder stood on the stoop, his face drawn tight. “Ivy. May I come in?”
