by Viv Daniels
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Her reddish hair was braided in a crown about her head, and a redbell was tucked behind one ear. She looked a bit like Archer, and Ivy recognized her at once. A black-haired boy came next, in a brown hide coat, with redbell in his buttonhole. More children followed, each in their simple forest clothes and each sporting a single, crimson flower. All were singing.
“It’s the forest folk.” The whisper traveled through the group like a wave.
There were more than a dozen now, more than two dozen, and their parents followed, their hands outstretched, their skin and clothes pale as deer bellies in the darkness.
“They’ll bewitch us!” someone cried.
They approached, walking right up to the border of silent bells. A young woman came to stand with the first two children. Her hair fell like a midnight waterfall down her back and her face was one Ivy had seen in Archer’s visions. She stood and went over to the woman.
“I am River,” she said to Ivy. “Thank you for the flowers.”
“Archer’s sister-in-law?” Ivy asked.
The woman cocked her head to the side. “It is not your townie law that made him my family, but yes.”
“What are you doing here?” Shawn yelled from what he must have considered a safe distance.
“We were told they plan to resurrect the barrier.”
“Told by Archer?” Ivy asked.
The woman nodded, sadly. “It was a great sacrifice for him. We have come to escape the forest, while there is still time. It is no longer a place for us, but we will use your gift of redbell to provide us with safe passage through your town into a new wilderness.”
Of course. They hadn’t wanted the redbell to help them survive in the forest, but rather to help them survive outside of it.
Another twang of the lattice, and the dozens of forest folk joined Ivy and her friends in crouching and wincing in pain.
“We’d better do this quick,” said Jeb, and yanked at the bottom of the barrier, trying to create a gap for the forest folk to slip through.
“Wait, stop!” cried Shawn and he started to step forward, but another townie placed a hand on his arm.
“They want to be free from the forest,” she argued. “These children, they want to be free. We have to help them.”
River nodded. “We will die trapped away in here. We have no choice.”
Shawn turned on the townsfolk. “You want them in your town?”
“They won’t be in the town, moron,” Ivy said. “None of us can live here when the barrier goes up.” She wasn’t sure where else the forest folk could go, though. They were sensitive to the trappings of civilization, to electricity and steel and cell phone towers. But that would be a problem they solved later, out of earshot of the deadly bells.
Ivy searched the group in the forest. “Where is Archer?”
River looked at her curiously. “He isn’t one of us.”
“He’s choosing to stay in the forest?” she asked. “Alone?”
The woman was unfazed, and her voice was calm when she replied. “He has been alone, Ivy Potter. You cannot wield such dark magics and live among people.” Then she turned to crawl beneath the barrier after her children.
As Jeb and Sallie helped the forest folk to crawl through the gap between the lattice and the ground, River turned to Ivy and pointed up the cliff.
“How many of them are casting this spell?”
“Two,” Ivy replied.
“Two? A strange number for black magic.”
“It’s the blood of three,” Jeb corrected, still pulling kids out. “They stole some of Ivy’s blood when she wouldn’t help them.”
“My father,” Ivy explained. “He did the spell with them the first time.” Then she remembered what Ernest Beemer said when he’d cut her. “Something about the two other men being spirit and body, and my father—and me—being the heart.”
“Blood magics,” River confirmed. “They’ll need three, and midnight. We have a few hours yet, to get away.”
“But what about Archer?” Ivy begged River. “He can’t stay in the forest alone. He’ll be consumed.”
“He’s lost,” River replied, her tone so detached Ivy’s fingers itched to slap her. “He’s been lost since the moment he agreed to try to stop the bells. Just like his brother. They gave their souls to help us.”
“No!” Ivy said. “I saw him!”
River looked at her sadly. “You do not see much, Ivy Potter, with your townie eyes.”
“I saw all I needed,” Ivy snapped. Who did this lady think she was, the queen of the forest? “Yes, he does dark magic, but he did it for you. You can’t leave him alone in the forest. With nothing to fight for, how will there be any chance of saving him?”
“There is no chance of saving him,” said River. “He has helped us, but he hasn’t triumphed. Archer is lost, Ivy Potter. Trust me. I know more of magic than you.”
Ivy grit her teeth. That may be true, but she knew more of Archer than anyone. She’d let him go once, and his own people had allowed him to sacrifice himself. Ivy may not be forest folk, but she belonged to Archer, and he to her. She wasn’t letting him get stuck in the forest again.
A third shudder traveled down the wires, scorching through their eardrums. Jeb hissed and dropped the lattice on a forest woman, who screamed in agony. As they pulled her out from beneath the barrier, great red lacerations appeared on her flesh, as if she’d been cut with a whip. Jeb looked down at his hands, which bore similar markings.
Ivy turned to retrieve her First Aid kit.
Suddenly, a few of the townsfolk stepped up. “Grab that over there,” said one to another, “let’s get these people out quick.”
The woman who’d argued with Shawn looked at her. “They won’t hurt us yet, right? Just the magic people?”
Ivy nodded mutely.
River stared up at the cliffs. “It is a strong spell they are casting, and a ruthless one. Three legs form a steady stool. The body man and spirit man, they must have firm beliefs.”
Ivy knew they did. Deacon Ryder truly believed the forest was evil, and the forest folk devils out to steal all their souls. And Ernest was in it for the money for his quarry— the dangers of the forest kept big business from town and material wealth from his pockets.
“Heart — that is your blood?”
“Yes,” Ivy said. “Because my father. He… loved me, and he was afraid he’d lose me to the forest.”
River’s eyes widened, but she said nothing, which was fine by Ivy. She didn’t need anyone else to pity her father, and his wretched, fearful love.
The last of the forest folk were crawling under the gap. Ivy stared out into the darkness.
“Where is he?” she asked softly.
River hesitated. “My man is gone, too, Ivy Potter. My children’s father.”
Ivy nodded. “Archer told me. He died taking on the barrier.”
“Long before that, he was taken by dark magic. I know how it feels to lose him.”
She bit her lip. “Archer’s not dead.”
River took a deep breath. “He wants to be. The darkness is too extreme. Let him go.”
“No!” The word tore out of her. “I will never let him go.”
Behind her, the forest folk were gathering, readying to set off into the unknown. Ivy looked down at the space where they’d all crawled through.
“Ivy,” Jeb warned. “You cannot go into the forest.”
She turned to River. “Tell me where to find him. I know you know.”
River was silent, studying Ivy, her modern clothes and her townie features. “I do not. But when he brought the flowers, wrapped in your greenhouse moss, he also had with him a knot of the bell lattice. I believe he has made his choice.”
Ivy chest felt tight, remembering the giant hole in the lattice right across from her shop. The one they’d been repairing when Shawn had thrown her in the van. “His choice?”
“Yes,” said River. “Like his
brother, Archer will die when the bells begin to ring.”
***
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Ivy-girl?” Jeb asked her when she slipped beneath the barrier.
No. Of course not. Ivy didn’t have the slightest clue what she was doing. She could not search the entire forest in a few hours, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she could even get to Archer once she’d found him.
But she had to try.
“I’m going to get Archer,” was all she said. “I’m going to get him.”
“But what about the bells?” Jeb asked. “You’ll be trapped in the forest.”
She nodded. “I know. But I spent three years trapped on this side. It’s time to try something new.”
It was crazy how convincing she sounded.
“Good luck.” He waved.
Ivy tried not to cry as she took off into the woods.
First she made a beeline down the barrier toward her shop, searching for a hint of silver lattice work in the ground. If Archer planned to commit suicide by bell, he’d have to attach the bells he stole to the rest of the lattice somehow. Right?
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all she had.
She hurried through the deadened trees at the edge of the forest, sloughing through fallen leaves and hopping over roots and rocks. There was no sound in the forest tonight—even if any fauna had come closer to the bells during these last two days of silence, they were clearly wiser than Ivy, and had fled at the first tingle of the barrier bells. Though she hadn’t been in the forest in years, she had never heard such total silence, on either side of the barrier.
Every time the bells rang out, a fresh wave of pain sent her into a cowering crouch, covering her ears and crying out in pain. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth, her stomach roiled with nausea, and a slow, pounding agony took up residence inside her skull. The sound was coming more often now, every ten minutes, then every five, then every three. She wasn’t sure how much longer she had—how much longer Archer had.
The first question she’d won from him in the game, his story of coming for her the morning after the bells started to ring, loomed large in her mind.
They filled the air, setting everything on fire. The trees, the soil. But I kept walking. My blood boiled beneath my skin. My face blistered, my bones crumbled. And still I walked.
Ivy didn’t walk. She ran, and in her head, larger than the pain, louder than the bells, stood Archer, her own, lovely Archer, who she’d thought she’d lost, and who she never wanted to lose again.
There! A line of silver, a single wire running from the main barrier lattice into the heart of the forest. She stopped to peer through the bells, trying to get her bearings. They were just down the street from Petal and Leaf.
All of a sudden, Ivy knew exactly where Archer had gone.
She sprinted into the forest, heedless of dead trees and beasties. The woods were rotted and black, like ghosts from a forest fire, and she leaped over downed limbs and piles of char. Three horrible rings of the bells later, she saw it, a great, ancient tree rising up from the forest floor, blackened to a crisp, but still standing. And there, in the side of the bark, was affixed a row of rungs reaching high into the canopy.
Don’t be afraid, Ivy-mine, Archer had whispered into her ear on that warm, summer night. Climb up. I’ll see you at the top.
The silver thread also wound its way up the trunk. Ivy squeezed her eyes shut.
Damn you, Archer.
The splintered rungs were hell on her injured hand, and slippery with ice and snow. Her feet broke off chunks of rotted wood with every step, and each ring of the bells—faster now, every two minutes, every one— sent shockwaves of pain and nausea through her body. It had been nearly three days since she’d drunk redbell tea. Even if she made it to him, the barrier might kill her.
But he’d come looking for her the day the bells started to ring. They’d nearly killed him, but he kept on. And so would she. For if he’d chosen this tree, of all the trees in the forest, it meant he was hers, still.
He was hers, and she wasn’t letting him go.
Ivy’s fingers were raw and bleeding by the time she reached the platform Archer had built in the branches. The flowers were long gone, of course, nothing but crackling vines on blackened boughs, an empty ruin swaying in a deadened tree. It was nearly midnight in deep winter, and there was no one up here.
The bells sounded again and she collapsed on the platform, huddled into a ball, covering her head with her hands, her mouth open in a silent scream. Midnight was nearly upon her now, and with it, death and enchantment. And Archer wasn’t here at all.
A flash of silver drew her eye as the bells tapered off, but no—it was just a knot of bells and wire, wrapped tight around a mess of branches.
A sob escaped her throat. Was it one last, cruel trick, to think that she might find him in their bower?
“So,” croaked the branches, in a voice like low thunder. “You are an angel, after all.”
“Archer!” She crawled over to him. He looked like part of the tree, charred and crumbly, with black smoke pouring off of him like he’d just been taken from a fire. There were angry red lines where the silver wire cut into his shoulders and neck and wrists, and his features were barely discernible in the deep night. “I’ve come to get you.”
“Archer is gone,” he said. “You cannot fuck him out of me anymore.”
“Shut up!” She hadn’t come to argue with the darkness, but to fight it.
The bells rang again. He let out a cry of pain and she wavered, woozy, while blackness crowded the edges of her vision.
When the bells silenced, she reached out and began unwinding the wires from his skin.
“Stop,” he said, unmoving. “I will kill you if I’m free.”
“Not before the bells do,” Ivy said. “And I think one of us, at least, should survive this.”
“Don’t you see?” he asked, as she finished with his arms and started in on the loops around his neck. “I do not want to live like this, in this endless darkness I’ve made for myself. I do not want to live without you.”
“Then help me get you out of here,” she said, leaning in between his spread legs to tug at the wires. “And we’ll run away from the bells, and we’ll figure out the whole black magic thing some other time.”
The bells jangled again, and Ivy gasped as they singed her fingers.
Archer’s voice was scary and calm. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple,” she insisted. There was a knot there, high on his neck, and she realized she should have brought wire cutters. “Listen to me: I love you. I love you more than all the dark magic in the world, and I am not afraid.”
From far away, there was a sound—a clamorous earthquake, a crystalline train crash, the horrid, deathly jingle of a million, million bells. The enchantment was complete.
Ivy reached for Archer again, but it was all too quick. The wires lit up in her hands, the silver shone like starlight, and the bells everywhere began to ring.
Then, all at once, the sound resolved, the discordance smoothed, shifting into a harmony, a molten-golden tone that fell onto Ivy’s ears like the sweetest redbell tea, like the softest summer morning, like the whisper of a loved one. Out from her hands, the golden glow spread, dancing down the lines and lighting up the bells like tiny suns.
And where those bells touched Archer, the darkness melted away. His skin shone through the burns, his hair shifted back to red, and at last, his eyes cleared, moss-green and smiling up at her like they had every time in this tree.
I love you, and I am not afraid.
How foolish the townfolk had been to use Ivy for their spell. Her belief was strong, but it wasn’t the one they wanted. She may have been her father’s daughter, but her love was not made weak by fear. It was powerful, and true, and more than any black magic could bear.
Ivy’s hands dropped to her sides. “Archer…”
He lifted them to his lips,
kissing each palm in turn. “Ivy-mine.”
CODA
Five Years Later
Ivy tied the last of the ribbons around a bunch of dried lavender and set a price tag sticker on the bundle. She stretched, rolling her neck muscles, and observed the winter display. The tourists would love it. Jeb had told her this morning that his woodshop in town was already seeing a huge rise in visitors this season.
Every year, the land came back into itself, fresh, green growth peeking out from the scars of old magic. The forest folk had moved back into their home, but Ivy and Archer had opted to stay in town and help the people there come to a greater understanding of the resource they’d very nearly lost.
Archer’s forest tours had grown tremendously in the last few years, taking townsfolk and tourists alike into the forest for a display of magic and an education on what the forest was, as well as what it wasn’t…and most of all, how to stay safe beneath the trees. More than ever, people wanted to visit this strange and infamous slice of land, and they needed a guide who knew its good side and its bad. In that, Archer was more of an expert than any ranger of the forest folk.
And with his base here in town, he provided a level of trustworthiness that other forest-folk guides, who didn’t even have telephones, could not.
Over the door, a tiny golden bell rang as someone opened the door, a sweet, harmonious sound that never failed to make Ivy smile. There weren’t a lot of the bells left these days. Tourists had bought up most of them, and scavengers claimed the rest, selling them far and wide as sleep aids and anti-depressants. She’d even seen a few hawked online as guaranteed ways to make your beloved stay with you forever.
That, of course, she couldn’t argue with.
Even the wire that had once formed the bell lattice was worth money, and Sallie had made a fortune crafting healing jewelry from the metal that remained. Last summer, she’d moved someplace tropical. “I may be half-forest,” she’d explained to Ivy, “but I think I need a change of scenery.”
