Forest of Shadows

by Kamilla Benko

  Now it was in front of them, a round circle of red that pulsed like a beating heart. Anna stumbled to a stop, but the Huldrefólk shoved her forward, and though she could not believe it was possible, she grew even hotter.

  “Stop,” Anna garbled through her gag, her mind racing as she skipped over steps two through ten of diplomacy. “We’ll give you chocolate!” The words came out muffled.

  It wasn’t actually a step of etiquette—truly, bribery didn’t belong on the list at all—and nothing in all her reading had prepared Anna for the possibility of being thrown into a river of lava by a hosting nation.

  But it didn’t work. They pushed her forward. Even though it was hotter than Oaken’s sauna, Anna went numb as she saw Elsa’s boot hang over the edge, the toe turning red in the glow. Anna struggled harder. If they disappeared on their mission, no one would ever know how the Nattmara came to be or how it could be stopped. No one would survive it. Being thrown into lava wouldn’t just mean the end of Kristoff, Elsa, and Anna—it would mean the end of Arendelle. They would have failed. She would have failed. Emptiness yawned in Anna, threatening to swallow her whole.

  All she had wanted—ever wanted—was to always do more and, out of true love for her sister, help her.

  Although the whole kingdom had seen Anna save her sister three years ago, she had since wondered who wouldn’t save their sister. And still, Anna couldn’t get past that she was the one who had provoked Elsa into casting an eternal winter then, and now she was the one who had called a Nattmara to the land. She would never feed Sven a carrot again. She would never hear more about Olaf’s warm philosophy on life. She would never get a chance to learn about the natural and celestial worlds from Sorenson. And it was all her fault.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Elsa whip her head so fast that her braid slapped her Hulder captor’s nose, taking them by surprise, while Kristoff flung himself backward, slamming his captor into the wall. The two managed to wrestle out of their binds in the process.

  Come on! Anna told herself. They’re still fighting. You can, too! She wanted to cheer them on, but she needed to save her breath. And besides, there was still a gag in her mouth. Her guard dragged her forward, closer to the edge of the molten lake, while Anna freed her hands.

  “HALT!” A deep voice reverberated around the rock, sending tremors through the earth.

  But there was no way Anna was going to stop fighting. She lunged to the side, free of the Hulder’s stony grip, and tore off her gag. She took a few running steps away from them before realizing she wasn’t being chased. Instead, the Huldrefólk knelt to the ground as a fourth Hulder appeared in the red haze. This Hulder seemed to be the tallest of them all, their hair a wild black mane surrounding their face, and on their head they wore a circlet of something shiny. It took Anna a minute to realize it was gold.

  The leader of the Huldrefólk.

  And on the Hulder leader’s shoulders sat a small, familiar figure.

  “Horse!” Dash yanked on the Hulder leader’s hair.

  Anna sank into a curtsy, and after she coughed pointedly in Kristoff’s direction, he bowed. Elsa, however, stayed as upright as an icicle, befitting her rank.

  “Psst! Rule number one,” Anna murmured loud enough so that Elsa could hear.

  Elsa nodded and spoke. “Greetings. I am Queen Elsa of Arendelle, and this is my sister, Princess Anna, and her…er, our guard, Kristoff Bjorgman of Nowhere in Particular. We greet you in friendship.”

  Anna held her breath, wondering if the leader would accept.

  “Friendship,” the Hulder leader repeated. And then, to Anna’s utter astonishment, the Hulder continued in full sentences. “I apologize for my family. They can be a bit overprotective.” In the dim light, Anna saw the Hulder pat Dash’s dangling knee. “Young Echo, however, has cleared up the misunderstanding, and she and I welcome you to our domain. I am the king of the Huldrefólk.”

  “You’re not repeating everything,” Elsa said, clearly too surprised to worry about manners.

  The imposing Hulder king inclined his head. “We like to use other people’s words so that we can wrap ourselves up and hide within them. It’s very rare for Huldrefólk to actually have to compose something new. That’s part of the reason why Echo found you—she wanted to collect your song. Songs are easy to remember. Easy to echo back.”

  “Echo!” Dash—now Echo, Anna realized—repeated the word from her perch.

  Anna knew she should probably let Elsa do all the talking, but her curiosity was too much. “Why do you talk in your own words?” she asked.

  “Because I am not only the king, but also the librarian,” said the Hulder leader. “I’ve spent years visiting the world above, collecting items as well as stories, and I have enough words at my disposal. And so, I would like to apologize again for your initial greeting.” The Librarian King reached for Echo and set the child on the ground.

  “That’s it?” Kristoff burst out. “We’re almost thrown into a lake of lava, and all you can say is ‘I’m sorry’?”

  “I’m sorry!” Echo squealed, moving toward Kristoff.

  “Does ‘We’re very sorry’ make it any better?” the Librarian King asked. “Usually, the only humans who make it down this far want to take precious stones and gems from our mountain, or to capture a member of our domain to make them find iron ore deposits for their weapons and the like.”

  “We’re not looking for stones, gems, or iron,” Elsa said. “We’re looking for a sword of myth, the Revolute Blade. Can you please help us find it?”

  The Librarian King’s eyes flashed. “‘Revolving moon and spinning sun, forged a crescent blade. From light and dark within the heart, the burnished sword was made.’” He looked down at them. “That’s the one, yes?”

  Anna nodded, feeling this was a good sign.

  “And,” he continued, “I suppose this has something to do with the Nattmara that has come to Arendelle?”

  Anna gaped. “How did you know about the Nattmara?”

  “Just because you can’t see us doesn’t mean we’re not always there.” The Librarian King studied them a second more. It was impossible to make out any expression on the leader’s face. The Hulder’s textured skin had taken on the appearance of the cracked rivulets of lava, and was hard to see against the molten backdrop. But then, he must have made a secret signal, because the guards bowed before each of them and then hurried away, keeping their backs to Anna and her friends. It only took the hidden people a couple of steps until they seemed to have disappeared entirely, though Anna knew they must still be there, great masters of camouflage that they were.

  The Librarian King turned. “Now, all of you, come with me.”

  Anna’s heart leapt. At last—she had not led them astray!

  “We don’t always know the answer—but we do know where to find it,” the Librarian King continued.

  Allowing the humans to walk in front of them, the Librarian King and Echo escorted Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff away from the lake of molten rock and toward a tranquil tributary of water where rafts bumped and prodded against each other.

  Anna looked at Elsa and Kristoff in the gloom, and a smile spread across her face. “This could be it!” she whispered. “We may finally find the sword!”

  “Let’s wait and see,” said Elsa, ever the one to freeze the excited mood.

  Echo tugged at Kristoff’s tunic, and they began to toss stones into the water.

  “My assistant will help. She will take you to the Library of Lost Things,” the Librarian King told them. “If my people ever came across the legendary sword, it will be there—that is, if the sword truly exists.”

  Elsa shot Anna a look, and Anna bit her lip. She hoped against hope that it did.

  “We are sorry for bringing the Nattmara to your door,” Elsa said. It wasn’t lost on Anna that her sister had used the word we.

  The Librarian King shook his head. “The Nattmara is one of the many natural enemies of the Huldrefólk—we both see
k to reign the dark. But while the Huldrefólk love the night for its quiet privacy, the Nattmara prefers to use the dark as a weapon. Fear not: the Nattmara cannot pass into the borders of our domain. As long as you’re within the Huldrefólk realm, the Nattmara cannot touch you. We are the hidden people. We keep ourselves hidden, and now that you’re with us, we’ll keep you hidden as well.”

  Relief filled Anna, and then a thought stirred. “Umm, I have a question for you,” she said. “We lost a member of our group. Is it possible for the Huldrefólk to find him? He’s kind of short and stocky, with a long silver beard that touches the floor, and he’s grumpy.” Anna paused, then added, “He’s nice!”

  The Librarian King inclined his head. “As you know, Huldrefólk are seekers of lost things. Collectors. If your friend is still free of the Nattmara, then I’m sure we can locate him.”

  “Land ahoy!”

  Anna looked to the water, where a gray raft glided in front of them and bumped against the bank. A cheery-looking Hulder (as Anna thought she could make out a smile in the dim glowworms’ light) waved at them and leaned against the long pole she’d been using to steer the vessel.

  “Ahoy! Ahoy! Ahoy!” Echo cried out, and left the game of skipping rocks with Kristoff to fling herself onto the raft and into the new Hulder’s arms.

  “This is my assistant, Obscuren,” the Librarian King proclaimed. “She will help you find what you are looking for and will be your guide in my domain.”

  Anna scrambled onto the raft, settling herself next to Kristoff. It was only then that she noticed the unusual material it was made of. While rafts were almost always constructed of wood, this one seemed to be made of floating stone. As she peered closer, she saw tiny holes perforating the surface, making the texture of the raft seem more like bread than rock.

  “I think this is a pumice raft,” Anna said to Kristoff, who nodded.

  “It is,” he said. “Rock from the volcano.”

  Anna felt a tug on her hair as Echo crawled into her lap, quietly chanting, “Row, row, row your raft!”

  “Say your goodbye,” the Librarian King instructed Echo. “It’s time for dinner.”

  The little Hulder’s eyes swam with tears. “Stay!”

  “I wish you could,” Anna said, and was surprised when she realized she meant it.

  Miner’s Mountain was beautiful, full of unexpected surprises and even more unexpected friendships. She liked the little Hulder and her penchant for flying ahead as fast as possible. Anna bet Echo could show her many things—glowing crystals, ice caves, maybe even a sleeping bat or two—but she needed to fix her mistake before she could explore the wonders of the mountain further.

  “Besides, you’d be bored if you joined us,” Anna said. “We won’t be singing anymore, and being on a raft makes it hard for you to dash anywhere.”

  Head tilted, the little Hulder considered this bleak reality, then clambered out of the raft to join one of the Huldrefólk guards who’d seemingly materialized out of nowhere.

  “Bye!” Echo proclaimed from the riverbank, waving. “Bye-bye-bye!”

  Anna’s heart squeezed. “See you later. Stay out of dark abysses, okay?”

  Elsa was the last to step onto the raft. When she’d settled her cloak around her, she looked back at the Librarian King. “Thank you,” she said. “For all your help. I promise we’ll keep your secret, and we will keep the mines closed. Your city will remain hidden.”

  The Librarian King bowed in thanks, and then Obscuren pushed them across the glassy surface of the river.

  The raft rocked as they navigated the underground waterway, the air refreshingly cooler now.

  Obscuren took in their drooping eyelids. “You can sleep,” she said. “I know my way around the river. And as the Librarian King said, you are hidden here with me, even from the Nattmara.”

  “Are you absolutely…” Whatever Kristoff had been going to say was lost in a yawn.

  “The Nattmara cannot find our domain,” Obscuren reminded them. “We are cloaked from it. You can rest here, safely, without any fear of losing yourself over to its influence. Sleep. Rest. I’ll wake you when we reach our destination.”

  Obscuren had barely finished before a snore ripped out of Kristoff, and in the next second, Elsa, too, was asleep. Anna, however, stayed awake. Though she had been daydreaming about sleeping, she found she couldn’t close her eyes. Every time she did, her stomach hurt too much. Because each moment asleep was a moment she wasn’t fixing her biggest mistake: the Nattmara she’d accidentally welcomed into Arendelle with a spell. Obscuren’s voice interrupted her thoughts, and Anna pulled herself out of them.

  “Sorry, what was that?” Anna asked.

  “I said,” the Hulder repeated, “that you should sleep, too.” Obscuren pushed on the pole, and the water sighed as the raft sliced through it. The river flowed through winding tunnels with low ceilings, though here and there little beaches seemed to jut into the waterway, and Anna thought she could make out the distant shape of a Hulder or two watching them. This close to a Hulder who was not trying to kill her, she could finally make out a more definite shape.

  Obscuren looked almost human but for an overall spindly appearance, pointed ears, and changing skin. At the moment, the Hulder’s eyes were a beautiful shade of orange, a color that made Anna think of the end of autumn or the start of spring. They seemed to take in everything around them, and as Obscuren looked at Anna, Anna wondered if the seeker of things could find Anna’s deepest secret in her eyes.

  “Obscuren,” Anna said, “do you know how the Nattmara came to Arendelle? I think I know, but I’m not entirely sure. The Blight started before the Nattmara arrived. I’m a bit murky on the details.” She held her breath, waiting for Obscuren to somehow say the words that were blaring through her mind as loudly as a goatherd playing the tungehorn: the spell. It must have been the spell, as much as it didn’t make sense that the animals and crops had grown sick before she’d read it. But after she read the spell, the wolf appeared. Of that much Anna was certain—just as she was certain it was her fault.

  Obscuren was silent, but it wasn’t the kind of sharp silence of being ignored. This quiet had a thoughtful quality to it, as though she were weighing each word before speaking.

  “A Nattmara doesn’t appear out of thin air,” the Hulder said. “They are made, formed from an event in a person’s life that grows so big they can’t keep it inside anymore, and the fear becomes so large that it takes on a life of its own.”

  Anna nodded. Yes, that was what Sorenson had said. The fear is too big to keep inside. “Sooo,” Anna said, “you don’t think that someone could have, I don’t know”—she tucked a strand of ruddy hair behind her ear—“said a spell, or something, and brought the Nattmara to Arendelle?”

  Obscuren gave a shake of her head. “I don’t believe the poems that humans call spells are really anything other than just that: poems. They may be able to conjure a beautiful image or a moment of time, but that is a different kind of magic entirely.”

  Anna wasn’t sure what to say, but she was comforted. Because Anna had read a spell…but it sounded like even if she had never said it out loud, the Nattmara still would have come to the kingdom.

  Anna still would have accidentally called it, with or without a poem. Because the night that it had materialized from her dreams was the same night she’d heard Elsa holding a council meeting without her, and she had felt her heart break a little. It was the moment she had realized her greatest fear had come true: that Elsa really and truly had no need for her at all. And because of that, her nightmare—her fear—had manifested in the form of the Nattmara that was now stalking them all.

  “And I guess,” she said, trying to keep her voice light, “if there’s no spell to call a Nattmara, then there’s probably no spell to banish one, right?”

  Obscuren shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so. I’ve only ever heard of one warrior willing to face the Nattmara, and that was Aren, with his mythical Revolu
te Blade that contained a strange power.”

  Revolute.

  With Kristoff and Elsa asleep and nestled against her back, and Obscuren in the front, keeping an eye on Anna and her friends, the mythical curved sword shone like a lighthouse in the dark river of Anna’s worry, and, at last, she let her eyes drift shut to sleep.

  WHEN OBSCUREN WOKE ANNA, she felt better rested than she had in a long, long time.

  Next to her, Kristoff stretched, half his hair smooshed against his cheek where he’d lain on it. “Up, up, and away,” Kristoff said with a yawn.

  Elsa, however, still managed to look regal, even though Anna could see the pattern of pumice pores on her face. Anna giggled, motioning to her sister’s cheek.

  “You should take a look at yourself,” Elsa grumbled with half a smile.

  Anna peered into the river. Sure enough, she looked the same as she always did when she woke up: a bit like a woodland creature with a slobber problem. Anna patted down her stray hairs with river water, and she found comfort in the way that some things stayed the same. Elsa smiled at her, and Anna guessed she was thinking the same thing, too.

  “We’re here,” Obscuren said as they glided up to a post.

  While they waited for Obscuren to secure the raft, Anna looked around, but even holding out her wrist with the glowworm bracelet, she couldn’t see any sign of a library…or where one could possibly be. The banks of the underground river were narrow, no wider than a foot or two, and as far as she could tell, nothing had been carved into the rock’s surface except for a few crumbly-looking steps.

  “Where is it?” Anna asked. It had been nice to sleep and all, but being awake again meant she was more aware than ever of the time that was slipping away. They had only one more day of sun and a single night left before the third sunrise made the Nattmara’s reality permanent—assuming that the spell really had been what brought the Nattmara to Arendelle in the first place. Obscuren hadn’t though so, but Anna couldn’t shake Sorenson’s words. All myths contain a kernel of hard truth. The spell might not have been real magic, but that didn’t mean the warning wasn’t true. At any rate, Anna was not willing to risk it.