The Crosswood

by Gabrielle Prendergast

  I open my eyes and look at the place where I last caught sight of Violet. “I saw both of the twins turn onto this path. Indigo was in front of Violet. I saw them run down the path, past this tree.” I point to a particularly spiky, twisted tree.

  Mom limps in a circle around the tree, examining it. I check it out too. It seems out of place somehow. Like it’s too old for this forest. Or the wrong kind of tree. The color of its leaves is slightly off. Instead of the fresh yellowy green of the other trees, it’s dark green. Like emeralds. And the bark is nearly black. Worst of all, the branches are covered with thorns.

  “What kind of tree is this?” I ask.

  Mom doesn’t answer. She looks back at the little path the twins took. It seems to end right here where we’re standing.

  “Did you see anything else?” Mom asks. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

  I feel strange telling her. I don’t want her to think I’ve gone crazy. “The forest was spinning,” I say finally.

  “Spinning? Did you smell anything?” Mom asks.

  It’s a strange question. But I do remember smelling something. Something thick and…

  “Sweet,” I say. “It was like…”

  “Strawberry jam?” Mom asks.

  “Yes! Did you smell it too?”

  “No,” she says. She doesn’t explain further. Because suddenly the air fills with that smell again. Like strawberry jam, only different. Almost like strawberry perfume, if there is such a thing. It’s so strong that my eyes start to water.

  The forest doesn’t spin as much this time. Or maybe it’s me who doesn’t spin because I have the sense to hold on to the tree. But my ears pop again, and my vision goes really blurry. When I blink and get back to normal, I’m grateful to see that Mom is still here. She’s staring over my right shoulder. Her eyes and mouth are open in shock.

  I turn around slowly, afraid of what I’m going to see.

  Standing behind me, as though she appeared out of nowhere, is a woman I can only describe as a queen.

  She is wearing a crown. That’s the first clue. And it’s not a little sparkly tiara thing like brides sometimes wear with their veils. It’s a massive golden crown. It’s covered in gemstones of every color. It looks like it is made of twigs wound together and then dipped in gold. The woman’s hair underneath the crown is golden too. It tumbles down in curls and waves to her waist. She looks about Mom’s age.

  Her clothes are amazing. She’s wearing a red dress that drapes down to her feet. It’s decorated with sparkling jewels and embroidery. Over the dress she wears a purple cloak. It’s lined with white fur and trimmed with more jewels. She has a bunch of diamond necklaces strung around her neck and rings on every finger.

  Her face might be beautiful, but she’s so angry it’s hard to tell.

  Just as my eyes adjust to all the color and sparkle, two men step out from the trees behind her. Both are wearing some kind of armor, like knights. And they have swords slung from their waists.

  I take a step back, pulling Mom with me.

  “Juliette Jasper!” the strange woman says. Her voice makes the leaves around us vibrate. I have to remind myself that Juliette Jasper is my mother. Everyone calls her Jules.

  “Juliette Jasper!” the queen repeats. “You have broken our pact!”

  “They just vanished,” Mom says. “Can you find them? Can you help us search?”

  “There is no need to search,” the woman says. “I know where they are.”

  “Where are they?” Mom asks.

  “That is no longer your concern,” the woman says. “Your concern now is our pact and the price you must pay for breaking it.”

  I can’t just stand here in silence anymore. “What is going on?” I ask. “Who are you?”

  The woman looks at me like I’m a bug she’s about to squash.

  “Who are you?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.

  “I’m Blue Jasper. Indigo and Violet’s brother.”

  The woman sniffs. “I am Olea of Nearwood. Indigo and Violet’s mother.”

  I look at Mom. Her hand is over her mouth.

  “Uh, I’m pretty sure this is their mom,” I say. “My mom. The twins’ mom. I’m their brother.”

  Olea stares at me again. There’s so much anger in her face that I pull Mom behind me.

  “You are not important,” Olea says.

  “Now just a minute—” Mom starts, but Olea interrupts her.

  “SILENCE!” she shouts. The guys with swords move toward us.

  I’m starting to think that maybe I fell and hit my head. Can this be real? It feels like a dream. Or a nightmare.

  Olea steps forward. “I am Olea, queen of the Faerie kingdom of Nearwood, and the twins, the ones your mother calls ‘Indigo’ and ‘Violet’, are my children.”

  “What’s Nearwood?” I ask stupidly.

  Olea glares at Mom. “You haven’t told this human boy? You haven’t told him who the twins really are?”

  Mom sighs. “No,” she says. “I haven’t told him anything.”

  I turn around to look at her. “Mom?” I say, feeling goose bumps rising on my skin. “Is this real?”

  “I’m sorry, Blue,” she says. “Yes, it’s real. It’s all real.”

  Chapter Four

  This time my head spins, because I think I’m about to faint. Mom puts her arm around me, pulling me close.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she says.

  I pull away from her. “No it’s not!” I say. “Where are Indigo and Violet? What is this pact?”

  Mom is strangely calm. She turns to Olea, speaking slowly.

  “Will you let me explain this to my son?”

  Olea narrows her eyes.

  “Address me properly,” she says through her teeth.

  Mom actually goes down on one knee. She bows her head. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. Will you permit me time to explain everything to my son?”

  Olea flicks her eyes to me. I feel an irresistible tug and find myself falling to my knees too. The damp forest floor soaks my jeans. I lower my eyes, which means I don’t exactly see what happens next. But when I glance up, Olea is sitting on an ornate throne. In addition to the two armed guards, there are two young women with Olea now. One of them feeds her brightly colored fruit. The other one fans her with a feathered fan. They are both dressed in long yellow gowns.

  “You may begin,” Olea says.

  Mom takes a deep breath. I think I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

  “Remember when you were sick?” Mom asks. “Around the time the twins were born?”

  “I remember the hospital,” I say. “I also remember some weird things. But you always said that was the fever.”

  “Some of it probably was the fever,” Mom says. “But some of it might not have been.”

  “This is boring,” Olea says. “Get to the good part.”

  Mom closes her eyes for a second. “The truth is… you were so sick I thought you might die. I was driving you to the hospital in the rain. I was driving too fast. The car slid off the road. We got stuck in the mud.”

  “It was raining quite hard, wasn’t it?” Olea says lightly. “I do like rain.”

  I guess my brush with death doesn’t mean that much to her.

  “It was late,” Mom says. “It was the middle of the night. There was no one on the road.”

  “It was deliciously dark,” Olea says.

  Mom ignores her. “I had to carry you,” she says. “You were so small. It wasn’t hard. But taking the road was the long way. It was still a mile to the bridge. I knew I could walk through the woods to the river. There was a footbridge right up to the highway. I could flag someone down there.”

  “I don’t remember any of this,” I say.

  “Oh, Blue,” Mom says. “You were so sick. I’m not surprised.”

  “Boring. Boring,” Olea says, waving her hand. “Human sickness is so dull. Tell him about the forest.”

  Mom frowns, but she goes on. “Right,” she sa
ys. “The forest. It was much darker than I realized. I wasn’t thinking straight, of course. I was so worried about you. And it was wet and slippery. I slipped down a bank. I got scratched by thorns. Then I must have made a wrong turn. I was lost. I never found the footbridge. I never found the river.”

  Mom falls silent and stares at the ground. The look on her face tells me she’s remembering. Remembering getting lost in the rain at night. Remembering me being so sick she thought I would die. I reach over and take her hand.

  “What did you find?” I ask.

  Olea chuckles, a low and creepy laugh. “She found me, Blue Jasper,” she says.

  Mom squeezes my hand, ducking her head again.

  “If it pleases Your Majesty,” she says, “you could tell the rest of the story.”

  Olea leans back in her throne. She rolls her eyes.

  “I suppose,” she says. “That would certainly be more interesting.”

  Then we all wait while she eats several pieces of fruit. Her servant fans her. I think if Olea would only take off her fur cloak, she wouldn’t need fanning. I’m starting to feel impatient by the time she speaks again.

  “My twins had just been born,” Olea says. “And I had spirited them through the Crosswood into the human world.”

  “What’s the Crosswood?” I ask.

  Olea wrinkles her nose as though she smells something bad. “The Crosswood is a wood, like this one.” She waves her hand at the twisted trees. They seem more magical and less ordinary the longer we stay here. “In every wood there are places like this. Here the magic that upholds the border between human and Faerie realms is thin. There is a kind of…” Her voice trails off as she searches for the word. “A kind of mirror,” she finishes. “There is a mirror version of this place in the Faerie realm. That is the Crosswood.”

  “So a Crosswood has two sides?” I ask. “A human side and a Faerie side?”

  Olea frowns at me. Even though I suspect I’ve got it right, she looks disappointed.

  “You are clever for a human,” she says. “Are you sure you don’t have Faerie blood?”

  “He doesn’t,” Mom says.

  Olea stares at me for a few seconds. It’s like she’s trying to analyze my blood herself. She shrugs.

  “As I was saying,” she continues, “I had spirited my twins into the human world. I needed somewhere to hide them.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “They were not safe in the Faerie realm,” she says.

  “Why not?”

  “You’re so smart, human,” she snaps. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Someone was after them?” I try.

  Olea’s eyes widen for a second. Then she crosses her arms and looks away, making a humph noise.

  “Well. That’s correct,” she says with a sneer. “Oren, the King of Farwood, was after them. He has always hated Nearwood and hated me. But a treaty between the Woods means that by Faerie law he cannot enter my kingdom to harm me.”

  “The twins aren’t covered by that law?” I ask.

  “No,” Olea says. “Faerie children are very rare. We didn’t think to put that in the treaty.”

  I look over at Mom. She’s wiping a tear from her cheek.

  “So…the king of Farwood has the twins now?” I ask.

  Mom nods. “I tried to—” she starts, but Olea interrupts her.

  “You have failed in your task,” she says angrily. “You have broken our pact. Payment must be made in blood!”

  My heart drops. “Wait, what?” I yell. “What kind of pact was this? What do you mean payment in blood?”

  Mom lets go of my hand and sits back on her heels. She looks tired.

  “I was desperate, Blue,” she says. “You were barely breathing. And I…I made the terrible mistake of asking her for help.”

  “Which I provided, of course,” Olea says. “For I am a good queen. I flew you, Blue Jasper, and your mother to the—” She turns to one of her servants. “What is the word?”

  “Hospital,” the servant whispers.

  Olea looks very impressed with herself. “I flew you to the hotpizal. The human healers did their sad little magic tricks on you. Then you got better.” She shrugs. The woods fall silent for a moment.

  “We flew?” I ask as that detail sinks in.

  “Indeed,” Olea says. She raises her eyebrows at me. For an instant, behind her back, I catch a glimpse of a huge set of green, bat-like wings. But in an eye blink they are gone.

  “W-where does this pact come in?” I ask, gathering myself.

  Olea laughs. “Your mother was so grateful,” she says. “What did you say, Juliette Jasper?”

  Mom hangs her head. “I don’t remember,” she says.

  Olea laughs even harder. “Ah, it’s so delightful the way you humans can lie. So amusing.” Her laughing stops abruptly, and her mood darkens. “I remember exactly what you said, Juliette Jasper.”

  Mom cringes. I put my arm around her.

  When Olea speaks, her voice sounds just like Mom’s. It’s like a recording.

  “ ‘Thank you! My son owes you his life. How can I ever repay you?’ ” Olea says.

  Her servants giggle. Even the grim-faced guards smirk.

  Olea’s voice returns to normal. “Then I said, ‘You can keep my twins safe.’ And your mother said, ‘Ummm, for how long?’ and I said, ‘For as long as you want your son to live,’ and then—”

  “Wait! What?” I yell.

  “I’m sorry, Blue,” Mom says. “That’s what I agreed.”

  Olea seems pretty pleased for someone whose kids have been kidnapped. “Faerie law is magically enforced,” she explains calmly. “You have twenty-four hours. Then I’m afraid the terms of the pact will apply.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask. I can’t believe this is happening.

  “It means, Blue Jasper,” Olea says, “that if the twins aren’t safe by sunset tomorrow, you die.”

  Chapter Five

  “Take me instead!” Mom says immediately.

  “If you wish,” Olea says lightly.

  “Wait, no!” I yell. But the trees tremble. The air around us ripples. I get the feeling that some sort of spell has just been invoked. Or changed. “You can’t just trade Mom’s life for mine.”

  Olea looks at me, perplexed. “I’m not a monster, Blue Jasper,” she says. “I don’t want to see a child die. Your mother’s life was a fair trade. I accepted it. The Woods accepted it.”

  “But can’t you just cancel the pact altogether?”

  For the first time, Olea shows some regret. It makes her face look almost human for a second. But it passes quickly.

  “Faerie magic doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid,” she says. “It would pain me to see you lose your mother. But a pact is a pact. Lives can be traded—it’s true. But the price of a broken Faerie pact must be paid. The magic of the Faerie Woods will uphold that law whether I like it or not.”

  “There must be something we can do!” I yell. My ears are ringing. I feel like I’m going to faint again.

  “You can get the twins back,” Olea says.

  Right now nothing would make me happier than to have the twins back. I feel terrible for having wished they would disappear for a few days. And not just because of Mom. I’m worried about them too. What is this King Oren planning to do with them? They could be hurt. They’re probably scared. I need to save them.

  “Can you tell me exactly how the pact was supposed to work?” I ask. I feel like one of those lawyers in a suspense novel. I’m trying to find a loophole. Some way of getting us out of this. “How was my mom, a human, supposed to protect the twins from a magical Faerie king?”

  Olea sighs. “It’s quite simple. You humans have no magic of your own, of course,” she says. “But Faerie magic can be put on you. Even in ways that might not work with Faeries. So I put a protective spell on your mother. If the twins were within range of her hearing, nothing from the Faerie realm could touch them. As long as the twins were safe,
the pact was upheld.”

  I turn and stare at Mom. So this was why she’d rarely let the twins out of her sight. Why she wouldn’t leave the house even if the twins were fast asleep in bed. Why she’d never sent them to school.

  She’d done it for me. To protect me. And I’d messed that up. I’d let the twins run off. And now I’d let Mom exchange her life for mine. Suddenly my mother seems small and fragile. Like she’s the child and I’m the grown-up.

  I look back at Olea.

  “Can’t you go and rescue the twins?” I ask. “You’re a Faerie. You’re magical.”

  Olea seems suddenly to tire of being fanned. She shoves her servant away.

  “I would if I could,” she says impatiently. “The treaty means that no Nearwood Faerie can enter Farwood without being invited. It goes the other way too, obviously. And neither of us is inclined to issue invitations.”

  “But if the Faeries can’t enter each other’s kingdoms, why didn’t you keep the twins with you in Nearwood?” I ask. “They would have been safe there.”

  Olea pinches her lips. “There are creatures other than Faeries in the Woods,” she says. “Oren could have paid any of them to harm the twins. And protective spells like the one I used on your mother don’t work on Faeries or in the Faerie Woods at all. I needed a human. I needed to leave the twins in the human world.”

  I put the idea of “creatures other than Faeries” out of my head for the moment. I could worry about that later.

  “Okay, so no Nearwood Faerie can enter Farwood,” I repeat. “What about a human? Can a human enter Farwood without an invitation?”

  “Blue, no,” Mom says.

  But Olea raises her eyebrows at me. “Humans who stumble into the Faerie Woods rarely stumble out,” she says.

  “If I save the twins, Mom won’t die, right?”

  She nods. “If Indigo and Violet are safe, the pact is upheld. Your mother’s life will be hers again.”

  “You promise?”

  “I have no need to promise. The Faerie Woods will uphold the law. But for my part, yes, I promise. All I care about is…” She pauses, seeming to struggle. “The twins being back with your family.”

  I turn to Mom. “I have to try,” I say. “I’ll find them and bring them back somehow.”