Evanescent (14 page)

“Where?” I saw nothing but ground below. I then spotted a hay bale, no more than a four- or five-foot jump across and a two-story drop down. “There!”

“Where?” She looked around, her eyes wide and terrified, as I grabbed her arm and then jumped into the air, dragging her along behind me.

We hit the hay with a bone-jarring
thump,
and I had to fight the urge to moan in pain as the crown box’s edge jammed into my rib, knocking the air out of my lungs. All those adventure movies were wrong. Landing in a hay bale
seriously hurt
.

“Come on.” I tumbled out of the pile. “We have to move. Kitsuna said to meet her in the forest so that’s where we need to go.” I stood and looked back at the house, now totally engulfed in flames, before taking off at a run beside Mercedes.

I spotted the woods in front of us and tried to run harder, pushing my legs to get me from the field to the tree cover as quickly as they could. The faint beat of wings sounded behind me, and I looked up to see Kitsuna’s mother hovering low over the forest entrance. Once we had broken through the tree line I heard a raspy roar and then felt the heat of the world behind me exploding in flames, blocking anyone who might have tried to follow us. Mercedes and I ran into the forest, both of us searching for a place to hide.

“There!” She pointed to a patch of thick plants and high grasses among a group of trees. “Come on.”

“Are you sure?” I asked as she started toward the patch of underbrush. She didn’t bother to answer as she led me into the waist-high grass, holding her hand out so that the plants would lean out of the way and give us a clear path.

“Here.” Mercedes stopped in front of a large tree with several thick, low-hanging branches covered in leaves. “You’ll be safe here.”

She pushed me forward until I was standing next to the trunk, and then dropped to her knees, urging me down beside her. She grabbed a handful of mossy dirt and smeared it on my face and arms, covering all my exposed skin.

“Don’t make a sound. Stay still,” she said before standing and moving away from me.

“What are you doing?” I asked as she raised her hands and chanted in a language I didn’t understand.

“
Mala he onohie
,” Mercedes said, touching the tree’s trunk. “
Mala te omate. Mala te omate
.”

“What are you doing?” I asked as the entire tree seemed to sway with her words.

“
Mala te omate
,” Mercedes repeated, louder this time.

The tree began to shrink in on itself. The drooping branches brushed past Mercedes, who was still kneeling in the same spot as they drew inward and cradled my body against the tree trunk. The branches imprisoned me in their grip, wrapping around the trunk like a flower closing for the night. Instead of crushing me with their weight, the branches shifted and moved, forming a tiny nest for me to hide in.

The dull
thump
of footsteps moved away from me, and the woods fell silent. No chanting. No birds. No tiny animals moving around in the grass. Just the distant roars of Winston and the raven battling each other.

I wanted to cry out but knew that would just bring the wizard directly to me. So I stayed quiet and tried to find a comfortable position inside the tree. The branches nestled closer to me, and I brought my knees up to my chest, hugging them close as I waited out the battle.

Chapter Fifteen

My mother had always said there was nothing worse than waiting. Personally I’d always thought there was nothing worse than biology on dissection day, but it turns out that Mom was right. There is nothing worse than waiting to find out if your friends are dead.

I shifted in my tree cocoon and listened for any sounds coming through the forest. Something. Someone. Winston. Kitsuna. Mercedes. A crazed, homicidal wizard intent on causing mayhem. Anything was better than sitting here alone, not knowing what had happened to everyone else…well, except maybe the “getting caught by a homicidal wizard” thing.

“Your Majesty?” a faint voice called. I shifted to my knees from my seated position to peer between the intertwined branches at a small girl with the same red curls as Kitsuna and her mother. “Queen Alicia, are you in here?”

“Hey,” I whispered, my voice thick with nerves, as I pressed my face against the tree branches. “I’m up here.”

“Queen Alicia?” The girl looked up at me and then clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh no! The tree ate you.”

“What? Wait. No, the tree didn’t eat me.” I tried to throw a hand out to stop her as she turned on her heel and took off at a dead run, bolting in the direction of Dramera.

Crap. So much for getting rescued any time soon. But the little girl had known to come into the woods to look for me. That meant the battle was over and someone would figure out what she was talking about and come for me. Although maybe—now that the danger had supposedly passed—the tree might be persuaded to let me save myself… Just for once. Sort of like a test. Could the princess be self-sufficient? My vote was for absolutely. I could only hope the tree agreed.

I moved back, closer to the tree trunk, and rubbed my hand along its bark. “I think I’m safe now.”

The tree pulled its branches more firmly around me.

“You were very brave.” I stroked the tree again, trying to act reassuring and more than capable of kicking butt all on my own. “Now it’s time for me to go back and find my people.” Most importantly Winston, to make sure he was okay, that he was safe and the raven had been taken care of.

The tree tightened its grip, and a branch snaked up to wrap around my ankles as another slid around my waist and a third tightly bound my shoulders. The rest of the branches moved away from us and I drew in a breath as the three branches holding me began to lower, carrying me toward the forest floor. I held as still as I could and tried not to look down.

When we reached the moss growing along the tree’s trunk the branches slithered away from me and I stood, brushing dirt and green flakes of moss off my clothing before turning to the tree and bowing my head. “Thank you for hiding me. I won’t forget it. I need you to do me one final favor.”

I pulled the crown box out of my shirt and held it up for the tree to see. “I need you to keep this safe for me. No matter what. Can you do that?”

The tree swayed toward me and then back like it was nodding, and then two branches came forward, like hands, cupped in front of me.

“It sounds cliché,” I said as I placed the box onto the cupped branches. “But the fate of our world sort of rests inside that box. So keep it safe. For all of us.”

The top of the tree dropped forward, bowing, and then the branches that it had used as arms retreated slowly, the case with my crown and the Dragon’s Tear disappearing from sight.

“Thank you,” I said before I turned to run back toward the village, following the path of broken twigs that the tiny dragon girl had left in her wake. I searched for Mercedes as I ran. Surely she wouldn’t have gone too far.

Nothing but trees greeted me. That wasn’t good.

I stopped and turned in a circle. Giant trees were covered in glossy, dark-green leaves, and tall grasses and scraggly undergrowth were mired in the black mud that covered the ground. No footprints peppered the dirt beyond the tiny prints the little girl had left as she sprinted for Dramera. No markings on the trees. Nothing that my years of television crime show–watching would provide to help me figure out which direction my best friend had taken off in when she left me hidden in a tree.

Crap, crap, and double crap. Where could she be?

I could go back to Dramera, check on Winston, and try to form a search party to look for her. But then again, if I could save myself, then I could save my best friend as well.

I started into the forest, searching for a sign—any sign—that Mercedes had gone in the same direction. There wasn’t much to go on, but if Mercedes had left me here and hadn’t melded with the trees around us, then she would have gone away from Dramera. Deeper into the woods that had been her home here in Nerissette.

I walked into the trees, alert for any sign that she was nearby. There, on a low branch, was a scrap of brown material. I moved closer and saw a few silver hairs clinging to the trunk. Mercedes had been here. She’d brushed up against this tree and gotten her hair caught.

“Mercedes!” I whispered. “Come out, come out wherever you are! Come on, Mercedes, leave me another clue to find.”

“Allie?” I heard a panicky voice whimper.

I turned, glancing around, trying to figure out where Mercedes’s voice was coming from. Across the clearing I could see a deep gouge of mud, and the tree seemed skinnier than the rest. Like it had wrapped its branches around itself or something. Whatever it was, something with that tree wasn’t right.

“Mer?” I moved closer to the tree, careful, searching for danger with every step.

“Allie! Oh crap, Allie, help me!”

“Mercedes?” I hurried over to the strange-looking tree. “Are you in there? What happened?”

“There have been some complications,” she muttered. “I may be stuck.”

“Stuck? How did you get stuck?”

“It’s a bit complicated,” she squeaked as I moved toward the sound of her voice.

“Complicated how?”

“You’ll see.”

“Mercedes, just tell me, are you okay?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said, her voice going higher at the end like it was a question. “I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of trouble.”

“
Lions, giants, and wizards oh my,
trouble, or
I think I got turned around in the forest and I’m so glad you’re here
trouble?”

“A little of both.”

When I was directly in front of the tree I looked up into the narrow branches and found her strung up in some plant’s tentacles, cradled against the trees trunk while the branches held her like some sort of spider’s web. “A little of both” might be the understatement of the day. Possibly the week—and that was saying something.

“What the heck happened to you?” I peered up at her face high above me, the rest of her obscured by thick, leafy green vines.

“I was searching for a place to hide,” Mercedes said, “and I chose the wrong tree. This one has apparently been taken over by a giant carnivorous vine of some sort. It caught a bird a few minutes ago and ate it whole. Bones and all. I think it was supposed to be the appetizer.”

“So what’s the main course?” I asked.

“That would be me.”

“But you’re a dryad. I thought all the trees and plants loved you. You’re like the Snow White of trees and birds and all that sort of stuff.”

“Yeah, well, this particular vine seems more interested in lunch than it is in making friends. So can you help me or not?”

“Help you do what?” I asked.

“Allie!” She glared at me. “Get up here and get me down before the tree decides to turn me into its lunch.”

“Are you saying that’s a cannibalistic tree?”

“Technically it’s the vine that’s going to eat me but yes, it’s a carnivore and it just happens to have a taste for dryad!”

“Okay, okay. What do we do?”

“I don’t know. It has me in such a tight grip that I can’t even touch my magic, and it’s already started to sort of tickle at my toes. I think it’s trying to figure out if it wants to eat me from the bottom up or the top down. So hurry up and think of something already. Please?”

I looked skeptically at the tree. There had to be some way to get her out of this, and right now I was the only one who could do it. “No one told me how to deal with killer trees.”

“Well, where’s Kitsuna? If anyone knows how to deal with crazy trees then it’s Kit. She knows everything there is to know about all things weird in Nerissette.”

“I didn’t go and get her. I got out of the tree and came to find you so that we could go back to Dramera together.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant. We’re out here alone, trapped in a forest, and I’m going to die inside a houseplant. This is so not cool.” Mercedes kicked her feet and struggled to get loose.

She managed to wiggle one foot free and the plant seemed to shrink back from her kicking heels. “Mercedes, wait… I might have an idea.”

“What?”

“Kick the vines again.” I could feel the beginning of a plan starting to form as I saw the way the recently injured tendrils kept their distance from her.

“Do what? Why?”

“Because the vines moved away from your ankle when you were kicking it.”

“So?”

“So, it’s a living creature, right?”

“It’s a homicidal maniac in plant form.”

“Right, so I think the vine doesn’t like when you kick it.”

“And?” She struggled again and brought her foot back to deliver a futile kick. It wasn’t much, but the plant definitely shrank away from it, which was something.

“Can you get a hand free? Or even better, an arm?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I spotted a large rock and made my way over to the branches of the tree where the plant had made its home. Shoving the rock into the pocket of my hunting trousers, I grabbed on to the rough bark and pulled myself up onto the branch, grumbling about all the upper body strength I’d lost since I wasn’t going to swim team practice anymore. “I got it.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, her face turning a sort of mottled purple, her silver eyes wide. “Order it to release me by command of the Golden Rose of Nerissette?”

“Do you think that will work?” I tightened my grip on the rock and made sure I was wedged tightly between where the branch and the plant met.

“No. What other ideas do you have?”

“Bash it with a rock, obviously.” I held the stone up for her to see and then brought it down as hard as I could on one of the vines near her. Just as I suspected, it peeled away and shrank to the far side of the trunk, trying to stay away from me and my crude little hammer.

“So what do I do when you’ve got the last of the vines off me?” Mercedes asked.

I started to bash in the vines nearest her head and worked my way down. “Lean over and grab the branch. It can hold both of us, and then we’ll climb down.”

“Great. Tree climbing. That’s exactly what I wanted to do after a long day of running for my life.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said as the vines pulled away, retreating in the face of my bashing stone. “All you have to do is hang on until I can get you out.”

“Like I’ve got anything else to do—I’m tied to a tree.”

“Don’t crab at me about it.” I rolled my eyes before bashing the vines closet to me, hoping that they would release her without too much difficulty. “It’s not my fault.”

“Fine, it’s not your fault I’m stuck here in this crappy world being eaten by a plant. Can you please get me down now?”

“I’m working on it, bossy. I swear by the stars, you were never this much of a pain in the real world.”

“I was never eaten by a plant there, either!”

“Give me a second and you’ll be free.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!” I brought the rock down as hard as I could on the one remaining vine. It let go of Mercedes and she swung over, dangling underneath the branch. I heard a soft creak, then a crack, and all I could think was that today was
really
not my day.

“Allie?” Mercedes asked, her voice suddenly a lot less angry and a lot more worried.

“Yeah?” I braced myself as the branch creaked again, one last time, before it broke completely and we plummeted to the forest floor below.

“Ouch,” Mercedes moaned. “That really hurt.”

“Tell me about it.” I sat up, pushing my hair back off my face. The soaked green cotton of my tunic was now more of a mud color, and I sniffed. Yep, it had picked up a moldy smell as well.

“So what do we do now?” Mercedes asked as she sat up beside me and pushed her own hair back.

“We find our way to Dramera. Wait for Rhys and the army to get here. Save the kingdom, and find a way to get you, and anyone else who wants to go, back home.” I grabbed her hand.

“Together.” Mercedes tightened her grip on my hand. “No matter what, we’re going together. You are my best friend, and I don’t care if I have to drag you through that portal, I’m not leaving you behind.”

I pushed myself up, all the muscles in my legs and back aching, and reached, hoisting her up to stand beside me. “We’ll see.” I didn’t want to fight with her right now about the fact that I wasn’t going back to the World That Is, even if she did. I couldn’t. My place was here now.

“We’ll find a way home, Allie.” She squeezed my hand. “We have to.”

“Come on. Let’s get back to Dramera.” I tugged her along behind me as I started in the direction of the dragon stronghold, not meeting her eyes.

“Hiking and tree climbing?” Mercedes asked. “This day is getting better and better by the minute.”

“Well—” A branch snapped and we froze. Another branch snapped and I turned to look at Mercedes and saw that her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. My stomach started to roll and all I wanted to do was vomit. But I swallowed and tried to clamp down on the terror that was racing through me.

“Come on.” Mercedes pulled me toward another tree and brushed her fingers against it. “Take me home. Please, all I want to do is go home. Back home we’ll be safe.”

“What?” I asked as a branch reached out to grab me. The next thing I could see was smoke. Lots and lots of smoke, and all I could think as the smoke filled my lungs and the tree tightened its grip on me was
, this can’t be good
.