Into the Wildewood (11 page)

What she sensed was very different. Her throat constricted and her stomach seemed to rise, ready to toss its contents. She fell to the ground, shaking her head, trying to lessen the pressure inside. She was nauseous with the overpowering sense, the painful ache, that built until she thought she couldn’t breathe. The trees were sick, all of them. Something was weakening them.

A dark energy willed her not to go any further. The Dread. She forced herself past it. The trees were sick, and they needed help. The part of Keelie that was elven reached out to them, not able to bear their pain.

“What can I do to help?” She spoke the words aloud. She looked up as Knot thrashed through the leaves and jumped onto a huge granite boulder covered in lichen. He meowed again to Keelie.

She climbed up. The wind lifted her hair. It was warm, like spring, on top of the rock, and the scent of flowers wafted through the air. The unicorn was like spring. She imagined he’d been here for the first spring on Earth, when the world was new and bright.

And then she saw him. He stood in a shaft of afternoon sunlight, his horn sparkling, glorious in its beauty and radiance. Each spiral gleamed as if it had been dipped in iridescent moonlight. He looked at her, then danced skittishly, hooves digging into the loam.

She squatted and dropped from the boulder.

He wheeled and ran, darting impossibly between the trees.

“No, don’t go.”

A bird shot out of a nearby bush, joined by others. The air was briefly darkened by rushing wings.

The unicorn stopped and turned, tossed his silver mane, then galloped away. Knot leaped after him, and Keelie followed. She wasn’t about to be left behind.

Around her the trees entreated her to stay. “Don’t go. Be our shepherd. Help us.”

Keelie drove the tree thoughts from her mind and focused on the unicorn. A small part of her noticed that it wasn’t a conscious effort—the tree thoughts had faded into the background. The unicorn had taken over her mind, had become a singular compulsion. She ran on, thinking that she must not lose him. She belonged with him. On and on through trees, through thickets of bushes, she ran as if in a trance, pulled like a puppet by a magical string.

Her skirt snagged on a branch, ripping. She pulled the skirt up and knotted it at her waist, then slipped out of the ridiculous shoes and ran barefoot, the green hose in tatters around her ankles, hardly feeling the rocks and twigs she stepped on. She forced herself to move faster, always keeping Knot and the unicorn in sight. Her side burned and she pressed a hand against her ribs to rub the stitch away.

The unicorn leaped across a stream, tail rippling, and landed lightly on the other side. Keelie grabbed a sapling to keep from falling in.

“Help me, shepherd. I grow weak … ” It was a young oak, sick, like all the others.

She took her hands away from the treeling, and its entreaties for help faded. The unicorn pawed the ground lightly, but didn’t move. Keelie crept forward slowly, deliberately, like a cat stalking its prey. A small part of her mind wondered why she hadn’t stopped to help the little tree.

Knot sat upright at the water’s edge, staring unblinking at the silvery white beast before them. Without looking away from the unicorn, Keelie lowered her foot, feeling for the stream bottom. When her toe touched sediment she dropped the rest of the way. The water was numbingly cold, and the pebbles that formed the streambed bruised her feet. The unicorn tossed its head, but made no move to leave. The water soaked the hem of her skirt, making it heavy, but the cold finally woke her up enough to realize she’d been somehow enchanted. She took a step forward and ran into an invisible wall.

A frisson of fright rushed through her body. A magical force held her in place. Fear did not override her desire to follow the unicorn, but a sane part of her mind awakened, freed from enchantment.

Knot meowed, and his low cry turned into an angry growl. He stared across the water, unmoving, but Keelie couldn’t tell if he was under the spell, too, or if it was just a kitty’s natural aversion to water.

The unicorn’s eye glowed with intelligence.

“What do you want?” she whispered. It tilted its head and moved its ears forward. Keelie stepped back, and the spell released her. It was as if she’d walked out of a spider web, and thin tendrils of the spell tickled her with the compulsion to be still.

Move, don’t move. A breeze blew softly through the forest, blowing thin strands of the broken spell around her.

She climbed back onto the bank, grateful that her feet were numb, because when the cold wore off they’d probably hurt like crazy.

Behind her, the unicorn whickered, the cry so horse-like that she turned to look. Was he calling her back? The glow around him faded, and suddenly she could see that his hide was bare in spots, and his horn was dull and yellowed. His neck was thin. As if he knew that she could see the truth, he hung his head, then backed away until he faded into the bushes behind him. This did not look like the guardian of the forest.

Keelie’s tears dripped into the stream. The little glade where the unicorn had been seemed dimmer now. The afternoon sun had dipped lower, and the light would fade faster in the forest. Her heart ached with sadness, and she wanted lie down on the decaying forest floor and cry.

She wondered what could hurt a unicorn, and whether the forest had sickened it or if it was the guardian’s illness that was affecting the forest. According to Dad, unicorns were very powerful. What evil could do this? Dad was the Tree Shepherd. She had to tell him, although he had warned her to stay out of the woods.

The forest seemed gloomy and sinister.

“Come on, Knot. Let’s head back.”

Limping, she retraced her steps. The little oak at the bank’s edge seemed small and sad. She gently grasped one of its branches, and with her other hand touched the Queen Aspen’s heart. Her fingertips tingled, the signal of rising magic. She couldn’t help the unicorn, but she could save this tree. The magic bubbled up, like heated sap, and spilled over. She guided it to the tree’s feeble roots and felt them thicken and throw out rootlets, reaching deeper into the nourishing earth. Leaves burst from the branches and its bark grew smoother.

As the magic deepened, she heard the singing of the sprite that lived in the stream, and the voices of the tall trees around her, begging for a sip of her magic.

There wasn’t enough for all of them.
I will return
, she promised. A tug pulled her toward the magical stream, and she cried out as her hand brushed against bark and stuck fast, her magic usurped by the wide oak that branched over the water. He drank deeply of the Queen Aspen’s magic. But the magic was not just the pendant’s—it was Keelie’s life force as well.

She fell to her knees, pulse racing. Her heart beat like a mechanical thing gone wild. Other trees protested above her, clamoring for a taste. Keelie fell over, numb, and as her vision grew fuzzy she watched an ant walk the edge of a leaf. Her world had been reduced to this, the march of the tiniest creature.

With an effort she turned her head. Silvery forms sprang to being around her, a ghostly forest that cried out to return to the earth. She heard the echo of saws and the shouts of men, and the cracking and thunder of falling brothers.

Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe anymore. This is it, she thought. I’m dying, because I didn’t listen to Dad. A roar filled her ears, like a wind machine beating against her ear-drums. The saws had come for her. She closed her eyes, ready for whatever came next.

Someone was sandpapering her eyelids, and the horrible feeling of being siphoned dry lifted. She opened her eyes. Knot’s face loomed large, revealing the reason why she couldn’t breathe. He was sitting on her chest, purring, and he’d put his paw on her forehead to anchor himself as he groomed her.

She pushed him off and sat up. He purred and rubbed against her arm. “I thought I was dying, Snot, and it was just you.” She laughed shakily, aware that she might have been really dying, and that just maybe the cat had done something to stop the trees from draining her.

The ghostly forest had faded, but it was still visible. She shivered. It had been real. This was the forest Dad had told her about, the trees that sought rest, the sisters and brothers of the oaks, themselves so sick that they might join them in death.

She glanced at the young oak, now in full leaf and healthy. One spot of vibrant health in the haunted and dying forest. Her good deed had almost killed her.

Nauseous, she got to her knees and then stood up, careful not to touch any trees. She needed to tell Dad about this. Maybe the haunted forest was the reason he looked so ill. It could be that he’d let the trees take his energy, but she doubted that he’d deplete himself so much. He probably knew a better way. No, he hadn’t allowed himself to be drained. This was bad magic.

She was already in a lot of trouble. She’d been fired from her second job, she owed Dad and Lady Annie hundreds of dollars, and Laurie was coming. Her life was so messed up that she didn’t know what he could do to make it worse.

Then it hit her. He could call Elizabeth and tell her not to let Laurie come to New York, he could say that Keelie couldn’t drive. He could tell Lady Annie to sell the boots. She needed to stay in Dad’s good graces, and that meant that her forest misadventure would remain a secret.

She looked down at Knot, who was blinking up at her. “Don’t you tell him. This has to be our secret.”

In answer, he stalked past her with his tail held high. Keelie followed his furry booty, and he led her to her shoes. She never would have believed she’d be glad to find the hideous gold lamé gnome booties, but almost cried with relief when she put them on. Her sore feet still kept her progress slow. Behind her, in the deep woods, the unicorn neighed, and the trees above whispered songs of sorrow and regret.

ten

Keelie thrashed her way clear of the last bush. The sunlight had faded into dusky twilight. Twilight and dawn—the times when the fairies came out, or so it was said in the fairy tales she’d read. But Keelie knew better. Fairies caused mischief no matter what time of day it was.

A cloud of them had surrounded Knot and he’d vanished, leaving her to fight her way through the unknown woods. She could forgive him that. The evening air chilled her exposed shoulders, and she wished she still had the vampire cape. At least she had the Robin Hood hose to keep her legs warm. They’d helped protect her skin from scratches, and she’d been careful not to touch any trees.

She remembered that weird spell in the water. And something was terribly wrong with the trees that had pulled her energy. A normal human, or even another elf, would not have been in danger from the trees. She pushed away the thought that she wouldn’t have been in danger, either, if she’d listened to her father and if she hadn’t helped the sapling.

She couldn’t understand why anyone would put a spell like that in the water. It hadn’t been in the trees, so it wasn’t to keep people from falling in. It was to keep them from crossing the stream.

She saw the Admin building ahead and glanced down at the torn Jersey-cow bodice, the wet and muddy skirt, and the trashed glitter-gnome shoes. She couldn’t face Finch tonight. Keelie’s head was still buzzing from the spell, and she was fatigued, weak from the weight of the trees’ illness.

Maybe Dad was so sick that he didn’t know how bad off the trees were. The greenness of the hurt trees pressed against her, and she could smell moss and loam as if she had her nose to the ground, instead of aimed at the gravel walkway that gleamed in the dim light. The trees had called to her and she’d run, frightened that they could take what she had not offered.

Her shoulders ached from hunching them, not that it had helped to keep her from hearing their pleas. Dad would have to be in a coma not to notice that the trees were in distress. Maybe he couldn’t help them, either. It would take an army of tree shepherds to solve their ills, or maybe a unicorn in full power, not the sad specimen that haunted these woods. She needed to find Dad, and quickly. He had to know what was going on, and she couldn’t keep her forest adventure secret if she was to discover how to help him.

She hurried down the path, wincing as the gravel bit through the thin-soled booties and into her sore feet. Sir Davey needed to be told about the forest, too, and especially about the unicorn. She shivered as she recalled his patchy coat and his dull horn, after she’d seen through his glamour. The oaks across the lane from Heartwood were so sad, and they had reason to be. Between the logging and the unicorn’s decline, they’d had a rough century. She wanted to help them, but she didn’t know where she could summon that much power—not to mention time, since she had to work, help at Heartwood, and show Laurie around.

Keelie crouched down, hidden below the level of the bushes as she passed the Admin building. She didn’t want to get caught by Finch. Tomorrow, she would swallow her pride and take the next job. She still had to pay for those Lady Annie boots.

A few of the last-minute guests, probably from the pub, were dragging down the path out of the Faire, still singing. She got some odd looks, and no wonder. She was too exhausted to care.

All around, artisans were packing up and food vendors were cleaning their areas. A crowd of tall men was ahead of her on the narrow path, and Keelie slowed down, stuck behind them. She was about to tap one on the shoulder and ask him nicely to move aside when she realized that it was Little John, carrying his thick staff. He seemed to sense her and turned to look. She slowed, afraid he’d hit her, but he winked at her and walked on, his long legs striding easily next to Robin Hood and Will Scarlet. Maid Marian walked more slowly, dragging behind.

From here, Keelie could see the blur that seemed to hover over Maid Marian’s face. She squinted. Some sort of magic, but she couldn’t tell what.

Then she overheard Will Scarlet say, “Hey Jared, I’ll meet you down at Rivendell.”

The guy playing Robin Hood waved his hand in a see-you-there motion.

Tired as she was, Keelie still summoned up a big dose of healthy appreciation for the guy playing Robin Hood. If she had been playing Maid Marian, she would’ve had her arms and lips locked around that hunky piece of work in green. Keelie thought of the party at the Shire, at the High Mountain Faire, and Captain Dandy Randy’s wandering hand. She blushed at the memory.