I stumbled backward, cradling my hand, trying to catch my breath, and fell straight into Osprey’s arms. His blindfold was off, hands untied, eyes searing with relief and joy. His lips parted slightly. Was he trembling?
One of his hands held a stick like a club. He must have broken the bear’s grip on me.
“You saved me,” I said stupidly.
“Always,” he said, smiling slightly, and then he gasped, doubling over and clutching his chest. My bee screamed in my head.
I caught him as he collapsed toward the forest floor, his face outlined in the harsh light of the burning Forbidding bear. We were vulnerable here. The Claws would follow, and the fire would light their way right to us. I had to get him out of here.
He was sucking in little shuddering breaths, shaking from head to toe. I clutched him to me as fear clawed at my heart like its own kind of Forbidding bear. I shouldn’t have put my bee in him. What had I done? In my mind, the bee was still screaming, and I had the sense of something folding it, kneading it, pounding it like meat before the roasting pan.
“Hold on,” I said, but I didn’t know what I thought he should be holding on for. There would be no relief unless I let the bee out. We couldn’t know how long it would take. We couldn’t ease his pain.
His hands came up to clutch my arms and his face twisted in pain.
Maybe I should stop it. Maybe I should just let him rest.
“Don’t stop it,” he gasped after a moment. “I can tell you’re thinking about it. Worried about the consequences. Let the bee keep working.”
“What if it kills you?” I whispered. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
He reached into his sleeve and pulled out one of his toothpicks, his face clouded with pain as he jammed it between his teeth and scowled furiously at it.
“I’m harder to kill than you think.”
“What if it triggers the death of your father and crowns your brother Emperor?”
He looked away. “We can’t know that it will. Now, help me back up on the back of that beast. I don’t have the strength to do it myself.”
“You shouldn’t have come down in the first place,” I scolded him, but I helped him to his feet and took most of his weight as I helped him back to the snorting carabao. The beast rolled its eyes, but it was well-trained. Unlike Marcel. I gave him a look and he just looked right back, totally unashamed at freeing Osprey and letting him come after me. “Help me get him up.”
Marcel complied, swaying as he helped me pull Osprey onto the back of the huge bull. Osprey had gone pale, sweat forming across his forehead and dampening his shirt and jacket. None of that was good. We barely managed to heave him up.
I sat there a moment when we were done, gasping for air, breathing in the scents of sweat and fire and angry bovine. My hands were shaking. Not from the bear. I’d fought Forbidding-bears before. They had a real taste for tearing horses apart so there always seemed to be one after our herd. No, they were shaking for other reasons. We all made choices. And we lived with the consequences. But could I live with having killed Osprey with my magic?
“You were supposed to keep him safe up here,” I growled to Marcel. He leaned to the side and vomited again before speaking.
“I told you tying the lad up was a bad idea. See? He saved your life.” Marcel had Osprey’s belt. He gave me a look of defiance before wrapping it around Osprey’s waist for him and buckling it. He jammed the blindfold in Osprey’s pocket. Osprey barely even seemed to notice. He was chewing the toothpick aggressively, eyes focused ahead, hands gripping handfuls of his jacket as if they needed something – anything – to steady them.
I shook my head. Marcel had not helped at all. But I had two men in desperate need of care, enemies on our heels, and nowhere to take them that was safe. I heard a call in the distance. Someone had seen the fire.
Forbidding take it!
“Where’s this gap, Marcel?”
“Right there.” His eyes were glassy, and he was pointing to where the Forbidding tangled between the trees. There was a faint trail that led to that spot, but it looked more like a game trail than anything else.
“There’s nothing there.”
Behind me, there was another call, this one closer. They were on our trail.
“Either trust me that there is a gap,” Marcel said, “or don’t trust me and the Claws will take you to where you don’t want to go. Why is it that they want you so badly?”
I flicked the reins and the carabao lurched forward.
“That’s not much of a path,” I told Marcel. “Would you really have left the cart with a friend and walked down this path? Where is the friend?”
“In his home at the other end of this path,” Marcel said evenly, “this was truly the next step on our destination. If you can just trust me enough to step inside the tangle of the Forbidding, then you will see why. I realize you are not a girl who trusts easily, but you can’t do everything on your own. Sometimes you have to trust that someone else has your interests in mind, too.”
But I didn’t trust him – not where the Forbidding was concerned. It was hard enough to trust family and friends to have your back there, never mind someone who you barely knew. I reached back to pat Osprey on the leg to try to tell him I was with him as much as I could be. Then I walked the carabao up to the edge of the tangle where the path seemed to roll up on itself like a curling fern leaf in spring. The edges of it formed waving tentacles. I hesitated at the edge, pulling on the reins to slow the carabao but there was a shout behind us. Tense, I looked back and saw the other carabao charging through the trees.
I needed to decide right now.
“It’s real. And it’s here. Come on, girl!” Marcel said in worried gasps. "Just go.”
Osprey moaned.
I shook my head, trying to convince myself to go against every instinct and walk right into the tangles of the Forbidding. I was going to have to trust Marcel. I didn’t want to, but what other chance was there?
I clenched my teeth, flicked the reins, and let the carabao step into the tangled mass. Tentacles reached toward us, waving and swaying and the path rolled upward like a wave, taking us with it and out of sight of the forest. We rolled sharply to the side and then I had the oddest feeling that the carabao was walking upside down – oh, its feet were still on the path, but the path was somehow in the sky.
I focused my eyes on a single point ahead and refused to look anywhere else. At this rate, I was going to be ill – and I couldn’t afford to be ill. Everyone else was ill already.
The carabao couldn’t manage more than a walk on a path that twisted like a corkscrew, so I held onto his reins with one hand and wrapped my other hand back to help balance Osprey who was slumped against my back. I gritted my teeth and hoped he could just hold on.
There were no more shouts behind us, no sound of pursuit, but the Forbidding tentacles wrapped toward us, waving and slicing at the air and I realized Marcel was right. This path was some kind of gap. If we kept to the path – though it tangled in strange ways – the tentacles couldn’t reach us.
I bit my lip, focused now on keeping the carabao straight while a voice sang to me from the Forbidding.
YESSS LITTLE BEE. YOU HAVE RETURNED. LET US SSSSIFT YOU. LET USSS SEE YOUR HEART.