Only her parents ever risked coming this close to the forest. She stepped back, grabbed the hoe, and held it like a spear—a dull, mud-caked spear. It was laughable, but she felt better with it in her hands. She searched the shadowy stillness for signs of the beast.
Maisy circled Larkin. “When day dies and shadows grow, the beast without his kingdom goes.” She was nothing if not cruel.
“Shut it, Maisy!” Larkin searched for a puff of tangled blonde hair, a flash of pale skin. She saw nothing. “Sela?” she called again. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded hollow. With her father at the tavern and her mother attending a birth, Larkin had been left in charge of her sister. How long had it been since she’d heard her little sister playing? She couldn’t remember.
Pushing damp strands of copper hair out of her face, Larkin whirled in a circle. On this side of the river, the fields were fairly flat. She should have easily spotted a muddy four-year-old girl. But there was no sign of her.
Maisy circled closer, stalking Larkin. “Shadows his cloak, magic his staff, his snaggily claws reach ‘n grasp.”
Larkin’s heart squeezed violently. The last thing she needed was the druid’s mad daughter taunting her. She shot Maisy a glare and ran to the last place she’d seen her sister, mud clinging to her soles and splattering her back. Her skirt tugged free of her belt and dropped around her hips, hampering her every step.
“Sela?” she called again, louder. Only the steady patter of rain answered.
Larkin swept the muck for Sela’s tracks. There was a general mess, like Sela had decided to swim in the mud, then perfect little footprints, the toes digging deep as if she’d run. Larkin hiked up her wayward skirt and followed the erratic footprints past mud mounds, mud cakes, and finally, partially melted mud balls. The path took her closer to the smear of trees, but then the tracks went from zigzags to a straight line—directly toward the Forbidden Forest.
“Snatching the virgins from their dreams, never a chance to voice their screams.” Maisy squatted, her head cocked to the side as her ragged fingernail drew an X through one of Sela’s tiny footprints.
“Go away, Maisy!”
Dread wrapping a poisonous cloud around her, Larkin followed those tracks to the outer edge of the outstretched boughs. She stood there, the wind pressing her ragged, damp skirt against her legs. The trees whispered dark secrets to each other. If she strained her hearing, she might be able to understand the words, but she was quite certain she didn’t want to.
Beside her, Sela’s tracks had also paused—she could tell because they were deeper and nearly perfectly formed—but then her baby sister’s footprints crossed into the Forbidden Forest.
“Ancestors save me,” Larkin whispered. The sun chose that moment to peek out from be-hind the clouds, though the rain continued drumming against her head and shoulders. The trees’ shadows stretched toward her toes, ready to infect her with their inky darkness.
Maisy stood beside her and faced the trees. “Back to the forest, he doth go, to nibble and dribble their bones just so.”
“You saw her go in!” Larkin whirled on Maisy, grabbed the girl’s sodden shift in her fists, and brought her muddy face close to her own. “Why didn’t you stop her? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did tell you.”
That idiotic song! Maisy closed her eyes and tipped her face to the sky. Rivulets of water exposed streaks of pale skin.
“The forest called to Sela,” Maisy said. “She heeded the call.”
Maisy was as bizarre and unwelcome as a midsummer blizzard. Not worth beating to a pulp. Larkin shoved Maisy so she landed hard on her backside. “She’s a child!” The forest often sent its beasts to take virgins as sacrifice—the Taken—but never a girl younger than fourteen. Sela must have wandered in on her own.
Larkin was furious. Sela might be only four, but she knew better.
Larkin pointed back to town. “Go get help!”
Crazy Maisy lay back in the mud with a plop. “The men won’t risk the forest—not for your sister.”
“Get your druid father. He serves the forest! He can make it spit her out again.”
“He would praise her sacrifice.”
Larkin wrapped her arms around her middle, partly to hold herself together and partly to keep from strangling Maisy. Every year, girls went missing—sacrifices taken from their beds by the beast. They disappeared in the night. No one ever saw them leave.
And no one ever saw them again.
Now her baby sister was gone, and it was Larkin’s fault. She should have watched her clos-er, should have reminded her—again—to stay away from the forest. She looked back at her home, situated on a little rise beside the river. The conical hut rose from the ground like a beehive. Be-yond the river was the town of Hamel. Blue-gray smoke rose from some of the roofs. For half a thought, she considered going back for help. But Crazy Maisy was right. No one would risk those shadows for Sela, not even Papa. He’d give Sela up as lost, or worse, devoured by the beast—one less worthless girl’s mouth to feed.
To never again feel the solid weight of her sister in her arms, to never come home from the fields to find a cluster of flowers on her sleeping mat . . . Larkin couldn’t bear to lose her sunshine.
“Once to the forest she hath gone, never again will she see the dawn.” Crazy Maisy had slipped away to twirl through the fields. She’d made that last part up; it wasn’t part of the song.
Larkin couldn’t go back home. She had to go in after her. Clenching both hands around the hoe, Larkin eased into the forest.
Rotten leaves and naked branches closed in on her from every direction. She had the im-mediate sense she’d stepped into some vast being; the forest was aware of her presence, and it didn’t want her there. Per-haps even more frightening, the beast could be hiding right beside her, just out of sight, and she’d never know.
With every step she took, the animosity bearing down on her grew. She glanced back. Between the massive trunks, she could make out the field that shone behind her, a rainbow arching over her town. She could still go home—and tell her mother that her youngest child had been devoured and that it was Larkin’s fault.
Not really a choice at all.
Larkin willed herself to keep moving, to keep her attention on her sister’s fading prints as the forest’s anger grew into a living thing that gnashed and clawed. The ground here didn’t take tracks as well as the mud of the plowed field, but she saw enough signs of Sela’s passage—a freshly broken stick, a stray footprint, more little mud balls—to believe she was headed in the right di-rection.
And then a giant picked up the forest and spun it—at least that’s what it felt like. She grabbed the nearest tree and held on, the bark biting into her hands. Anger and hatred stung like a thousand hornets. She had a sudden urge to do something. Some nameless word rested on the tip of her tongue, but she lost it in her desperate attempt to hold on to the tree.
“You think you can frighten me,” Larkin gasped. “I’ve known hatred and pain my entire life. You can’t scare me!”
Finally, the rolling slowed and stopped. She concentrated on holding still, though her head continued to spin. She blinked a few times, eyes watering, to keep from bolting away from an animosity so strong it made her stomach heave. Was this what they called the stirring?