She glanced around and tried to get her bearings. The town had been behind her, but she wasn’t sure of that anymore. Her legs shaking, she bent to retrieve the hoe she’d dropped when she grabbed the tree. Gripping it so hard her hands hurt, she clenched her teeth and kept going.
She hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps before another stirring caught her. Everything blurred, the trees melting in the sun. This time, she had nothing to hold. She collapsed and dug her fingers into the bleeding earth. She tipped her head toward the boughs dripping hot, burning wax onto her. “I will not leave without my sister,” she said firmly.
The feeling faded, but it was only pulling back into a crouch, ready to spring at any moment. She bolted, and the stirring struck. The world swirled around her, melting branches dripping on her, forming blisters that popped, clear fluid running down her skin.
With a cry, she slammed into a tree, fell into a patch of prickle weeds, and promptly lost the contents of her stomach. She rested her forehead on a clean patch of dirt. Had Sela endured this stirring? It hurt to think of her four-year-old sister facing this.
She threw back her head. “I will not leave without my sister!” She pushed herself to her feet. She’d lost the trail, but she couldn’t stop. She limped away from the patch of prickly weeds and plowed doggedly forward.
When the stirring came again, she did her best to ignore it, forcing herself to stumble through the whirling shapes all around her, hatred pelting her. She tried to avoid the roots that snatched at her feet. The stirrings came faster and faster, one on top of another. Clenching her eyes shut, she felt her way forward. Sometimes she ran into things. When she did, she carefully felt her way around and kept going.
Something growled behind her. The beast? She took off running and slammed into another tree. She cried out as something pierced her palm. On her hands and knees, she crawled. And then the stirring stopped. She looked back. The trees were whole again, glowering as if furious she’d escaped. If the beast had been there, she saw no sign of it.
She collapsed and lay still, panting. Her feet stung with thorns, but though welts and scrapes covered her arms and legs, there were no burns, no blisters. She lifted her hand. A splinter the size of her pinky had pierced the meaty part of her palm opposite her thumb. Bracing herself, she yanked it out, though a sliver was left behind. Fresh blood welled, dribbling down her wrist. She squeezed her palm to slow the blood flow.
With a groan, she sat up and pulled stickers from her feet and backside. In the relative qui-et, she heard a child singing. She tipped her ear toward the right, where dark shadows lightened to emerald.
“Sela?” Larkin whispered, the sound of her voice loud in the stillness. She pushed to her feet and hobbled through the thinning trees and into a meadow filled to the brim with wildflowers. She squinted in the bright light streaming down in shafts from the clouds, the colors so sharp it was almost painful.
In the middle of it all, next to a burbling stream, sat Sela in her simple ankle-length tunic. She was sur-rounded by flowers. She’d stuffed them into her collar, her cuffs, and her wild, strawberry blonde hair.
“Sela!” Larkin cried as she ran toward her.
Sela’s round face lit up, her bright green eyes a stark contrast to her muddy face. “Larkin! Look, pretty flowers,” she said, lisping the l and r. She held out a fistful as proof.
Larkin dropped to her knees and took her sister’s too-thin face in her hands. She really was fine. Sela smiled brilliantly back. Larkin bundled her sister into her arms and rocked her back and forth, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Sela, you know you’re not supposed to go into the For-bidden Forest! The stirring—how did you even get past it?”
Sela rested her hands on Larkin’s shoulders, her little brow furrowed in concentration. Something broke free inside Larkin—a burst of light where before there had been only darkness.
She realized her eyes were closed. When she opened them, the last vestiges of the oppressive hatred were gone. In its place, warmth and life spread through her, growing and enlarging until her limbs tingled with energy and power. She took a free breath. She felt alive, more alive than she’d ever felt before. The sensation was familiar, and yet foreign at the same time—like the stories her mother used to tell of her privileged childhood.
Larkin looked at the forest with new eyes. It no longer seemed a dark and foreboding place. Instead of sinister, the shadows seemed cool and inviting, promising protection and safety. The rotting leaves smelled spicy and fresh. Birdsong sounded in the distance. The new sensation was so strong it overwhelmed Larkin’s fear.
“All better,” Sela whispered as she patted Larkin’s cheek with a hand that smelled of crushed plants and dirt.
Larkin gaped at her sister. “What did you do?”
Sela shrugged. “The trees are our friends.” Her big green eyes full of concern, Sela thrust the flowers into her face. “Picked flowers for you.”
Remembering where they were, Larkin brushed the tears from her cheeks as her nervous gaze swept over the meadow. It now seemed a pretty place, but it was all deception. This was the Forbidden Forest. And Sela might have escaped its stirring, but she wouldn’t outrun its beast, with its terrible claws and insatiable hunger. If it found them, they were as good as dead.
She forced herself to be calm. Running for safety would do her no good if she went the wrong way. “I’m lost, Sela. I don’t know the way back.”
Sela patted Larkin’s cheek again. “Larkin, don’t cry.”
Larkin gave a wobbly smile and looked around again, trying to remember where she’d come into the meadow. Something out of place caught her attention, and her gaze snapped back.
In the shadows of a tree, a man watched them. He stood far enough away that she could cover his form with her outstretched hand. Her heart lightened with hope. Had one of the villagers come for them after all?
The man stretched back a bowstring in one fluid motion, the arrow flying directly toward them. Larkin could do little more than let out a squeak of surprise and hunch protectively over Sela, her eyes squeezing shut. Behind her came an inhuman scream of pain and a crash.
Holding her sister tight, Larkin whipped around and leaped to her feet. She staggered back from a writhing, monstrous lizard the size of a man, an arrow sticking out of its eye.
The beast had found her.
With another scream, it clawed at the arrow until it broke off. Its remaining eye fixed on her, and its tongue flicked out to taste the air. It charged, mouth full of curving teeth. Larkin jumped back. Its maw snapped shut over empty air. It gathered itself to lunge, when another arrow bloomed from its gaping mouth. The creature gave a roaring shriek.
“Run!” came a cry from behind her.
Move, she screamed at her sluggish body. Gasping a breath into her starving lungs, Larkin held her sister tight and sprinted away from the creature, toward the man running in their direction. He hauled an ax and shield from his back and charged the creature. The lizard lunged, its massive tail launching it forward. The man braced himself behind his shield, ax swinging up and under. They collided in a heap.
Clutching Sela to her, Larkin panted and waited for one or the other of them to move. If there were more beasts, she would need this man. If he didn’t rise . . . she didn’t know what she would do. Sela lay still in Larkin’s arms, her hands fisted in Larkin’s hair. Larkin rubbed her back, trying to emit comfort she herself didn’t feel.