If the curse had somehow been lifted, and she found herself in the middle of the wood, she’d be terrified. And calling out like that . . . It wouldn’t be long before an ancient found her.
“I’m here!” I called. “It’s her—I have to go. I have to find her. I’ll be right back, I promise,” I told Vala, quickly fashioning a torch from a fallen limb and a length of cloth I ripped from my oversized shirt. I lit it, and the fog around us warmed to a pumpkin orange. It didn’t help me see much farther, but at least I had some light. Though I didn’t know how I was going to get back to camp—the fog was too thick to see anything beyond the reach of my hand, and I didn’t have any string to tie to me so that I could lead myself back, and all there was in the surrounding area were river stones and dead trees with hanging moss—
Moss.
I grabbed a tuft of moss from a nearby tree, returned, pulling my iron knife out of my pocket, and pricked the tip of my finger. A bead of red blood bloomed, and I pressed it into the moss. Almost instantly—faster than it ever had back in the Village-in-the-Valley—the magic in my blood took root, and the moss in my hand grew, curling down over my fingers, until it was as long as I was, and still it kept growing. When there were about fifty yards of it (and by then it was slowing), I took up one end of it, gave it to Vala, and made her promise not to let the end go no matter what happened. It would be my only way back to the water through the fog, since I certainly didn’t trust myself to find my way back on my own.
“Cerys!” Wen called again, closer.
I steeled myself, tied the other end to my sash with the crown, and set out into the mist.
There was no path, and the underbrush was thick, so my going was slow as I picked my way through the wood. The trees bent and swayed in the wind, the thin black leaves rustling, sounding like laughter. When I looked straight up, the branches were so thick and the fog so consuming, I couldn’t see even the moon or stars. I couldn’t see anything.
The fog was suffocating.
“Wen?” I called, holding tight to the hanging moss, the torch in my other hand. There was no answer. I wandered a little farther. I’d go as far as the string would let me, and then I’d turn back—with or without her.
“Anwen!” I called again.
“Ceeeeeeeryssss.”
I froze in my footsteps. A cold chill crawled down my spine. I spun around to try to find the owner of the voice, but there were only the shadowy trunks of ancient trees and fog.
So much fog.
My torch flickered. Something was wrong. I should never have left the campsite.
The wind tickled against my ear, and I swatted it away, ducking beneath a low-hanging limb. On the other side was a clearing where nothing grew. Trees lay bent and broken on the ground, old and rotted, while the soil itself crinkled dryly as I crept across it. There was a strange smell here, too, like smoke from Papa’s pipe and something I couldn’t quite place, so pungent I almost gagged.
“Ceeeeeeryssss,” the voice whispered again, this time closer—close enough for me to hear the honeyed edges of it. My heart panged with familiarity.
It was Wen.
I spun around toward the voice, but as soon as I turned, all I saw was that unending white fog.
There was no one.
With my free hand, I began to wind the moss tight, until I realized that I was winding too long without it going taut. Frightened, I dropped the torch as I reeled in the plant and found the end. It had been crudely cut.
“Ceeeeeerysssss,” the voice of my best friend hummed again, and the sound of footsteps, light and brisk, followed.
There was no denying that there was something in this glen with me. I felt its eyes on me now, as sure as I smelled the pipe smoke and the rot—like death. I remembered that stench now.
It came with the ancient as it breathed its hot breath on my neck.
I slipped my hand into the pocket of my trousers, my fingers curling around the iron knife there, my other hand on the crown at my side. I should’ve left it with Vala, but I hadn’t thought of it at the moment. Fox was right—I shouldn’t have kept it on my person.
“Ceeeeeeeeeeeryssssss . . .” The whisper came again, as soft as snow through the trees.
The fog was so bright and disorienting, and it clung to me like a damp towel. I searched the ground around me for my footprints, but when I looked down, I found mine—and another’s.
Large, taloned, and deep.
A tree branch snapped in front of me, and a hulking figure appeared in the mist. With a bolt of fear, I realized that I was well and truly lost, and the thing that was once Anwen had found me.
18
The Empty Promise
Fox
“DAISY!” I CALLED, but she didn’t answer.
The damned fog was everywhere. If it hadn’t been for the shadows in my eyes that picked up the magnetitic fields, I would’ve been lost ages ago. They were like dark spots at the top of my vision, always pointing in the way that I now know as north. If she and Vala had continued following the river, I couldn’t be that far behind them. Or at least, I thought not.
As I traveled, the fog continued to encroach on the path, silent and thick.
Where was that impossible girl? My throat began to constrict, even though I tried to stay calm. She was just ahead of me. She wasn’t that far—why didn’t I keep her in my sights?
The wood grew more dense, the rush of the river was muted by the fog, but there were small tracks in the earth from wild animals. Nothing too wild or beastly, but I bristled at every crinkle in the underbrush. While I wasn’t the one carrying the crown, there were still things in the wood that wouldn’t mind crunching on my bones, too.
And one of them decided to pay me a visit.
“Where did your flower girl go, fox-boy?”
I jumped, tripping on a root as I spun toward the voice, and fell backward into a hollowed-out tree.
The monster faded out of the dark wood—a shadow made flesh. He propped his hand up on the side of the tree and leaned in toward me. “Frightened you, did I?”
Shit. It was that guy—what had Daisy said his name was? Seren? I hadn’t even heard him sneaking up on me.
I pushed myself back into the hollow of the tree even more, but there was nowhere for me to go. I was too big for the tree; my shoulders jammed into the sides, brushing against the dry moss.
He cocked his head. Black rot had crept up the right side of his face, disorienting because his left shoulder was full of blooms: a bouquet of wildflowers blossoming across his chest and down his arm. The branch I had thrown at him was still embedded in his shoulder, though it looked like he’d been trying to dig it out to no avail.
Daisy’s power really was terrifying.
His black eyes settled on my face. “Look at you, cowering like some poor little creature. Is that why she left you?” His voice—it wasn’t like before. Back at the cottage, he had sounded like a thousand crows in unison, but now he just sounded like a man. “Did she kick you out of her adventuring party?”
I clenched my teeth together. Every piece of me wanted to sink into the shadows of the tree and hide. Get away from this corpse. The wrongness came off him in waves.
He cocked his head to the other side, like a raven assessing something shiny. I fisted my hands so he couldn’t see them shake.