Hear Me (20 page)

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the Deacon, and indeed, he sounded devastated.
 

Oh well
, she wanted to snap back at him. Guess my soul is lost for all eternity. Strange, though. It felt like the opposite. She felt as though she could fly.
 

“What should we do?” Beemer was asking Ryder. “You’re the spirit, and I’m the body…”

“But the miracle won’t work without the heart.”

“So that’s the spell,” she spat at him. “Spirit, body, heart? And blood to bind it all? Be honest with yourself, Deacon. You’re doing dark magic.” She raised her voice. “Do you know that? This barrier which you think protects the town from magic is stronger than most of the enchantments in the forest!”

Stronger than any she’d seen, in fact, except Archer’s. He’d been even stronger, to be able to break it.

There was a rumble through the crowd, and Beemer hissed and shook his head. “Enough of this. I’m not going to lose any more time or money to these backwards customs. Grab her.”

Hands clamped down on her arms and shoulders and Shawn jerked her hand out toward Beemer, who approached with a cup and something flashing silver in the lantern light. A knife.

“Let go!” she screamed, wide-eyed, looking to the crowd around her. Why was everyone just standing there while she was being attacked? “Help me!”

Nothing.

Deacon Ryder hovered behind, wringing his hands. “This isn’t ideal. It’s supposed to be of one’s own free will.”

“Superstitions,” Beemer grumbled. “Blood is blood.” And then he sliced into Ivy’s hand.

She gasped, but the pain wasn’t really so bad. She’d cut herself worse on shears in the greenhouse. It was the shock, the utter violation, and the fact that there were all these people standing around, waiting for it to happen. This was supposed to be
her
town.
 

Beemer caught some blood in the cup, then stood back. “That should do it. Let’s get a move on.”

Ivy whimpered as her blood dripped onto the gravel. Shawn still held her firmly as Mr. Beemer and Deacon Ryder headed over to one of the large, metal-grid elevators that ran up the side of the cliff and ascended.
 

As soon as they were gone, Shawn dropped her to the ground, and Ivy cradled her hand to her chest.
 

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” she shouted at him.
 

“Why can’t you just do as you’re told?” he shot back. He turned toward the back of the van. “Out, all of you.”

Jeb, Sallie, Bette, and the children wasted no time scrambling out of the back of the vehicle. Jeb carried Ivy’s pack.
 

“You can’t cause any more problems now,” Shawn said.

“You’re a monster,” Bette said.
 

“You forest people would know,” he snapped.

Jeb rushed over to Ivy. “Let me look at your hand.”

“There’s a First Aid kit in my pack.” As Jeb cleaned the wound on her palm and wrapped her hand in a bandage, Ivy looked up at the elevator, high at the top of the cliff. “What are they doing up there?”

“Black magic,” he said. “Blood magic.”

“I don’t know much about that.”

“Good girl.”

No, it wasn’t good. If she knew dark magic, maybe she’d know how to stop it. If she knew what held this town and Archer in its grip, she’d be able to fight it.

Jeb finished up with the bandages then straightened to look at the crowd. “This whole town is cursed tonight. You made a mistake once, three years ago, out of fear and ignorance. But tonight you have assaulted your neighbors. You have kidnapped children!”

Some of the people looked guilty at that accusation, but one of the townies called out, “You hate it here so much, you should just leave. Go back to the forest.”

“That’s how I found myself in the back of this fine gentleman’s van.”

Ivy shook her head. What was the use? The bells would start to ring again and this time, they didn’t even have redbell. She shut her eyes and sighed. This was what Archer had said would happen, wasn’t it? That’s why he wanted to take the redbell and escape back into the forest with it. He knew that no one in the town would listen long enough to realize they had nothing to fear.

A twang traveled down the length of the lattice, shivering all the thousands of tiny, silver bells like the first lance of a migraine.

Sallie, Jeb, and Ivy put their hands over their ears, but after that one little clang, they stopped again. Ivy looked around. Bette, wisely, seem to have disappeared with the children. Thank goodness. No one needed to be here to see this abomination. If she were Bette, she’d be running with the kids out of town.

“I can’t go to the forest,” Sallie was saying, a sob catching her throat. “I don’t know anyone there. My pa’s long dead, and I was never close to my forest side.” She looked up at the lattice, her eyes wide. “But I can’t take those bells. Not without the tea. I can’t take it.”

Jeb put his arm around her. “We’ll figure something out.”
 

Ivy didn’t know what. Perhaps they’d leave town entirely, start somewhere new. Maybe this was the perfect solution for the townsfolk, not only to divide themselves from the forest, but to cast out any remaining citizens with links to the land. Ivy tried to imagine going back to her old life, and couldn’t. She tried to imagine leaving, like her fantasy of escape the night the bells stopped, but found she couldn’t picture that either. There was no life for her out in the world, in desert or city or tropical island. She peered into the endless forest. Archer was in there. Her Archer. And he needed her.
 

Over the winter wind, she thought she heard the sound of music. Something pale flashed between the trees.

Around her, the people seemed to notice it, too. Some turned their flashlights on the woods, as the night turned lavender and blue and black. The noise got louder—not the clanging din of silver bells, but soft, sweet melodies. Songs Ivy remembered from summers in the trees.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Her reddish hair was braided in a crown about her head, and a redbell was tucked behind one ear. She looked a bit like Archer, and Ivy recognized her at once. A black-haired boy came next, in a brown hide coat, with redbell in his buttonhole. More children followed, each in their simple forest clothes and each sporting a single, crimson flower. All were singing.

“It’s the forest folk.” The whisper traveled through the group like a wave.

There were more than a dozen now, more than two dozen, and their parents followed, their hands outstretched, their skin and clothes pale as deer bellies in the darkness.
 

“They’ll bewitch us!” someone cried.

They approached, walking right up to the border of silent bells. A young woman came to stand with the first two children. Her hair fell like a midnight waterfall down her back and her face was one Ivy had seen in Archer’s visions. She stood and went over to the woman.

“I am River,” she said to Ivy. “Thank you for the flowers.”

“Archer’s sister-in-law?” Ivy asked.

The woman cocked her head to the side. “It is not your townie law that made him my family, but yes.”

“What are you doing here?” Shawn yelled from what he must have considered a safe distance.

“We were told they plan to resurrect the barrier.”

“Told by Archer?” Ivy asked.

The woman nodded, sadly. “It was a great sacrifice for him. We have come to escape the forest, while there is still time. It is no longer a place for us, but we will use your gift of redbell to provide us with safe passage through your town into a new wilderness.”

Of course. They hadn’t wanted the redbell to help them survive in the forest, but rather to help them survive outside of it.
 

Another twang of the lattice, and the dozens of forest folk joined Ivy and her friends in crouching and wincing in pain.
 

“We’d better do this quick,” said Jeb, and yanked at the bottom of the barrier, trying to create a gap for the forest folk to slip through.

“Wait, stop!” cried Shawn and he started to step forward, but another townie placed a hand on his arm.

“They want to be free from the forest,” she argued. “These children, they want to be free. We have to help them.”

River nodded. “We will die trapped away in here. We have no choice.”

Shawn turned on the townsfolk. “You want them in your town?”

“They won’t be in the town, moron,” Ivy said. “None of us can live here when the barrier goes up.” She wasn’t sure where else the forest folk could go, though. They were sensitive to the trappings of civilization, to electricity and steel and cell phone towers. But that would be a problem they solved later, out of earshot of the deadly bells.

Ivy searched the group in the forest. “Where is Archer?”

River looked at her curiously. “He isn’t one of us.”

“He’s choosing to stay in the forest?” she asked. “Alone?”

The woman was unfazed, and her voice was calm when she replied. “He has been alone, Ivy Potter. You cannot wield such dark magics and live among people.” Then she turned to crawl beneath the barrier after her children.
 

As Jeb and Sallie helped the forest folk to crawl through the gap between the lattice and the ground, River turned to Ivy and pointed up the cliff.

“How many of them are casting this spell?”
 

“Two,” Ivy replied.

“Two? A strange number for black magic.”

“It’s the blood of three,” Jeb corrected, still pulling kids out. “They stole some of Ivy’s blood when she wouldn’t help them.”

“My father,” Ivy explained. “He did the spell with them the first time.” Then she remembered what Ernest Beemer said when he’d cut her. “Something about the two other men being spirit and body, and my father—and me—being the heart.”

“Blood magics,” River confirmed. “They’ll need three, and midnight. We have a few hours yet, to get away.”

“But what about Archer?” Ivy begged River. “He can’t stay in the forest alone. He’ll be consumed.”

“He’s lost,” River replied, her tone so detached Ivy’s fingers itched to slap her. “He’s been lost since the moment he agreed to try to stop the bells. Just like his brother. They gave their souls to help us.”

“No!” Ivy said. “I saw him!”

River looked at her sadly. “You do not see much, Ivy Potter, with your townie eyes.”

“I saw all I needed,” Ivy snapped. Who did this lady think she was, the queen of the forest? “Yes, he does dark magic, but he did it for you. You can’t leave him alone in the forest. With nothing to fight for, how will there be any chance of saving him?”

“There
is
no chance of saving him,” said River. “He has helped us, but he hasn’t triumphed. Archer is lost, Ivy Potter. Trust me. I know more of magic than you.”

Ivy grit her teeth. That may be true, but she knew more of Archer than anyone. She’d let him go once, and his own people had allowed him to sacrifice himself. Ivy may not be forest folk, but she belonged to Archer, and he to her. She wasn’t letting him get stuck in the forest again.

A third shudder traveled down the wires, scorching through their eardrums. Jeb hissed and dropped the lattice on a forest woman, who screamed in agony. As they pulled her out from beneath the barrier, great red lacerations appeared on her flesh, as if she’d been cut with a whip. Jeb looked down at his hands, which bore similar markings.

Ivy turned to retrieve her First Aid kit.

Suddenly, a few of the townsfolk stepped up. “Grab that over there,” said one to another, “let’s get these people out quick.”
 

The woman who’d argued with Shawn looked at her. “They won’t hurt us yet, right? Just the magic people?”

Ivy nodded mutely.

River stared up at the cliffs. “It is a strong spell they are casting, and a ruthless one. Three legs form a steady stool. The body man and spirit man, they must have firm beliefs.”

Ivy knew they did. Deacon Ryder truly believed the forest was evil, and the forest folk devils out to steal all their souls. And Ernest was in it for the money for his quarry— the dangers of the forest kept big business from town and material wealth from his pockets.

“Heart — that is your blood?”

“Yes,” Ivy said. “Because my father. He… loved me, and he was afraid he’d lose me to the forest.”

River’s eyes widened, but she said nothing, which was fine by Ivy. She didn’t need anyone else to pity her father, and his wretched, fearful love.

The last of the forest folk were crawling under the gap. Ivy stared out into the darkness.

“Where is he?” she asked softly.

River hesitated. “My man is gone, too, Ivy Potter. My children’s father.”

Ivy nodded. “Archer told me. He died taking on the barrier.”

“Long before that, he was taken by dark magic. I know how it feels to lose him.”

She bit her lip. “Archer’s not dead.”

River took a deep breath. “He wants to be. The darkness is too extreme. Let him go.”