“That thing nearly had the arm off me!” said Danny, his voice shaking.
“Are you surprised, you prat?” snapped Maddy. “You should have listened to Roisin. They’re not coming anywhere near us now.”
“We’ve got to stay on the path. Stay on the path and we’re fine,” said Roisin, still rigid with shock. “We follow the rules and we’ll be OK. It’s just a faerie tale. Nothing really bad ever happens in faerie tales.” She looked at Maddy. “We can’t get hurt in here, right?”
“Roisin, the big bad wolf
ate
Little Red Riding hood, remember?” said Maddy. “Did it hurt you much?” she asked Danny.
“I’m not too bad,” said Danny. “My arm aches though.”
He got to his feet while Maddy scooped George up again. The little terrier was panting with fear, and his breath rasped in the silence. She grabbed Roisin by the arm. “Come on—let’s keep moving.”
As soon as they started to walk, the loping shapes appeared again. Roisin flinched and let out a little sob. Maddy squeezed her arm. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other,” she whispered. “This path has to lead somewhere.”
Then Maddy saw what was waiting for them up ahead. The forest opened up into a clearing filled with tall, frost-hardened grass. The path they were on led into the clearing, but there it stopped.
It was a dead end.
“What happens when the path runs out, Ro?” asked Danny.
“I don’t know, do I?” snapped Roisin. “It never runs out in the story.”
“Maybe this is what they want—a clear site, no trees to climb,” said Maddy.
“Then we won’t go in,” said Roisin. “Let’s just turn around and walk back the way we came.”
“But that way doesn’t get us home, Ro,” said Danny.
“I don’t care,” hissed Roisin. “I am
not
getting off this path.”
“I don’t see that we have much choice, Danny,” said Maddy. “Let’s just turn around slowly and walk back. Sooner or later they’ll give up, and we can find another way to get to the tower.”
As the three of them turned to retrace their steps, a huge black wolf stepped on to the path in front of them. He planted massive paws in the grass to lower his head and snarl, showing what had to be the biggest pair of fangs Maddy had ever seen in her life. The hair on his back stood up as he paced toward them, narrowing his green eyes, his muzzle quivering as he peeled black lips back from his teeth. Saliva dripped from his mouth, and his tail twitched behind him.
Carefully, all three children retreated, never taking their eyes off the wolf. His rasping snarl filled their ears, and his paws moved forward slowly and deliberately. They found themselves backing into the center of the clearing, where all around them wolf eyes glowed in the forest. The big black wolf stopped snarling, sat down in the center of the path, and curled his tail around his paws as neatly as a cat. He stared at them. The silence stretched tight.
“What do we do now?” whispered Maddy, as George trembled in her arms.
“I know it didn’t work last time, but I think we should climb a tree,” said Danny.
“But that means running toward them,” said Roisin. “We’ll never make it.”
The black wolf threw his head back and let out a long, trailing howl that shivered the silence apart. The pack grew excited, and Maddy could see them milling in the undergrowth, yipping and barking, but none joined in with the howl.
Suddenly he bounded toward them. They dropped to their knees and curled in on themselves, their arms wrapping around their heads, as he leaped over them and raced away into the trees. The pack crashed after him, all grace gone, as they chased after their leader.
The children stayed where they were for a few seconds, not daring to move a muscle. Maddy’s mind was numb with fear, and she kept waiting to feel the wolf’s hot breath on the nape of her neck. What she could feel was wet seeping through her jacket. She looked down at her clothes and the spreading yellow stain.
“I don’t believe this!” she yelled as she held George away from herself.
“What’s wrong?” asked Roisin.
“It’s George—he peed all over me!” said Maddy.
Roisin and Danny looked at each other and burst into hysterical laughter.
“It’s not funny!” yelled Maddy, which made them laugh so hard they bent double, clutching their stomachs. She held George up in front of her face, his belly
wet. “You’re a bad, bad dog,” she scolded. He wagged his tail sheepishly and licked her face in apology.
Danny and Roisin subsided into giggles, while Maddy ripped up handfuls of the frosty grass and tried to wipe her jacket clean. She nudged George with her knee. “You could do with a wipe as well,” she said.
“What was that all about then? Why didn’t that wolf go for us?” asked Danny in a very shaky voice.
“I have no idea,” said Maddy. “I am just glad he wasn’t feeling hungry.” She staggered to her feet. Her legs were rubbery with shock. “Well, the path stops here. I can’t see a clear way through the trees,” she said. “We are going to have to leave it if we want to keep going forward.”
“Nuts to that,” said Danny.
“Leave the path?!” yelled Roisin. Tears started to well in her big brown eyes. “You want us to do the one thing we know is going to get us eaten? Why do you think we should listen to you anyway? It’s your fault we’re here, your stupid idea to go after Stephen.” She started to cry.
Maddy looked at Danny, who shrugged his shoulders in disgust.
“I’m not standing around here waiting for them to come back,” he said. “She’s blubbing so much we wouldn’t hear them sneaking up on us. I’m going to climb a tree and see if I can spot a way out of here.”
He went over to a huge old pine tree and started looking for a way up.
“I did tell you to stay home, Roisin. I never asked you to come after me,” Maddy said.
“Wherever you go, there’s trouble,” Roisin sobbed.
Maddy felt hurt. She opened her mouth to say something back, but Roisin sighed and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Sorry,” she sniffed. “I’m a bit freaked out.”
“Um . . . yeah . . . no, that’s understandable,” said Maddy, surprised.
“I
hate
it when I cry,” said Roisin, scrubbing at her wet face. “It doesn’t mean I’m a coward, you know. I just cry easily, that’s all.”
“I never said you were,” said Maddy.
“
He
does,” said Roisin fiercely, jabbing her chin in Danny’s direction. “He thinks I’m a crybaby.”
“I’m not Danny,” said Maddy quietly. Roisin looked at her for a moment and then offered a watery smile.
Embarrassed, Maddy looked toward Danny to see how he was doing, but he was standing as if rooted to the spot. She frowned and walked over to him.
“What’s up with you?” she asked.
“The tree is staring at me,” said Danny, his eyes never leaving the trunk of the pine.
“Come again?”
“The. Tree. Is. Staring. At. Me,” said Danny in a low voice. “And it doesn’t look happy.”
Maddy glanced at the tree and saw two
brown eyes that glared at her malevolently. They flicked between herself and Danny, then began to roll menacingly as the two of them took a step back. Suddenly, the eyes shot forward, and a woody mouth splintered apart.
“BOO!” it shouted.
Maddy and Danny stumbled backward and watched, open-mouthed, as a piece of bark began to pull itself away from the tree and clamber down to the ground. As it walked toward them with a rolling gait, she could see a short body with long arms and legs, finished off by huge hands and feet that sported long, knobbly fingers and toes. What she first thought was a branch with a couple of leaves perched gamely on the end of it turned out to be the creature’s nose. Its head stopped at about
mid-thigh on Danny and it cocked its head to look up at them. Its massive eyes blinked in its woody face.
“What is it?” whispered Danny.
“It’s a dryad,” breathed Roisin behind them. “A faerie that lives in trees.”
“I’s not an
it
!” the woody man snapped.
“Sorry,” said Roisin, turning crimson. “I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just that . . .”
“Doesn’t matter if you didn’t mean to. You did,” he said.
They looked at each other. Maddy cleared her throat. “Well, my name is Maddy, and this is Danny and Roisin.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Danny and Roisin murmured.
They all stood there shifting uneasily from foot to foot as the little man continued to glare at them.
Maddy decided to try again. “What’s your name?”
“None of your business.”
“But we told you our names!” protested Maddy.
“Don’t care. Didn’t hear me ask for them, did you?” said the dryad.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Hobbs, tell them your name, and try to be a little bit civil,” sighed a voice above them. Another piece of pine tree began to climb down toward them. This one was taller and thinner than Hobbs, and stiff pine needles sprang out from his head like an Afro.
“Civil? To this lot?” shrieked Hobbs. “You know what they are, don’t you, Izzie? Men! Great, big, stinking
sacks of meat—you can smells them for miles! And with men come fire and axes.”
“We don’t mean any harm!” cried Roisin. “And we haven’t got any axes or matches or anything like that.”
“But you’ve got iron,” said Hobbs. “I can smells it. The whole forest tastes of it.”
The forest began to rustle, and the trees that surrounded the clearing shivered as more dryads climbed down. They began to gather around, creaking and rustling, one or two of them smacking their own jaws to get them working.
The clearing filled with dryads. Soon the air was busy with their chattering. Even the enormous trees seemed to bend down as if to listen. Some waved their hands as they talked, and Maddy noticed some of them jabbing their fingers in her direction. A slim dryad female with silver hair and skin and black eyes was making her way to the front of the crowd.
Roisin took a step toward Izzie and Hobbs, who were arguing fiercely in a scratchy language. She cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but could someone tell me where we are?”
Hobbs snorted. “If you don’t know that, girl, then you don’t have much of an imagination.”
Izzie smiled at her. “You’re in an older world, a world that humankind barely remembers.”
“But we made this up,” said Danny.
At this there were angry murmurs in the crowd.
“How did you make this world up, human child?” asked Izzie.
“From stories and faerie tales—stuff we remembered from when we were little,” said Danny.
The dryads began to laugh.
“And where do you think these stories came from?” snorted Hobbs. “They is echoes of what your ancestors remembered from when we walked the land with them, when they were squatting in their own filth and drawing on cave walls!”
“But I don’t understand,” said Maddy. “The stag told us what we knew would bring us power—we thought he meant magic, to help us get Stephen and go back home.”
The dryads began to talk very animatedly among themselves. Izzie grabbed Maddy by the arms. “A stag let you in here, do you say? A white stag?”
“Yes, yes—do you know who he is? What did he mean when he said we would have power?”
Izzie looked at her with eyes full of pity. “I think he meant that what you knew would guide you and help you stay alive,” he said.
Maddy stared back at him in horror. This was getting much too serious. She hadn’t signed up for mortal danger.
Roisin stared at her with wide eyes. “We’re going to die?” she asked.
“Hopefully,” said Hobbs.
Furious, Maddy turned on him. “I’ve got a poker in my hand, you know. Do you want a smack?”
“Try it, meat bag,” sneered the dryad.
“Stop it!” insisted Izzie, while Hobbs bristled indignantly. “Go home, human child,” he advised sadly. “There’s no place for you in the woods and rivers wild. Your friend is lost.”
“He can’t be,” said Maddy.
Izzie shook his head. “The Winter Queen has him. There is no hope. Go home.”
“Who is the Winter Queen?” asked Roisin.
“Liadan—the wife of Cernunnos, the Horned God, and queen of the Winter Court,” piped up a nut-brown dryad with a deeply wrinkled face.
Hobbs spat on the ground. “Queen, if you please!” he sneered. “She’s an uppity elf and no better than she should be. If Cernunnos weren’t so taken with her big eyes, he would have sent her and her family packing long ago.”
“Hush, Hobbs, you’ll get in terrible trouble saying things like that,” said Izzie, his eyes scanning the forest around them, while the other dryads whimpered and cowered.
“Don’t you shush me. I won’t stands for it!” The little dryad was practically jumping up and down on the spot with rage. “I am saying what all of you is thinking and none of you has the guts to say out loud. Cernunnos is befuddled and bewitched by a common elf. Nothing but trouble here since her and her kind arrived, dragging all kinds of human trash through the land. It’s bad enough she takes them for pets; now we have to put up
with their kith and kin chasing after them, stinking the place up with their iron.” He pointed a finger at Maddy. “She lets a bunch of you in every now and then, and until you die in here, we have to put up with the pollution of the worst of your emotions, the dregs of your id, every nightmare that haunts you. Go back to where you came from, you filthy, filthy creatures!”
With that, Hobbs turned and stomped up to his tree, melting away into the bark. Izzie wrung his hands and shifted nervously from foot to foot, swiveling his ears toward the rustling behind him as one by one the other dryads moved to slip away from the clearing.
Maddy looked at him. “This Liadan has taken kids before?”
He nodded. “Every now and then since she came, we have seen her riding through the woods with a child asleep in her arms.”
“Has she ever given them back?”
“No one has ever come after them before,” said Izzie. “And she already knows you are here. The wolves of the White Tower have been playing games with you—I saw.”
“The wolves are hers?” asked Danny.
“They are not faerie kind, but she gives them protection, and they watch for her,” said Izzie.
“Help us!” said Roisin, rushing up to him. “We can’t leave him here. You must understand that. We’ll go home as soon as we get him, and we can leave quicker with your help.”
The dryad’s Afro quivered, and his shoulders shook as he wrung his hands. “No,” he said, his voice hoarse with fear. “I can’t do that. None of us can.”
Roisin’s face crumpled with disappointment, but Danny looked over at Maddy, his expression hard and determined.
Maddy looked back at Izzie and swung the poker on to her shoulder.
“You’re not going to help us?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Well, get lost then. We’re not a freak show.”
High, mocking laughter rang through the clearing, and the sharp sound of a slow handclap. The remaining dryads looked up and froze where they were, terrified.
What now?
Maddy thought.