Three favours, then I'm free. It seems so simple, so close. What I've been waiting for all this time. But the lingering feeling of dread won’t let me forget what I still have to do.
My knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel. Sam's words are still ringing in my ears, and an uncomfortable itch creeps across my shoulders.
Three favours. Then I can see them again.
My eyes snap back to the street. The faint aura of bad music and mild drunkenness wafts through my open window. I've arrived.
I park the car and make my way back, doing my gallows walk, dragging my heavy feet. The street lamps cast a hanging shadow from the sign onto the pavement.
As I approach, the inebriati loitering around the door, pumping out their smoky haze into the night, clear a path without looking at me. The Morningstone is a single room, barring the disgusting toilets and wherever it is they store the kegs. Judging by the taste of the beer, they’re both the same place. Wisps of smoke trail in after me, and I close the door to keep out the night.
It’s pretty quiet, but The Morningstone has never been a place to draw a crowd. I count four people plus the barman. Only two are sitting together, which also tells you something. I walk slowly to the bar, ignoring the tacky tug of the floor on my shoes, all the while trying to spot if any of the clientele are paying me any undue attention.
I rest my palms on the bar and wait. The barman comes straight over. He’s a scrawny, emaciated guy, who you could justifiably place anywhere between 16 and 40. If I didn’t know better, from the look of him I’d guess that he was using something. I do know better.
I give him a curt nod. ‘Dink.’
‘Hey Si. Haven’t seen you around in a while.’ His voice is flat and measured. Dink’s hard to read; he makes an effort to give as little away as possible. It’s a natural caution that’s served him well in the past.
‘Busy. You know how it is.’
‘Sure. Yeah. Can I get you something?’
‘Yeah, actually you can, Dink. I’m calling in a favor.’
His wiry frame visibly tightens. It would be easy to miss, but I’m looking for it. It gives him away slightly, showing the very real tension and power concealed in his apparently feeble frame. ‘Do I get any say in the matter?’
‘No, you owe me, remember? You know how it works.’
‘Shit. What are you getting me into now?’ He’s half smiling while he says it, but there’s still a drop of bitterness in his voice.
‘I’m in a bind. I’ve got someone on my back and I need to straighten things out with him.
‘Who?’
I lower my voice and fix him a stare. ‘Someone who’s going to be tricky to shake off. I’ve got to pay off an old debt to clear things up.’ I pause. I’ve got to play this right. ‘There’s a girl. She disappeared into the Woods a few days ago and he’s quite keen to get her back. Finding her is the difficult part, other than that, no big risks.’
‘Other than the small danger of going into the Woods, y’mean?’ He wrinkles his nose like someone’s just thrust a dead fish under it. ‘If it’s really that simple, why’d you need me at all?’
I had thought hard about this before coming here. I have to spin it just right to get him on board without tipping my hand. ‘Like I said, I’m in a bind. I can’t reach the Woods on my own right now.’ His eyebrows shoot up. ‘I need you to take me, babysit me while I’m there and bring me and the girl back safe.’
His face betrays nothing. ‘And what about her? What does she get out of this?’
‘Well she’s certainly not going to have a better time wandering the Woods on her own, that’s for sure.’ I soften my tone. ‘I’ll be honest, I don’t know that she’d be happy about going back, but he doesn’t intend her harm, that I can guarantee.’
‘You make it sound so simple. Alright, I shall do you this favour, and that’s my debt repaid.’ He does a mock haughty voice making his acceptance sound more official. ‘I don’t owe you anything else. And don’t get the impression that I’m happy about this, either. You and I know better than most the value of freedom.’ He extends a bony hand.
I take it. ‘Your concerns are noted. Don’t go thinking that I’m over the moon about this either. And don’t even consider bailing on me out there. I’ve got too much at stake.’
He nods, his face as impossible to read as ever, and shakes my hand firmly, the steel-trap tension in his grip belying his slight frame.
‘When d’we leave?’
‘When do you close?’
‘Gimme an hour. Stay and have a drink...?’
‘No thanks. I’ve got to sort a few things first. I’ll see you back here in an hour.’ Without waiting for a reply, I push off from the bar and step back out into the night.
***
Once the place is shuttered and dark, Dink leads me behind the bar into an apocalyptically disorderly storage room. A multitude of assorted junk is piled around the room. I follow a trailing pool of brown liquid back to its source, and spot a couple of sweating, moss-covered kegs stacked against the wall. Well I guess that answers that question.
There’s a small door on the opposite wall, tie-dye patches of damp across its surface, almost hidden behind all the stuff. Dink clears a path to it, and carefully selecting a key from a bunch he produces from his pocket, pops open the padlock. He has to kick several recumbent mops out of the way to clear space for the door to swing free.
The room beyond is dark. Dink roots through a nearby pile and pulls out a torch. He click-clacks the switch a few times, but the bulb remains unlit. ‘Let me.’ I rummage in my bag and for my own. When going on a jaunt like this, preparation is usually the only thing that will bring you back. That’s the first rule of the Woods - preparedness is everything. It’s one of those hefty torches you see security guards carrying - the kind you can easily club someone round the head with. Preparedness. First rule.
I step through the door, lighting up the bare floorboards ahead of me. It’s not a large room, but the narrow torch beam and the lack of furnishing conspire to make it feel like an expansive vault stretching out into the distance. It makes me oddly uneasy, like a weird kind of agoraphobia. I catch sight of the one object in the room - something big, about six feet square, wrapped in a heavy cloth bound at the edges with silver clasps.
I whistle. ‘Wow. You’ve been keeping this handy.’
‘Y’never know when you might need something like this.’ I can’t make out his expression.
He steps into the beam and starts to fumble with one of the clasps. I can’t tell if his hand is actually shaking or whether it’s just a trick of the light. I prop the torch on my satchel and help him.
There are thirteen clasps securing the thick material firmly to the flat object beneath. It takes us a few minutes to pry them all loose, setting each carefully down on the floor. When the last comes free, we hold the cloth to stop it from falling.
I nod to Dink. He nods back. And we drop the cloth.
The light catches the surface underneath and reflects back off it, sharply lighting up the room. I take a second to admire the huge, flawless mirror we’ve uncovered.
‘Okay, let’s do it,’ I said.
Dink stands close to the mirror and, almost tenderly, places his scrawny hands flat against the surface. He closes his eyes and the mirror starts to darken, ink-like tendrils spidering out from his palms until the mirror is night black. As the surface loses its reflective sheen, the room darkens ominously.
A ripple of colour spreads across the surface, like a painted pebble has been dropped into it, transforming the mirror into a window. Or a doorway. I find myself looking out into a small woodland clearing. Light from the pale gray sky casts an odd pallor over the squalid little room. My immediate impression is of green, always green.
There are no signs of life, and that is a very good start.
Dink takes his hands off the mirror and steps back, the slightest sliver of a smile showing on his face. He turns to me. ‘You comin’?’
‘This is the part I need a little help with.’
I feel that itch in my shoulders again. I tilt my head to one side and offer out my hand to Dink. He takes it, and together, we step through the looking glass, into the Woods.
***
For a long second, I’m somewhere else. I feel waves of heat reflecting off the ground. I screw my face up. I never could get used to the heat. My ears are filled with supersonic cracks that sound so distant, but I know are only metres away. I open my eyes a fraction and the world is swimming in yellow, orange and grey. I feel a sharp tug deep within my shoulders...
***
With a lurching rush of green, I’m back. I feel the tug get stronger as we cross, evolving into a deep, burning pain. My mind is filled with images of searing, tearing flesh. And then it stops. I open my eyes, and I’m through, with all my body parts firmly attached.
I get my bearings. We’re standing in the clearing, which spans just a few metres across, hemmed in by wild and overgrown trees, far too green for the season that we left behind. Come to think of it, it was night outside the pub, but here, though there is no sun to be seen, there is definitely daylight. I listen, and hear...nothing. There is an unnerving, empty silence all around. No bird calls or insect noises. I know it’s normal for the Woods, but I’ve never been able to get used to the silence.
There are two obvious paths leading away from the clearing - one in a direction I christen ‘north’ in my head, the other ‘southeast’. In the Woods, you always stick to the path - that’s the second rule.
I look back to where we came from. There is a clear gap between two trees free of any overgrowth or stones. When the light catches it just right, I can see, even from this angle, the shadow of the storeroom beyond lingering in the air.
I fish a battered old orienteering compass out of my bag, draping the red string, dirty from years of sweat and grime, rather ineffectually around my neck. I face the north path, holding the compass flat on my palm. The needle hangs loose like a broken watch hand, not drawn in any particular direction. I turn to the southeast path and it begins to rotate lazily, not settling anywhere, but turning steadily clockwise on its axis.
***
We’ve been walking for about twenty minutes when I hear it. The path has forked three times, and each time I’ve consulted the compass. One path always elicits a faster rotation, and that’s the path we take. We’ve travelled in near silence, me in front, Dink behind, as the paths have been so narrow. At the last fork the path widened, but he still hasn’t moved up alongside.
I hear it first. A distant rustling, like something striding through the brush, with surprisingly little regard for being heard. In the Woods, if something’s not afraid to be heard, that’s usually a bad sign for the ones who hear it.
I slow my pace, and the rustling slows also. I freeze, and it stops altogether. I take a slow, experimental step forward, and hear the rustle, fainter this time, respond in kind.
I turn around. Dink is nowhere to be seen. I silently pray to - well, I’m never sure quite what it is that I silently pray to - that that’s not the last I’ve seen of him. That he heard it too, and that he has my back. Figuratively, at least. Dink can be a slippery character, but we have a history. I know he trusts me well enough that I can count on him when it matters; which is pretty much how we’re in this situation in the first place.
I continue walking, alone, and I hear the rustling resume. Though I hadn’t much noticed Dink’s presence when he was with me, I’m now acutely aware of how exposed I feel. Every step is punctuated by a corresponding rustle from the trees, growing louder and louder, making me catch my breath.
It’s still matching my pace, but I can hear it getting closer to the path - and me - with every step I take. I force myself to keep walking, and the hairs on my neck start to quiver as I catch the first glimpse of a humanoid silhouette passing between the trees. I see just a flash of its smooth, pink body. Another step. Now it’s just behind that tree. Another step, and it’s just off the path, standing out in the open. I turn and face it, and it, in turn, faces me.
It looks quite a lot like a person, but someone who’s been systematically scrubbed of all their identifying features. Its entire body is plain pink skin, totally featureless. No fingernails, no hair, no telltale moles; Action Man smooth between its legs. The skin is stretched and blank in the place where its face should be, ripples of flesh round its neck, like there wasn’t enough skin to quite cover it all.
I stare, and this thing without eyes holds my gaze, mirroring my posture down to the last detail. I raise my hand in a kind of mock greeting, experimenting like a child meeting its reflection for the first time. Its arm moves in perfect synchronisation with mine. I furrow my brow, and the skin on its empty face wrinkles back at me. I take a step backwards. It steps forwards.
I go cold and feel an icy tension catch in my limbs. This time, it moves first, taking another step forward, slowly, almost hesitantly. I feel my left leg extended in front of me like I’m some farcical, oversized puppet. The skin where its mouth isn’t flexes and stretches, and, though I try to fight it, I feel my mouth curl into a twisted parody of a smile.
We take another step together. It’s close now, just a few more steps, and it will be at arm’s length. And then it will be over.
Another step.
I see eyes, a nose and a mouth pushing against the surface of its face from beneath, just visible through partially translucent skin, making it bulge grotesquely, slender purple veins stretched thin.
Another step.
Slowly, ever so slowly, it reaches out its right arm toward my shoulder. My right arm reaches back in fearful symmetry. I feel my eyes widen hungrily, locked on its distorted face, and my body leans, stretching out to make contact. Another few inches, and it will have me.
The creature falls sharply to the side and its head slams against the forest floor with a sickening thud. My body jerks and spasms as I try to avoid a fall that I’m not experiencing. My body suddenly goes limp as I regain control, and I fall hard onto my back, cursing, but rejoicing at the sudden feeling of freedom.
Dink rises up from the ground, releasing the thing’s ankles from his grip. It tries to rise, but he plants a foot on its back, pinning it to the floor. I bring my knees up to my chest, away from it, and focus on breathing to slow my suddenly rocketing heart rate.
The thing quickly gives up on trying to stand. Dink is small and light, but deceptively strong, and the Rorrimmirg aren’t so dangerous once they’ve lost their element of surprise. I look down at its face, turned to the side and pushed down into the dirt. The features I saw have subsided, and it’s blank again.
‘Poor bastard.’ I step past Dink to the edge of the trees, and pull down some choice vines from one of the branches. I pin its unresisting hands behind its back and bind them tightly. I feel a pang of pity for it, and I sigh a little to myself.
‘Let’s leave it just off the path.’
Dink nods and picks up its legs. I grab it awkwardly around the torso, and we prop it up in a sitting position against a tree a few metres off the path. It doesn’t acknowledge us, but just stares ahead.
I shake my head. ‘Let’s keep moving.’
I left it just enough slack that it’ll be able to worm free eventually. I don’t think it will come after us again, now that it knows we’re travelling as a pair, and, more importantly, that it’s clear we know how to handle ourselves.
I’ve heard stories about the Rorrimmirg - most people just call them ‘Copycats’ - but this is the first time I’ve encountered one. They say that they’re people who’ve had their shapes stolen. They can’t escape the Woods as they are, so they have to hunt unwary travellers and steal new shapes for themselves, leaving more unfortunates like them. Poor bastards. It sounds like they just want to go home.
I find my mind wandering back to the desert. My ears are still ringing from the gunshots and explosions and I’m staggering away from Smith and Churchdown, all that’s left of my eight-man squad. To the water. To drink. To quench the thirst of desert and battle and fear. I toss away my empty canteen, bullet hole clean through either side, and drop to my knees by the clear pool to plunge my head in. I see more than blue sky reflected back at me. And I fall, and yellow and orange and red become green.
***
We’ve been walking for another half hour or so, and the increasingly frantic spinning of the compass indicates that we’re getting close to our destination. Dink is ten metres or so in front of me when he suddenly stops short.
‘Something’s wrong.’ There is a slight tremor in his voice. I slowly reach for the slingshot in my bag.
‘What is it?’
‘I can’t move.’
I take a step back. He’s frozen with his weight raised on the balls of his feet, like he was midway through taking a step. His right arm is extended slightly forward, but held motionless in an unnatural position.
I creep slowly round to the edge of the path and crouch in some foliage. I hear a soft giggle which sets a tremor down my spine. I look up. There, perched on the branch of a tree is a young girl. At least I think she’s a girl. She can’t be older than eight, with dark skin and a crop of short, black hair.
In all the stories I’ve ever heard, I can’t remember the sudden appearance of a laughing child being a sign of anything good.
I debate trying to unseat her with my slingshot, but hold back. Her attention is currently focussed on Dink - she doesn’t seem to have noticed me yet. I’d prefer to know exactly what I’m dealing with before making my move. After all, she might just be, as she appears, a lost child. But I doubt it.
A smile spreads across the girl’s face, revealing a set of jagged white teeth. She speaks with a playful, singsong voice.
‘I am treacherous and easily broken, but everyone needs me.
I am within everyone, but some wear me like a badge.
You can give me away, but I’ll always be part of you.
I give life, but can still beat you to death.’
So, it’s riddles, is it? In the woods, a keen mind can keep you alive for as long as a keen blade - though it’s best to have both, and the wisdom to know when to use them. But for all his uncanny talent for self-preservation, Dink isn’t the sharpest wit, and I have no idea how he’ll handle even a relatively simple riddle.
Panic is starting to show on his face. I see a single bead of sweat form and slide slowly down his cheek. Suddenly, the liquid stretches away from him through the air in a line. And then I see why Dink cannot move. I see the thin strands of a fibrous web strung between the trees.
The girl peers down at Dink from her bough. ‘Do you have the answer, little one? It’s very important that you get this right.’
Dink starts to breathe audibly faster, and I think that he must be starting to hyperventilate. But then his mouth starts to form more defined sounds, and I realise that he’s trying to speak.
‘H...huu....he....heart.’
The girl giggles, and pushes herself off the branch. She glides gracefully to the floor and lands without bending her knees. She creeps forward and pokes a spot on Dink’s chest with a single finger.
‘That’s right. The heart. That’s the part I shall save until last.’
My hands are moving before my brain has quite caught up, drawing back the pouch of my slingshot and sending a small iron bullet at the girl. Dink’s right arm drops to his side as my shot severs several strands of the web and catches the girl in the shoulder.
I’m already readying my second bullet when the girl, who now appears to have rather too many legs for a child, begins ascending into the air. For a second, I think that she is flying, but I realise that she is drawing herself up a strand of web to the branch above.
My second shot flies true, severing the thread before she has reached her branch, and she falls heavily to the ground, landing hard on her back. She is bigger now, bigger than any girl or person should be, her too-many-legs flexing furiously as she tries to right herself.
I loose a third shot into her abdomen. Her body screams out, and I’m running forward, sliding my rough iron knife out of the sheath in my bag. The blade easily slices through the webs encircling Dink and we move to pass the enormous supine spider that now blocks the path.
As we near, it flings itself into the air, surprisingly athletic for a giant spider, landing on its legs and darting forward. I am suddenly fixated by its fangs, which must be a full foot long, moving inexorably towards my face. I make to draw back my slingshot, but, finding my knife in my right hand instead, fling that. It tumbles end over end, and I worry that it will strike handle-first, but the crude iron slides easily into her flesh, driving deep into her thorax, and she snaps back, writhing in pain.
We don’t stop running.
***
We run for an hour. Or possibly ten minutes - it’s hard to tell when you’ve got that much adrenaline coursing through you, and the lack of sun doesn’t make it any easier to mark time. We run until the spider is far behind us. It doesn’t appear to be following, but we both keep casting suspicious glances up at the trees.
We’ve reached another clearing, smaller than the one in which we arrived. Dink walks towards the centre. He doesn’t seem all that tired, the bastard. I lean my hands on my knees, wheezing slightly, trying to catch my breath. My panting is deafening over the silence.
I’m cursing the loss of a good cold-iron knife when I catch sight of something just a little way off the clearing. Something I’ve been looking for since we arrived. A smattering of small, white flowers growing above a tangled thorn bush.
I turn to Dink, who is looking warily down the path. ‘I’ll be right back.’
I don’t give him time to reply, and pick my way carefully out of the clearing towards the bush. The Seeming Briar is characterised by its delicate and beautiful white flowers, growing tantalisingly above sharp, coal-black thorns. At night, the flowers glow with a bright light, shining like stars against the dark brambles.
Like so much in the Woods, the Briar is most dangerous for the unwary, but it is also much prized for its effects. Those who unwittingly prick themselves on its sharp thorns, usually while picking one of its elusive and inexplicably desirable flowers, dream in vivid, brutal nightmares, involving them being smothered, strangled, or crushed. Eventually, these horrors start to bleed over into their waking life. After enough days and nights of this, they just don’t wake up. They stay forever in their nightmares, held by the brambles. From their slumbering corpses, small white flowers grow.
If you can identify it, you stand a much better chance. You can recognise the effects for one, and resist them to some extent, but too big of a dose and you’ll end up no better off. The flowers have real value, though. If you can collect some of the thorns’ poison and the juice of the flower, you can distil a serum that lets you inflict these same effects on others. Waking or sleeping, if you can get the concoction into their bloodstream, you can bend their nightmares to your will. The Briar is much sought-after for these effects by wizards, tricksters and all-round unpleasant folk everywhere.
Low-hanging fruit first. I trap one of the outer brambles between my boots and snap it off, scraping it clear of the bush with my foot. Briar thorns are razor sharp, and I’m thankful that my boots are tough. Well, that was the easy part.
I take out a pair of thick leather gloves (just don’t ask what they’re made from) from my bag of tricks. I stand as close as I dare to the bush and stretch up for the flowers. It feels as though the flowers recede from my grasp as I reach for them, and I let my weight come precariously forward onto the toes of one foot. If I overbalance now, I’ll land right among the thorns, and probably get enough of a dose that I’ll be spending my final few waking hours clawing at my retinas.
My fingers close around the stem of one of the flowers, but as I start to pull, I feel a tug against my sleeve. A thorn has pierced a hole in the arm of my leather jacket, and is poking through. I can’t feel it scraping on my skin yet, which I hope means it hasn’t gone all the way through.
Keeping a tight grip on the flower, I pull my arm back, carefully, slowly, trying to angle it so the thorn will slide out. I’m suddenly very aware of every tremor. Every slight deviation in movement feels like I’m wildly flailing my arms. The thorn suddenly loses its purchase in the leather and the branch flicks up into position. I snatch my arm away and stagger back, landing unceremoniously on my behind.
Since I’m trying not to crush the flower, I don’t throw out my hands to cushion my landing, which, I realise with a sharp intake of breath, is all that stopped me planting directly onto the bramble I had kicked free before retrieving the flower. Stupid and lucky.
I check my arm where the thorn went through. It didn’t puncture the skin. Very lucky. I pull a small leather wallet from my bag with my free hand, arms still shaking, and I go to work.
***
I walk back into the clearing. Dink is sitting on the grass, knees pulled up to his chest, facing away from me. I give him a firm pat on the back, though it doesn’t startle him. I kneel down on the grass and pull off my gloves, stowing them carefully in my bag.
‘Sorry - had to collect something we may need. You ready? Compass says we’re close.’
‘You’re the one who needs to be ready. I’m just the taxi driver.’
‘Fair point. That reminds me, if things do go south, there’s an exit here - on that side of the clearing.’ I point to a gap between two of the trees. ‘I’d rather go back somewhere we know is safe, but we may need it.’
‘Very reassuring.’ He nods and clambers to his feet. I fish the compass out from my breast pocket, string still looped round my neck, and stalk towards the north end of the clearing. It now spins furiously, hardly changing speed at all.
We follow the path for a few minutes. I realise, hands trembling, that now is the time. If I pull this off, I’m several steps closer to freedom. If I don’t? Well, then things are going to get a whole lot worse.
Just as I finish this thought, I hear a soft music floating on the air. I look at Dink, and it’s clear he hears it too. It’s something I can’t quite place - a sound somewhere between a string quartet and the wind rustling through the trees - straining at the edge of my hearing. It’s like I’ve heard it somewhere before, buried deep in some forgotten dream.
A trail breaks off right from the path, and it’s clear that’s where the music is coming from. I motion to Dink, and we both slow, picking up our feet carefully to make less noise as we approach.
Peering down this path, I catch my breath. It stretches on improbably long and straight, with the trees encroaching on each side. The Woods are usually wild and chaotic, so to see such a stark imposition of order is alarming.
At the end of this too-long path is a small clearing, and at its centre is a too-big tree. A vast redwood, so tall that we should have been able to see it for miles above the treeline. And yet here it is. At the base, bound with vines which, even at this distance, I can see are cutting into her flesh, is the girl.
She’s younger than I expected, perhaps late teens or early twenties, wrapped in a plain sackcloth tunic. Her head lolls on one shoulder, long brown hair curtaining down in front, hiding her face. For a second it looks like... No. I know it isn’t her.
I glance over at Dink. He looks equally stunned. I close my eyes for a second and focus. I guess I had better try to get her.
I motion to Dink to stay hidden and I start down the path. I try not to rush, but since the path offers no cover, I feel uncomfortably exposed. I find myself speeding up, trying to balance caution with my desire to get this over with as quickly as possible.
Halfway down the path, I glance back over my shoulder. I can’t see Dink. I hope he’s just well hidden and hasn’t lost his nerve and rabbited. Which would be very bad, at this point. The remaining distance isn’t as far as I’d thought. The path must be shorter than it appears, or it just hasn’t made up its mind yet.
Now I’ve got a better view of the clearing. Other than the obvious giant tree, there’s a circle of small boulders round the edge. Interesting. All we need now is a ring of fire and we truly are in some Wagnerian nightmare.
I’m close now. Three steps away. Two steps. As I raise my foot for the penultimate step, I hear a sudden rustling, like an animal is rushing through the brush. The light falters, and the circle of rocks in the clearing starts to glow, as if covered they are covered by a luminous moss. As my foot hits the floor, a shape steps out of the trees and blocks the path.
The figure towers over me. I am faced with an immense form clad in poisonous-green plate armour, holding a wicked-looking sickle in its right hand, and standing far too close for anything good to happen.
Even as my eyes are tracking up to its face, my body is turning to run in the opposite direction. My eyes meet hers. I think it’s a she. Her face looks...old, somehow, though it shows no trace of wrinkles or lines. There’s an odd perfection to her skin and a terrible intensity in her eyes, which are sharp green and clash violently with her armour and the thicket around us. Her white hair is tied back with a filigree of vines, in a braid reminiscent of a crown.
She smiles at me. It is not a friendly smile.
My head whips around to catch up with my feet, which are already making good progress down the path. I expect to feel the blade of the sickle bite into my back as I flee, but I don’t.
‘DIIIIINK!’
I discover that yelling is impractical while running at full pelt. For a split second, my vision blurs, and I’m back in Afghanistan, looking into the pool, open-mouthed with horror as a face that is not my own stares back at me. It’s something much, much older. That face morphs into the face of the woman that is, in some other place, chasing me. Her hand is reaches out for me and rips me from this world. Into the Woods. Into darkness and neverending servitude.
I snap back when I hear the soft clank of the woman - no; that’s no woman - starting to give chase. I don’t turn. I swear I can hear the distant crack of gunfire.
My breath is already running short, but I’m nearly at the end of the path. I can see Dink sprinting away, and I feel a surge of relief.
‘Time to go. Get that exit open!’
Dink is at the clearing by the time I reach the end of the path.
My feet skid across the dirt as I try to turn the corner without stopping, dancing over a tree root to avoid going down. I catch a glimpse of the figure, just a few metres behind me now. I barely slow, pelting down the wider forest path towards the clearing, and what lies beyond.
Dink is waiting for me in the clearing, holding his palms out away from him. There’s a soft rippling in the air, which turns dark as the gateway opens. You stupid, dependable bastard. You could have just left me here. A part of me goes cold at the sight of him standing there, arm outstretched to bring my safely back.
As soon as I’m close enough, I launch myself at him, our arms closing around each other as my momentum carries us forward, and in that strange embrace, we tumble through the trees and out of the Woods.
***
This time, in the seconds as we cross over, I’m not in Afghanistan. I’m back in the Woods, deep in the darkness of Avalon, where the Alfur live. Where they kept us for years as their playthings and slaves. Where daily life was fear, torture and servitude without reason or chance of escape. Few make it off the Apple Isle, and those that do remain marked by it forever, unable to truly take back their place in the world. Not without help.
Dink and I made it out, and there were a few others that we knew of, but you can never really get away from that. The fear always follows you. I escaped the Woods and one kind of indenturement, only to find myself wearing another set of chains, in an ill-considered bargain to help me rejoin my family. Because without them, I’d never really have my freedom.
I climb awkwardly to my feet as my eyes adjust to the gloom. I hear Dink’s voice in the darkness nearby.
‘What the hell was that? Why was one of them so close to the edge of the Woods? They don’t hunt that far out. Who is the girl? What the fuck are you mixed up in?’
I don’t reply. I say nothing, because I know where we are. The edges of the room are packed with bookcases and worksurfaces. Candles cast a dim light which is twisted and magnified eerily by the enormous mirror, polished to perfection, that dominates the wall we fell from. We stand on a black, wooden floor at the edge of a broken chalk circle.
I know where we are. From the look of Dink, he’s starting to realise too.
‘Fuck. Oh fuck. What now?’
‘Now,’ answers a voice from the shadows ahead of us, ‘Now, I take a look at who has landed in my web.’
Dink leaps to his feet. ‘Si, we can’t be here.’ His voice is pleading. He nudges at me with his arm, and starts to back towards the mirror. ‘Si, we’ve got to go. Si. Si?’
I hold his gaze, but I don’t move.
A figure in a plain black robe steps from the shadows on the other end of the room. His bald head and fleshy face are shark-like as he unleashes a toothy smile.
‘Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.’
‘Hello, Dink. It’s been a while. Thank you for bringing him to me, Lieutenant Winter.’
I still say nothing. I meet Dink’s gaze again as his head whips around to look at me, and I feel the sensation of ice running in my veins.
‘I’m sorry for the merry dance through the Woods, Dink,’ Samrael purrs in a voice that puts me in mind of a velvet-gloved hand crushing a still-beating heart. ‘I hardly think you would have come if I had just asked, and, besides, I needed Simon to run another errand for me on the way. Simon, you do have it, I presume?’
I pull the leather wallet out of my bag and fling it at him, a little too hard. He catches it effortlessly, with no sign of irritation showing on his face, and delicately peels it open. With a satisfied smile, he folds it shut, and it disappears into the folds of his robe.
‘The lymph of the Seeming Briar. A potent tool, no? It can play havoc with the mind. Make people tell you whatever you want to know. Do whatever you need them to. Run just where you want them to go. All you need to do is construct the right fantasy and make them live in it for long enough.’
Dink is still staring at me. He takes a step away, but there’s nowhere for him to run. I have no words. I can say nothing that will ease his pain, or mine, at what I’ve done. What I had to do, I tell myself. But freedom suddenly seems such a fragile dream, something fundamentally selfish.
There was never any girl. No giant tree. No monstrous fae had pursued us from the Woods. It had seemed so strange, so unreal, so much like a nightmare, because that’s precisely what it was. I had done that. A pat on the back with my barbed glove, and I had shaped a shared nightmare for us, to get Dink just desperate enough to run here without question.
Now Samrael has two of his favors. One for the serum, one for Dink.
One more favour, then I can see them again. One more favour, then I’m really free.
I try to picture the smiling faces of my family, but all I can see is the terror in Dink’s eyes.
