Changeling Read online

  The fair folk had been especially delectable. The delight came from their magic, the Thing recalled fondly, the taste of their magic, the sensation of it filling the Thing’s senses. It sighed. But then, gradually, the fair folk had left the Wild Wood. The Thing had been forced to satisfy itself with baby birds fallen from their nests, wolves separated from their packs, a doe who had lost her fawn. A meager existence. Over the years, these, too, fell into its clutches less and less frequently. The Thing in the heart of the bramble was hungry.

  A vine beneath it trembled. The Thing stiffened. The ragged cloak of shadows that defined the Thing’s bulky form shivered in excitement. Something had been caught. The creature closed its eyes to feel its victim’s panic rippling through the forest. A child. Good. Children were the best at fear.

  A wave of energy snapped through the vine like an electric current, and the creature’s eyes shot open. This was no fledgling fawn. The Thing’s heart began to race. It had not felt power like this in a very long time.

  The creature pulled its precious shadows closer, its nerves twitching in anticipation. It could feel the child’s emotions pulsing at the other end of the vine—and it could feel the magic, real and raw, magic like the forest had all but forgotten. Tonight, the Thing at the heart of the bramble was going to feast.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “She’s really your child?” Annie Burton asked the queen as they pressed through the Deep Dark. Kull hung back nervously, twenty yards or so behind them, and Fable scurried twenty yards or so ahead. The girl moved through the forest like a fish through water. Annie moved through the forest more like a fish through—well—a forest, bumbling and stumbling over the uneven terrain every step of the way, but she managed to keep pace with the witch. “She’s yours properly, I mean,” she added. “You didn’t steal her?”

  Ahead of them, Fable vaulted over a fallen branch and then paused, pushing her thick curls out of her face to smell the breeze. Abruptly, she clenched her fists, closed her eyes, and held her breath—WHUMPH! She was a bear cub again, leaves spinning around her shaggy body.

  Annie stared.

  The cub dropped to the earth. She snuffled along the ground in front of her for a few paces and presently jumped up on her hind legs. In another flurry of movement, she was back to her human form.

  Annie Burton shook her head in awed silence.

  “This way!” Fable called out.

  “Yes. She is mine,” said the queen.

  “So, you didn’t turn her into an animal after all? She did that herself?”

  “Fable has always been a precocious child.”

  Annie nodded. “And . . . her father?” she asked.

  “Gone,” said the queen in a tone that made it quite clear that branch of the conversation had reached its end.

  Annie considered telling the woman about her own husband. About how her sweet Joseph had vanished shortly after their one baby became two babies, about how she had been left to raise them on her own without him. She hesitated. What was she thinking? Her husband was not a topic Annie Burton discussed with anyone—least of all a sinister sorceress who would as happily steal her children as save them.

  “Who are you, really?” Annie said, instead.

  “I am the Witch of the Wood,” the woman answered, flatly. “I’m sure you’ve heard the titles. Queen of—”

  “But are you, actually? Are you the witch from the stories? Do you blight crops and transform into horrible monsters and eat children?”

  The queen eyed Annie. “Somebody has to,” she said, shrugging. “Crops don’t just blight themselves, after all.” A hint of a smile teased at the corner of the witch’s lip. “But you doubt the stories, I can tell. What did you say your name was?”

  “Annie Burton.”

  “Tell me, Annie Burton, did you ever believe them? When you were young, did you believe that the Queen of the Deep Dark would gobble you up if you trod too far into the Wild Wood?”

  Annie swallowed, and decided to be honest. “Yes. When I was young.”

  “And did the stories keep you from treading too far into the wood?”

  Annie considered. “I suppose so.”

  The queen’s grin was wicked, but also somehow warm. “I love those stories. They are my stories. And they serve their purpose.”

  A squat boulder blocked their path, and the queen stepped over it as smoothly as if it were a lumpy cobblestone. The forest seemed to bend around the will of the witch, as though it really were bowing to its queen. Annie had to use both hands to scramble over the thing, and a creeping briar tore the hem of her skirt as she slid down the opposite side. She would have to mend that later. For half a second she marveled at the thought of ever again doing something as ordinary as sewing, and then she jogged to catch up to the wicked witch in the middle of the Deep Dark.

  “But are they true?” she panted. “The stories about you capturing lost boys and girls? Is that why you don’t age? Is it something to do with stealing children’s youth or something?”

  The queen raised an eyebrow. At length she said: “I age.”

  “Then how can you be her? You’re much too young. You don’t look much older than I am. We told stories about an old witch when I was just a child—so you can’t be the same witch, not after all this time.”

  The Queen of the Deep Dark shook her head, amused. “Just because a story is not yours to begin does not mean it isn’t yours to finish. Just because it isn’t yours to finish does not mean it isn’t yours to begin.”

  “Oh,” said Annie. And then: “Sorry, what does that mean?”

  With a sigh, the queen put her hand out and brushed the trunk of a broad pine tree. “Let’s try it another way,” she said. “I did not plant this tree. It was here long before me, and it will still be here long after I am gone. Am I important to the tree?”

  “No?”

  “What if a woodsman came into the forest with an ax and I chased him away from the tree? Would I have been important to it then?”

  “Well, yes, obviously.”

  “What if I teach my little Fable how to chase the woodsmen off, and Fable teaches her children, and so on—will I have been important to the tree then?”

  Annie nodded.

  “That is how stories work. Stories are important. They are born, they die, they’re born again—but while they live they chase away the woodsmen that threaten their trees.”

  “That’s a lovely sentiment,” Annie said, “but I’m afraid you’ve lost me. Are you talking about you or about stories?”

  “Yes,” said the queen.

  Ahead of them, Fable had transformed into a bear cub once more and was turning in circles as she sniffed the earth. For several seconds the two women stood in silence and watched her.

  “I . . . I think I understand,” Annie said softly.

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t think you’re terrible at all.”

  The queen said nothing.

  “I think they’re all just stories,” Annie said. “Stories to protect children from the forest.”

  The witch’s hard laugh startled Annie.

  “No?” Annie said.

  “It is not my task to protect your idiot children from my forest, Annie Burton. I protect my forest.”

  “From . . . children?”

  “From what children become.”

  Up ahead, Fable appeared to have caught the scent again at last, and she hurried onward through the bracken.

  The queen did not rush after her at once. Something about the way she was looking at Annie made the old, scary stories feel plausible, indeed.

  “This is my forest,” said the queen, “my trees, my beasts, my monsters. They are my children to protect. When the woodsmen come with their axes, well . . .” Her eyes narrowed as she let the sentence trail off. “You would do well, Annie Burton, never to underestimate just how terrible I can be.”

  Before Annie could find the words to respond, Fable’s voice cut through the trees ahead. “O
uch! Ow! Let me go! LET GO!”

  The queen’s eyes flashed like fire. In one fluid motion she leapt forward and pulled the furry hood over her head. The cloak swelled, the forest trembled, and Annie Burton found herself staring up at a massive grizzly bear. The creature’s lips curled into a grotesque sneer as she growled, deep and rumbling.

  A moment later, her front paws slammed into the ground and the beast thundered off into the forest toward the sound of Fable’s cries. With an effortless swipe, she cleaved a bush in two.

  Annie’s heart thudded. Her life had turned into madness. That morning she had wanted nothing more than a cup of tea, and now there were real goblins and sinister swamps and strange women who turned into bears—and her boys were still gone. Her morning felt worlds away. A part of her was terrified. A part of her wanted to run away, run back home to a fat old house cat and piles of laundry and lukewarm tea—but a different part of her kept pressing against her rib cage. It pulled her forward, into the dark. The sound the bear was making just beyond the bushes was the stuff of nightmares, but Annie recognized that growl on another level. That growl was the sound her heart made when her boys needed her most. Her boys needed her now, just as Fable needed the witch.

  Annie took a deep breath as she prepared to follow the bear-queen into the darkness. The deafening crunch of a tree cracking and crashing to the ground echoed through the woods before she could even take her first step. Birds erupted from the leaves all around her, fleeing for quieter skies. Total chaos was erupting from the forest ahead.

  “That’s why I dinna stand in front,” said Kull, plodding past. “Come on.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Tinn could barely see the thin, prickly vine that looped around his ankle in the gloom. As he reached down to free himself from it, a tiny barb greedily bit his thumb. He sucked on the injury, and the coppery taste of the blood mixed with the earthy grime and dust of his journey. Ahead of him, Cole pulled back his own hand as another thorn caught him in the same thumb. The boys pushed forward. All things considered, a cut was nothing—they were lucky they hadn’t already been carved to tatters in the dense maze of thorns as they did their best to keep up with Candlebeard.

  The whole thing felt wrong to the pit of Tinn’s stomach. It was more than the darkness, more than the pain. The vines were moving—bending and creeping like living snakes as the boys traveled beneath them, the path opening ever so slightly ahead of them, closing ever so stealthily behind them.

  Cole stopped, and Tinn drew up beside him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t find the path,” said Cole. He was straining his eyes, feeling his way around, but in every direction he could find only more brambles.

  Up ahead, they could see the hinkypunk’s light flickering weakly behind layers and layers of the dense vines.

  “Candlebeard!” Cole called. “Come back, we’re stuck!”

  The candlelight neared, and they could just barely make out the old man’s face beyond the wall of thorns. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. His voice was dry and cracked like broken chalk.

  “You talk?” Tinn said.

  “Don’t do this,” said Cole, tugging fruitlessly at the vines. “You came back for us! Please don’t do this!”

  “Don’t do what? What’s he doing?” Tinn said. He looked from Cole to Candlebeard. “How do we get out, Candlebeard?”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Candlebeard was crying now, shaking his head.

  “Candlebeard, you get us out of here right now!” Cole yelled, but the vines were already slithering into a dense mesh, squeezing tighter and tighter together, until every inch of the hinkypunk’s miserable face had been hidden from view. “Aaaaaargh!” Cole yelled, tearing at the vicious things. He succeeded only in carving a deep gash in his palm.

  Tinn just stood, frozen. “He—he left us.”

  “He lied to us!” Cole yelled through the inscrutable wall. “He’s a dirty, rotten monster, and he lied to us all along!”

  Ever so slowly, like the last trickle of maple syrup slowly running off the spoon, the faltering beams of sunlight faded away completely and the world went black.

  Fable screamed again. Wicked black barbs had wrapped themselves around both ankles now, and the harder the girl kicked and thrashed, the more fiercely they bit into her legs. She fell backward onto the cold ground. With both hands she tried to pull herself away from the plant, but the vines pulled back.

  She hadn’t even seen them at first, so heavy were the shadows in the Deep Dark. She had only been paying attention to the scent—paraffin, sharp and faintly sweet, the unmistakable trail of the hinkypunk’s candle. It had been so fresh and close, she could imagine Candlebeard waiting just over the next hill with Cole and Tinn. She had allowed her eager hope to cloud her caution, and by the time she had realized her mistake she was already up to her knees in the awful vines. The bramble had waited for her to try to turn back before it closed in and snared her with its biting thorns.

  The forest behind her rustled and she heard her mother’s roar. Moonlight cut through the forest canopy like a spear, and Fable could see clearly the vines that had trapped her. They were writhing like a mess of vipers, clambering to overtake her, long tendrils reaching out of a massive mountain of thorns.

  In another instant, Fable’s mother was looming over her, beastly muscles rippling under heavy fur and dark lips curling back over monstrous fangs. Fable breathed a sigh of relief.

  The great bear tore at the vines holding Fable’s feet. Fable felt her legs yanked up and down with each swipe. The beast’s long talons should have carved easily through the cords, but blow after blow, they held fast. The queen barked with pain and fury, but she did not relent. Fable could see blood on her mother’s paws.

  The bramble shuddered and swelled in the dim light. Fable watched in horror as a new wave of dark vines bulged forward, rolling toward them from the main bulk. Her mother fell back. Fable clawed at the ground, trying to get away before she was buried beneath the oncoming cascade, but she found nothing to grip but damp, slippery leaves.

  She heard a sharp crunch and a snap of wood splintering to her left just as the wave of thorns swelled in front of her. And then a deafening CRACK echoed through the forest, and a mossy tree trunk thicker around than Fable herself came crashing down on top of the slithering brambles. Her mother had thrown an entire tree at the vicious vines.

  The painful pressure around Fable’s ankles loosened. She pulled her foot back experimentally. The vines tried to hold her, but crushed as they were under the weight of the trunk, they had lost most of their strength. Fable was twisting her feet this way and that to slide them free when she felt a sudden grip on her wrist. Startled, she wrenched her arm away.

  “It’s me,” said a familiar voice. She blinked up at Annie Burton. “Take my hand,” Annie urged. “Come on!”

  Fable took Annie’s hands in hers and kicked at the vines as the woman pulled. They sliced at her legs angrily, but she ignored the pain.

  “It’s na good,” grumbled the goblin from somewhere behind them. “They dinna let go until they’s satisfied.”

  “You could help us, you cretin,” Annie barked over her shoulder, kicking at the creeping plants as she kept a firm grip on Fable.

  Inky black tendrils were beginning to peek over the top of the fallen tree. It would not take the bramble long to overcome the obstacle. Fable felt the ground shudder as her mother bounded atop it to swipe at the nasty things.

  “Ya’ll na see me gettin’ that close,” Kull called back. “Even if the bramble lets the wee witchy free, it’ll just take another in her place.”

  “I suppose you’d rather just let it have her?” Annie demanded.

  “It’s na havin’ me.”

  “Ugh,” Annie grunted in disgust.

  “Please don’t let it take me,” Fable squeaked.

  “I’m not letting go, sweetheart,” Annie promised, redoubling her efforts.

&
nbsp; Fable’s legs felt like they were on fire, but with a final effort she wrenched one foot free and then the other. Together, she and Annie tumbled backward into the bracken.

  Fable gasped, panting, and pushed herself to sitting. For one terrifying moment, she couldn’t see her mother. Where was she? She had been atop the tree trunk only a moment ago. Dread crept into Fable’s mind. Had the bramble taken her mother in Fable’s place?

  And then the ground shook as the bear landed hard beside them. The big beast’s hot breath blew Fable’s curls around on her forehead, and Fable smiled. The bear grunted. Her muscles quivered and she slumped to the ground, panting. Her shoulders rose and fell, her whole body shuddering until the bear was gone and the queen was a woman once again, panting heavily beneath her heavy fur cloak.

  Fable turned her eyes warily back to the bramble. The tendrils pinched beneath the tree remained where they had been trapped, as lifeless and still as if they had never been anything more than harmless forest foliage.

  “It’s stopped,” Fable whispered.

  “That’s na good,” said Kull.

  “Not good?” Annie huffed. “We’re exceedingly lucky that we all came out of that alive, no thanks to you.”

  “Aye, ’tis luck, but na the good kind. This is bad. Very bad. The wee witchy didn’a satisfy the bramble.”

  “What, and you wanted her to? You are a horrible, vile—”

  “No.” The queen cut her off, her voice strained. A line of deep crimson had cut down her cheek, and she drew her breath through clenched teeth. “The thief is right. Look.” The swell of vines that had been crawling over the fallen tree had retreated, ebbing back to melt into the dark mass in the shadowy center of the forest. The bramble fell dormant and docile. “It’s quiet, and we’re all still here,” the queen said. “That’s not how the bramble works. If Fable did not satisfy it, then something else did.”