The Unready Queen Page 16

  The great wolf flinched as if stung. He glanced down at his flank and then up the sloping hill at the shaking Albert. His lips curled back over razor-sharp fangs. Muscles rippled under layers of coarse hair. Skoll growled, a noise so low it was barely a noise anymore.

  “This is going to be bad,” Tinn muttered, just before the field erupted into complete chaos.

  Skoll made straight for Albert, but he was not as fast as the arrow that caught the dishwasher in the shoulder and sent him falling over backward with a yelp. More shots were fired, cracking and popping in irregular bursts. Sunlight flashed off of wicked blades, and deafening cries of pain and outrage filled the air, along with clouds of acrid gun smoke and buzzing, flapping wings.

  “Ow!” Mr. Washington shrieked as a blur of wings swarmed around him. “Ow! They’re biting!” His flailing arms made contact and a stunned pixie spun to the ground with a squeak.

  In all the madness, Fable had lost sight of her mother. She squinted through the scuffle and the smoke, her eyes searching. A flinty-faced spriggan in the center of the bedlam opened the pouch he kept slung around his neck. He tossed his head back and threw something in the back of his throat. Was that little ruffian having a snack in the middle of a battle?

  “What do we do?” Cole whispered.

  Fable didn’t have an answer. More townspeople were pouring down the hillsides now. A woman in a soot-stained apron pulled at her neighbors’ arms, but they shoved past her to join the fray.

  “Is that Mom?” Tinn breathed. “Oh, jeez, she’s right in the middle!”

  Even over all the other voices, Annie Burton’s fruitless pleas carried on the wind. “Stop! Don’t do this!” she implored.

  “There’s my uncle Jim, too,” Evie whispered. “What are they all doing? They’re going to get killed!”

  Fable looked where Evie was pointing. Old Jim Warner had paused atop the nearest hill, overlooking the melee. He lifted the rifle and focused his aim on a target the children could not see within the fight. His jaw tightened. For all his mean talk, he did not look enthusiastic about pulling the trigger.

  Fable wondered with icy dread which of the forest folk might be standing at the other end of his muzzle. Kallra? Chief Nudd? Her mother?

  Old Jim’s thumb slid to the hammer, but before he could fire his first shot, the swirling smoke of the battlefield parted and a giant erupted before him like a whale breaching the ocean’s surface.

  Old Jim stared, gaping.

  The impossible behemoth loomed over the heads of even the tallest trolls, its skin like hardened slate and its expression murderous. The monster’s features blurred at the edges, and Fable found it hard to focus on the giant for too long. It made her eyes hurt.

  Old Jim slowly lowered his rifle. Across the next hill, Annie Burton froze. The colossus was growing larger still, right before her eyes. It was thirty feet tall—then forty—then fifty. The ground shuddered as it stepped forward, and the children could only stare, stupefied. Gunshots rang out to the left and right, but bullets whizzed right through the giant’s skin and out the other side as if it weren’t even there. The giant took a slow step toward Annie.

  “Mom!” Tinn yelled. “Look out!” If she could hear him, she was too stunned to react. Cole felt his heart lurch.

  Jim Warner jogged toward Annie. “Move!” he bellowed. Annie blinked. Old Jim caught her by the shoulder and she snapped out of her daze. The two of them leapt just as the giant swung one mammoth hand downward.

  Annie dove to one side, Jim to the other. Annie rolled to safety.

  Evie screamed as Old Jim’s body flew fifty feet in the air to land in a heap in the center of the smoky field. His rifle tumbled across the grass and slid to a stop against the roots of the felled tree.

  Tinn’s throat felt dry as he swallowed. Old Jim wasn’t moving.

  Evie vaulted forward.

  “No, wait!” Fable tried to catch her arm, but Evie threw herself into the fray. Tinn bolted after her, Cole fast on his heels.

  The myriad sounds of battle melted into a deafening roar as the children pelted between slicing blades and slashing claws. Evie ducked under a troll’s swinging fist and Cole dodged a swiping spear tip. Fable heard a pop and felt the air part in front of her as something shot past, inches from her face. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, and for all her frantic searching, there was no sign of her mother in the crush of bodies.

  Somehow, in the fog of smoke and sound, Evie found Old Jim and threw herself down at his side. “He’s still breathing!” she cried. “He’s alive!”

  No sooner had she spoken than an arrow thudded into the soil a foot away from Jim’s leg, the bolt vibrating from the force of impact.

  “He won’t be alive for long if we can’t get him somewhere safe,” said Tinn.

  “Where is safe?” said Cole.

  Hoofbeats thudded up behind them like thunder, and in the next instant a pair of centaurs leapt over their heads. The kids threw themselves down, feeling the ground shake as the hooves slammed to the earth and pounded off again into the fog of war. Somewhere behind them a voice bellowed something loud and incoherent. A shrill screech answered.

  Fable’s head spun. It was all too much. The gun smoke hanging over the field stung her eyes and burned her throat. “Stop,” she tried to say, but she couldn’t even hear her own voice over the din.

  “We can’t stay here!” yelled Cole.

  “We’re not leaving him,” said Evie.

  “Come on!” Tinn grabbed Old Jim under one arm. “Anywhere is better than here. Let’s just find some cover.” Cole grabbed Jim’s other arm. Jim let out a low moan, his head lolling to one side as they tugged at him.

  They dragged the old man toward the wreckage of the ruined oil rig, keeping their heads low as they moved. They had barely reached the shadow of the shattered structure when an unearthly wild pig bounded out of the fog, its eyes like embers and its back lined with spines as jagged and sharp as saw blades. Cole threw himself aside just in time to avoid being cut to ribbons.

  Fable raised her eyes and tried to calm her pounding heart. It was too much. Through the haze to the east, she could see spear tips waving. Atop the hill to the west, a group of townspeople had set a hay cart ablaze, and they looked as though they might send it rolling down. All the while, the air crackled with the incessant popping of gunshots.

  “Stop!” Fable screamed. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” She was choking on noise and smoke and violence. At the top of the hill, the blazing hay cart began to roll. It caught a rough patch a few yards down and toppled, spewing its fiery contents across the hillside like a hellish blanket.

  “We can’t stay here!” Cole yelled. “We need to—”

  But he did not finish. A booming voice from the forest’s edge barked a command and the sky was suddenly full of arrows. The projectiles looked strangely graceful as they reached the top of their arc, moving toward the children like a hungry swarm.

  Time stopped.

  Fable’s heart paused. In that frozen moment, the strangling panic lifted, the deafening noise died away, and she felt herself go hollow and empty.

  Thum. Her heart beat. Thum. The pounding echoed through her, rippling the tips of her fingers. Thum. Magic tingled in Fable’s veins.

  Fable’s mind was clear and calm. Cole was shouting something, but his voice was a million miles away. Evie had thrown herself over her great uncle’s chest, and Tinn had thrown himself over Evie.

  Fable took a deep breath.

  And then she let it out through the wind.

  The breeze moved through Fable and Fable moved through the breeze. Gale, she thought. Trees whistled, smoke whorled, and with a whoosh, the swarm of descending arrows curved abruptly upward, their sharp tips sweeping over the children’s heads to bury themselves harmlessly in the burning hillside. The flames crackled happily and began to consume
the shafts at once.

  Fable closed her eyes. She felt the heat of the raging fire, and reached out for it in her mind and grasped it with a hand that could not be burned. Extinguish. Her fingers clenched at her sides as she concentrated. She felt the flames cool by slow degrees under the pressure of her mental grip, until they were no warmer than a summer breeze—and when she opened her eyes, the fire was out. A cloud of ash and smoke spun lazily over the charred earth.

  Fable turned back to Cole and Tinn and Evie, still huddled over Old Jim, their arms around each other in the shadow of the broken rig. Cole’s urgent shouts reached Fable like a gentle whisper. He was yelling at her to get down, and Tinn was waving for her frantically. Their eyes were full of fear but also desperate hope. Fable smiled. Her friends wanted to protect her.

  She listened. She breathed. She concentrated.

  She wanted to protect them, too.

  And so she did.

  Twenty-Seven

  The breeze shifted, and the queen’s cloak whipped in the draft. She felt a familiar tingle running up her neck, but she kept her focus. There were six of them, men and boys, racing across the gap toward the waiting gnome forces. The human fools wielded kitchen knives and broken table legs. Perhaps they thought their height would give them the advantage. They would not survive the encounter. The gnomes tensed as they waited for the men to close the final distance.

  The queen flexed. At her command, the grass slithered with motion and the first man tumbled to the ground. Not remotely enough time to summon a full wall, but she could fill the field with knotty, troublesome roots. The second man twisted as he stumbled and she could hear the snap of his ankle. He howled in pain. Better a broken ankle than his life lost. The rest of the men slowed, stepping more gingerly through the growing tangle, the momentum of their terrible decision rapidly losing steam.

  Goose bumps prickled across the queen’s arms, and she felt it again, stronger this time. She knew that magic. So much energy was swirling in the air all around her—fairies and spirits and wildlings of all sorts wielding their own spells and charms—but this magic was special. Where was it coming from? It was like trying to pick out a familiar voice in a chorus. And there it was.

  Fable’s magic.

  No. Her daughter could not be here. Not now.

  The queen took two steps forward, and then, halfway across the field, a circle of earth rose like a platform. Roots pushed up out of the ground and spun themselves into thick vines, which wove into tighter and tighter knots, fat leaves sprouting from their sides in rippling emerald waves. It was a nature barrier—a wild-wall as sturdy and thick as any the queen had ever summoned. It grew with lightning speed, weaving a circular barrier twenty feet in diameter. In its center—through the fog, and between the rapidly closing gaps in the vines—the queen could see a head of dark, curly hair.

  “Fable,” she breathed.

  Within the wild-wall, Fable took a slow breath. She could still hear the pop of gunfire and the clang of steel—but inside their leafy cocoon the noises were muffled and far away.

  Cole stood and brushed his hands off on his pants. “Whoa,” he said. “Nice.”

  Fable blinked and spun, surveying the wall with unmasked wonder. “Huh. Yeah. I—I did this.” She nodded to herself. “This is a thing I did. Now what?”

  The ground within the circle was cracked and uneven, churned up by the motion of the roots. The framework of the fractured rig was now leaning even more heavily to one side. Beside it, a wicked-looking tricone drill bit had been partially unearthed, its muddy teeth glistening in the sunlight.

  Tinn pushed himself to his feet. “Old Jim is still breathing, but he’s in bad shape.” He leaned his back against the ruins of the rig, and the wreck creaked and groaned. He pulled hastily away as it swayed ominously.

  “I guess now we know Hill was telling the truth about what smashed that thing,” Cole said. “That was a real, actual giant back there. Old Jim is lucky it didn’t just crush him completely. I thought there were no giants left in the Wild Wood.”

  “There aren’t,” said Fable. “Not . . . technically.”

  “How was that not a giant?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was a spriggan. But a big one.”

  “I thought spriggans were tiny,” said Evie.

  “They are,” Fable said. “Except when they’re not. They’re forest spirits. And spirits are . . . flexible. Some of them turn into plants, or winter winds, or bullfrogs. Some of them turn into . . . well, that, apparently. They can’t stay giant forever, though. So, that was a temporary giant. Doesn’t count.”

  “Spirits of the old giants,” Tinn mumbled, more to himself than the rest of the group, remembering Kull’s lesson.

  Fable nodded. “That’s right. Mama once told me that spriggans could make themselves huge if they needed to—I’d forgotten all about that until I saw it. I’ve never ever actually seen one do it. It basically never happens.”

  “They probably haven’t had a reason to for a long time,” said Cole. “Not with the old saw mill closed down and people not chopping down trees anymore—plus your mom protecting the forest for them.”

  “Well, they have reason now,” Fable said. “Humans ruin everything.”

  Nobody said anything for several moments as the dull roar of the battle continued all around them.

  “Hey. Look at this,” said Evie, breaking the silence. “There’s stuff all over the bottom of the drill.”

  They turned to look where she was pointing. The drill was a heavy industrial thing, built for tunneling through rock. It ended in a trio of jagged cones all rimmed with metal teeth—and each of these was caked in some sort of iridescent mud. It glittered like diamonds where it caught the light.

  “Is that oil?” said Tinn.

  “It doesn’t look like any kind of oil I’ve ever seen,” said Evie. She stepped closer. “It looks like clay, but there’s all these sparkles in it, like it’s full of tiny rainbows.” Light bouncing off of the drill cast a spray of colors across Evie’s arms like fancy confetti as she neared. She poked at the mud and a clump broke off in her hand. “It’s all powdery,” she said, dropping the lump to the ground.

  A shadow fell over the circle of vines, and all four children looked up. A massive face like sheets of granite stared down at them. It did not look happy.

  “Your temporary giant,” Cole managed in a hoarse whisper, “appears to be still a giant.”

  The giant’s fingers ground slowly closed to form a fist the size of a boulder.

  “Look out!” yelled Tinn.

  “Stay away from my friends!” Fable cried. She pointed both hands at the giant and screwed up her eyes in concentration. Nothing happened. She opened her eyes. “Oh, come on,” she growled. “Stupid magic! You’re supposed to work now!”

  The giant’s fist rose to strike.

  Fable pointed both hands upward again. “Be a hedgehog!” she yelled. “Butterfly? Turtle?” The giant—still very much a giant—drove his fist down like an avalanche.

  Evie dove, catching Fable from the side a split second before the stony knuckles could catch her from above. The two tumbled over the uneven terrain, bouncing as the impact of the giant’s blow shook the earth. Something behind them cracked loudly, and they could hear the boys yelp in alarm. Evie’s face ground against the dirt and Fable flopped beside her. They righted themselves frantically as the giant’s fist withdrew, bracing for the next attack. But the behemoth turned away. It bellowed deeply as its attention was drawn elsewhere.

  “You okay?” Fable panted.

  Evie did a rapid inventory of limbs and nodded, wiping dust out of her eyes. Everything hurt and she could taste iron on her tongue. With one hand she wiped a bloody lip, and with the other she pushed herself to her feet. She swayed.

  “I’m . . .” she began. Her whole head suddenly buzzed and her knees f
elt wobbly. It took everything she had left not to topple over. Then, just as quickly, the sensation was gone. “. . . I’m fine?”

  Evie took a deep breath and was shocked to feel her lungs expand without pain—she hadn’t even realized how sore they had become until they weren’t. Had Fable done something magical to her? Her joints, which had been screaming at her since they had begun their reckless race through the forest, felt strangely limber and strong. She looked down at her hand. Across her fingers was a streak of red from her bloody lip—and within the smear sparkled the residue of the glittering powder. Evie blinked, trying to make sense of the feelings coursing through her.

  “Help!” Tinn’s voice sounded strained, and Evie pulled her attention toward it. “Help me!” he cried. “I can’t move it!”

  What remained of the rig had collapsed completely. The giant’s blow must have finished it off. Steel braces had bent and twisted, and splintered scraps of wood littered the ground to the left and right of Old Jim. Extraordinarily, the man seemed to have missed the worst of it, but Tinn had not been so lucky.

  A timber as thick across as Tinn’s chest had landed on the boy’s leg. Tinn’s face was pale. Cole was already at his brother’s side, and in an instant Fable had bounded over to join them. They pulled as Tinn pushed, their arms shaking from the strain, but the heavy beam refused to budge.

  Evie ran forward and wedged her fingers under the wood beside them. Maybe, if they all pulled at the same time . . .

  The beam lifted a fraction as her fingers slid under it. Evie tensed. Her muscles tightened. The beam rose.

  She almost dropped it the second it was up. She had expected the dead weight of a mountain, but the wood under her fingers felt soft and light, like she was lifting a cardboard box and not a timber as wide as she was. She gripped tighter and raised it over her head, her fingers pressing into the pliant wood like it was a sponge.