“What was she thinking coming this close to the forest? She knows only her mother or I are to work this close to the trees.” Harben’s voice sounded angry rather than sad. Papa was right. She should have paid better attention, should have focused on her planting and watched her sister instead of daydreaming about escape. Humiliation burned Larkin’s cheeks.
“She’s one of the Taken now,” intoned a third, nasally voice—the druid Rimoth. So, Crazy Maisy had gone for her father. “Your youngest is still alive. Praise the miracle and count yourself blessed.”
“Blessed?” her father said, voice pained. An unfamiliar swelling of hope started in Larkin’s breast. “How can I call myself blessed? Her mother is due any day. Nesha is a cripple, and Sela is only four. I need Larkin for the planting.”
The swelling died, bitter rot seeping into her veins instead.
More steps and ragged breathing. “I sounded the alarm. Where is she?”
Bane! Hope rushed through her. Bane would never give up on her—not without a fight.
“In there.” Larkin could imagine her father running his hand through his hair, curly and copper, just like hers. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Even her father’s slaps didn’t hurt nearly as much as those words.
“Her sacrifice will not be forgotten,” Rimoth said. “Tonight, we will place a candle in the river, as we did for your sister, Caelia, when she was taken.”
“No!” Bane cried. She heard a struggle, the impact of fists, and then someone tearing through the underbrush. “Larkin!”
“No, son! You can’t go in there,” Daydon said.
The suck and release of mud was replaced with the crack of brittle branches and the shush of soggy detritus. Larkin detected motion through the smattering of leaves blocking her vision. Though her eyes couldn’t shift to focus on him, she recognized the way he moved, the determined set of his shoulders.
I’m here!
Behind Bane came more motion, Papa and Daydon chasing after him—she could tell which one was her father by his slight build—but her friend pulled quickly away.
“You will make the forest angry!” Rimoth cried from farther away—the coward wouldn’t risk the forest for any of them. “It will visit destruction down on all of us. The beast will be unleashed!”
Bane’s sure steps faltered. He stumbled, tried to right himself, then his back arched, and he fell hard. “The trees are poison!”
The stirring, Larkin thought in dismay.
A half-dozen steps behind, Daydon and Papa dropped as well. “The whole forest burns,” Daydon said.
The trees around them stood silent and still, though the men cowered as if the boughs had come alive and were attacking them. Larkin suddenly understood. There was no stirring. The forest, like the magic of Denan’s pipes, made them see things that weren’t there.
It’s a lie! An illusion! she wanted to say.
“The stirring has taken you,” Rimoth said in his superior tone. “The forest will call her beast to devour you for daring to disturb her.”
Bane pushed himself up and took a few staggering steps. He was almost directly in Larkin’s line of sight now.
“Son, she’s gone. It’s too late,” Daydon implored. “Come back before the beast takes you too.”
“I won’t leave her!” Bane squeezed his eyes shut, held his arms in front of himself, and staggered forward. Papa and Daydon came after him. One took hold of Bane under his arms. The other reached for his legs.
“No!” Bane cried as he struggled to fend them off.
She seethed at the irony. For Bane, Papa would risk the Forbidden Forest—for another male, but not his own daughter. Not me.
Bane shoved her father back. “You all heard Sela. If a little girl can come back from the forest, so can Larkin. Help me.”
“No,” Daydon said firmly. “I’ll not lose you like I lost your sister.”
She wanted to call out to Bane, tell him the truth—tell all of them the truth about Denan. But then, from somewhere deep in the forest, a growl reverberated with enough force to make the leaves covering her face tremble and shift.
The gilgad Denan had killed—there had to be more. Her heart pounded out a frantic rhythm. If any of them would look down, they would see her lying silent and still, little more than a dozen paces from them.
“It’s the beast come for us all!” Papa said.
“You will visit destruction down on all our heads!” Rimoth said.
“Quickly, boy, or we’re all dead,” Daydon said.
At that, the fight drained out of Bane, and Larkin knew she was lost. Her father hadn’t bothered to fight for her. Even Bane was giving up. If she didn’t do something, they would leave her for the beast or Denan or both. Larkin gathered everything she had, pushing air through her throat. A strangled moan slipped past her vocal cords.
Bane whipped around, and his eyes locked with hers. He gaped, then jerked free of Papa and Daydon, lurching and staggering toward her through the illusions that bound him. “She’s here! She’s here!”
He ducked under the log and clawed at the leaves, scraping them away from her. He was touching her, probably even scratching her, but she couldn’t feel it. His hands cupped her cheeks. “Larkin? Oh, don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.”
She couldn’t meet his gaze, couldn’t answer.
The growling came again. The trees trembled around them.
“Bring her! Quickly,” Papa cried, hurrying toward the fields.
Bane lifted Larkin into his arms, detritus falling away from her. Her head dangled and bounced as Bane carried her from the forest. Though she could only focus on what was directly in front of her, she was surprised how much she could make out from her peripheral vision.
At the edge of the forest, Rimoth stepped in front of them, hand out. “Put her back!” he puffed. “Put her back or risk the beast’s wrath!”
Bane shoved past the older man, Rimoth calling threats after them. Ahead, men rushed toward them through her father’s fields, carrying scythes and axes.
“Stop them!” Rimoth called. “Stop them now!”
With looks of confusion, most of the men staggered to a halt. Kenjin, Horace, and his son, Horgen—the richest, most powerful men in town, next to Lord Daydon— pushed through the others to block Bane’s path. “What’s the meaning of this, Druid Rimoth?”
Gasping for breath, Rimoth lurched to a stop beside them. “The beast will not be denied its price. Larkin belongs to the forest now.”
Daydon stepped between her and Rimoth. “Nonsense. The girl will go home to her family.”
Larkin hated her father for his silence.
“The last time you defied the forest,” Horace said, “we lost five good men and dozens of girls.” His brother had been one of those men.
Daydon stiffened. It had been his idea to start the fires in the first place. Seeing his advantage, Rimoth pushed past him.
“This is different.” Bane held her closer. “The beast didn’t take her. She went in after Sela. Now, let us by.”
“Is it different?” Druid Rimoth’s voice went husky and deceptively soft. Larkin would have folded in on herself until she was as small as a field mouse if she could. Instead, she lay helpless in Bane’s arms as Rimoth scrutinized her, making her skin itch and crawl. The crowd grumbled. No one really liked Rimoth, but those who paid for his protections didn’t have daughters go missing as often.
“Why did you go into the forest, Larkin?” Rimoth’s rotten breath washed over her. She caught a glimpse of his pale thumb as it brushed over her brow—he was touching her! She wanted to recoil from the man’s damp, corpse-pale skin and lean into Bane for support. Instead, she was imprisoned in this frozen body.
“You will step away from my daughter, Druid!” Even with her enormous pregnant belly, Larkin’s mother, Pennice, shoved past Rimoth and the powerful men like they were errant children. As the town midwife, Mama had plenty of experience dealing with emotional men. She
rested her hand on Larkin’s chest, and her eyes fluttered shut in relief. “Bane, bring her to the house.”
“Get inside, woman,” Papa said, the first time he’d spoken during the entire exchange.
Mama shot him a glare that would sizzle bacon. Bane pushed past Horace and Horgen.
“Now see here, Mother Pennice,” Horgen began.
Mama rounded on the young man’s father. “Horace, I brought all your boys into this world, naked and screaming. Now control your oldest, or I’ll hand him back to his mother the same way I found him.”
Horgen stepped back. The rest of the crowd parted for Mama without another word.
“Men, spread out around the town,” Daydon said. “If anything comes out of the forest, kill it.”
“How can you defend against a creature no one has seen and lived to tell about it?” Rimoth called out to the men. They ignored him as they moved toward the forest.
“Until now,” Bane said, his voice rumbling in his chest.
“Move it!” Daydon shouted at the townsmen. They picked up their pace.
“I speak for the forest!” Rimoth raged after them. “I alone can calm her anger. You would do well to obey me!”
Larkin wanted to warn the men; it wasn’t a beast they should be watching for, but a man.
Bane shifted so Larkin’s head settled on his shoulder. He rubbed his scruff against her forehead. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he whispered. “You’re safe now.”
Warmth enfolded her as his familiar smell washed over her, like night mist off freshly tilled earth. She couldn’t tip her chin back to look at him, but his features were burned in her memory—his broad chest and narrow waist, his beakish nose and raven black hair, his warm eyes that offset his pale skin.
If anyone could protect her from the piper, it was Bane. And she had no doubts Denan would be back for her, as he’d promised.
Mama knocked on the door to their house, which was made of fitted chunks of black stone that staggered up the cone-shaped roof. “Nesha, let us in.”
The bar over the door scraped as it dropped away. Nesha’s bare feet—one of them twisted and deformed—appeared. “Larkin?” she asked, her voice pitched high with panic.
Bane shouldered his way past her. Immediately, the smoke from the baking fire stung Larkin’s eyes.
Mama dropped the bar back over the door. “Lay her there.”
Bane set Larkin on her sleeping mat. Her head turned so she could see her mother, though she couldn’t focus on her. Beyond her family, she could make out the rolled-up sleeping mats, a woven basket with their wooden plates and cups, and the coracle—a small boat made of cowhide stretched over woven willow branches. Now it held their seed rye, but during the spring, they often needed it to cross the overflowing river.
Mama knelt next to Larkin and pressed her ear to Larkin’s chest, her pregnant belly pushing against Larkin’s side. “Her heart is strong.” She began checking Larkin over for other injuries.
Nesha knelt on her other side. She tucked the wild mess of hair out of Larkin’s face and cupped her cheeks. “Larkin?” When she didn’t answer, Nesha looked to Bane. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. I found her this way.”
“The piper did it,” Sela said from somewhere out of sight.
Someone banged on the door, the hinges squealing in protest. “Open the door, Pennice!”
Everyone froze. Mama let out all her breath and nodded once to Nesha, who rose to let Papa in. Out of breath, he pushed into the house. “What were you thinking, you fool girl! All you had to do was work and keep an eye on your sister. But no, you have your fool head in the sky!”
Everyone stiffened and averted their gazes. Larkin wanted to catch the breeze coming in behind her father and ride it somewhere far, far away.
Bane slipped his hand into hers—she knew because she felt it. She felt it! Her heart stuttered and started back up again. She tried to feel the mat beneath her, the mud she knew must be drying on her skin, but there was nothing besides the palm of her hand resting against Bane’s. And like always, his touch grounded her, brought her back to the dark, dank hut her family lived in.
“She’s suffered enough,” Bane said flatly.
Papa took a menacing step toward her, then seemed to note the lord’s son and think better of it. “As soon as she gets up, I want to know.” He turned on his heel and left.
Mama glared at Papa’s retreating form. “I need to check her over. Bane, you best go.”
Bane hesitated, placed Larkin’s hand on her stomach, and turned away. Her face was turned toward the door, and she had no choice but to watch him go.
Mama took a deep breath. “Nesha, you and Sela bring in pots of water. Let’s wash this mud off her and see what we find.”
Humiliated, Larkin lay helpless as Mama stripped her like she was a child, bathed her, and wrapped her damaged feet with boiled rags. Mama tried to dig the remaining sliver out of her palm—the pain a sharp ache Larkin was powerless to escape from—but it was too deep. Mama and Nesha went through the arduous process of washing Larkin’s waist-length, curly red hair. A chill breeze snaked through the gaps around the door and window, but the cold was nothing to the horror that she would stay this way. What had the piper done to her?
Finally, Mama braided her hair, dressed her in a clean shift, wrapped her in her wool blanket, and forced some valerian tea down her. She slid Larkin’s eyes closed, which eased her burning need to blink, but did nothing for her nerves. She lay blind and frozen as her family made and ate supper. Papa came home. Apparently, a watch had been set—not that it would do any good if the beast decided to come—and Papa wasn’t needed yet.
The town would never need him. He was not to be trusted.
Eventually, everyone lay down to sleep. Wet sounds filled the night—the rushing river, the scattered pattering of rain, and the chorus of frogs. Larkin lay helpless and tried to pick apart the sounds for any hint of Denan coming for her.
Born on the wind, music seeped through the cracks of Larkin’s hut, insinuating itself in her dreams. Her body flickered from form to smoke and back again. Rising, she turned her back on the embers of her family’s dying fire. Her feet skimmed over her damp, cold blankets. Larkin soundlessly lifted the bar and slipped into a night as dark as ink on charcoal.
The music breathed into her. The cold pierced through her thin shift, threatening to pull her apart. She drew her arms around herself to keep from dissipating. She took a step away from the house, then stumbled and fell. The smoke of her body scattered and gathered back together as she sprawled over something large and fleshy. She recognized Bane’s body by smell—damp soil and mists.
He didn’t stir from the sleeping mat he’d spread before the door. She took form long enough to press a gentle kiss on his temple and tug his cloak over his shoulder and around the ax he clutched to his chest. The music swept around her again, her breath forming a vapor that misted against her cheeks as she walked into it. She wandered past the bridge, then between the willows and the hill bearing Bane’s manor. The town beyond slumped in the shadows.
Grassy fields beckoned her up the hill. Partially frozen beads of moisture cracked against the soles of her bare feet, making her shivery with cold. She passed the last hut before the forest and slipped around a sentinel who slept in a heap next to the pigpen, his neck bent at an awkward angle.
She crested the hill and blew down the other side, carried along beside the river that gleamed onyx as a serpent’s eye. At her approach, the frogs stopped singing, taking up the chorus again once she was past. She walked in this bubble of quiet until she reached the place where the river met the forest.
Before her stood a large tree covered in wicked thorns the size of her thumb—the Curse Tree. Faded bits of ribbon shifted with the breeze. On each were written curses—Let my entire crop fail or May my child be born a girl and a cripple. Some people believed they could trick the forest into cursing them with something good. Lark
in thought them all fools. Nothing good came out of the Forbidden Forest.
The breeze rippled leaves and made the great boughs moan. A man stepped from the shadows, a set of panpipes at his lips. And if she was smoke, he was her fire—for one could not exist without the other. Still playing, he came to the forest’s edge and stretched out his free hand.
She looked at his open palm and at him. Longing tore through her—a knowledge that if she took hold, her life would change for the better, that she would be happier than she had ever been. She knew it as surely as she knew that not taking hold would mean bitter sorrow.
And yet, she hesitated.
He reached out and ran his knuckles down her cheek. A zing of awareness bolted through her. She leaned into that touch. His hand opened, cupping her cheek. She turned her nose into his palm and inhaled the earthy, resin scent of him.
“I told you I would come back for you,” he said.
He played again. His other hand slipped into hers, tugging her a single step into the forest. The pressure of his hand pushed the sliver deeper into the meat of her palm. Her hand tingled, and sudden clarity shot through her.
A small reservoir of power lay dormant inside her. That power felt right and good and hers. Instinctively, she reached for it. It slid up and down her skin. In an instant, the smoky haze clouding her thoughts vanished, and she was herself again.
She planted her feet and jerked her hand free of Denan’s, her head shaking frantically even as the music tried to burrow past the defenses she’d built around herself. “No,” she ground out.
With a look of supreme frustration, he gave up on the pipes and grasped her arm. “How are you resisting my magic? That isn’t possible.”
She had no answer for him, but he didn’t seem to expect one as he dragged her toward the forest. She writhed and hit him with her free arm. He took both her wrists in his large hands. “Don’t make me dart you again, Larkin.”
She stiffened, thinking of how utterly helpless she had been in that state. It took everything she had to stop fighting him.