Into the Woods: Tales From the Hollows and Beyond

  Ivy dropped. Daryl’s sword point missed, but just. Rolling backward, Ivy tried to knock Daryl down, but the nymph jumped straight up. Ivy was standing when she landed, and the two women hesitated, looking at each other in surprise and what might be respect.

  “Blow it up, Jenks!” Ivy called out. “I’ll get out of the way!”

  Jenks’s mouth dropped open. Holy shit. Ivy didn’t know if she could take her or not.

  Darting back to the rock for protection, he sheathed his sword and pulled an arrow from his quiver. “Everyone get behind the rock!” he shouted. “Jumoke, the firepot!”

  Leathery wings shaking, Bis scrambled behind the rock. Vincet fought his child as he dragged her to safety, the freedom-hungry dryad screaming. Vi was only a year old. Her tiny body couldn’t take this. She was dusting heavily, glowing like a demon as the energy of the ley line ran through her. Vincet’s own tears turned to dust as he fought to keep her from attacking Daryl—but he looked up at Jenks with hope.

  “Here, Dad!” Jumoke shouted, taking off the lid. The scraping of the lid was loud, and Jenks buried the tip of the arrow in it. Immediately the wad of dandelion fluff ignited. Matalina was the real archer, he thought as he took aim and the arrow arched away. Fortunately, all he had do to was hit the statue. “Fire in the hold!” he shouted. “Everyone down!”

  “No!” Daryl screamed, stretching her hand out. A flash of wind came at him, and he went tumbling backward, but a pained cry echoed, and the force immediately died.

  When he found air again under his wings, his arrow was lost and the statue untouched. Daryl was writhing on the cement, downed by Ivy in the instant the nymph lost her concentration. Ivy herself looked winded, holding her arm where the nymph’s sword had scored on her.

  “Rhenoranian, help me!” Daryl said, coughing as she got to her knees, undeterred.

  Expression pinched, Ivy strode forward, but Daryl groaned, kneeling as she shoved the air at her with both hands.

  “Watch out!” Bis cried as Ivy was flung back to land in the flower bed beside Sylvan’s statue as if having been pulled by a string. Frustrated, Jenks lowered his next arrow, not yet lit.

  “Let me be your strength, Rhenoranian!” Daryl said, staggering to her feet. “Let me be your vessel!” She turned to Jenks, and his wings went cold. “Let me be your vengeance!”

  Worried, Jenks darted up, then down. He couldn’t see the ley line she was pulling on, but the force of it made his wings tingle. Daryl pointed at him with a new confidence, and then Ivy’s scream echoed against the dark windows across the street. Motions blurring, the battle began again. Twelve feet up, Jenks watched, useless bow in hand and knowing he wouldn’t be able to shoot until Ivy downed the nymph. Daryl kept pushing Ivy back to the statue.

  Moving faster than seemed possible, Daryl ducked Ivy’s crescent kick, only to fall when Ivy continued the spin and knocked her feet out from under her.

  The nymph hit the ground, coughing. Ivy jumped into the air, elbow poised and clearly ready to slam it into Daryl’s throat as she fell to hit the dirt beside her.

  Daryl saw it coming and pulled her sword up to protect her throat. Ivy screamed, knowing she couldn’t move enough to avoid being cut. The blade nicked Daryl’s face, too, upon impact, but it protected her throat. Ivy was hurt more.

  The small success seemed to galvanize the nymph, who staggered to her feet when Ivy rolled away holding her numb elbow. Swinging her blade in a wide arc, she waited—grimacing.

  Like a mad thing, Ivy rushed her, plowing her foot right into her solar plexus between the gaps of the blade.

  Daryl bent, and Ivy lashed out with a front kick, snapping the nymph’s head back.

  And still the woman wouldn’t go down, falling back as she tried to find her breath.

  “Now, Jenks!” Ivy called out, and Jenks dropped down to the rock and the firepot.

  One hand to her middle, Daryl groaned, staggering to a stand. “Help me, Rhenoranian!” she screamed, shaking hand outstretched.

  The wind came from everywhere. The black roared. It beat at the trees. Jenks tumbled, fighting it.

  “Stop!” Ivy shouted, and when Jenks squinted, he saw she had yanked the nymph up and was pinning her to the tree across from her statue. “Stop, or I will fucking kill you!”

  “Let me go, or I will pierce your liver,” the nymph said, her teeth gritted.

  “Oh, shit,” Jenks whispered, seeing the glint of metal at Ivy’s side.

  Screaming down from the hills, the wind circled them like wolves. A small spot of stillness grew, surrounded by a wall of gray and black fury. The lights of Cincinnati vanished as if behind water. Even the ever-present thumps of industry were gone, overpowered by the chugging of the wind.

  But here, in Daryl’s sacred grove, the moon shone down in perfect stillness.

  Jenks glanced to Jumoke peeping up from behind the rock as the torn leaves drifted down, gesturing for him to stay. Vi had stopped struggling. Her breath rasped like oven air, and her wings were starting to smolder by the acrid smell now pinching his nose.

  Ivy still pinned Daryl to the tree, her arm against her throat. One in white, one in black, one in silk, the other in leather, both unmoving apart from their lungs heaving.

  Slowly Jenks started to drop toward the firepot.

  “Why do you stand against me?” Daryl whispered. “It’s honor that gives your limbs the strength to best me.” She took a careful breath. “It glows in you, and you hurt from it.”

  Ivy flinched when Daryl touched her jaw. “I’m not hurt,” she said quickly.

  “Sylvan went against the gods’ law,” the nymph was saying, her cracked lip starting to bleed. “Taught himself to exist in cold stone, then used the knowledge not to live, but to kill for enjoyment. Why do you free him? I don’t understand.”

  “She lies!” Vi shouted, elbowing Vincet. “She’s touched! Break the statue! Now!”

  Sylvan was in jail? Not imprisoned by a jealous lover? Jenks hesitated, his wings going cold as Vincet struggled to hold her wildly struggling body. Had they had almost let him free? A murderer?

  “The demons imprisoned him in stone,” Daryl said, her fingers opening. The sword dropped to the grass, and Ivy flinched. “His heart remains as cold, even now when the fire of the demon’s blood burns through him. I begged for the honor to guard him as it was my sisters he murdered. I fought for the right, learned to kill, to be heartless, only to fail here when it counts. If you free Sylvan, kill me as well, for I’m too cowardly to live when honorable people give such filth freedom.”

  Around them, the wind died to let the clamor from the townhouses and city beat upon them once more. The lights were on again, and people were talking loudly. “You’re not a coward,” Ivy said softly, and Daryl’s eyes met hers, widening at something only the nymph could see.

  Abruptly Ivy let go of her and stepped back, frightened. Holding her arms to herself, she looked for Jenks, now hovering right over the rock, Jumoke below him with the firepot. “We need to reassess this,” she said, white-faced.

  “No!” Vi exclaimed, exploding into motion and hitting her father right between the legs.

  “Ooooh,” Jenks said with a wince, then yelped when she scrambled up the rock as if she didn’t have wings, snatching his bow and yanking an arrow from his quiver.

  “Jumoke!” Bis shouted as the little girl jumped at the boy, screaming wildly. Jenks’s son took to the air, frightened, but she crashed right into him. The coal pot hit the grass. The lid popped off and coals scattered, flashing orange with the new breath of air.

  Screaming in victory, Vi ran for them, burying the tip of an arrow against one. It flared to life even as she pulled the bow back, arrow notched.

  “Get her!” Jenks shouted as he tackled her about the knees.

  He hit her hard, and they slid across the grass, his arms scraping. Taking a breath, he looked up to see the flaming arrow was arching true to its target.

  “Drop!” he shouted, trying t
o cover Vi from the coming blast. Panic iced his wings as he saw Jumoke still hovering in midair, shocked into immobility. He’d never reach him in time.

  Then Bis raised his hand, cupping it before him.

  The night turned white and orange, and an explosion pulsed against his ears and echoed up through the ground into him. Hunching down, Jenks tried to bury himself in the grass, feeling the blast push the blood from his wings for an instant. Jumoke fell to the ground in front of him.

  “Why didn’t you drop!” Jenks shouted, his own voice sounding muffled from his stunned ears as he got off Vi and went to his son, bewildered on the ground. “Jumoke, are you okay?”

  Panicking, he pulled his son up. Frantic, he felt Jumoke’s face, then ran his hands down his wings, looking for tears. Jumoke yelped, wiggling to get out from under Jenks’s hands.

  “Oh, that was everlastingly cool,” the boy said, grinning from under his dark hair.

  Jenks smacked his shoulder in relief. He was okay. “What’s wrong with you!” he shouted, glad his hearing was coming back. “I told you to drop!”

  Bis’s thick skin on his brow was furrowed in worry, but Jenks didn’t think it was from the cut he was looking at on the back of his hand. In the distance, a car alarm was going off. “Um, Jenks?” he said in question.

  A quick glance told him Vincet was okay. Vi was in his arms looking stunned but herself. Sylvan no longer possessed her, which meant he was probably free. Great, just freaking great. He only wanted to help, and he freed a murderer. Rachel and Ivy were not going to be happy.

  Ivy.

  Alarmed, Jenks darted up. Chunks of marble the size of apples and melons littered the sidewalk. A few pieces were embedded in the tree that Ivy had pinned Daryl against, and the scent of cracked rock pervaded. Vincet’s home and Daryl’s statue looked untouched. But no Ivy. No Daryl, either.

  “Ivy!” Jenks shouted, realizing he was about to fall from exhaustion. Damn it, he’d let his sugar drop. Immediately he found a sweetball in his pocket and sucked on it. The sugar hit him fast, and his wings sped up. Across the street, people were starting to come out of their homes, aiming flashlights at the park. They had to get out of here.

  “Ivy!” he shouted again. “You okay?”

  Bis poked his head up from behind the rock, his ears pricked as he looked at the tree, and Jenks wasn’t surprised when Daryl stumbled out from behind it. Ivy levered herself up from the ground, having found a dip to take shelter in. They both picked their way carefully to the sidewalk, taking in the damage with a numb acceptance.

  “He’s free,” Daryl whispered, her smooth features bunching in distress.

  A crack of noise made them all jump. It was the snap of breaking stone, and the sharp sound echoed off the town homes across the street. As they watched, a huge slab of broken rock slid from Sylvan’s statue, falling to crush the flowers.

  “I didn’t do it, Papa!” Jumoke exclaimed, eyes wide as he darted close. “It wasn’t me!”

  “It was me,” a new voice said, sly and wispy.

  Startled, Jenks turned in the air even as Daryl caught her breath only to start coughing. Ivy held her back from attacking him, but her lips were pressed in anger. A thin figure was standing in the moonlight, his feet on the moss beside the dogwood tree. It looked like Sylvan’s statue. Moving as if it might be hurt, the shadowy figure edged out into the moonlight, drawing back as one bare foot touched the concrete. It was Sylvan. It had to be.

  “You lied to me,” Jenks said, loosening his sword.

  “I’m free!” the dryad exclaimed, and he leaped lightly onto the concrete, exuberant as his robes furled.

  The glow of Vincet’s dust was a sickly yellow as he hovered beside Jenks, his broken sword in hand. The dryad probably didn’t know it, but it was a real threat.

  “Is Vi okay?” Jenks asked, and Vincet nodded.

  “But I fear we have let loose a demon.”

  “You are trash, Sylvan!” Daryl shouted, sagging in Ivy’s arms as she wheezed. “I will not rest until you are dead!”

  Sylvan stopped his twirling. Looking at Jenks as if seeing him for the first time, the dryad smiled, his gaze alighting briefly on Vincet, Jumoke, and finally Bis, all fronting him. “Daryl is a crazy bitch,” he said softly, pulling himself to a dignified stance. “I didn’t lie.” Glancing at the people coming across the park from the town homes, he added, almost as an afterthought, “Not much, anyway.”

  “Now!” Ivy shouted, springing into action. Jenks darted forward, sword in hand.

  “No, wait!” Bis exclaimed, but Ivy was already pinwheeling to a stop. The spot of air where Sylvan had been, was gone.

  “Where did he go!” Ivy asked, turning back to them.

  Bis shook himself, resettling his wings as he looked at the people coming closer. “Into the line,” he said, clearly unnerved. His ears were pinned and his tail was lashed about his feet. “He shouldn’t be able to do that,” he added, meeting Jenks’s gaze.

  Daryl slumped on the bench to look totally undignified and out of character. “It’s why he was imprisoned in stone,” she said, pushing a chip of his statue off to clatter on the cement. “Now I’ll never find him.”

  Jenks stifled a shiver as he met Ivy’s eyes. Tink’s contractual hell, he’d made a big mistake. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We can worry about Sylvan later.”

  “Right behind you.” Bis flew to their satchel, ducking behind Daryl’s robes and coming out with it and the grimy, dented bowl. A bobbing flashlight across the grass caught his eyes, and they glowed red. Seeing it, someone called out. More lights angled their way.

  “Jenks, I’m taking Daryl to the hospital,” Ivy said. “Can you get home from here okay?”

  Jenks looked at Daryl, struggling to breathe, and he nodded. “See you there.”

  Daryl was complaining she wasn’t going to go to the butchers and leechers when Vincet dropped down to him. “Thank you, Jenks,” he said, his expression solemn in the dim light. “You saved my family.”

  Wincing, Jenks looked to Vincet’s front door where his wife and sons were silhouetted in the warm glow of a fire. “You’re welcome. I don’t think Sylvan will be back.”

  “Tomorrow,” Vincet said, shaking his hand. “I’ll come tomorrow. Thank you. I can’t ever do enough.”

  Jenks managed a smile as he thought of Vi. She’d be fine, now. “Just be nice to some pixy buck who needs it,” he said. “And build me an office.”

  Vincet’s head was bobbing as he drifted back, but it was clear he wanted to return to his home. “Yes. Anything. Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” Jenks agreed, then darted up when a flashlight found him, bathing him in a bright white light. “Sorry about the mess!” he shouted.

  Vincet went one way, Ivy and Daryl another, and in an instant, even their dust was gone. He waited until he heard the soft sound of Ivy’s muffled engine before he turned his back on the demolished grove and rose higher. Like a switch, the sounds of chaos went faint and the air turned chill. An uncomfortable mix of success and failure took him. And as Jenks quickly caught up to Jumoke and the slower-flying gargoyle winging his way back across the Ohio River, he had a bad feeling that this was far from over.

  SIX

  Hands on his hips, Jenks hovered a good five inches above the damp moss, newly transplanted from somewhere half across the Hollows. He gazed in satisfaction at the freshly scrubbed, upside-down flowerpot buried halfway into the soft soil. The sun was high, but here, under the shelter of an overgrown lilac, it was cool. It had taken almost a week working the four hours before the sun rose, but Vincet had finally called his office done.

  While Jenks’s children watched, Vincet had chipped out a door in the upside-down flowerpot, built a hearth, and laid a circle of stone that said “welcome” in pixy culture. Seeds had been planted from Vincet’s own stash, and Jenks wasn’t sure how he felt about another man putting plants into his own soil. How was he to know what was going to come up?


  Watching Vincet had been a good lesson to his own kids, who up to now had only seen their parents work, and when Jenks rubbed his wings together to signal the all-clear, his children swarmed down in a wave of silk and noise. The babble grew high, and he fled, darting to where Matalina was on the wall with Jrixibell, again refusing to eat her pollen, having stuffed herself with nectar. He hadn’t a clue where she was getting it. The little girl probably had a stash of flowers somewhere that even her mother didn’t know about.

  “Go!” the woman relented as the little girl whined, her wings down in a pitiful display. “But you’re going to eat twice as much tonight!”

  “Thank you, Mama!” she chimed out, and Jenks watched for birds until she reached her brothers and sisters, already buzzing in and out of his new office.

  Happy, Jenks settled himself beside Matalina, thinking she was beautiful out here in the dappled sun. She handed him a sweetball, and he took it, pulling her close to make her giggle. “I’d rather have you,” he said, stealing a kiss.

  “Jenks,” she fussed, clearly liking the attention. “I’m pleased it ended well.”

  A flash of guilt darkened his wings. “Yeah, as long as Sylvan doesn’t come back and Rachel doesn’t find out,” he said, gaze going to his kids as they doused Jumoke in pollen from an early dandelion, temporally turning him blond until he shook himself.

  “You’re such the worrier,” Matalina teased. “Let the future take care of itself. Vincet’s family is safe, and Jumoke is considering a career outside the garden. I’m proud of you.”

  He turned to her, his guilt easing. “You think it will be okay?” he said, and she leaned in, putting her arms around his neck and her forehead against his.

  “I’m sure of it. That dryad is long gone. No need to worry.”

  Jenks sighed, feeling a knot untying, but still . . . “How do you like the office?” he asked, trying to change the subject. “I’ll get a little bell and they can ring it. I don’t think anyone will come, anyway.”

  Matalina smiled as a shaft of light found her face. “They’ll come, Jenks. Just you wait.”

  The sound of one of their children wailing drifted to them, and together they sighed.