“How is this helping?” Tadg yelled.
“Well, I’m dry!” Viola shouted.
“Yeah, and there’s no water left to summon,” he growled back. “If I had more, I could summon Mar-Mar. He’s no good on dry land.”
Defeated, Barclay called off the wind. Ethel and Abel watched the three of them smugly from the mirrors.
“There isn’t anything you can do,” Ethel told them.
“So you might as well surrender,” Abel finished.
A roar tore through the Woods.
Not just any roar but the loudest and most frightening sound Barclay had ever heard. Everyone—even Abel and Ethel in the mirrors—covered their ears. Barclay heard the roar in his stomach. He heard it in the ground. He heard it in the trees around them.
The canopy above them rippled, as though the Woods was taking a breath.
As though the Woods was waking up.
“Gravaldor,” Tadg said, ashen. Then he charged and threw himself at one of the mirrors. The mirror cracked slightly, but Tadg ended up collapsing onto the ground, clutching his shoulder.
Abel laughed and leaped out of the mirror at Tadg’s left. He kicked him in the chest.
Tadg sputtered.
“Hard to breathe, fish food?” Abel asked him.
Viola groaned, and Barclay whipped around to find heralso on the ground. Ethel had one foot in the mirror and the other on the grass. She clutched Viola’s arm and held a broken shard of glass against her throat.
“Just stay still,” Ethel told her, “and you won’t even get a scratch.”
Another ripple swept through the trees. Gravaldor was waking up, and Soren could have found him by now. If they stayed here any longer, they wouldn’t be able to stop him.
Barclay had never wished so desperately to be a more powerful Lore Keeper. There was nothing he could do to win this.
Nothinghecould do.
The thought gave him an idea.
“How much water do you need?” he asked Tadg.
“Don’t answer that,” Abel said, pressing harder on Tadg’s chest.
“Whatever it is,” Tadg rasped, “just do it.”
Barclay hesitated. If he acted, would Abel and Ethel hurt Tadg and Viola more? But no amount of pleading would save them now. No amount of pleading would save theWoodsnow.
And so Barclay howled, and in the moment of silence that followed, Barclay wondered if Root wouldn’t listen like he had when they’d faced Soren in the practical. Maybe Barclay had broken their relationship beyond repair.
He met Root’s eyes desperately, as if to say please.
Root threw his head back and howled as well.
The already dark forest went significantly darker. Thunder cracked through the sky, and it began to pour, the hardest rain Barclay had ever felt. His clothes were quickly drenched, and the circle of mirrors began to fill up like a bathtub.
“Make it stop,” Abel growled.
“I can’t,” Barclay told him truthfully. This was Root’s power, not his.
