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I shake my head as if I can clear it of Circe’s memory forever. “Nothing.”
We walk for some time, until the lush ripeness of the meadow gives way to thick copses of gnarled trees. The sky is gloomy here, as if it has been streaked with soot. There are no flowers, no bushes. In fact, there is no color at all, save for the brown of the brittle trees and the gray of the sky above them.
“Ugh,” Felicity says. She lifts her boot and shows us the bottom. It is dark and mealy, like rotted fruit. When I look up, I see that the trees are laden with what seem to be clusters of berries. They hang flat and defeated on the branches.
“Oh, what has happened here?” Ann wonders aloud, pulling a rotting husk from a branch.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Let’s change it back, shall we?”
We put our hands on a trunk. Color flows beneath its withered bark. Leaves burst through the broken skin of the tree with a sound like the earth itself cracking open. Vines slither along the dusty ground. The shrunken fruits grow fat and purplish red; the branches sag under their succulence. The magic surges in me, and I feel as ripe and beautiful as the fruit.
I grab Ann, who yelps as I lead her about in a giddy waltz. I let go and take hold of Felicity, who, being Felicity, insists on leading. Soon we’re all twirling round and round dizzyingly fast, my happiness fed by theirs.
Sudden thunder rumbles in the distance; the sky pulses red like an angry abrasion. I lose my hold on the others and we fly apart. Ann lands hard with an “oomph.”
“Really, Gemma!”
“Did you see that?” I ask, running toward the path. “The sky turned all funny for a moment.”
“Where?” Felicity searches the sky, which has settled into dusk again.
“That way,” I say, leading them on.
We walk until we reach a long wall of brambles whose thorns are both sharp and plentiful.
“What now?” Ann asks.
Through the small gaps in the brambles, I see a strange mixture of green and rock, fog and twisted trees, much like the English moors in the Brontë sisters’ eerie tales. And farther on, something rises from the mist.
“What is that?” I ask, squinting.
Felicity searches for a peephole. “This is hopeless. I can’t see a thing. Let’s find a way in.”
She sets off running down the hard path, stopping here and there to test the strength of the bramble wall.
“Ahhh!” I pull my hand back. I’ve pricked my finger on one of the sharp points. My blood stains the tip. With an anguished sigh, the brambles unclasp. The long, thorny threads slither free of each other like snakes scattering. We fall back as a wide hole appears.
“What should we do now?” Ann whispers.
“We go inside,” Felicity answers, and there is the hint of a dare in her smile.
We squeeze through the narrow opening and toward the barren forest. The air is noticeably cooler. It tickles our skin into gooseflesh. Thick vines twist along the ground, strangling the trunks of the trees, choking off much of what might grow here. A few valiant flowers poke their heads up here and there. They are few but large and beautiful—a deep purple with petals as fat as a man’s fist. Everything is coated in a blue light that reminds me of dusk in winter. The land here has a peculiar feel. I am drawn to it, yet I want to run. It is like a warning, this land.
We reach the edge of the forest and are astonished at what we see. On a hill is a magnificent ruin of a castle. Its sides are overgrown with a pale, sickly moss and thick, ropelike vines gone tough with age. Tree roots have grown into the stones. They are like bony fingers twisting and turning about the castle, holding it tight in an unwelcome embrace. One limestone tower refuses to be taken, however. It rises majestically from the hill’s grasping hands.
The ground near it is covered in a fine coating of frost. It is like a doll’s castle under a shaking of powdery sugar. It is odd here. Hushed as a first snowfall.
“What is this place?” Ann asks.
“Let’s have a look inside!” Felicity leaps forward, but I pull her back.
“Fee! We’ve no idea where we are or who lives there!”
“Exactly!” she says, as if I have missed the entire point of our excursion.
“Might I remind you of the Poppy Warriors?” I say, invoking the name of those gruesome knights who lured us to their cathedral in hopes of killing us and taking the magic for themselves. As we ran for our lives, they transformed into enormous black birds, chasing us out onto the water. We were lucky to escape them, and I shan’t make the same mistake twice.
Ann shivers. “Gemma’s right. Let’s go back.”
