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Their relaxing pace came to an end when they reached a giant root. Without a kid on her back, Tammy probably could’ve jumped to the top. She approached the barrier, looked up, and did the same sort of shimmy housecats tended to do right before jumping up to the counter. Annie got the hint and held on tight.
She made the jump, disturbing the silence only slightly with some scratching. Like someone caught sneaking into a place they didn’t belong, Tammy froze to listen for the sound of buzzing wings or crackling vines.
So far, so good.
“Ugh,” whispered Maple from inside the backpack. “So tired…”
Tammy’s ears twitched. She stared from atop the vine at the forest ahead. The roots of the great, rotting tree stretched outward forming an interconnected network of barriers, effectively dividing the forest into large cells, each surrounded by tubular ‘walls’ that ranged in height from two to twelve feet. The farther they went from the tree itself, the smaller the obstructions became. Still, they made for an arduous trek.
“Maple?” whispered Tammy.
“Yes. I’m here.” The faerie yawned. “Merely tired.”
“It’s okay to say no, but do you have enough left in you to shrink Annie, too?”
“Wait. What?” blurted the girl. “I don’t wanna be small. Who’s going to carry Allison and Maple?”
Allison poked her head out the top of the backpack. “Why? And shouldn’t we, like, not be talking in case they hear us?”
“Roots. Big ones.” Tammy raised a paw. “Annie can’t ride on my back if I’m an eagle… unless she’s faerie sized.”
“Ooh! Good idea.” Maple floated up out of the backpack.
“Crap,” deadpanned Annie—right before she shrank to a little over four inches tall.
Her rapid loss of size squeezed Allison out of the shrinking backpack like toothpaste from a tube. She made a silly face at the odd sensation, then hugged Annie since they were, relative to each other, normal size again.
“Hang on,” said Tammy.
She thanked the panther spirit for its help and called the eagle. The avian form she took on probably counted as a condor, or even slightly larger despite still having the appearance of an eagle. This bird could grab a small child and carry them off into the sky with ease, plenty big enough to fly with three faerie-sized people on her back.
“Whoa,” said Allison.
Tammy leaned forward and spread her wings.
Allison, Annie, and Maple ‘burrowed’ into her feathers and held on.
Trying to be gentle and not throw them off, Tammy let gravity pull her off the root into a glide. Gingerly, she flapped up to speed, climbing to cruise at about twenty feet off the ground. Going above the treetops would be easier—no branches to dodge—but they’d almost certainly be seen by the dark faeries. Despite the annoyance of constantly having to slalom around trees at this altitude,flyinglet her cover much more ground at greater speed and happened to be less tiring. Flying also made far less sound.
Tammy flew for hours, following her subconscious sense of where to go. Nature wanted to guide her home. She didn’t know exactly how it worked, but felt confident her instincts pointed her in the correct direction. That Maple hadn’t piped up to say otherwise reassured her.
She felt pretty good about their odds.
“Shi-crap!” blurted Allison. “They found us!”
Having a bird’s neck wasweird.Tammy looked almost straight back… at a swarm of dark faeries. Maybe they sensed their combined magic. Maybe any of a thousand different little horrible creatures in the trees watched them cruise by. It made no differencehowthey’d been found. Too late to worry about it.
Now, their best chance was an all-out sprint and hope the rotting tree happened to be as close as she thought it should be.
Chapter Nineteen
A New Level of Weird
Now I know what a hotdog feels like in the microwave.
Okay, that’s exaggeration for comedic effect. Still, it hurt. Like… everywhere. Zappy, painful tingles give way to cold numbness. There’s smooth metal against my skin. I seem to be stark naked and on my back atop a slab of some form. My first thought is that a search party found me out in the woods, mistook me for dead, and I’m in a coroner’s office.
The sense of people hovering over me is impossible to ignore. One on either side. Yeah. I’m definitely on a table. Last time I checked, medical examiners didn’t make a habit of just standing there staring at dead bodies.
