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“I know that. Just saying.” Allison stepped over the smaller root. “How far away is Annie and should we stop talking so the bad faerie don’t hear us?”
Maple looked around, shrugged. “Won’t matter if we talk or not. They will feel us more than hear. Not sure how far. Feels like a long way.”
“Right,” said Allison. “We’ll be walking awhile.”
Meanwhile, Tammy leaned into her stride, trying to make up time over a stretch of relatively unobscured ground. Some hours and many large roots later, the forest gave way to a clearing that contained a village.
Various huts, a mill, fences, and even a well at the center appeared to be a recreation of a human-made settlement straight out of the medieval era. Tammy narrowed her eyes. Humans didn’t live in this realm. There shouldn’t be any trustworthy reason for a village like this to exist in this place.
“Help!” called a child’s voice.
The plaintive cry drew Tammy’s attention to the left side of the village, specifically to a hut with fire belching from its windows and devouring the thatched roof. Whoa, where did that come from? A short distance inside the door, a little boy lay on his chest, pinned under a fallen timber. He reached one hand toward the door, staring right at Tammy.
“No.” Maple flew up to hover in front of Tammy’s face. “It’s a trick. He is not real. Don’t go in there.”
Tammy looked away, trying not to pay attention to the heart-wrenching screams. Maple was right, of course.
“A trick?” Allison looked back and forth between her and the boy. “Okay, that’s just wrong.”
Tammy backed away from the clearing, turned, and walked to the right, intending to go around the village—which probably didn’t even exist.
Like a tiny glowing compass, Maple pointed the way toward Annie. They continued climbing over giant vines, jogging across patches of open ground, and fighting through swaths of abnormally thick undergrowth—that sometimes came to life and grabbed them.
In one such patch of stomach-high foliage, Tammy wobbled to a halt with moving vines wrapped around her body from foot to neck. She sighed, annoyed.
“This is really freaky.” Allison used a machete she’d conjured and cut herself loose from a similar entrapment. “This is going to get awkward, isn’t it?”
“Awkward?” asked Tammy.
Allison chuckled. “Almost feels like they’re trying to rip my pants off.”
“Oh. Maybe they are. If it will embarrass you, they’re definitely gonna do it on purpose.”
“Hah. How little they know.” Allison examined her fingernails.
Tammy laughed. She knew Allison sometimes went into the deep woods alone and did magic like the old witches—meaning with no clothes on. Of course, Tammy knew all her secrets—having had access to Allison’s mind for years. She knew her mom’s friend had also been a go-go dancer in Vegas. As such, a little nudity really wasn’t a big deal to Allie.
Alternately, the idea of these vines possibly shredding her own jeans or shirt didn’t bother Tammy at all. She had, after all, lived in the faerie world for years having only whatever foliage-garment she summoned for clothing. If the dark ones thought they could embarrass her for laughs, they were wrong. She’d just make something else. Thinking hard on how much it wouldnotembarrass her to lose her clothes (even if she lied to herself a wee bit) would hopefully dissuade the dark energies from even trying.
This place was one of torment. Any little thing it could do to make someone miserable, it would do… and that’s merely the forest itself, not the actual dark faeries. It acted just like the annoying bratty kids in grade school who sometimes teased her. If she acted unbothered, they’d sometimes get bored and stop pestering her. Option two—punching the jerk in the nose—wouldn’t work here. In fact, the dark oneswantedthe violence. Worse, she couldn’t exactly go around slugging trees and plants.
She’d never been terribly good at the Zen thing, but for Annie’s sake—and her own—she’d have to try today.
At least the terrified screaming of the fake boy finally stopped.
It made no sense for a human village to be here. It made less sense that only one hut would be on fire or that no adults would be there. Yet, somehow, Tammy couldn’t deny a twinge of guilt for not helping.
This place is evil. It’s trying to get in my head.
A low moan came from behind the next huge vine, this one the size of a tanker truck trailer.
“That doesn’t sound good.” Allison stopped walking. “Guessing there shouldn’t be zombies here?”
“Nope.” Tammy sighed before starting to climb. “No idea what this place is thinking. I’m not particularly phobic of zombies. Are you?”
“No more than any sane person would be afraid of contagious undead.”
Once Tammy pulled herself up high enough to see over the massive creeper vine, she froze in shock, staring down into a pit. Her father, mired up to his waist in black sludge, seemingly struggled to free himself from the grasp of multiple shiny black tentacles attempting to pull him under the surface.
