My heart pounds harder and I take a deep breath. All right, I’ve got this—I can do it. I just have to walk backwards, away from the path to get back to it. I just need to go slow and take tiny steps since whatever magic is doing this seems to multiply distances somehow.
I shuffle my other foot backwards and the path is only a few yards away from me. Almost back! I’ll get right back on it and hurry to catch up with Valen, who will never know the difference. I won’t even tell him about the pond or my strange little adventure. I’ll be just fine, and we’ll reach the Sorceress’s stronghold before nightfall.
I take another half step back and I can see the path right in front of me—it’s barely a foot away. I can just step right onto it and?—
“Not so fast, if you please, little miss.”
The inhumanly deep voice is coming from directly behind me. My shoulder blades tense and the short hairs at the back of my neck prickle—every instinct I have shouts, DANGER!
I tense my body and leap forward for the path, forgetting that I can’t get to it that way.
My forward momentum carries me backwards and suddenly I’m in the middle of Thornmere with the path nowhere in sight.
I give a cry of distress—what am I going to do now? And where is the creature who spoke to me—because it must be some kind of creature. No human male has a voice so deep—a voice I could feel in my bones when it spoke.
Go back again—you have to go back! I tell myself. I start to take a step backwards, trying to get to the path again…only to feel someone grab my arm. I gasp and look down to see a long, green vine winding itself around my wrist.
“As I said, not so fast, missy,” that same, rumbling voice growls in my ear.
The vine tightens and yanks at me, spinning me around to face the most enormous tree I’ve ever seen. But no—it’s not just a tree—there’s a face in the bark. Two knotholes that look like eyes and a horizontal crack that looks almost like a mouth.
I try to convince myself that I’m dreaming or maybe just imagining the whole thing. But then the crack-mouth opens and it speaks again.
“How dare you violate the forest law and take without giving?”
“Wh-what?” I blink up at it, my pulse racing so hard it’s actually making me dizzy. Surely this must be some kind of nightmare—a bad dream. I must be back in the castle at home in my own bed and any minute I’ll wake up—won’t I?
“You stepped into the Ring of Thorns and took berries,” the tree-creature accuses me. “But you left no sacrifice in return.”
Oh fuck, as Valen would say. I did do that. But speaking of Valen, where is he? He could threaten this tree-thing with his fire and make it leave me alone if he was here.
“Valen!” I shout as loudly as I can, but the forest seems to muffle my voice—it’s like screaming into a blanket. Still, I try again. “Valen! Help me! Valen!”
The crack that serves the tree-creature as a mouth turns down at the corners.
“Calling for help will do you no good. Your companion has not broken the laws of the forest—you have.”
“But…but I didn’t know I was breaking any laws!” I plead with it. “Please, just tell me what I have to pay and I’ll pay it!”
“You must pay in blood and pain!” the tree creature declares, and the knothole eyes are suddenly menacing. “Blood and pain, girl—no other payment will do.”
As it speaks, the green vine around my left wrist sprouts long, curving thorns. It tightens and they dig into my flesh, drawing crimson rivulets of blood that run down my arm and patter on the dry leaves of the forest floor.
I shout at the sudden, piercing pain and yank at my arm. But now more vines are growing. They invade my shift and wind around my breasts—a sharp thorn pierces my nipple and my cry of pain becomes a shriek of agony.
“Come now, missy—don’t be upset,” the tree-thing says. “Everyone who comes to Thornmere has to pay one way or another.”
The crack-mouth opens wide revealing a horror—long, jagged splinters of wood which must be the thing’s teeth. Some are longer than my arm and they gnash together hungrily as the thorny vines around my left arm drag me towards it.
It’s going to eat me—oh my Goddess, it’s going to eat me! yammers a panicked voice in my head.
Suddenly, I remember something—only that morning, when he was packing our meager possessions into the burlap sack he stole from the smokehouse, Valen handed me the knife with a broken point.
“Here,” he said gruffly. “For self-defense—in case things get hairy in there.” And he’d nodded at the forest.
I had taken the knife without comment and slipped it carefully into the pocket of my shift. It’s still there now—if it hasn’t fallen out—and thank goodness, it’s on the right-hand side, since it’s my left arm that’s encircled with vines.
I reach into my pocket and find the smooth wooden handle. I pull out the knife and begin sawing at the vine wound around my wrist. The green outer layer parts at once and sap that looks like bright red blood begins to drip sluggishly to the forest floor.
