“You got to pick last time. I get first dibs this time,” another protested. Their small, mournful voices trudged along a haunting breath.
The former gasped. “I did not!”
“Did too!”
“You always hog the humans.”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Well, I don’t want the big one. He smells funny.”
They must have thought he was human because that was the last way I’d describe his scent.
“Too bad!”
They let out tiny growls before they collided, tussling around the air in a ball.
The third one who had been quiet throughout their bickering piped up. “I say whoever is quickest gets first dibs.”
I hardly had a chance to register her words before she dove in. I cried out at the sharp pain of her pulling at my hair. Sebastian backhanded her, sending her tumbling through the air. She shook herself out like a dog once she righted herself. She snarled, pointing a slender finger at him. “I’m eating you face first!”
Their limbs extended before my eyes, creaking like branches pulled by the wind. Once teeny, tiny things now towered over us. Their hair trailed behind them as they stepped towards us with knobby, skeleton-thin legs wrapped in birch bark. Their delicate clothing made of roots fell off them in tatters. Their skin glowed even brighter now that it was hard to even look at them directly.
I cringed at their red-smeared mouths curling up into a smile, revealing rows of jagged teeth.
Sebastian let out a long sigh that seemed a bit incongruous with the current situation. I risked taking my eyes off the formidablecreatures to glance back at him. He met my eyes with a look of annoyance, not a hint of fear shown on his clearly vexed features.
I jerked my head back to them as an uproar of snarls lurched suddenly close, only for them to freeze. In a flash of light they were back to their tiny forms, suspended in the air. Their giant eyes even wider as they were fully entranced, looking off at nothing, their little mouths hanging open.
We trotted past them as they remained bewitched by an invisible scene.
“What did you show them?” I asked quietly.
“A light show.”
I snickered. “Really?”
“Lucky guess.”
Just as we managed to lose the faeries, a slight tremble rolled beneath the ground like a wave seeking the shore. Nyx grumbled discontentedly, shaking her head from side-to-side. Sebastian managed to calm her until another tremble shook the earth. We paused, combing the still breadth of fallen leaves and broken branches. A pressure built up within my chest as I waited for some unknown horror to burst through the soil.
In the hollow silence of the woods, the rustling of decaying leaves was deafening as something slithered beneath them. My lungs halted, not daring to expand, to take in the air that housed what dug itself out of the ground. And that was exactly what happened.
A vast system of roots from hundreds of trees disentangled and broke free. Nyx reared back from the disturbance that quaked below. Sebastian wrapped his arm around me in a nearly bruising grip as he held on to her mane, keeping us from falling off. Larger roots unwound themselves from the intricate webbing, lashing out with quick blows that narrowly missed us. The air cracked as they whipped through the air.
Once Sebastian eased Nyx back down on all fours, he urged her into a gallop, and we took off. “We may just have to outrun this one,” he grunted.
I peeked around him, my eyes widening at the sight of unraveling destruction. The entire ground was upturned behind us, as if the woods itself clamored to swallow us up. I turned back around, leaning forward with him, clutching the horn as my life literally depended on it.
I shrieked as a root attempted to wrap itself around my ankle, not able to take purchase as we dashed away too fast. With an ease I could only hope to master, Sebastian wrapped his ankles around mine, scooting them up closer to Nyx’s side before securing his boots back in the stirrups, trapping my calves beneath his.
“We’re almost there, Nyx. You got this, just a little further,” he murmured, urging her on.
I could almost make out a clearing ahead as I winced at all the low-lying branches that we sped past. I didn’t know how Nyx was managing to find stable ground from all that crumbled apart around us. As flailing roots continued to grasp for us, we broke through the clearing. Nyx reared back again as Sebastian stopped her abruptly.
All at once, the roots fell back to the earth behind us, slithering back into their rightful place beneath the soil, spitting up leaves as if the ground had never been disturbed. The haunting silence returned once more.
