Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels (42 page)

Through this connection, I was able to realize for the first time that everything in this forest was linked. The trees were connected to each other, to the land, to the things that walked the forest floor and flew through the air. The memories were all still here. I couldn't see them like pictures; I only got the sense that anything that happened here, stayed here as shadows. And there were lots of shadows in this forest.

Something was niggling the back of my mind. Something was there, wanting me to pay attention. But then Tony began speaking, and I lost it.

"I feel like I'm being rocked in a rocking chair by a grandma I never had. This is just ... so incredible. No wonder you were vibing all that happiness. I'm, like, on cloud nine right now." He smiled contentedly at me, and for the first time, I realized how truly beautiful my friend Tony was on the outside. I've always known about his inner beauty, but with the clothes and the glasses and everything, his outer gorgeousness was sometimes too easily hidden.

"You're really beautiful, you know that, Tones?"

"I was just thinking the same thing about you."

We both smiled.

"What are two gorgeous bombshells like us doing out here in this fucked up forest full of messed up creatures, anyway?" I asked.

"I don't know. But as much as I'd like to stay here and hug this tree all day, I think we really need to get going to that other waypoint." Tony broke the connection, pulling away from the tree and standing up straight. The light on his face faded out and he became regular old, serious Tony again.

I sent a big thank you up to the tree as best I could, hoping it could read my mind and feel the gratitude I was trying to transfer through my arms, before standing to join Tony.

"When do you think the others will get to the first waypoint?" I asked. I had half expected them to show up while we were there.

"I don't know. From the look of the map, it seems like maybe an hour or two after us. We were just lucky to have met those gnome things."

"Yeah, well at least
they
didn't try to eat us."

"Did you see their teeth?" Tony asked, shivering at the memory. He was walking through the forest again, glancing back to make sure I was following.

"Yeah, disgusting. I've never seen anything like that before. Makes me want to keep Mister Biggles out of the garden forever." Mister Biggles is my old cat who loves to go and lay right smack in the middle of my mom's flowers. It made her crazy because his fat butt always squashed them, but it made me laugh. Thinking about one of those lumpy gnomes with their dirty, sharp teeth coming up from behind and ...
ew
.
Poor Mister Biggles.
"Should I call my mom and tell her to keep Mister Biggles in the house?" I was only half-joking. I had to believe that as much of a pain in the ass as I was to my mom, she was worrying about me now.

"No. First of all, you don't have a cell phone, so you can't; and second, all you'd do is freak her out. This forest isn't normal. There are no gnomes in Florida or we would have seen them or signs of them - or someone would have. This is some ... enchanted place or something. Once we're out of here, life will go back to normal."

"Enchanted forest, eh?" I'd bet old Walt Disney had never envisioned this kind of shit going on in
his
enchanted forests. Maybe a few dwarves, sure. But nasty-toothed gnomes? Vampires?
No, I think not.
"Face it, Tones. Life is never going to go back to normal after this. We've seen something we shouldn't have. This forest. The Green ... this connection with the trees. It's alive, and I don't mean alive like just living. It's alive like
aware
alive. I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at the world the same way again."
The Green
seemed like the perfect name for this weirdness around us and the energy that I was able to connect to.

"You're probably right. I'm not sure that we fully appreciate what's going on here right now, but I'm not in the best frame of mind to figure it all out. I just want to focus on finishing this thing and getting out of here. Must be my survival instincts." He took his axe out of his bag as he walked along.

"Why do you have your axe out?"

"I think it's a good idea to keep it handy. When those gnomes showed up, I was totally unprepared. We're just lucky they weren't killer gnomes, otherwise I would have been dead meat."

"Well, you would have had some nasty bites on your ankles for sure, but I'm not so sure about the dead part."

"I'll bet even an ankle bite from those little things would be deadly. Those teeth ... " Tony shuddered.

"Yeah, you're right. It would be like being bitten by that dragon thing. What was it called? We saw it on
Animal Planet
one time."

"The Komodo Dragon - bites its prey and then leaves it, tracking it for days until the bacteria poison in its saliva destroys the prey's blood and eventually kills it. Then the dragon moves in and ... "

" ... munches on the easy prey."

"Exactly. Easy prey." Tony held up his axe. "I'm not going to be easy prey for the rest of this trip. Anyone who gets in my way ... "
SWOOSH!

Tony swung the axe in the air. I was glad I was far behind him at that particular moment, because the axe was all messed up. A sound filled the space around us, like a humming, and a blue shadow hung in the air where the axe had just been. It was like a laser light show or something, only with less defined lights and more afterglow.

"What the fuck was
that
, Tony?"

Tony was staring in amazement at the blue streak that was slowly dissipating. "I have no idea."

"Do it again!" I urged, unable to keep the glee out of my voice.

Tony swung the axe again, but nothing happened. He lifted it up towards his face, staring at it curiously. "Did I imagine something happening last time?"

"Not unless it was mass hysteria and I'm imagining crazy shit too. Try again."

Tony swung it a third time. Nothing happened.

"What did you do different?"

"Nothing I'm aware of."

"Look at your feet. Are they in a different position?"

"No, I haven't moved."

"Did you swing it softer? Or harder?"

"Nope."

"What were we talking about before you swung it last time?"

"I was saying that I wasn't going to be easy prey anymore."

"Okay, say that again and then swing it. Maybe there's a magic word in there."

Tony held the axe above his shoulder and to the right. "I'm not going to be easy prey anymore." He swung the axe, and I thought I heard a very slight hum.

"Did you see that?!" asked Tony, excitedly.

"Was that some blue there?" I asked.

"I think I saw some. Not as much or as bright, but some."

"That is
so
cool." I pulled my stick out of my bag. "Maybe I have a lightsaber too." I swung mine around, but nothing happened. I gave Tony's magic words a try. "I'm not gonna be easy prey!" I swished the stick out in front of me, back and forth, giving some high-quality forward jabs too for good measure.

Nothing happened.

"Oh well ... figures. Finn gets vampire killer arrows, you get a lightsaber axe, and I get a stick. That Dardennes guy had it in for me from the start."

"Jayne ... "

"Come on, Tony, you know it's true. When it was time to pick weapons Niles put Becky in front of me.
Becky
. She's, like, half my size."

"Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration."

"You know what I mean."

"No, you're right. She's definitely smaller than you, and we were supposed to be picking by size." He shrugged. "Your weapon will be valuable for something, I'm sure."

"Yeah, for what? Digging up mushrooms?"

Tony laughed at my disgust. "Just keep it handy. I don't think we'll be lucky enough to get through to the fourth waypoint without meeting anything else along the way. A sharp stick is better than nothing."

He was right. I took his advice and kept my stick out. I continued to wave it around as we walked towards our next destination, trying different techniques to see if I could wake it up, but nothing worked.
Stupid stick.
Those gnomes had called it Dark Blackthorn or something, though, so I held out some hope for my little friend, the sharp stick. It did look like a giant thorn - a really giant one. I decided to call it Blackie. It was black - a weird color for wood - plus I had a little black Pomeranian once, creatively named Blackie. He was tiny but he was badass. The postman refused to come onto our property because of old badass Blackie. Best dog ever. He died when I was twelve, but I still remembered him fondly.

After walking for about an hour my stomach began growling. "I'm hungry. Can we stop for lunch?"

"Sure."

Tony stepped off the trail to go sit on a fallen tree.

I sat down next to him, and we opened up our bags, deciding to eat an actual meal this time since we were starving. We'd gotten one quarter of the way through this test and still had another full meal and most of the side bits remaining. I had one bottle of water left; Tony had one and a half. We could afford to splurge on the calories.

We had finished eating and were packing up our wrappers when we heard a sound. Tony grabbed my arm to stop me from moving. We both listened carefully to see if we could hear anything else.

The noise came again. It sounded like voices.

"Quick!"
whispered Tony.
"Get behind that root!"

The end of the fallen tree that we'd been sitting on was a huge root, taller than me. Piles of leaves and other branches had collected around it, making a small mountain of debris to hide behind.

Tony and I hunkered down, looking out between a crack in the cover, towards the direction of the voices. They were coming from the path we had been following.

Two figures appeared out of the dark tree shadows. One of them was Niles, wearing full cammo gear and carrying an axe very much like Tony's - only much bigger. Walking next to him was another dwarf, similarly dressed, but younger-looking. He was also carrying an axe, holding it in a deceptively casual way that told me he knew how to use it.

I looked at Tony and nodded at his axe. Tony glanced down and then nodded back at me. Apparently, Tony had the weapon of choice for commando dwarves around here.

Niles was talking. "They came this way for sure. They couldn't broadcast their trail any louder.
Idiots.
We'll make quick work of them if the others don't get to them first."

"What about the other humans?" asked the younger dwarf, practically running to keep up with Niles' longer stride. Even thinking that made me want to laugh, because I realized I had never seen truly funny until I saw that long dwarf stride.

Tony shot me a stern look, probably vibing my humor. He was right; the last thing we needed was two axe-wielding army dwarves up our asses. Even though they were little, they probably had low centers of gravity, and I didn't think Blackie would be any match against their weapons. I quickly choked down my hysteria, amazed at how quickly it went from inner laughter to abject fear.

They were soon gone from our immediate vicinity, but Tony and I stayed put, whispering so we wouldn't bring them back with further ineptitudes.

"
Fuck!
What should we do now?" I asked. This test had gone horribly, horribly wrong. We weren't being tested ... we were being
hunted
. And that was a whole other deal altogether. I was going to have to survive just so I could kill Dardennes when this was all over. The concept of life or death was way,
way
too far into the land of the unthinkable for me to even remotely consider right now, even though my rational mind knew it was my current reality. I tamped it down, shoving any distress I was feeling to the back of my head to panic about later.

"I'm not sure what we should do. I guess we can't keep going in that direction. They could stop and we'd come right up on them. And from what Niles said, it sounds like they're tracking us and so are other ... people, or dwarves, or whatever. Who the hell knows?
Dammit!"

"Easy, Tony. Now's not the time to take up swearing. Your mother would be so
very
disappointed in you." I wiggled my eyebrows at him.

Tony shook his head impatiently. "Shush. We need a plan. Help me make one."

I put my hand on the root of the downed tree that we were hiding behind. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was a little surprised to feel something there - an energy. I grabbed Tony's hand to link him up with me.

"What's that?" he whispered.