Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest (22 page)

Professor Tanglewood had been writing a birthday card to himself when the Shadow Witch flew to him, and brought him news.

“Well? Is it done?” Professor Tanglewood studied the Shadow Witch, but she wasn't looking into his eyes. He began to worry that she hadn't found the human children.

“Yes, master. The humans have been changed.”

“Into what, if I may ask?” The Professor was clearly relieved, and his question had an almost happy playfulness about it.

“Into a bird. And a rabbit.”

“A rabbit!” The Professor looked startled at the thought. “Who? The boy or the girl?”

“The boy, master.”

“A stroke of genius. What a fantastic birthday present for me. He will never survive.”

She was looking straight at him now, but he couldn't read her expression. Studying her too dark eyes was like staring down two bottomless wells.

“He was with someone,” she said.

“The boy?”

“Yes. He was with a dog.”

“A dog? What type of dog?”

“An elkhound.”

Professor Tanglewood's eyes widened in disbelief.
“No.”

The Shadow Witch suddenly looked worried, and regretted giving this information. “Master, I don't thi—”

The Professor raised his hand, to silence her. He took a deep breath, as if the news was something that needed to be inhaled in order to be fully understood. “He must have told them.”

“Master?” The Shadow Witch didn't understand.

“The elkhound must have brought them into the forest.”

“But, master, it makes no sense. Why would he want to do that? Why would he want to return? Why would he put the children's lives in danger? And how can a
dog
tell a human anything?”

The Professor flapped away the Shadow Witch's questions as if they were annoying flies. “Our policy is no longer enough. We must reconsider what we are to do with humans who enter the forest.”

“Master, if we transform the humans into animals, the forest will always be—”

“Safe? How can you say that when you know that is no longer the case. We transform a human into a dog and what happens? The dog brings more humans into the forest?”

“Master, we don't know…”

“Silence! You are not here to question me. You are here to obey me. I saved your life. I
saved
your
life.
The Hek Code. You do remember the Hek Code, don't you?”

“Yes, master. Of course. I am a witch. The code is what I am.”

He stood up from his desk: “Very well. Then you must do as I command.”

“Master, what is it that you command?”

“I want you to find the human children and kill them. Both of them. The girl as well as the boy.”

There was a pause—a long pause—and the Shadow Witch said: “Yes, I understand.”

The Professor shook his head. “No.”

“Master?”

He was looking at her, and saw something new inside those dark, gleaming eyes. Something he didn't trust.

“Give me your Hek bracelet.”

“My Hek bracelet, master? Are you going out of the clearing? Is that why you need it? To protect you.”

“Yes,” lied the Professor. “Now. I command you.”

The Shadow Witch reluctantly slipped the bracelet off her gray wrist and handed it over to her master.

“Now, give me your powers,” he demanded.

“Master?” She had heard, but she did not understand.

“I command you to give me your powers.”

“But, master, my powers are a burden you do not want.” She looked at the birthday card he was writing to himself, and felt a deep hatred for her master.

Professor Tanglewood took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Give. Me. Your. Powers.”

The Shadow Witch thought of her sister, melting in the cage, and found a new strength inside her.

“Master, I can't.”

The Professor opened his eyes, and looked at the Shadow Witch as if she was someone new. “You can't? You
can't
? What about the Hek Code? It is inscribed into the essence of your being. My order is your command.”

“Master, there is something even more powerful than the Hek Code. Something that has been buried, but which has now risen once again inside me.”

The Professor gasped in disbelief. “Pray, tell me. What is this deep and powerful thing?”

The Shadow Witch paused, as if hardly believing her own resistance. “The love I have for my sister.”

“Your sister is dead.”

She nodded. “I know. But the love lives stronger than ever before.”

“I don't understand. What has your sister got to do with anything.”

The Shadow Witch cried more black tears. “I have done terrible things in your name. Terrible things. I have turned paradise into a nightmare. And I can't do it anymore. I can't give you my powers…I'm sorry.”

Her head dropped when she finished talking, as if the words had been keeping it upright. She turned, walked past the pickled heads and out of the room. She kept walking through the windowless chamber, passing the skeleton of the last huldre she had been forced to kill, and headed toward the door of the tree house. She was so lost in miserable thoughts that she did not hear the Professor creep across the floor, unsheathe the huldre's sword and pull it back through the air ready to deliver the fatal strike.

“I am sorry too,” he said, before pushing the blade through her body and back out. Black blood dripped from the sword.

The Shadow Witch found strength enough to turn around.

“Why?”
she whispered.

Following the word, shadows left her mouth in vapors. Professor Tanglewood understood the shadows were the source of her magic and so pressed his mouth against her dying lips, and felt a new and dark power enter his body. All the shadows of every changed creature—including Samuel and Martha—were now drawn into him. He could control them all. And do exactly what he wanted.

“Now I truly am something to be feared,” he said as his skin changed from pink to gray. “I am a true Changemaker.”

The Shadow Witch collapsed into his arms, and he held her there for a moment, in the windowless room. Waiting as the dark vapors he had inhaled began to take over every part of him.

The blue-feathered bird was hard to keep track of. It was dark, and from Samuel's distance, it didn't look either blue or feathered. It was just a small dark dot vanishing into a dark and windy night.

Samuel kept hopping, aware of the blind trolls behind him still groping around for their eyeball.

“Shame!”

“Shame!”

“Shame!”

“Shame!”

He ignored the chants of the rabbits, but there was something else bothering him. The ground seemed to be tilting forward. He looked around, but none of the rabbits seemed to notice.

“What's happening?” he asked the rabbits. “The ground's moving. Can't you feel it?”

Of course, the ground wasn't really tilting. What had happened was that the Professor—or rather, the being the Professor had become—was using his new powers to draw Samuel back to his shadow. A shadow that was now contained, along with all the others, inside the Professor's body.

The effect for Samuel, though, was of gravity shifting ninety degrees, turning the flat ground into a vertical cliff face. A cliff face with trees sticking out of it.

His body dropped.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!” He twitched really fast, which is how rabbits scream. Fortunately (if such a word can be used), the spell made sure that Samuel would avoid colliding into any trees. On and on he fell, sliding down upward slopes, flying over each descent, skimming over the open plain that the Troll-Father had told him about. The sensation of falling was so strong that he was unaware that he was also changing back from a rabbit to his normal self.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

The scream came out of his mouth now, not as a series of fast twitches, and it lasted right until he reached the clearing. Once he was there, the ground lay back down and gravity stood back up and Samuel skidded to a complete stop.

He was a boy again. A human. His skin no longer itched with fur.

He lifted up his head. In the distance, he could see a small fire. Behind the fire was a huge tree, with a wooden palace perched in its branches. The tree seemed too still, even for a tree, its branches completely unaffected by the wind.

“Changemaker!” Samuel shouted toward the Still Tree. “Where's my sister?”

A gray figure stepped out of the wooden palace and turned into a raven. He flew toward Samuel, landing in his natural form a few yards in front of him.

Samuel noticed how strange the figure looked. Like a man who lived in a world of no colors. His skin wasn't pink or yellow or brown like human skin, but various shades of gray. Indeed, it wasn't possible to think of Professor Tanglewood as a human anymore. Consumed by shadows, he had at last turned into his own invention, the sinister overlord known to all the forest—and Samuel—as the Changemaker.

His lips were dry and black as if they were made of thin pieces of charcoal. That shadowy darkness was in his eyes too, and under them, blackening the vertical scar on his face.

It wasn't his looks that made the Changemaker so terrifying, however. It was the way he made Samuel feel as he walked nearer.

Weak. Confused. A stranger in his own, shadowless body.

“Who am I?” Samuel mumbled to himself. “I am Samuel. Remember. Samuel.
Samuel.
Sam-uel?”

His own name sounded foreign to him, as if it belonged to someone else.

“Hello, Samuel.” A black vapor left the Changemaker's lips as he spoke, and went up his nostrils.

“You…are…the…Change…” Samuel found it a strange effort to speak, as if the words were heavy things to be carried.

“I'm so glad you could join me. It's my birthday, you know.”

Samuel felt like he was about to faint, but he kept himself together enough to say: “My sister…”

The Changemaker looked irritated that Samuel hadn't acknowledged his birthday.

“Your sister. Yes? What about her?”

“She…where…she…”

“I'm sorry. You're not speaking any sense. What is it with young humans nowadays? Where's their grasp of language? All right. I'll make an educated guess. You want to know the whereabouts of your silent sibling. Am I right?”

Samuel didn't have any idea if this was what he wanted to know. It was as though his mind had been stolen along with his shadow. In fact, his mind was so lost that he no longer felt scared. (You might think this was a good thing, but there is only one thing worse than feeling scared, and that is feeling nothing at all.)

“Well,” said the Changemaker. “There she is. Up there in the tree. Can you see her?”

Samuel looked but couldn't see anything.

“Look closer…”

Samuel strained his eyes and saw a dot at the end of the branch that stuck out higher and farther than any other. A bird. Why was his sister a bird?

A single memory entered the desert of Samuel's brain. A memory of the bird that had saved him from the trolls when he had been a rabbit.

“I don't know why you would care,” said the Changemaker. “What use is a songless bird? It's about as good as a body without a shadow…or a child without their—” He stopped, and a look of sadness fell across his gray face. “Never mind. Don't worry about your sister. If she wants to be up the tree, let her stay there.” He called up to Martha: “Say hello to your brother. Say hello…Oh, silly me. How can a bird say hello?”

The Changemaker closed his eyes as his cracked lips began chanting some kind of spell. When he was finished, Martha was suddenly transformed from a bird to her original form. A ten-year-old girl in a navy-blue dress stuck on the highest branch of the tree.

Samuel looked and could see what was happening, but his mind was too weak to know what to do or why to do it. Even if he had thought of something, it would have been too late. The thin branch could hold a tiny bird much easier than it could a human, and gave up trying.

Martha fell, down and down and down, her dress making the most hopeless of parachutes. But inches before she hit the ground, her body froze in the air. Then she sat up as if she was lying on an invisible bed and placed her feet on the ground.

“Come, children,” said the Changemaker. “Let me tell you a story.”

Samuel noticed something speed past his head, flying through the air. At first he thought it was another bird, but when he saw it stop in the air and float down into the Changemaker's hands, he realized that it was in fact a book.

“The Creatures of Shadow Forest,”
said the Changemaker, catching the book and then giving it imaginary reviews. “A towering masterpiece. A most extraordinary achievement. Professor Tanglewood has excelled himself with this work of jaw-dropping genius. I can't
wait
for his autobiography.”

He beckoned Martha and Samuel toward him, and they walked over, as if pulled by some invisible thread.

“Have you read his book?” The Changemaker leaned his gray face toward Samuel. “What did you think of it? Tell me. Did you like it? Speak! Speak! Speak!”

“I…don't…I…”

“Mmm. Not sure? Maybe you need to read it a little more closely. What do you think?”

“I…er…I…”

“Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!”

On that final “squeak,” Samuel shrank down to the ground and found himself turned into a small, white mouse.

The Changemaker picked him up by his tail and placed him inside the open book.

“I am now going to tell you a story,” said the Changemaker. “It is a true story. It is the story behind the story these pages have to tell. And when it is over, you will be over too. Your sister will watch as I close the book and squash your little mouse guts inside these pages. Blood and ink—it is much the same, you know…Oh, what an exciting birthday this is going to be!”

He then told Samuel and Martha the story of his life. He told them everything. About his childhood. His forgotten birthdays. His time in prison. On and on, reciting extracts from his autobiography as well as
The Creatures of Shadow Forest,
unaware of the time.

It was morning now. Pink light softened the forest, casting long shadows.

The fire had died.

“Since then, I have had to—how shall I put it?—
relieve
the Shadow Witch of her duties, and take matters into my own hands,” the Changemaker said, with a heavy sigh, as he reached the end of his story. “And whatever is going to happen next, one thing is certain. No one will ever leave the forest alive.”