Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
The pit gaped ahead of me, the roots of the thirsty oak snaring my ankles and starting to draw me into that vile hole.
I would lay there rotting, perhaps alive, perhaps dead, I didn’t know.
I might become one of those Cursed Ones who lingered on eternally, one with the forest, always yearning for escape but never finding it beneath the damp earth.
Between the delirium the Lost Children’s song was driving me to, the yawning desire of the oak, and the clawing breaths heaving from my lungs, I found her voice calling to me.
The trees reared up on all sides while the Lost Children surrounded me, binding me every time I broke through one of their tethers and dragging me toward the open roots of a hungry oak. There she was, near-ethereal as the trees parted for her, shrinking away like shadows from the light.
Ferris’s hair swept around her, the bright silver almost aglow as she ran for me with my name pouring from her lips once more.
“No!” I roared back. “Stay away!” But the song flooded over her and she staggered to a halt, enraptured by it, blinking to try and fight through the lunacy it caused.
“Dance the dance of the deadly night,
Come to us and we’ll take you right,
To the heart of the ground where starved roots wait.
They’ll feast on your bones and seal your fate.”
The Lost Children laughed as they caught hold of their new prey, small hands fisting in Ferris’s clothes and pulling her to the ground to lay at my side. My thoughts were heavy again, the song making me confused, the words pressing in on my mind and luring me toward insanity.
I smiled as Ferris looked to me, my human in all her gentle beauty.
Those violet eyes met mine and fear flared in them as she began to thrash against the tethers the Lost Children were banding around her, rope and vine alike holding my lightwing in place and causing the madness to fracture inside my head.
With a will of my mind, I fought my way through the power of the song and commanded my spirits to free themselves of their amulets, willing them to attack the Lost Children.
But the Bear and the Fox only pranced off into the trees with light merriment without any intention of harming them, as if some greater force held them from doing so.
I lurched upwards in anger, muscles bulging against my restraints and breaking enough of them to get an arm free.
I caught one of the Lost Children by the hair, hurling him away from Ferris, but he only laughed and spun on his heel, his voice rising above the others’ to trap me with the song once more.
“Rest, rest upon the silken floor,
Let us guide you to the thirsty door.
The oak, she waits, she’ll be your home,
She’ll bury you and drain your bones.”
The towering oak beside us groaned as its roots shifted, reaching for me with unnerving hunger.
The Lost Children howled like feral beasts as they dragged us closer to the monstrous tree, and I saw Death peering out at me between the trees.
Her falcon’s face was angled my way, a knowing look in her fateful eyes as she pulled her cowl closer around her head.
The song quieted me once more, my arm falling willingly to my side again as a croaky laughter left my throat to join that of the Lost Children’s around us.
Perhaps tonight was as good a time to die as ever.
The lunacy stole me away again and I looked to Ferris, finding her on her feet, fighting the Lost Children, shoving them away and screaming at them to stop. But oh how they sang so prettily. And perhaps it would not be so bad to meet Death alongside her, between the arms of these hungry trees.