Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Yuck! Yuck! This is so gross! Get off of me already!” Alice shrieked as another nearly invisible spider web snapped across her face like a sticky net made of living silk.
She stumbled back, flailing and muttering dire threats under her breath. “Oh no. Nope. I’m done. I am so done. This is Bálint or Jabir’s thing. Not mine. If one of those creepy little things touches me, I swear I’ll set the entire forest on fire!”
Not that she could. She couldn’t even conjure up a damp napkin right now, let alone summon fire.
She batted wildly at her face, trying to wipe off the clingy strands while her long, blonde braid snagged on a hanging vine. Her fingers caught in the webbing, and she let out a frustrated cry as she backed up—and immediately tripped over a half-buried root.
Her body hit the damp forest floor with a thud, leaves and soil puffing up around her like startled spirits. She sprang to her feet, red-faced and seething, then bent down and snatched up a nearby branch.
“Okay, you want to fight? We’ll fight! You’ve messed with the wrong Curizan princess!” she hissed, brandishing the stick like a sword. “I’m going to burn every single spider web the first chance I get!”
Alice spun in a tight circle, her heart pounding against her ribs like a drumbeat in a war march.
Her wary gaze scanned the darkening landscape.
A light breeze caused the thick, broad stems of the ferns to rustle softly.
Moss clung to every tree trunk. Strange, wide-leafed plants unfurled with whispery sighs.
Everything was green. Too green. Too still. Too enchanted.
The energy here is so wrong! she thought with a shiver of fear.
Thirty minutes ago, she had woken up in the middle of a fern bed, dirt smudged across her face, and her hair tangled with twigs and leaves.
There had been no familiar voices. No friends.
No flicker of energy she could control. Just this eerie, otherworldly forest that pressed in around her like it knew she didn’t belong.
She had tried—over and over—to gather the surrounding energy, to make something.
A simple hat. A sparkle of light. Even a damp cloth to clean her face.
But the energy she usually summoned without a thought was slippery here.
Unruly. Every time she reached for it, it shifted like mist between her fingers.
It was like trying to paint with watercolors on glass—pretty, but impossible to control.
And now, to top it off, she was lost and covered in spider web goo.
She swiped the sticky strands off her cheek with the back of her hand and groaned. “This is so not what I signed up for.”
Her voice startled a flock of tiny sapphire birds from a nearby tree. They launched skyward with sharp cries and sparkling wings.
Alice yelped and bolted. She gripped the branch tightly in her right hand. Her soft, brown boots thudded against the mossy ground as she tore along the narrow, winding path. Panic surged through her. Her eyes darted from shadow to shadow.
It was getting dark.
The light that had filtered through the canopy only minutes ago now dimmed, turning gold into gray.
“Bálint?” she called, her breath ragged. “Adaline? Zohar? Phoenix? Roam? Anyone!”
Her voice echoed off the trees, swallowed by thick silence.
Tears pricked at her eyes, but she shoved them back. “Someone say something!” she begged.
No one answered.
The ground sloped suddenly, the earth slick from the nearby creek. She tumbled down the embankment, arms pinwheeling, and splashed into the ankle-deep water below.
“Seriously?” she muttered, soaked and miserable.
She staggered across the shallow stream, her feet slipping on smooth stones. On the other side, she clambered up a small rise—but stopped cold when a crack shattered the silence behind her.
She spun around, her heart pounding in her ears.
Branches snapped. Leaves rustled. Something growled in the shadows.
Alice stumbled backward until her spine met the rough bark of a colossal tree. Her fingers clenched tighter around the branch in her hands.
“Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared. You’ve faced worse,” she whispered to herself, her voice quivering. “You’re not afraid. You’re not afraid.”
The growl came again—low and bone deep.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. She wiped them away with a furious sniff and dropped into a crouch, holding the branch like a spear.
“I’m not afraid,” she whispered again. “Everything’s going to be fine. It’s just… just forest noise. Forests have noises. Bálint is always talking about the hullabaloos he hears when he is out in the woods.”
Alice froze when a movement behind her pushed her forward.
The ground gave a gentle tremble under her feet, and the bark groaned. The leaves above her whispered in the breeze.
She scrambled forward on her hands and knees, her heart in her throat, before she twisted around to face it.
Her breath caught in wonder as her jaw dropped.
The tree—ancient, wide, and impossibly tall—bent.
Two thick branches curled down with deliberate gentleness, like arms… and then cupped beneath her, one bracing her back while the other supported her under her legs, and lifted her off the damp ground. Her eyes widened as she was lifted nearly twenty feet into the air.
She froze, every muscle tight. “What—what is happening?’ she whispered, blinking rapidly.
The limbs swung her gently until she faced the heart of the trunk, where a triangle of knots began to shift—slowly rearranging themselves into something impossibly familiar. A pair of wide, kind eyes blinked open, and a round hollow deepened into something unmistakably warm—a smile.
“I’ve gone loco!” Alice breathed. “Or dead. I must be dead.”
The entire trunk shuddered with amusement, and golden leaves rained down from the higher branches in a swirling cascade. The sound was like a thousand gentle chimes.
“Well now, you don’t look dead to me,” said a deep, amused voice, rich and warm as honeyed oak. “You do look like you could use some assistance.”
Alice’s mouth worked, but no sound came out.
The tree was talking to her.
The tree was smiling at her.
A strange, gray-furred creature with twin tails and tiger-like stripes scurried up the trunk, perching on a knobby shoulder. Its oversized ears twitched as it tilted its head at her, blinking with curious, almond-shaped eyes.
“Are you… real?” she finally managed.
“As real as the tears on your cheeks and the stick in your hands,” the tree replied with a low chuckle. “Though I admit, the branch you’ve chosen as a sword is a little… modest.”
Alice flushed, clutching her stick tighter. “It’s temporary.”
“I imagine most things are,” the tree rumbled. “Come now. Let’s get you somewhere dry before the evening showers start.”
Still blinking in disbelief, Alice slowly wrapped her arm around one of the sturdy limbs cradling her and held on tight.
As the majestic tree turned and began to move—slow and sure, with roots lifting and setting down like massive toes—she stared out across the forest with wide eyes.
Every step shook loose a few more glowing leaves.
A sense of peace settled over her. The forest, though still shadowy, no longer seemed as menacing; the air itself seemed lighter.
It felt like… magic.
Not the kind she commanded with hand sigils and focused will—but a quiet kind.
A kind that whispered, not roared.
That welcomed, not demanded.
That had a heartbeat.
And if she listened—not with her power, but with her heart—she might finally understand the magic this world was trying to share.
The air had changed—from cool and dry to heavy with magic and damp. That’s the first thing Geoff noticed.
He had been halfway up the old forest path leading to Elder Oak when the stillness of the ancient forest fractured.
Magic rippled, sharp and strange—wrong somehow—and every creature within earshot fell silent.
Geoff froze mid-step, his senses prickling like they always did when the magic of the isle shifted.
And then came the funnel.
A swirling mist coalesced out of nowhere, falling through the canopy like a ghostly spiral. It churned with hues of white and silver, and from its heart tumbled a figure—small, limp, and entirely out of place.
Geoff’s breath caught as the body hit the forest floor with a soft thump and a flurry of startled ferns. For a moment, he simply stared, heart pounding. He had never seen anything like it before. No portal, no whisper of runes—just magic… foreign, ancient, and unruly.
He stepped closer, wary. Then the girl gasped and sat up.
Geoff dove behind a mossy trunk and crouched, his dark brown eyes peeking around the bark.
The girl’s face was turned toward him, though her wide, fear-laced eyes saw nothing but the forest. Her hands were raised, trembling slightly, as if she expected to be attacked—or to attack back.
Geoff could see her magic thrumming. She was trying to summon it, draw on it…
but the strands fell apart like mist in the wind.
It’s like she doesn’t understand our energy.
Intrigued, Geoff remained hidden. She was beautiful.
He realized that surprising thought with a startled flush.
Not in the delicate way the nymphs were, or the fierce way the warrior maidens of the northern cliffs were.
This girl—this creature from the mist—was alive in a different way.
Her face was smudged with dirt, and her long silvery braid looked like it had lost a battle with a cyclone.
A streak of grime cut across one cheek where she had unconsciously wiped her hand.
Her clothes clung oddly to her form, the silvery fabric shimmering like starlight as it hugged her shoulders and chest, with small fastenings running diagonally across her top.