Chapter Fourteen
Nothing to Lose
By the time Felipe reached where Oliver had last stood, the occasional drop of rain had grown into a steady patter.
Thunder rolled over the woods as Felipe checked that his knives and gun were in place before stepping closer to the trees.
This time, there was no siren song, but he could sense the change in the aether.
How had he not noticed before that the shadows were wrong beyond the tree line where everything looked as uniform as a mirage?
Inhaling a steadying breath, Felipe drew on the adrenaline coursing through his veins.
All it would take was a brief plunge to follow Oliver to the other side.
Felipe said a silent apology to his family for what he was about to do.
As he tried to take a step, the air coalesced and tangled around his arms and legs.
His feet slid on the wet grass as he thrashed harder against the wall of pressure.
No, not now. Not when Oliver needed him.
Choking on a ragged breath, Felipe backed up and rushed toward the trees only to be ensnared by unseen hands once more.
“No,” Gwen yelled behind him, her voice tight, “absolutely not. Felipe Galvan, you need to stop and listen to me.”
With a final thrust of her powers, Gwen knocked him back.
Scanning the cemetery, Felipe found her running up the hill with an umbrella.
In the chaos, her hair had come loose from one of her braids and her coat was only half on.
While each exhalation still came with a wheezy echo, Gwen looked far more angry than she did winded.
“I should have known you would have run off on your own the first chance you got. If you had waited one minute before slipping out the back, you would have learned something important.”
“Just let me go, Gwen,” he said between his teeth as the invisible binds pressed against him like an embrace.
“No, not until you’ve listened to me.”
His hand twitched at his side, itching to grab his knife and slice through her magic. “What else is there to say? Oliver’s in there. If I can’t save him, at least I can die trying.”
“You know Oliver wouldn’t want you to do that.”
“You haven’t seen the things I’ve seen. Any minute now, he’ll—” Felipe pressed his eyes shut against the sting of tears.
He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to feel the moment when the tether snapped.
He had come too close to that once before.
“I need to do something. I can’t just leave him to die. ”
“I know, and we won’t.” Holding her hand up for silence, Gwen pushed her glasses up her nose and steeled herself as she crossed the hill to stand at Felipe’s side.
Her eyes trailed to the knife in his hand as she said only loud enough for him to hear, “I have a theory about Oliver, though I can’t prove anything yet.
Is he still doing all right as far as you can tell? ”
Closing his eyes, Felipe reached for the tether.
It felt odd, like it was solid on his end but stretched like a rubber band on the other.
He gave it one tug and waited. When no tug came in response, his pulse quickened, but if he focused, he could still sense Oliver’s nebulous presence on the other end.
A relieved sigh escaped his lips before he could stop himself.
“He’s still alive. It doesn’t feel like he’s in danger, but I can’t be sure.”
“Good, then I’m probably right. While you were busy sneaking off, I asked Mr. Allen about the woods.
See, I remembered that he mentioned only one family can go into the woods without repercussions and that they don’t help anybody come back out.
Well, today, someone in town said something similar about the town’s founding family.
I think Oliver’s father was part of that family; that’s why he’s still alive.
But if you or I run in there after him, we might not be so lucky. ”
“It’s a chance I’m willing to take,” Felipe replied, pressing his finger into the sliver of exposed blade before inching up the hilt.
As if sensing his intentions, Gwen’s magic surged around his legs, and she gripped his arm so tightly he didn’t dare look away from her as she said, “There are fates worse than death, Felipe. You know that. And there’s a possibility your presence could make whatever’s in there turn on Oliver.”
“Then, what do you propose we do?” he asked, his voice cracking as blood dripped down his hand.
“We wait.” Holding his gaze, Gwen’s features softened as she gently pulled the knife from his hand. “If Oliver’s allowed into the woods unharmed, then he should be allowed out. We have to trust he can find his way back to us.”
Felipe’s gaze trailed to the woods as the cut on his hand bloomed with pain.
If he couldn’t protect Oliver, what was the point of having him around?
The fight left him so quickly his knees would have buckled had it not been for Gwen and her powers prodding him away from the trees and toward a bench with a view of where Oliver disappeared.
Collapsing onto the wet stone, Felipe barely noticed the umbrella over his head or Gwen pressing a handkerchief over his bloodied hand.
All he could do was cling to the tether under his heart and wait for Oliver to come back to him.
***
OLIVER STARED UP AT the fleeting glimpses of sky as he followed the winding path deeper into the Dysterwood and tried to figure out how long he had been walking.
When he first fell into the woods, he had frozen where he landed with tears in his eyes, waiting for the moment when something would step from the shadows to take his life.
He didn’t know how long he knelt there, but when nothing dropped from the canopy to tear him limb from limb, Oliver’s fear cooled into caution.
Magical spaces like this always had rules.
Most were to be respectful, keep to the path, and take nothing, and if nothing else, Oliver was good at following the rules.
Keeping his arms close to his sides, he stayed to the center of the dirt path that cut through the forest like a knife and hoped it would lead him back to Felipe and Gwen.
Somehow, he had expected something far more sinister from a man-eating forest than pine and oak trees that rose so high and thickly around him he could scarcely see the sky.
What he could see peeking through the branches as he rounded the bend told him it was the wrong time of day.
Though he knew he hadn’t been walking for that long, the sky had taken on the red hue of an evening after a storm when it had been barely past one and about to pour when he left.
Much like the desecrated cathedral, the world around him looked and felt wrong.
There was something uncanny about the Dysterwood that made it ancient yet ageless, but where the cathedral’s island teemed with creatures ready to pounce if they strayed, the Dysterwood seemed to be holding its breath and watching him from afar.
If anything, the forest was too quiet. Oliver had little experience with nature after living in Philadelphia and Manhattan for all his life, but he thought forests were supposed to be teeming with creatures.
So far, all he had seen were insects. Moths flitted around the moss and plants covering the forest floor like a living carpet, and at eye level, an emerald beetle climbed a tree and beat its wings at him when he stopped to look at it.
Once or twice, he caught movement from the corner of his eye, only to turn and find the space between the trees empty.
A voice in his mind that sounded remarkably like Felipe scolded him for never carrying a blade, not that it would have done him much good.
Oliver appreciated people like Felipe who could fight, but it wasn’t for him.
He had his wits and his experience, and he had to make peace with that being enough.
He regarded the bees and the pitch pines with reverence and hoped that whatever lurked within the Dysterwood could understand that he meant no harm to them and only wanted to leave in peace.
Walking until his heels and back ached, Oliver lost all sense of time in the Dysterwood.
The sky never changed, but the trees gradually gave way to scrubby, brown grass and pink flowered bushes.
Hope swelled in his breast. He had made it out of the forest without incident, so maybe the forest would let him go back to Felipe and Gwen.
At a strange pressure in his chest, Oliver stopped midstride and focused on the tether.
The comforting weight remained beneath the apex of his heart, but Felipe felt farther away than he had ever been before.
The tether hadn’t stretched uncomfortably as it did when they ventured too far apart.
Instead, it felt like the tether had turned to taffy and had been stretched so far that it sagged beneath its weight.
Oliver tried not to think too hard about the implications of that.
So long as the connection between them still lodged beneath their ribs, he and Felipe would be fine.