Chapter 44
PANDORA’S DIARY
Sense that my gift is fucking up the island: Yes
Despite being pissed at Leo, all I could think about was finding Daffodil.
I didn’t merely care about the folk, I felt responsible for them.
Not only the ones I personally adored, either.
I’d invited them all onto our island, into our homes.
Sure, the brownies weren’t my favorite, but I still thought of them like a friend’s cute-but-rowdy toddlers.
Except now?
Now I was worried the toddlers were wandering around with loaded guns. Between the injured and missing pixies, the “wild dogs” and vandalized garden—and Dames-damned Leo—I felt myself start to spiral.
I needed to set everything aside except the search for Daffodil. Though I will admit, here and only here, that I didn’t hate that Leo’s first impulse when a cart started careening toward us was to protect me.
I was less fond of the weird tone in his voice when he called me to the front of the cart. Leo crouched there, with his muscly forearms and concerned face. I peeked under the cart, but couldn’t see much through the ferns.
“I thought we were stuck in gravel,” I told him.
“I wish.”
Because Diary, those weren’t ferns. Arrowhead-shaped leaves with red veins carpeted the undercarriage of the cart, and ropes of vegetation twined around the wheels.
“What the hell kind of—” The leaves rustled as snakes slithered toward us. I scrambled backward. “Snakes!”
“They’re not snakes,” Leo said, steadying me. “They’re vines.”
I took another look and yeah, they were vines. They were moving slower than any snake, but faster than any vine as they groped blindly toward us.
The sight sickened me a little. “Something is wrong.”
“Very wrong,” he said.
Violet chirped her agreement as I straightened to take a breath—which was the only reason I caught the motion. I didn’t even hear the faint whine of an electric motor, I just saw a flash of movement down the road.
The cart that had hit us was speeding back around the bend.
Returning to ram us.
I froze for a heartbeat, as Violet fluttered in fear and darted away. The cart accelerated through the turn and aimed straight for us. The impact would crush Leo, who was still bent between the hood and that tree, so I screamed.
And I dove at him.
I’d never been a huge fan of football, but this was a game-ending tackle. I brought him down like a lioness taking a gazelle. And for a moment, I basked in the glow of his shock and bewilderment—then we hit the ground and the other cart rammed into ours.
Our cart smashed against the tree. Shards of glass and splinters of bark spat across my back and, a few seconds later, I stopped screaming and tried to explain: “It came back, the cart. It came back to finish the job.”
Leo’s face changed. His eyes narrowed and his mouth firmed in anger. After checking that I was okay, he straightened and strode toward the cart. I brushed myself off as he threw open the door, his other hand balled into a fist.
Then the tension ebbed from him. “There’s nobody here.”
“How could there be no one—” I strode toward him, then wrinkled my nose at the air wafting from the cart. “Gah, that stinks.”
“Yeah, I don’t think our joyriders are house-trained.”
I frowned at the footwell, where a thick scrum of balled paper covered the pedals. “What’s that?”
“Pages.” Leo leaned closer, making a face at the stench. “Torn out of library books.”
“The library? Oh, shit. That’s where all this started.”
“And the manuscript is still there.”
“Doing whatever a magical manuscript does.”
Leo nodded. “Like releasing mutant vines across the island. We need to check on it.”
“After we find Daffodil.”
“Right,” he said. “She’s somewhere on the island, Pan. We’ll find her. Then we’ll get the manuscript and figure this all out.”
We started hiking to town, hoping to find Daffodil at the Driftwood or Deja’s shop.
Our cart was hopelessly stuck, and the other one smelled so nasty you could taste it.
Despite everything, the afternoon sun shone prettily through the high branches of trees, and the fields swayed in a lovely breeze. But one thing was missing.
“I don’t hear any birds,” I said.
Leo stopped to listen. “Well, that’s not ominous.”
Violet hovered in front of me, cupping her ear.
“You want me to listen?” I asked her. “I am listening.”
She shushed me and mimed “listen” again. So Leo and I stood there, listening to the fluttering leaves, until I heard the faintest noise. A hollow sort of groan.
I pointed into the stretch of woods to our right and whispered, “It’s coming from over there.”
“Oh, shit, yeah. That sounds like someone moaning.” He turned toward the sound. “Let’s go.”
I grabbed his arm. “Are you serious? Our phones aren’t working and the birds are missing. A ghost cart tried to run us over and something is attacking pixies. This is not the time to wander into the woods after a creepy noise.”
“What if it’s Daffodil?” he asked.
“In that case,” I said, heading into the woods. “Dames be with us.”
After I passed the trees lining the road, everything looked strange.
Leo and I had spent hours in these woods as kids, playing hide-and-go-seek, looking for mushrooms, building elaborate houses for bugs.
Yet these trees weren’t the trees I knew.
They were still maples and firs, mostly, but the branches were too angled and the needles too thick and long, like daggers.
I pulled a piece of bark off a birch tree and it didn’t peel like birch bark. It peeled like sunburned skin.
“Leo, this isn’t—” I shuddered. “None of this looks right.”
“Doesn’t feel right either,” he said, which wasn’t exactly comforting.
Strange berries grew from unfamiliar mosses, and patches of lichen seemed to stretch and waver like slime molds. Grasping roots twisted from the forest floor like animal traps and even the rocks felt wrong, too jagged and angular.
The once-comforting woods stank like a sad vet’s office, with an acrid tang that didn’t cover the stench of urine and fear. But the absolute worst thing was the vines. They spiraled around tree trunks and drooped from branches like thick, horrible cobwebs.
Then I spotted a dangling mass: a basketball-sized chunk of fur and feathers, clumped together and looking half-digested. And when I started to look closer, Violet flew in front of me and covered my eyes.
“She’s right,” Leo said, his voice thick. “Don’t look.”
I’d caught a glimpse of rabbit ears and squirrel feet, so I didn’t peer closer. I turned my head, and heard the moaning again. “This way.”
Leo grabbed a stout branch from the forest floor as I ducked beneath a clump of freakishly sharp spruce needles.
The eerie silence started scraping at my nerves, so I grabbed a weapon, too.
Except the branch I chose was half-rotten.
When I couldn’t find anything better, I kept hold of it: frankly having anything in my hand made me feel more secure.
Violet gazed around with wide, fearful eyes, then burrowed into my hair to hide. I murmured a few comforting words for her—for all of us—as we paused at a puddle of skunky water.
Leo said, “I don’t see any—”
A moan sounded and a patch of dirt moved a few yards from the puddle.
A hand reached upward from a shallow grave. A human hand, shedding dirt, followed by a filth-encrusted arm. Then an entire torso broke the surface and an unearthly sound came from a dirt-caked face.
And listen, Diary: like most faerie-kin, I’m not completely in command of popular culture. Still, I know the basics. I know the absolute minimum. So I didn’t hesitate.
I shouted, “Zombie!” and clubbed the undead creature with the branch in my hand.
My half-rotted branch dissolved into soggy splinters, doing about as much damage as rolled-up newspaper.
“Ugh!” the zombie grunted, sitting up in his grave. “Ow! What the fuck?”
“Sh-Shrig?” I asked, recognizing his voice.
He smeared a hand across his face. “Why does this keep happening to me?”
“Oh, my Dames!” I sputtered. “Are you okay?”
Leo handed me his branch, grabbed Shrig’s elbow, and helped him out of the shallow hole in the ground. He’d only been covered with a foot or so of dirt, and he was naked except for board shorts and flip-flops.
“We need to get out of here,” Shrig mumbled, but when he took a step he almost tripped.
Leo kept him upright. “What happened?”
“Just go! There are things in the woods.”
“What kind of…” I trailed off when I heard scratching from the forest shadows.
Scratching, scraping, and chittering. Then squeals, like a horde of rats, coming closer from the gaps between the tree roots.
Violet grabbed two hanks of my hair and flapped her wings furiously, desperately trying to pull me away—and I’d never agreed with anyone more.
“C’mon c’mon c’mon!” I shoved a pine branch aside. “This way, back to the road.”
Leo half-dragged Shrig past me, grunting with effort while Shrig moaned again.
“Faster, you prick!” I snapped at Leo, in my gentle, ladylike way. “Faster, faster!
I forged ahead to clear the trail, narrowly avoiding a nasty patch of swampy mud. Violet buzzed around me, helping me choose a path, while Leo and Shrig crashed along behind us. They loudly snapped every single twig underfoot, just in case whatever was chasing us was in danger of losing our trail.
Yet despite their crashing and groaning, I heard the chittering more clearly than ever. Chittering and growling, followed by yipping. Almost like they were laughing.
“Sounds like hyenas,” I panted. “Maybe there is a pack of wild dogs.”
Twigs scratched my arms and thorns pricked my legs as I pushed forward. Vines snagged in my hair and curled around my ankles—and I couldn’t find a way out.
“Where’s the road?” I called.
“I don’t know!” Leo cried. “Just go, Pan. Go!”
Fear tightened in my stomach, the terror of helplessness and claustrophobia. We were trapped like flies in a web as a monstrous fate crept closer to consume us.
Then Violet blew a puff of glittery powder around me and the enclosing vines shrank away. I checked on Leo and Shrig before pushing onward through the eerie woods, away from the sounds of pursuit, which finally faded as we pulled ahead.
“—dozed off on the beach,” Shrig said, apparently answering a question I’d missed. “In the sun.”
“This morning?” Leo asked, helping him over a fallen, fungus-knotted log.
“Yesterday,” Shrig said. “God, I’m thirsty. Then I was being buried in sand. I thought it was a prank until the noises started.”
A chorus of yipping and snarling sounded behind us, as the creatures caught our scent.
“Yeah, those noises,” Shrig said, and the yips turned to howls.
I shoved through a thicket, aiming for the road, for sunshine, for freedom from this Dames-forsaken forest.
“I don’t know what happened after that,” Shrig said, his voice starting to tremble. “They moved me here, like they were saving me for later. I heard them sniffing and—”
“It’s okay, Shrig.” Leo squeezed his shoulders. “You’re okay now, we’ve got you.”
“Did they hurt you?” I asked.
Shrig shot me a sharp look that I found heartening. “No, Pandora. Other than burying me alive overnight, it was like a spa holiday.”
“Ha! A mud bath!”
He and Leo both shot me sharp looks.
“Too soon?” I said.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Leo said.
I giggled a little hysterically, as the yipping grew sharper and shriller behind us. “What—what are they, Shrig? Did you see them?”
“They’re Chucky dolls with fangs and claws. Scaly and horrible.”
I didn’t ask any more questions. I didn’t want to know. I forged through the woods, my breath harsh and arms stinging. And finally, finally, I caught sight of familiar trees. A handful of aspens lining the road. Thank the Dames! We weren’t going to get torn apart by a swarm of scaly monsters.
With my chest heaving for air, I said something like, “We made it!”
Then I stumbled through the aspens—and the road wasn’t there.