Chapter 40
Our relief was short-lived.
“Watch out!” Russ screamed two minutes later, and he pointed to the left, to where a shadow was basically peeling itself from a large branch, becoming a timewraith right there while we watched.
More. Of course there were more.
We continued to run, and Seth and Erith were already feeling much better. They had no trouble keeping up with the rest of us as we ran ahead, without any clear direction.
“Behind us!” Anika shouted, and we all turned our heads to find another wraith was already gaining speed as it ran for us.
My heart pounded. My legs screamed in protest. I exchanged a look with March—we were the last of the group—and we both forced our bodies to move faster.
“There’s nowhere to go! There’s nowhere—argh!”
Mimi.
My heart stopped.
One second she was there at the head of the group, and the next second she was gone with a sharp scream—a scream that didn’t stop, but became more and more distant…
The others stopped and we had no choice but to do the same.
They stopped, and they were looking down at the floor where Mimi fell—no.
She was still falling, but not quite. More like sliding down the smooth branches that twisted around one another to create a carved bridge that connected the floor we stood on, to whatever was below.
Wherever Mimi was sliding to—and she was laughing now, no longer screaming. She was laughing and cheering—woohoo!
“Jump!” Russ ran the three feet to where those smooth branches extended beyond the hole in the floor and jumped.
He cheered, too, as he went sliding.
“Go, go, go!” March shouted, pushing the others forward, and they didn’t hesitate. A look back said that three more wraiths were right behind us, and I was willing to bet even more would come, and they were fast now. Faster than they had been before.
I looked ahead, knowing I’d freeze if they got too close—or stop to try to fight them, which would be suicide.
I had nothing on me, only my magic that was food for them.
The only way to survive was to get away, to jump down a slide made of smooth branches that had somehow twisted together in just the right way.
March was the only one left near that hole in the floor, and I knew for a fact that if I stopped to tell him to just jump first, we’d only waste time. He wasn’t going to, not without seeing that I was safe.
So, I spared both of us the seconds and I jumped straight into the hole.
A scream escaped me—and then I was sliding. I didn’t even feel anything, couldn’t tell if I was hurt or not, but I was moving, and March was right over me. That was all that mattered.
The slide went on forever—possibly fifty feet.
Maybe it was the speed that made me see things, but I could have sworn there was a disruption about halfway down that I just slightly felt against my back.
I could have sworn that I saw another forest floor—or rather another level of the tree that we slid right through, then continued farther down.
I only saw it for a split second, though, so I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t made it up. In the state I was in, anything was possible. I hardly breathed in the time it took me to see the bottom. I doubt I was even alive in those minutes before I saw the others, clapping, hi-fiving each other, cheering.
And I had no idea how to slow down or stop—I was just focusing on breathing because this was somehow worse than that strange hole on the ground I sometimes fell through for hours and hours when I dreamed.
When the slide ended and I slammed against the ground, I rolled three times before I was able to stop—and by then, March was on his feet somehow, having managed to stop just off the smooth branches.
Breathing. Moving. Alive, I told myself, and held onto those three words until my breathing was under control and my heart didn’t threaten to beat out of me anymore.
“We’re okay,” March said, nodding at me when I finally stood up. “We’re all—”
“Guys!”
Somebody screamed. The laughter died, and we all knew what came next: something bad. Something very bad.
It was.
The timewraiths were sliding down the same branches as us.
“Break it! Break the slide!”
Could have been March that said it, and then most of the Hands were already onto it, their magic turning the tree bright, a rainbow of colors slamming onto the twisting branches.
It took me a moment to join them, adding purple to Cook’s magic, and the energy vibrated in the air, filled it with tension so thick I could hardly breathe.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…
“It’s not working,” I said, though maybe not loud enough for all to hear.
But our magic wasn’t working—it wasn’t breaking the wood as it was supposed to. It was doing nothing at all—and the wraiths were halfway down already.
Panic made my ears whistle. If only there were axes or saws or anything at all to help us cut the wood. My mind was made up to magic an axe, only by then the wraiths would reach us, and—
“Here! Over here!”
Levana was screaming at the top of her voice, and she wasn’t with the rest of us, pouring magic onto the slide.
Instead, she was on the other side of it, on her knees just by the edge where the smooth branches had grown from, and she was digging.
She was pulling at the roots and leaves frantically and—unplant what you planted.
The words popped into my head one after the other. The flowers. That’s what the flowers had said.
We were all falling to our knees, digging into the roots, breaking pieces of wood.
My skin bled but I didn’t feel the pain.
I didn’t feel anything but panic, until we finally pulled a big piece of wood that seemed to be a layer of the floor itself.
It took three of us—I had no idea which Hands—but we pulled, and underneath them, we saw seeds.
A handful of seeds that someone grabbed in their fists—Levana. She stood up screaming, and threw them to the other side, and then the floor underneath us groaned like a beast. Seth grabbed another handful, threw it to the other side.
The groaning intensified.
The timewraiths were almost on us when the smooth branches began to move.
“Move back, get back, move!” someone shouted, but we already were doing just that, all our eyes on the slide as it tried to untwist itself but couldn’t—and then it broke.
Screams as the branches snapped, some farther up, some lower—and then the wraiths began to scream, too. A screeching sound that made my ears bleed, like nails against metal, but much, much worse.
They were right there, possibly about five feet away, but the pieces of the broken branches crashed through the forest floor when they fell.
They broke the floor completely, taking the wraiths with, their arms swinging, their awful fingers trying to hold onto thin air as they fell deeper and deeper below.
It all happened fast and slow, felt all too real, too raw, and like an impossible dream at the same time.
For the longest moment, none of us dared to go closer to the hole in the floor. I looked around and nothing had changed—the same branches and leaves, flowers and mushrooms—it was all the same down here as it had been up there. A forest within a forest, indeed.
We no longer heard the pieces falling nor the wraiths screeching the way they had. More light slipped through the canopy surrounding us here, so we saw clearly how far the other level had been—at least fifty feet.
“They’re gone, too,” Mimi whispered, looking down at the floor, to where Levana and Seth had thrown the seeds. She was right—all that was left of them were small piles of white powder scattered all over.
“Over, over, over,” Helen whispered as she slowly went closer to the hole to see better.
My stomach twisted like a broken machine.
“Helen,” someone said—could have been Mimi. “Helen, get back.”
But the Heart was whispering, over, over, over, and she inched a little closer to the edge, careful, her step light.
“Helen?” Levana said, the name a question on her tongue.
“It’s over,” Helen said. “It’s o—”
A groan. A hiss. A hand with four freakishly long fingers wrapped around her ankle. Pulled.
We all ran forward, even though we knew it was too late. Others called her name, and maybe I did, too—there’s a wraith, there’s a wraith, there’s a wraith wrapped around your ankle!
What a silly thought. Must have been the shock.
But Helen was gone.
She didn’t scream—she only fell.
“Stop, stop—you’ll all fall, STOP!” someone shouted, thank Time, and I thought to listen.
I thought to stop before it was too late for me, too, and the momentum propelled me forward, brought me to my knees.
The hole was just two feet away from me, the edge of it like another mouth of a monster, too.
No Helen. No timewraiths anywhere that we could see—but the rings on the trunks and the branches were glowing silver. A full glow—like they’d suddenly come alive just now.
It was over—now for real. It was over, for us, and for Helen, too. She would never survive the fall. She would never survive a wraith wrapped around her ankle.
It was over, and somehow, I was still alive.