Chapter 25 Hollow
Hollow
Laurel had always called on Sage whenever she needed help with anything.
Sometimes it was outfit advice, where Sage was surprisingly useful, in that Laurel would then wear the exact opposite of whatever her older sister deemed suitable.
For a while, it had been relationship problems, but Sage had had to caveat her suggestions by reminding Laurel that she would generally prefer to be stuck in a conversation with a houseplant rather than most men.
Of course, there was sometimes career advice too, but that one always hit the same stalemate, whenever Laurel’s reply was “Well, that doesn’t sound very fun.
” Whatever the topic, the help and advice would inevitably be followed by bickering about Sage’s dreary lack of whimsy versus Laurel’s unwise lack of reality.
The next time they spoke, it would be as though nothing had ever happened; such was the circle of sisterly life.
So, when Sage heard the youngest Hemlock’s voice caught on the wind, strained and struggling as though it were made of something slippery and ethereal, she did not think twice about the implications.
Everything else ceased to matter; even the presence of a witch’s enchantment that was growing increasingly twisted was irrelevant.
She simply knew she had to help her sister and be by her side, where she had always belonged.
It took a fleeting moment to hear it again. Blundering into the road, following her instincts blindly, Sage spun on the spot several times as she tried to locate Laurel, simply to pinpoint the direction of her shouts as a starting point.
“Laurel?” she yelled at the top of her voice, not caring whether anyone stared.
For a second, she wondered whether she’d heard anything at all. The magic or lack thereof, freshly drained from her system, was making her edgy and slow. Ears pricked like a fox, she strained against the sounds of the town around her to find Laurel’s voice again.
“Sage? Sage, I’m here!” The forest. It was definitely coming from the forest. “Come on, quickly! Hurry up!”
When had she last seen her sister? What had she said her plans were?
Laurel had said goodbye to Sage and Casimir at the bonfire, throwing her arms around her sister and yawning obnoxiously loudly into her hair, which Sage only remembered because she had grimaced at it and told Laurel that she was disgusting.
In her defence, Laurel had apologized and told her that she was absolutely exhausted from writing and auntie duties and everything in between and that she was looking forward to a few long lie-ins.
Why would she have gone into the forest?
Sage ran towards the wall of trees that was once the dell.
She couldn’t make herself move quickly enough; it was as though the path towards the forest stretched out longer and longer, some kind of cruel trick at play.
Eventually she reached it, however, and the moment her hand landed on the first cold, rough trunk to catch herself from falling, the darkness within felt all-consuming.
Sage peered over her shoulder to glance back at the town.
People were going about their morning business.
Everything looked as it had done recently, brighter and louder, the sheen of glittering magic greying but still coating everything in sight.
Music still lingered in a constant background lullaby.
But turning back to the forest, it was as though a pitch-black night had fallen.
It seemed to swallow her rationality. Everything was silent.
She had promised Casimir that she wouldn’t go in alone.
But what choice did she have if Laurel needed saving?
As the eldest, that had always been her job.
The Enchanted Forest…Sage racked her tired brain, tugging on old, frayed research to try to quell her fears.
The forest was a liminal place in the world of fiction, a physical marker of the turning point between the life that was and the changed life that was still to come.
The dark forest, where a character can lose themselves completely to a unique sort of madness or find unknown new strength if they possess the courage to fight their way through.
“Sage, come on!” Laurel’s shouts grew louder, more desperate by the minute, strained and struggling.
“Please! Where are you?” Maybe she’d fallen and hurt herself.
She was so clumsy, forever bumping and scraping herself when they were young.
But whatever had happened, Laurel was in there somewhere, and for reasons that didn’t particularly concern Sage all that much, she needed her help.
So she would go. It was always as simple as that.
A rolling silky mist breathed above the forest floor, a fine veil of damp silver curling around her ankles. There wasn’t time to assess whether she should mark the way for them to follow back out. That part didn’t matter. She’d figure it out once she’d found Laurel and made sure she was safe.
Sage took only a few steps inside before the town behind her fell silent and disappeared completely from view.
The bark that wrapped around each towering pine only caught the slightest hint of daylight, swirling in gnarled patterns that blurred at the edges of Sage’s vision.
Her boots sank deeply into the soft, misty mulch, slowing her pace.
If she hadn’t fallen, she had probably got lost—Laurel was hopeless like that.
Her sense of direction was practically non-existent, and it had landed them in trouble several times over the years.
Her sister, in all of her sweet, silly ways, wouldn’t have been able to resist the prospect of an Enchanted Forest. She’d probably taken a walk to try to clear her head and somehow ended up deciding that being alone in a sinister, looming forest was the perfect location for it.
Idiot girl. It was easier to be mad at her than scared.
“I need you! Sage! Hurry, please!”
Laurel’s voice turned fainter, softer. There was a fragile feeling to it, as though she were tiring. She sounded younger somehow. This was the Laurel that Sage had taken under her wing, a broken baby bird all those years ago, and vowed always to look after.
“Laurel?” Sage’s voice cracked, dry with fear.
No answer. Only a rustle that could’ve been the wind—must have been the wind—the scent of damp moss, rotting flora, something faintly metallic that caught at the back of her nose.
Was…was the coven here? Were they waiting in the shadows that clung everywhere, ready to snatch her from her life before she could save everyone?
Was it a trick? She didn’t permit herself to think on it.
Sage pressed on, hurrying, but as quickly as she called out her sister’s name in the hope of a reply, the dense forest swallowed the sound up whole.
Panicked, Sage threw out her left hand to cast a small, unassuming incantation to light her way.
But her stomach plummeted when only a splutter and a stalling sensation came where magic had once flown.
Of course. It had gone. She’d forgotten.
She couldn’t do that anymore, not ever again.
She tried to slow down her breathing, which was coming in shallow, quick gasps with her lumbering pace.
It could have been minutes or hours that passed.
It was difficult to keep her wits about her as the need to find Laurel brought the blood rushing to her head.
At long last, she squinted as a shape she recognized finally flickered between the trees.
It wasn’t her youngest sibling, but it was tall and solid and so welcoming in its familiarity.
“Robin! Oh, thank the universe.” With the last of her energy, Sage ran towards her brother’s silhouette up ahead. “You heard it too? Where is she?”
But Robin didn’t turn around, didn’t respond to her cries.
And her brother’s silhouette…it wasn’t quite right.
The inky shadow that stretched out from his feet, somehow even darker than the rest of the black forest floor, bent in a way that shadows shouldn’t.
It was odd. Angular, too solid in its shape.
And as the thickly knitted canopy of leaves above them shifted, allowing the slimmest beam of daylight to find its way down towards them, Sage gasped when she saw him.
Or something like Robin. Something that wore his face, but it wasn’t her brother. It couldn’t be him.
His skin was deeply mottled. Gnarled and dry, wrinkled, formed into something aged and worn and rough.
The broad, sturdy shape of his torso was only faintly recognizable as the one that she had been hugged by so many times over the years, always just when she needed it most. She wasn’t sure when her “little” brother had grown so much taller than her.
She still got a shock sometimes when she saw him, realizing that he wasn’t as she remembered him on that day anymore.
It was him and yet it wasn’t.
He was rigid. All sharp lines. Jarringly cold.
The woodsman had become one with the woods. The spell had taken him.
“Robin…” Sage gasped, her hands flying to the branches that had once been his limbs.
The bark that had crept over his skin was still warm to the touch, pulsing faintly beneath her fingers.
She must have only been seconds from saving him.
Sage stumbled back, and her blood ran cold when his eyes opened slowly, painfully.
“Sage.” Robin’s voice rasped in recognition, the sound muffled by sticky sap and splintered wood. “It hurts. Please…I heard Laurel. I came running but…”
Sage fell another pace back, struggling to stay upright as horror warred with love.
Around her, the other trees shivered and sent down a rain of pine needles as a wind blew through them.
She saw more faces, half-hidden within the patterned bark, mouths twisted in silent cries. The forest was full of them.
“Robin!” She gasped for air, any last composure cracking. “What do I do? How do I help you? Tell me!” She fell towards him and shook the branches desperately, as though it might loosen his real form and let him escape.
“Where’s Laurel?” He managed to groan beneath the wood.
Sage desperately spun to try to spot her sister, hoping and praying that she was hiding in the shadows, scared. “Laurel? I don’t know! She’s…she’s not here? But I heard her!”
In a flash of pale light, the chain around her wrist glinted and caught her attention. The next charm had transformed. A pine tree all along.
She had been tricked. Sage felt sick. The curse, so humbling in the way that it left her wrong-footed, over and over, had wanted her to come and find Robin. His change was the latest twist to remind her of the incomparable chaos that magic could wreak upon the people she loved.
“I followed her voice too. I tried to leave…When I knew she wasn’t here,” Robin croaked, sticky tears of amber sliding down his wooden cheeks. “It won’t let me.” He groaned, the ache and regret audible as he tried to twist his rigid wooden form towards Sage but found it unforgiving.
“But I gave it up!” Sage shouted with a sob. “I gave my magic up! That should have been enough! This isn’t fair! I was trying to protect you both; I was trying to…”
As the mist thickened at her feet, something behind her—roots, tendrils, hands—brushed her ankle and held it tight. Sage kicked out, a scared animal noise coming from somewhere at the base of her throat.
“Go, go!”
Sage heard her brother offer those final, generous words of wisdom to her.
And she ran.