Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“Hello,” it greeted him in a scratchy, tinny voice.
David instinctively scrambled back. “What the hell are you?”
“I’m not a what,” said the creature in indignation, “I’m a who.”
“What?” repeated David. “Er, I mean, who?”
“I’m the Forkupine!”
“You’re—real?”
“I am now,” said the Forkupine. “He made me real.”
He made all of you real, David realized, and he has no idea.
He understood now. As absurd as it might be, there was a kind of logic at work here in Meredith’s unerring ability to find his way through the Wood in the dead of night, in the way the landscape shifted to clear paths forged with will alone.
Even the Erlking, a nightmare conjured up from childhood fairy tales and warded off by the words Meredith believed in so deeply that he’d inscribed them on his skin.
David took a deep breath and let it out. He was out of his element here, and he knew it. But he supposed it made as much sense as anything else in the Midnight Wood—as much sense as anything else where Meredith was concerned. “Okay,” he said. “Right. Pleased to meet you.”
“Come on, come on, up on your feet, no time to lose,” urged the Forkupine. “We must rescue the king of the Midnight Wood! Onward!”
With renewed determination, David rose to his feet and hurried to keep up with the Forkupine.
They raced deeper and deeper into the Wood, dodging between trees and crashing through thickets of brambles, heedless of the thorns and branches tearing at them.
The Forkupine ducked beneath another fallen log.
Following close behind, David vaulted over it, and then halted abruptly as the pull of the bracelet led him straight toward the face of a massive rock outcropping.
David swore. Of course the thing didn’t function like a proper GPS. It only urged him along the shortest route in the right direction, but he couldn’t move through solid rock.
“This way! This way!” came a chorus of tiny voices. There was a flash of white, then another, and another, and a trio of white mice had assembled next to the Forkupine.
“We,” they said in unison, “are the Midnight Mice.”
This time, David took it in stride. “And I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said. “In fact, I owe you my thanks. I believe one of you tried to help me when I was in these woods before.”
That cast a pall over the Mice, but the leader of the trio spoke up. “That was Hyacinth.” She solemnly bowed her head. “She met her end at the hand of the Erlking.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said David.
“But you will banish him from our forest and restore our queen to the throne. Come, we will show you the way.”
“Matriarchal society and all,” explained the Forkupine in a low voice. “Only title they recognize.”
David nodded, though he didn’t imagine Meredith would mind either way.
The group pressed on. The bracelet tugged harder and harder at David’s arm, and every time a new obstacle blocked their path, the Mice led them to an alternate route.
As they stumbled through a sycamore grove carpeted with sweet woodruff, they were joined by a pair of dryads—extraordinarily beautiful women with mottled silver skin and luxuriant green curls.
Their band continued to gain new followers, leaving David with mere impressions as they rushed on—the large luminous eyes of the Moon Calf, the flowing inky mane of the Night Horse, the rapid patter of the Most Weasel’s paws.
At last they slowed at the outskirts of the fir grove. The trees were in poor condition, their needles brown and brittle.
“The lair of the Erlking,” said the Forkupine in a hushed tone. “He’s made the trees too sad to live.”
“We can accompany you no further,” said the Moon Calf. “Banish the Erlking and return to us the rightful ruler of the Midnight Wood.”
David didn’t know whether there was going to be a Midnight Wood for much longer if Maitland Cartier had his way, but one thing at a time.
“May fortune be with you, valiant knight!” called the leader of the Mice, and the rest of the group cheered in a cacophony of agreement.
“Right,” said David. “Here I go, then.”
Squaring his shoulders, he crossed into the ring of pines.
Some knight he was—trembling with fear, clad in his pajamas, and without the first clue what he was going to do when he came face-to-face with the Erlking.
Then again, Meredith was hardly the standard golden-haired fairy-tale princess, either, so perhaps it didn’t matter.
Perhaps it was enough for David to have shown up as he was.
In the center of the empty clearing, he called out, “Erlking! I demand an audience!”
In a blink, the man himself appeared before David, and it took everything he had not to jump back in the most ignominious fashion.
“Well, well, you’ve shown up after all,” the Erlking greeted him. “I’m surprised you made it this far.”
It was hardly any of the Erlking’s business, David decided, if he had happened to have a little help on that front.
“I have,” he said, his voice hard. “Now, what have you done with my—my—” To his shame, he faltered once again, this time out of fear. What if, in spite of all he thought he’d understood, Meredith still didn’t want him?
“With your what?” mocked the Erlking. “What’s he to you?”
But this time, David knew the answer. “Everything.”
A sickening smile sliced across the Erlking’s face, a flash of pointed teeth in his silver beard. “Oh, I do find that hard to believe. Why, if that were true, you never would’ve shattered his heart so thoroughly that I could get into his head and take over without ever leaving my domain.”
David’s glare was icy. “A simple misunderstanding.”
“Is that so?” The Erlking’s wheezing laughter faded as quickly as it had begun. Collecting himself, he said with a pretense of solemnity, “But where is my hospitality? Are you thirsty, boy? His despair is simply unparalleled.”
At a loss, David followed the Erlking to the far side of the clearing and beneath the overhang of the towering, moss-covered rock formation.
There in the shadows, surrounded by the glowing white blossoms of dozens of candleflowers, Meredith lay upon the flat stone.
He appeared to be asleep, hands folded over his chest, tangled hair splayed out around him.
His dress was torn, his arms and face bore the telltale scratches of thorns, and his bare feet were black with grime.
David hurried to him and seized hold of his hand. “Meri, wake up.”
He remained still and silent, save for the rise and fall of his chest. Dread washed over David, but he channeled it into rage and turned to the Erlking. “What have you done to him?”
“Me? Oh, no, no. He’s the one who let despair into his heart.
I simply called, and this time—this time, he came to me.
” The Erlking extended a hand, summoning a wineglass into existence.
From nowhere, it began to fill itself with a pale green liquid.
“You’re sure I can’t tempt you with just a little sip? ”
Upon the stone table, Meredith gasped as though in pain, but still he did not wake.
“Stop it,” said David.
The Erlking paid him no heed, and the glass continued to fill. Meredith twitched and turned his face to one side. Though his eyes remained closed, tear tracks glistened on his cheeks.
“Stop it!” shouted David. “You’re hurting him.”
“Now, that is rich, coming from you,” said the Erlking, a hideous amusement twinkling in his colorless eyes. “You go hurting him all the time.”
He drank deeply, and Meredith threw back his head, a whimper escaping his throat.
David knelt beside him and placed a hand to his cheek. “Hush, little bird,” he whispered. “I’m here now, it’s going to be all right. I always make everything all right, don’t I?”
He still didn’t know how he possibly could, but Meredith believed it. He’d said as much, and judging by the way his breathing evened out, the reassurance seemed to work.
Meredith believed it, and David had to make it true.