Chapter 3
Maddox
I’m still in my car, my hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel.
What…the fuck…am I doing?
Wasting time, when I could be filling out job applications. No matter that fast-food restaurants and gas stations don’t pay a living wage and don’t offer medical insurance.
A slow-building tremor shakes my fingers, and a wave of heat courses from my face to my core.
Could be from nerves or the lingering alcohol.
Could be my body reacting to the horrifying fact that I’m returning to the same forest where my parents died, where I screamed and cried for hours as I watched helplessly while my parents’ blood turned the dirt dark and muddy.
But no. My body only reacts like this to one thing: too much insulin.
With unsteady hands, I test my blood sugar, going through the mindless steps:
Attempt to jam the tiny test strip into the meter with the grace of a teenage boy trying to find “the hole” for the first time. It takes three tries and twelve curse words, but eventually I get the strip in, and the meter flashes on, demanding: DELIVER BLOOD NOW.
Prick finger with dull lancet that should have been changed weeks ago.
Deliver blood to the test strip god.
Wait while the machine thinks.
Wait a little more.
Finally, the meter beeps and a bright red 53 flashes across the screen. Anything under seventy is considered too low. Anything under fifty is flat-out dangerous.
I reach into my bag to retrieve the package of Skittles I keep in case of emergencies. They’re cheaper than glucose tabs and achieve the same goal. Pouring a handful in my palm, I toss them in my mouth like a pill popper who’s gone too long without a fix.
Leaning back against the seat, I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for my racing heart to slow. My hands are the first to calm, then my vision refocuses. The fog in my mind dissipating as the sugar takes effect.
This is why I drove all the way here, to the metaphorical doorstep of the Myrtle Queen. This is why I can’t enlist in the military or couch surf. Because no matter how independent I try to be, I will always be dependent on insulin.
I glance back to the white-and-brown sign that reads Myrtle Tree Trail. The last time I saw it, I was in the back of an ambulance while police canvased the area, treating it as a crime scene, collecting evidence to search for a suspect they couldn’t even see.
An EMT on the scene wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, offering me a box of juice.
I remember thinking I should tell him that my mom didn’t allow me to have sugary things if my blood sugar isn’t low.
Then I remembered her rules didn’t really matter anymore.
I wasn’t sure if I was more upset or relieved by this.
I had always wanted to be able to choose when and what I ate.
Little did I know, that sense of control was merely an illusion.
I have as much control as my disease allows me, and even less after factoring in what my health insurance allows. Which is currently nothing at all.
My phone has one bar of service—enough for me to send Javen a quick text that I’ll be off the grid for a bit.
I don’t mention anything about dryads. Instead, I feed him another lie, claiming I sold my soul to Arborfell Logging for some extra money.
It’s something I’ve joked about doing in the past, but not completely unbelievable given my chaotic employment history.
My car’s engine clicks and pops as I kick open the door and slide out, stringing my arms through my backpack. I hesitate, an odd sensation tickling my neck. I spin around, but nothing is there.
Riding out a shiver, I step forward onto the trail.
Silence is loud in the forest. Hidden birds chirp high in the trees. Tiny creatures skitter up trunks and under bushes. Insects buzz by my ears. I’m on high alert, looking left and right and up.
Myrtlewood trees with emerald trunks tower above like sea monsters frozen in time. Tentacles of branches stretch across the canopy, creating natural arches above the leaf-strewn path.
My chest aches from holding my breath, waiting for something to happen. Some sort of miraculous thing. The opposite of what happened last time, only minutes after my dad had leaned over to tell me, “This is where the Myrtle Queen lives. Stay close, okay?”
“Hello?” I whisper. “Anyone out here? Myrtle Queen? Dryad…people?”
I hope my deep loathing for them isn’t completely obvious, or the not-for-hunting hunting knife in my pocket.
I mentally review my father’s journal entry, repeating the words over and over as I move along the trail.
Take Myrtle Tree Trail. Find the largest tree.
To be fair, several of these trees are rather fucking large. Each larger than the last. I keep pausing, examining the bark, trying to find some sort of symbol that screams, THE MYRTLE QUEEN LIVES HERE.
But then I reach the end of the trail and immediately know I’ve found The One.
The tree before me looks as though it belongs in an old sea monster B movie, with its tentacular branches and base wide enough to fit twenty of me shoulder to shoulder.
It’s magnificent, with five separate trunks sprouting up from the single hollow moss-covered base.
Knots distort the branches like an old woman’s gnarled fingers, flaunting its great age.
The forest is screeching now: the constant chittering of birds from high above, the babbling creek to my left, the surround sound of bugs. But no fairies leave their hiding places. I drop my bag, walking around the base of the grand tree, revolving in a circle with my arms out in surrender.
“Hello?” I try again. “O great and powerful Myrtle Queen? I need…” I sigh, dropping my arms to my sides. “…help.”
Nothing.
I place my palm against the trunk, pressing hard. The aged bark cuts into my skin. “My dad told me about you.” Warned is more like, and he never spoke much about her. Not aloud, at least. Though his journal is full of little notes I’m pretty sure are about her. “He said he met you.”
And then six of you fuckers murdered him, but I’ll put that aside for now.
I wait. Nothing.
Leaning my forehead against the trunk of the tree, I close my eyes and try to remember every detail my dad casually mentioned or scribbled down in his journal. Something to help me here. Literally anything.
And then—Mortal music enchants them.
I sink to the ground beside my backpack full of things, gently pulling out the ukulele I’d stuffed inside.
There’s nothing remarkable about it. The wood is dark and scratched.
Decorating the space to the right of the instrument’s bridge is a faded sticker that says CHAOTIC BISEXUAL, which I added after my sexual awakening at fifteen.
I run a finger over the letters. When did all my chaos turn to crisis?
With my back pressed to the myrtlewood tree, I strum and pluck at the strings in a simple, lyricless melody. If I had a piano, I could enchant this entire forest. But, alas, I just have this fucking ukulele I can hardly play.
Something stirs within the hollow trunk of the tree.
My heart leaps, and I scramble aside as a reddish-brown blur shoots past me and into the bushes across the path.
I climb to my feet, craning my neck to get a better look, letting myself believe, letting hope creep in.
The creature stares out with yellow eyes, tail swishing back and forth.
Just a fox.
Rolling darkness fills me, burning from the inside out. I could resemble the hollow myrtlewood tree behind me. A frustrated scream rumbles through my chest and out of my mouth. I aim the lament at the fox. Rather than run off, it crouches farther down, watching me, its tail stilling.
I snatch up my bag to make my way back. Back to what, though?
I have no home. No steady job. No family.
No friends left in Arborfell. Javen is driving straight for San Francisco as we speak.
I’m twenty-six and can no longer cash in on my former-foster-kid dues.
There have been a few times in my life I thought I’d hit rock bottom.
But I was wrong. This is it. Worse. It’s the fish shit beneath the rocks.
Panic chokes me as I face the gargantuan tree once again, shallow breaths and tears coming quickly. I’ve never felt so small, so positively insignificant. Falling to my knees, I bend in half, placing both of my hands on the trunk as if in worship.
“Please,” I whisper. “I don’t know what else to do. Please…help me.”
The softest wind blows next to my left ear as a voice murmurs, “Finally, the lady asks nicely.”
Before I’m able to look up, a stabbing pain erupts across my shoulder, a cloth blackens my vision, and hands encircle my wrists. Then I’m being dragged across the dirt to the tune of cackling laughter.