The shadows are no longer the same inky black they were before my terrifying encounter with, um that, but as the moon descends, they gobble up what’s left of the light and somehow make themselves even more sinister.
Why didn’t I bring a flashlight again? Right, because shining light in fae faces is crass and insulting, and the last thing I want to do is piss off the faeries.
I should have brought one anyway.
I dig out my phone. It’s dead. Figures.
The light bleeds away, taking most of my confidence with it. Finding a hiding place has now trumped every other goal I have. There must be a fire hollow somewhere in this awful place. Something with a back and two walls. Defensible space. Somewhere I can wait out the darkness.
I don’t find anything.
I consider going back to the rift, but then I consider that there’s no way I’m finding back in the total absence of light.
My eyes are screaming from the strain of trying to see through unseeable darkness. I stub my toe on something I can’t identify. I fling my arms out and encounter a tree. It’s not the three-sided fortress I was hoping for, but it’s at least wider than I am.
I turn my back to it and lower myself to the forest floor.
I hold my hand in front of my face. I can’t see it.
I bring it closer and I still can’t see it.
Something bird-like calls out from the darkness. My breathing gets fluttery. I can’t let myself panic. Running blind through this forest would be a terrible idea. If I didn’t collide with a tree, I’d run right into the jaws of something hungry.
I take a long, centering breath, hold it, and breathe out. Then I do it again. I’m not going to panic. But otherwise, holy shit.
My vision will adjust. I wait for that to happen. It doesn’t. Everything is black, as black as the horrible eyes of the horrible monster I recently parted ways with. Which is the only thing in my head now that my brain has stopped providing me with visual information.
Something runs past me, four feet colliding with twigs and leaves. Oh, so now the forest decides to come to life. When I can’t see a half-inch in front of my own face.
I’m going to die.
After I-don’t-know-how-long, a light appears.
At first I think my eyes are playing tricks on me, but the last time I thought that, a hideous monster beast put itself together out of fluttering shadow fragments and said menacing things to me, so it’s probably not a good idea to dismiss anything as a figment of my imagination.
The light is yellow and pinpoint. It’s a firefly, I think, but then I realize it’s moving steadily along at the same relative distance from the ground, bobbing slightly and rhythmically, which means it’s not flying. It’s being carried.
My heart becomes very, very loud.
Every cell in my body screams at me to hide, but I’m not going to find a hiding place I can’t see. I go rigid. The darkness becomes something with weight, closing around me and squeezing the air out of my lungs.
My eyes lock onto that bobbing point of light, willing it to change direction and retreat back into the woods. But of course it doesn’t. It comes closer.
Okay. Maybe this is a hob or a brownie. Harmless-ish lesser fae who I can bribe for information using one of the small pots of honey I have in my pack, just as I planned.
Someone is singing. Someone with a voice like rusty hinges.
“Follow me, follow thou pretty maid
Let go thine sweetheart’s hand”
The singing stops abruptly, and the light wobbles as if whatever is carrying it is contemplating its next steps. I’m not naïve enough to think it might move away, but my stomach still shrivels a little when it continues in my direction.
Do hobs sing? I don’t think hobs sing.
The dull footsteps are muted by the litter on the forest floor, but I’m pretty sure there are two sets of them.
An old-fashioned lantern emerges from the darkness. Inside it, a flickering yellow flame clings to a wad of black pitch. An arm follows it out of the gloom. I press my back reflexively into the tree as a face appears on the other side of the lantern.
It’s a human face … sort of. She looks like an old woman, except her skin is smooth, like heavy leather worn into a polish. She’s small and hunched and has silver-gray hair that takes on a dingy yellow sheen under the light of the lantern. Her eyes are large and red-rimmed, and her chin is pointed. Her nostrils flare as if she’s trying to scent me.
The light from her lantern barely penetrates the wall of darkness between us. Blackness reigns behind me and on both sides, reminding me that there’s no point in trying to run.
A boy appears next to the old woman. He looks like a regular, human boy, though his hair is an unusual ash color. He isn’t strange or terrifying or unnaturally beautiful. He looks like a kid. Four or five years old, maybe, though the small size of his companion makes it hard to judge. He’s wearing sneakers and Spider-Man pajamas.
“What are you doing here?” the old woman asks. “Are you lost?”
My gaze flits between her and the kid. A human kid. A little kid like Leo.
I know what she is. A forest hag. Harbinger of bad omens. Brewer of curses. Eater of children.
The horror on my face must be obvious.
“Relax, girl.” She waves her lantern at me. “I don’t steal grown women.”
I don’t relax. My mind flits from my childhood memories to the creature standing in front of me and back again. This is not a mist demon, but how do I know whether mist demons conspire with forest hags?
“I don’t steal grown women” implies that she does steal other people.
My hand goes to the hilt of my sword. It occurs to me just then that recreational swordplay is probably not anything like running someone through with an actual sword, but that thought is not much help right now.
“Did you steal him?” I say, pointing my chin at her pajamaed companion.
She cackles like the fairy-tale villain she obviously is. “He was lost,” she says, angling her lantern in his direction as if to make sure he hasn’t wandered off. “I took him in.”
Anger makes me a little braver. “You could have taken him home,” I say, turning to the boy. “Is that true? Were you lost?”
He stares mutely at me as if he can’t believe I would presume to speak to him.
I reach into my back pocket. “Did you take this boy, too?” I ask, waving Leo’s picture at the old woman.
She snatches the photo out of my hand and peers at it like someone who needs glasses, but I’m pretty sure she’s faking it. “Don’t recognize him,” she says, handing it back. “You should ask the Moth King.”
“The Moth King?” I know who she means. She means the dreadful becrowned flapping moth demon man thing I have already been acquainted with. “I saw him. He didn’t seem like the … talking sort.”
She cackles again, and the sound drives cold splinters from the bottom of my spine all the way up to my neck. “That’s because his heart is black and darkness runs through his veins,” she says, as if she’s reciting some dull political fact she read once in a textbook.
That doesn’t much make me want to see him.
“Tell him Jahnari doesn’t have the boy.” She turns to go.
“Is that you? Why would he think you might have him?”
She turns back towards me, lifts her lantern a little higher, and raises eyebrows long enough to be braided. “I told you, girl, I help lost children. If he wasn’t lost, you’re looking in the wrong place. But you’re welcome to search my house.” She grins a crooked-toothed grin.
That sounds like the worst idea of all time.
If she does have Leo—or knows who does—I need a plan. One that doesn’t involve stumbling around blindly in the dark or getting thrown into a forest hag’s cauldron.
“Um, that’s okay,” I say.
“Suit yourself. If you decide to see the king, follow the creek until you reach the guard tower. Tell the schrats you want an audience.”
“Schrats,” I repeat. German folklore. Hairy fiends or nightmare demons, depending on the source.
She gives me another disconcerting grin. “The king’s men.”
I watch her and the boy walk away into the darkness. The yellow lantern bobs until it becomes a pinpoint and fades away altogether and black is all I can see.
An awful dread clutches at my stomach and I have an irrational thought that I should take my chances with the forest hag, because that seems so much better than waiting here in the smothering darkness not knowing if I will survive until moonrise.