I push myself to my feet. My hands are scratched raw, and my knee is bruised. The wound where the arrow grazed my leg is throbbing.
“What happened?” I ask.
A bellow comes from the forest.
“This place,” he says, giving the crack in the ground a wide berth. “Some of them fell into the earth as it opened. I cut a few apart. But there are still more. We have to keep moving.”
He reaches for my hand.
I take his, and together, we dart between trees. “Have you seen Tiernan?”
“Not yet.” I admire how thoroughly he is not letting himself think of any other possibility.
The prince stops suddenly. In the clearing ahead, an enormous spider creature of sticks and earth is shambling toward us.
“Come on,” I say, but he lets go of my hand. “What are you doing?”
“There’s only the one,” he tells me, holding his needle-thin blade aloft.
The spider is enormous, half as tall as one of the trees. It looms over us. One is more than enough. “Oak!”
As he rushes at it, I cannot help thinking of what Tiernan said, about how Oak wanted to be a ship that rocks broke against.
The spider lunges, with snapping fangs that appear to be made from broken femurs. It comes down on the prince, who rolls beneath it, slicing upward with his sword. Dirt rains down on him. It swipes with a thorn-tipped leg.
My heart is beating so hard that it hurts.
Oak climbs up, into the creature. Into the weaving of branch and bone, as though it were a piece of playground equipment.
The spider flips onto its back, the thorns on its legs tearing at its own chest. It’s ripping out its own insides to get to him. Oak strikes out with his sword, hacking at it. Pieces shred off. It thrashes and bites at the air as it pulls itself apart. Finally, what remains of it goes still.
Oak climbs out of the husk, scratches all down his arms. He grins, but before I can say anything, there is a sound behind me. I whirl as three tall trolls step out from between the trees.
They have light green skin, golden eyes, and arrows tipped in bronze pointing directly at my chest. “You brought those monsters from the Citadel here,” one says.
“They followed us,” I sputter.
They wear armor of heavy cloth, stitched with a pattern of sworls like the map to a hedge maze or a fingerprint. “Come with us and meet our speaker,” says the tallest of them. “She will decide what to do with you.”
“It’s kind to invite a pair of strangers back to your village,” says Oak, walking to us, somehow misrepresenting their intention without actually lying. “But we’ve lost a friend in your woods and wouldn’t want to go anywhere without him.”
The tallest troll looks as though he is on the verge of turning his request into an order. Then, from the darkness, a knife catches the moonlight as it is placed to the base of the shortest troll’s neck.
“Let’s point those weapons elsewhere,” Tiernan says.
The tallest troll’s eyes narrow, and he lowers his bow. So does the other. The third, knife to his throat, doesn’t move.
“You seem to have found your friend,” the troll says.
Oak gives him a slow, considering smile. “And are therefore left without a reason not to partake in your hospitality.”
The troll camp is set in a large clearing, where buildings of stone and clay have been constructed around a massive bonfire. Sparks fly up from it, then fall as black rain, smudging whatever they touch.
The houses are cleverly and artistically made. The stucco-like clay has been sculpted into shapes—spirals and trees and faces, all in the same pale mud color, decorate the dwellings. High up on the walls, circles of mostly green and amber glass have been inset, creating the effect of stained glass windows. I draw closer and see that they are parts of bottles, and spot a few in brilliant blues and crimsons.
The scale of everything is intimidating. As tall as Oak is, the trolls are at least a head taller. Most are well over eight feet, with bodies that are green or the gray of the stone they become.
We’re greeted by a troll woman, large and heavy of limb, who introduces herself as Gorga, the speaker of the village. She has an axe strapped to her back and her hair in braids tipped with silver clasps. She wears a skirt of leather, with slits up the sides for easy movement.
“You’re hurt,” she says, taking in our bedraggled appearance. “And cold. Stay the day with us, and we will provision you and guide you to your destination safely next nightfall.”
That sounds like an offer entirely too good to be true.
Oak meets her eyes with great sincerity. “Your generosity appears boundless. But perhaps I could prevail upon you to tell me more about this place. And yourself.”
“Perhaps,” she says, looking pleased. “Share a cup of strong tea with me. I will give you some good black bread and honey.”
I glance over at Tiernan. He gives me a half smile and a shake of his head, inviting me into his amusement at Oak playing the courtier. “Let’s get something hot to eat and sit by the fire,” he says, clapping me on my shoulder. “He doesn’t need us.”
We walk together, me limping a bit. A few young trolls bring us cups made of stone, heavy in my hands. They are full of a warm liquid that looks like tea but tastes like boiled bark. I sit on a rock near the firepit. The heat is such that the stones are warm.
I am on my second cup when Oak joins us, holding a honey sandwich that he takes apart to offer us each a slice. “The troll king, Hurclaw, is off courting, according to Gorga. She was rather cagey about who, exactly, he was intending to marry. She was also rather cagey about what would happen if we tried to leave.”
“So we’re prisoners?” I whisper.
He sighs. “We are indulging the fiction that we are not.”
I take a bite of the sweetened black bread. Then I take two more, practically stuffing the thing in my face.
“For how long?” Tiernan asks.
Oak’s smile is tight. “As short a time as possible. Let’s all keep our eyes open. Meanwhile, Wren, maybe I can look at your leg.”
“No need,” I say, but he ignores me, rolling up the bottoms of my pants. There’s blood, but it’s truly not so bad. That doesn’t stop him from asking for bandages and hot water.
Since I left the mortal world, no one cared for my wounds but me. The gentleness of his touch makes me feel too much, and I have to turn my face, lest he see.
An old troll man arrives carrying a wooden bucket full of water, sloshing over the lip when he moves. He has a patch over one eye and white hair in two long braids on either side of his head. In his ears, a half dozen gold hoops glitter.
“Let me take that,” Oak says, getting up.
The troll man snorts. “You? You’re little enough to take a bath in it, like a babe.”
“Nonetheless,” says the prince.
The old troll shrugs and sets the bucket down, indicating Oak should give it a try. He lifts it, surprising the troll.
“Put it on the fire to heat,” he directs the prince. “It’s for your lady.”
Oak places it on the hook of the metal tripod over the flames.
The old man sits to watch it boil and takes out a roll of bandages from his bag, handing it over.
Oak kneels by my feet. He has dipped one of the bandages in the water and uses it to wipe off the blood and clean the cut. His fingers are warm as he wraps, and I try to concentrate on anything but the feel of his hands on my skin. “I worried you might have been poisoned back in the woods.”