Page 20 of Echo North
“The wood. It was made as a prison for the queen, you know, but she’s powerful. She can find cracks. I can’t let her loose—she would devour the world.” The girl ran her finger around the rim of her mug and offered the bird a handful of cake crumbs. “So I tend the forest. I cut down the blossoms that grow from her poison, and care for her creatures who managed to escape. And I plan how I might defeat her, when the wood can no longer keep her at bay.”
“And how—how do you plan to defeat her?”
The girl’s eyes caught mine, a fathomless sea-green. She shook her head, sorrow weighing heavy on her thin shoulders. “The only thing that can stand against her is the old magic, and it’s all gone. I gather what ragged bits of it I can—the wood sheds it, here and there. But the weavers of old magic left this world long ago. They imprisoned her here. They didn’t think she could ever get free.”
The bird squawked and flapped suddenly to the window. The girl flung her head up. “She’s here. She’s coming.”
“But—”
And then the world changed around me. I stood with the girl in an ink-black forest, the wind whipping her hair about her shoulders. She held a torch in front of her, outstretched like a sword, and a tall spiny creature that looked like the black-flowered briar come to life shrank back from the light, hissing through thorny teeth.
“A sentinel!” cried the girl. “A vanguard! The queen is coming. We stand against hernow.”
The bird flapped its wings and grew in front of my eyes, until it stood as tall as a man. It wrapped one wing around the girl like armor, and its feathers glinted iron silver in the torchlight.
But then the spiny creature plunged its arms into the earth, and a hundred creatures in its exact image sprang up to stand beside it. They dripped black petals onto the ground like blood. I choked at the stench.
The girl hurled the torch into the air and somehow it ignited, sending a wall of flame toward the thorny creatures. She dropped to her knees while the enormous bird stood guard, his iron wings shielding her. From her pocket she drew a spool of shimmering thread, which she began to unwind. Using only her hands and one of the bird’s metal feathers, she wove a glittering net that grew and grew and grew, until it was large enough to encompass the queen’s army. The spool ran empty of thread, and the girl stood to her feet with a great cry. She cast the net at the creatures.
But it wasn’t enough. The thorny army broke the threads, shredding the net. They surrounded the girl and the bird, they tore the bird’s wings from its shoulders, and wrapped the girl in briars. The bird stood stiff as any soldier, blood dripping down its iron feathers, but the girl wept. The thorny creatures dragged her away in briar chains.
I blinked and saw the girl, bowed and bleeding before the Queen of Fairies. The queen was tall, and formed of the same stuff as her army: her limbs were thorns, her gown black flower petals, her hair decaying leaves. Her eyes glittered red-orange, embers of fire in her brambly face. “You thought to defeat me!” she mocked the girl. “And see what has become of you—you willdie,and the world will be mine, and all you’ve done and fought and lived for will be fornothing.”
The girl wept in the dirt, clutching one last iron feather as if it were a knife.
But the queen saw, and plucked it out of her hands. “Your precious bird cannot help you now.” And she plunged the feather into the girl’s heart.
I gasped as the girl’s eyes grew wide with shock and pain and she collapsed on the ground. Blood spread crimson beneath her body.
The queen threw the feather down and strode past the girl with obvious disgust, whistling for her army.
I couldn’t stop shaking—whatever this was, however I had come here, if this were a story, I didn’t want to read it anymore.
But I didn’t know how to break free. I ran away from the girl into the wood, leaves slapping moldy and wet against my face. The forest lightened slowly to the silver hue of dawn, and I stumbled at last into the clearing where the girl’s cottage stood. The hedgehog was curled up tight and sleeping amongst the radishes.
I collapsed on the front stoop, hugging my knees to my chest as tears leaked down my face. The girl was dead, the queen had won, and I was trapped here more completely than I had been in the wolf’s horrible house.
“Are you all right?” came a sudden voice just above me.
I jerked my head up to see a young woman standing by the garden, the hedgehog cradled in her hands.Beautifuldidn’t begin to describe her. She was luminous—willowy and tall, with straight silver hair that hung nearly to her knees and an enormous pair of eyes the color of summer violets. She wore a diaphanous blue gown, and her feet were bare. I got the feeling she didn’t belong here any more than I did.
“Are you all right?” she repeated.
I nodded dully, at a loss for words, and she let the hedgehog loose in the garden again and came to sit beside me. “I haven’t seen you in the books before—is this your first one? I’m Mokosh.”
Her words took a moment to sink in. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged, her lips quirking. “Not many people have access to book-mirrors—there used to be scores of readers like us, but there are hardly any left. I’ve only met one or two others my whole life, and I read alot.Where is your library? Mine’s in my mother’s palace. You must be a princess, too—or at least a duchess?”
I blinked at her loquaciousness. “I’m not—I’m not anyone important.”
“Of course you are. Ordinary people don’t have access to magical libraries.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
She leapt to her feet and pulled me up as well. “You do know the rules, don’t you?”
“What rules?”
