Page 164 of Into the Heartless Wood
retract the branches piercing him through.
He gasps and chokes.
Blood seeps from his wounds.
But he lives, he lives.
Behind us, the Soul Eater slides in the mud. The heartless lion lunges at him.
The Eater shouts a word to the sky and a slice of star jolts through the heartless lion, ripping it in half.
My mother screams
in anguish,
in rage.
She calls branches up from the earth, sharp as blades.
She hurls them at the Eater,
one
by
one.
He shrieks: “You cannot win! I will eat your heart like I ate your soul, and I will live, and you will die, and no one will remember you.”
My mother spits: “You FOOL. When I have killed you, I will grind your bones to powder and drive them into the earth with my heel. You are nothing before me. You are aworm.”
The Eater rages against my mother.
My mother rages back.
There comes the noise of thundering hoofbeats:
another army, coming across the plain to meet the ragged
remnants of the Eater’s forces.
They collide with the wood and my snarling sisters. They wield torches and swords.
The trees ignite.
Despite the rain, they burn.
All is smoke and fire and screaming.
All is blood and stars.
My mother’s power still holds me.
Owen lives. But she will not let me release him.
He dangles before me.
His blood mingles with the rain. It runs a watery red into the
