White Hart (16 page)

As we move off, Sasha’s eyes find me and hold my gaze. She’s open-mouthed and completely silent. I grip my dagger and stare at my feet, uncomfortable with the accusation on her face. As we move away from Welhawen, all I can think about is the wood nymph’s warning. The Waerg Woods wants to chew me up and spit me out. I’m not welcome here, and my life is in danger.

I
t’s not until we have put enough distance between us and the nymph to stop the chill in my bones that I question Sasha about the sleeping willow tree. The forest changes around us. I begin to recognise birch trees. The path widens, and there are a few clearings between the trees on soft banks of green grass. The sun is beginning to set, turning our colourful world into a blurry grey. Soon it will be black.

“In the centre of the forest, the trees are alive. They have been for centuries. At one time they moved, stretched their branches and roots to capture prey,” Sasha tells us.

“Father told me about a place where trees come alive,” I say. “I wasn’t sure if it was real or not.”

“Oh, it’s real,” she continues, “but they haven’t come alive for many years. Right in the middle of the sleeping forest is the sleeping willow. It’s the tallest tree in Aegunlund, and the wisest.”

“The
wisest
?” says Cas. “You mean, it talks?”

Sasha nods.

Cas starts to laugh. “No. It can’t. Talking trees don’t exist.” He pauses. “Do they?”

There’s no hint of a smile on Sasha’s lips. She only looks ahead evenly, being careful not to stumble on her ropes. “They do exist, Prince.”

Sasha doesn’t have much respect for Cas, and it makes my skin itch. There have been many times I’ve thought Cas to be a bit of a fool, but somehow when she treats him with disdain, it brings out a rash of temper in me. Above everything, he is thoughtful and has saved my life. I shake my head. Why am I thinking of Cas when I should be concentrating on getting Anta back?

“Where is it? Which direction? Can you help us get there?” I ask.

Sasha tries to hold her hands up as if in surrender, but Gwen pulls her forward with a jerk. “Whoa, hold on, it’s dark. We can’t go there tonight. We need to camp and get rest.”

“She’s right,” Cas says. “Gods prevail, we need a rest after that
awful
wood nymph thing. I ache all over.”

“You didn’t think she was
awful
before,” I mutter. “You were quite taken with her, if I remember rightly.”

“Only because she tricked me into thinking she was Ellen,” he retorts. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been interested at all.” He puts his nose in the air as though he is above the situation, but I can tell he is embarrassed by the pink flush on his cheeks.

Sasha sighs. “Look, we can sleep on the clearing on that bank. It’s an open space, and we’re away from Welhewan. You can make the fire there.” She nods to a patch on the ground.

“I think I’ll decide where we make the fire,” I say, a hint of growl coming out in my voice.

“Fine,” she says through gritted teeth. “I can’t walk any further. I need rest, and I need to be out of these ropes.”

Cas reins in Gwen and dismounts. I stand opposite Sasha and shake my head. “Oh, no way. We’re not letting you go. Do you think I’m stupid? You’d slit our throats in our sleep.”

Her eyes flash. “I would not.”

“I think you want to get back to your murdering family,” I say, “and I think you’ll do anything to get there.”

She approaches me. The rope allows her to get within a few steps of me. In the moonlight I see the way her blue eyes twinkle, and her pale skin glistens with sweat. “Don’t get all high and mighty with me,” she says in a whisper. “You have more secrets than anyone in this camp, and we wouldn’t want them to get out.”

“What’s going on?” Cas steps over to us. He has blankets and furs under one arm as he prepares to set up the camp.

“Nothing,” I say. My cheeks are red hot where angry blood has risen to my face. Where does that girl get off, trying to blackmail me? “Could you get some wood for the fire? Don’t go too far though.”

Cas frowns but heads off to a small thicket of trees. Sasha grins, and the moonlight reflects on her slightly yellowing teeth.

“You treat him like a child,” she says. “You like looking after people, don’t you? It’s such a shame he doesn’t feel the same way about you as you do him. He’ll only have eyes for his precious Ellen, you know. Not a plain, surly girl like you.”

I grab Sasha by the throat, and her eyes widen in shock. “If you tell Cas about me being craft-born, I will leave you for the Nix.”

“You need me to find the others,” she croaks.

I squeeze her throat tighter. “I can find them on my own.”

“What about your stag?” Her face is red with the strain. Her voice rasps little more than a whisper.

“Anta will come back to me.” I let her go. “Tomorrow you show us the sleeping willow. You will keep your mouth
shut
, or I will shut it for you.”

I untie the length of the rope from Gwen’s saddle and lead her over to a substantial tree. There I knot the rope around the trunk and tie her feet together.

“Water,” she croaks. Her eyes are swimming with tears.

I hold the canteen to her lips, and she drinks greedily.

“Your abilities will be the undoing of you, unless...” She stares out into the distance. The Nix is back, circling our camp like always.

“Unless what?” I say.

She shakes her head. The blush leaves her cheeks, making her as washed out as milk, starkly contrasting with her bright red hair. Even her lips are drained of colour. She gazes out into the dark with wet, unfocussed eyes. She doesn’t speak again all night.

*

W
e reach the sleeping forest the next day. It is a large thicket within the woods, covered with dense trees, trees with trunks so large it would take two people to wrap their arms around them and reach both sides.

Sasha directs us away from the path to a part of the woods where we have to weave through low branches. The trees lean over like a hunchback, so long that they almost reach back down to the ground in an arc of fluttering leaves, reminding me of a trail of tears. Gwen snorts and shakes her head as we duck underneath. She doesn’t like the way the thin branches fall over her body. I rub her shoulder, trying to keep her calm. I am walking on foot and holding the horse’s reins. Sasha jogs to keep up when Gwen breaks into a nervous trot.

“If you don’t disconnect me from that horse, I’m going to end up getting dragged halfway to Cyne,” Sasha says indignantly.

“She has a point.” Cas appears from behind the weeping trails of branches. He parts them like a curtain and steps through. “Gwen is very jumpy. The girl could get hurt. Maybe I could hold her ropes for a bit?”

I press my lips together but untie Sasha from Gwen’s saddle and hand her over to Cas. “Don’t let her run off.”

Cas rolls his eyes at me, but the corner of his mouth twitches in amusement. “You know, the rich women in Cyne walk about with little dogs on leads. They take them in the park and walk them with their husbands. That’s like us right now.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous,” I say. “You’re not my husband.”

“And I’m not a dog,” Sasha points out. “Although I suppose the likelihood of you two marrying is similar to me being like a dog, seeing as the prince can only marry the craft-born.”

I narrow my eyes at her.

“That’s not strictly true,” Cas says, carrying on without the slightest clue what Sasha is hinting at. “Father suspected a craft-born would be born in my lifetime but it was never a given. Had there been no one before my thirtieth birthday, I would have married a noble woman from Cyne, or maybe even the Haedalands.”

“That’s a shame, Mae. Maybe if there’s some noble blood in you...?” She looks me up and down as if I’m a donkey for sale. “Hmm, I doubt it.”

I close my eyes and think of those precious moments when I had my hands wrapped around her neck. I long for them again.

“Well, Mae could have noble blood in her veins, depending on who her ancestors were from the Haedalands,” Cas says. He flashes me a pitying half-smile.

Gwen lets out a deep snort and nods her head so violently that it jerks me forward and shakes the great vines of the willow tree above us.

“Steady, lass,” I say, putting a hand on her trembling skin. “Isn’t there any way around these trees?”

“No,” Sasha replies. “There aren’t any paths in the sleeping forest.”

“I think she senses that the trees are alive,” Cas says. “You can’t fool a horse by pretending to be asleep. They sense a lot—your mood, your temperament, whether or not you have a sugar lump in your pocket.”

The image of a young Cas with his horses pops into my head. For some reason, I imagine him spending most of his time in the stables and away from his warring parents. Father always said that if you wanted to find a good person, you looked to the way they treated their horse. Mean types are bullies, fools are trampled over, and leaders encourage loyalty. Gwen is utterly loyal to Cas. She would ride into battle with him if he wanted her to. There’s a leader inside him—I know it. He just needs to let it emerge.

“This way to the sleeping willow,” Sasha says. She turns to the right, and the prince follows her closely.

My heart begins to quicken as I think about Anta being nearby. There has to be a reason why he hasn’t found me.

Up ahead, a curtain of long, trailing branches block our view of anything else in the forest. I have to peel them apart so we can enter beneath the sleeping willow.

It’s dark inside, but if we crane our necks up, we can see the tree in all its glory. The sun shines against the pale yellow of the leaves so that they are almost translucent. Underfoot, the gnarled old roots spread across the ground like huge snakes that have been petrified solid. The tree trunk itself is so thick, it is almost the width of our hut back in Halts-Walden. It would take five people to wrap their arms all the way around it.

In the middle of the tree there is a small portion of bark that juts out and hangs low like a nose. Above the nose there are two hollows that could be eyes. The effect is of a big-nosed, ancient old face patterned with wrinkles. It doesn’t take much to imagine the tree is alive. I only have to close my eyes and concentrate to feel the humming of magic emanating from the bark.

I reach forward to touch the tree, and when my fingertips brush the surface, I gasp. Magic thrums through it like the skin of a drum being beaten. It draws me in with its power, and I find myself pressing both palms to the bark of the tree, watching as every hair lifts on my arms. The forest melts away. Cas and Sasha fade from existence. It is just me and the ancient tree with its ancient craft inside. I don’t know how I know, but I sense great power, and when I close my eyes, I picture the roots spreading from beneath the soil, twisting and turning and feeding every single patch of forest with its magic, like nutrients spread through veins. I imagine them travelling for miles beneath the surface.

“What do you feel?” Sasha asks.

I’d forgotten all about them. I open my eyes and move away from the tree. Gwen has calmed now that she has found space beneath the sleeping willow where the branches leave her alone.

“Power,” I say. I try to say it nonchalantly. I try to ignore the way I feel differently about my craft now.

She nods as though that is what she expected me to say, or expected me to feel.

“It just looks like some old tree to me,” Cas says. He steps forward and puts his hand on the tree trunk. “I don’t feel anything.”

I shrug. “Maybe I was mistaken. Come on. We should leave from under the canopy and try and find Anta’s tracks.”

Moving away from the sleeping willow feels like leaving home. My hands ache to touch the living magic inside the tree one more time. For the first time ever, I want to learn more about my craft-abilities. I want to know why I can influence nature and why I’ve been chosen. I want to know if I can use some of the power from the tree, and how. It calls to the very fibre of my being. Walking away seems wrong. Yet I have a reason for being here. I have to find Anta. I have to find the Wanderers.

The sleeping forest provides cover from the sky above, and when it starts to rain, we barely feel it. With our bodies close together beneath the canopies, we become hot and sticky, with steam rising from our wet clothes. It’s seemingly never ending, with many branches that open like curtains. As we travel through, I begin to get a sense of something behind us, watching us. Every now and then, I find myself looking back, expecting to find something or someone lurking in the shadows. There is nothing each time.

“Mae, over here.”

After getting distracted by the thought that someone is following us, I’d drifted away from the group. Cas, Gwen, and Sasha are already a tree ahead of me. Suddenly aware of the shadows around me, I rush ahead and part the low-hanging branches to find the others. Cas waves me over.

“Look! The tracks—they could be Anta’s.” He takes my arm and pulls me closer.

He’s right. The tracks are Anta’s. I would recognise them anywhere. They are the size of his hooves and the length of his stride.

“He was walking slowly. That’s a good sign,” I say. “He wasn’t running away, frightened.”

“We should follow them,” Cas says, smiling. The fact that he is as excited as I am warms my heart.

“See, I told you I would help you find your white hart, didn’t I?” Sasha calls out from behind Gwen. “
Now
will you untie me?”

“We still don’t know if you’ll run off,” I say.

Sasha stamps her foot and glares at me. Gwen spooks away from her, startled at the outburst. “How many times do I have to tell you? Why would I run off into the Waerg Woods on my own with the Nix out to get me?”

“The Nix could get any of us at any time,” I say. “You just keep using it as an excuse. How do you know it will get you if you’re on your own? You’re trying to talk us round, and it won’t work.” I want to tell her to remember what I said. I want to tell her to heed my warning, but she knows that she’s safe with Cas next to us. She knows what she can get away with saying.