Page 42

I’ve newly turned ten, and the double-digit age feels like an enormous milestone.

Excitement pulses through me like a heartbeat because Dad’s taking me to the Fall Festival.

It’s always me and Dad since Mom keeps up Aunt Eloise’s tradition of extending Chalice’s hours until midnight during festival week.

I’m wearing hot pink camo leggings, a black zip-up hoodie, and I even learned how to French braid my hair so I can show off my brand-new ear piercings.

My lobes still feel hot and uncomfortable, but I want him to notice the gold stars Mom and I chose.

I don’t know yet that he’s about to cancel on me.

Not this time, North Star.

I’d never shouted at him before or since, and recalling the things I said fill me with shame. In my dreams, I always get a do-over to change the last thing I ever told him.

Fine! Go, then! If you love the woods so much, stay there forever! I hope you never come back!

I thought I was so grown up, but that childish tantrum undid everything.

In the days that followed, I thought about running to the forest so many times to try and find him.

When I finally did, a month after he went missing, Mom caught up to me first. She caught me in that gravel parking lot, rocked me in her arms like I was a baby again, and cried with me until my throat was so sore I couldn’t tell her what I’d done even if I’d wanted to.

There were no more camping trips in the Longing Woods after that. Mom put up with his excursions into the forest because it was his job but, more importantly, the forest was in his blood. But she never wanted the forest to claim me, too.

She let me sulk in those first days of the Fall Festival before she got worried worried.

She had tried to make the disappointment up to me with all the cotton candy I wanted, funnel cakes and corn dogs for dinner, and sticky taffy that made my teeth hurt.

Madame Aurora showed up on our doorstep the next month, a woman who couldn’t bring Jules Marwood back but whose support was doing more for Mom than the cops and the forest rangers whose best just wasn’t good enough.

Austin had been through this with his dad, but it was too raw for me to let him in. Austin lost Shane; I made Jules go. We weren’t the same.

Where Mom seemed to need the support of other people more than ever, I retreated. I stayed in my room, crawled into bed, drew the covers over my head, and recited everything Dad had taught me about wilderness survival. Powered through all of it like one of his quizzes.

As a little kid, I had to get every question right before he deemed me ready to accompany him, and going over it again and again anchored me. Made me think that he’d be okay because he taught me everything I knew, which meant he knew it, too.

If you encounter a snake, should you attempt to kill it or move out of its way?

Give the snake right-of-way.

What’s the sign that a snake is about to strike?

It’ll rear back into an S-shape.

If that happens, should you run or attack it?

Neither. Any sudden movements threaten the snake. I’d back away slowly.

Good job, Nova. I think you’re ready.

“We should try to run back to the stairs,” says Tayla.

As though they understand what she’s saying, the displeased hissing grows tenfold.

“No,” I say sharply when she bends her knees as though she’s getting ready.

“But—”

“Tayla, trust me.”

Even as I say it, I can tell it’s not going to come easy. She probably doesn’t find me worthy enough to hand trust over. Our eyes meet, and I can’t begin to parse the emotions flickering through hers, but then she gives me a tiny, imperceptible nod.

I keep my voice calm and reassuring. “We need to stay really still. Don’t. Make. A. Move.”

Her eyes widen. “That’s your advice?”

“Yes. My dad said—Hey, what are you doing?”

Tayla’s twisting her upper body around to look over her shoulder. “Seeing how far back the steps were. I think we can make it.”

“What? No!”

“Waiting around to die by a hundred hungry fangs is not how I’m going to go, Nova!”

“Would you just shut up and listen to me?”

She huffs, and I’m not entirely sure she isn’t going to take off, so I speak quickly.

“Think about it for a second. Why the heck would anyone make a random set of stairs all the way out here? There’s no houses, no town.

No reason to travel, so no need for infrastructure.

So how come it appeared right when we needed it?

” Now that I’m saying it out loud, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to either of us before.

The fight goes out of her. I can literally see the tension dissolving from her shoulders as she slowly relaxes them, relief blooming over her face as her body alleviates some of its strain.

I hesitate. “Also, don’t freak out, but I don’t even see them there anymore.”

I thought it would talk her out of running, but I didn’t foresee that Tayla would want to take a look for herself.

This time, she forgets to keep her feet planted and twists her whole body in a 180.

She realizes her mistake immediately, a strangled gasp escaping from her mouth as she faces a hissing copperhead drawn up to its full height.

Granted, it’s still way shorter than her, but no matter what, a poisonous snake is still an imposing threat.

Her voice is smaller than I’ve ever heard it when she ekes out, “Nova?”

“It thinks you’re a predator. Seriously, do not move.”

“ I’m the predator?”

There’s a hint of sarcasm in her voice, which I choose to take as a positive sign. The day Machete Mouth isn’t a smartass is probably, like, a harbinger of the end times or something.

“Yes,” I breathe out, careful not to attract any undue attention.

“Next thing you know, you’re going to say it’s more scared of me than I am of it.”

“Well…”

Her groan trails off into a whimper. “After this, I’m never coming into the forest again.”

“Ditto. Now shut up unless you want to die.”

I guess that’s the threat that gets through to her because she manages to listen and keep her leg quaking to a minimum.

It’s impossible to tell how long we stand there in limbo.

It was hard enough when the trees were robbing our sense of time but interminable when we’re achingly aware of each second slipping by, each bead of sweat sliding down our foreheads, dripping off our eyebrows, grazing the corner of our eyes.

Eventually, the snakes lose interest in us. Realizing we pose no threat to them or their habitat, they take off, disappearing into the bramble and undergrowth. Tayla’s finally taking this seriously because I don’t need to remind her to stay absolutely still until the last one shuffles away.

When at last it’s safe to move, her exhale is even bigger than mine. “Let’s get out of here,” she says.

I doubt they’re going to return so soon after dismissing us, but truth be told, I’m hardly in favor of sticking around, either. But when we make it back to where the steps were…they’re indeed gone.

Tayla appears as though she has to work very hard to school her dismayed expression.

I try to steady my shaky breath. “I told you I didn’t see them anymore.”

“Yeah, but I thought maybe it just wasn’t in your eyeline anymore. Not that they were gone gone.”

“Well, what do you want to do now?”

She opens her mouth then shuts it. “You’re asking me?”

“Y-yes?”

Her frown creates one giant perplexed squiggle. She seems to struggle with her thoughts for a moment before coming to a conclusion. “If we listened to me, we’d both be dead by snakebite right now. You were the one who knew what to do back there. Without you…” She swallows with some difficulty.

True enough. But I can’t take all the credit.

“I still remember the things Dad taught me,” I say quietly. “I haven’t had much reason to use any of it until now. I’m glad that it stuck.”

“You and me both,” she says with a wry smile. “That’s why I think you’d make the better leader.”

She couldn’t have surprised me more if she’d confessed to harboring secret feelings for me. “We don’t need a leader, Tayla. We need teamwork.”

“I can do that.”

“ Can you?”

One eyebrow tics, but she passes the first test by not responding with a cutting repartee. “I’ll be the best at that,” she says decisively. “You’ll see.”

I level an Aaaaand there she is look at her.

Tayla flushes. “Baby steps.”

“Okay, well, if I’m right about the steps being given and taken away, then it follows that the forest wants us to go this way. It’s leading us. Same as the crows who rerouted us in this direction, too.”

She cranes her head in the direction of the snakes and grimaces. “Leading us to where, though? And to what end?”

“That…is a question mark,” I admit.

“It’s a WTF followed by an interrobang and those obnoxious red exclamation point emojis,” she declares. “So is the forest, like, a benevolent being? Or does it have it in for us?”

“I don’t think it’s as binary as benevolent and evil. Petra thinks it’s sentient, that it has its own needs. Whims and fancies. Maybe it’s amusing to mess with people.”

She huffs. “The forest is definitely an asshole, then.”

I sputter and frantically wave my hands. “Shhhhh!”

“What, you think it can hear us?”

“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing about this day,” I mutter. “Treat the forest as a scared, angry snake. Try not to piss it off.”

“That analogy would work so much better if the forest wasn’t already full of snakes, you know.”

“You can’t help yourself, can you?”

“Not generally, no.”

“Takes an asshole to know an asshole, I guess.”

She actually laughs. “Knew I liked you for a reason, Nova Marwood.”

I blink. This is Tayla when she likes someone?

“Now, come on,” she says, authority back in her voice. “What do we do next?”

She wants a decision, but my mind is racing as fast as my heart.

Taking a beat, I observe our surroundings.

The steps are gone, but we could attempt to climb up.

I was never the best at our school’s indoor thirty-six-foot-tall climbing wall, and the difference between us and the trail above is at least that high.

The other option would take us through the snarled, straggly bushes and straight into the belly of the forest. Snakes would be the least of what we’d discover there, I’m sure. Biting my lip, I weigh both options in my mind. Neither is great.

Midway through my mull, something catches my eye. A thick, towering oak tree squats just ahead of where the steps once were. Despite its hearty size, the branches are obviously unwell, their bark stripped and peeling to reveal stringy white sapwood.

“Tayla, that wasn’t there a minute ago, was it?”

“Can’t be sure. All the trees in here kind of look like all the other trees after a point.”

I shake my head impatiently. “Yeah, but we’d remember this one.”

One of the branches stretches out in our direction like an arm, four fingers curling backward and one belligerently jutting out. It isn’t crooked like it’s beckoning us closer. No, it’s more like it’s…

“It’s pointing that way,” I realize aloud. Back the way we came. Closer to where Kiara was taken.

“Where the snakes are,” Tayla says flatly. “Seriously, Nova? Because a weird tree is being weird?”

I full-body cringe. Apparently these directions are so sketchy that weird needed repeating. The guidebook, undoubtedly, would advise following the signs. Generations of Henry’s descendants would, too. If Radhika was here, I know what she’d say.

Unfortunately, it’s the exact opposite of what my gut is telling me to do.