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ORCHARD PROBLEMS

G isele!

She woke from fitful slumber with a start, heart pounding. Disturbing, formless after-images lurked at the edges of her mind. Urgency beat at her chest, as if a line anchored there had pulled taut. She rolled out of bed and onto her feet, searching for the danger.

The lights came up, but they weren’t the usual cheerful golden feylights. Instead, they glowed a dim red, reflecting the unease Gisele felt roiling through the house.

“Skymallow? What is it?” she whispered. The lights flickered in response, and an emotion she’d never before felt from the house shivered through her: fear. The house was afraid. What could make a house afraid? Was it Prince Avern? Had he found them?

All the lights dimmed except for the ones nearest the balcony, which brightened in a clear directive. She went to look. The sky had lightened since she’d fallen into bed; sunrise was probably less than an hour away.

A bird cried a long, grating note like the tolling of a rusty bell, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

She couldn’t see the source. The garden was still mostly cast in deep shadow, especially— She stilled as her gaze came to rest on the far end of the orchard.

The shadows were darker there, and a taste like rotting fruit filled the back of her mouth even as her body leaned towards the sensation, revulsion and lure entwined.

She stumbled back and slammed the balcony doors, shuddering.

“There’s something down in the orchard. Something trying to pull me in.” It wasn’t a question, but the lights flickered confirmation anyway. “Where’s Mal?”

But she already knew, she realised with a sickening twist of her stomach. The bond was humming urgently in the same direction as those poisonously mesmerising shadows. Mal was out there, and judging from Skymallow’s reaction, he was in trouble.

Quickly, she knelt by her pack, fishing out the packets of herbs that she’d brought on her original journey for their folkloric protective qualities.

They’d got her to Skymallow through the dangers of Faerie woods.

Or maybe they’d done nothing and that had been luck or the curse. In either case, they couldn’t hurt.

“It would be helpful if I could have my dagger back now,” she told the house, but it didn’t respond. It was too deep in its panic to understand her, or perhaps the dagger had long since met the same fate as the weeds and dust it swallowed.

She didn’t take the time to dress, only tied an apron over her nightgown and tucked the protective herbs inside.

The house echoed with silence as she slipped down to the kitchen, the way lit by dimly red feylights. When she reached the kitchen, she picked up a lantern with one hand and drew out the carving knife with the other. Taking a deep breath, she threw open the back door.

If the house had felt oppressively quiet, the garden was even more so.

There ought to have been normal birds calling in the pre-dawn light, not just that single occasional, unsettling toll.

But instead, even the plants were locked in stillness, not a breath of wind or single insect disturbing so much as a leaf.

There was no sign of the giant butterflies, and the air felt thick and stale.

The hint of rot on the back of her tongue strengthened.

The faintest of melodies curled beneath the hush, making her stomach roil, and at the same time filling her with the urge to follow it.

It might have been harder to resist if she hadn’t spent weeks resisting a much more seductive magical force.

Setting her feet against this one was easy, in comparison.

“Whatever you are, you’re not going to reel me in like that,” she told the garden sternly.

Gisele.

This time her name came with a little flash of vanilla, briefly cutting through the rot. Something else came alongside it, less a word than an emotion: Run .

I can’t, idiot , she thought back. We’re tied together, remember?

“Mal?” she called softly. Her voice sounded thin, swallowed up by the heavy silence.

There was no response.

She really, truly did not want to go down and find out what sort of eldritch horror had buried itself in the orchard, but the alternative was leaving Mal to its mercies and that was unacceptable.

Nothing for it, then. Every sense on high alert, she made her way through the overgrown weeds.

The ominous bird call came again, close by, and she startled.

It was the erdhenne, poking its head out from its hiding place beneath a rotting log to give her warning, its grey feathers fluffed up in agitation.

She’d never heard it make that sound before.

The erdhenne turned its neck towards the orchard and shook its head, repeating its warning toll.

“I know, but I don’t have much choice,” she told it.

It gave a long, ominous book-book and ducked back into its hollow. Helpful.

The tug of the psychic siren song grew stronger the closer she got to the orchard, a whisper in the air that said, give in to me / come to me / lay down your arms. Gisele’s grip tightened on the carving knife.

Her steps slowed as she padded beneath the canopy, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The air felt like a heartbeat, pulsating in a meaty, unsettling way, and the sickly-sweet scent of rot made her gag.

In the shadows in the darkest part of the orchard, something glittered.

An enormous golden web stretched between the trees, and in its centre hung a dark shape.

At first, she couldn’t make sense of it, but then all at once the scene clicked into place, and her heart jerked in horror.

It was Mal, hanging limply from golden threads.

“Mal!” She would have burst into a sprint, except that sharp needles sunk into her shoulder.

“Fool girl!” it was Apfela’s voice, but there was no sign of the fae woman. Gisele spun wildly, heart thundering. “Down here!”

It was Apfela’s lanbee, the creature clinging to her shoulder with all its spiny fur puffed out. It hissed in the direction of Mal.

“Where’s Apfela?” she asked it.

The little creature opened its tiny jaws, and Apfela’s voice emerged: “Your Malediction spent all his strength on the wards locking me out, but it only means he’s made a tasty meal of himself by locking it in there with you.”

Her hold tightened on her knife. “What is it?”

“A solshant. It’s been sleeping here for aeons, probably, and now it’s woken, intent on building itself a nice nest and filling it with food for its future young. It’ll string you up just as neatly as him if you run straight into its web. Get yourself free while it’s distracted.”

“I can’t leave him,” Gisele said flatly.

The lanbee growled in disgust. “He’s lost already. It’s not worth your dying too.”

Her grip tightened on the knife. “Do solshants have any particular weaknesses?”

The lanbee’s long tongue licked out. “Don’t be a fool, girl.”

She took a few cautious steps forward, closer to Mal.

“He’s alive, and I’m not leaving him.” She wasn’t arguing with Apfela; it was a simple statement of fact.

She could no more leave Mal to die than reverse the laws of gravity.

She hadn’t been able to let him die of poison when he was a malevolent stranger.

It wasn’t in her to let him die now, when he was… a friend?

Her stomach twisted with fear, every nerve straining, but nothing moved among the branches. Nothing except Mal, who began to twitch like a cat having a nightmare. He was unconscious, but his fear roiled through the bond, strengthening with every step she took closer.

Bare-chested, he wore the loose-fitting gathered trousers that she grimly recognised from her dream. The enormous web of lines holding him glinted gold in the light from her lantern. She set it down and took a deep breath.

“Mal?” she called softly.

No response. She could just reach his ankles, and she put a hand up to one. His skin felt clammy, and he took a sharp breath at her touch but didn’t wake.

Still no sign of the solshant. She’d have to climb to reach any of the lines holding Mal.

Heart in her throat, she moved to the nearest tree, a gnarled old pear.

A nightgown was not the optimal climbing gear, and the fabric kept catching on the bark as she pulled herself up, carving knife awkwardly held in one hand.

The closest golden line was thick, cord-like, resisting the knife, but she persevered.

The whole web shook as she sawed, and her heart beat in the same ragged rhythm.

She didn’t want to imagine what sort of creature had made this, but giant spidery conclusions nonetheless crept, unwanted, from her imagination’s crevices.

The line finally came free, the ragged end swinging back towards Mal. Leaving only… a daunting number more to go.

Something huge and golden scuttled through the shadowy canopy, the pale pre-dawn light not penetrating deeply enough to see it properly.

The pressure of the siren’s song swelled.

Sleep / give in / despair, it crooned, and the carving knife dropped from her lifeless fingers.

What had she been planning to do? She was only a useless spinster of a princess, after all.

The creature emerged into the lantern’s glow. It had an elongated, multi-segmented carapace and six limbs, calling to mind a praying mantis with its forelimbs held close. It glinted the same gold as its webs.

Gold . A thought beat urgently at her, struggling to push through the heavy mental fog. Gold!

GOLD! She reached for the closest line, moving through thick jelly. Her hands slowly closed around it, and she filled her mind with images of fire and exploding fragments. The throne room. The divination ritual. The failed magic lessons.

The metal grew hot beneath her hands. Light flashed, and the smell of hot metal and the after-image of vines snaked through the air. The creature shrieked, terrible and high-pitched, and all the lines sagged at once.