Page 96 of Shifting Hearts

"I saw something." A tiny girl with ginger curls pointed between thick trunked trees into a permeating blackness where gold flecks glimmered. “Right there. Glowing .”

“There’s nothing to see,” I lied cheerfully, scrunching her hair and grabbing a pale girl by the hand, noting some of the kids starting to separate.

“Everyone join up. Let's make a forest train. Choo-choo!” It was a shitty sentiment, but it seemed to work on my young tribe, if only for the time being.

A cold finger worked its way down my spine, stopping halfway.

The impossible touch lingered in an invisible caress that set my nerve endings screaming at the wrongness of it.

Revolving slowly on my heel I pretended to count heads again but nothing appeared near me, or anywhere around us.

Nor did the kids seem to notice anything.

I learned all too well that they were often the first to note a change in the air, the pensive stickiness that preceded evil, refusing to be drawn into our lungs.

Or death.

Forcing myself to face forward, I straightened and tried not to clasp the children's hands too tight.

I will not look. I will not. I will not.

Holding to my mantra with a grip no evil could dislodge, I skipped along with the children, subbing my mother for wizard . She would ensure children had a fresh start well away from their old lives, finding them safe houses to go to, new homes and schools, places to thrive.

Seeking a path around the forest wasn’t an option.

My mother’s house was the last patch of usable ground beyond the small township that seemed lost in the centuries before.

After the last roads ran out near the mountains, deep crevices rent the earth running hundreds of miles in length.

On the other side of the forest sat Gran’s home, the stone cottage exposed on a plateau of granite.

Shallow steps led down the mountainside to the isolated community there where she whisked damaged children away in the night to send on their trek through the forest under my sole care.

Where my mother’s cottage was all sunshine and starlight, Gran’s was built of harsh granite shards covered with a brutal blast of sleet that constantly barraged the blackened cliff face. The little house perched at its zenith before the forest closed in, dead and creaking and alive.

All things it should and shouldn’t be, and all at once, as though this place was created in order to enclose the creatures residing within. Guarding against those nightmares that might come slithering toward the towns we protected and warded against that might crawl out of the shadows in between.

“We’re nearly there!” Joey tugged frantically at my hand, breaking me out of my reverie.

I blinked twice, but he was right. Sunlight—thin, and wavering, but sunlight nonetheless—striped the gloom before us. Dust motes danced in the fresh haze. I had zoned out in the middle of the forest with a double handful of wards and could have lost them all whilst dithering away in my daydreams.

Mentally berating my selfishness, I forced a smile and a happy, sing song tone when all I wanted was to scream at the shadows that cloaked us all.

Show yourself.

Stop hiding from me.

Come out and play.

I squeezed my eyes shut and blocked out the traitorous thoughts that only led to one unhappy ending.

"We’re nearly there," I called, keeping my shoulders relaxed, fixing my smile in place.

Joey looked up at me, then down at his hand as though he recognized the truth hidden beneath my perfected lies.

Ignoring the fluttering guilt in my stomach– he’s too young, he won’t remember this amongst his other traumas anyway– I measured the distance between the shadows and the glow emanating through the darkness.

Shards of light created playgrounds for dust motes that danced between the sparser branches on the edge of the forest. So close.

We might be nearly there, but also, we might not make it.

I wasn’t a glass half empty girl; I was the glass is broken, the milk is draining out and we’re screwed type of girl.

The first few children we sent through the forest alone never made it. Others disappeared too, and that was when I made the choice to tread the paths no one else dared, taking on the darkwood alone, challenging it to take me into its depths.

Only, that never happened.

At my side Joey stared straight ahead, defined resolution I recognized written in the hardness of his gaze, the sharp line of his small shoulders.

Four years old. He’s four .

I gave him my first truthful smile in far too long. "Look. We’re nearly there.” I needed a parrot who could learn a handful of phrases.

Nearly there.

“Nearly there.” The children took up the whispered chant.

Nearly there nearly there nearly there–

“Nearly there,” I muttered, forcing one foot before the other. Neither rushing nor slowing, I kept our pace steady lest any extra movement provoke the forest’s keepers.

A tiny glow bug floated before the girl with red curls, a tempting wisp that pulled her away from our party.

She darted forward, tripping over herself in her haste to exit the woods.

Tiny hands waved in the slivers of muted sunlight.

Then she was gone, breaking through the edge of the forest to freedom.

A scream built in my throat that never ripped through the forest as she disappeared, like she’d never been there at all. The next child followed her, shooting between twisted, grabbing branches that swayed in their constant back-and-forth motion though they were too tall to touch the children.

Too high to be bothered by our passing, but they moved all the same.

"We’re there,” I breathed.

We're there we’re there we’re there.

The chant changed as the children charged forward en masse. I halted, allowing myself a smile, counting heads yet again as each child passed beneath the wavering branches.

And then I did something I'd never let myself do before. Just as Joey's head of dirty blond hair was replaced by scratching branches still shifting when they never should have, I glanced over my shoulder, and looked back.

I stared into the darkness, daring the shadows to expose their secrets.

Whoever watched me travel through the forest, who watched me last night and listened to my sounds in the darkness, that was the presence I dared to show themselves now.

I waited, holding my breath until my lungs were fit to pop.

An invisible touch grazed my spine in a cold caress as I twisted on my heels, spinning in a perfect circle to find that the only company I kept?—

Was my own.

Goose flesh broke out on my arms. Without conscious thought I twisted back the way the others had disappeared and sprinted to the edge of the forest. My bare feet slid on the dew laden, lush new grass beyond.

Sunlight instantly warmed my skin, bringing with it a welcoming heat that delivered instant color to pallored faces, including my own.

Happiness filled the clearing at the door to my mother’s cottage, cries and laughter and tears circulating at the children’s new found freedom.

I stood still amidst it all, my back aching from the pressure that lingered along my spine where the forest watched.

And waited.