Hushwood

ix. hear the sound

Arienne stumbled to her feet, her limbs numb from cold, her thoughts hollow with sleep. Her fingers closed around the knife. With a cry, she stabbed at the creature holding Tobrym, and it evaporated as if it had never been.

Tobrym gasped a breath, his eyes shooting open, like a man woken from a death sleep. "Here!" Ari shouted, tossing the knife to him—he needed its protection. He caught it and immediately fought off the reflections converging on him. He did what needed to be done without flinching, but Ari could see that he was shaken. Something was wrong.

Indeed, she thought wryly; she still could not feel anything. The rush of air through her fingers, the scratches and scrapes on her feet and ankles—it was as if she were merely watching through a looking-glass, imagining herself in a body that wasn't hers. The damage, the pain, it all meant nothing to her. Nothing at all.

"Ari," Tobrym said. "The mirror. Go."

"Not without you."

"I'll follow. Go!"

Ari hesitated. But he had the knife. He was safe. She turned and ducked through the mirror, feeling her insides shift as she stepped through to the other side.

When she looked back through the mirror, she saw nothing. Just darkness and trees.

Her heavy heartbeat faltered. Her voice was hushed; she scarcely dared to speak. "Tobrym?"

There was no reply.

"T-Tobrym?"

The mirror's surface rippled, glowing and shimmering and turning a pale, milky color, like liquid starlight. With a sound like a sigh, Tobrym appeared, pulling away from the glass in ethereal pieces that sealed themselves back together again. It was unsettling to watch, but Ari couldn't pull her eyes away.

Once Tobrym was whole again, Ari ran to him and hugged him tight.

"You foolish, foolish boy," she whispered. "You should have gone on without me. I was as good as lost."

"Don't say that." He squeezed her briefly, then let go, taking a deep breath. "I still don't feel right. That place behind the mirror—it was wrong, it was all wrong. And some of the wrongness is still there, like it's stuck to us. It's never going away."

"Are you alright? That thing—Hännah's lark, Tobrym, you were as pale as a ghost. I thought it had killed you, I really did."

"I'm fine." He felt her pulse. Still there. "And you?"

She still couldn't feel her hands. Deep down, she doubted the numbness would ever go away completely. But she smiled anyway. "Good as new. Thank you, Tobrym, really."

They left the glade soon after, breaking the mirror before they went. It was strange, but when the glass shattered, they felt it inside—like a dull, rippling pain within their chests, as if they too had broken.

Neither of them spoke for a while. It was difficult to find words. There wasn't much to be said; their minds held only fear, and that wasn't worth speaking aloud.

~~~

Night came after what felt like days of traveling, with no discernible end in sight. Tobrym wouldn't let them stop until they found a safe place to rest. Finally, they reached a small glade and gave in to their exhaustion, sinking to the grass and gazing up at the stars that swam in the sky above.

Ari's eyes, weary as they were, became dazzled by the beauty of the clearing. Fireflies were everywhere; lovely little things that gleamed softly blue in the darkness, making the whole place glow like a fairie dream. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly. The air was cool and sweet—like perfume. She smiled.

Tobrym's fingers brushed against hers. He gripped her hand. She felt nothing, no warmth, just a gentle pressure. Her skin was as numb as paper. She blinked away wistful tears.

"It's pretty here," Tobrym murmured. "Terrible. But pretty."

Arienne shakily breathed out again. "Yeah. It is." She swallowed, forcing the sudden swell of emotion away. "Kind of enchanting. I don't know."

They were quiet for a little while, watching the stars rearrange themselves into different patterns, spelling out warnings in a language they couldn't understand. "Your mark," said Tobrym softly. "What do you suppose it means?"

"Hm?" Ari tiredly lifted her wrist and glanced at it. It was too dark to make out the words. That didn't matter—she'd memorized them by then. "The Child Prisoner and the girl in the library... I'm not sure."

"The Child could be Bindi."

"It says to stay away from her." They couldn't obey such a command.

"I know. Maybe it's not as much of an ally as we think."

It. He meant the forest. Ari sighed, running a hand through her dark hair. "Maybe. Maybe." She bit her lip, swimming in a sea of doubtful thoughts. "Back in the mirror—what happened? My reflection, it was holding you, staring into your eyes. You looked almost trancelike. It was strange."

The hand holding hers twitched. "I'm not certain. I saw...things, but I don't know if the creature was showing them to me or just... I don't know. Like you said—strange."

"What did you see?"

He recounted everything to her, only briefly mentioning the last vision he'd seen, of her crying, and of the terrible stillness he'd turned into. She could tell he'd skimmed over it, but she didn't question him. "I-I'm not sure what it was supposed to mean. Maybe nothing."

"The white tree," muttered Arienne. A firefly drifted past her face, its pale light reflected in the oceans of her eyes. "Wasn't there a story about that? Or some sort of song..."

Tobrym remembered. "There was. A lullaby. They didn't sing it often, I'm not sure why."

"Sing it to me," Ari said in a breath.

He whispered the words.

"When the wind runs cold and the sky grows old,
The white tree beckons, it beckons to me.
When the earth goes dim and the whole world ends,
I heed the voice of the wise white tree.

"Come, dear children, gather round,
Hear the sound. Hear the sound.
All is lost, for we've been found;
Hear the sound. Hear the sound."

"When the whole world ends," echoed Ari.

"Is that it, then? We should find the tree?"

"I suppose it couldn't hurt. But I don't know where we'd even start to look." Ari closed her eyes. "The white tree...the wise white tree." Her voice was heavy with exhaustion. "Do you suppose it might know about Bindi...where she is?"

Tobrym smiled in the darkness. "It might."

Arienne was silent for so long that Tobrym thought she'd fallen asleep. Then she whispered, "What next?"

"What do you mean?"

"We can't go home...the forest won't let us leave. So we'll find Bindi. And then we'll just be here. Forever, beneath these trees. Do you think they ever end? Maybe they do. Maybe there's another place on the other side, a bright, happy place that isn't falling to pieces."

Tobrym didn't know what to say. The thought hadn't occurred to him. "What if there are other people here? In the Hushwood, I mean. People like us, maybe a village of them or something, and if we find them, they'll welcome us in."

"I'd like that. I'd like to stay."

It was such a dark place, but some spots of it were breathtakingly beautiful, and they were both beginning to realize that the Hushwood was more than just cunning. It was addictive, like the deadly opium flowers that grew in little patches near the outskirts of the village. With every day they spent in its depths, it grew just a little harder for them to leave.

Arienne was the first to drift off. Tobrym felt sleep pulling at him as he sank deeper into the grass, and he was swiftly losing the strength to fight it. Just before he slipped away, he remembered.

The cäerthlinn has come, they'd said. The cäerthlinn has come.

But what did that mean?