Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 120974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
There’s a face in the water.
I lean over to get a closer look—the face is familiar.
“Mother?” I whisper.
And suddenly, I can see her—she’s there. I hear her soft, sweet voice, and see her familiar eyes looking back at me.
“My child,” she whispers. “I miss you. Why have you gone so far away?”
“I’m searching for a cure for you,” I tell her. “I’m going to get you a Healing Draught from the Sorceress—the Lady of Thornmere.”
Without noticing, I’ve taken a step forward as I talk to her. I don’t even feel it when my foot slips off the path and into the grassy verge beside it.
“Come to me, my darling.” My mother holds out her arms.
Instinctively, I step towards her…and then, as suddenly as she appeared, she is gone.
I look for her in the still water, but it’s nothing but a pond again. Realizing that her image must have been a trick of the forest, I turn back to the path…only to find that it’s somehow yards and yards away from me now. In fact, it’s barely visible—a thin brown ribbon running through the massive trees.
My heart fists in my chest and my breath grows suddenly short. The palms of my hands feel clammy. I must have stepped off without really noticing it—I need to get back!
I take a step towards the path, but somehow, that puts it even further away. Now I can barely see it at all. What in the Goddess’s name is happening?
“Think, Irena!” I mutter to myself. Suddenly, I remember something that red-beard said back at the inn. “He must’ve left the path and forgotten that in order to go forward, you have to go back,” he’d said. At the time, it made no sense to me but now, I wonder…
I took a step towards the path and that put it further away. Maybe I ought to take a step away from it instead to see if that brings it closer?
Tentatively, I shuffle one foot backwards, away from the path. Suddenly, I can see it more clearly again. Yes, it’s definitely closer.
My heart pounds harder and I take a deep breath. All right, I’ve got this—I can do it. I just have to walk backwards, away from the path to get back to it. I just need to go slow and take tiny steps since whatever magic is doing this seems to multiply distances somehow.
I shuffle my other foot backwards and the path is only a few yards away from me. Almost back! I’ll get right back on it and hurry to catch up with Valen, who will never know the difference. I won’t even tell him about the pond or my strange little adventure. I’ll be just fine, and we’ll reach the Sorceress’s stronghold before nightfall.
I take another half step back and I can see the path right in front of me—it’s barely a foot away. I can just step right onto it and—
“Not so fast, if you please, little miss.”
The inhumanly deep voice is coming from directly behind me. My shoulder blades tense and the short hairs at the back of my neck prickle—every instinct I have shouts, DANGER!
I tense my body and leap forward for the path, forgetting that I can’t get to it that way.
My forward momentum carries me backwards and suddenly I’m in the middle of Thornmere with the path nowhere in sight.
I give a cry of distress—what am I going to do now? And where is the creature who spoke to me—because it must be some kind of creature. No human male has a voice so deep—a voice I could feel in my bones when it spoke.
Go back again—you have to go back! I tell myself. I start to take a step backwards, trying to get to the path again…only to feel someone grab my arm. I gasp and look down to see a long, green vine winding itself around my wrist.
“As I said, not so fast, missy,” that same, rumbling voice growls in my ear.
The vine tightens and yanks at me, spinning me around to face the most enormous tree I’ve ever seen. But no—it’s not just a tree—there’s a face in the bark. Two knotholes that look like eyes and a horizontal crack that looks almost like a mouth.
I try to convince myself that I’m dreaming or maybe just imagining the whole thing. But then the crack-mouth opens and it speaks again.
“How dare you violate the forest law and take without giving?”
“Wh-what?” I blink up at it, my pulse racing so hard it’s actually making me dizzy. Surely this must be some kind of nightmare—a bad dream. I must be back in the castle at home in my own bed and any minute I’ll wake up—won’t I?
“You stepped into the Ring of Thorns and took berries,” the tree-creature accuses me. “But you left no sacrifice in return.”