Read Hollow by Caroline Peckham Chapter 27 – “What is this?” I demanded, stumbling away from the tree where a woman who looked all too like me was reaching out a vine-coated arm and hissing warnings at the trees.
I turned to my sister, the girl I’d spent so much of my life determined to rescue, hunting for answers in her silver eyes but instead finding nothing where she’d been stood.
“Rissa?” I called as the snake’s huge body coiled around my own, its rough scales glimmering in the shards of moonlight which punctured the canopy of the trees overhead.
“Don’t fight the path that calls you,” the Cursed One hissed, and I recoiled, pushing against the snake’s twisting form, my own voice echoing in my ears.
How could she be me? How could she have my face? The tree surrounding her had consumed nearly all of her body, bark growing over her throat and jaw, moss tangled into her hair. She must have been there for years, left to suffer endlessly, caught in death but not fully departed.
“You’re not me,” I told the Cursed One, and the Serpent released a low hiss which sounded like laughter while the boughs and branches of every tree around us leaned closer as if they wanted to listen too.
The Serpent’s grip on me tightened, crushing the breath from my lungs, and panic clawed its way deeper into my soul. I didn’t understand what was happening, what I was seeing, why there was a Cursed One wearing my face. How could that be? Could I be looking at a glimpse of my own destiny? Or had I finally lost my mind in this damned and bewildering place?
Panic threatened to overwhelm me as I fought to push myself free of the Serpent’s hold, but there was a single truth I could cling to, one which had led me to this place, one which would never be denied.
I’d come here for my sister. I needed my sister.
I craned my neck, hunting the trees for Rissa, calling her name once more, but she was gone.
I dug my fingers into the Serpent’s body, the reality of what was happening to me settling in fast. But before I could be consumed by fear, the spirit released me. It unravelled itself from my chest so quickly that I stumbled and fell on my ass in the dirt.
I scrambled backwards in the mud, my eyes wide as I stared at the enormous Serpent, its body a thousand shades of metallic stone, a rough grinding sound accompanying its movements.
The Serpent’s duty to the forest had been to the rocks and minerals but it was also said to be a warrior, the creature destined to protect the forest from outside harm. It was ferocious in its responsibilities and single-minded in its task. And that had been before the curse had taken hold of the forest and the spirits had all lost their minds. Who knew what it might be capable of now?
A rough cry made my head snap around, a jolt of lightning searing through my chest which burned its way down my body and left the pungent taste of panic on my tongue.
“Hendrix?!” I called, scrambling to my feet.
The Serpent loomed over me, raising up on its coiled body and peering down at me from a height which made its rocky head brush the lower branches of the canopy above.
It bared its fangs which glistened silver in the moonlight, its long tongue snapping out to taste the air and my fear right alongside it.
I backed up, all of the awful things in this clearing making my limbs tremble and heart pound to a frantic and terrified pace.
“Too many times death has claimed us before we captured our destiny!” the Cursed One yelled, and I cringed away from the woman with my face, hating her and hating myself for the cowardice the sight of her brought on in me. Was she a warning from the spirits? A fate yet to pass? Or was there something darker at work beneath these trees?
The Serpent hissed at me again but made no move to strike, and as another cry came from the depths of the woods, I turned and fled.
My pulse thundered in my ears as I ran, more footsteps hounding my own, Hendrix’s cries all I could allow myself to focus on as I raced for him.
The forest was more terrifying than ever in the darkness, every piece of it more alive than in the day. Roots slithered out of my path, trees bent and bowed around me, leaves lifting, vines parting. The forest was helping me. Or perhaps it only wished to lead me to the same fate as the Fae warrior who had chased me into the night.
Something was tracking my steps, a hundred eyes boring into my back as I ran, but when I threw a wild look over my shoulder, there was nothing but that endless dark between the trees.
Orange light sparked up ahead, the blaze of a fire searing the backs of my eyes, and I threw up a hand to shield my vision.
Hendrix cried out again and I cursed beneath my breath as I ran on, knowing it was my fault that he was out here, hating that I even cared about the Fae bastard and understanding that I was going to do everything in my power to help him regardless.
A glade opened up before me, Hendrix laying in the middle of it, Lost Children rushing around him, his limbs bound in vines as they dragged him towards a yawning hole at the base of a gnarled yew tree. I was so filled with shock that I couldn’t find thoughts for how terrifying it was and acted entirely on instinct.
I reached for my slingshot only to find it missing, my pulse racing with fits and bursts, pounding against my ears so hard I was deafened by the unsteady crescendo. Of course I hadn’t had it with me. I’d been about to sleep before Rissa’s voice had lured me into the forest and now I was without even my meagre weapon to aid me in this foul place.
Hendrix needed me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to help him unarmed and alone, but I knew nothing would keep me from trying despite the foolishness that implied.
I pushed forward, meaning to rush out into the clearing, only to be yanked back by a cold hand which snared my upper arm and pulled me behind an enormous oak tree.
I swung a fist, my aim poor but fury potent.
Before I could land my blow, Rissa knocked my arm aside with a swipe of her own hand.
My sister smiled at me and my heart cleaved in two.
“Riss?” I breathed, tears blurring my eyes.
“I knew you’d come find me,” she said. “I’ve waited a long time in the trees for you, Ferris.”
I wanted to hurl my arms around her, drag her into my embrace and promise her everything would be okay while begging her forgiveness for how long this rescue had taken. But without a single word escaping my lips, her hand clapped down over my mouth and she pushed me back against the rough bark of the tree with surprising strength.
“Listen,” she breathed in my ear. “There’s no time to waste. The moon has bought you a moment of clarity before the madness of the dark can pierce you through the heart.”
I tried to pry her hand from my mouth but she only frowned at me, her face so familiar and yet so changed. She’d grown, her features sharpening into those of a woman in place of a child, her auburn hair all wild curls tangled with moss and leaves, those silver eyes weighed down with more knowledge than any child could have born.
“I grew up,” she stated, as if reading my thoughts the way she so often seemed to when we were young. Her eyes slid beyond me to the glade where the Lost Children were still hauling Hendrix towards that yawning hole which led to spirits knew where, his muffled grunts and cries cutting into me with each passing moment. He was thrashing and kicking, even champing his teeth at them, but they only laughed and dodged his blows, dragging him on again.
I made to go to him but my sister held me tightly, forcing my focus to remain on her.
“The other children… they’re not like me,” Rissa sighed, loosening her grip on my mouth to allow me to speak at last.
“Why not?” I asked, my gaze roaming over her, drinking her in. The relief at finding her here after so many years of hoping and wishing on what I knew to be nothing more than a slip of a chance were all compacting around me until I felt utterly overwhelmed in her presence. I wanted to cry, scream, laugh, beg, gush, pray, and everything in between.
“The forest keeps the Lost Children in its grasp, gifting them immortality, but with every passing year, they lose a little more of what they once were to the wildness of this place. Some still mourn the families they were torn from in small ways, clinging to trinkets from past lives, others don’t recall ever being anything other than creatures of the wood.”
“But you grew up,” I said, echoing the words she’d offered me.
A sad smile tainted her lips.
“I did. Because I’m not born of the human realm nor the Fae realm either. Not truly.”
I scoffed, shaking my head at her. “You claim the madness of this place hasn’t infected you and yet you speak of not being human?”
“I am and I’m not,” she replied, reaching out to brush a tear from my cheek and letting it hang from her fingertip. “Just as you are and you aren’t too.”
Rissa’s eyes flared with a molten brightness and I recoiled from her, the teardrop on her fingertip illuminating in that same silvery hue before she flicked it at me.
I flinched, my eyes scrunching shut as the tiny drop of water splashed against my cheek and suddenly I was no longer standing with her on the edge of a glade but peering out from within the depths of the cursed forest at a woman who sobbed on its border. A woman who looked wholly familiar, though several decades younger than I now knew her to be.
“Mother?” I breathed, trying to take a step closer and finding I couldn’t move.
“I beg you, great spirits,” our mother sobbed, her fingers digging into the bark of the trees before her while her knees pressed into the dirt. “I beg you to bless us with a child.”
A rush of wind blasted through the trees, a trilling song on its back which knocked our mother onto her haunches as it ripped her hair away from her face and she gasped in startled alarm.
I stumbled forward as that same wind knocked me from the vision, Rissa’s hold on my shoulder the only thing which prevented me from falling to my knees.
“You were born of her womb, sister,” Rissa said. “But you arrived there by magic. Just as you did so many times before to so many other mothers who came to beg the gift of a child from the Great Elm.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head while she cocked hers at mine.
“Don’t you?”
I shook my head, my brain torn between putting all of the pieces of this puzzle together and the danger which surrounded us. I needed to get her out of here, I needed to get Hendrix free too.
“Come on, Rissa,” I begged, taking hold of her hand and tugging, emotion thickening my throat because I’d come so far to find her and now she was really here before me, staring back at me with those eyes I’d dreamed of night after night, alive and whole despite the odds. “Come with me. I’ll get us out of here. Just help me with Hendrix and-”
The Lost Children broke into a chorus of wild laughter, the sound so loud it was like a thunderclap, and I flinched away from it, trying to tug Rissa with me, but she didn’t move.
“You know we can’t leave this place,” Rissa said sadly. “The forest closed its walls and the only chance at freedom is to break the curse. My fate is tied to it, Ferris. Even if I ran with you, there isn’t anywhere to go. And if by some miracle we found a way out of the trees, my life is tied to the curse now. It has to be broken if I am to have any hope of being free of it.”
I shook my head, pointless tears blurring my vision, a frustrated growl escaping my throat as the injustice of it all overwhelmed me. It wasn’t fair. I’d defied all the odds in getting this far, and despite everything, I somehow stood before the girl I’d sacrificed so much to find. She was right here. But she wasn’t free of this place and neither was I. Neither was anyone in the whole of Rathian while the forest’s curse endured. So now the fate of all of us had become the burden placed upon me.
“I have the Dragon,” I told her. “And Hendrix has the Bear and the Fox, plus I know another Fae has two more. Maybe we stand a chance of uniting them all and then you can leave with me-”
“I still won’t be free,” Rissa said sadly, her fingers brushing my cheek and sadness swimming in her silver gaze. “The Offerings were made in full, each of the Lost Children were given to the forest. That includes me, Ferris. I can’t ever leave the Great Elm.”
“Then what about the boon?” I asked, because that had been my plan all along. “Would the boon free you if I used it to ask for such a thing? Could it free all of you?” I glanced up into the trees where the Lost Children clambered and leapt between the branches with haunting grace.
The leaves around us rustled and shivered, words seeming to pass between them in a whisper I couldn’t understand. But Rissa tilted her head to listen, and her eyes brightened at what they said.
“The others aren’t all like me,” she said slowly. “You could free them, but some have been here for hundreds of years and they wouldn’t have anywhere else to go. But… those of us who still had homes and families to return to might be able to reclaim what we lost. The Great Elm says that the boon could be used to give us that choice. She would let us decide to stay or go. To live on eternally here or reclaim the mortality we traded when the trees took us into their domain.”
“Truly?” I gasped, gripping her fingers so tightly it had to hurt, and her smile stole the breath from my lungs as she nodded.
A choked sob escaped me and I hurled my arms around her neck, crushing her in my embrace and finally succumbing to the surge of emotions which were threatening to overwhelm me. I’d been forcing myself to hold off on hope but she’d finally handed it back to me.
“Then I’ll earn the boon,” I said fiercely as if it wasn’t a practically unattainable task. Yes, I had claimed one amulet, but I would have to seize more than any other Champion. With Hendrix already ahead of me and that other, murderous brute on a mission to murder his way to find the rest, it would be near impossible to achieve. But I’d do it. Somehow.
The Dragon made a sound like a low purr in the back of my mind, and I took strength in its encouragement as I straightened.
“The Serpent,” I said, my eyes moving to the trees as I hunted for the spirit which my sister had been keeping the company of.
A low and sinister hiss came from directly above me and I flinched in alarm, whirling around and knocking into Rissa who steadied me with a laugh that was bright and clear and utterly at odds with the threat coming from above us.
“Not now,” she warned, and the way the Serpent’s eyes gleamed made it clear that it agreed with her. “But I’ll bring it when the time calls and you will have its amulet.”
“Truly?” I beathed, my heart lightening at the thought. If she could deliver me the Serpent, then I was so much closer to achieving my goal of freeing her from this place.
Hendrix cried out from the clearing beyond us and I turned to see the Lost Children hauling him into the mouth of that darkened hole.
“What are they doing to him?” I hissed, taking a step towards him, but Rissa caught my arm and jerked me to a halt.
“You care for the fate of a Fae?” she breathed in my ear, anger coating her words. “After what they did to me?”
“It’s… complicated,” I breathed. “But he helped me to get this far despite everything-”
“Despite the fact that they took me, hauled me from my bed and threw me to this fate without a care?” The trees groaned and rustled in reply to her rage, the Serpent hissing spitefully as it descended from the trees and started towards the Fae who I had begun to see as so much more than my enemy.
“I know, I do. But Rissa, he’s… different.” I wasn’t even sure that was true and as she looked to me, I knew we both heard the uncertainty in my claim. But as the Lost Children hauled Hendrix closer and closer to the oblivion of that dark pit, I found panic rising in my chest, my pulse racing with fear and the desperate need to save him warring in my limbs.
“Fine,” she hissed darkly, releasing me so suddenly that I stumbled a few steps. The Serpent coiled around us, its scales grinding together like rocks sliding over one another as it circled me, the threat in its posture clear. “But if you’re wrong about him, then don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I tried to back up, Hendrix’s groans pulling at my attention, but Rissa caught my chin and urged my gaze back to hers.
“This isn’t our moment, sister,” she told me, a sadness to her tone. “But know that this is not the first time you have walked this forest. However, it will be the last. You can’t fail again.”
“Again?” I repeated hollowly, trying not to think of the Cursed One with my face, trying not to remember how familiar the words in that diary had seemed to me.
“This time will be different,” Rissa promised. “Because this time, the Great Elm created me to help you. When the moment comes, we can break the curse together. The forest wants you to succeed, don’t you see?”
“I don’t see,” I protested. “I don’t know what you-”
Hendrix cried out in pain and I whipped around.
“He matters in this too,” Rissa said from behind me, her eyes gleaming with urgency as she forced my focus back to her, a bitterness to her tone as she admitted the fact – though I didn’t understand what she meant by it. “You should really get him out of the dark.”
The ground trembled beneath my feet, a low rumbling making me jerk around again to find Rissa rising up on the back of the Serpent, her face stoic as she looked down at me.
“The clock can’t wait for you any longer, Ferris. When it strikes the hour this time, the curse will prevail. You’re out of chances to change that fate. So make it count.”
“Wait!” I cried as the Serpent turned and dove into the trees with Rissa riding upon its back, the forest swallowing them whole before I could even try to chase them.
I took a step in their direction,
then turned again as Hendrix cried out in the heart of the glade. I needed more answers. But first, I needed to save him.
