Read Hollow by Caroline Peckham Chapter 5 –
As night drew in, the shadows beneath the trees deepened to the point where we could hardly see the forest floor beyond our feet. My boots thumped against the tangles of roots which lined our path, threatening to trip me at every step. Dead leaves kicked up around us like swarms of rustling butterflies only interested in roosting in the underbrush.
A silence had fallen between the Champions that was marked with tension.
We’d all heard the forest warn against being outside at night. We were in desperate need of shelter and almost out of time to claim it.
Gunther, Helga and Damon walked closest, their powerful bodies surrounding me as if they were my own personal guards. But I knew better. They’d left me easily enough when the Raven had shown itself. If anything, I was serving as a conveniently expendable snack for anything that might come after us, a weak link to sacrifice should something swoop out of the darkness.
I bristled at the thought. I may not have been trained for battle or well-versed in the use of blades and bows, but I was the farthest thing from weak. I’d survived more than they knew, fighting for this life of mine and braving each day with the full weight of my need for redemption weighing me down at every moment.
My pockets were heavy with stones I’d gathered while walking the forgotten trails through the forest, my slingshot ready in my pocket should I need it. I had no sword to swing but I wasn’t unarmed, and a stone to the skull could be just as effective as any blade, given enough force and good aim. And one thing I had was impeccable aim.
Devlan hadn’t returned and we’d found no sign of him among the trees. I didn’t know whether to think of him as dead or not. I supposed it didn’t matter much at the moment regardless.
“We’ve got fifteen minutes at best before night falls, and then we all die out here,” Esther called as if any of us might be unaware of the fact. She was a mean-looking woman with pinched features and hard muscles lining her compact frame. She clearly held no interest in me, and the feeling was mutual, so I’d had little to do with her aside from listening to the numerous complaints she liked to voice.
“Let’s move faster then,” Colton decided, swinging his sword at a swathe of vines and trailing moss to reveal a new path.
The group broke into a jog, making my chances of tripping on this ragged terrain even likelier.
We’d come across a few rotten barns and a collapsed farmhouse but nothing we could use for real shelter overnight. The forest had stolen so much of our lands that I’d assumed finding those lost houses would be easy, but either they’d been consumed by the trees or we weren’t looking in the right places.
In my pack I had a map which had plotted the lost human lands and all of the buildings I’d known to have been swallowed by the trees in the last century, but I hadn’t even bothered to get it out. This place was a maze and we’d gotten more than lost in it during our encounter with the Raven.
I hoped to come across some kind of landmark which I might be able to use to define our location, but so far, there had been nothing but trees and trees and trees.
The Champions ran faster, my breaths coming heavily in their stead. I’d taken care to spend time running while preparing to enter this doomed place, building up my stamina as best I could while keeping my intentions secret, but I was nowhere near as fit as them and it was beginning to show.
Damon had already left me behind, Helga and Gunther powering on without me too. I could barely make out Colton’s silhouette at the front of the group, the sound of him hacking through the forest more of a clue to his location than anything I could see.
The others passed me too, and I shoved my slingshot into my belt before hoisting my pack higher on my back and forcing my legs to move faster.
If I was left behind out here, then I’d be facing the threat of the dark alone. And though I had no real belief that any of us would survive the forest once night fell, I preferred the idea of standing among the Champions when it happened than meeting it alone.
I hurried on but a root snagged the toe of my boot and I tripped, my arms wheeling wildly, my palm colliding with the thick trunk of a tree.
I almost smacked my face into the rough bark, but by some miracle, I managed to twist my head aside in time.
Ragged pants escaped me and I blinked into the trees to the right of our path, something pale looking back at me within them.
“Wait!” I called, though the Champions ignored me, running on without so much as a glance back in my direction. Assholes.
I shoved away from the tree and pushed through the undergrowth, a chaotic laugh spilling from my lips as I found an old tavern beyond it. The walls were thick with foliage, vines climbing them to gather on the roof, encasing it in lines of tangled green, but the door stood firm, the roof intact. A sign hung lopsidedly above the entrance, an image of an archer taking aim at a deer mildewing above thick letters which named it ‘The Hunting Man.’
“I found shelter!” I yelled, though I was tempted to let them all run on into the night and face the threat of the dark for having left me behind so callously. I understood it though. Out here, it was every person for themselves when it came down to it. The strongest couldn’t risk their lives for the weak – the aim was and could only be to claim the amulets and break the curse.
I stumbled towards the tavern door with a smile breaking like dawn across my lips. The handle resisted my turn at first and then gave, the door creaking open just as the thunder of footfalls announced the return of the other Champions at my back.
Colton pushed through the group and joined me at the door, his grin a wicked, conspiratorial thing as he shoved his weight against the wood and forced it wide.
Darkness had almost enveloped the forest entirely, and as we all spilled into the safety of the tavern, howls and wild whispering erupted from the trees.
The sound enveloped me in terror, but Helga threw the door shut on it with a savage thrust and with mere seconds to spare, we were awarded the prize of safety.
I woke with a jolt, my pulse thundering and fingers curling around my slingshot before I could even determine what had roused me from my sleep.
For a moment, I’d thought I’d heard singing, but as I focused on my surroundings, I realised it wasn’t the haunting lullaby I’d come to fear with the rise of the moon.
A series of ragged grunts were coming from somewhere beyond the door and I frowned, certain that hadn’t been what had woken me but unable to detect anything else.
We’d made camp in the largest room, which had once been a bar, the tables and chairs now shoved against the walls, many of them broken so we could use them for firewood. Our bedrolls were made up on the floor next to the wide stone fireplace, our group huddling close to make use of the heat from the flames.
Thick beams crisscrossed the ceiling overhead, old paintings of hunters hiding behind trees or aiming bows at various prey decorating the wood-panelled walls, forgotten by the people who had fled. I could almost imagine the way this place had once been, with the sconces lit and the old piano which was mouldering in the corner playing a jovial tune while people danced between the tables and fought to get service at the bar. There was an echo of the noise they’d have made in the heaviness of the silence here, like that moment in time was just out of reach rather than lost to the depths of the forest.
We were haunted here by the people whose homes had been stolen by these trees, and I couldn’t help but feel like their eyes were on me, their expectations a burden I hadn’t intended to take on. This curse had come for all of us, and my pain wasn’t the only wound which demanded to be healed.
The fire had burned down to smouldering embers, Esther dozing against the wall, her head lolling onto her chest where she sat beside the kindling and failed miserably at her turn on watch.
I pursed my lips, the grunts coming again and prickling at my subconscious. There was something about the noise which tugged at my memory, conjuring up the descriptions I’d studied of the thirteen spirits. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, a thought coming to me which had the last vestiges of fatigue slipping away: the Boar.
I glanced around at the sleeping Champions. It was hard to make out much more than the lumpy shapes of their bedrolls in the gloom, but I didn’t find any other eyes peering back at me.
If it was the Boar, then I might have a chance at claiming it for my own without them ever realising it. For now, they were content for the group of us to travel together, the need for safety in numbers outweighing their individual desires to win the most amulets and earn the forest’s boon for themselves. But I knew that wouldn’t last. They all wanted the prize I’d come here for, and there was no way I could allow any to seize it but me.
I pushed aside the thin blanket I’d been shivering beneath and slowly stood.
The grunts came again, louder, definitely a large pig. My smile bloomed wickedly. If the spirit was inside this building, then perhaps it too had to shelter from the forest at night. Perhaps it would have nowhere to go and I really would be able to take it for myself without the others knowing a thing about it.
I crept from the room, my eyes seeking shapes in the shadows beyond the dim light of the fire and struggling to find any. We’d blocked off the windows in the room we’d chosen to sleep in using the bigger pieces of furniture we could find. We’d had nothing left over to do the same in the rest of the building, so we had to hope the door would be enough to keep us safe.
Silvery moonlight illuminated the old bar area up ahead of me, and I padded closer to it, the grunts getting louder, more frenzied. My gaze caught on a portrait of a woman in a voluminous blue gown whose violet eyes seemed to track me as I passed it by. I frowned at her, unable to see much of her face in the dim light aside from those eyes which were eerily similar to my own.
A grunt drew my attention from her, and I frowned at myself for allowing the distraction. This forest was full of tricks and I refused to fall prey to any of them.
I readied a stone in my slingshot, my pulse pounding to a crescendo as I closed in on my prey.
The Boar was rumoured to have a hide of that was near impossible to pierce, its cloven hooves sharp as knives and its tusks deadlier than any human-made spear. It would take a direct strike between its eyes to down him. Nothing less would suffice. I needed to get into position without it detecting me so that I could-
I fell still as I rounded the corner into the small bar at the rear of the building, my lips parting and fingers almost slipping on my drawn stone.
The grunting wasn’t coming from the Boar.
In the centre of the room, their eyes thankfully pointed towards the bar on my right, Gunther had Helga bent over a table and was ploughing his cock into her with rapid, jagged thrusts. His shirt was crumpled on the floor, but his trousers were hanging loose beneath his ass, sweat rolling down his bare skin as he pounded away, grunting with effort and stealing all hope of the Boar from me at once.
“Harder, for fuck’s sake,” Helga hissed, gripping the table she was bent over and driving her ass back against him.
I swallowed a lump in my throat, standing there for far longer than I should have as I scrambled to recover from the shock of my discovery.
“You fucking love my cock,” Gunther panted, thrusting harder, grunting louder.
“I would if I could feel it,” Helga growled, and Gunther cursed her, slamming his dick into her more firmly and making the table legs scrape against the floor.
The shriek of wood on stone snapped me out of my shock and I whirled away from them, slipping back into the darkness of the corridor and colliding with a hard body before I even realised someone else was there
“See something you like, Ferris?” Colton asked me in a low, amused tone.
Gunther was grunting so loudly now that I doubted he or Helga could hear anything other than his piggish sounds of pleasure, but I still cringed at the thought of being discovered here.
“I thought he was the Boar,” I blurted, knowing Colton couldn’t see the heat of my cheeks in the darkness, my embarrassment shielded in bravado.
Colton breathed a laugh, his hand finding my waist as he leaned down to speak into my ear.
“I imagine Helga would gain greater pleasure from the encounter if he was.”
I snorted in amusement, and the grunts in the bar became a drawn-out wail of pleasure that belonged solely to Gunther.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Helga growled while Gunther panted, and Colton tugged me back towards the room with the fire.
“Best we don’t let them find out that you were watching. If I’d known you were into voyeurism though, Ferris, I’d have gladly put on a show for you myself.”
“I’m not,” I hissed, slipping through the door and finding the fire blazing again. Esther was still asleep against the wall, so I had to assume that Colton had built it back up.
I headed for my pathetic excuse for a bed, intending to sleep away my disappointment and embarrassment, but Colton hounded me.
“What?” I asked, stalling short of returning to my thin blanket. “Are you planning on following me into my bed?”
“Is that an offer?” he countered.
“No,” I replied firmly, though my skin prickled a little at the insinuation. Colton was…well, Colton. He was the man every woman in town had claimed to want for a husband should he return from the forest and who had certainly done the rounds of testing their marital beds, even if he never lingered in any of them for long. He was precisely what all the books described a Champion to be; tall, strong, handsome and irritatingly deserving of the admiration he drew for his battle prowess. I may not have been one of the simpering fools who had followed him about town in hopes to gain his attention for a night or three, but I wasn’t blind.
“Pity.” Colton looked me up and down, the edge of his lips tugging towards a smirk, as if he’d known precisely where my thoughts had just wandered to, but I wasn’t going to be distracted by his obvious flirting.
I scowled.
“What is it?” I asked, knowing he wasn’t truly looking to bed me in a room full of people.
Colton considered me for a moment, then shrugged. “I want to see that book you were hoarding before we settled for sleep. I could take it by force, but I figured I’d be polite first and see where it got me.”
I stilled, my eyes falling to the pack which lay beside my bed, its contents containing the few most precious things I owned.
My instinct was to refuse his curiosity but one look at his powerful body told me he hadn’t been lying. He could take it by force, and then where would I be? Perhaps if I sated his curiosity over it he’d lose interest…
“Fine,” I grumbled, taking a seat on my blanket and drawing my pack into my lap.
Colton sat beside me. Close. Too close, his knee butting up against my thigh and his shadow fallowing over me as it danced in the flickering light of the flames.
He was filthy. I was filthy. Hell this whole fucking place was filthy, and yet something about it suited him, like he was built for the roughness of the forest rather than the bustle of the town we’d left behind. I very much doubted the same could be said for me, but it didn’t matter if I was suited to this place or not – my destiny lay beneath these trees and I wouldn’t turn from it no matter how hard it proved to claim.
“It was no accident you ended up in here with us, was it?” Colton asked curiously, his gaze all too astute, his guess too close to the truth to bother denying.
I shook my head, poisonous memories slithering through my mind, a call unanswered, a fate which shifted so fucking unfairly-
“No,” I admitted, banishing those thoughts. “I came here intentionally. It was always my plan.”
“Then why not train as a Champion?” he questioned.
“My mother and father never would have allowed it,” I said dismissively. “It would have broken their hearts for me to even suggest it. Besides, I’m not like you.” I waved a hand at him and the rest of the Champions, indicating their brawn, bulk, preference for violence. “The way you plan to do this thing isn’t the way I-”
The door thumped open, drawing our focus to Gunther as he sloped back into the room, adjusting his fly and grinning like he had something to be smug about. Helga didn’t follow him but her words did.
“I’ll be along in a bit – just need to finish what you couldn’t, small fry!”
The grin on Gunther’s face faded to rage and I quickly looked away from him, busying myself with drawing the larger of the two books I carried from my pack. It was the one I’d been studying when Colton had noticed it and the only one I was willing to share with him.
“Bitch,” Gunther muttered, stalking back to his bedroll while Colton made no attempt at all to hide his laughter.
Gunther glowered at him but with one assessing look, he clearly decided he didn’t favour his chances against the favourite of the Champions and truthfully, I didn’t either. Colton Evast was a brute of a man and I was starting to wonder if I wouldn’t be better off distancing myself from him sooner rather than later. Especially now that it transpired that he was actually paying attention to me.
Whatever decision I made in that regard would have to wait for daylight, however, so I gave in to the demand he’d made of me and placed the book in my lap.
“It’s a book of the spirits,” I said cautiously, my fingers skimming the embossed cover of the tome I cherished so dearly. There were metal coverings over the corners of the hard case to protect it, and each of the forest’s spirits were represented on its face, all surrounding a single tree.
Colton eyed it, but as he reached out to take it, I quickly opened it and positioned it so that he could view it clearly from my lap.
Colton glanced at me, obviously knowing what I’d just done, but thankfully he didn’t attempt to take the book from me again.
“There are chapters on each of the spirits,” I told him. “Myths and legends recounted, descriptions, depictions.” I showed him the first chapter which was titled ‘The Stag’. There were pages of beautiful artwork showing its pelt of woven leaves, its moss-covered horns so tall and wide it was a wonder the beast could traverse the forest at all. “The Stag is the keeper of the forest’s histories and the guardian of moss, fungi and soil. Where it steps, nutrients bleed into the ground, moss spreads across the trees and mushrooms sprout in honour of its passage,” I surmised, pointing out the various images and notations, the ethereal stag peering out at us from the page as if it were listening too.
Colton nodded, reaching over me and turning the page. I tried not to wince at the dirt beneath his fingernails or the roughness of his grip on the ancient parchment and released a sigh as he manged to complete the task without tearing it. I curled my fingers into fists to stop them from smacking his hand from the precious parchment and watched him silently leaf through the chapter dedicated to the Stag before he paused on the next, which spoke of the Tiger.
“The Tiger was tasked with shepherding the wayward creatures of the forest and making certain that all paid homage to the Great Elm which lays at the heart of the labyrinth where the amulets must be hung if the curse is to be broken,” I said while Colton studied the image of the huge spirit whose pelt was coated in small animals, mice, rabbits and squirrels riding on its back, foxes, badgers and hedgehogs roaming between its legs.
“So you prepared for the Great Hunt in secret,” Colton surmised, turning another page and another. He didn’t pore over them the way I had when I’d first gotten my hands on this book, but he did read the annotations, study every image. Perhaps he was more than just a brute after all.
“I prepared in my own way,” I agreed.
“Because of Rissa?”
Her name on his lips was a dagger through my chest. I hadn’t heard it spoken aloud very often in recent years. Mother and Father certainly never uttered it, and I’d long since fallen into the same pattern. People in town knew of course, but they didn’t bring it up, didn’t just spit her name out in a conversation as if it were nothing at all to do so.
“You remember her name?” I asked dumbly, and Colton drew his eyes from studying the pages which spoke of the Carp and looked at me intently.
“Do you really think me so self-interested that I didn’t know the people of the town I grew up in, Ferris?”
“Truthfully?” I asked, and he narrowed his eyes before nodding. “Yes. I don’t mean that badly,” I hurried to clarify. “But you and all of the Champions were always so focused on your training. I hardly ever saw you socialising aside from frequenting the taverns for free meals and drinks-”
“I can’t help it if people liked to show their thanks for our sacrifice by paying out for a few meals here and there,” he protested, and I shrugged.
“I wasn’t judging. And I agree. The chances always were that most of you, and likely all who entered this place wouldn’t ever come back again. Every Champion chose to risk the forest in hopes of saving our people. Why shouldn’t you have benefitted from some free drinks and easy company in the lead up?”
“Easy company?” he echoed in amusement, and I fought against the heat which rose in my cheeks as he leaned closer to me. “If you had no objections to offering me easy company, then how come you never did so?”
“Oh please,” I scoffed, hiding the heat in my veins and busying myself by turning another page in my beloved book. “You were hardly short of offers and clearly had no need of one from me.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t wish for one.”
I snapped the book shut and he barely snatched his fingers away in time.
“Are you seriously flirting with me right now?” I demanded, meeting his gaze defiantly and finding nothing but a cocky smirk awaiting me. Colton had clearly gotten his way with far too many women, thanks to that smile, but I wasn’t going to become another of them.
“Do you want me to be?” he asked.
“No. Go see if you can satisfy Helga in Gunther’s place if you’re looking for someone to fuck in the back room of a dirty tavern inhabited by all manner of woodland beasts. I came here to see this curse broken, not to become the latest of your nameless conquests, Colton.”
“Ouch.”
“Don’t play the fool. You had no interest in me before we found ourselves together in this place, and I had none in you. Let’s allow that to remain the bar we set our acquaintance at.”
“Acquaintance? Is that all I am to you? Haven’t I saved your life in here?”
“Haven’t I saved yours?” I indicated the tavern we were currently sheltering in, and he conceded defeat by raising his hands.
“Fine. But you’re wrong about me only paying attention to you now, Ferris.”
“Of course I am,” I replied scathingly.
“Always a book in hand, always a scheme in mind. You get that little crease right…there.” He pressed a finger to the furrow between my brows, and it only deepened in response. “Always watching, always plotting. I saw you, Ferris, and you saw me. Only, I think perhaps you dismissed me a little too quickly.”
I pursed my lips as he withdrew his hand, only to find him pressing that same finger to the cover of the book in my lap.
“This is Fae made,” he stated. Not a question.
I sighed. “I traded for it.”
“You can’t trust a thing inside this,” he pushed.
“I know.” But I did trust it all the same. There were so many different accounts recorded in this tome, so many sightings recounted over a thousand years of the spirits when they’d wandered close to the edge of the forest and had been seen from beyond it. The legends of what they’d once been were all documented here too, from Fae who had been living before the magic of the forest was shattered and the curse sent the spirits who had once protected it into the frenzied state of loss they now embodied.
“You didn’t show me the other book you’re carrying,” he said, allowing me my lie, or perhaps believing it too easily.
“It’s not a book, it’s a journal,” I told him, making no move to show him it, and thankfully he accepted my rebuff.
“I’m sorry about Rissa,” he said.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” I replied, earning a hard smile from him.
“That’s different,” he grunted.
“It is and it isn’t,” I agreed, fighting a shudder as my thoughts slipped to the Hollows.
Colton looked away from me, his eyes on the edges of the window we’d blocked with a wooden dresser.
“If I survive this place, my next stop will be at the Necromancer’s door,” he growled, a menace to his tone which hadn’t been there before. Despite our current predicament and the proximity we held to death, I couldn’t help but shudder at that suggestion.
“You can’t mean that,” I breathed, looking over my shoulder as if someone might have overheard him, might pass his threat to the ears of the beast we all feared even more than these trees. No one dared speak ill of the Necromancer, let alone lay threats at his feet. You never knew what ears he might have listening, what foul creature he might send to your door.
“I can and I do,” Colton replied without a flicker of fear. “What more can he take from me anyway? I’m not afraid of a coward who hides in his castle sending monsters out to do his dirty work.”
“I heard someone say the Necromancer is as dead as the army he rose in his image,” I whispered, laying my hand on Colton’s arm as if that might soothe the roiling fury which had been unmasked in his gaze at the mention of his parents’ death. “You can’t kill someone who wed themselves to death already, Colton.”
It was said the Necromancer had once been a prince of the Fae who hoped to become king when the spirit of Providence decided to select a new monarch. But he’d been an impatient male and there were many princes and princesses who might be chosen for the throne. As the years ticked by and the immortal King Arthrun’s reign grew ever longer, more heirs were born but no new monarch was selected, and it drove him to madness.
He coveted the crown the king wore with a fierce desperation and decided to claim his power in case the spirit chose another prince or princess to rise to the throne and disregarded him entirely. So one day, he crept into the palace and killed the king while he slept before taking the crown from his bedside, lifting the sacred relic and placing it upon his own brow.
The crowns of Fae weren’t like the crowns of men. They held ancient power and would only yield to one owner at a time, granting power which aligned harmoniously with the soul of the one who wore it. But the power the crown had granted him manifested while he hid in exile, bestowing upon him magic more ruinous than any which had come before it.
By the time Bane Crownthief revealed his power over the dead, he’d already amassed an army and set it loose on the world at large. His anger was for the Fae but his Hollows struck at any living being they could find. My people had been hit harder than any. We’d been caught unawares and occupied with the forest’s curse and we had no wall to hide behind. Thousands had fallen to his army of soulless dead, and we all knew well to run at the first hint of a Hollow.
Colton studied the fear in my expression, then sighed, shaking his head and waving a hand at our surroundings.
“No need to fear the Necromancer in here, Ferris,” he pointed out. “We should focus on one foe at a time, don’t you think?”
I relaxed a little even though it was madness to consider the spirits an easier foe than anything, but at least their power was born of nature, their curse something which could be broken. The Hollows and the Necromancer who wielded them were another matter, and one I planned never to come close to. I had my work cut out for me in this place and if I managed to win the forest’s boon, then I would gladly allow my turn at adventure to pass and stay well clear of the Hollows, the Fae and anything like them for the rest of my years.
“Do you think we might find another spirit in the morning?” I asked, glad to change the subject.
“Tomorrow will be worse,” Colton said simply, like the fact that we’d faced so much death and carnage already meant nothing at all. “That was just the welcome party coming to whittle us down and choose the real hunters it wants for this game of brutal chance. We’ll find out the truth of this place in the coming days…assuming we’re still alive to witness it.”
He got up and rounded the fire to his own bed, taking his turn on watch while I carefully returned my book to my pack.
I said nothing more as I curled beneath my blanket and willed sleep to come for me, but I had the horrible feeling that he was right and our entry to this cursed place had been the easiest part of the hunt.
“Don’t worry, Rissa,” I breathed into the silence, even though I was beginning to doubt my own words. “I can do this.”
