Read Hollow by Caroline Peckham Chapter 6 –
If there was a time when I’d cared about the fate of the world, it was long forgotten to me now. Call me selfish, greedy, a bane on the realms; I gladly wore the titles. I had no desires beyond my own gains in this hellscape of a reality anyway.
A cursed forest that would gladly devour me, body, flesh and soul didn’t stoke fear in the remnants of my heart. My fears were few and far between – some would say I held none at all. But they would be wrong. There was still one thing that stirred terror into my bones in the dead of night, but I rarely put a voice to it.
Here on the verges of the world’s consumption, who would I care to tell anyway? The Fae who had turned their backs on me? Or the worthless humans who were barely here for a blink of an eye, then turned to dust as if they’d never been here at all? Pointless beings. They were breathing one moment and gone the next. Barely worth a wasted thought of mine.
No, I didn’t have time for humans, and Faekind could rot for all I cared. At least the mortals hungered for their day in the sun. The Fae squandered their endless lifetimes on political debates and drab merriment – I’d rather gut myself before attending either. Again. Because yes, once I had been a part of that bullshit, but I’d severed myself from their company long ago. My days of languishing at balls were dead and buried. The invites had dried up around about the time I’d killed a handful of my people.
They weren’t so fond of shaking my bloody hands these days, and I was hardly scratching at their doors to be let back in.
I rather preferred my position as a loathed prince. But a prince I still was, they couldn’t carve that name from me. My crown was made of blood and there was no tearing it from my brow while I still drew breath. Royal was royal, my blood was proof of it. They could cut my heart out raw and it would still beat blue. It was the envy of all, to be meant for a throne. There were few things the Fae craved more than power.
I gazed blandly at the forest around me, plant life veiling all paths and trying to confound me, but as I stepped toward a knot of vines, they parted.
Perhaps this place sensed what I was, the corruption of me mirrored in the ripe and tangible malevolence that hung in the atmosphere. This forest was ravenous, like a tankard with a hole in its base, filled tirelessly but never to find itself full. I knew the feeling well.
There was no birdsong in this part of the forest, no chattering little creatures. It was as if these trees were part of a larger beast, the moss between them its fur and the rough bark its claws. My task was to seek out its heart and drive a dagger into it – metaphorically speaking of course.
I walked along the silent path, the quiet all too pressing. But then – there, a scream. And another. A pitching wail that brought a twist to the corner of my lips.
“Hungry spirits,” I whispered to the dark. “How many will you take before the next sundown?”
I had sheltered in an old cottage this past night, but I’d moved many miles from it the moment the sun had risen. In all those steps I’d walked, not one spirit had shown itself and the sun was already setting again. I’d moved cautiously, a predator well-versed in the hunt, but these spirits were no ordinary beasts. They sensed what I was and they were retreating from me, as all creatures tended to do.
The trees stirred in a wind I couldn’t feel. Listening. They could hear my voice like lashes on their bark. They didn’t want me here. Welcome I was not. But I had rarely been welcome anywhere in the latter half of my lifetime, so there was ease in the familiar rejection.
The forest acknowledged me as most others did: with caution. I was no meagre human tiptoeing through its boughs, nor a simple Fae whose wits might be bested. I was a beast in my own right, a monster fit for this trial. And these trees knew it.
“How easily you let me walk between your towering trunks, my lady,” I taunted, talking to the creaking boughs. “But I know you’re assessing the cut of me. Whatever death you’ve sent to those screaming Fae or mortals, you know it is not good enough for me.” I raised a hand, brushing it over a knot in a particularly wide tree. It shuddered at my touch and the trunks groaned around me, roaring at my indifference to their power. “Come on, show yourself. Don’t hide like this. I know you have a true form, let me see the real you. Stop hiding from me. Let me see your spirits.”
A hiss drew my gaze skyward and movement among the thick canopy made me halt. I watched, waited, no weapon unsheathed. There was a crack of twigs, a heavy groan of branches as something large writhed between the branches up there.
“Hello, pretty,” I purred. “Come to daddy.”
I reached for the nearest branch, hauling myself up, using the gnarled trunk for footholds. Closer I climbed toward the hulking thing that slithered through the trees, the echoing power of it making my ears hum. The Serpent. Here she was at last. I couldn’t see her beauty yet, but I was about to snatch a glimpse.
I’d trained in Summoning many hundreds of years ago, but I hadn’t cared for the call of the forest until I’d finally realised its use to me. How the fair folk would shudder when they discovered who had claimed it. Their forsaken prince with all the power of the cursed forest to his name. It was worth the effort for that mere idea alone. But I had greater plans for it too.
A rustle to my left made me twist around and my fist snapped out, shattering the nose of the blonde male swinging through the trees. He yelled in pain, and his cries pitched higher as I launched myself at him, arms banding around his waist and sending us both tumbling out of the branches and crashing to the ground.
The air was knocked clean out of him but his soft body cushioned my fall. I grimaced as I was gifted the huff of his breath to my face.
“Caelan Havinger, fancy seeing you here,” I growled, his yells quieting as recognition dawned in his eyes. He was part of the Coterie – the inner circle of the royals, a tight-knit group of ancient Fae who had lived longer lives than any of our kind. And they just so happened to be my favourite thing to kill.
Caelan scrambled for his sword, but I was faster, unsheathing it for him and tossing it aside, grabbing him by the throat in the next heartbeat and pinning him to the earth. “I’d say it’s a pleasure seeing you again after all these years, old boy, but I always was a terrible liar.”
“You,” he rasped, unable to form much of a sentence as he clawed at my hand around his jugular.
Old boy was what I’d called him hundreds of years ago, and his hair had only just held a fleck of grey back then. He’d barely aged since in truth, but being a few hundred years younger than him had always been a point of contention between us. He might have been an Elder, but he coveted youth and beauty over all else. Time took a toll on our kind ever-so-slowly, but in reality, Caelan would never look a day over fifty – in human terms – no matter how long he lived.
“I always thought you’d end up trading with a Hag to get rid of those greys, Caelan.” I plucked one out with my free hand, twirling the hair before his blue eyes. No Fae were ever unhandsome, but if I had to pick a face that was an irritation from mouth to brow, then it was his. “I guess you didn’t think it was worth the price.”
He threw his knuckles into my side, causing a nice crunch, the force throwing me off of him. We fell into a fist fight, all animal, but my new toy was trying to scramble his way free of me more than put me on my back.
“What would a fallen prince want from the Taking Trees?” Caelan spat as he regained his feet.
I lunged for his ankle, biting down with a feral snarl, and he screamed bloody murder. It was a wild overreaction but I guessed he had good reason, considering my appetite for death. And immortals tended to fear that more than all else. When you’ve lived hundreds of years, you tend to grow accustomed to living, so I rather enjoyed seeing the high class of the realm quiver in the face of death.
They gathered riches all their lives, treasures of infinite value, as if they might be able to take them into the black abyss beyond the grave. What a waste of living. And I’d know all about wasting life. Years of bleak, meaningless existence had seen me pursue all manner of follies. Nothing had quenched the monotony in the end. Not that there was an end. Unless you counted this shell my tired soul was trapped in as the conclusion of my existence. No, there was nothing to live for bar one thing now. The prize of the cursed forest.
Caelan kicked for my face but I was on my feet again, swerving in front of him as he tried to flee and pinning him to a tree with nothing but the firm muscle of my chest.
“You’re a madman,” he gasped, trying to push me away to no avail. “Why did you turn on your own people? What did we ever do to deserve your wrath?”
“What didn’t you do, old boy? What wouldn’t the Fae do for a little entertainment?”
His face paled with the understanding of what I knew of him.
“I saw you in your little den of vices,” I sneered.
“W-well I may have my sins but yours weigh far greater than mine. The spirits of the forest won’t let a black soul such as yours summon them. You’ll perish in this place, and I’ll damn well rejoice when-”
I stuck him in the neck with my dagger, his voice turning to a strained gargle, bubbles of blood rising to his lips and his eyes widening in delayed surprise. It was funny how close death could come to people before they realised it had snared them. Beautiful, foolish denial had kept Fae like Caelan merrily ignorant of his demise until his very last breath.
“Pity you won’t make it to the celebrations, Caelan.” I tugged the dagger free, ready to stab him some more to ensure he couldn’t heal from that wound. But as he slumped to the ground, a tangle of vines crept over him, dragging him into a twisted mass of roots. He thrashed against them but they tightened their hold, wrapping around his throat and winding over his chest, stealing him away into a mass of bracken. It seemed the forest was happy to finish the job. And there he would stay I supposed. No grave to mark him, no one able to visit to leave so much as a flower. ‘Poor Caelan’ some insufferable wench would utter to the sky, but his soul wouldn’t be there among the stars. It would lay here rotting forevermore. Because of me. And that suited me rather well. This day was already more interesting than the last, though to say my interest was piqued was still a stretch. Nothing roused me as much as the rush of killing.
I wiped my dagger on the moss by my boots and treaded on, my gaze skipping between the large leaves above, seeking movement among the branches. Nothing. All was still now, my beastie gone to ground. No matter. There were plenty more to find.
I walked a while among the whispering trees, certain they were speaking riddles to me. Sometimes I caught a word or two, a song to lure me east or west but I never wavered from my path south. Not that I knew what awaited me there, but I wouldn’t risk following the call of the forest only to find myself in a trap.
At last, I reached a clearing, parting a fan of low-hanging branches to reveal a valley beyond. In it sat a trickling stream which coiled around an old castle of cream and brown stone. It must have been taken by the forest several hundred years prior. Its turrets were boxier than the modern palaces with their piercing spires but not as decorative, though their pale blue colour was striking in its own right. I strode toward the stocky building, finding it bigger than it had appeared from up on the hill. Vines were crawling across its walls and curling around its windowsills like clawing fingers, but the building remained mostly intact, despite the forest’s touch.
The arched wooden door stood open, beckoning me inside, promising sanctuary. Or death. One of the two. And as no whispers summoned me closer, I risked the latter and walked inside.
The cold was apparent, but a fire would heat a room or two in no time. It was fine enough for a fallen prince – as Caelan had called me. He had loved the royals during his years of servitude, always gushing and following them dutifully. I’d never been fond of an ass tonguer, but Prince Koval in particular had adored the flattery. He was, quite unfortunately, my uncle. A male who had looked down on my father’s choice to marry my mother – a Fae who had not checked the boxes the royals rather preferred for their wedded brides and grooms. The older the Fae, the better. The more connected they were among the inner circle of the Coterie, the more likely they were to find themselves a royal partner. Father had been a rebel. I had to thank him for that.
Royal I may have been, but my relation to King Arthrun who had sat on the throne during my time in the Fae realm of Rivenspire had been distant. I was a prince by blood, but there were plenty of others who had awaited a chance at the throne. The king himself had never borne children, but his sisters had, and some of those children had had their own and so on until there had been a large pool of heirs with royal blood, all awaiting the moment the spirit of Providence would show up and select a new king or queen. But it never had. Usually, a monarch didn’t reign longer than a couple of centuries – or if they were particularly poor at ruling, the spirit would crown another Fae promptly. One king had only lasted two years before being replaced, and he had lived in shame on the edges of society since. But Arthrun, he had ruled for over five hundred years, and there had been no whisper of the spirit stirring. And so the pool of princes and princesses had grown and grown, all hoping Providence might appear and select them. At least until The Last King was finally revealed and the crown finally found its place upon the head of the one destined to rule until the end of this age and beyond. Though I, like many of my kind, doubted that fated monarch would ever come.
Among my rather large family, my uncle Koval was one of the more insufferable of my relatives who had hoped Providence would select him for the crown. He always had been a prissy little tart, so I doubted he’d decided to step into the forest this time. Would he or any of my estranged family be joining me here in the Great Hunt? Perhaps my aunt, Princess Drava, might have had enough gall to test her mettle. The others? I highly doubted it. They held nothing of the ferocity my line of the family had possessed. Maybe my mother’s rogue blood mixed with Father’s rebel tendencies had been the reason for that.
The truth was, I hailed from two of the strongest Fae warriors of the realm, and I’d always found my extended family withering company. I expected I’d feel a touch more murderous if a reunion was on the cards. Funny thing about being branded as a psychotic outcast; you tended to live up to the reputation.
An old chair with a back so tall it was akin to a throne had been drawn up to a fireplace in a stone chamber away from the entrance hall and there I sat, plotting my next move.
Blood speckled my fingertips, and I examined the red tarnish to the deep golden hue of my skin. Silly things, weren’t we? Immortal, so long as we didn’t accidentally fall down a well or jab ourselves with something a little too pointy.
Death was inevitable, so she was good company to keep.
I’d rather make a friend of her than face her whimpering like a newborn pup. It was why I wore her fingers as a necklace. Two bony hands wrapped around my throat, tattooed there to declare her ownership of me.
I felt her creeping closer now, always brushing past, never quite catching hold of me, as if her grip was not yet strong enough to claim me.
“Yes, yes, you’ll have me in the end, darling. But there’s work to be done right now, and you’ll want to see what’s coming next. I’ll put on a fine show for you. A bloody one. You know the type. Our favourite.”
Stories told of Death’s visage, the head of a falcon on the body of a woman. She was the spirit who would take the hand of all those passing into the afterworld and lead them to their fate.
She left me, as she always did, off to seek easier prey. But she’d be back. She couldn’t resist the draw of me. Her little project.
The night was deepening beyond the stained-glass windows, the forest alive with groans and wicked wails. Someone was dying out there, screaming for mercy. They clearly hadn’t made it to shelter in time. A human, most likely. The fleshy kind with bones so brittle, they’d snap like twigs. Why their kind came here, I didn’t know. Proving nothing as ever. Trying to be remembered. What fools. But let them die for all I cared. Let them be hailed back home, only for those celebrants to die too one day, and on and on the cycle went. Stupid, fleshy humans. If I were so breakable, with a lifespan akin to a mouse, I wouldn’t go squandering my death for glory. Spirits be, why didn’t they die for something interesting?
Perhaps, I envied them a little though. Brittle as they were, they had something right. A beginning and an end. Clear cut and quick enough to give them one hell of a fire in their bellies. They lived truer and more keenly than the fair folk. We were the ones to squander life, lavishing in our palaces and draining the earth of all it had to give.
Now look; the forest was fighting back. It despised us, and so it should. I despised us too.
Rivenspire had deserved the scourge of the Hollows that had made the Fae hide, scurrying into their shining towers to wait out the storm. But it had never ceased, the dead still walked the land, roaming, devouring and ripping through lands that belonged to their lush realm – but that was before they’d built the wall. Their numbers increased with every passing day. Enough to climb that very wall perhaps. Or to crack clean through it.
I laughed. Dark and rumbling was the sound. Yes, that would amuse me greatly to see the Fae’s palaces fall, to see them climb on each other’s backs, brother on sister fighting to escape the purge. But there would be no escaping that end. The Hollows were death on legs, ever moving. An unstoppable tide.
If there was something worth living long enough to see, it was that. Oh how the Fae feared the Necromancer who had created them. How they whispered of the king of the wastelands who was sending his dead to finish them all. And oh how I would fucking laugh when their high castles came tumbling down.
