Page 10 of The Quiet
Kay consented to believe her. She couldn’t blame him for asking. Love, or the loss of it, was what motivated him. Ella wouldn’t mention that either. He and her teammate, Jade, had been engaged to marry.
Silence settled, the fullness of the day lingering, waiting to be discussed. A few minutes later, they set off for Tunedyl.
CHAPTER 4
SPIRIT OF THE WOODS
BAKER STUMBLED OVER a clod of grass, hair flying as she fell into the field. She rested with her face pressed into the kiss of morning dew and laughed. Her eyes were wide and thirsty, drinking in the sight of the misty pink sunrise over the forest with snow-capped mountains just beyond.
The night had been treacherous. She’d flinched and squirmed at every whisper of rustling leaves, skirting past any dark hollow where the moonlight wouldn’t trespass. A step had crunched in the woods, followed by a second that had sparked her pulse and made her go rigid. Holding her breath in the forest silence, it seemed that Death was stalking along the timeless, impenetrable darkness that hung like a curtain.
She’d released an involuntary gasp for air, and when Death didn’t jump from the treetops with its claws bared, she realized how silly she’d been. The first signs of sunrise signaled the end of the journey, and now the forest ahead was a symbol of courage as much as her freedom.
She sprinted into the sunlit woods with Valentine’s dagger, and climbed over the tapestry of mossy roots that laid the forest floor. Imagining a warrior engaged in battle, she dove around trees and balanced on roots, waving the blade like Valentine had once taught her.
No doubt Valentine had noticed her absence. He’d certainly notice the knife’s.
She had to bring him something if not drag him all the way here. This place could awaken that old man back to life.
Deeper in the woods, she danced into a wide clearing, stopping in awe at a series of flat stones laid out across the forest. There were names in the stones.
She would have thought they were graves, but there was no end to them, and so they became a path instead. Baker danced over them, drunken with the beauty of it all. Like a dream, a woman appeared beside her as Baker’s fingers flirted with the air.
The woman was dressed in sky-blue clothes, with a porcelain face and waves of curly red hair. She took Baker’s hand and danced with her, Baker caught in the sunlit rings around her irises that simmered like hot caramel.
Convinced that her imagination had run off with her, Baker followed the woman’s steps over the stones, knowing that this was the spirit of the forest.
The wind blew through Baker’s brown dress, tousling her hair and she felt a strange bubbling up in her chest, a sensation that made her want to open her mouth and laugh aloud. She urged it to come but was slammed into the ground with such force that she felt her bones jostle inside her skin.
Her body rolled and she choked on the laugh, flattening her hands on the ground to stop it from spinning as her knife tumbled away. Disoriented, she turned back to where she’d been standing, grasping for Valentine’s knife as she faced monsters.
Twice the size of normal men, they hunched over her forest spirit, their ragged, singed bodies bustling against each other.The creature’s faces were like large seashells riddled with black grooves, collecting a spurt of blood as it spewed up across their chins from the convulsing body beneath them. They were eating the forest spirit.
A gust of wind blew through the trees and the magical luminance of the forest glittered with its many leaves as if unaware of the horror taking place at the forest bed. Abandoning any sense of her body, Baker watched the scene like she wasn’t inside of it. Blood seeped from between the masked creatures as if spilled from a chalice, and a blast of heat wrapped them all as the group caught fire and burned.
Baker scrambled away as one of the hellish creatures noticed her from the flame, turning in a black and white patterned mask. Her heartbeat muffled every other sound as she ran on an endless loop past trees and more trees. Her steps grew sloppy, her sight hazed with exhaustion until she collapsed and heaved to gather her breath, Valentine’s knife clutched to her chest.
The forest was silent as she collected her hair in her hands and buried her forehead in the cool earth. A stew of panic, nausea and confusion brewed in the pit of her stomach.
“Hey, hey, here she is! Are you alright? Hey,” someone asked through the blur of time, but she was convinced by then that she was a rock.
“Hey,” a woman’s voice prompted, shaking her body.
Baker did not move, eyes closed and obstinate even as someone picked her up and started carrying her. Hoisted up onto a strange surface, she folded forward, eyes cracking open as her hands grasped the mane of a horse.
Someone hopped on behind her, and through cracked lids, she found herself among a group of five giant riders with helmeted heads. She couldn’t see the front of them, and closed her eyes each time one leaned back to look at her.
Some contractual silence kept them all quiet until they rode from the cover of the woods several minutes later. Collectively, they all removed their helmets, collapsing them and hooking them on the side of their saddles.
“It was barely a few days old. As soon as it saw the masks it froze up. Its fingers weren’t even frostbitten yet,” a man at the front said, his russet hair in disarray from the helmet, pasted up with sweat as if static had seized it.
“A young one can still split a tree in half with a fingertip. And this close to the base? Not a good sign,” a woman argued back, blonde hair shaved close to her head.
“Bird, it was just stalking the girl,” a third man reasoned. “They smell joy from a mile away. Young Strike will drink anything, even if it’s not fermented through adolescence.”
“Kiddos' feelings do just fine,” the first man shot back, eyes brightening when he saw her watching.
Baker stared.
