Page 41 of The Light Between Worlds

“Do you like it?” Tom asks. “I come round in summer when school’s out and help the head gardener. The grounds all look like this then—flowers every way you turn.”

“I do.” The idea of walking back past all those stags is a daunting one, but I try to push the thought aside, to stay here, stay present, stay in this moment of beauty and warmth.

We linger in the glasshouse, sharing out the sour halves of a ripe lemon. When it’s time to go, Tom helps me into my coat and grabs a metal pail.

“I’ve got one more thing to show you,” he says. “Just keep a few steps back from me.”

I frown but follow after him as he goes out the glasshouse’s far end and trudges across the park, toward the leafless grey woods. Near the trees he shakes the bucket and calls out.

“Hey now! Come on, boys! Come on!”

For a long time, nothing happens. Tom calls again, and then they step out from the shadow of the wood—twin stags, their hides the color of autumn leaves.

He couldn’t know, he couldn’t, but that doesn’t change the pounding of my heart, the terrible pain in my chest. I stand rooted to the spot as a hundred memories flash through my mind in an overwhelming onslaught.

Cervus in the Great Wood, the birch ring, the castle. Cervus calling me away from this world and to a place where I belonged. Cervus healing my burned hands with a touch. Cervus and me tending the dead.

One of the stags takes a mouthful of grain and rests its head on Tom’s shoulder. He throws an arm around its neck.

Cervus on the beach.

Grey rain, a grey sea, a grey sky.

I turn and run, heading for the wrought-iron gate. I don’t stop until I’ve burst through it and into the laneway, where I slip through a gap in the hedgerow and hurry on across the dales, occasionally stumbling over a stone or rabbit hole. I don’t look back to see if Tom’s following—I hope he isn’t, because I’m drowning in memory and I’ll go under soon.

When I find an outcrop of rock that offers a little protection from the brisk wind, I huddle against it and pull my knees to my chest, because

we’re losing this fight.

The Empire’s army tore a hole through the Great Wood, hacking and burning their way to the heart of it with ruthless Heraklean fire. There’s fighting everywhere, even in the midst of our encampment now.

“Cervus!” I call out through the pandemonium. “Cervus, where are you?”

He appears suddenly, the only still spot in a world of terrible motion. I run to him, dodging a Tarsin soldier as I go.

There are so few of us already, though our enemy can’t possibly know. Hector’s cobbled-together army still fights like smoke in the forest, hurrying in to attack, retreating just as swiftly. They are quick and clever and desperate, but woefully outnumbered.

“Take me to my sister,” I beg Cervus. We stumble across the battlefield, which is littered with bodies and abandoned weapons, the air thick with smoke from burning trees and tents.

Halfway across the clearing a great cry rises up among the Tarsin soldiers. I cast about us in confusion, and there at the edge of the trees is a chariot driven by a formidable figure in gilded armor that gleams brightly even under the halfhearted spring sun.

“Is that him?” I breathe.

“The Tarsin Emperor himself,” Cervus answers. “Ruler of the Known World, should the fronts here and in Illyria fail.”

But something has happened, something the Imperial troops don’t seem to notice, caught up in their battle cries.

The field has emptied of Woodlanders. Though the wounded and dying still cry out, Cervus and I stand alone at the clearing’s center, surrounded by the wreckage of our encampment.

“Will you surrender now, Cervus?” the Emperor calls out, his booming voice echoing back from the trees. “Bow before me and I swear I will leave a few trees standing. A handful of sad copses here and there, for a frightened remnant of Woodlanders to hide away in, telling tales of the day their country was destroyed.”

Cervus stands proud beside me. Above us, a breeze sways the branches of the greening trees. I tighten my grip on Cervus, twining my fingers in his fur. The breeze overhead is a wind now, edging on toward a gale. Leaves skitter across the clearing and twist among the Empire’s soldiers. Faintly, I hear a chiming laugh.

The leaves swirl and gust around the Emperor’s chariot and he makes no more futile offers. He’s silent, and Cervus and I exchange a look. The soldiers fix their eyes on him in confusion, and Vaya takes her girl shape as the Tarsin Emperor goes white, then blue, with her hands around his throat.

When the first soldiers make for the chariot, she vanishes, skipping away with the breeze, and the Emperor collapses to his knees, gasping for air. It’s a moment of uncertainty, a moment without the threat of fire, and it’s all Hector needs.

The last of the Woodlanders burst from the trees near soundlessly, barefooted or barehooved, making no hue or cry. Hector charges in at their head, and I catch sight of Jamie among their ranks. It’s not until they’re fighting with the very last of the Emperor’s guard that the soldiers fully realize what’s happening. But tree spirits move among the Tarsin army, there one instant and gone the next, reaching out tostrangle with invisible fingers and sowing terror in their wake. The Emperor’s troops panic.