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Opal
Silence crept after me like a shadow at my back.
Birdsong from the trees above waned and died, rustling leaves stilling. Gazing up, it was as though a glass ceiling had rolled overhead, trapping the world outside and me within.
Fine hairs began to stand upon my bare arms, the warm breeze no longer. The air had grown thick, frozen, yet I could still feel each breath enter and leave my body. One foot moved before the other, carrying me toward the first corner of the maze.
In that corner sat a garden gnome, and as I wound deeper inside the maze, another and another, all dressed in differing painted clothing of red, yellow, green, and blue. Some wore top hats, others bo
The sun didn’t leave me, but its warmth was no longer, and the shade with each passing turn caused my skin to prick and pebble with gooseflesh. Roses, in deeper blacks and reds, hung from many a thorny branch in the hedge, all in perfect bloom.
On my sixth turn, I gave in to the urge to reach out and touch one. Silken petals firmed and yielded beneath my fingertips, and then the ground shook, and I clutched my hand to my chest as roots slithered out from beneath the hedge.
I scrambled back, but it didn’t matter. Like snakes in a feeding frenzy, the roots raced after me, and I fell flat on my back, bones rattling. A scream was trapped inside my throat, unable to be released as I rose to my bruised backside and frantically tried to pluck at the roots that’d circled around my ankles.
Dade would say this was a perfect example of how carrying a weapon could save my life. Yet I had none, knowing I’d probably not be permitted a tool in which to slay him.
Groaning, I tugged and pulled to no avail. Panic scored through me, my heart kicking at my sternum when the vines didn’t budge. They climbed higher, nearing my knees, thorns ripping and trapping my skirts.
Shift, I told myself. I had no choice but to shift.
I closed my eyes, swallowed thickly as my legs began to grow numb, and then rational thinking reentered, and I leaned forward to wrap both hands around the vines. Thorns cut into my palms, my blood only aiding my intentions as I compelled the plant to calm, to stop moving.
My breath, a long-forgotten thing, burned as I watched the serpentine vines slowly still, then gently unravel themselves from my body.
I didn’t wait, wasn’t willing to believe I could afford to. I climbed to my feet, urging feeling to return, and spun around to head back. To head back to the enemy I was growing uncomfortably familiar with. I’d much rather finish what he’d started than waste my people’s chance out here by getting maimed by plants or some other creature.
I reached the end of the hedge-lined path when they moved. Closing in, they slid together in a patch of greenery and roses so thick, I wasn’t sure my meager powers could convince them to do otherwise.
Cursing, I turned, the vines now slithering back under the hedges, and raced across the soft trimmed grass to the other end. If the maze wanted me to earn my way out, then that was what I’d do.
Rounding the bend, a line of garden gnomes blocked my path, and I blinked, swearing I had seen a few of those gnomes already when there was a blinding flare of light.
My arm shot up to shield my eyes, and when I lowered it, I found small faces with determined expressions and weapons bigger than they were in their hands.
Little Folk.
“What do we have here?” asked the white-bearded elf.
“A trespasser,” hissed a tiny thing beside him—a youngling wearing a pair of overalls smaller than my palm.
It didn’t matter that they were little. I shifted without thought, without thinking of the risk, wings flapping and taking me high above the giant walls of the hedge. The gnomes, Little Folk, became nothing but colorful dots below me as I climbed higher, my wings spreading wide with the gathering breeze.
I caught it, soaring over the hedge. At my back, Shadow Keep blocked my ascent from view, but not from those in the vegetable gardens to the west of the hedge, nor the workers in the orchards and wheat fields that stretched for a mile or more toward the east behind a large building with a horse-dotted training yard before it.
Greenhouses sat in three clustered rows beside the fields, and as I breached the never-ending hedge—trees. Dense woods spread from the west to wrap around the northernmost corner, crawling toward the east.
Toward the ravine, the place I’d once found solitude, and had since handed me chaos.
Lost to my musings, the melancholy for all the darkness that lay behind and ahead of me, I banked and dropped beneath the thick foliage of trees and entered the woods. I had to return. I knew that even with the king gone, he could still be alerted to my absence, and if this singular plan of mine was to work, then the last thing I needed was to make him too distrustful of—
A net swallowed me, pulling me toward the ground.
Feathers ripped and splayed, and I shifted back right as I hit the earth, my teeth singing, ankle groaning as I slipped on the netting and rolled to my side. Pushing up and peering through the mesh, I found myself surrounded by Little Folk.
They gawked, weapons slack at their sides or forgotten on the ground.
A white-haired female came forward, her dark blue eyes seeming too large for her small head. “A black swan.”
Another female hurried by her, snatching the knife from her lax hand and snapped, “Well, don’t just stand there, free her.” Clucking her tongue, she approached me, slicing at the net, and then hollered, “Rosa
Shock held me immobile as the rough netting slid down my arms, and I gazed around the small clearing I’d wound up in. Gingerly, I pushed to my feet, absorbing the tiny creatures that rushed out of their homes inside of fat toadstools, thick tree trunks, and the flower beds surrounding both.
Burrows emerged, rock thrown aside and more of them scrambling and spilling onto the grass. “You truly are the Little Folk.”
We hadn’t any in Sinshell for some decades, many fearing they’d been extinct or moved on after the first war.
“We prefer the term Elf.” The white-bearded male drifted closer, his cheeks ruddy and shifting as he smiled. “But you may call us as you see fit.”
“Elves,” I breathed, blinking hard, still taking them all in.
“How do you like your tea?” asked the female, head tilted.
Tea? I stepped out from the netting, walking back a couple of steps toward what I hoped was the entry to the forest. “Just moments ago, you were ready to kill me.”
“Kill you?” The female balked. “Oh, my dear, no. We merely teach trespassers a lesson, and then we let them go.” I froze at that, thinking perhaps it was time to take flight again when she continued, “They might be missing some hair and shoes, but that’s to be expected.”
“Shoes?” I couldn’t help but ask as two teeny tiny younglings hurried through the circular throng of Elves and into the clearing with a tea tray.
The bearded male stepped aside, and sketching his hand behind him, he peeled back some of the foliage. “The young ones enjoy them.”