Lillya

When their stomachs were full, the girls had no distractions from their overarching problem, which was being a group of children stranded in an unfamiliar wood. Ivyliss splayed herself on large rock by the fishing hole and whined, “We need a plan.”

Jadelynn flipped the older girl’s silver blond hair over her face. Ivyliss spluttered and sat up. “Stop moping,” Jadelynn snapped. “We have to assume those people Lil saw are looking for us.”

Ruby had been investigating her map, but at this she nearly dropped it. “Why?” she gasped. “Why do we have to assume that?”

“Maybe Sorceress Issabeth got them,” agreed Iris.

“I hope so,” Lillya sighed.

“But we can’t assume,” added Jadelynn like a bucket of cold water.

“There are some caves nearby,” Ruby suggested. Ruby loved caves. She might even be able to tell if something was living inside. Pepper could easily keep guard at the entrance.

“Getting out of sight for the night would be a good idea,” agreed Lillya. “Tomorrow, my mother will be looking for us.” Instant calm washed over her. Mama could find her anywhere, and nothing was stronger. She could snap a few would-be kidnappers and their overgrown guard cats like twigs. They just had to make it through tonight, and everyone would notice they were missing. She clapped her hands together. “Let’s get moving!”

She was less cheerful hours later when the sun was setting, filling the eerie forest with dark patches, long, jagged shadows, and the scuttling of creatures.

“Are we close, Ruby?” she asked, trying not to be cranky with her friend.

“The caves should be just ahead,” insisted Ruby, consulting her map.

“But that’s what you said hours ago,” snapped Jadelynn, not trying not to be cranky.

“I know, but it’s all flat ground from here to there. There has to be an entrance close this time. See?”

Ruby pointed, but nobody saw. They were lucky Ruby could make sense of the map at all, even if she did have trouble judging distances. The red dot was changing location as they moved, but that just made the map more confusing somehow. Actually, the red dot remained at the center while the map changed around it. Maybe that was what was so confusing.

On they trudged through the gray, gnarled landscape full of the most awful trees Lillya had ever seen. Her mother hardly ever talked about growing up in Thorn Forest, but she did admit once the trees always seemed to be watching her. Out of the corner of her eye, Lillya swore she saw eyes in the twisted gray trunks and flashes of movement just out of her field of vision. Sometimes she was sure she heard the trees creaking, even though there was no wind in this dank place. The air hung here, heavy and damp and smothering.

Pippa’s head swiveled. “I feel like if I could just turn around fast enough, I’d catch a branch trying to grab me.”

“You’re just imagining things, Pippa,” grumped Jadelynn, because it comforted her to disagree and not because she believed being grabbed by a tree was impossible in this place.

“Ew,” complained Ruby, foot sinking to her ankle in muck. “Careful, everybody. I think we’re in a swamp or something.” She turned her map upside down and cocked her head, which was not comforting.

Another long creaking sound floated past, and another, but the sounds were louder now and plaintive. They were the nearby echoes of whimpering.

Girls’ heads turned, and Lillya was relieved the sound was not in her head.

“Nope,” argued Jadelynn, although no one had spoken. “We are not investigating crying in a dark forest. I know how that story ends.”

“It sounds like an animal in trouble,” said Iris. Iris once tried to rehabilitate a badger with a broken paw, so she had an unmatched soft spot for animals. Unmatched in this group, anyway. Lillya’s brother Taurin had once barricaded himself in a storeroom to save a family of spiders from dusting. He refused to come out until he had safely relocated every single one of his eight-legged friends. He would have saved the webs, too, but the entire event stretched way past bedtime, so he finally conceded defeat and let Grandpapa Tal carry him to bed.

A piercing whine sounded all around them.

Pepper dashed ahead.

“No, Pepper, stop!” cried Lillya, and she ran after him. Her boots squished in soft, mucky ground.

Pepper was oblivious, bounding from tree root to tree root. He followed the whimpering to a brown bundle of leaves, wrapped up tight like a head of rotting lettuce.

“Pepper, come back,” Lillya called, hopping across what looked like a shallow pit of sludge.

“I am not crossing a swamp,” complained Jadelynn. “This is a terrible idea.”

“Look! The caves,” exclaimed Ruby. “I told you they were close.”

She was right. The dark maw of a vine-draped cave was just across a stretch of oozy swamp. The distance was not far, and it was too dark to come up with a better plan.

“We can make it that far,” insisted Lillya, balancing herself across a wide root. “We need to stay close together. Don’t let anybody get stuck.”

The girls hopped their way over to Lillya, who made her way to Pepper, still sniffing the whimpering plant.

“What is it, Pepper?” asked Lillya. The plant was bigger than it looked from a distance—about knee height, nestled at the base of a twisted tree. Despite its disgusting appearance, it smelled a little like braxismelon and mint. Melon smelled delicious after their long trek.

“How does anything even grow here?” Ivy’s question was more of a complaint.

Pepper snuffled the plant, and a few clenched brown leaves trembled and loosened. The big cat bounced backwards, ears and body flat, ready to pounce.

“Come on, Pepper,” begged Lillya. “Get away from that.”

The plant tightened in on itself and began whimpering again—the same shrill cry over and over.

“Leave it alone, Pepper,” grumbled Pippa, the first to come up behind Lillya. She grabbed Lillya’s arm to steady herself.

Pepper ignored both of them. He gave the plant a sharp smack with his paw. Leaves unfurled all at once, and a sticky, grasping tendril shot forward from the innards of the plant. Pepper leaped out of reach, so the little tendril flailed around while the wide leaves of the plant opened further. It was searching for its prey. A sickly croak sounded from deep inside the plant, and something quivered. A toad was trapped in the goopy maw of the plant. Half the toad’s skin had dissolved away. It croaked again and tried to make a leap for freedom. The plant’s tendril shot back inside the plant, spiraling around the poor toad and pulling it deeper inside.

Iris shrieked, and Pippa jumped back, and that was when the trouble started in earnest. Jostled by Pippa, Lillya half tumbled off her root platform, and her boot sank into the sucking swamp. As Lillya struggled to yank her foot out of the ooze, Pippa screamed in earnest. Lillya turned to help her, and now both feet were sinking in the muck.

A tree-sized plant was behind them, wide open and grabbing for Pippa with a tendril as big around as a grown man’s wrist. Pippa was trying to grab a knife from her pack when the tendril shot around her legs, knocking her flat on her face. Pippa gave up on the knife and beat the plant with her pack while it dragged her inside. Leaves encircled her, gobbling up the pack first, grasping tendrils shoveling the bag into its plant stomach.

Ivyliss grabbed for Pippa, managing to lock arms with her right when the plant erupted in a fiery explosion. Blazing plant bits flew everywhere while the plant still tried to drag Pippa into its burning mouth. Pippa kicked and screamed. Ruby and Ivyliss each grabbed an arm and tugged. Using Issabeth’s bow, Jadelynn tried to fire an arrow while the plant flopped and struggled, nearly hitting Ivyliss, who was hacking away at the tendril still wrapped around Pippa. Luckily, Jadelynn’s shot was short, and the arrow was sucked up by swamp muck. Ivyliss sliced through the tendril, and Ruby and Ivyliss tumbled backward, landing just short of what appeared to be a moving river of thick swamp ooze. Jadelynn pulled Lillya out of the muck she was busy sinking in, and that was about when the buzzing started.

“Get to the cave!” screamed someone. It might have been Lillya, or it might have been someone else screaming what she was only thinking.

They bounded over tree roots toward what seemed like safety, but the buzzing creatures were not similarly encumbered by the uncertain footing. A swarm of flying insects swept over them. Lillya felt tiny pinpricks on her skin like hundreds of tiny needles. Her head clouded, and she stumbled, nearly tumbling into the swamp river. Next to her, Ruby keeled over. Lillya grabbed for her friend, but her arms were like noodles. They flung in Ruby’s direction, brushing against her as she tumbled into the river sludge. The rolling ooze carried Ruby away and sucked her under.

The other girls stumbled as well, most sinking to the ground. Piles of insects landed on the bodies, a black blanket swarming with tiny flapping wings. A miserable Pepper spun and swished his head from side to side as the malevolent insects swarmed his exposed eyes and mouth.

Lillya flailed her tiny attackers away. A rush of panic cleared her head. Quick healing was her only useful magical gift, and she was grateful for it now.

“Help!” she screamed, although she did have the presence of mind to wonder what kind of help she was calling for in the middle of a swamp that was clearly trying to kill them.

A buffeting wind streamed behind her. Lillya turned, and there was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. It was a brilliant white animal, like a horse, but it had giant feathery wings, stretched wide. Those broad wings beat the air, driving away insects with each powerful sweep.

Predisposed to trust helpful horses, Lillya waved her arms to get her new equine friend’s attention. “Ruby,” she exclaimed, pointing to the swamp river. “Help! She’s sinking!”

Two more horses dropped down into the swamp, one spotting the sinking girl. He reached to scoop her up by using his teeth to clamp down on the clothes on her upper back, like a snowy white, winged mother cat. He deposited Ruby on the shore where she coughed up sludge and struggled to wipe swamp muck off herself.

“Are you ok, Ruby?” called Lillya.

“My head’s fuzzy,” coughed Ruby, “and I smell so, so terrible. I’m going to throw up.”

Ruby sounded ok. She had been bitten fewer times since she had been covered in swamp mud. Her other friends were not faring as well.

The first horse approached cautiously and sniffed at Lillya.

“Are you a person?” asked Lillya.

The horse cocked her head quizzically at the question and craned her head to inhale a whiff of Pepper.

“Do you know us?” she tried next.

The beautiful steed nuzzled her hair. Apparently her new friend was just a horse. A flying horse, yes, but not a horse that sometimes turned into a person.

“You’re a pegasus,” she realized, feeling silly for not remembering the familiar story before. She had only begged her father to tell the story of how pegasus had carried her parents over the Ascleon Mountains for three moons straight. “Can you take us home?” she begged. “Please.”

Her horse tossed a soft whinny back to the others. Two more pegasus swooped down from the darkness, and they worked together to gather up Lillya’s friends. A pegasus grabbed hold of each arm and hauled one girl at a time onto another pegasus’ back. When they were all loaded, the pegasus lifted off, leaving Ruby and Lillya with the original pegasus.

Lillya had finally reached her friend. She hugged Ruby and regretted the decision pretty quickly.

“You do smell terrible,” she told Ruby.

“Ugh,” said Ruby, brown slime sliding down her hair.

The last pegasus was waiting, but Lillya remembered Pepper.

“I’m so sorry, Pepper.” She hugged his soft, muscled body and stroked his fur. As an afterthought, she pulled the ribbon from her hair and grabbed a sickly-looking leaf from the ground. Mama would recognize it. Of course, the girls would be home before Pepper, but he had a way of traveling faster than a jaguar should be able to travel when nobody was watching him. She managed to knot the ribbon around the leaf and attach it to his tail. He tolerated this; he’d been subject to much worse with twins in the palace.

Pepper bumped her leg with his head and sat back on his haunches. He wanted to make sure she was safe before he left. Lillya hoped he would be safe. “No swatting crying plants,” she chided him, big furry head in her hands.

Helping Ruby onto the waiting pegasus was no small task. Through a combination of tall roots, knees, shoving, and pulling, both of them ended up safely on the pegasus’ back. Their ride wasted no time once they were seated. She gathered her legs under her, and in two hoofbeats, the flying horse had launched into the air. Each thrust of her wings shot them higher and higher—first through the branches of the tall trees, then into the sky. Her father described the experience as harrowing, but Lillya found it exhilarating. She took time to wave at the sparkling stars. One never knew when they were watching. Now would be a great time for some nosy stars.

“Wow,” breathed Ruby. “You can see for furlongs up here.”

They could, and the view was amazing. A river glinted straight below, and the moon lit up the snowy mountain tops of the jagged mountains just ahead.

Snowy mountain tops? “Ruby, do you still have that map?”

“Sure don’t,” answered Ruby. “I’m lucky I have my head.”

Lillya did not need the map to tell her they were not heading toward Crystal Palace when the caravan of pegasus veered toward Diamond Falls, flapping their way up the mountainside next to the rushing falls. Lillya could feel tiny droplets of icy mist against her skin. She watched distant pegasus disappear one by one into the crags of a mountain peak. The pegasus were not taking Lillya to her home. They were taking her to their home.

Ruby and Lillya’s pegasus swooped in a spiral, and they could see the wide, rocky expanse below as she came in for a landing. On the flat peak above Diamond falls, there were dozens of giant nests made with twisting branches, white feathers, and springy moss. Pegasus dozed inside them, and some of the large bodies were wrapped around little gray foals. These babies were hard to see; they were nearly the same color as their rocky habitat.

While Lillya’s pegasus touched down and trotted to a stop, the others had already landed. Those pegasus nestled their passengers in an empty nest, tugging moss around the disoriented girls like a cozy blanket. Hopefully swamp insect stings were something that could be slept off, because Ivyliss, Pippa, Jadelynn, and Iris were not waking up.

“Water,” gasped Ruby the second she slid from the pegasus’ back. The falls emerged from the rock here, like a gushing fountain. She scrubbed the swamp sludge from her skin and hair, even though the punishment was to end up shivering cold. When she was clean, she stared off the cliff, pointing straight down.

All Lillya could see was churning white water below—far, far below.

“How are we going to get out of here?” whispered Ruby.