Thornwood by Leah Cypess (read after .txt) 📕

I tried. But a branch shot across my legs, and I tripped and fell. The second my hand hit the ground, another branch erupted between my fingers.

“Varian!” Rosalin cried. “Cut her loose!”

No. Help Edwin first. I tried to say it, but the words wouldn’t come. Terror closed my throat. Edwin wasn’t moving now. Branches climbed over him, growing from his hunched-over body. That would be me, in just minutes, if we didn’t get out.

Varian sawed through the branch holding my hand down, and then through the vines around my ankle, and then he whirled and sliced off a branch that was reaching for Rosalin’s neck. Together, the three of us staggered toward the castle doors. A branch struck at my ankle, and I savagely kicked it away. Varian stopped using his sword like a knife and instead swung it wildly in front of him. The blade cut through a swath of trees, which fell away like dust, clearing a space before us. For the first time, I believed we were going to make it back.

But not all of us. We had already passed the thorns growing over Edwin.

I forced myself to stop, even as the thorns bent toward me and every muscle in my body screamed Run run RUN! I looked up. The black figure was still watching us, her dragonfly wings spread wide.

“Fairy Godmother!” I screamed. “Help us and I’ll spin for you!”

The fairy didn’t move. I sobbed, turned away from Edwin, and lurched forward, but I had stopped for too long. A branch was wrapped around my ankle. I reached down and yanked it. Pain pierced my palm and blood dotted the thorns, but the branch didn’t move.

I looked up. A solid wall of trees had shot up before me, already so thick they blocked Rosalin and Varian from view.

Someone seized me by the shoulders, and a musical voice said, “Hush! Stop calling for fairies, you stupid child. I’m not the only one who might answer.” The fairy pointed at the branch holding me down. “Cease to grow!” she commanded.

The branch dissolved, and the fairy lifted me into the air, her hands beneath my arms.

I screamed, and she snarled, “I said be quiet! My power is limited in my queen’s woods. I’m doing what I can.”

She shot upward so fast that the air was ripped out of my throat, giving me no choice but to obey.

The thorns writhed up toward us, but in less than a second, we were out of their reach. Before I had time to think about falling, the fairy deposited me on the sill of the tower window.

“All of us,” I gasped. “I said us. My sister and her prince, and Edwin, too.”

The fairy godmother hovered in front of me, her wings a blur. “You will spin extra for each human I save.”

“Yes, yes. Just get them!”

She smiled her too-wide smile and dove into the woods, leaving me alone on the windowsill.

Below me, the tower stretched down, down, down into the branches. The tops of the trees thrashed in the wind, too far below for me to make out individual thorns.

All at once, I could think about nothing but falling.

The fairy had left me on the very edge of the windowsill. To get myself inside the tower, I would have to move sideways along the ledge until I reached the window. Stabs of fear crawled up from my feet and quivered through my body. One wrong move, one careless shift of weight, and I would fall screaming into those waiting thorns.

Dizziness washed over me, and the world tilted. I closed my eyes and clung to the cold stone with all my might.

A whoosh of air. I opened my eyes just in time to see the fairy godmother deposit Rosalin on the windowsill next to me.

“Excuse me,” I said. My voice shook. “If you don’t mind, could you—”

The fairy whizzed downward and disappeared into the Thornwood.

Rosalin made a strangled sound. She got to her feet, inched along the narrow sill, and swung herself through the window. I heard a thump as her feet hit the floor.

“Briony?” she said. “Come on.”

She made it look so easy. I leaned in toward her, and my hand almost slid off the smooth stone. I froze.

“Briony?” Rosalin’s head popped through the window. Her face was marred by three long, bloody scratches and surrounded by a ragged mass of shorn tangles, but she still looked beautiful. That’s fairy magic for you. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t move,” I whispered.

Rosalin frowned. “All right. Don’t look down.”

I looked down anyway. The thorns were a tangled blackness far, far below. There was no movement in the branches.

“I said don’t, you idiot!” Rosalin said. “Look at me.”

I looked at her. Rosalin had pulled herself halfway onto the sill and was leaning precariously over thin air so she could hold out her hand.

“Come on,” she said soothingly. “Just move a little bit forward and I can pull you in.”

Or I could pull her down. I looked over the side again.

“Stop doing that!” Rosalin said.

The Thornwood was back to the solid mass it had been before we started cutting through it. Shouldn’t the fairy be back by now? Was it taking her this long to get Edwin free?

Was Edwin still alive?

I remembered the branches growing over his face, cutting off his screams. My gut wrenched, but at least I wasn’t thinking about falling. I used that moment to slide one hand forward.

“Good,” Rosalin said. “Now your leg—your right leg, so you stay balanced.”

It sounded like a good idea, but my leg felt like it was made of stone—quivering, heavy, rubbery stone. I couldn’t move it.

Rosalin slid farther out onto the sill. My stomach lurched just watching her, but she leaned right next to the edge as if it were nothing and took my fingers in hers.

“Don’t pull me!” I screamed.

“I won’t. Come on, Briony. You can do it. Don’t be afraid.”

“Did you ever notice,” I said through gritted teeth, “that people only say ‘Don’t be afraid’