The Edge of Strange Hollow by Gabrielle Byrne (best affordable ebook reader txt) 📕

“She won’t,” Poppy insisted. “She’ll tell you that you did the right thing.”

The guard seemed to take a breath.

Poppy turned to the male guard. “Want to know the answer?”

“Don’t tell him,” the guard grumbled, crossing her arms.

Poppy met the guard’s eyes and smiled. “Do you?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Your victory. It’s only a silly riddle—a child’s game. What’s the answer?”

Poppy tried not to look smug. “A shadow.”

“Good one,” he admitted when he had thought it through.

“Well,” the female guard sneered. “You better hope she’s right about the queen as well, or we’re both mulch.”

Poppy dropped the apple back into her pack as Nula appeared at her side. Both she and Mack watched the guards as they passed.

“They’re with me,” Poppy reminded.

The male guard threw up his hands. “Go on, then. Our fate’s in the queen’s hands.” He gave Dog an admiring glance. “But feel free to leave your cerberus in our care. They’re the first I’ve seen.” His black eyes shone at her from the shadows of his face. “Or perhaps I could win them from you. Another riddle?”

“They stay with me,” Poppy said firmly. Dog was the best thing her parents had ever done. She wasn’t letting them out of her sight.

“I can’t believe your riddle trick worked!” Mack blurted as the three of them passed under the archway of rowan trees.

“It’s the Grimwood,” Nula said irritably. “Of course it worked! Riddles are like gold coins around here—everyone takes them.”

Poppy grinned. “Guess faeries aren’t so smart after all.”

Mack tried to frown at her, but laughed despite himself. “Okay then, now what, oh wise one?”

“Now, we go see what the queen knows about the Soul Jar.” Poppy grimaced.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Faery Queen was easy to find. There were no rooms or alcoves in her “throne room”—just places where the trees had been cleared and replaced with sharp, manicured hedges and lawns, trimmed in geometric shapes, and arched trellises. They were marked by tall vases used as if they were exclamation points. Everything was tidy and tightly controlled. Even the vines were trained to do as they were told, spreading gracefully across the spaces between the trees in pleasing symmetrical designs, like screens—or walls—on the outside edges of the garden. They grew denser as Poppy and her friends moved forward. Crystal raindrops hung in the trees and in the trellises, catching the light and shooting rainbows over the ground.

Poppy shuddered. It all reminded her of a series of tunnel webs, leading them along. The delicate green beauty should have been pleasing, but it made Poppy’s skin crawl. It was so perfect it turned her stomach, like overripe fruit, too colorful and too sweet.

The dulcet tones of a harp floated on the air, growing louder as they moved deeper into the wood. They saw no houses anywhere—no signs of a village or of life generally, just the open gardens through the trees, and the dense screens of vines, narrowing as they walked.

Poppy gave Mack a questioning look.

He pointed one finger upward. “They live in the canopy,” he explained.

The harp music grew louder, and they passed between two hedges in bloom, the sweet scent of their tiny white blossoms thick and cloying. They’d been trimmed to look like Fae, with blossoms for eyes, and a spill of flowers for hair. The blooms poured out of their open palms and open mouths.

A long path covered in white snowdrops opened, stretching to a point ahead of them. The flowers beneath their feet let off a bruised scent as they walked over them. Dog sneezed.

The scent stuck to the back of Poppy’s throat, and for some reason, this, more than anything else, made Poppy wonder if going to the faeries might be a mistake. She hadn’t realized how much light and fresh air there was in the green iron tang of the wood. She hadn’t noticed it, she supposed, because it was everywhere. Everywhere but here. Here, the Grimwood smelled as though it had been sitting too long in the sun.

She looked up and her breath caught in her throat. At the very tip of the white path, the Faery Queen sat on a throne of gnarled black wood, polished to gleaming and shot through with silver—but that wasn’t what made her gasp. It was the enormous spiders, nearly as large as horses, stretching along the path to the throne. There were at least ten of them, each accompanied by a faery handmaiden standing nearby to help spin out their silk into skeins. Large baskets sat on the ground, filled with the completed skeins.

The Faery Queen cleared her throat, and Poppy’s eyes snapped back to her. She was tall. Taller than any of the others, and needle thin. Her gown was made of spider lace, covered in tiny diamonds—or at least Poppy thought they might be diamonds. Then again, they might be crystals … or dew drops. All she knew was she didn’t want to get close enough to find out.

The queen’s face was gaunt, and deep blue—with a bruised, shadowed look below her dark eyes and across her cheekbones. She watched them approach almost eagerly, her thin lip curling as her gaze fell on Nula.

Nula flushed and dropped into a deep curtsy. “Great Queen,” she began as Mack and Poppy scrambled to sketch bows of their own. “You who are wise beyond measure, lovelier than stars, strong as the—”

“I see my hedge did not deter you, pooka. But never mind. You’ve brought strangers.” The queen’s voice was airy and high, like breath through a bell, and Poppy thought that if she heard that voice in a moonlit glade, she would never in a million years picture the queen as she really looked.

Poppy drew up, and beside her, Mack shifted his weight. “We’re seeking information, Your Majesty,” she interjected. “Nula says your people know everything there is to know in the Grimwood.”

The force of the queen’s consideration fell on Poppy, and it was like being pinned by a curious collector. Sweat broke out across her