“What is the matter?” Nathaniel asked. His eyes scanned the immediate area. The creature seemed to have either fallen asleep or left, because there wasn’t a sound to be heard.
Sweat trickled down my face and spine. My T-shirt was uncomfortably wet in a few moments. I folded myself over the branch so that I rested on it from face to belly, my legs straddling it like a horse. I turned my head to one side and tried to breathe through my nose. Unfortunately, breathing seemed to make it worse. My stomach twisted in knots of pain, and my chest felt tight.
“Are you sick?” Nathaniel asked. He floated down to my side, his face level with mine and his body hanging below as he flapped his wings gently in place.
I nodded a very tiny nod and closed my eyes. Looking at him hanging there was making me feel sicker.
He frowned. “It must be this fog. It’s affecting your human body.”
“Great,” I said through clenched teeth. “As if I don’t have enough to deal with. Now there’s poison gas.”
“We must get you away from here before it affects your brain,” he said.
“Bad news,” I said. “My brain’s already affected. It’s doing the tarantella with my stomach.”
Just then the creature began to move again, and it seemed to be moving a lot faster than it had before. Nathaniel reached for me.
“Carefully . . . unless . . . you . . . want . . . puke . . . all . . . over . . . your . . . jacket,” I slurred. My tongue felt heavy in my mouth and it was getting harder to think.
“I will risk it,” he said, and lifted me off the branch. He placed my head on his shoulder like I was a baby and put my arms around his neck. “Wrap your legs around my stomach and don’t let go.”
“Ooookay.”
I just wanted to go to sleep. I could hear, in a far and echoey way, the resumed chittering and clacking of the monster in the woods. It just didn’t have any urgency for me anymore. Sleep was the thing. Sleep was good.
“Madeline, do not go to sleep,” Nathaniel ordered.
“Tired,” I murmured.
“Do not go to sleep. You must listen to me. I am your husband.”
“Not yet, you aren’t,” I said, or maybe I thought it. It was hard to remember how to talk.
The monster crashed into the clearing. I heard branches breaking and the high-pitched whistle it emitted as it saw us. From my resting place on Nathaniel’s shoulder I could see his eyes grow wide.
“Hold very tight,” he said, and he let go of me so that his arms were free. I hung off the front of his body like a baby gorilla. “I must attempt to fight this creature.”
“Is it a giant spider?” I mumbled.
“Yes,” Nathaniel said, and then he threw a bolt of lightning at it.
The lightning sizzled as it hit the spider’s skin and the clearing filled with the scent of ozone. The spider screeched in anger and thumped its legs on the ground.
“Did that help?” I asked.
“No. Do not let go,” Nathaniel repeated, and he began to try to fly away from the creature.
Pretty quickly he came up against the same problem that we’d had before—the woods were too dense to fly. He hadn’t made any kind of headway and the creature was coming up on us with alarming speed. I looked over Nathaniel’s shoulder and wished I hadn’t.
The spider was fourteen feet tall, with long, tufted gray hair and about a million spinning red eyes. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep for weeks if we got out of this alive.
“Portal?” I asked.
“The elements here are not correct,” Nathaniel said, turning to face the spider and lowering to the ground. “The trees would suppress it. We need an open clearing.”
“Where’s Beezle?” I asked, and slipped from his shoulders to the ground. I landed and sprawled at his feet just as the spider came close enough for me to smell the stink of its blood-scented breath.
“I told you to hold on,” he said, and blasted the spider with nightfire.
The animal reared back, emitted a high-pitched screech. Its teeth clicked together as it retreated a few feet and hissed at us.
I looked up at Nathaniel from my prone position in the dirt. Now that we were away from the cloud of green gas, I was feeling a little better. The bands of tightness around my chest loosened and some of the nausea subsided.
“Nightfire help?” I asked.
“Apparently not,” Nathaniel said. “It seems to be impervious to magical means of destruction.”
“A very wise gargoyle recently told me that most things don’t like fire,” I said, and sat up just as the spider made another run at us.
I pulled up my magic, pushing through the lingering feeling of wrongness from the miasma. Eight legs pounded into the ground, coming closer. I heard Nathaniel muttering to himself, preparing some assault of his own.
The spider’s crazy whirling eyes were too close. It let out a scream of triumph.
I pushed the spell through my heartstone and let it fly, the same spell that had destroyed the monster in the swamp. The spider ignited immediately. It howled as it went up in flames, thrashing its burning legs all around the forest. The stink of scorched meat and burned hair was everywhere. Some of the trees caught fire and the area quickly filled with smoke.
Nathaniel yanked me to my feet and pulled me forcefully away from the smoke and flame. After a few moments of caveman dragging I disentangled myself from his grip, slapping his hands away in irritation.
“I can walk, for crying out loud.” I couldn’t walk very steadily, but I was sick of being yanked through the flora.
Nathaniel gave me a stiff-faced look. “Forgive me. A few moments ago you were helpless and needed me to help save you from the giant spider.”
I brushed some imaginary lint off my filthy clothes, keeping my eyes down. “Yes. Well. Thanks for that.”
He put his hand beneath my chin and forced my gaze upward. “Can you never look me in the eye when you are being civil to me?”
I arched an eyebrow at him and gave him a small grin. “It doesn’t come naturally.”
He let go of my chin, leaving a little warm spot where his fingers had been. “Perhaps it will one day.”
We stood there for a moment, staring at each other. Then I became aware of the heat of flame crackling closer.
“Better move,” I said. “I wonder what the hell happened to Beezle.”
Nathaniel looked surprised. “I forgot about the gargoyle.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the twig that matched the one he had given Beezle. The end glowed blue.
“He has found a clearing for us,” Nathaniel said. “This way.”
He turned to the right and began to cut through the woods. Behind us there was the enormous crash of a tree as it was consumed by fire. I winced.
“Amarantha is not going to be happy with me,” I said. “First I barbecued two of her best monsters, then I burned down her forest.”
“Let us worry about Amarantha at another time,” Nathaniel said. “The important thing is to leave this area before we are barbecued ourselves.”
We hurried through the forest toward Beezle. It seemed to take forever, particularly with the forest burning to the ground behind us. It is not comfortable to feel flames literally licking your heels.
About ten minutes later we reached an open clearing. Beezle sat on a large, pointed rock that jutted up several feet from the ground. He looked terribly smug.
“Check it out,” he said. “Forget getting above the tree line. You can set up a portal here and get us straight home.”
“I’m all for that,” I said, turning to Nathaniel. “Portal us out of here.”
He gave me a surprised look. “But what of your mission? The faeries in the woods will surely report to Amarantha that you were here and that you left without paying her notice.”
