“Is that a tree?” said Cole.
“Maybe,” said Fable. “Lucky. Kallra never gives me anything.”
“What does it mean?”
Fable shrugged.
“Do you think I can keep it?” said Cole. “Would that be okay?”
“Duh,” said Fable. “A lady in a lake just gave you a present. It’d be rude not to. Didn’t your mama ever teach you basic manners?”
“I don’t think someone who pees behind a bush is allowed to lecture me about manners.”
“I only peed behind the bush because you got all weird when I started to pee in front of the bush. Jeesh. Everybody pees, Cole. It’s not like I peed on a pixie ring. I’m not about to make that mistake twice. Hey, you wanna see a pixie ring?”
Cole turned the disc over and over in his hand as Fable led him onward through the Wild Wood. His feet stumbled, but his mind was racing. If the nature spirit had really wanted him to have this, then it had to be related to his vision, right? Did this mean his father was definitely still out there? Would the stone somehow help them find him? This could be the first clue in thirteen years that might connect Cole to his own long-lost family.
“What the snot happened here!”
Cole looked up to follow Fable’s horrified gaze.
All around them, the ferns and grasses had been trampled down, and several limbs had been lopped off the trees nearby. A little way ahead, the tree trunks thinned out and rolling grassy hills began.
“Looks like somebody else came exploring through here first,” said Cole. “Where are we?”
“Not a place that people are supposed to go exploring! This part of the forest is extra special. There’s a sacred Grandmother Tree right over—” Fable stopped. “Wait. It should be right up ahead. We should be able to see it from here.”
“Maybe you got turned around,” suggested Cole. “Let’s—whoa!”
Cole pitched forward abruptly, slamming hard onto the forest floor, one leg jammed deep into a hole in the earth.
“Ow!” he managed.
“And what is THAT?” Fable demanded.
Cole pulled himself out of the hole. His hip was sore from the landing, but miraculously he did not appear to have turned an ankle or broken anything. The hole into which he had stumbled was perfectly circular and only a bit wider than a dinner plate. It went straight down, deeper than he could see. His foot had not felt a bottom. “You know any giant gophers?” he said.
“This was not gophers.” Fable narrowed her eyes. She reached a hand up to feel the fresh sap dripping from the severed tree branch. “Mama is not going to be happy about this.”
The stone Cole had gotten from Kallra had been knocked out of his grasp by the fall, but it had only bounced a few feet away and come to rest in a pile of pine needles. Cole bent down to retrieve it, but as he rose, he felt a crawling, prickling sensation on the back of his hand. He swiped at his wrist instinctively, and connected with something that felt decidedly heavier than an insect. It gave a screechy squawk as it flew through the air, and then landed with a plop next to the hole.
“Sorry!” Cole stepped toward it and stood over the crumpled creature. It was a miniature person, no more than five or six inches tall, built like a sturdy tree branch. Its legs and arms looked as though they had been woven out of flexible twigs. Cole could not tell if the figure was wearing tiny wooden armor or if it simply had a chest that resembled tree bark. One of its sticklike legs was bent and badly splintered. It breathed heavily as it attempted to right itself.
“Oh, jeez. Sorry, little guy,” said Cole. “Or girl? Wood-person? I didn’t mean to—um. You were just on my hand, and I . . . Sorry.”
The creature turned, its face a tiny mask of indignant rage.
“Are you a nature spirit? Hey, Fable! Come over here. I found a—a thing. What is this?”
Fable tromped back over the flattened foliage. “What did you—” She froze. “Oh crud.”
“What? What is it?”
“Spriggan.”
“The ones with the tempers and the grudges?” Cole whispered.
“Whatever you do,” Fable said soberly, “do not make it mad.”
“You mean, like, maybe don’t slap it across the forest?” Cole whispered back.
“Why would you even think that? Are you crazy? Definitely don’t do that!”
Cole swallowed hard.
The spriggan chittered like a furious squirrel, not taking its beady eyes off the boy.
“What do you mean?” Fable barked indignantly. “This mess? Absolutely not! We didn’t have anything to do with this. We just got here.”
The spriggan chirped angrily again, and then straightened and pulled a loose stick out of its back. The stick emerged with a faint shhing, like a knife being drawn from a sheath. Its end was polished ivory and looked very, very sharp.
“Hold on,” Fable said. “Cole didn’t do anything wrong. He’s allowed to be here. He’s my guest. Just wait a minute . . .”
“Easy, little guy,” Cole said. He held out his hands peaceably. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”
The creature seemed to let down its guard for a moment, but then its expression faltered. It stared at the disc still cupped in Cole’s palm, and then its sinewy muscles tensed and it shrieked, redoubling its fury. It shifted its footing, leaning its weight on its one good leg as if preparing to leap, and raised the ivory blade over its head.
Fable dove through the air, and with a muffled fwumph, she landed between Cole and the spriggan—not as a girl but as an adolescent bear, her teeth bared and her hackles up. She growled fiercely. In the moment’s hesitation that her sudden appearance gave the creature, Fable batted it hard with a swipe of her paw.
The spriggan stumbled backward, teetering on the edge of the deep hole. Cole stared at it unblinking. The creature swayed on the brink.
In
