The queen scowled. A movement to the north caught her eye. Even as the boy and girl picked their way slowly out of the woods to her left, someone else was stomping into them to her right.
“Watch your step, Mrs. Grouse,” a man’s voice said.
Humans! There were humans all around her—in her forest! The audacity! The impudence! This was completely unacceptable. Didn’t they have entire cities of their own to ruin? What did they think they were doing?
Another voice carried through the branches, and the queen halted.
“The forest is fine just the way it is!” Fable said. Her voice had come from just beyond the edge of the tree line. She was outside of the Wild Wood.
Fable had left the forest. Whatever this was, her daughter was a part of it.
That child was in so much trouble.
Jacob Hill leaned on the iron rod like a cane and shook his head. “I’m just saying, what good is a natural resource if its resources can never be tapped?” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of local legends: former lumber workers who refuse to touch another tree, quarry workers who are afraid to crack a rock. They’re all true, aren’t they?” The sound of twigs crackling pulled Hill’s attention away and he spun toward the forest. “What was that?”
Annie stepped in front of Cole. “Stay behind me,” she said.
Something was emerging from the woods.
Old Jim leveled his rifle at the noise. Gradually, two figures stepped out of the darkness. He dropped the barrel at once. “Evie?” he said. “What in tarnation?”
“Tinn!” yelled Annie. “You kids cut through the forest? What on earth were you thinking?”
“Sorry, Mom,” Tinn said. “It was all my idea. It’s my fault. I’m an idiot.”
She opened her mouth to agree, but another noise brought her attention to the edge of the woods again, just a little farther north.
Jim raised his rifle again, but lowered it almost at once. It was only Mr. Washington’s group returning.
“Find anything interesting?” said Old Jim.
“Afraid so,” said Washington. “The tracks are fake.”
“What?” Hill said.
“Either that or Hill’s giant magically flew away.” Washington shrugged. “We followed them in a ways. They just stop completely about thirty feet past the edge of the trees.”
“You lost the trail?” Hill said.
Washington shook his head. “Of a sixty-foot giant? My old man raised me hunting rabbits. I know how to find a trail. Like I said, it just stops.”
“But how?” Hill put a hand through his dusty hair.
“Why don’t you tell us?” Washington said.
“Me?”
“It does look awful sketchy.” Mrs. Grouse crossed her arms.
“You think I did this? You can see what that thing did to my drill! Why would I destroy my own equipment? Hurt my own crew?”
“Come on, boys,” said Annie. “Let’s all go home.”
“Wait!” Hill shouted, pointing into the woods. “Look! There!”
“Let it go, man,” said Helen Grouse.
“No! I saw something! Just there!”
With a sigh, Old Jim raised his rifle one more time and peered into the gloom.
“Shoot it!” Hill shouted.
“Shoot what?” Jim answered. “I’m not going to fire blind into the woods.” But even as he said it his eyes locked on to the faintest shudder of motion within the shadows of the forest. Instinctively, his thumb drew back the hammer. For a fraction of a moment, he saw what might have been a figure clad in a long, shaggy cloak.
“If you won’t, then let me do it!” Hill grabbed for the rifle and tried to yank it from Jim’s grasp.
“Enough!” cried Annie Burton. “Stop that before somebody gets—”
The gun went off with a boom.
A single shot of lead and brass. The queen’s eyes hung open as the echo of the gunshot faded away like ripples in a pond. Shaking, she reached a hand up to brush the spot with her fingers. Mangled splinters splayed around a small hole in the tree beside her as if a flower had just bloomed on its trunk.
She took a deep breath, her whole body shaking. The queen was not hurt. She was not afraid. The queen was livid.
EIGHTEEN
Fable took quiet footsteps as she eased herself back into the woods a few minutes later. Behind her, the townspeople had already begun plodding back down the human road, grumbling and whispering as they went. The sun had slid well beyond midday, but maybe if Fable hurried, her mother would still be waiting for her in the glen. She was bound to be angry that Fable was late for her lesson. Fable skipped over a patch of vines and pushed through a curtain of hanging leaves. Her mother was waiting on the other side.
Fable blinked.
The queen did not.
“Hi,” said Fable. “So. You . . . saw?”
“I saw.”
“There were reasons,” Fable began.
“There always are.”
“Tinn and Cole were lost.”
“Tinn and Cole”—the queen repeated the names through gritted teeth—“are trouble. You are not to see those boys again. Or anyone else from the village.”
Fable gaped. “What?” she said. “But they’re my friends.”
“They are not your friends,” said the queen. “People are never your friends, Fable. People don’t belong in our forest at all. They are bad men. They bring axes and saws . . . and gunfire, Fable. This is my own fault. I have allowed the humans too much freedom in our domain. I need to be more firm—and that starts with you.”
“Mama. Please, listen . . .”
“Did you know that they brought strangers into the forest?”
“Who? Evie? Evie isn’t strangers,” said Fable. “She’s my friend, too.”
“None of them are your friends!” the queen yelled.
Fable’s chest hurt. She clenched her fists.
“And you,” the queen continued, tempering her voice like hardened steel, “are not just some silly human girl who can skip and laugh and play whenever you like. You have responsibilities. You need to be ready. You are important, Fable. You are the future queen of this forest, and it is long past time that you began to act like it.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be important!”
