“Helen, stop.” Annie’s face was pained.
“Is it true?” Jacob Hill leaned in, his voice softening. “I’m sure you knew your dear husband better than anyone, ma’am. Tell us. Do you believe he left you?” He raised his eyebrows. “Or was he taken?”
Cole’s fingers clenched around the slim disc in his pocket, feeling the coolness of the stone and the etching on its surface. He reached up with his other hand and held his mother’s arm. Annie closed her eyes. “Joseph would never leave us,” she said.
“Stolen!” Hill raised his hands at the confirmation. “And they made you swallow a lie about your sweet husband running away rather than deal with the truth. Yes, I’m beginning to see the pattern here. I’m so sorry, my dear. You deserved better. You all deserve better!”
Hill stepped up onto the bench and addressed the whole group now filling the town square. “It doesn’t have to be this way, ladies and gentlemen! For generations you’ve allowed the creatures of this forest to terrorize you, but if we work together, we can send every last one of the wretched things scurrying for the hills!”
Fable’s whole face was hot. “They were already in the hills,” she growled.
“Fable, don’t—” Annie said.
“But it’s true!” she yelled. She turned to face Hill directly. “They were in the hills that you drilled into when this all started. You’re the one who made the forest mad. Maybe the monsters are just showing you what happens when you cross their line!”
“That!” Hill jabbed a finger at the girl. “That right there! See? That is precisely the attitude they have come to expect from you! How long have you blamed one another for daring to wake the dragon rather than facing the dragon together? My dear, sweet child, human beings do not need permission from beasts to tame the land around us! It is our world, my friends, not theirs—or it can be, if you’ve got the mettle. You will never be free from this tyranny unless you make them see what happens when they cross your line!”
Heads nodded in grim agreement.
“What happens?” a voice from the crowd asked, timidly.
Hill’s zealous expression clouded. “What?”
“What happens when they cross our line? What exactly are we going to do?”
There was a pause. “You tell me,” said Mr. Hill.
Old Jim stepped up to the front of the crowd. “We take a stand,” he said. “Hill’s right. My nephew is laid up with a broken leg. Our city is on fire. It’s time. I think you’ll find we’ve got the mettle, Mr. Hill. And you’ve got our attention—so what do you propose to do with it?”
Hill lifted his head. “Hm.” He surveyed the faces around him. A hundred sets of eyes peered up at him across the crowded square. “Are you all ready,” he said, “to stand up for yourselves?”
“Yes!” came a staggered chorus of shouts.
“Are you ready to take back your homes?” he called.
“Yes! Yes!” The voices grew louder.
“Are you ready”—a glint sparkled in Hill’s eyes as he gazed around the assembly—“to slay some monsters?”
The blood drained from Fable’s face. She sank back against Annie Burton as the energy around her built feverishly. No, she thought. No, no, no.
“Yes!” the crowd bellowed. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Rally your neighbors,” Hill instructed. “Fetch every weapon you can muster. Axes and saws, too. We’ll march together to the Roberson Hills and make our stand where they crossed the line! Let’s send them a message they won’t soon forget!”
The whole world was spinning. Fable couldn’t breathe.
“We will make this land ours again, ladies and gentlemen, once and for all,” Hill crowed as the crowd began to move out like a pot boiling over. “Even if we have to level the whole miserable forest to do it!”
TWENTY-THREE
Blue led the swarm. Her name was not Blue, of course, but there is no translation in any human language for the customary pixie title that her kinfolk had given her. She had been raised to be wary, to distrust humankind and to shun their gifts. Blue knew better.
But still, the honeyed milk had smelled so sweet. She had allowed it to draw her out of the safety of the trees. Now that was proper tribute, she had thought. It was laid out in a saucer just her size, a ring of flower petals around it, just like in the old days. She had fluttered over cautiously, her eyes fixed on the offering. She had not noticed the human. Or the net.
The glass prison had come next, and then the human building full of horrible human implements. That had been offense enough. She had thought, perhaps, they had seen the error of their ways when they slid in the second offering—an apology, surely. She did not imagine that they would be so cruel as to imprison her twice. But then the metal bars had snapped shut, and Blue had been hauled into the air and shaken mercilessly. The whole ordeal had been beyond an injustice.
If that forest girl had not freed her, surely the humans would have torn her limb from limb or eaten her wings or plucked off her toes one by one. The tales of barbaric human cruelty were legendary. This affront could not go unanswered.
The problem was, now that the town was drawing closer, Blue still did not have any specific answers in mind. Revenge was all well and good—but how? In the old days they had tormented the sheep or tied an offender’s hair in miserable knots as they slept. But the men who had harassed her possessed neither sheep nor hair enough to knot. And besides, it felt unequal to their crimes. They deserved far worse punishment.
The swarm slowed as the buildings rose up before them. They were at the forest’s edge now. The time for bold actions had arrived. She hesitated, her mind whirring.
And then Blue became aware that the swarm was not alone. Spriggans appeared in the branches and leapt from stump to stone
