“Wait,” Cole wheezed.
“It’s fine, Oliver. It’s fine.” Hill’s lips were tight as he supported Mr. Warner by the arm, urging him away from the field and up toward the hills again. “Just get yourself back home now. Can you manage that?”
“Of course.” Warner nodded. “Right away, sir. Just remind me where those samples are and I’ll go see to them.”
“Oh, for—” Hill pinched the bridge of his nose. “The steamer trunk, Oliver. They are in my steamer trunk right at the foot of your—”
Hill stopped talking abruptly. He released Warner’s shoulder and stepped back a pace, his eyes narrowing. Oliver Warner wobbled. He looked increasingly nervous under Hill’s scrutinizing gaze.
“Wrong leg,” Hill said.
“Oh, that. Yeah,” said Mr. Warner. Except suddenly his voice did not sound like Evie’s father’s. He sounded much too young. Warner’s features blurred and wobbled like the far end of a road on a hot summer day, and his face transformed into Tinn’s face. “I was hoping maybe you wouldn’t notice.” Tinn shrugged feebly. “Not sure how much longer I could’ve kept it up, anyway.”
The sunlight caught a hint of glass in the changeling’s hand and Hill patted his jacket reflexively. “You little thief,” he said, but he sounded almost impressed. “You’ve stolen one of my vials.”
“Noticed that, too, huh?” Tinn swallowed. “Evie! Egg toss!”
He whipped the glass tube high over Hill’s head. It sailed across the field until it came to land in the cupped hands of Evie Warner.
“Run!” Tinn shouted. Evie nodded and bolted away over the uneven terrain.
Hill snarled. “You,” he spat, kicking the makeshift cane out from under Tinn and giving him a shove. The boy crumpled to the ground beside his brother. “. . . Are beginning to test my patience.”
Hill sneered down at them, and then something in the grass caught his eye. He leaned down and picked up Old Jim’s discarded rifle. The barrel opened with a click. “Just one shot,” he said, snapping it closed again. “Choices, choices.”
Annie Burton raced down the hill. The entire town had just watched Tinn transform. They had felt Fable’s power. There would be no hiding them after this. So much for secrets.
“You see what we’re up against?” Jacob Hill was yelling from the center of the field. In his hands he held a gleaming rifle. “They will stop at nothing to manipulate you!”
Annie’s stomach lurched. Hill’s contagious zeal had turned maniacal. His eyes looked eerily black. She ran faster.
“They are shape-shifters, my friends! Demons! They are—”
“My boys!” Annie cried. “Stop! Please!” She was still so far away, her legs pumping as she raced over the scarred landscape.
Hill glowered, but then his face became a mask of indulgent sympathy, and he addressed the hills all the more loudly. “This poor woman has suffered enough, ladies and gentlemen. She has been under the thrall of these monsters for too long. All of you have!” He lifted the rifle and drew back the hammer. “But that ends now.”
“NO!” Annie yelled.
Fable screamed.
It was the scream that did it. The queen had already nearly reached the stump of the Grandmother Tree when she heard it. She pulled the cloak over her head as she ran. In a blur of motion, a mountain of furry muscles, sharp fangs, and wicked claws was suddenly barreling toward Jacob Hill. The queen roared.
Mr. Hill spun, the loaded rifle in his hands, the hammer drawn.
The bear leapt.
Hill pulled the trigger.
The gun went off with a ferocious BANG.
Fable did not stop screaming, not even after the air had left her lungs. It was a scream beyond sound.
She watched in horror as her mother’s body jerked back midair as if caught on an invisible wire. She watched the unstoppable Queen of the Deep Dark drop like a bear-shaped boulder into the dirt at Hill’s feet.
Then there was stillness—there was the echo of that lone gunshot bouncing across the hills—and there was the screaming. The screaming was everywhere. It made Fable’s vision reel. It came from every tree, every rock, every blade of grass. The forest was screaming with her.
And Fable could hear it. She could hear the forest, clear as day.
She couldn’t not hear it—it was deafening.
And the forest heard Fable, as well.
And their cries were one cry.
And then the earth moved.
THIRTY
Reality bent.
The hillside rolled like waves in a storm, throwing wary combatants off of their feet before they had even rejoined the fight. The entire horizon had become a writhing serpent. Raw power crackled in the air like lightning.
Fable did not remember rising, but she was suddenly upright and free, the soil no longer pressing into her back. Many days later, a confused hinkypunk would find a warped iron rod lodged deeply in the trunk of a mossy tree three miles away. The hinkypunk—not knowing that the twisted metal had once restrained the most powerful being in the Wild Wood—would use it to hang wild garlic for drying.
Fable filled her lungs. High above her, dark clouds began to churn. She slid her foot forward and the ground beneath her swelled in response. She clenched her fists, and a hundred knotty roots writhed like serpents under her feet. She and the forest spoke wordlessly, connected by an understanding beyond language.
Jacob Hill dropped the smoking rifle.
Fable’s eyes narrowed, and vines erupted from the earth like geysers, whipping around Hill’s wrists. With a yowl, he ripped his arms free just as a fresh tangle of roots wrapped themselves around his legs. He kicked wildly, tearing loose again, the strength of a giant still coursing through his veins.
Hill glowered at the girl, his gaze like fire. He took a step toward her, uprooting creeping plants each time he moved. Another step. A third. The wind whipped across the field and Fable’s vegetative assault increased. Hill’s progress slowed. He was strong, but Fable and the forest were relentless. For a moment they seemed to have reached a stalemate.
Then Hill ripped a hand free and plunged it into his jacket pocket. He drew
