The tree was even thicker now than it had been before it was cut down. Leaves sprouted above them in a dense green canopy, and the whole clearing was suddenly washed in cool greens. Hill’s face, a mask of rage, hung in the center of the trunk like a grotesque, lumpy knot.
“You—” he grunted, but the bark closed in over his mouth before he could finish the thought. His nostrils flared as he glared at Fable.
The field fell quiet at last.
“That should hold you,” Fable said softly. “Until the powder has time to wear off.”
“He won’t be the same,” a raspy voice from behind her declared. Fable turned to see Evie stepping over a fresh bed of lush green moss. On her shoulder sat a flinty spriggan. “Not ever,” Flinty continued. “It makes you wrong. Makes you not yourself. He took too much. Went too far.”
Fable nodded. Everything had gone too far. And nothing would ever be the same again. Her feet began moving before she knew where they were taking her. Numbly, she crossed in front of the new Grandmother Tree. Her mother’s body was still there at its roots, somehow untouched by the chaos of the fight.
Her mother looked as if she could be resting. Fable could almost believe she was still breathing. A knot rose in her throat and the world suddenly blurred with hot tears.
“Are . . . are we still fighting?” a voice called from somewhere in the hills to her left.
“No more fighting!” Fable cried. “Everybody lost. You all lost because you’re all angry and stupid and . . . and . . .” She swallowed.
All eyes turned to the girl. Her mouth felt dry. Her mother would know what to say in a moment like this. The Queen of the Deep Dark would have stood with her chin up and her cloak waving in the breeze, and she would have spoken firmly and eloquently, and then everything would have been okay. Fable didn’t know how to make everything okay—she only knew how to get everything wrong.
Suddenly her mother’s words hung in the back of her mind. She sniffed, and lifted her chin. “And in the end, maybe we can all learn more from how we got it wrong than we might have learned from getting it right.”
The collected masses were all staring at Fable. She had never felt smaller.
“It’s okay to have your own special places and to be your own special selves,” she pressed on. “Everybody needs that. But you can have that and still be a part of something bigger.”
General Pholon took several steps out of the forest. At his hooves, the gnomes crept forward as well.
“Look, spriggans and trolls and centaurs—you have never exactly gotten along, but you’re here now, aren’t you? You all belong to your own groups, but you are also a part of the Wild Wood, and the Wild Wood is a part of you. It’s not just a bunch of stupid trees. It’s a place to belong.” The leaves rustled in the wind. “That is what’s worth protecting.”
“We will defend it fiercely,” Flinty grunted, “as we always have.” He slipped down from Evie’s arm and landed on the ground at Fable’s feet. “It is the humans who do not belong.”
“You’re wrong.” Fable drew a deep breath. “Endsborough—and all the humans in Endsborough—are a part of the Wild Wood, too.”
Murmurs erupted in the crowds to either side.
“They’ve always been a part of us,” Fable continued. “A long time ago, someone drew a bunch of imaginary lines, and somehow we all forgot they were imaginary. We forgot that those people are a part of our world and they forgot that we’re a part of theirs.”
Flinty’s beady eyes narrowed. “The queen has always respected those lines,” he hissed. Fable’s chest tightened. “The Old Queen even helped draw some of them.”
“Maybe,” said Fable. “But she crossed them, too. Right here. That’s what this place is.” The light filtering through the leaves of the new Grandmother Tree caressed Fable’s face. “This was not a place to look out for enemies—it was a place to look out for one another. It was a place where my grandmother could belong to both worlds. And maybe it can be like that again.”
Fable’s eyes swept from the fair folk and the wildlings to the humans, timidly emerging from the rolling hills. “You do belong here. All of you. And because you belong here, you’re going to need to learn how to belong together. You’re going to have to learn how to respect each other—even if you never understand each other. You’re all going to need to respect each other’s imaginary lines, and be patient as they learn how to respect yours.”
“What does that mean?” someone yelled.
“It means we might not always like each other, but humans had better be a lot nicer when they see a pixie stuck in a shop window, and forest folk better be a lot nicer when they see a human lost in the woods. It means that, from now on, we remember that if something threatens Endsborough, it threatens the Wild Wood, and if something threatens the Wild Wood, it threatens Endsborough. We look out for each other. I can’t promise monsters like Mr. Hill won’t try to hurt the forest again or that forest creatures won’t threaten the town, but from here on out we deal with them together.”
“Hm,” Flinty grunted, unsatisfied. “And what will become of the villain Hill?” He nodded up at the parts
