Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(40)

He flushed angrily. Oh, how the rumors would fly, and the jokes as well once it became public knowledge that Daylily had fled her own wedding. Was it evil for him to hope that she may have been abducted, not run off on her own?

Shaking his head at his own folly, he scrambled up the last of the path and slipped at the end, nearly vomiting his heart out in a moment of terror on the edge of the gorge. Then he gained the upper country and stood in the Eldest’s grounds.

Only, they weren’t the Eldest’s grounds. They couldn’t be.

For where the stump of the old fig should be stood a great, spreading, fruit-laden tree. And beyond, all was wild, dark, teeming jungle.

“Dragon’s teeth,” Foxbrush whispered, his hands turning cold. “Where am I?”





13


THE BEATING OF A HEART. The thrilling sickness of a gut. The rush, rush, rush of adrenaline coursing through veins.

How strange are these things called emotions, and how exhilarating. How could one ever become accustomed to such sensations?

The utter, ecstatic delight of terror!



She must be mad. Why else did she run from the shelter of the jungle? Why else did she plunge through the screaming throng of women, pushing them aside like so many frail dolls?

She must be mad. Why else was her voice upraised in something like a scream or battle cry?

Daylily’s feet beat the ground with painful insistency. She did not know what she would do when she reached the well. Could a hero be taught to slay a dragon before the dragon descended? Could a maid outsmart an ogre whom she had never met? As the challenge came, so must it be overcome.

She covered the distance to the well in mere moments. Only when she reached the lip of that churning water did she pause, and the wind caught at her hair and her gown so that to those watching she looked like some fiery angel poised on the brink of the Dark Water.

The well was green and black, a witch’s caldron of bubbling evil.

The child can’t live, some piece of her mind argued. Not in that. He’s drowned already. You cannot help.

Dive! Dive!

Or die!

Daylily bared her teeth and plunged feetfirst into the water.

The surging froth and closing darkness was full of malevolence. Daylily felt it immediately, as thoroughly as she felt the cold. Water filled her nose, for she had not thought to take a proper breath, and she struggled upward for air. Her skirts closed around her legs, binding them. But she broke the surface and gasped a half breath.

Something caught her ankle. Something pulled her down.

It was like being caught by waterweeds, slimy and clinging but stronger by far. She was pulled into a blackened world, and even when she opened her eyes, her vision was filled only with stinging murk. She struggled and kicked at whatever held her, but to no avail. Her sumptuous underdress weighed her down, and she sank farther than she would have thought possible into the coldness of the well. She thought her lungs would collapse with the need to breathe.

First, there were bindings upon her wrists. Second, she found that air was given her, though she did not know why or how. She breathed it in desperately, then opened her eyes.

Two white lanterns pierced the darkness of the well. Daylily looked into the face of Mama Greenteeth, who grinned, her fangs gleaming in the light of her own expressionless eyes. Then the apparition swam away, and Daylily followed the trail of light left by her eyes to see where she went. Across from her, not many feet away, was the stone wall of the well, perhaps man-made, perhaps lined with homey care by Mama Greenteeth herself.

The child was bound to the wall. Daylily saw he wore over his mouth a flower gleaming pale green in the light of the monster’s eyes. A similar flower covered her own mouth, and she wondered if this provided the source of air. The little one was unconscious, she saw and was grateful for his sake.

Mama Greenteeth made certain of his bindings, then poked him cruelly. With that, she pulled out from some crevice a handful of wafers and began to eat them. But the light in her eye as she studied the child said that she preferred warm meat to wafers.

Horrified, Daylily strained against her bindings. She could not see her hands, tied above her head. Her hair floated across her face, blinding her still more. But as it waved to and fro, she caught a glimpse of something at the very bottom of the well.

A leafy plant grew in the center, its big leaves stirring of their own volition. And from this grew, like a stalk or stem, the sinuous body of Mama Greenteeth herself.

Daylily’s eyes stung with the murky water, and she could see nothing else clearly. But this she saw with the clarity of noonday, and she fixed her gaze upon it even as she worked her hands against her bindings.

Dive and die! Dive and die!

Daylily gnashed her teeth, tearing the flower the monster had secured over her nose and mouth to keep her alive and her blood fresh. Mama Greenteeth was still gnawing at her wafers, but one long finger and longer thumb pinched the child’s arm, testing.

The time must be now. Now!

Daylily pulled. With strength she had never before possessed, she tore her hands through the bindings, shredding her skin and filling the well with the taste and scent of her blood.

Mama Greenteeth’s slitted nostrils flared. She dropped the child’s arm and turned. She saw her prisoner, struggling against the encumbrance of her wedding rags, swimming for the rooted plant at the well bottom.

Daylily grabbed a stout leaf, and though it waggled against her hold, she pulled herself down and wrapped her hands around the very base of the plant, right down to the roots. She did not look up, even when the roar of Mama Greenteeth reverberated through the water and struck her with a hammer force. She braced herself against the muddy floor and, using her own weight as a lever, pulled.