With a wary smile, Serilda lowered herself to a crouch. “Hello there. I won’t hurt you.”

  It blinked—one eyelid closing at a time. Then it lifted a webbed hand toward her and crooked one of its fingers.

  Beckoning.

  It did not wait for her reaction.

  The schellenrock turned and scampered past her, before lowering itself back down into the lake’s shallows with a jangle and a splash.

  Serilda glanced around to see if anyone was watching, but a woman pushing a cart full of manure had paused to chat with a neighbor in the overhang of their front door, and no one was watching Serilda, or her unexpected visitor.

  “I suppose I might be a lost and weary traveler,” she said, following the creature. She climbed down onto the shore, which was more rock than sand. As soon as it was sure that she was following, the schellenrock took off, speeding through the shallow water on hands and feet, staying close enough to the shore that it was easy for Serilda to keep pace with it.

  It was leading her straight toward the cobblestone bridge that connected the castle to the town, and unless it expected her to swim out into the lake to go beneath the drawbridge, they would soon reach a dead end.

  But the schellenrock did not swim out farther into the lake. Once they reached the bridge, constructed of rocks and boulders that were slick with algae, the creature climbed up over a few rocks and vanished.

  Serilda froze.

  Was she imagining things?

  A moment later, the creature appeared again, its yellow eyes peering out at her from the rocks, as if asking why she had stopped.

  Serilda approached with a bit more caution. Fitting her hands onto the damp stones, she pulled herself up to where the schellenrock was waiting for her. The climb was easy enough, so long as she was careful not to slip.

  The river creature disappeared again, and when Serilda peered into the space where it had gone, she saw that there was a little alcove in this wall of rocks. And tucked into it—invisible from the shore or the docks—was a small cave, leading away from the castle, underneath the city.

  Or, perhaps, a tunnel.

  Or a hiding place for a schellenrock, she supposed.

  A small part of Serilda wondered if it would be best not to follow. This cave looked dark and dank and all manner of unwelcoming.

  But she had heard, and told, enough stories to know that it was never wise to ignore the summons of a magical creature. Even a lowly, peculiar one like this little river monster.

  As the schellenrock crept into the mouth of the cave, Serilda hastily tied back her braids and followed.

  Chapter 42

  Her initial reaction had been accurate. The cave was dark and dank and entirely unwelcoming. It also smelled of dead fish. She had to stay crouched the entire time and her legs were aching something terrible; and there was standing water on the cave floor that the schellenrock kept kicking up behind it and splattering into Serilda’s face.

  And she couldn’t see. The only light came from the schellenrock’s faintly illuminated eyes, which might have let it see well enough, but left Serilda in the dark.

  The path was mostly straight, though, and Serilda could tell that they were traveling beneath the city. She tried to gauge how far they had gone, and wondered how long this tunnel went for, and very much hoped that it had an opening at the other end and she wasn’t being led to an unsavory death.

  Just when she was beginning to think her thighs couldn’t take any more and she would have to start crawling on her hands and knees—not a tempting proposition—she saw a spot of light up ahead and heard the burble of water.

  They emerged.

  Not in the town or out in the fields …

  But in a forest.

  Serilda had no sooner marveled at how gratifying it could feel to stretch one’s legs after they’d been crouched for far too long, than a shiver prickled along her spine.

  The creature had brought her into the Aschen Wood.

  They were standing in a shallow creek bed, surrounded by ancient trees, their boughs so thick she could barely make out the sky above, sheltering them from the rain. The air was still damp and chilled, and great globs of rainwater fell from the branches.

  The schellenrock hurried off down the creek, its webbed feet splashing in the shallow water, part hopping, part hobbling, leading Serilda deeper into the wood.

  Her boots squelched with every step. She knew she should be afraid—the woods were not friendly to humans, especially those who entered them on foot or ventured off the road, and she was definitely off the road. But mostly she was curious, even excited. She wanted to pause and drink it in, this mysterious place she’d been dreaming of her whole life.

  The one time she’d ever been beyond the edge of the woods was a few short months ago, on the night of the Hunger Moon, when the king had first summoned her and the carriage traversed the little-traveled road through the forest, when it had been too dark to see anything.

  Papa had never dared enter the woods, not even on horseback. She doubted he’d have traveled through the woods if he had an entire royal guard to accompany him. His fears made more sense to her now. The Erlking had lured away her mother, and most people believed that the Erlking still resided in Gravenstone Castle, which lay deep in the heart of the forest.

  Regardless whether the king now called Adalheid his home, the Aschen Wood remained a treacherous place. Serilda had always feared it, just as she’d always been drawn to it. What child could resist the allure of such magic? The image of fae creatures dancing on toadstools and water sprites bathing in the brooks and songbirds with glowing feathers alighting on the branches overhead.

  But it was not quite the landscape of evocative color and song she’d always pictured. Instead, everywhere she looked there was a chorus of gray and green. She tried to think of it as pretty, but for the most part, it struck her as a palette of uninterrupted gloom. Spindly black tree trunks and branches drooping with strings of lichen and fallen logs crumbling under the weight of thick moss and fungi the size of wagon wheels.

  There was a sense of eternity here. This was a place where time didn’t exist, where even the smallest sapling might be ancient. Unchanged and unchanging.

  But of course, it wasn’t unchanging. The forest was alive, but in quiet, subtle ways. The fat spider spinning its intricate web among a patch of bloodberry thorns. The rumbling call of toads along the banks of a murky pond. The haunted cry of crows eyeing her from the boughs, occasionally answered by the lonely song of the warblers. Together with the incessant rainfall, it made a somber melody. The quiet drumbeat on the canopy overhead, paired with steady drips pummeling the lower leaves, thumping down into the bed of undergrowth and pine needles.

  Serilda’s nerves tingled with imagined threats. She kept a close eye on those crows, especially the ones who landed overhead and waited for her to pass underneath, watching like greedy scavengers. But they were only birds, she assured herself again and again. Not bloodthirsty nachtkrapp, spying for the Erlking.

  The coat of the schellenrock jangled loudly, startling Serilda. She realized it had gotten quite far ahead and was standing on a fallen log, eyelids alternating in slow blinks.

  “Sorry,” she said, smiling.

  If the creature could smile, it didn’t. But that might also be because a fly had started to buzz around its head, catching its attention, and while Serilda made up the distance, the schellenrock stuck out a whiplike black tongue and swallowed the fly whole.

  Serilda buried a grimace. When the creature’s gaze returned to hers, she had found her polite smile again. “Is there a place we can rest? Just for a few minutes?”

  In answer, the schellenrock hopped off the log and headed up the bank of the creek, where the foliage was dense and the ground was a patchwork of gnarled roots and ferns and brambles.

  Sighing, Serilda grabbed hold of a thick root sticking out of the clay and hauled herself up after it.

  Yes, the forest was bleak, she thought, weaving and ducking around the branches that clawed at her as she passed. But there was a serenity to it, too. Like a sad concerto played in a minor key that made you weep just to hear it, though you could never quite tell why.

  It was the smell of earth and fungi. Of that damp, sodden smell after a good rain. It was the tiny purple wildflowers unfurling near the ground, so easy to miss among the prickly weeds. It was the fallen tree trunks that were rotting away, giving life to new saplings, wrapped up in tender, spindly roots. It was thrumming insects and an entire menagerie of croaking frogs.

  The path, if it could be called a path, curved along the edge of a swamp overrun with swamp grass and weeping willows. A pool speckled with algae and enormous lily pads was fed by a small brook. The schellenrock clambered over to the other side, its shells clinking merrily, but when Serilda went to follow, her foot slid ankle deep into the mud. She gasped and threw her arms wide, barely managing to catch her balance before she fell into the swamp.

  On the other side of the pool, the schellenrock paused to look back at her, as if wondering what could be the problem.

  Serilda scowled and pulled her boot from the mud with a gloopy, sucking noise. She backed up onto drier land. “Isn’t there another…” She trailed off, spotting, not much farther down the brook, a little footbridge made of birch twigs and mortared stones. “Ah! Like that.”

  The schellenrock rattled its shells loudly.

  “It’s not much farther,” Serilda called back, pausing to wipe her muddied boot on a patch of moss. “And this will be much easier for me.”

  It rattled again, a bit panicky. Serilda frowned and glanced back at its wide eyes, now unblinking.

  “What?” she said, taking a step onto the bridge.

  Oh … hello … lovely thing.

  Serilda stilled. The voice was a whisper and a melody. The rustle of leaves, the soothing burble of water.

  Pulling her attention away from the schellenrock, Serilda looked ahead to see a woman standing on the other side of the little bridge.

  She was crafted of silk and moonbeams, in a long white dress, with dark hair that hung nearly to her knees. Her face, though lovely, was not flawless like the dark ones’. She had thick, dark eyebrows over acorn-brown eyes, and impish dimples just above the corners of her mouth. Still, mortal as she might look, the ethereal light emanating from her made it clear that she was something unearthly.

  And judging from the schellenrock’s reaction … dangerous.

  But Serilda did not feel threatened. Instead, she felt drawn to this woman, this being.

  The woman’s smile grew wider, her dimples more pronounced. She giggled, and it was parade bells and shooting stars. She stretched a hand toward Serilda.

  An invitation.

  Will you dance with me?

  Serilda made no decision. Already her hand was reaching out, eager to accept the offer. She stepped forward.

  Something crunched beneath her foot.

  Startled, Serilda looked down.

  Ah—nothing but a birch twig.

  She went to kick it down into the brook, but paused.

  A warning, deep in her mind, shouting at her.

  This was no twig.

  This was a bone.

  The entire bridge was crafted of them, mixed in with the mortar and rocks.

  Heart thrumming, she began to step back, meeting the woman’s eye again.

  The smile fell, overcome with a desperate plea.

  Don’t go, whispered the voice. You alone can break this curse. You can set me free. All it takes is a dance. One little dance. Please. Please, don’t leave me …

  Another step back. Her foot landed on soft mossy ground.

  The woman’s brittle sorrow morphed again, now a vicious sneer. She lunged forward, her fingers reaching to grab Serilda—to claw or strangle or shove her, Serilda didn’t know.

  She lifted a hand to protect herself.

  A wooden staff smacked the woman’s hands away. She released a shriek of pain and reared back.

  A figure leaped onto the bridge, between Serilda and the glowering woman. Lithe and graceful, with moss where hair might have been, growing between tall fox ears.

  “Not this one, Salige,” came a stern voice.

  A familiar voice.

  It took Serilda a moment to recall the moss maiden’s name. Basil? Purslane?

  No.

  “Parsley?” she asked.

  The moss maiden ignored her, her eyes on the woman. Salige, she’d said.

  Wait—salige. That was not a name, but a type of spirit. The salige frauen—malicious spirits that haunted bridges and graveyards and bodies of water. That demanded a dance from travelers, begging them to break a curse … but usually ended up killing them.

  I found her first, hissed the salige, baring pearlescent teeth. She could break the curse. She could be the one.

  “So very sorry,” said Parsley, holding her quarterstaff like a shield in front of her as she slowly backed away, forcing Serilda off the bridge. “But this human is already spoken for. Grandmother wishes to have a word with her.”

  The spirit screamed, a sound of frustrated agony.

  But when Parsley turned and grabbed Serilda’s arm, yanking her away, the spirit did not follow.

  Chapter 43

  “Are you really taking me to see Shrub Grandmother?” said Serilda, once the bridge with the salige was far behind them and her heartbeat had begun to slow. “The Shrub Grandmother?”

  “I would tame your awe before we arrive,” said Parsley, a bit snarly. “Grandmother does not respond well to flattery.”

  “I can try,” said Serilda, “but I cannot guarantee.”

  The moss maiden moved like a fawn among the branches, quick and graceful. In her path, Serilda felt more like a wild boar crashing through the woods, but she was comforted to know that the schellenrock, at the back of their odd little party, was the noisiest of all with its coat of shells, and Parsley wasn’t telling it to be quiet.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For rescuing me from the salige. I suppose now I’m in your debt.”

  Parsley paused beside an enormous oak tree, one that stretched so high Serilda could not see the top of it when she craned her neck.

  “You’re right,” said the maiden, holding out her hand. “I’ll take back my ring.”

  Coldness swept across Serilda’s skin. “I … left it at home. For safekeeping.”

  Parsley smirked and Serilda could sense that she didn’t believe her. “Then you will have to remain indebted, for I doubt you have anything else I would want.” She grabbed a curtain of vines draped across the tree’s trunk and pulled them aside, revealing a narrow opening just above the tangled roots.

  “Go on,” she said, with a nod at the schellenrock. It ducked inside, its shells jangling. Parsley turned to Serilda next. “After you.”

  She stepped into the hollow trunk and was greeted by impenetrable blackness—no sign of the river monster. Squeezing her shoulders, she crouched low so as to fit through, and inched into the tiny shelter, stretching out her hand. She expected to feel the rough, cobwebbed insides of the tree, but found only emptiness in the dark.

  She took another step, then another.

  On the seventh step, her fingers brushed—not wood, but fabric. Thick and heavy like a tapestry.

  Serilda pushed the fabric aside. Gray light spilled forward. As she emerged from the tree, her breath caught.

  A dozen or so moss maidens formed a tight circle around her, each one gripping a weapon—spears, bows, daggers. One had a very poisonous-looking wolf spider perched on her shoulder.

  They were not smiling.

  She spotted the schellenrock crouched behind the group, just as one of the maidens handed him a small wooden bowl teeming with wriggling bugs. He licked his wide lips before enthusiastically burying his face in the bowl.

  “You,” said one of the maidens, “are very loud, and very cumbersome.”

  Serilda stared at her. “I’m sorry?”

  The maiden cocked her head to the side. “We have been waiting. Come.”

  They formed a circle around Serilda and led her down the winding paths. She did not know where to look first.

  The space before her was cavernous—not a clearing exactly, for towering trees still blocked out the sky far overhead, cloaking the world in dim shadows. But the undergrowth had been cleared out, replaced with meandering walking paths thick with spongy moss. And there were houses everywhere, though unlike any houses Serilda had seen before. These abodes were built into the ancient trees themselves. Wooden doors tucked into the spaces between roots, and windows carved from the natural knots scattered along the trunks. Thick branches curved to form winding staircases. Higher boughs held cozy nooks and balconies.

  She could still hear the steady patter of raindrops far overhead, and the occasional drizzle fell down into this wooded sanctuary, but the gloom of the forest had been replaced with something cozy and charming, almost quaint. She spotted little shade gardens bursting with sorrel, arugula, and chives. She was mesmerized by the glow of twinkling lights that floated whimsically everywhere she looked. She didn’t know whether it was fireflies or fairies or some magic spell, but the effect was enchanting. She felt like she’d just stepped into a dream.

  Asyltal.

  The sanctuary of Shrub Grandmother and the moss maidens.

  She glanced back once, hoping that Parsley would be coming, too, but there was no sign of her almost-ally.

  “Our sister had to return to her duties,” said one of the maidens.

  “Duties?” asked Serilda.

  Another maiden released a wry laugh. “Just like a mortal to think that all we do is bathe in the waterfall and sing to hedgehogs.”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Serilda, affronted. “Judging from your weaponry, I suspect you spend a great deal of time dueling and competing in target practice.”

  The one who had laughed shot her a fierce look. “Don’t forget it.”

  Serilda spotted more maidens lingering around the village, tending to the gardens or lounging in hammocks made of thick vines. They watched Serilda with little interest. That, or they were just really good at hiding it.