Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(136)
Author: Kim Harrison

Frightened, she pulled from him, shivering as his hand hung a breath from her jawline, almost touching. Eyes widening, she rose, backing up until she found the earth again. Penn stood in the middle of the bridge, waiting for her.

"Run with me," he asked again, a hand outstretched.

"No." It was a harsh croak of denial, and her breath came fast as he looked past her to Meg’s dark window. "No!" Lilly cried out again, this time in fear for her daughter, and from inside, Pepper began to bark.

When Lilly looked back, the bridge was empty.

Parental instinct turned her back to the house. Within three steps, she spun and took five more to the bridge. She had to stop him. She had to save her daughter. Meg would run with him. She would go with a sun-brown boy who smiled and dared her to climb to the top of a tree to see the butterflies beyond. She would give him everything he asked to keep him with her. She would believe. And she would be tossed aside when he got what he wanted.

All but crying in her frustration, Lilly stopped at the foot of the bridge, her arms wrapped around her middle, not knowing what to do.

Perhaps it was time for her to believe as well.

FOUR

The sun wasn’t up yet, but the air had grown transparently gray, hinting at it. Lilly lay in her bed, listening for the bedsprings in the room next to her. The palest blue slipped in around her curtains, and only the crickets marred the silence. Soft and easy, her breath slipped in and out of her as she waited, her mind calm and at peace. Her mother had risked her life for her. Once was enough. She would not allow her to do so again. If Penn was real, then she’d trap him. It wouldn’t be with a dead chicken and a fairy-tale poem, either. There was dy***ite in the barn, and caves in the hills. But first she had to slip her mother’s apron strings.

The click of Pepper’s nails on the hardwood floor jolted through her, and Lilly jerked at her mother’s soft admonishment in the hall downstairs. Cursing, she flung the covers aside and rolled out of bed. Somehow her mother had gotten up without shifting the bedsprings, and as she flung on her clothes, she watched out the window for her mother’s hunched shadow headed for the barn.

Rugged pants, thick socks, and a short-sleeve button-down shirt would keep her safe from the cave’s jagged edges, and if all went well, she’d be back before it got hot. Opening her door, she listened, hearing nothing from downstairs. Lilly felt like a teenager as she snuck to the top of the stairway, touching her daughters’ door in passing. They would be safe after today, one way or the other. Lilly eased down the stairway, avoiding the creaky steps and freezing when the squeak of the front porch’s screen door split the silence. Pepper’s soft whine followed.

Moving faster, Lilly paced into the kitchen, giving the golden lab a pat as she looked out over the sink, through the window and to the barn. He mother was striding to the barn, another big knife in her hand and a canvas sack. "Either she’s crazy, or I am," Lilly whispered, but the memory of Penn reclining on the bridge, staring up at the stars was too real, the breath of his words on her cheek too heavy, and the scent of his wild spirit too thick in her. How could any girl see his snare?

Lilly snatched up a biscuit from last night’s dinner, and taking her floppy hat at the last moment, she gave Pepper a pat, telling her to stay. Then she dropped another biscuit into the dog’s bowl to distract her as she eased the porch door open and slipped outside.

The sky was a perfect pale blue, shading to orange and pink at the horizon over the fields and the unrisen sun. Cool and humid, the morning breeze brushed against her as Lilly crept down the porch steps. Her mother was almost to the barn. Heart pounding, Lilly waited until her mother tugged the tall door open, then she jogged after her, breaking a spiderweb as she ran under the apple trees.

Her pace slowed as she got closer and heard her mother inside. Breath held, she halted at the door, ear to it as her mother muttered over which hen hadn’t been laying properly. Fingers trembling, Lilly eased the barn door open and went in.

The darker gray of the barn smelled like hay, familiar and welcoming. Looking up at the cupola as her eyes adjusted, Lilly squinted at the soft cooing. Her mother was already in the converted chicken coop, and Lilly pushed herself into motion. The door to it was a thick heavy pine, the latch old iron.

The snick of the simple lock sliding into place was hardly audible, and Lilly backed up at the sudden sliding sound behind the door.

"Lilly?"

Mouth dry, Lilly clasped her hands before her like a scolded child. "I’ll be back in an hour to let you out, Mom."

"Lilly!" It was stronger this time, and Lilly edged to the big barn door and the scrap of gray morning showing. "Lilly, let me out of here right now! I am not crazy. The girls are in danger!"

Lilly’s breath caught as her mother rattled the door. She might get out by crawling through the chicken door, but it wasn’t likely. "I believe you." Her mother swore, and Lilly backed up even farther. "Mom, I don’t want you to be hurt anymore. I’ll take care of Penn. It’s my turn. You protected me, and I’m going to protect Meg and Em. Take care of the girls if I don’t make it back." Oh God, she was going to blow up the mountain.

"Lilly, let me out of here!" her mother cried, pounding on the door to make the latch rattle. "You don’t know how evil he is. I don’t want you to have to pay that cost! Lilly? Lilly!"

But she was walking away as if in a dream. The two sticks of dy***ite were right where she’d seen her grandpa leave them, wrapped in a cloth and tucked up in a hole in the barn. They’d been left over from when her great-grandpa had shifted the stream that now ran around Rock Island to bring water closer to the house and dry out a neighbor’s field.

"Lilly!"

The banging on the door was almost unheard as she left the barn. In the yard, chickens darted out of the coop with a flustered agitation. She wasn’t going to take a chicken, and she wasn’t going to take a knife. She was going to lure Penn into a cave and blow up the opening. Her mother said he couldn’t move through solid rock, so it should hold him. What if it didn’t?

Thoughts of her daughters alone in the house kept returning again and again as she trudged into the woods, following a path she’d often taken to meet Kevin. Bitter memories of Kevin mixed with worry for her children, pounding up through her in time with her feet on the earth. How could she have just left them? Wraith by moonlight, hunter by day, the singsong went. He could lure them away from their beds, or attack them as a wolf. What was she doing out here?

Fear pushed her into a faster pace until she was almost running, weaving through the woods as if she were a deer, taking small fallen trees with a jump and using her momentum to swing around trees. The explosives bumped her with each step, smelling of barn dust and reminding her of her risk. The wind of her passage whispered in her, tugging her hair and caressing her cheek. Angry, she pushed aside her thoughts of Penn. He was a lie, like all the rest.