Labyrinth of Stars(88)

“And the forest?”

Tracker hesitated, rubbing his chest like it hurt. “I don’t know. I’ve never . . . been here before.”

“So who taught you those other things?”

A faint furrow gathered in his brow—rare sign of confusion—but he did not answer me. Just slid down the other side of the root and disappeared. I searched for Oturu and felt a tingle at the back of my neck. I looked up again, just in time to glimpse a shadow floating amongst the trees.

I scrabbled down from my mossy nest, using the fat, coiled roots around me as a highway system, a forest sidewalk. I felt small as an ant compared to the trees, each of which seemed fat as an entire city block. Skyscrapers had never made me feel so insignificant—nor any man-made structure, mountain, or canyon. But this was different.

This was breathless wonder. First twilight, first hush, a silence so expectant and pure that to make a sound, to even breathe, felt as though I was intruding upon the gestation of miracles. Ancient did not belong in this place, ancient was too young a word, but for every step I traveled, I felt more certain that I walked amongst immense and dreaming souls and that I was nothing but a dream, a fragment, an echo lost in the heart of eternity. I wondered if mankind had been born from trees, or if trees walked amongst men as their own dreams, born and born again.

We are home, whispered a small voice inside my head. We are home in the heart of the endless wood.

And the darkness, which had been silent all this time, murmured:

It is in the blood.

I found Tracker moving toward me through a clutch of large ferns, each frond nearly as large as his body. He rubbed his chest like it hurt—which was odd enough to make me stare. Tracker did not show pain. I had stabbed him in the foot once, and he’d practically asked for more.

“What is it?” I asked him.

Tracker faltered. “Nothing.”

“I’ll take that as a something.”

He balled his hand into a fist. I picked up my pace, passing a mossy knoll covered in small purple flowers, like bluebells, only tinier. “This isn’t what I expected.”

“I’m surprised you had any expectations.”

I hesitated. “I was in the Wasteland, remember?”

A place where souls were thrown to be forgotten. I had walked the dark side of the Labyrinth, buried alive. Nothing but a heartbeat in the endless dark.

I was the only person to ever escape the Wasteland. And though I knew that the Labyrinth was much more than that dark, endless hole, I could not help but associate one with the other. The Wasteland was the nightmare that never died.

Tracker was silent a moment. “I’m sorry for that.”

I shrugged, watching Zee prowl ahead of us, slinking over roots and through the ferns with a hushed, preternatural grace. Raw and Aaz were still in the trees, leaping from trunk to trunk, absolutely silent. I could only see them because of the little teddy bears dangling from their backs.

“You’ve been here before?” I asked him.

“No.” Pain flickered through his eyes as he looked through the trees, but when he turned his gaze on me it was flat, empty. “Oturu didn’t free me, then. But I felt this place around us.”

“What is it like when you’re not free?” I asked him, impulsively. “When he has you . . . inside him?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s hell,” I told him. “I’m sorry.”

Tracker pulled ahead. “You brought me here to help you, not be friends.”

“Wait—”

“I track,” he interrupted. “That’s what I am. When the Aetar made me, I got a skill. I can find anything.”

“Yes,” I said, wishing I could take back my question.

His jaw tightened. “Your husband is somewhere ahead of us, but I can’t tell you anything else except that he’s far away and alive.”

I said nothing. Tracker ran ahead, little more than a lean shadow darting along wide root structures that tumbled and twisted between the massive trees. He looked as small as I felt, but far more graceful. I hurried to catch up, falling into a careless run that made me feel as though I were flying; helped by the boys, who fell down from the trees and raced alongside me—my wolves.

A tingling sensation arced across my back, raising goose pimples. I thought I was just cold. But the sensation intensified until it felt like a live wire was being threaded from the base of my neck, down between my shoulders. Dek and Mal made an alarmed trilling noise, tightening their hold on my neck.

Zee skidded to a stop, looking back at me with his eyes wide, alarmed. From above, Oturu called out. I could barely hear him. I was still running, but my body felt strange, like it was being sucked sideways into a massive vacuum cleaner.