Grandmother always told me not to go into the forest.
She told me not to do a great many other things, too. I wasn’t to mess with the plants in her garden, which took up a fourth of the mansion’s massive grounds. That was because the garden plants were the thing Grandmother loved most in the world, and I was of far less concern than her plants. I wasn’t supposed to enter the shed where Grandmother kept her gardening tools unless she was there to watch me. She didn’t want me ruining her carefully organized system. I wasn’t supposed to run in the attic, even though the floors were solid wood. This was so the creaking didn’t disturb Grandmother if she happened to be on the third floor, which she almost never was. I wasn’t supposed to slide down the banister of the massive staircase that twisted from the third to the first floor. There was a possibility that I would scuff or scratch it, ruining the woodwork. The list went on and on.
I disobeyed, of course. I would slide down the banister whenever Grandmother was away at work and the servants were occupied, whooping and hollering as the wind of my passage caught my long blond hair to send it streaming out behind me. I mastered the act of catching the knob at the end of the railing and using my momentum to vault over it, landing on both feet. Perfecting these moves gave me a number of bruises and scrapes, but I was careful never to scratch the banister, so Grandmother never noticed.
Running in the attic was somewhat of a letdown. One day, when I was little, I waited until my grandmother went outside to work in her garden, then climbed the ladder to the attic and ran up and down, my bare feet thumping against the boards. It didn’t seem loud enough to be heard downstairs. I wished that I could be in both places at once to be sure. After running around the attic a few times, I grew bored and climbed back down. The attic was large, spreading over the entire mansion. But it was also very cluttered, and the grounds were even larger, much better for running.
Sneaking into the shed was the most difficult thing for me to accomplish. When I first tried, I had to drag a box to the small window in the back. Forcing the window ajar even slightly was difficult the first time, and if it had opened outward, I doubt I ever would have managed it. Crawling through the window, I reached for the wall, only to put my hand on a shovel instead of a flat surface. I lost my balance and pitched forward, falling hands-first to the floor in a clatter of cascading garden implements.
Scrambling to my feet I stood stock-still, waiting to see if the door would burst open, should the groundskeeper have heard the noise and alerted Grandmother to my crime. After two full minutes of nothing, I breathed out and began putting the tools back on the wall. Then I explored the shed, which was considerably more mundane than I’d been expecting. From the way Grandmother had talked, there should have been a glowing aura surrounding each appliance, a glow that only vanished if a child’s unworthy hands altered its position even slightly.
My later visits to the shed went much more smoothly. I eventually stopped needing the box, but squeezing through the window became more difficult every year. I continued to return, though, as the shed was the one place in the mansion or its grounds that I could go without anyone finding me. Not, of course, that anyone ever came looking except whichever tutor Grandmother had dragged here for that month. The mansion was often bustling with servants, so whenever I wanted to be truly alone, I would sneak off to the garden shed.
And most nights I would crawl through my window, shimmy down the wall of the mansion, creep across the grounds, and scramble over another wall into Grandmother’s garden. At night, the garden felt like it might have been a fairy garden straight out of the old stories. Walking slowly through it, I would drink in the fragrant scent of newborn flowers, kneeling to examine a freshly-budded cythna, jevice, or pofez, all of which seemed to glow in Tsuosin’s violet light. Once I determined they weren’t locked, I also walked through the coldhouses and enjoyed the plants that grew better in winter’s chill. These tranquil walks, when everything seemed just slightly out of focus with reality, were my favorite moments. For all of Grandmother’s eccentricities, her garden was truly magnificent. After my first several forays down its paths, I began to believe that she had some of every kind of flower in the world somewhere in the garden. Due to its expansiveness, it took several more nighttime visits to realize that I was mistaken. Throughout the entirety of her garden, there was not a single amaranthe, the flower of my namesake.
But the forest scared me. Sitting at the edge of the grounds, surrounding the mansion on every side, it was massive, dark, and grim. I never saw anything moving in it, and no light ever seemed to pierce the tops of the towering trees. It just sat, brooding and watchful. I was ashamed to admit it, even just to myself, but I was glad the garden was far from the forest; otherwise, I might have lost my nerve during my nightly treks across the grass.
Growing up, I broke every rule Grandmother had given me, once or repeatedly, by accident or on purpose. But I always stayed away from the forest. Until, eventually, I broke that rule too.
It was in my twelfth year on a day that had already begun unusually. I was pretending to do what I was told, instead of just blatantly ignoring my tutor’s instructions. We lived too far away from any of the schools for them to take me in, but Grandmother wanted to keep me busy, so when I had grown up enough to go to school, she had already found some teacher willing to be paid a great deal of money to live at the mansion and teach one student: me. Naturally, the teacher and I did our best to make each other’s lives as miserable as possible, but in the end, I won. Of course, this led to Grandmother luring another teacher out to the mansion with the promise of easy money, and we would again wage war on each other. The cycle had repeated ever since, to the point where I wondered why Grandmother never sent me off to a boarding school. I guess she figured that, in the long run, dredging up tutors every few months was easier than switching schools.
My current tutor was a woman called Ms. Hayth, who was exactly as crotchety and irritable as all the rest. She believed in keeping me from idleness by giving me loads of busywork. I generally did everything I could to avoid the work given, then rushed through it at the last minute. Today, however, I was indoors with my head over the boring literacy as outside was blazing hot.
Up in the far north, where we lived, it was always warm. However, the past few weeks had been unnaturally hot, even for midsummer. Nobody understood why, though it had even begun to affect the plants.
That was why I was sitting in a large stuffed chair, pretending to read some excerpt from a classic work, but my mind was really thinking about how Grandmother’s flowers seemed to be wilting, and worrying about what would happen to them. I had been keeping up the pretense of reading for an hour and had sunk into a sort of stupor. That might have been why, as I languidly lifted my head and swept my gaze across the room, it took me almost ten seconds to spot the man sitting on the shelf across from me.
I let out a shriek, involuntarily flung the book across the room, and scrambled up on the chair. As I stood up, I felt my feet sink slightly into the padding and awkwardly swung my arms for several seconds before gaining my balance. Once that was accomplished, I looked back up towards the man, confirmed he was still there, and opened my mouth to scream again.
However, before I could, the man put his finger to his lips and hopped down from the shelf.
“Please don’t shout,” he said softly. “I only want to talk to you.”
Normally I would have disregarded his words and yelled again anyway. But the man’s movements had drawn attention to a startling fact about him, one that I should have noticed immediately. The man was barely two feet tall. This stunned me for a second, and I almost choked on my breath.
There was a sound of running footsteps in the hallway, and the door burst open. One of the maids came barreling into the room.
“Amaranthe! What happened?”
I opened my mouth and pointed at the man to explain, but when I glanced in his direction, he wasn’t there. My eyes darted around the room, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
If I said something about a vanishing man, I doubted the maid would believe me. So instead, I redirected my accusatory finger to the book as smoothly as possible and tried to sound sheepish. “Sorry, Marie. There was a spider. I hit it with the book.”
Marie let out a sigh of relief. “You scared me, Amaranthe. I’m glad everything’s okay, though you probably shouldn’t tell Ms. Hayth you hit a spider with one of her books.”
She regarded the book’s landing spot. “Or threw it across the room.”
“Trust me, I won’t,” I said, stepping down from the chair. My shoes had probably left marks on the padding, but at that moment, I did not care. Mrytle nodded and closed the door.
As soon as she did, the little man appeared right where he’d been standing. “That was almost inconvenient.”
I wanted to scream again, but didn’t. Instead, I walked quickly over to the door Mrytle had just closed, keeping the man in my sight the entire time. He watched me in silence, and it wasn’t until I put my hand on the doorknob that he reacted.
“Wait!” he cried out, still quietly. “I said I wanted to speak to you!”
“You broke into the house just to talk to me?” I replied, stumbling over my words. “Why? I’ve never even met you before.”
“Because my business is urgent,” the man said. “Please, listen while I try to explain.”
I took a moment to study the man while I made my decision. He was small, that was immediately obvious, but that wasn’t the only odd thing about him. He had curly green hair and large brown eyes. He had a narrow p chin and nose, though his ears, which stuck up through his hair and tapered off into points, where his sharpest features. His warm, honey-colored skin seemed almost too smooth and youthful for the age he projected. His outfit (modern dark brown pants and a loose long-sleeved green shirt) was the most normal thing about him.
If this man hadn’t just proven he could vanish from sight whenever he wanted, I would have called for help. As it was, I wasn’t sure that bringing more people would accomplish anything; they probably wouldn’t believe me. As things were, I could see him, he wasn’t doing anything threatening, and I could leave quickly if needed. Slowly, I nodded.
“Thank you,” said the man. “My name is Leonard, the left-handed leprechaun. I’m a member of the Summer Court of Fairies. And to put it bluntly, we need your help.”
“What?” I almost found myself laughing. “Fairies? Like from those old legends about the seasons? You’re claiming to be one of those?”
Leonard rolled his eyes. “Not claiming. I am one. I understand your skepticism. We’ve been gone for a while. But still, how many people have you met who are this small, or this color? Not to mention, have you ever met anyone who can do this?”
As soon as he finished the words, he vanished. I knew he had been able to hide when Marie entered, but seeing him disappear right in front of me was entirely different. I barely had a couple of seconds to be astonished before Leonard reappeared.
“See,” he said, standing in exactly the same spot he’d been before. “Fairy.”
I almost bolted anyway. But, other than the sheer bizarreness of the situation, there didn’t seem to be any reason to leave. Leonard hadn’t done anything threatening, and with the door now unlatched, I was ready to be gone within a second if he did.
However, my own budding excitement was more enticing than fear. I loved doing new things, especially if they were thrilling, and especially if it felt like I wasn’t supposed to be doing them. Leonard was too interesting for me to just flee.
“Okay,” I said, keeping my hand on the doorknob. “Taking all of this at face value, you have a relatively convincing argument for you being a fairy. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Like I said, we need your help.” Leonard seemed impatient, but like he was trying not to be. “It’s probably best to start somewhat close to the beginning. You know that the planet cycles through the Summer and Winter seasons, correct?”
I nodded. “Except for the poles.”
“Yes. And you know that over the last few weeks, the weather has been getting increasingly hot, correct?”
“Yes . . .” I replied slowly.
“Well, the fairies are the reason behind that. Or some of it at least. The Summer and Winter Courts take turns spreading their power over the planet, back and forth between each other. That creates the regular seasons. The problem began when-”
Leonard suddenly stopped, his eyes widening. “No,” he whispered, his voice barely audible.
“What?” I asked. He ignored me.
“No no no,” he whispered again. “How could they be here?”
I watched Leonard’s eyes dart wildly about, as though he were looking at something beyond the room, something I couldn’t see. His body had gone rigid, with little shivers running through it every couple of seconds. I had just opened my mouth to ask “what” again when his eyes snapped back to me.
“We have to leave,” he said, voice back to normal.
“What?” I asked, my voice rising. “Why would we need to leave? I’m not going anywhere!”
“Please, Amaranthe, just come with me” Leonard said, stepping towards me.
That was it. I flung open the door so hard it bounced off the wall, then hurtled through the doorway. As I ran, I glanced back to see if Leonard was following me. He was.
“Wait!” he called. “Listen to me! That’s dangerous, we need to go the other way! You don’t understand!”
He was no longer trying to be subtle. That was fine by me. The more people who heard the commotion and came running, the better. I reached the spiral staircase and hopped up on the banister, straddling it and beginning to slide down.
Halfway down, I glanced upward. Leonard had reached the stairs, but he didn’t take them. Instead, he hopped over the guardrail and began jumping down, leaping from one section of interior railing to the next.
He’s going to beat me to the bottom.
Indeed, Leonard passed me and reached the ground floor first, tucking into a roll as he hit the floor. He sprang to his feet and spun around just as I reached the end of the banister. I vaulted over the newel post like I’d done a thousand times before and hit the ground running.
Before I could escape to the front door, Leonard grabbed my hand.
“Please, Amaranthe. They’re coming from that way! You have to come with me! We need to get out of here!”
“Get away from me!” I shrieked, pulling away from him. The little guy was stronger than his size indicated. I had to wrench my hand away. Stumbling backward, I bumped into someone coming up behind me.
“Thank you,” I said, turning around. “This guy is trying to -”
I stopped as I looked up at the person I’d collided with. It was Mr. Ernst, the mansion’s groundskeeper. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was a familiar face around the mansion.
“Amaranthe!” he cried, seizing my shoulders. “We have to leave!”
“Wait!” I said, my mind spinning. “Just what is going on?”
“No time. Please just come with me,” Mr. Ernst pleaded.
His words reminded me of Leonard’s plea. I looked wildly around for the self-proclaimed fairy, but he seemed to have vanished again. Looking back up at Mr. Ernst, I nodded hesitantly. He barely waited for my consent before grabbing my hand and sprinting further into the mansion.
I stumbled, barely able to keep up. We ran past the staircase and towards the sitting room behind it. Mr. Ernst had just stepped over the threshold when an explosion split the air behind us.
A wave of scorching heat slammed into my back, and I gasped at the intensity of it. Turning my head, I looked past the staircase and saw a gaping hole where the front door had once been. The air was shimmery and distorted from the heat, but it seemed like the hole was filled with bright, dazzling yellow light.
Mr. Ernst hadn’t stopped moving, and I was yanked along after him. After seeing what had happened to the place I’d been standing moments before, I was all too willing to follow him. We pounded through the sitting room and into the hallway behind it. Turning right, the two of us hurried to the kitchen. I could still feel the heat burning into my back. Shouts came from around us as the staff reacted to the explosion.
We entered the kitchen, and at the island closest to the opposite door, I saw our cook, Mrs. Stonegard, looking up from her pans with a quizzical expression.
“Mr. Ernst, what was that?” she asked, voice puzzled, but not afraid. That felt wrong somehow. She should be afraid.
Mr. Ernst just shook his head, pulling me around the counters towards the door used for kitchen supply deliveries. “Fire. There’s a fire in the entryway. Please, we need to get out of here.”
Mrs. Stonegard almost dropped her utensils. “A fire! Shattering branches, we need to leave!”
Tossing her spoon onto the counter, she turned and made for the exit. Mr. Ernst and I were just rounding the middle of the three islands when Mrs. Stonegard opened the door, so we couldn’t see what she saw.
Mrs. Stonegard froze, and I was able to see her face as she looked out. Her mouth fell open, her eyes widened, and her expression changed from ‘concerned’ to ‘terrified’. Her hand fell limply from the doorknob, and her entire body seemed to fold. I saw her knees begin to buckle, just as there was the faintest spark of yellow from outside. And then light and heat burst into the room, enveloping Mrs. Stonegard and searing through the island behind her.
Neither Mr. Ernst nor I had any time to react to this before another explosion shook the mansion, driving both of us to our knees. I put my hands over my ears and screamed as another burst of heat enveloped me, burning into my skin and down my throat. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Coughing, I pulled my hands away from my ears, my right hand feeling strangely sticky. The hair around my ear felt matted, like it was clinging to my head.
I looked down, and though it was hard to tell in the strange lighting, I could see something dark and shiny on my palm. Blood. That’s blood. Your ear is bleeding.
The thoughts didn’t really register with me, as though I was observing things happening to someone else. My right ear was buzzing, but there wasn’t any pain. As I stared down at my hand, it suddenly occurred to me that the light shouldn’t be strange. I looked up.
The door, like the one in the entryway, was gone. In its place was a gaping hole filled with what seemed to be liquid fire. It flowed over surfaces, with sparks and flakes billowing off of it. It was spreading far faster than it should have, to the floor, the ceiling, the cabinets, and even the countertops, all of which were melting or crumbling.
Those shouldn’t be burning. They’re marble.
That thought didn’t register with me either, but for a different reason. My attention had just been captured by something that was somehow far more terrifying than the burning substance. Standing in the center of the fire was a being.
The creature was difficult to spot, as it blended in with the liquid fire that was gobbling away at the mansion. Standing over seven feet tall and three feet wide, it loomed where it stood, seeming to cast a shadow of fright around itself. Through the light, I could see it had chalky, flaky skin, all of it bright yellow. It had clothing, though it consisted of nothing more than a ragged, dull-colored shirt and shorts. Its head was bald, and its flat face was scary even before I noticed the eyes. Its eyes were terrifying. They shone a pure, harsh white, their steady light piercing even the liquid fire surrounding the being.
I wondered why I could see the eyes so clearly, and then suddenly it hit me. The creature, which had at first been looking around the room, had focused its gaze on me.
Awareness came flooding back to me all at once, and I realized that Mr. Ernst had been trying to pull me to my feet. He was shouting. It was hard to hear.
“Come on, Amaranthe, we need to move! Now!”
I pushed myself to my feet, and we turned towards our closest means of escape, the door right next to us, which led to the narrow servants’ stairwell. Mr. Ernst threw the door open, and we bolted through, slamming the door behind us.
“Hurry! Up the stairs,” he gasped.
I nodded and began climbing, taking the steps two at a time. Looking down, I saw yellow light already showing through the cracks around the door. I made it to the top just as a roar came from below, and I felt the temperature spike. My skin started to blister, my lungs burning as I struggled to draw breath.
The stairs came up at the very end of one of the second-floor hallways, in a section of the mansion that was mostly servants’ bedrooms. All of the rooms on the right-hand side had windows. Racing towards the nearest door on the right, I grabbed the knob, then yelped and snatched my hand back as the metal scorched my hand. I stepped back, cradling my hand against my stomach.
The room must already be on fire.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I whirled around to see Mr. Ernst coming up behind me, already reaching for the doorhandle.
“Not that way! Not that way!” I shouted, shoving his hand aside.
I ran to the next room and gingerly brushed the knob with a finger, then drew it back at the searing heat. Mr. Ernst was already checking the room beyond that and he looked over and motioned to me. That one must still be safe.
I began to run towards him, but stopped when I felt a presence behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the being reaching the top of the stairs, shoulders brushing the sides. It wasn’t surrounded by dazzling light anymore, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying.
It focused on me and lifted its arms, and I knew, somehow, that it was about to kill me. Why else would it not try to catch me?
I lunged across the hallway, banging my knees and hands as I scrambled for a door on the left side of the hall, having only a faint, desperate hope that maybe I could reach it before the thing could finish whatever it was doing. I was watching the being from the corner of my eye, so I could see it turning to track me. Then, just as yellow light began to blossom into existence around the being’s hands, they jerked suddenly, and the light died out.
I was still moving, grabbing the door and opening it, but the thing’s sudden movement compelled me to not immediately jump into the room and slam the door behind me. Instead, I stopped mostly behind the door and stuck my head out from behind it to observe.
That put me in a perfect position to watch as the ceiling above the being bucked and warped, then seemed to fold downwards into a pointed stick and spear itself through the being’s head. The thing twitched once, then went limp. It didn’t fall, though. The spear-like sections of wood sticking through its head and arms kept it suspended.
Between Mr. Ernst and me, Leonard suddenly appeared. He was visibly trembling, and his face was sweaty and pale. Putting his hands on his knees, he took several deep breaths before shaking his head and standing up straight.
“Okay. We really do need to get out of here. Amaranthe, Mr. Ernst, please listen when I say it would be in your best interests to follow me.”
Mr. Ernst was staring at Leonard in bafflement. “Who- who are you?”
“That doesn’t matter right at the moment,” Leonard said impatiently. “I saved us from immediate death, but we could all still die in the next few minutes if we don’t get moving!”
I could tell he was right. My right ear was still buzzing, but I couldn’t hear any more screaming out of my left one. That couldn’t be good. Also, there was smoke coming from the stairwell, several doors, and I could even see traces of it down the hall. This mansion was rapidly turning into a death trap.
“Mr. Ernst. I think we need to trust him.” I was probably talking just a little bit too loudly, but I couldn’t help myself.
Mr. Ernst seemed to have come to the same conclusions I had. He nodded at me then said, “Okay, creature. Lead the way.”
Leonard didn’t even react to that possible insult. He simply rushed past Mr. Ernst to the fourth door on the right, opened it, and darted inside with Mr. Ernst and I close behind. This room was clear of both smoke and liquid fire, and Leonard was already throwing the window open. He looked back at us, then stepped to the side and motioned for us to go ahead.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
Mr. Ernst reached the window first. He seemed about to step aside, but I pushed him in the back.
“Don’t worry about me! Go! Go! Go!”
Without any more prompting, Mr. Ernst swung himself out the window and lowered himself out of sight. With him no longer blocking the view from the second floor, I could see the mansion’s grounds. The sight was so terrifying it almost took my breath away.
The liquid flames were spreading all over the grounds, burning swaths through the grass and even beginning to chew through the walls of Grandmother’s garden. Smoke obscured much of the grounds, but I caught a few glimpses of massive forms moving around.
Still, I couldn’t hesitate. I hopped up onto the windowsill and began scrambling down almost before I turned. My nightly excursions hadn’t taken me to this section of the outside wall, but my body was used to climbing, and my hands and feet found notches almost instinctively.
I could feel the heat rolling over me, and a quick look to the left showed the liquid fire steadily burning through the wall toward me. I descended at an even more furious rate, almost slipping and falling several times. I dropped the last several feet onto the grass, setting a new personal record for climbing from the second floor.
Mr. Ernst and Leonard were waiting for me. The second my feet hit the ground, Leonard turned and began running across the lawn, Mr. Ernst and I following close behind. The smoke was thick all around us, but wasn’t choking us yet. Leonard was madly dashing through it, and it was taking all our effort just to keep him in sight.
Mr. Ernst was a few strides ahead of me when my foot struck something on the ground. Falling to my hands and knees, I didn’t stop moving, trying to scramble to my feet. I was just about to manage it when there was another explosion up ahead.
Throwing myself flat to the ground, I did my best to roll away from the blast. As I did, I felt an assortment of hard objects of various sizes slam into me. Gripping the earth and dragging myself backward, I looked around to see a bunch of dark gray stones scattered around me.
Those are stones from the garden wall.
I hauled myself back further, then another vibrant flood of heat and light and sound hit me, this one far more intense. My skin burned as I threw my arms up, rolling away as best I could.
The sound subsided, but the heat and light remained. As I lowered my arms, I realized why. The grass in front of me had caught fire.
Mr. Ernst!
I was just about to scramble closer to the fire, but something grabbed my hair. I whipped my head around as best I could, suddenly terrified that one of those things had snuck up on me. Instead, I vaguely saw Leonard, both feet planted firmly on the ground, tugging me backward. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The message was clear though. We needed to keep moving.
I looked back at the liquid fire now covering the area and realized he was right. Whether or not Mr. Ernst was okay, I couldn’t search for him. Getting back to my feet, I ran after Leonard.
Blundering through the smoke, I almost stepped in the liquid fire but managed to stop myself at the last second. Leonard was back by my side in an instant, tugging at my pants to keep me moving in the right direction. I followed him through what felt increasingly like a maze of death, scared and waiting for one of those beings to come striding out of the smoke at any moment.
Running through the smoke, it took me a few seconds to see the dark shadow looming through it. Once I did, I stopped, thinking that what I had been imagining was about to come true. But the shadow didn’t move, and Leonard did, grabbing me and pulling me forward towards the shadow.
I reluctantly followed, and it wasn’t until we were right next to the shadow that I realized it was a tree. Now that I was looking, I could see more large shadows spread out ahead of me, more visible in the thinning smoke.
My steps slowed. Grandmother’s warnings and my own fear came rushing back to me, reminding me of the one rule I had never broken. Leonard looked up at me and yanked on my clothes harder, his mouth moving. I still couldn’t really hear him.
I came almost to a standstill, dragging my feet, years worth of conditioning warring with the last few minutes of my life. I had been scared of that forest for so long, it wasn’t possible for me to just run right into the trees.
Coming to a complete halt, I looked back over my shoulder into the smoke, struggling to wrestle my panic into submission. I couldn’t deny it, not in that moment. The forest scared me.
But what I had seen today scared me far more. I turned back around, and let Leonard pull me forward, taking the first few steps into the forest. And in doing so, I broke Grandmother’s final rule.