watched from a short distance. She didn’t think anyone could see her. She didn’t think she was really here. And yet she still felt the urge to hide, to duck back against the shelter of the solid trunk. Even if this was some kind of dark Otherworld magic, she knew it could all just be more demon lies. A ruse to make her vulnerable and steal the fight from her.
Or maybe it was real. The truth of the life she’d spent so many years repressing. After all, she’d chosen memories when she’d chosen the river. The Bridge of Lies had seemed far too easy.
Just as the scene from her past in the heart of the Ironwood became sharper, it also became far more painful. Donna watched her younger self and squeezed her fingers against the rough bark, wishing that the scrape of splinters would somehow bring her back to herself and take her out of this, even if the only escape was into the Otherworld. Into death.
The little girl was pale but composed. “Where’s Mommy?”
“I’m going to get her, darling, then we’ll all leave to-gether.”
“I don’t want you to leave me!”
“I’ll be right back, I promise.”
“But Daddy,” Little Donna said, taking a step after her father, the desire to follow, to not be abandoned, written all over her young face. “What about our bags?”
She gestured at the small pile of luggage that Donna, watching from her hiding place, had only just noticed. Of course … she’d forgotten this part. The part where the Underwoods—Patrick, Rachel, and Donna—had packed a few belongings and left in the middle of the night, attempting to flee the Order of the Dragon; Simon had planned to take Donna away and use her developing powers to enter the Elflands, so that the alchemists could exterminate their sworn enemies, the wood elves. She might even have been their ticket to conquering Faerie itself, eventually, if a way through Faerie’s many wards and protections could be found. With her ability to open doors, Donna was like a walking, talking key.
And, beyond that, there was something else sleeping inside of her that none of the alchemists but Maker had glimpsed. Something more powerful, which the Underwoods couldn’t afford to reveal.
“Stay with the bags,” Patrick said. “Just stay here. Don’t move.”
He ran back along the path, disappearing between trees that were just beginning to shed their leaves. It was a chilly fall night. A night that Donna remembered in her bones, in her dreams, if not in her waking memory. He was gone, for good this time. The little girl waited for him to come back for her, wondering whether he’d made a mistake and actually meant to take her with him on the path after all. But it remained silent, apart from the wind through the branches.
She watched herself scuff a foot along the earth and eye the baggage. “Move the bags,” she whispered to her younger self.
Little Donna seemed to make a decision, and began dragging each bag to the edge of the pathway, hiding it as best she could behind the trunk of a tree even bigger than the one her future self currently hid behind. Donna smiled, despite her fear and confusion. She remembered this—she really did.
She remembered the feel of the bag strap against her small hand. Recalled how heavy her father’s backpack had been and how difficult it was to pull it safely behind the tree. But eventually she managed. She had all the bags safely tucked away, not really visible from the path unless you were looking for them. Especially not in the darkness, with only a sliver of moon overhead.
Donna watched as the little girl sat on the largest bag and peeked around the tree trunk, watching and waiting. She remembered the beating of her heart and the pain in her throat. She remembered how thirsty she was, and how she wondered whether she dared open Mommy’s bag and look for some water.
And then a howling, alien call shrieked through the entire forest, and Donna remembered what it was like, the first time she heard the cry of the Wood Monster. The terror, without even know what she was afraid of.
“Daddy?” she whispered, knowing that she wasn’t supposed to make a sound.
The monster screamed again. It was getting closer.
Donna fell into the memory, and everything else slipped away.
Twenty-three
She waits for her father to return. She knows he’ll come back for her. She knows he would never leave her behind—not forever. He was