“In all your life, your only choice,” Aunt Léonie said to her once, “is the path of needles or the path of pins.”
Rachelle remembered that, the day that she killed her.
When Rachelle was twelve years old, Aunt Léonie picked her to become the village’s next woodwife.
Rachelle had been to her aunt’s cottage a hundred times before, but that morning she stood awkwardly straight and proper, her hands clasped in front of her. Aunt Léonie knelt before her, wearing the white dress and red mantle of a woodwife.
“Child,” she said, and Rachelle’s spine stiffened because Aunt Léonie only called her that when she was in trouble, “do you know the purpose of a woodwife?”
“To weave the charms that protect the village,” Rachelle said promptly. “And remember the ancient lore.”
Rachelle thought she would like weaving the yarn through her fingers. She knew she would love learning the old tales. But she wished that woodwives still went on quests. She wanted to live the stories, not just tell them to the village children.
“And who was the first woodwife?” asked Aunt Léonie.
“Zisa,” said Rachelle. “Because she was the first person to protect anyone from the Great Forest, when she and Tyr killed the Devourer.”
“And who is the Devourer?” asked Aunt Léonie.
“The god of the forestborn,” said Rachelle. “Father Pierre says he doesn’t really exist, or anyway he’s not a god, because there is only one God. But whatever the Devourer was, he had the sun and the moon in his belly until Tyr and Zisa stole them and put them in the sky.”
Father Pierre said that part of the story wasn’t true either, but Rachelle didn’t see how he could be so sure when he hadn’t been there three thousand years ago. And she liked that part of the story.
“He is the everlasting hunger,” said Aunt Léonie in a voice of grim resignation. “And yes, once he held all the world in darkness, and once all mankind was ruled by the forestborn, who hunted us like rabbits.”
A thread of uneasiness slid through her stomach. “Tyr and Zisa killed the Devourer,” she said. “Zisa died, and Tyr became king.”
“No,” said Aunt Léonie. “Tyr and Zisa only bound him. And that binding is nearly worn out.”
She said the words so simply, it was a moment before Rachelle understood them, before she felt the awful, sickening lurch of real fear.
Quietly, relentlessly, Aunt Léonie went on, “One day soon he will open his eyes and yawn, and then he will swallow up the moon and the sun, and we shall live in darkness once again.” She met Rachelle’s eyes. “Do you believe me, child?”
“Yes,” said Rachelle, as her heart beat, No, please, no, but when she met Aunt Léonie’s eyes, she had to think, Maybe.
It’s all right, she told herself. Aunt Léonie will save us.
But Aunt Léonie didn’t plan to save anyone.
For three years, Rachelle sat obediently braiding charms in the cottage. She learned to ward off fever and keep mice out of grain, and to prevent woodspawn—the animals born in the Great Forest, suffused with its power—from wandering into the village and attacking people. But none of it mattered, because when the Devourer returned, no charm would be strong enough to protect anyone. Aunt Léonie told her so again and again.
“What can we do?” Rachelle always asked.
Aunt Léonie would only shrug. “Sometimes abiding is more important than doing.”
Zisa hadn’t abided. Zisa had fought the Devourer and saved the whole world, but apparently woodwives weren’t supposed to save people anymore. They were supposed to sit in their cottages and braid insignificant charms and never, ever dream of changing the world.
Rachelle clenched her teeth and furiously dreamed. Every day the cottage felt more like a prison.
Until one day she was walking home from Aunt Léonie’s cottage and she realized that something had changed. The shadows had grown deeper; the blue flowers by the side of the path had begun to glow. The wind felt like fingertips tracing her neck. Shadowy, phantom mushrooms studded the ground; a deer made out of black cloud peered at her from between the trees, its eyes glowing red.
She blinked and it was gone, but her heart was thudding and her veins buzzing. She had seen the Forest. Not just the woods around her village—she had seen a glimpse of the Great Forest, the Wood Behind the Wood. You could wander for days beneath the trees and never see it, because it was not part of the human world; it was a secret, hidden place that