Clove Bakshi's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The field ended at a wall. Clove stopped short. What had been a thin tree line an hour ago was now a thicket twice his height, black branches braided thick as his wrist, studded with thorns and dusky purple flowers. The fay had grown it while he wasn't looking. He walked the length of it. No gate. No thin spot. Just thorns and the soft hum of something pleased with itself on the other side. He tried anyway. He picked a low patch and shoved his arm through. A thorn caught his sleeve and tore it. Another opened a line across the back of his hand. He pulled back and stared at the red bead rising on his knuckle. He pushed again at a different spot, harder, lowering his shoulder. The branches bent and snapped back, slapping his cheek. He sat down in the dirt and pressed his sleeve to his face. His ears, the pointed ones his mother had never asked about, burned hot. He was thirteen and bleeding and his sister was in there somewhere, and brute force was not going to work. Something moved near his boot. A small white mouse sat up on its back legs, watching him with shiny black eyes. Its front teeth were too long for its face. Not a real mouse. He knew the difference now. Clove dug in his pocket and found the heel of bread he'd taken from the bakery counter that morning. He broke off a crumb and set it on the dirt. Then he did the thing he'd been trying not to do. He reached for the fay part of himself, the part that felt like cold water under his ribs, and he spoke to the mouse without using his mouth. Show me a way through. There's more bread. The mouse's whiskers twitched. It took the crumb in both paws and ate it neatly. Then it turned and ran along the base of the thicket. Clove followed, dropping crumbs as he went, hating how easy it was. His fay mother had probably smiled the same way when she handed him the key. The mouse stopped at a place where two trunks crossed low to the ground. A gap. Not wide. Not friendly. But the thorns there grew outward instead of inward, and a person small enough could crawl under without losing skin. Clove dropped the last of the bread. The mouse ate, then vanished into the thicket like smoke. He knelt in the dirt and looked at the gap. He'd asked a fay creature for help and it had helped him, which meant he was using their tools now. He thought of soup on a tray. He flattened himself to the ground and started crawling through.