one

Keelie Heartwood ran, legs stretching, arms pumping, her lungs squeezed from the fear that threatened to stop her. Half blind from the tears that clogged her eyes, she tried to drown out Sean’s words, playing in an endless loop in her head.

Around her the deep green of the ancient Oregon forest was a blur as she raced over the unfamiliar ground, barely noting the terrain. She listened for the cry of the hawk overhead.

Ariel came first in her life. The blind hawk was flying, and she would die if Keelie didn’t coax her down. The trees here were tall and forbidding, and a collision would be fatal. She had chosen to release the nervous hawk—if Ariel got hurt, it would all be her fault.

A small stream cut deep in the loam, and Keelie vaulted it and landed, sure-footed in her running shoes, on the other side.

Stay. The water sprite’s voice rose like bubbles from the fast-moving water, and though Keelie ran on, she sent back the promise to return. At least she’d have one friend here.

The Dread had nestled in deep pockets in the old woods, and her next step made her gasp as a strong eddy of the curse made her human fear spike. She squeezed her rose quartz in her fist, thinking of what Sir Davey, her Earth magic teacher, had said over and over to her this summer: Pull on the earth, let the rocks below ground you.

The fear ebbed and she ran on, looking up now and then for the dark wings of the hawk she’d worked so hard to rehabilitate. She could not let anything happen to Ariel. Too bad Sir Davey hadn’t taught her anything about boys.

Leaves rustled on the bushes to her left, and before she could react, a lithe, brown-furred body burst through them, leaping through the air. It touched down in front of her, then leaped again. She whirled to avoid it, then stopped as another one jumped toward her. Deer. Tall and graceful, they landed on the grass of the clearing, then headed up the slope, away from her. Panting, Keelie watched them maneuver the rocks and gullies as if they were being manipulated by a giant puppeteer.

Ariel cried out above her, and Keelie looked up, dismayed that she’d let the deer distract her. The shadows had lengthened, and it would be dark soon. She needed to get Ariel and return to her grandmother’s house.

She didn’t want to go back, but she had to. Everyone would be waiting for her. Sean would be there. Her chest tightened, remembering the earnest look on his handsome face, the way the tips of his ears poked out between the blond locks that hung to his shoulders. The words had made sense as he’d started talking, and then they’d been lost in the thudding of her heart.

She’d thought he’d taken her aside to sneak a kiss, and so she led him to the mews, where she’d just fed Ariel. “I’ve missed you so much,” she said, like a lovesick idiot.

And he’d looked pained and told her about Risa. Risa, the elf girl that his father had chosen for him. The one whose engagement to Sean might be announced tonight, at Keelie’s welcome party.

Sorry, sorry, sorry—his words echoed with each step. She’d have to hide her feelings from everyone, especially Grandmother.

It sounded weird to say “Grandmother,” a word that before had only meant Josephine, her mother’s mother and the only grandmother she knew. Josephine was small and sweet, soft and full of laughter. Nothing like tall, stern Keliatiel, whose long, silvery white hair hung straight behind her, brushing the skirts of her robes. Yeah, robes. Straight out of the movies. She was the leader here in the Dread Forest, and the elves all bowed to her.

She’d made a big show of welcoming Keelie, and her house at the edge of a clearing was the site of the welcome party in Keelie’s honor. The guests were all probably anxious to stare at the half-human child that Zekeliel, Keliatiel’s son—the Tree Shepherd himself—had brought home. His daughter. The one who wasn’t elf enough to marry Lord Niriel’s son.

The thought made Keelie break into a run again. What would she say to them? And worse—how could she keep them from seeing how much it hurt her to see Sean but not to be able to hold his hand? To be called “Round Ear”? She’d seen the sidelong looks and behind-the-hand whispers around the village all week.

Keelie moved faster, looking up to try to spot Ariel again. But the sky had darkened and it was impossible to see. She tripped and landed hard on her knees. For a moment the pain was so intense that she just concentrated on breathing; then it lessened. Keelie moved one leg, then the other, carefully, testing them. Her knees burned through her jeans and her palms were scraped, but she was okay.

No, she wasn’t. She rolled sideways and sat, dampness seeping through the seat of her jeans, then pulled her legs up.

Tears slid down her nose and dropped onto the dried leaves that formed the forest floor. Her hand had snapped a twig. Alder, she thought. Alder like the ones at the High Mountain Faire. Through her contact with the branch, she could see that one of the huge trees nearby was its mother. She’d never seen such a broad alder.

These trees were hundreds of years old. What must they think of silly humanity, running around trying to solve their so-called problems?

Then Keelie froze. She sensed movement in the bushes. Something was there, in the shaded crevice formed by the overhang of a massive fallen oak next to her. It was not a deer.

Keelie put her hand on the green-spotted bark of the dead giant and said the words of the Tree Lorem, which her father had taught her. “Peace to You, Oh Tree,” she finished. She felt through the bark the thousands, millions of little lives that were now part of the tree, fed and sheltered because of its death. She saw in her mind’s eye the storm that had felled it, felt the hot sizzle of lightning as it had burned explosively to the tree’s core.

Flinching, Keelie pulled her hand away from the bark—then saw clearly the thing that had sheltered in its shadow.

It was a boy. He slept, his hoodie shielding his face, with his thin arms wrapped tightly around himself as if they could keep the damp away from his ribs. He seemed to be about her age. His torn jeans revealed one grimespotted white kneecap, and his boots had heels so worn that it must have hurt to walk in them.

He lay unmoving, so still that Keelie wondered if maybe he was dead, but no, she’d seen him move before. She’d heard him.

A couple of the elves in the village had mentioned to her father that hikers were getting farther into the Dread Forest than ever before, now that the Dread was fading. Keelie almost opened her hand to look at her rose quartz—her ward against the Dread—but knew better. If she lost contact with the little polished stone for even a minute, the Dread would roar through her. Its terror was not real, but the panic it brought would be so deep that she would be unable to stop herself from running away. Even though she knew what the Dread was—a curse to keep humans from entering and defiling the forest—it still affected her. She willed herself to breathe more slowly.

The boy moved. His head shifted, which pulled the hoodie away from his face. He was beautiful. Dark hair fell across his brow, and his lashes were long and sooty black against his pale, pale skin. He was deeply asleep.

She saw that he was round-eared, and seemed to be as human as she was. Even more so, actually, since he wasn’t half elf. Keelie touched her ear, the rounded, normal upper edge smooth under her finger, then slid a finger up the long, upswept curve of her other ear tip. So much drama over the shape of an ear.

She had the sudden urge to do a reverse Sleeping Beauty and kiss him. Would he awaken? Grant her a wish? No, that was a genie. But at least she’d be kissed by someone.

The cool ground was getting uncomfortable. She got up carefully, not wanting to wake the boy. He didn’t look dangerous, but she’d be sure to tell Dad about him when she got back to Grandmother’s.

His presence here was puzzling. The elves didn’t want humans near the forest, and relied on the Dread to keep them out. But even asleep, this boy didn’t seem afraid. If he’d been affected by the Dread he would have been curled up in a ball, terrified, or running wildly toward the edge of the forest, not knowing why he was fleeing or from what.

The brilliant greens of the forest were muting to shades of gray in the gathering darkness. The boy was barely visible. As the gloom deepened, it occurred to Keelie that Ariel had not cried out in a while. Maybe she was roosting somewhere. Keelie was not excited about the prospect of spending the night in the forest, looking for a lost blind hawk, and her father would start searching for her if she was late to her party.

Wings flapped overhead and Keelie looked up expectantly. Ariel, or an owl? She stared up into the soaring canopy of the trees. Dad had been right—the Dread Forest was a forest like no other. It was his home, and now it was to be hers, too. She wasn’t sure she’d call it home, though. “Home” was a word like “dad”—it had to mean something. Any place where she had to clutch her rose quartz to feel comfortable could not be home.

Of course, she’d only been here one day, so maybe she’d change her mind. She could avoid Sean, and maybe after awhile it wouldn’t feel like her heart was being stapled to her ribs every time she thought about him. And she’d feel a lot more optimistic once Ariel was safe.

The dried leaves of the forest floor rustled, and Keelie looked back down. The boy was gone. She looked around for a trace of his passing. Nothing. Not a moving leaf. Where had he gone, and how had he moved so silently? It was as if he’d melted into the earth. She silently wished him a speedy journey out of the Dread Forest before the elves found him.

Keelie opened herself to the trees, asking them to find him. She felt their ancient presence, the green enormity of the mature forest, but the trees didn’t answer her call. Puzzling. She could feel their guarded presence, but her connection to the forest seemed to be faltering. She came from a long line of tree shepherds, and though she’d only been able to actively communicate with trees since June, she’d gotten used to it. Was she being snubbed?

Keelie cut off her attempt to contact the trees as she heard Ariel’s high-pitched call. But a chill of fear trembled through her. If the trees wouldn’t speak to her, finding Ariel and getting her back into her enclosure would be a lot harder.

She took a deep breath and released it slowly, trying to regain her calm, if only for Ariel’s sake. The hawk always seemed to sense her emotions; the stress she’d felt about moving to the Dread Forest had made the hawk pick at the feathers on her chest until she bled. Keelie had no feathers to pick, but she understood the feeling.

Something moved to her left. Thinking it was the boy, she turned, but instead saw raised wings settle against a large shape perched on a juniper branch, which was bent low from its weight. Keelie walked slowly toward the tree, not wanting to scare Ariel away.

The tree was near the top of the ridge, and the forest below was vast, undulating and green, reaching toward the faraway road that led toward the tiny town of Edgewood. Smoke rose from a spot near the road, and Keelie had to squint against the growing darkness to see what it was. Forest fire? She put a hand on the bark of the great fir next to her, and suddenly it was as if she were wearing binoculars.

She saw the source of the fire clearly—a giant tangle of branches and wood, heaped in the center of a clearing that had been scraped out of the forest. Big yellow bulldozers and cranes were parked at the edge of the bare earth, with a small office trailer on the other side. She would ask Dad what they were doing. The Dread was losing its strength, making the forest vulnerable to humans and their industrial ways, but this was just too close.

Maybe this was where the boy had come from.

She needed to go back to Grandmother’s house, although she wished she could spend more time here. She wasn’t looking forward to the elf fest.

Beneath her hand the bark warmed, and she felt the tree’s awareness shift to the juniper and the bird in its branches. Do you wish for us to send the bird to you?

Amazed, Keelie realized that Ariel’s flight had been guided by the trees. If they could do this, she could bring Ariel out every day.

The juniper’s branches shook, and Ariel flapped her wide wings and glided confidently toward Keelie as if she could see again. Keelie held her arm high and Ariel landed on the leather guard wrapped around Keelie’s wrist. The hawk dug her talons into the leather, shifting to steady herself.

Keelie stroked the bird’s throat feathers to calm her. “There, girl, didn’t that feel good?” she crooned. She couldn’t get mad at Ariel for wanting to take off, when she’d done the same thing.

The strong scent of evergreens surrounded her suddenly, making her feel as if she was on a Christmas tree farm. Tree Shepherdess, your father says it is time to return to the village. It was a tall juniper by the path. She sensed its great age, and through it, the forest around her, steeped in layers of magic, both in the air and under the earth. She could feel the soil strata beneath her, the age-old deposits, rich in magic, and something else, deeper below, that her mind shrank from.

Soon, Keelie replied.

Now! Dad’s mental voice blared into her mind. Keelie immediately shut him out. She didn’t want Dad talking to her telepathically. He’d been doing it more and more ever since they’d arrived at the Dread Forest, and she was afraid that he’d look into her mind as well. What if he saw what had happened with Sean? She’d been such a fool, telling him that she loved him, that she’d missed him.

Keelie, come to the gathering! You promised you would be here and your Grandmother is unhappy. If you want to fit in with the elves you need to meet them halfway. They’ve come to see you.

Why couldn’t he get a cell phone and text her like normal people did? And she wasn’t talking about one of those elf phones that used the trees as cell phone towers, either.

She tuned him out. She didn’t care if Grandmother was unhappy. Keliatiel Heartwood seemed to be glad to have her son back, but she ignored Keelie except when Zeke was around. It was as if she didn’t know what to do about her odd, half-human grandchild.

Keelie started walking back to the path, working to keep Ariel steady on her arm, placing her feet carefully so that she didn’t slide on the pine needles. She wondered where the boy had gone, still amazed that the Dread hadn’t freaked him out this far into the forest. Maybe she shouldn’t tell Dad or the others either. The boy might need their help, but they might overreact if they heard that a human had been here.

As she reached the wide, sandy path that led to the elven village, she glanced back wistfully at the gloomy forest. If the boy wasn’t hurt, she wished he’d stuck around to talk a little. She was lonely. Her best friend Laurie had spent a couple of weeks with her at the last Ren Faire, in New York, but Laurie was back home in L.A. now. Their older friend Raven was in college in New York City, taking a heavy class load so that she could finish early and rush back to Canooga Springs, New York. Keelie felt totally alone.

She hadn’t even seen Sean until today. Lord Niriel was in charge of the jousters, and he insisted on them maintaining a rigorous training routine even in the off-season. Sean had either been busy working out with the elven jousters yesterday or avoiding her. But Keelie had been willing to wait to spend time with him. She’d been busy with Ariel and Alora, the acorn who’d been given over to Keelie’s care by the Wildewood Forest’s queen. In a matter of days, the acorn had quickly grown into a seedling, and now it was a treeling. It was a total brat, too. Keelie bet that was why Dad was so insistent that she go to the party. Alora was probably throwing a tantrum.

She trudged back along the path, slowing as she saw the distinctive stone-and-timber buildings that made up the elven village. She was dreading the next few hours, and maybe the whole winter ahead. A small breeze ruffled Ariel’s feathers and the hawk lifted her head to catch the cool air. Keelie was glad that, at least, Ariel had flown. It was a rare occurrence, although now it could be a daily escape for both of them. Maybe Ariel would sleep soundly tonight, dreaming of swooping down on unsuspecting field mice.

Skirting her father’s house, Keelie went to the workshop in the back where she’d built a temporary mews for Ariel out of chicken wire and boards. Once she had settled the hawk, she examined the door for holes and stared, puzzled, at the smoothly-joined boards that formed the entrance. No way could Ariel have gotten out by herself, and she was sure she hadn’t left the door open.

She climbed the three worn, shallow, stone steps to the house and entered the kitchen—a broad room with a stacked stone hearth at one end and an array of copper pots hanging in the center over a scarred timber table. She hurried through to the hallway that led to the paneled foyer, and then up the curving stairs to her bedroom.

So far, her bedroom had been the best part of her new life in the Dread Forest. Dad must have had folks working on it at the beginning of the summer, back when she’d first moved in with him at the High Mountain Faire in Colorado. A canopied bed dominated the room, its posts made from twisted wisteria vines that held back billowing curtains of spangled blue and purple gauze. A cherry dresser was set up on one wall, each drawer knob a carved golden apple, and above it was a large round mirror, the frame carved with realistic-looking apple branches. She loved to run her hand over the smooth, glossy wood, which sent her images of its long-ago days on a Virginia hillside, when puffy clouds and passing deer were the only movement.

The room’s sole window had an extra-wide sill, which was where she’d put Alora, the acorn treeling, in her pot. The sill was vacant now, since Alora was visiting the aunties—three ancient oaks huddled together at the opposite edge of the village green. Keelie was glad, because she’d had enough of the treeling’s babyish demands.

She quickly changed out of her jeans and T-shirt and tossed on the bat-sleeved velveteen medieval dress her grandmother had given her to wear tonight. Its skirts flared out from a tight bodice, but there were no buttons or zippers. It was cut so that you had to wiggle into it, and then adjust it until it fit. She clasped a jeweled belt with a silver buckle adorned with acorns and oak leaves around her hips, and she was ready to go. There was nothing that could be done about her wild, curly brown hair without a strenuous flat-ironing session, and she didn’t have time. Who cared, anyway?

There was nothing she could do to make the elves think she was beautiful, or that she was one of them. She tossed aside the wimpy leather slippers that matched the outfit and put on the expensive custom boots Lady Annie had made for her at the Wildewood Renaissance Faire in New York.

Her grandmother’s house was at the end of a short path that skirted the broad green common area. If any human ever saw this place, they would believe it was part of a theme park. She could picture it now: Medieval Land, complete with picturesque cottages and small strongholds, handsome elf lords, awful, wicked grandmother elves, and traitorous jousters who made you think they loved you and then left you—

She stopped and took a deep breath. This would not do at all. She was going to march into the party and own it. She would not look bitter or betrayed. She would smile and try not to bite anyone, no matter what they said. When she felt in control again, she walked quickly to the front of the well-lit house. She could hear the buzzing of many voices through the open windows.

Keliatiel Heartwood’s house was two stories tall and made of light grey stone, its jutting upper story supported by heavy dark timbers. The path that led to the front door was bordered with fragrant herbs, and in the side yard bee skeps stood on tables, angled so that bee flight paths didn’t intersect the walking trail.

Keelie stepped onto the stone stoop and placed her hand hesitantly on the glass doorknob. She took a deep breath, then staggered backwards, heart hammering, as the door flew inwards and she recognized the tall, elegant elfin the opening.

“Greetings, Keliel Heartwood. I expect you thought you’d never see me again.” His deep, beautiful voice was like poisonous moss, velvety and lethal.

It was Lord Elianard, the unicorn killer himself.