Free Hawthorn by Carol Goodman Page B

the Great War, but you won’t survive long here, dearling. There’s a contagion that is taking us all.” She looked back over her shoulder at the swaying women. One at the center was moving less and less. She was covered with soot from head to foot; even her hair and skin were the color of ash.
    â€œWhat happened here?” I asked. “I thought the shadows couldn’t cross over into Faerie.”
    â€œSo did we. But once van Drood opened the third vessel, the hope-eaters pressed in on us here in Faerie. The darkness spread like a mold or a virus, killing the grass and the flowers, the trees . . . and then the fay. First the smaller delicate ones—the lampsprites and boggles—but then even the trows and goblins. They all fell to the contagion. Only those of us who were human were immune—and the changelings—but now even the changelings have succumbed.”
    She turned her head back to look over her shoulder. The woman in the center had stopped swaying. She was arrested in a posture of supplication, her soot-covered arms raised to the sky, darkening and hardening as I watched until she was indistinguishable from the trees surrounding her—
    Which weren’t trees.
    They were changelings frozen into the stunted, twisted shapes of blasted trees. I looked back at my mother and saw with horror that the same soot streaked her arms and stainedthe hollows beneath her eyes. “Come with me,” I said. “I have a watch that will take us back to a time before all this happened. Come with me.”
    She shook her head. “Even if I could pass back into your world I wouldn’t take the chance of spreading this contagion. But if you can go back . . .” She smiled, the movement spreading fine cracks in her brittle skin. “Perhaps you can change the course of events and keep the creeping shadow out of Faerie. He’s waiting for you there, isn’t he?”
    â€œYes, Raven is waiting for me. He left me the watch.”
    â€œThen you’ll be all right. Go back to him now, dearling, before it’s too late.”
    â€œWe’ll make this right, Mother, I promise.”
    She lifted her hand to stroke my face. “I know that if anyone can it will be you—and your friends.” She looked over my shoulder to where Helen had come to stand behind me. “But promise me one thing, dearling.”
    â€œAnything, Mother,” I cried, my tears blurring her face.
    â€œDon’t make the mistake I made. Hold on to the ones you love. If you can’t change our fates—take the ones you love and run as far as you can.”

    Helen led me away from my mother, my eyes so blurred with tears I stumbled over the rough ground. I remembered how hard it had been to leave her once before in Faerie but it was a hundred times worse leaving her in this desolate place.
    â€œWe will make this right,” Helen said firmly. “We will stop van Drood before he can spread his foulness everywhere.”
    I nodded, too overcome to talk, and took the watch out of my pocket. It was ticking faster, as if it were an animal whose heart was racing in this awful place—or as if it were running down. What if the foul soot was clogging the mechanism? Even a magic watch might not run forever. What if we were too late?
    My hand trembling, I held up the watch and depressed the stem.
    The ticking stopped. My heart stopped with it. Everything stopped. The keening wind, Helen’s breath, time itself. Raven had found what Helen had asked for: a spell to stop time. But what if it kept us here—and now—for all eternity, trapped in this ruined place?
    Then the watch began to move. The gold wings spun clockwise, then counterclockwise, then lifted up from the watch face. Gears and cogs whirled inside, reshaping the watch into something else. I watched in amazement as before my eyes the watch changed into a mechanical bird with gold wings that rose