Free Red by Liesl Shurtliff Page A

this means, don’t you?” I said.
    “What?” Goldie shifted nervously.
    “War!” I flung two handfuls of mud. She shrieked and stumbled forward into the muck, but as soon as she came back up, she lobbed an apronful of mud in my face. I gagged and sputtered.
    “You have a little something on your face,” said Goldie.
    “That’s funny, you have a little something everywhere.” I lunged at Goldie and tackled her into the mud. We rolled this way and that while the mud squished and squelched with such a range of pitches it was nearly musical. The smell was vile, but it didn’t keep us from smearing the mud in each other’s faces, laughing so hard we couldn’t stop.
    “Look!” said Goldie. “A bend in the river!”
    She was right! The river was bending to the left, which was probably what had formed this bog in the first place. We slogged our way out of the mud, soggy and smelly as rotting fish guts, but neither of us minded. I didn’t think I’d laughed quite like that since…since the last time I had a friend, when Rump still lived on The Mountain.
    Goldie put her muddy arm through mine, and we walked away from the river, our footsteps squelching in a cheerful rhythm.

    By early afternoon, we found the rock shaped like a fish. Its curved body was poised as though jumping out of water, just as the dwarf had said.
    “Now which way?” asked Goldie.
    “The dwarf said north. And we were going west, I think, so…” I tried to get my bearings, but I wasn’t at all certain until something whispered in my ear. A yellow leaf drifted past me, floating along an invisible path.
    “Follow the nymph!” I said. We walked around a narrow ledge on the mountainside that gave way to a steep, rocky hillside and finally smoothed to thick woods dotted with stones. Gravestones.
    We instantly slowed, suddenly wary of what lay ahead.
    The graveyard looked ancient. Some of the stones were crumbling, covered in lichen, and the names etched in them were nearly unreadable from so many years of rain and wind and snow. I couldn’t help but study the names as I passed.
A GATHA. B ELINDA. J ACOB. B ERNARD.
    My skin prickled as I read. People who had once been alive were now dead and buried in the ground, nothing but bones and dirt. No matter how rich or poor, how powerful or helpless, they all died.
    “I don’t like graveyards,” said Goldie.
    “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said, though my own voice trembled.
    “What if we see a ghost?”
    “Then we must hope it is a friendly one.”
B ERTHA. H UGO. K LAUS.
    The trees began to whisper.
    “Do you hear that?” Goldie asked.
    “Shhhh.” The whispering grew louder, like a wind rustling the leaves, except I felt no breeze.
    “It’s a ghost!” whimpered Goldie.
    “It’s not a ghost,” I said. “It’s the tree nymphs.” They seemed excited, or at least they were louder than I’d ever heard them before. Granny said when people die, the tree nymphs soak up all their memories and whisper their ancient secrets and wisdom to those who will listen.
    I walked between the gravestones, tilting my ears toward the trees.
R OSAMUNDE. S IEGMUND. G UIDO.
    I could almost hear the nymphs saying the names aloud with their tiny clicks and whispers. Then the nymphs took flight, all the leaves rising off the branches at once. They swirled around us, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Surely I could catch at least one.
    I jumped and clapped my hands over the nymphs. I tried to use my cloak as a net, but the nymphs evaded me at every turn. Then they swarmed all around me, tugging on my cloak and hair. They did the same to Goldie, pulling us each farther into the graveyard, where more tree nymphs rose off their branches. Finally they all swirled up into the sky in a funnel, leaving all the surrounding trees as bare and lifeless as the graveyard. But beyond the trees lay the treasure we were seeking.
    A well.

CHAPTER TWELVE
Well, Wine, and Witch
    The well didn’t look magical. It was