They did. It took a good thirty seconds for them to trudge back through snow.
“More!” I said.
They backed up a little more.
I put my one hand on the tree, and gave it a light push.
With only that gentle pressure, something higher up cracked, something below cracked.
Snow broke free of the spell of frozen time. An entire section of forest seemed to come to life in small ways, with drifting snow and movement from a faint wind. The tree I’d touched broke free, tilting. Ice and snow rained down on top of Evan and I as branches were torn from where ice had frozen them in place.
With the one tree came two others, like one domino hauling the rest behind it. Dirt and snow were kicked up as roots pulled free of the earth, and with the housing lost, a fourth tree toppled.
Trees that had grown for more than a hundred years now fell. Their branches were meager, and did nothing to slow the fall.
The landing broke two of the four trees right in the middle, the upper ends striking hills, the midsections bowing until they broke. Where they touched the middle of the clearing, dirt, roots, and thin branches stuck out, kicked to life where they had been arranged in rows.
Part of the trap mechanism, buried just beneath the earth.
Three trees, falling, parallel with one another, across the middle of the clearing.
The fourth fell diagonally. Poised to strike down anyone or anything fast enough to move clear of the initial deadfall. A dead tree, the branches long since fallen or broken, reduced to spiky protrusions jutting out from the trunk.
The sound of splintering, shattering wood echoed through the crone’s glade.
Had we been approaching from the other direction, we wouldn’t have seen the track, I wasn’t sure we would have escaped.
Not all of us. Maybe I would have, with Evan’s help. I suspected the satyr and maenad were spry enough. Green Eyes… maybe.
But not all of us. Which wasn’t good enough.
Snow that had shaken free of branches across the entire forest now came to a stop, halfway through to falling to the ground.
I could hear crows and vultures cawing in the background.
The others headed in my direction, walking across the fallen trees.
“Magic?” Green Eyes asked.
I frowned, looking at the fallen trees, and the poles that had been part of the mechanism.
“Not sure,” I said.
“No,” Tiff said. “That’s not how she operates.”
“Oh, great,” Peter said. “Innocents are protected, they say. It’s good to have some innocents along. Innocents are harder to affect with magic. You aren’t entirely magical, but you should go along. You’ll help the group just by being there, an extra set of skills. What happens in the first half hour? Dragon, giant, now falling trees. Are we protected? Noooo.”
“This is natural,” Tiff said. “But it’s hers, in a way that very few things are anyone’s nowadays.”
“When you say hers, you mean the woman who hates whitey?” Peter asked.
“That’s not how I’d phrase it,” Tiff said.
“Just trying to keep it all straight.”
“It’s not straight,” Roxanne said, staring down at the fallen tree she was standing on. It was a non-sequitur, an out of place line, and it made me worry a bit about her mental state.
“You okay?” Tiff asked. She placed a gloved hand on Roxanne’s shoulder, on the crimson coat.
Roxanne twisted away, scowling, as if she’d been burned.
“I see,” Tiff said.
“No you don’t,” Roxanne said. “You don’t.”
I winced. Meeting Tiff’s eyes, I could see she was thinking along the same lines.
Being called on a lie was bad, for a practitioner. Even if it was superficial. Not the best word choice by Tiff, but it was rare to get that kind of attack from inside one’s own camp.
“Roxanne,” I said. “Don’t do that. That kind of arguing is disastrous, here.”
She tensed. “You stop doing that first. Taking charge. Telling us what to do. Being condescending.”
“They’re not being condescending,” Peter said. “They really are superior. They’re better than us, and they’re acting like it.”
“That’s not-”
Peter raised a hand, then glanced at me. “You want to lead the way, or do you want to use us as cannon fodder?”
I glanced in the direction of the hut.
The others followed behind me as I led the way.
“The problem, Roxie,” Peter said, “is that you’re used to being superior. Everyone has a way of dealing. Kathy? Attack, attack, attack. That’s her pattern. When the attacks fail? Undermine, sabotage the competition in less direct ways. Paige? Act better than she is, raise herself up, place herself on a pedestal. When that fails? She breaks down, and she breaks down hard. Recognize the pattern, and you know how to play someone. All that emotion gets turned inward.”
“I don’t care,” Roxanne said. “Stop talking?”
“Gotta talk, part of how I deal. You and me? We’re manipulators. Different environments, but we play the same game. Where we differ is in how we deal when the manipulations fail. I’m not so different from Ellie. I retreat. But where she changes things up, I retreat to study. I come back better, smarter.”
“I think you might be a little biased in your interpretation of yourself,” I commented.
Peter shrugged. He stepped closer to Roxanne, who only glared at him, one of her eyes still bloodshot. “You, little Roxie, go right for the jugular. Or with a letter opener aimed at the crotch, it seems.”
“Don’t call me Roxie,” Roxanne said. But she didn’t move as Peter extended one hand, taking hold of her jacket, and lifted it up until the bottom edge was up around Roxanne’s armpits. She didn’t resist, and she didn’t flinch like she had with Tiff.
I looked back over my shoulder.
Knives in sheaths. Nice looking sheaths. Oiled leather. A leather harness was strapped around her body, with twist ties holding some excess straps in place, and ultimately was set up to hold a glass bottle over her bellybutton, and two pouches at either side. There was more just under the jacket that I couldn’t make out, and maybe more behind her back.
Tiff stared. “Did she always have those knives? That harness-”
“The witch hunter’s,” Peter said. “From the big bag they left behind, before Rose’s friends went through it. When she went to the bathroom, after we got back to the house. Our attention was on the Behaims. Hers was on preparing in case she needed to get cutthroat. That’s another little difference between us. She plans for failure. I like thinking I won’t fail, and still manage to deal if I do.”
Roxanne didn’t react. She kept walking, jacket lifted up to expose her sweater and myriad weapons.
“Armor, I’m presuming,” Peter said. He flicked at her stomach, fingernail tapping something hard.
“I used a book,” Roxanne said. “There were pieces in there but it was more to protect bottles.”
Peter commented, “That bottle there, that’s alcohol, Blake. She has matches too. Strips of cloth, if you didn’t see.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay? You do realize that she was planning for the eventuality that she might need to go after you?”
Green Eyes growled.