Part 25 (1/2)

Take me instead.

And the vines and branches crawling towards Tanya and those that already ensnared her paused for the briefest of moments before slowly withdrawing, releasing her from their clutches and continuing on their way . . . to Red. Inch by inch they crept over her like leafy tentacles, pulling her away from Tanya . . . away from the mortal world.

Red did not resist.

In moments, she was surrendered completely; swallowed by the forest.

Fabian's hand closed around the hair, along with a fistful of earth.

'I've got it!'

Warwick struck another match, the yellow flame hissing to life. He seized the hair and held the match to it. It flared up instantly and he dropped it to the ground. They watched in silence as it burned away to nothing, until all that remained was the charred remnants of fallen twigs and leaves where Morwenna's hair had been.

Fabian's watch finally went silent.

'I never realised,' Warwick said softly. 'All this time . . . I thought the hair was my mother's. She was dark too . . . I never saw the significance until tonight. All the time he was trying to find a replacement for Morwenna. He never got over her. The truth was right there in front of me and I chose not to see it.'

'How long have you known?'

Even in the darkness, Fabian could read the regret in his father's eyes.

'Ever since Tanya was born.'

'What will happen to Morwenna now the pact is broken?' Fabian whispered.

'She'll feel it, instantly,' said Warwick. 'It should be enough to deter her from wanting to go ahead with the exchange.' He began to run deeper into the woods, calling over his shoulder.

'We have to find Tanya!'

Fabian followed his father, neither of them aware that an alternative exchange had already taken place.

The edge of the forest was in sight, the moon just visible through the trees. Barely lucid, Tanya staggered towards it. Only Oberon, tugging at the other end of his leash, was supporting her. Her eyes were swollen and sticky with tears, and her head felt woollen.

Red was gone; vanished into the fairy realm like a footprint in sand. In trading herself instead of Tanya, she had saved them both.

Tanya was almost at the wood's edge when she realised she was not alone.

Just paces in front of her, on the path ahead, Morwenna Bloom was moving towards the opening in the trees. And as Tanya watched, an initial surge of anger dispersed as it became apparent that something was very wrong.

Morwenna pushed herself onwards but her movements were slowing. Tanya heard her breathing change, becoming ragged and laboured. She keeled over suddenly, her back hunched, feet moving slowly now, hobbling and shuffling. She looked like she was in pain, Tanya realised. Aching . . . or very, very tired.

'What's happening to me?' she murmured.

The voice that emerged from her lips was not that of a fourteen-year-old girl.

Not tired . . . but old.

With mounting horror, Tanya now knew what had happened. Fabian had not left her in an act of cowardice. Fabian had gone to destroy the lock of hair the link to Morwenna's youth. And he had succeeded.

The horrified whimper that reached Tanya's ears then was her own. At the sound of it, Morwenna turned to face her.

'You?' she rasped, in an old woman's voice. A strange new voice that Tanya could see was even more terrifying to Morwenna than it was to her. 'How . . .? It's not possible that you're here . . .'

The confusion and malice on her face shrivelled with her flesh. It wrinkled, withered and puckered, sagging and hanging loosely over the contours of her skull as every one of the fifty years Morwenna had cheated caught up with her all of them at once. The effect of it was like poison and truly terrible to witness.

Tanya was powerless to do anything except scream. And scream.

Morwenna looked down at her hands and cried out. No longer were they smooth and soft; they were growing withered and twisted before her eyes.

'No!'

She grabbed a strand of her long hair, but it was now coa.r.s.e and white like wool. Slowly, she lifted her hands to her face and felt the hollows of her cheeks and the lines of her skin. She reached her twisted hands towards Tanya. Her lips were drawn back in a hideous grimace over teeth that were blackening and loosening, then crumbling and dropping out.

Tanya turned on her heel and fled. Back into the woods, back the way she had come; sobbing and desperate and more willing to face whatever the woods held rather than stand before the grotesque figure of Morwenna Bloom.

She never saw Morwenna trying to follow her along the path. For in the time it took for the old woman to take but a few steps, Tanya was long gone. And so Morwenna was utterly alone when the combination of the ageing process and the subsequent shock of it took their final toll on her body.

A crippling pain seared through her chest and upper left arm. Gasping, she sank to the ground. With fading eyesight, she looked to the edge of the forest.

It was so near . . . yet she would never reach it.

Tanya was huddled on the ground, cowering into Oberon when they found her.

A calloused hand brushed her hair back from her face, and then came a voice, familiar . . . and yet not.