I walked into the trees, alert for any sign that she was nearby. There, on a low branch, was a scrap of brown material. I moved closer and saw a few silver hairs clinging to the trunk. Mercedes had been here. She’d brushed up against this tree and gotten her hair caught.
“Mercedes!” I whispered. “Come out, come out wherever you are! Come on, Mercedes, leave me another clue to find.”
“Allie?” I heard a panicky voice whimper.
I turned, glancing around, trying to figure out where Mercedes’s voice was coming from. Across the clearing I could see a deep gouge of mud, and the tree seemed skinnier than the rest. Like it had wrapped its branches around itself or something. Whatever it was, something with that tree wasn’t right.
“Mer?” I moved closer to the tree, careful, searching for danger with every step.
“Allie! Oh crap, Allie, help me!”
“Mercedes?” I hurried over to the strange-looking tree. “Are you in there? What happened?”
“There have been some complications,” she muttered. “I may be stuck.”
“Stuck? How did you get stuck?”
“It’s a bit complicated,” she squeaked as I moved toward the sound of her voice.
“Complicated how?”
“You’ll see.”
“Mercedes, just tell me, are you okay?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, her voice going higher at the end like it was a question. “I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of trouble.”
“Lions, giants, and wizards oh my, trouble, or I think I got turned around in the forest and I’m so glad you’re here trouble?”
“A little of both.”
When I was directly in front of the tree I looked up into the narrow branches and found her strung up in some plant’s tentacles, cradled against the trees trunk while the branches held her like some sort of spider’s web. “A little of both” might be the understatement of the day. Possibly the week—and that was saying something.
“What the heck happened to you?” I peered up at her face high above me, the rest of her obscured by thick, leafy green vines.
“I was searching for a place to hide,” Mercedes said, “and I chose the wrong tree. This one has apparently been taken over by a giant carnivorous vine of some sort. It caught a bird a few minutes ago and ate it whole. Bones and all. I think it was supposed to be the appetizer.”
“So what’s the main course?” I asked.
“That would be me.”
“But you’re a dryad. I thought all the trees and plants loved you. You’re like the Snow White of trees and birds and all that sort of stuff.”
“Yeah, well, this particular vine seems more interested in lunch than it is in making friends. So can you help me or not?”
“Help you do what?” I asked.
“Allie!” She glared at me. “Get up here and get me down before the tree decides to turn me into its lunch.”
“Are you saying that’s a cannibalistic tree?”
“Technically it’s the vine that’s going to eat me but yes, it’s a carnivore and it just happens to have a taste for dryad!”
“Okay, okay. What do we do?”
“I don’t know. It has me in such a tight grip that I can’t even touch my magic, and it’s already started to sort of tickle at my toes. I think it’s trying to figure out if it wants to eat me from the bottom up or the top down. So hurry up and think of something already. Please?”
I looked skeptically at the tree. There had to be some way to get her out of this, and right now I was the only one who could do it. “No one told me how to deal with killer trees.”
“Well, where’s Kitsuna? If anyone knows how to deal with crazy trees then it’s Kit. She knows everything there is to know about all things weird in Nerissette.”
“I didn’t go and get her. I got out of the tree and came to find you so that we could go back to Dramera together.”
“Oh, that’s brilliant. We’re out here alone, trapped in a forest, and I’m going to die inside a houseplant. This is so not cool.” Mercedes kicked her feet and struggled to get loose.
She managed to wiggle one foot free and the plant seemed to shrink back from her kicking heels. “Mercedes, wait… I might have an idea.”
“What?”
“Kick the vines again.” I could feel the beginning of a plan starting to form as I saw the way the recently injured tendrils kept their distance from her.
“Do what? Why?”
“Because the vines moved away from your ankle when you were kicking it.”
“So?”
“So, it’s a living creature, right?”
“It’s a homicidal maniac in plant form.”
“Right, so I think the vine doesn’t like when you kick it.”
“And?” She struggled again and brought her foot back to deliver a futile kick. It wasn’t much, but the plant definitely shrank away from it, which was something.
“Can you get a hand free? Or even better, an arm?”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I spotted a large rock and made my way over to the branches of the tree where the plant had made its home. Shoving the rock into the pocket of my hunting trousers, I grabbed on to the rough bark and pulled myself up onto the branch, grumbling about all the upper body strength I’d lost since I wasn’t going to swim team practice anymore. “I got it.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, her face turning a sort of mottled purple, her silver eyes wide. “Order it to release me by command of the Golden Rose of Nerissette?”
“Do you think that will work?” I tightened my grip on the rock and made sure I was wedged tightly between where the branch and the plant met.
“No. What other ideas do you have?”
“Bash it with a rock, obviously.” I held the stone up for her to see and then brought it down as hard as I could on one of the vines near her. Just as I suspected, it peeled away and shrank to the far side of the trunk, trying to stay away from me and my crude little hammer.
“So what do I do when you’ve got the last of the vines off me?” Mercedes asked.
I started to bash in the vines nearest her head and worked my way down. “Lean over and grab the branch. It can hold both of us, and then we’ll climb down.”
“Great. Tree climbing. That’s exactly what I wanted to do after a long day of running for my life.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said as the vines pulled away, retreating in the face of my bashing stone. “All you have to do is hang on until I can get you out.”
“Like I’ve got anything else to do—I’m tied to a tree.”
“Don’t crab at me about it.” I rolled my eyes before bashing the vines closet to me, hoping that they would release her without too much difficulty. “It’s not my fault.”
“Fine, it’s not your fault I’m stuck here in this crappy world being eaten by a plant. Can you please get me down now?”
“I’m working on it, bossy. I swear by the stars, you were never this much of a pain in the real world.”
“I was never eaten by a plant there, either!”
“Give me a second and you’ll be free.”
“Fine!”
“Fine!” I brought the rock down as hard as I could on the one remaining vine. It let go of Mercedes and she swung over, dangling underneath the branch. I heard a soft creak, then a crack, and all I could think was that today was really not my day.
“Allie?” Mercedes asked, her voice suddenly a lot less angry and a lot more worried.
“Yeah?” I braced myself as the branch creaked again, one last time, before it broke completely and we plummeted to the forest floor below.
“Ouch,” Mercedes moaned. “That really hurt.”
“Tell me about it.” I sat up, pushing my hair back off my face. The soaked green cotton of my tunic was now more of a mud color, and I sniffed. Yep, it had picked up a moldy smell as well.