Summer's Crossing

I loved it. Even though I was Summer, this felt more like home than anywhere else.

“Here we are,” I said, stepping beneath a pair of cypresses twisted together to form an arch between the trunks. Around us, the murk of the wyldwood closed in, though a few lone will-o-the-wisps bobbed through the leaves, looking for lost travelers. Thick black briars crawled between trunks, creeping along the ground as they strangled the life from all other vegetation. “Arcadia isn’t far. I would’ve used the trod that takes us through the quartz caverns, but I’m afraid a lindworm has taken up residence since the last time I was there.”

Ash looked around, always alert, and raised an eyebrow. “You do realize you’ve brought us right into the middle of hedge wolf territory.”

Inwardly I winced. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice that small fact. “Well, we’ll just have to sneak through nice and quiet.”

“Hedge wolves don’t have ears,” Ash continued. “They hunt by sensing the vibrations in the ground. And in the air. They’re probably listening to us right now.”

“Do you want to reach the Summer Court or not, princeling?” I challenged, crossing my arms. “This is the quickest way.”

A rustle in a bramble patch drew our attention, and we caught a glint of a baleful green eye as something huge and bristly drew away into the shadows.

“And…there it goes to alert the rest of the pack.” Ash glared at me. “Why do things always happen when I’m around you?”

“Just lucky, I suppose,” I said cheerfully, as we hurried away before the rest of the pack could arrive.

It didn’t go as well as I planned. Hedge wolves were ambush predators, though certainly not the nastiest monsters we’d ever faced. But they were tricky bastards, and had the bad habit of looking exactly like an innocent briar patch until you were right up on them and then boom, you had this big, wolf-shaped bush lunging at your face. We dodged, ducked and slashed our way past the first dozen or so, avoiding the spiky bushes of death that leaped at us with no warning, or lunged out from the briars. Unfortunately hedge wolves also had the audacity to learn from past mistakes, and they started using strategy and group tactics against us.

We stepped into a clearing just as one of the bristly creatures slid into the brambles ahead of us. As we eased forward, tense and wary, four bushes around us sprang to life and charged. Ash and I spun, going back-to-back instinctively as the spiky creatures lunged from all sides. Ash’s sword lashed out, slicing one from the air as I stabbed upward with my dagger, caught a hedge wolf under the jaw and hurled it into its friend. The last wolf met a sudden end on Ash’s blade, but then without warning, another pair of brambles unfurled and lunged, catching us by surprise this time. I felt the spiky body of a huge wolf slam into me, knocking me flat, as the second wolf chomped down on the prince’s sword arm.