Over there, past the barrier, that is where she wanted to go.
A thick ring of rough black stone, tall with jagged tops, closed off the garden on three sides - north, west, then south. Eastward, flat ground broke into steps sliding down the rocky rise, each lower than the last, steeper, ending where trees began - the start of the Whispering Woods. Getting down might work - if the path held, if the ledges didn't drop straight, if brambles left any space between them. Once below, on solid leaf-covered earth,
What? What then?
She almost died in those trees during her first attempt. Back then, she did not know what moved among the roots and shadows. Not just trees there, more like borders marked by silence. A place shaped by whatever sits in the stone halls up ahead. Each step under canopy brings her closer to him, never further away.
Yet choosing to remain came with its own weight. Staying would mean facing what waited just beneath the surface
Out past the tangle of sharp vines, she stepped into an open stretch of the bottom ledge - new ground. Her arms bore thin red lines. Breath came quick. That is when everything paused.
The view from here was devastating.
Underneath, trees filled the land, spreading wide without pause - row after row of deep green vanishing into the far edge of sight, shaped only by treetop ridges, yet missing markers, open spaces, paths, buildings, traces of people. On and on it stayed. Maybe endlessly - it was hard to tell up here, everything too large, the endless stretch of woods turning guesses about distance into something pointless.
North she looked. Trees stood beyond.
Southward her gaze drifted. Trees stretched beyond sight.
Eastward she turned, eyes searching for Elderbrook - just trees now, then more trees giving way to distant hills, after that open sky. The village was gone. Not a steeple in sight. Chimneys didn't rise. Smoke did not trail. Empty.
Far off, behind rolling hills, Elderbrook might have been blocked from view - too tiny, too distant to see - or simply gone. Both thoughts carried a chill.
Footsteps uneven on stone, blood smeared across her palms from sharp vines, air biting at her skin. A flicker inside her, kept alive through twelve trapped nights and four slow dawns of searching, began to waver. Not gone yet - but thinning like mist under sudden sun.
Flicker still remains. Just not bright. Less now than before. A drop you can see. One that shows on scales.
Upward she moved, tracing her steps toward the castle behind.