Willa of the Wood

Willa refuses to admit to doing anything wrong, and the padaran grabs his spear and tells her that he knows all that she has done and seen. He screams at her about how her duty is to her people and her clan and then accuses her of having abandoned him and her people by coming home without a take and not coming to him directly. He threatens to expel her from the clan, a fate worse than death. 

As he yells, Gredic runs in and grabs her satchel, which she pretends to try and keep from him; to his shock, however, the satchel is empty except for two hidden copper pennies. Willa notices that the padaran seems wary of this and doesn’t believe it, so he demands to know if that is truly all she has brought.

Willa calmly explains that the pennies are what she brought for Gredic, since he always steals her takes. She asks for permission to move across the room, and then goes to her grandmother, taking her satchel and bringing her real take to the padaran. She gives him coins, dollar bills, arrowheads, and jewelry—a bountiful take that shows her supreme loyalty to the clan. 

Gredic begins to grovel and insists that she stole their take, and the padaran asks for her defense. Willa, knowing that the padaran believes her but wants to see her response, lifts the bag and says that Gredic should be able to tell her what is left in the bag if what he says is true.

Gredic insists there is nothing of value left in the bag, and Willa agrees that it is not of value to him—and then hands the padaran a bundle of tobacco, his most-coveted item. The padaran is pleased and calls Willa by name, making the other jaetters furious. Willa can tell the padaran is impressed with her deceptiveness, but just feels ill and cold. She dwells on the suffering of the Cherokee boy and the kindness of the human man after he shot her. She feels more sustained by those emotions than her own leader’s love.

The padaran studies Willa’s grandmother, who looks frightened, and then asks Willa where she got the items. Willa refuses to answer at first, knowing he will be angry; he moves closer and smells her, accusing her of smelling like animals. Then he grabs her shoulder and demands that she follow him.

Willa follows, having no other choice, and enters the padaran’s private quarters, winding all the way to the top. The top room is filled with human items, to her surprise: The padaran had implied he was selling the items for goods, not collecting them for himself. He insists that he must study them so they can survive. 

He shows her some of the items and explains their rudimentary use, but she is dubious that the Faeran need machines to live like he claims. He shows her a telescope, which excites her, since it allows them to see the edges of the world; he has been using it to spy on his own people. He then leads her to his actual private chamber, past many rotting halls, which is decorated like a human bedroom with a bed instead of a Faeran nest. The padaran then takes her to the side of the mountain and tells her that he can either make her immensely powerful or harm everything she loves if she lies to him. She insists she has been loyal, but the padaran just asks if she knows why they are on the side of the mountain.

The padaran explains the power of the humans, including the world outside of the mountains, which Willa disbelieves. To survive, they must be stronger than the humans, who want to kill the world; they must kill, too. He tells her that he is selecting certain jaetters to not steal, but to use traps and weapons to hunt animals for human bounties. 

Willa is horrified by the steel trap he shows her, and more horrified as he leads her down a carefully marked path so the Faeran can avoid the brutal traps. He leads her to a den in the base of a tree, and she hears wolf pups crying; she realizes it is Luthien’s den, and he intends to kill them all.

Willa quickly realizes the padaran is attempting to assess her loyalty and ensure she doesn’t remain loyal to the wolves over him. She also realizes that if the human tried to help her, it means the padaran has been wrong about humans the entire time, and is probably wrong about other things, too. Willa watches Luthien, and, knowing she is endangering everything, grabs a guard’s spear and hurls it at Luthien as a warning.

The spear hits the trap, and Willa warns Luthien in her native tongue to get the pups and run. The furious padaran and the guards lurch for her with their spears and hands, but Willa escapes, running and blending through the forest. Knowing they will not stop hunting her, she drapes herself over the rock marking a trap location and blends. Not seeing the rock, the padaran runs by and steps into the bear trap, crumpling and screeching with pain. As Willa runs, she realizes the padaran’s impressive bronze appearance has melted away to a gray, withered, old Faeran person. She runs back towards Dead Hollow, knowing the jaetters and the people in the clan will turn on her grandmother next.

Dead Hollow is somehow in disarray. Willa sprints back to her den to find her grandmother bleeding out on the floor, attacked fatally by Gredic. Her grandmother tells her to protect the old ways and tells her a name that will destroy everything: “Naillic.” Mamaw tells her to leave and follow the trail of blood, and Willa holds her gaze as she dies, reliving all their memories together. She begs her grandmother not to go and wonders where her spirit will go when she dies. 

She looks around and realizes she doesn’t know how to escape, then looks at the bloodstain on the woven floor and realizes what her grandmother meant.

Willa realizes the floor is hollow and digs through the matted sticks, harming her hands as she goes, but tearing through ferociously. She then uses magic she is afraid of—inspiriting the dead—to wake the sticks back up and repair the whole, even though it takes her life force to do so. She then descends into the belly of the Hollow until she finds the stream that runs underneath the mountain, littered with the bones of hundreds of dead Faeran killed for what they knew. She lets the stream take her, reliving the suffering of all her people and the padaran’s real self, until numbness takes her and time ceases to be real.

Willa, semi-conscious, floats into the forest, but has no energy to pull herself to shore. Beavers pull her to the riverbank, where she lies for a long time, unable to move or feel.

Willa wakes up and is hungry. She notices that the water is clear and evening is setting in, meaning she has been lying there for hours. She is overwhelmed by grief from the memories of what has transpired. She realizes she has no family and will never hear her own language again. As she grieves, a doe and fawn find her, and the fawn drinks and watches Willa, seeming to sense her emotional state.

Willa speaks quietly to the fawn, who comes over and curls up next to her. They sleep together until night, with the doe nearby, and then Willa wakes to see blue ghost fireflies—spirits her grandmother had told her about—which soothes her. Willa realizes that the forest is alive and can sustain her, and the padaran betrayed her, not the other way around. She realizes she is still Faeran, and nothing can take that from her. Sustained, if still grieving, Willa stands and leaves to climb to the top of the Great Mountain so she can see the world.

Willa tests herself and her body and climbs to the top of the mountain, surprising herself. She then uses her woodcraft to climb an ancient pine tree on the summit so she can get even higher. She climbs into a bank of clouds, which clears almost mystically to reveal the enormity of the mountain range and thousands of shades of green and blue. She remembers overhearing two humans talk about whether the earth was flat or round, and decides both were wrong: “It was mountains” (156). She decides the world can be many things at once.

She watches a hawk flying somewhere below her, realizing they see the same world, and then the clouds close, encouraging her to return to the land. She smells something acrid and looks away, seeing smoke and then a huge explosion, murdering thousands of trees and animals. Tears well in her eyes as she watches the forest fall and burn.

Willa sprints down the mountain past landmarks she knows and loves, determined to save any animals that she can. She hides as she hears humans and sees a group of Cherokee families running through the forest, clearly distraught and carrying their belongings. As she watches them, she realizes that they are looking for something and have lost people they love; she wonders if it is connected to the stolen children of the Faeran. A boy around her age senses her, but Willa hides from him successfully. Another explosion occurs, terrifying Willa and the Cherokee, who run away as Willa runs towards the explosion.

Willa runs into smoke and fire and discovers an entire area of horrifically cleared forest. Trees that are hundreds of years old are felled with no regard for their life or value. Willa watches as the men—accompanied by a train—continue to destroy the forest and tries to imagine why the humans would do such a thing.

She stumbles away and quickly finds an area laid out with the corpses of birds, foxes, and other animals, all unable to be saved. The earth collapses under her and sends her spiraling into the rapids, where she sees a gigantic black cougar staring at her, also caught in the logjam.

Willa clings to a root to survive, watching the mountain lion, who is wounded and caught underneath a log in the river. Willa wants to help but also doesn’t want to risk her own life by getting close to such a fierce predator. The blue jays begin to warn her that the loggers are approaching, but when she looks up, she sees Faeran—specifically Gredic and his jaetters—on the cliff. Knowing they will kill both her and the panther when they find them, she moves over to the panther but gets caught in the water flow just as the jaetters see her.

Willa tries to go underwater to help the panther, but the water’s force overwhelms her. Suddenly, river otters appear and help her move through the water more easily. They seem to try to persuade her to let go of the branch she is gripping, and she realizes the logjam is about to burst and send everyone careening down the river whether she holds on or not. She lets go, and the otters show her how to move with the current and glide. She swims to the panther and sees a trap embedded in its back leg.

Willa apologizes to the panther, unable to save her, but when the water rises above her and the panther’s head, she sees that the panther is still staring at her, as if sure that Willa can do something. Willa works up the strength and courage to go underwater to work on the trap, but the braces and levers do not function. Willa decides to use woodcraft to enliven the branches in the logjam, and uses their strength to break open the trap, freeing the panther, who grabs at Willa to survive and gashes her thigh with her claws.

Willa and the panther come to the surface as the jaetters appear, and the panther sprints away, striking down Kearnin as she goes and saving Willa’s life. Willa stands on the edge as Gredic sprints for her and then falls backwards into the river, letting the current take her away like an otter.