WIP!

Here is a roughdraft of a scene I wrote for my current work in progress which is the second book in my urban fantasy series.  It will inevitably be tightened and tweaked, but it has a decent sort of dark mood now. I wrote it using a picture from Stock Xchng- http://www.sxc.hu/ ) 

 ———

This part of the forest pricked along my skin, a static caress that bordered on pain.  There was a coldness in the air that didn’t breathe crisp or clean as winter air should.  This felt more like slush– dirty, cold and wet.  I wanted to hold my breath to keep it out of my lungs. 

With one step inside, I’d understood why the witches had set their concert here.  Kneeling, I dug my fingers into the soil.  Dark ripples moved up my arm.  I flicked the dirt off and scrubbed my hands on my jeans but the blackness remained, alive and hungry.     

These woods housed magic.   

Deep, ancient and nothing like the friendly, curious magic of Nikolos’ home.  No, this place had been fed on darker helpings.  It was visible in the gray-tinged bark and the rotting, alarmingly small piles of shriveled, cracking leaves.  The trees held on with a desperation one could see in the roots which had literally crawled above the dirt as if gasping for clean air after an earth too tainted for nutrients.  They twisted and snarled along the surface.  I expected them to take on life–wrap around my ankles, suck me below and smother me into fertilizer. 

I was nothing’s food.  

Catching Blythe’s shiver out of the corner of my eye, it occurred to me that in her current state, the little witch could very easily end up a meal.  I tightened my hands into fists.  Not on my watch, she wouldn’t.  “Blythe, do you have any herbs in that silly bag that could numb you to this place?” 

She met my eyes, her own fixed and glassy as if she was already being pulled under. 

Frowning, I snapped my fingers in front of her face.  “Hey, shake it off!”

She blinked, shuddered and frowned as she reached out to stroke one hand down the trunk of a Blackjack Oak.  “My mentor, Sophie, taught me this rhyme when I was three. 

 ‘The spill of dark magic

 Upon our Mother Earth

Renders blood and death

In place of rebirth.’ 

She wrapped her arms around her middle.  “This place, Beri, is so long past rebirth.  What kind of person does such a thing?”

I curled my lip.  “Probably the kind who teaches a toddler such a rhyme.”