Robert Beatty - Willa of Dark Hollow

Copyright 2021 by Robert Beatty

All rights reserved. Published by Disney Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023.

Spot illustrations by Millie Liu

Designed by Phil T. Buchanan

Cover illustration 2021 by Millie Liu

(Minty Fresh Mangos)

Cover design by Phil Buchanan

ISBN 978-1-368-01061-0

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The Great Smoky Mountains

1901

The world is neither flat nor round.

Its mountains.

W illa pivoted toward the sound. The sharp, popping cracks of fracturing wood rolled like thunder through the forest air. Then came the rain-like noise of a thousand snapping branches and tearing leaves crashing down. When the massive trunk finally struck the ground, the earth shook beneath her bare feet. A gust of wind swept through the forest and blew through Willas long bark-and-moss-colored hair. And as the realization of what had just happened sank into her mind, her chest filled with pain. The human loggers had cut down the great hemlock tree that lived at the bend of the river.

She stood frozen like a young deer.

It was a tree she had sat beside on sunlit mornings, watching the river flow past its roots, a tree she and her twin sister had curled up in on misty nights, gazing up through its outstretched branches toward the Great Smoky Mountain and the moon above. The trees of the forest had shrouded and sheltered her all her life. They had consoled her when her sister was killed. They were her earth and her soil, her sunlight and her song.

But now she heard the axmen chopping and sawing and shouting to each other, their harsh, barking words circling through the treetops like quarreling ravens. The quills on the back of her neck went up and a burst of heat flashed through her body. She knew she should flee this killing ground or blend her green skin into the leaves of the undergrowth and disappear from the coming human eyes. She must run from their tromping feet and escape their cutting blades.

But how could she run away when her friends were dying? How could she just leave them?

She had to stop the loggers, but she had no sharp claws or long teeth. She had no weapons or ability to fight. She didnt hurt living creatures, she helped them.

The human loggers had jagged metal saws, axes, knives, guns, animals in chains, vast metal contraptions for dragging murdered trees from the forest, and black, steaming beasts that rolled on long gleaming tracks. She was a lone thirteen-year-old Faeran girl without a clan. How could she fight the men of iron?

The crash of another tree broke like a wave through the forest, the wind of it brushing her cheek.

Her heart pounded in her chest.

She knew she couldnt protect the trees the way they had protected her. She couldnt shroud them or shelter them or hide them from the world.

But she couldnt just abandon them, either.

She took a few uncertain steps, her legs trembling. Her eyes watered with burning tears.

And then she ran toward the sound of the falling trees.

W illa plunged into a dense thicket of briars, whispering to the spiky plants as she pushed through them so their sharp, talon-like thorns would turn aside and glide across her bare skin and her woven-reed tunic without doing her any harm.

Beyond the thicket, she dashed through a stand of tall pines, nothing but soft, wet needles squishing beneath her feet.

The odor of burning brush touched her nostrils and she curled her lip in revulsion. The smoke drifting through the forest stung her eyes, and the stench of spilled sap filled the air.

She crept forward through the leafy underbrush, quieting her breathing. The skin of her face and arms tingled as it changed to the color of the leaves and branches around her. Thin green vines grew along her limbs and torso, enshrouding her, as if they knew she was more like them than like the loggers.

She finally stopped at the edge of a rocky ravine, crouched down, and looked across to the other side.

The oaks, chestnuts, and tulip treesall the trunks of her dead friendslay flat across the ground in long, helpless stretches, their limbs broken, their beautiful leaves ripped and crushed, and the skin of their bark gouged and torn. She knew she had to be quiet, but she couldnt help crying out at the sight of the slaughter. A surge of bile heaved up from her gut and burned as she swallowed it back down. The human loggers had felled many of the trees and were hacking at them now with axes and mauls, pulleys and chains, cutting them apart piece by piece.

All around the edges of the logging site, men stood with rifles in hand, gazing out into the forest. They looked like local hunters of some kind, with heavy beards, raccoon-skin hats, and knives at their sides. But they werent hunting. They appeared to be guarding the loggers. Over the last year, shed seen more and more logging crews coming into the mountains, but she had never seen these guards before. Something must have happened. Were they frightened of the wolves and other wild beasts they imagined haunted the ancient forest they were killing?

She had once thought of the long metal rifles as fire-sticksvile, mysterious weapons that killed animals from a distancebut since then she had learned so much, about humans and her own kind, about guns and trees, about greed and love, and about herself as well.

As she gazed across the ravine, she could see the great hemlock tree she had come for. Her heart sank when she saw that her old friendonce towering to the sky with its mighty brancheswas now lying across the forest floor like a toppled giant.

The massive tree had crushed many of the trees around it when it came down, no longer their ally and protector, but their destroyer. More than a dozen men were standing on its severed stump.

Her grandmother had told her that this tree had sprouted from the ground and splayed its first needles to the sun more than five hundred years ago, and it had been a beloved friend of the Faeran people living in the hidden coves of these mountains ever since. Now these men cheered and congratulated each other for bringing down such a gargantuan prize.

The logging crew had cut down many smaller trees, toobeeches and maplesand the carcasses were being pulled by mules over mile-long slides toward the logging train farther down the mountain. Young cherry trees and birches had fallen victim as well, the thin saplings, green and fine, slashed and trampled and dragged to their death. Willa clenched her teeth and pulled air in through her nose to try to calm herself. But it was to no avail. She had seen it before: the humans would leave nothing but dead, bare ground.

As she looked toward the hemlock, she realized that even though the humans had cut it down, her friend was still alive, its sap still circulating through its trunk and limbs, its leaves still pulling in sunlight and breathing out air. The trees around it would continue to provide nourishment to the stump through their interconnected roots, trying to keep their wounded brother alive, for trees do not just