Where the Woods Grow Wild

by Nate Philbrick

  Nayadu finished the verse. “Strike no stone, bend no bough, lest Nayadu be on the prowl. Which, as it turns out, I usually am.”

  “Do you have a home in the forest?”

  “The forest is my home. All of it. The dryads think they rule the place, but outside of their palace, no one really bothers with them.”

  “If you ever decide to give them a scare,” said Elodie, “I hope I’m there to watch. They treated me harshly and unkindly. Most of them, that is. I never want to see that island again, or their mad king. He’s a horrid beast, worse than trunders, if you ask me.”

  Nayadu’s smile dimmed. “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not? He almost turned me into a tree.”

  They crested a knoll covered in tiny flowers before Nayadu answered. “King Prickle wasn’t always the way he is now. He used to be an ordinarily decent ruler.”

  Elodie snorted. “I have a hard time believing that. What changed?”

  “The queen became ill. She could not be cured. King Prickle did all in his power to stop the disease, but they both knew her time was running out. Rather than watch his beloved suffer, the king turned her into a blossoming tree beside his throne so that she might live on beside him. But even though he spared her from a slow death, he still lost her, and he never overcame his grief. That was the beginning of his fall into madness.”

  Elodie thought back to King Prickle’s ranting. “I thought he was maniacal and evil,” she said. “Now I see he’s just maniacal and sad. I still never want to see him again, but perhaps I shouldn’t have whacked him with a spear.”

  To her surprise, Nayadu tossed back her head and laughed. “Here I am, able to change my shape at will, and yet you’re the one who keeps surprising me. I understand more and more why Martin values you so much.”

  Elodie felt warmth spread through her. She smiled and said no more.

  An hour or so passed with sparse conversation. The terrain evened out as they moved through cleaner woods where lush ferns and soft petals grew instead of thorny underbrush. Despite the easier going, Elodie’s feet hurt. She lagged behind until Nayadu had to stop and wait for her.

  “Sorry,” said Elodie. “I’m doing my best, but I have more blisters than toes at this point.”

  “You should have spoken up sooner,” said Nayadu. “Here, sit.”

  Elodie found a cool splotch of shade to collapse in. Nayadu knelt by her and asked her to take her shoes off.

  Elodie scrunched her face. “Why?”

  “I’m going to help you,” Nayadu insisted. “There’s more to being a morpher than shape-shifting, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then watch.” Nayadu peeled off Elodie’s shoes and socks, then sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Ouch.”

  Elodie’s courier shoes had rubbed the skin raw on both her heels.

  “Ouch indeed,” said Elodie. “Those aren’t blisters.”

  Without a word, Nayadu cupped Elodie’s feet in her hands, one at a time. A chill seeped into her skin around the sores, and Elodie watched in fascination as the blood faded and her skin stitched itself back together. The stinging stopped. Before she knew it, her feet were as good as new.

  “Wait, did you just do that?”

  “Better than trotting around as a fox, isn’t it?”

  “Are you kidding? I think both are amazing.” She thought of Martin’s arm. “What else can you heal?”

  “I have yet to see a physical wound I can’t mend.” There was a hint of pride in Nayadu’s voice. “That being said, I have to be careful. To heal others, I must give of my own strength, so I have limits. Blisters and scabs aren’t a problem, of course.”

  Elodie rubbed her restored heels. “What happens if you try too much?”

  Nayadu spoke slowly, as if choosing her words purposefully. “One time, years ago, I heard the cries of a young fawn. I found her lying hurt and alone. Her injury was serious, but I tried to heal her anyway. At first I thought I’d gone too far, and I feared for my own life as well as hers, but we both pulled through.” She shrugged. “Now I know.”

  “I’m glad you found me,” said Elodie. “You have the kindest heart I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I’ve thanked you yet for helping me.”

  “There’s no need to thank me,” said Nayadu. “Like I said, this forest is my home. I watch over the people under my roof. Now, shall we carry on? We can stop for a longer rest once we’re across the river.”

  Elodie nodded. She slipped into her grimy socks and shoes, tightened the laces, and they were on their way.

  “There’s still something I don’t get,” said Elodie. “Why a fox? Not that I question your methods, but wouldn’t something like a bird have been more useful?”

  “That’s a valid question,” said Nayadu. “The answer is simple. I may be an outcast, but I still have some pride. I refuse to stoop to animals whose sole purpose in life is to peck worms. I tried it once, years ago. A sparrow, to be exact. I found out right away that flying isn’t my thing. When I morphed back, I threw up and couldn’t walk. Since then, I’ve stayed on the ground.” She shuddered. “I don’t know how others do it. As for the rest, well, I thought I’d be safe as a fox, even on this side of the river. Once I knew your general whereabouts, my goal was to find you as quickly as possible. Besides, I’ve been a fox many times before. They’re the coat with the closest fit, you could say.”

  “I thought you were a normal fox when I found you,” said Elodie. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have held you on my lap.”

  “I think we both needed comfort at the time. The trunders caught me by surprise. They got their claws in my back before I slipped away and hid. Then I had to wait for you to fall asleep before I could heal myself. You were afraid enough already.”

  “I wasn’t that scared,” Elodie muttered.

  The conversation lulled again. Elodie figured she had asked enough questions for a while, so she kept her eyes to the ground and her thoughts to herself. She caught herself humming the dryad song again and snapped her mouth shut. She simply had to get that tune out of her head.

  Nayadu stopped so abruptly that Elodie bumped into her.

  “What is it?”

  Nayadu held up a hand. She motioned for them to be silent, then pointed to her nose. The stench was upon them again. The trunders were back.

  “I thought we were safely away from them,” Elodie whispered.

  “Apparently not,” said Nayadu. “Once they find prey, they don’t easily give up the hunt.”

  “I really don’t like the way you said prey.”

  “Sorry. Poor choice of words.”

  A terrible howl rent the forest in two. Elodie clamped her hands over her ears. The trunder smell intensified tenfold, and when she looked up, she saw it. The beast drifted into view like a black kite. Leathery wings churned the trees with gusts of foul wind. Its snout curled back, revealing rows of stout fangs, and its muscled, canine body was covered in dark fur.

  Nayadu edged away from Elodie. “Be ready to ride. We’re getting out of here.” She hesitated. “Please…don’t watch me.”

  The trunder alighted on a thick branch, its eyes fixed on Nayadu. Elodie turned away. A warm light pulsed from where Nayadu stood. The morpher grunted and pulled in a deep breath. The light winked out. Elodie looked up. Nayadu the woman was gone. In her place, a speckled doe stomped the ground. Elodie knew what to do. She heaved herself onto Nayadu’s back.

  Nayadu took off like a stone from a slingshot. At the same time, the trunder launched itself from the tree in pursuit. Its wings snapped open and it raked the ground with its claws. Elodie clung to Nayadu’s neck with both arms, her legs rigid against the doe’s sides.

  Nayadu streaked through the woods with powerful bounds. Her hooves found sure footing in the soft earth, and she veered as close to the trees as she could to keep the beast at bay. Trees and rocks became blurs. Rushing air whipped Elodie’s hair as she devoted all her strength to hanging on. Nayadu would h
ave to heal more than scrapes if she fell off now.

  Trunder cries drew Elodie’s attention to the left. A second beast barreled towards them, a streak of tawny red. Nayadu swerved out of the way, nearly losing her balance. The woods opened up before them. The trees grew too far apart to offer much cover, so Nayadu dashed in a straight line in a vain attempt to outrun the trunders. Soon her breaths came in labored gasps. She slowed down.

  Elodie glanced under her arm. The trunders bore down on them. She saw the spittle on their teeth.

  Up ahead, the forest tightened again. Nayadu surged ahead in a final, desperate burst of speed. Elodie held her breath. If they made it in time, they might—

  Claws shredded through the back of her dress and drew a fiery line down her skin. She screamed and lost her grip on Nayadu’s neck. Her legs slipped. Nayadu dug her hooves into the ground, but it was too late. Elodie pitched to the earth and rolled. She came to a stop on her stomach. Her eyes swam with color and her back burned. Hands gripped her shoulders and heaved her up.

  Nayadu, back in her human form, snapped her fingers in front of Elodie’s eyes. “You have to run. Get out of here as fast as you can.”

  Elodie steadied herself. “It hurts.” She couldn’t see the trunders, but she could hear them in the trees. They were close.

  “I know it does,” said Nayadu. She was already pushing Elodie onward. “There’s no time. Listen closely. Run south as fast as you can, and don’t stop for anything. The river isn’t far. Cross it, then keep going. South, you hear me? Keep the sun on your left.”

  “I know that.” Elodie clenched her teeth against the pain.

  “Good. You’ll find—”

  Trunder cries cut her off.

  “They’re coming,” said Nayadu. “Just run. Don’t wait for me. They’ll be looking for you where—”

  The winged beasts struck from above. Nayadu shoved Elodie away just before the trunders drove her to the ground. Elodie stared in shock, but Nayadu’s light burst from the tangle of wings and legs, and a great bear rose from the fray. The bear flung the trunders off its shoulders, then turned and snarled at Elodie.

  Elodie didn’t want to leave Nayadu to face the trunders alone, but she knew the morpher could fend for herself. She did as she was told. She ran until Nayadu and the trunders were far behind and she could hear them no longer. Nothing gave chase, but she didn’t stop. She kept running until the river rushed in front of her, and with no rocks to hop across this time, she swam. Water seared her back and filled her mouth. The current carried her downstream, but she reached the other side and clambered out on her hands and knees. She got up and kept going.

  Sun on her left. Sun on her left. Go south. Elodie repeated the instructions to keep her mind from succumbing to the pain. Her lungs burned. Her legs felt like logs.

  She didn’t know what she was looking for or where she was going anymore, but she only stopped when her body shut down. She tumbled down a bank into a bed of leaves. Her strength was gone. She couldn’t even lift her face from the ground. She stopped fighting the pain in her back and the fatigue in her body, and though she knew she was blacking out, she let it happen.

  * * *

  Voices dragged her back to consciousness. Face down in the bed of wet leaves, Elodie groaned and sought the strength to rise. She didn’t find it. The voices, two of them, drew nearer, and since she couldn’t do anything else, she listened. They were strangers, not Nayadu or Martin. She hoped they weren’t dryad soldiers.

  “For the last time, you utter fungus,” said one, “this isn’t my fault. What was I supposed to do, spend the night outside his door?”

  “There you go again,” answered the other. “Being so gruff and generally unpleasant.”

  They didn’t sound like dryads, and Elodie didn’t care who the voices belonged to anymore. Voices meant people, or something similar, so she called out for help.

  Or she tried to. Her throat was raw and weak, and her plea came out as bleat more than anything else. The footsteps stopped above her.

  “Hold on, Podgin, did you hear that?” A gasp. “Look! What’s that thing down there?”

  Someone slid down the bank and landed beside Elodie. They rolled her over. Without leaves poking at her face, she let her eyes blink open.

  A girl with straight, yellow hair and a worried frown knelt over her. “What happened to you? You look like a bog boar chewed you up and spit you out.”

  “Must be a long-lost sister of yours.”

  The girl glared over her shoulder. “Oh, be quiet. Can’t you see she’s half-dead?” She turned back to Elodie. “Can you talk?”

  Elodie opened her mouth to no avail. She started to lose her grasp again. Images of Nayadu and the trunders blocked out all coherent thought. Her eyes welled.

  “Wait a minute,” said the girl. She ran her fingers down a strand of Elodie’s tangled hair. “Hobbling hopper-toads, Podgin. It’s her.”

  10. The Trunder

  Martin spent the entire morning under the stone ledge, only moving to scare away any birds or rodents that wandered too close for comfort. He wasn’t worried about Illo tracking him down, not with all the distance he had covered in his flight. This was the farthest he had ever been from home, deeper in the woods than he ever thought he would end up.

  Shortly past noon, hunger and thirst drove him from his secluded shelter. He explored the area in search of a stream or pond. He was about to give up and head back to the Minnowchuck when he found a shallow trench in the ground, lined by walls of moss and stone. A trickle of water, barely enough to lap up with his tongue, wound from the trench. Martin ebbed his thirst, then followed the trench to a small grotto formed by the elements. Slate shards crunched under his paws as he circled the hollow. Water cascaded from the ledges above into a clean puddle no more than a foot deep. It was from this puddle that the trench stream flowed.

  The grotto looked like a better place to hide than the stone ledge he had spent the morning under. After a few more laps to check for signs of intrusive life, of which he found none, Martin drank from the pool until his thirst was gone. He ducked his head under the cascade and let the water pound against him, drowning out all other sound.

  Next, he lay down in the shade under the grotto walls and considered food. There was no denying his body was designed for hunting. He thought of the mouse hiding in the grass earlier that morning, but the idea of taking a life with his own teeth just to feed himself revolted him. There had to be other options. Yet hunger whittled away his resolution as the afternoon wore on.

  Martin locked the grotto’s location in his memory before splashing down the trench into the woods. Once in the open forest, he recalled everything he knew about edible plants. There wasn’t much to go on. Poking around the base of the nearby oaks revealed a clump of white mushrooms. He sniffed them. They looked harmless enough, so he gingerly pried them loose and chomped down on them. An acrid taste assaulted his tongue. He spat the mushrooms out, only to watch them turn dark and blotchy and wither on the ground.

  The color reminded him of the veins in his arm prior to his change. He backed away from the mutilated mushrooms, growling at them as if this whole mess were their fault. Then he remembered Podgin’s escapade with the finches. Eggs sounded like a much better alternative to fungi, but he didn’t know how to go about finding a nest. He didn’t even know what eggs smelled like when they were still in the shell. Frustrated, he discarded that idea altogether.

  Martin returned to his grotto but only stayed there for a few minutes before his stomach protested against its neglect. He couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer. He had to hunt if he wanted to eat.

  Hunting turned out to be a chore in its own right. He roamed the woods in widening circles, only catching wind of a few squirrels. Of course, these were next to impossible to catch once they darted into the trees. Martin explored farther away from the grotto until, by a combination of luck and his sense of smell, he tracked down a hare. In two quick bounds he pinned t
he hare to the ground with his paws. The hapless animal shook under his weight, and he let it go out of pity. He watched it streak away and immediately regretted his decision. Being trapped in the skin of an animal was bad, but starving himself to death was hardly a solution.

  Longing to put something in his stomach, and hoping his animal organs could handle more than his human organs, Martin nibbled on a few blue thistle flowers. Just like the mushrooms, the thistles darkened and withered when his teeth broke them. Not only that, but they tasted like mop water.

  For the second time that afternoon, Martin went back to the grotto on an empty stomach. He drank from the pool, curled in the shade again, and felt generally miserable about himself. Perhaps he should have taken Illo’s arrow as a stroke of mercy.

  The waterfall lulled him into a restless sleep, a welcome relief from the hunger pangs. When he woke, the shade cast by the grotto walls had expanded almost all the way across the pool. Martin raised his head, tasting the air with his nostrils. There was a new smell in the grotto, drifting his way from the forest outside the trench. His heartbeat quickened. The scent was sickeningly familiar, because it was the same scent that permeated his own body.

  He wasn’t alone. Whatever creature he had become, there were more out there. Curiosity roused Martin from the safety of his grotto. He poked his head out of the trench. The other animal was close.

  Then he saw them. They dropped from the stout branches of an oak, not one, but two beasts like him. Martin tensed, gripping the ground with his claws in case he had to run. The animals didn’t act threatening. They approached him slowly. One was black and bulky, with a chunk of one of its wings torn out. The other was smaller than Martin, lithe, and with a tint of red in its fur. Martin sniffed again. The black one was male, the red one female.

  After a moment of curious studying, the female came closer. Martin caught his breath, prepared to fight or flee as needed. She nudged his shoulder with her wing. A greeting? Martin clumsily returned the gesture, and the female made a small grunt of approval in the back of her throat. The male stayed put.