by Kim Wedlock
Now she studied him. "But you have an idea."
"Nothing I'm ready to try."
"Then in the mean time...?"
"...Needs must."
Another rustle stole their jittery attention and two vakehn finally appeared. They set their baskets down in silence at the foot of the tree and began sorting portions of food into bowls of woven leaves and distributing them about the camp. Rathen and Petra looked down at their offering nervously. More meat - a bird, perhaps - rain tubers which tasted like a strange combination of potato and lemon, and yet more of the peculiar fungi they'd been served at every meal so far, off-white, vaguely yellow and with multiple heads on a single stalk. It didn't look healthy, and its burnt caramel taste struck them as notably deceitful. But they ate them, as usual, to avoid insulting their host. The vakehn assured them that they were equal to spinach. No one could quite see how.
Anthis reached up from his spot in the grass and took the bowl while another flicker of light washed out the clearing. "Aahst."
"Zeymakrah." The vakah smiled in surprise. "You speak it perfectly."
He stared at her for a final fraction of a second, then straightened with conviction. "You are an elf."
What little quiet muttering stopped as all eyes crashed upon the pair. The air rapidly turned to lead, and suddenly that niggling sense of near-peril that had followed them around since coming into such strange company took on a frightfully marked form, guided by the voices that had only a moment ago been so mysteriously familiar. But while they stared in fevered calculation, Aria gawped from the edge of the pond. She took the bowl handed to her by the second vakah and stared up at him in open wonder. He smiled back. Garon tensed further between them.
"We used to be. But Feiruikanax saved us."
"Feira," he nodded slowly as pieces began falling into place. "Just as Zikhon did. Devouts."
"Yes," but there was a distasteful shape to her berry-red lips, "but those He saved were not worthy. They were - and remain - a part of the problem. I take it that you've seen them? Hiding away on their islands and denying all responsibility? We, at least, have attempted to reform, and for that we have become one with Feira's forces. But...there is no reversing our actions." She turned away solemnly.
"So you can't do anything about the magic?" He asked after her, but she shook her head with a sad smile.
"If we could, we would already have done so."
"Why does your magic not affect it?"
She turned then towards Rathen, who stood in guarded challenge. Petra was already rising beside him, hand ready to snatch her blade. But the vakah sent him the same smile. "We know how to work around it. Rötternas Moder has guided us and over a thousand years, our magic has changed. But it is not the same as hers. She was able to extinguish the fires - but not even she can do what you can. They could have caught alight again at any moment."
"A thousand years?"
She smiled back around at Anthis. "A number of us lived in the wilds long before our kin's downfall. 'Devout', as you called us. There are some among your kind who seek to do the same. Your druids. They don't grasp quite the same concepts, but it is good that they try." She turned again and started away, then chuckled as he called after her once more. "We have much to do before midnight."
"Yes, sorry, I know, I'm sure. But," he presented the grooved black key, and she took it with a frown. "Do you know what this is?"
"The key from Reyn'lehfeik, in the southern forest. But as for what it unlocks, I do not know. There is no locked door here. The vines and roots could help us open them if there were."
"You're sure?"
"We are. We've looked. We know all that resides within the forests, and there is no lock that would fit this key - now or before." She pressed it back into his hand with another apologetic smile and finally walked away.
While the others watched the two brown-skinned non-elves slip back into the trees, he sank back to the grass, staring down at the mysterious key in growing disappointment.
"What's wrong?"
Despite the gentle tone, he jumped in surprise and snapped around to find Eyila's bronze grin radiating right beside him. "Sorry."
"I-it's fine, it's fine," he chuckled belittlingly. "Just...well, this place. On edge." And now even more so. He glanced sideways and found her watching him patiently, then gestured emptily with the key before tucking it back into the paper-stuffed satchel. "Can't work it out."
A flutter arrived beneath his ribs as she made herself comfortable on the ground beside him and began rifling through her bowl. "It's that ruin, too, isn't it? Aria told me about the light-locks, and that you were frightened you'd missed others like it because you didn't know what they were."
"Frightened? No, no - it just...bemused me, that's all."
"Like the key is bemusing you?" She cast him an aslant smile, then popped several stems of fungi into her mouth. "I thought you said some things should be left undiscovered."
After a moment, blood filled his face and his eyes widened in horror, betraying his much too quick smile of puzzlement. "Whe-uh-when did I say that?" He asked in a fluster, hurriedly looking away in an attempt to conceal his embarrassment, but the sudden shriek as she threw herself against him roused him into sheer panic.
The rest of the camp leapt to their feet.
The blood-curdling cry came again, closer than the first. Any and all weapons were bared as they instinctively tightened up together around the base of the tree, but a third shriek rose, even closer still. Fervent eyes scoured between the trunks, the boughs, the leaves; another flash of lightning, another peal, another shriek, this time right upon them. Their throats tightened, but not a shadow moved. Then the terrible cry pierced the air once again, far to the other side.
They stilled and sharpened their panic to a point, focusing at last on listening over the rain that drummed down onto the thick, impenetrable canopy. When the lone shriek came one last time, it was almost as distant as the first.
A unanimous breath of relief eased from tight lips, and slowly they returned to their previous positions without a word to each other.
"What was that?" Eyila asked in a strangled whisper.
"I don't know," Anthis replied as he calmed away the catch of alarm in his breath. "It happened last time, too, but nothing came of it..." He looked down at a dull pressure in his abdomen and found the bronze girl huddled in his arms, bent elbows pressing into his ribs while his own fingers pressed white marks onto her skin.
He let go of her immediately, apologising clumsily as the heat flooded back into his face, and looked about the camp at the others, none of whom appeared to pay them any attention. He turned back and matched her embarrassed smile.
But then her lips pursed, and she regarded him with a quick, thoughtful look. He frowned as her expression flashed into a smile, and she seized him suddenly by the wrist. "Let me show you something."
He was given no opportunity to make an excuse before she'd dragged him out of the clearing. "Where are we going?" He asked, not daring for a moment to allow himself intrigue as his eyes pulled warily back over his shoulder.
"I found something while I was looking for somewhere to meditate - I wanted to know what it meant." She grunted in disgust as she ran out into an abrupt column of rain let through by a break in the trees. "That got me last time, too." She threw him back a smile in apology, but continued to drag him through it all the same. And with every step a smile crept across his own face.
Finally, they came to a stop beside a small boulder, one tangled in roots - just like everything else in the forest - and half concealed in liverwort. But there was clearly something etched into its surface.
Anthis crouched in front of it and traced the visible lines with his fingertip while Eyila waited behind him, then nodded to himself. "It's an Eyn'feik - a mark of equality, between elves and nature. Neither are above the other; they're one in the same. There's probably quite a few dotted about through the forest." He waved her down beside him, momentarily distracted fro
m his nervousness, and pointed at the lines. "The trunk of this tree carved in the middle here is a person, see? And the ground is another, lying down on its side, and the very top of the leaves is another, reaching up into the sky." She nodded, peering closer, and for a moment her earthy scent - dry herbs, cured hides, chestnuts and dew - tickled his nose against the damp of the rain. It was lost as he turned back to the stone. "They, uh...it's...a symbol of equality."
"You said that."
"Yes, sorry. Uh...yes. Look here: this body lying on the ground represents the nutrients left in the earth upon decomposition. The tree grows from that and is tended and supported by this next body, who in turn is nurtured - fed and shaded - by the tree. Then, upon death, the person's spirit climbs the tree which lifts it towards the gods, while its body is returned to the earth to start the cycle again."
"They rely upon one another. They're all born as part of one entity, not as a single being..." She smiled softly; he didn't look. "Knowing your place in the world, in life and in death. My culture has something similar. That's partly why it caught my eye. But instead of a tree, it's a gust of wind. The other tribes, too - a plume of water, a mountain, a flame. We look after the natural cycles and thrive when the elements thrive, then the elements carry us up and into the Winds to reach the Frozen Gates...while..."
He looked around at her weighted pause and offered her a nervous smile. "You know an awful lot about the other tribes' faiths," he said in a bid to distract her.
"I've told you already: they're intertwined. They need one another. My people dedicate themselves to Aya'u because we live where Her influence is strongest." But the sorrow only continued to creep into her eyes, and he could see the words 'or we used to' scrolling through her mind.
She must have felt him looking, as she pushed it away and turned him a smile before glancing up and around at the trees. "This place is so confusing," she said, finally ringing the rain out from her white hair, though he doubted it really bothered her to have taken her this long to do it. In fact he couldn't help thinking in absence that her bright, often so mischievous face looked that much sweeter in its frame. "It's such an assault on the senses. I should have noticed the shift in the wind, the coming of the storm, but I didn't."
"You're assuming the storm is natural." His eyes returned to the stone. "But no one expects you to give us running updates on the weather. And here, I doubt it would have mattered anyway. We're not leaving until Her Majesty decrees it."
"Still... I don't like these forests. They're pretty, in their own way, I suppose, but...the air is so...heavy. It's wet, it smells, it's loaded with spores and seeds, none of which are even going anywhere, they're just...hanging there, waiting for a wind that never manages to reach them. No wonder the trees are all so tight."
He breathed a helpless laugh. "Sorry."
She frowned at him, puzzled. "Why are you apologising?"
"Oh, well...I don't know... It's not always like this, it's just this forest, and the time of the year..."
"Mm. But then when it isn't the forest or 'the time of the year', it's cold."
"I...I suppose it is..." He laughed again. "I suppose you're used to a different world. We light fires then, though."
"Yes - but in your own buildings. And then you're cut off from everything and everyone else! And the heat is so isolated...it must get suffocating with all that smoke!"
"We have chimneys. Oh - uh, hollow pillars built over fireplaces so the smoke goes up and out through the roof."
"But the heat surely gets too much."
"Fire guards. They protect the flame and catch the heat."
She nodded slowly. "And what does he do with it?"
"He? Oh, no, it's a panel--a sheet of metal netting that you stand in front of the fireplace."
"...And what does that do with the heat?"
"...Nothing..."
She blinked in confusion, then shook her head and continued ringing her hair. "What a waste." He couldn't help smiling in his bewilderment. "You cityfolk are very strange," she continued before a thoughtful pause. "But...you're not as bad as I thought you'd be. You five, at least, I like. You most of all."
He spluttered and gawked in surprise. "M-me?"
"Mhm," she grinned impishly. "If not for you, I wouldn't know that my people's ideals were ever represented outside of our tribes. It makes me feel a lot better. Like maybe some among you also believe the same things. Like the vakah said - druids! And perhaps, in time, it might spread to the rest of you. And then the world will be a better place. And perhaps...perhaps then our people could mix..."
His giddiness trickled away in a steady stream, leaving him with a smile as hollow as a rotten log. "...Oh...yes, maybe. Well, you're welcome..." 'Faith. It always comes back to faith...she must have more in her heart than that...' Unbidden, Petra's accusation of priorities began ringing suddenly within his skull and chased his sickeningly callow hesitance away. 'Priorities. All right, what else does she like? What else does she do? There must be something else we could talk about, something that won't remind her of home... Healing? No, certainly not... Herbs...plants...oryx...' His eyes flashed with the clattering arrival of an idea, and the word tumbled unstoppably from his lips. "Books."
She stared back at him in surprise. "'Books'?"
"Yes, books. Stories. Do you read very much? I can give you something to read if you'd like, keep you busy, take your mind off of the forest..." He noticed only then the confused crease between her eyebrows, and another thought, one much too late to save him, announced its arrival with a cold rush of self-loathing. "Oh...you can't...can you...read?"
"Yes," she replied slowly, "I can read."
"...Words?"
"Oh."
"...Well, in that case," another thought spoke for him before he could find a reason to flee from it, one that set a nervous heat across his cheeks and forehead, "w-would you like me...to...?"
She cocked an eyebrow "...Teach me, you mean? To read cityfolk books?"
"Oh - no, no no, don't worry, nothing you wouldn't enjoy. Elven stories - I'm sure we could find something in the cities - you won't have to come in, Aria can help me pick some things out..."
She shifted with a doubtful puckering of her lips, and he realised how pushy he was being. "Sorry," he said while silently chastising himself, "it's not important." He rose hurriedly to his feet and gestured back to the rock. "Yeah, so...well...I'm glad I could help."
He turned to leave, quite certain that death by embarrassment was a possibility after all, until he felt an abrupt grasp around his wrist. He looked around and found her smiling back at him.
"Yes, please."
A smile seized his lips while relief silenced the debasing voice in his head. He nodded his agreement, and the two continued to smile at one another. For much too long. Discomfort duly set in.
Anthis looked away hurriedly and pulled his hand free as smoothly as he could, though it came out as a snatch all the same, and turned again to leave. This time, though, a small figure bursting through the trees stunned him where he was.
Rathen stepped in barely half a pace behind Aria and very nearly tripped over her as she stopped far too suddenly in front of him. He frowned, once he'd steadied himself, at the strikingly guilty look on the young man's face. His dark eyes shifted onto Eyila, who looked only a fraction less awkward. "Sorry... Keep moving, Aria."
"No no no," Anthis said almost frantically, quite obviously avoiding any and all eye contact as he set off at a rushed march away towards the trees, "I was just leaving anyway, Eyila just wanted me to translate something, which I've done, so I'll be on my way."
The pair watched him in confusion as they stepped out of his way, then cast Eyila another questioning glance. But she suddenly appeared just as baffled. "He's very peculiar," she said once he'd vanished hastily from sight. "He seems so sure of himself until you get him alone, then he's jumpy, he stutters, and he either stares or doesn't look at you at all..."
"Nooo," Aria giggled wi
th a roll of her eyes, "that's just your effect on him. He's actually quite elenquent."
"Eloquent."
"Elegant."
"My effect? Why?"
"Because he--"
"Aria."
She looked up and around at her father, and understood in an instant the strange, innocuous look. She turned back to the clueless tribal and shrugged, smiling simply. "Because he's strange."
"Yes," Eyila smiled slowly as her eyes drifted back after him, "he is..."
She allowed Rathen to escort her back to camp. After the shrieking, she wasn't about to refuse him, and he wasn't about to listen. But just as they returned to the great old tree, Rathen glued to Aria's heels all the way, Garon stepped away from the pond and fixed him with intention. One look at the severity in the officer's grey eyes seared away Rathen's good humour.
"We need to talk."
"But we only just started playing a game!" Aria protested with a huff.
"And what game was that?"
"Shadow-hopping. Daddy has to be my shadow and stay as close as he can while I go whizzing about."
"It sounds like fun," Garon said with only the slightest degree of sincerity - though even that came as a surprise, "but I think it's time you went to bed."
"I can't. I'm too awake."
"Hence the game," Rathen whispered.
"Well, perhaps Eyila will play with you instead."
All looked hopefully to the tribal, but she was already grinning with anticipation. "Absolutely." She took the equally enthusiastic girl by the hand. "Teach me how to play shadow-hopping!"
They watched them leave, then, at another flicker and wail of dying lightning, Garon moved quickly into the middle of the camp, searching the trees all about them. Rathen, Petra and Anthis followed, stopping only at the most central point where they could keep the greatest distance between themselves and the forest, the sleeping tree included. They dropped their voices low, and eyed even the grass with suspicion.
"We need to leave."
"No need to panic, Garon, your affinity for stating the obvious is alive and well."
He ignored Petra's snide remark. "Hlífrún is wasting our time. Every hour we're in these woods, Salus is moving, and he is training."
