by R. Cooper
It was a very pretty speech. He meant it, because Flor was an honest person, but the words had the sound of Prince David’s calming influence.
“You did not frighten me,” Clematis replied after several moments of trying to make himself believe this was happening.
Flor gave him a brief, relieved smile before frowning, ever so slightly. “The others did. And that is something you will have to deal with, from time to time, if you… if you decide to keep company with me. More people. The occasional crowd. You should know that as well.”
He stopped and seemed to be waiting. It was not natural for him to wait for long. Clematis was already familiar with Flor’s energy and impatience. Watching Flor attempt to control both was novel and strangely breathtaking.
Clematis turned his hand to hold Flor’s, to help him keep still. “I don’t know how I feel about that,” he admitted truthfully. “But I spent the night wondering how I would manage without your company, now that I have known it.”
Flor met his eyes. “Truly?” he asked, and sounded almost awed. Then, with a sudden lift to his chin and a return to formality only somewhat betrayed by how he continued to let Clematis hold his hand, Flor cleared his throat. “If you are free now, Clematis,” he pronounced the name carefully, and visibly struggled to seem patient, to not whisk Clematis away, “we can discuss it. If not, I can wait until you would like to see me. If you would.”
“I would.” It fell from Clematis’s lips and made him pull in a startled breath.
But Flor’s smile was wide and lovely.
Clematis held his hand tighter, and then, because Flor’s fingers were interlaced with his, and he could not remember what cold was as he burned with such passionate affection, he smiled back.
Martin the Wrong
MARTIN OFTEN traveled through the ancient woods despite the warnings not to, to be careful, to never walk them at night. The parts of the forest closest to the town were managed for the town’s needs, but everything beyond the town’s immediate reach was wild, a wrong place where wrong things lived. The trees had existed before the town, and would exist after it, and whatever lived with them had no interest in people like Martin unless they strayed from the paths.
Most traders and visitors took the road from the south that avoided the woods altogether. If one had to travel by way of the forest, the most-walked path was the one that led to the mountains. Martin took this path to see Joseph in his lonely house. The other path was one created and tended to by Alyce, who was the sort of brave oddity to live by herself on the edge of the woods, and show no fear of the people in town or whatever lived in the shadows of the trees.
Martin sometimes walked these paths even when he had no intention of visiting his friends, which was reason enough to call Martin an oddity as well, aside from his friendships with the town’s most infamous outcasts. He walked the paths to get away from the townspeople teasing him for his interests and his lovelorn state, from those who were content to roll with him a few times but had no wish to speak to him otherwise, from his mother and her ear-pinching lectures on how he could make himself better instead of sewing clothes and fixing shoes or baking pies.
It was easier to breathe in the woods. Martin put on his big brown cloak with the big brown hood, and sometimes filled a basket with goodies for Alyce or Joseph, and wandered for hours. He could take his time as long as he didn’t get caught there after dark—not even Martin was that foolish. They said to stay on the paths, so he did… most of the time. But off the paths were tasty acorns, or nice flowers, or the most beautiful streams. He could sit by them and pretend he was far from the town, far from his mother and everyone else.
That did not mean the forest was safe. The deep woods were ancient and held many secrets. Bucks fought to the death there. Hungry bears lived closer to the mountains alongside the lions but could wander down. Some plants were poison. Some berries held magic for spells. Hawks killed, and spheres of lightning danced along the treetops.
And creatures walked in the shadows. Spirits or gods or something in between. The townspeople whispered of them and marked the trees with red stripes and put white rocks along the paths, so the spirits could not cross.
Martin barely noticed a streak of faded red on one of the trees he passed it. His gaze was on his feet and the crushed moss on the path to Alyce’s house. His pace was too fast, and his basket of tarts banged against his thigh as he walked, but he did not slow. He should not have left this late, and would have to spend the night with Alyce, but that had been his wish when he had run from his mother’s house and his mother’s words.
He would be lucky to reach Alyce’s before dark, and did not think he would beat the approaching storm. The winds howled through the canopy above him and sent needles and leaves across the path. The air smelled damp, and his skin prickled with the energy in the looming clouds.
The light was fading. Martin pulled his cloak tighter and tried not to glance up, not even for the distant flash of lightning and the following boom of thunder. He passed a row of white rocks, and then something that might have been thunder—merely too-close thunder—shook the forest floor and made him stumble to his knees.
When he got to his feet again, the white rocks and red paint were no longer visible. He couldn’t see his footprints behind him or before him, and the trees were unfamiliar in the rapidly growing darkness.
Martin swallowed as he debated what to do. Forward, or what he thought was forward, would take him to Alyce, if not out of the woods. He took one step, only a single step, from where he had been, and saw it in a flash of lightning. Saw something. Something as large as a standing bear but not shaped like one. Something alive and moving. Martin could hear that, too, below the wind and the thunder—measured, steady rustling.
A giant stepping through the underbrush.
Martin bolted away from the noise and the shape, and away from Alyce and safety, although he didn’t think of that until his lungs were raw and his chest was tight, and he had to stop to breathe or fall over in a faint.
He’d lost the basket, though he couldn’t remember when. His legs shook so much they could not support him, and he tripped and landed on his hands and knees over the exposed roots of a tree, mud slipping between his fingers.
It must have started to rain while Martin had been fleeing for his life. The roots were slippery, but the trunk of the tree was still largely dry. Martin felt his way into a nook between some of the roots and pressed himself to the trunk. He held still, trying to slow his breathing while peering out from beneath the bottom of his hood.
The rain was pouring now, obscuring what little Martin might have been able to see, though he realized after a few moments that the forest had gone quiet again except for the sound of the rainfall. He was also dryer than he’d expected to be, and tipped his head back to find out why. The black void above him might have been a shelter of tangled branches. If it was, it was the first good thing to happen to Martin today, maybe in months.
Martin ducked his head again and held his cloak tight around him. He was mostly dry but he could still feel the damp and cold, and could not keep from shivering. He was a fool. Of course, he was. Martin the odd one, who had ignored the warnings and now paid the price for it. Even if he had lost the shape—the thing—in the dark, if it had really been there, Martin still had a long, miserable, fearful night ahead of him. Perhaps longer, since he did not know where he was or how far he had run. He might be lost in the woods for good, and the only people who might look for him would not know he was missing until it was too late.
Martin turned his face to muffle his shuddering breaths, and shut his eyes, and trembled inside his big brown cloak.
THE RAIN STOPPED during the night. Martin woke to birds chirping and a beam of sunlight creating a patch of heat on his shoulder. Except for his icy toes, the rest of him was fairly warm as well, which did not make sense. He was stiff and his neck hurt from how he’d leaned against the tree trunk. Yet he was warm.
Wh
en he looked up, the massive branches of an old oak crisscrossed above him almost like a thatched roof of a house. A small laugh burst out of him, sending a jolt through the warmth at his side, and Martin stared with disbelief into the large eyes of the doe curled against him.
“Hello,” he greeted her softly in wonder, imagining that she must have been just as cold and frightened last night as he had been if she had thought cuddling with a human was a good idea.
But she blinked, and in another second, was on her feet and gone.
Martin stared after her, then glanced around at the water drops falling slowly from above, and the steam rising from the forest floor as it warmed in the sun. As far as he could tell, he was alone except for the calling birds.
He patted the tree as he slowly got to his feet and said, “Thank you,” because he’d always be foolish. Then he stretched and started walking. He picked west, because, unless he was being fairy-led, the town should be in that direction, but he was filthy and exhausted and hungry, and it was not going to be a pleasant walk, or an easy one.
When he had been walking long enough for some of the tension to leave his muscles, but not enough to have covered the distance he had run the night before, not possibly, he found himself in front of three white stones. And there, right behind them, right in the center of the path, was his basket.
The food inside was ruined, so Martin left it for the birds. But the basket was undamaged. He smiled as he held it once again, and decided not question anything else, at least until he was out of the woods, and headed down the path back toward town.
MARTIN NOW KNEW more about what the woods were like at night than anyone else in town. Yet, only weeks later, he was still late to return home after a day spent with Alyce, baking for her since she had no patience or gift for it. She’d told him to stay the night. But there was nothing in the woods worse than what was in town, which Martin had told her without meaning to. Alyce gave him a thoughtful look and suddenly seemed to stop her worrying, only quietly reminding him not to dawdle, at least.
No storm had rolled over the forest today, but the air was blue with dusk, and Martin was still some distance from town. He was hurrying along the path with his head down, thinking that once the sun went behind the mountains, he would be dependent on whatever moonlight made it through the trees, when he heard the noise.
Animals, when hunting or when avoiding predators, tried not to make noise.
Martin stopped, straining to find where the sound was coming from. That he had been safe last time did not mean he would be safe now and he should not have assumed so. The loud, yet still distant, thumping was his heart in his ears… or a large creature on two legs moving slowly over bracken and moss and damp soil.
Bears did not move like that. Neither did lions.
Martin started walking again, faster, looking back over his shoulder as he went, and didn’t see the burrow until right before he caught his toe on the edge of it. He flailed his arms to keep his balance but couldn’t stop his cry of pain at the twist in his ankle.
The steps behind him got louder, faster. Martin lurched down the path, biting his lip and cursing himself. Of course, he did this. He was always daydreaming and foolish, always odd, always wrong. There was too far to go, and he could not move quickly now.
A sharp, metallic cry split the air and that was all it took for Martin to leave the path and tuck himself inside the hollow of the nearest tree.
The noises stopped, but Martin didn’t move. Not for a long time, not until it was truly dark, and he didn’t think he could put weight on his ankle for any longer. The hollow had stopped being a good hiding place once the sun had set and the mushrooms ringing it started to glow in blues and purples.
More of the mushrooms lined the path, he saw when he returned to it. He had never noticed them before, but the mushrooms were small, and he usually avoided the woods at night. Bright spots of purple and blue followed the human-made trail, then veered away, then vanished, only to reappear in scattered groups of twos and threes among the shadows.
Martin stared at the way to town, to his mother’s house, if he could make it that far, and then looked at the mushrooms again, the only real source of light until the moon rose.
Then he sighed and started walking.
Leaving the path was easier this time, even though it was night. That probably said something about him, but it was nothing his mother hadn’t already accused him of, and the lights were very pretty. Martin followed the soft glow until he reached a clearing where a doe was chomping away on the mushrooms that had been guiding him, possibly the same doe that had slept on him. She startled at the sight of him, although she was the one with the glowing mouth, and if anyone should be scared, it was Martin, which he told her.
He didn’t understand why she didn’t run, unless she had never encountered a human before. But after a while, she began to walk again, pausing to nibble things, while Martin slowly followed. The rules were as clear about the paths as they were about following strange lights and suspicious animals, but when the doe stopped to curl up beneath a familiar oak tree, Martin was more relieved than worried.
He stumbled into his place between the roots, and leaned his head against the trunk to sigh. When he felt he could, he prodded at his ankle without removing his boot. His ankle didn’t hurt enough to be broken, but it was hot and swollen. He sighed for that, too.
His mother still brought up the last time he’d spent the night in the woods, and Martin flinched to think what she would say about this. He wondered what she would do if he told her that he’d rather sleep on a tree out in the cold than in her house in a warm bed. Then he wondered if all odd things were allowed to sleep safely in the woods, or if the odd things were all in town. But that was the sort of thought Joseph would have.
After a while, the doe wandered off, and Martin pulled some of the bread he’d made for Alyce from his pocket. He’d meant it for his dinner, anyway.
Without the rain, or any mysterious sounds, the woods were quiet. When the moonlight began to filter through the trees, they were even lovely. What a story it would make, if he told anyone. Martin, the oddity, who could stay in the woods at night.
SOMETIME LATER, Martin woke just enough to turn his face away from the tree and into something much softer. He whined quietly at waking, at feeling the pain in his ankle anew, and the wind stirred his hair, gently and carefully, until he went back to sleep.
HE WOKE AGAIN, this time to sunshine, and stumbled toward an exquisite sunbeam that ended at the banks of a small, clear stream. He washed up, and drank from it, and considering dunking his ankle until the cold numbed the pain, but knew he had to get home soon or his mother would never stop speaking of how irresponsible he was, or how thoughtless. How wrong.
Martin peered at his wavy reflection, his bright red hair and eyes of muddy brown, his pale, freckled skin, and felt the smile that had been on his face since he had woken up in sunshine fall away.
Then he got to his feet and hobbled back to the path to begin the long, painful journey to his mother’s house.
THE NEXT TIME Martin entered the woods, when he could walk without pain, it was in the middle of the day, and he had nowhere to be except there. He started out on the path to the foothills, and then, once he was surrounded by trees and the town was far away, stepped deliberately from the path.
He stayed for hours, filling his basket with good berries for tarts, and magic berries to sell to the healer in town, and mushrooms that did not glow for soup, and acorns for whatever he pleased. He left two handfuls of acorns by the oak for the doe, if she should come by, and smiled at the tree, which was as impressive in the full light of day as it was at night, and then, with time enough before sunset, he sighed and reluctantly returned to town.
MARTIN WAS BACK in the woods the next day, his basket brimming things for Joseph. But this time, he stopped midway up the path to the foothills, and dithered like the odd boy he was, until finally setting out a slice of acorn cake on a p
iece of cloth. He placed the cake on the outside of the path, blushing hard for no reason he could name.
An animal would eat it before anything else would. But Martin did not think the creatures in the woods would mind a bit of cake, if they found it first. It might not even be wanted, though Martin’s cakes were one of the few things people desired from him. He’d just thought, if he intended to keep coming to the woods, then he should offer a gift. He did not deal with the fairy, but the forest had been generous, and he ought to be so in return.
All the same, he did not mention it to Joseph, though it was on his mind throughout the visit.
ON HIS RETURN, the cloth and the cake were gone. Near where they had been, in the middle of the path, in the center of the path as though no white stones existed and where Martin knew nothing had grown but the moss he had walked upon, were beautiful yellow jonquils in full bloom that had seemingly sprouted from nowhere.
Martin didn’t pick one, though he was tempted. At first, he could not breathe, then he worried that he was being fairy-led, and then he thought that nothing magic would ever bother to lead him anywhere. Eventually, he realized he was smiling.
He stared at the flowers for almost too long and had to hurry back to town.
He only did that because his mother was expecting him.
HIS MOTHER asked more than once what was wrong with him, and not in her usual way. Martin wanted to tell her the spirits in the woods have sheltered me. The spirits in the woods might like me. To explain that he had been led to safety and to water, trusted by a doe, been given flowers.
He almost did, almost offered to take her so she could see for herself, but the town was afire with news. The dragon royal family had asked every town and village to send their very best, available youths to the palace to see if they might suit the youngest prince as a companion, and half the town seemed torn between wanting to end up the favorite of royalty and the fear of being roasted by a dragon.
