Forestborn

by Elayne Audrey Becker

  Every night, I watch my home burn over and over, the flames coming close enough to lick my skin. I don’t know how much of what I imagine is even real; my brain forges the details I can’t remember. I scream as faceless shadows fling Helos from one of the tree bridges. I feel their hands on my shoulder, ready to cast me in after him.

  Tonight’s dream is already fading, but I know the river loomed large, its black waves closing resolutely over Helos’s head.

  Moving ever so slowly, I wipe the tears from my eyes, dreading the thought of Weslyn catching me in this state. I have no desire to fall back into nightmares, but still sleep finds me quickly. As I’m drifting in and out of consciousness, I almost think I hear notes that don’t belong—a melody low and soothing. I’m gone before I can capture it.

  * * *

  “Hold on,” Helos warns, stepping up beside me.

  After another uneventful morning, we have reached the edge of a meadow studded with alpine flowers and windblown grass. The mist that sheathes the giants’ realm shouldn’t be too far beyond the other side; if we’re lucky, we might reach it today.

  Using a hand to shade my forehead, I strain my senses to scan the meadow’s periphery. Beneath an unbroken blue sky, a mass of wheat-colored stalks converges near the grassy center, crowned with swaying violet globes and nearly waist-high from the look of it. Shorter ones are studded throughout the rest of the field, their blossoms more lilac than violet.

  “Is something wrong?” Weslyn asks, stepping closer and fisting the straps of his pack.

  Helos squats to smell the flowers lining the outskirts. “I don’t recognize these.”

  I twist to Weslyn. “This meadow wasn’t here before.”

  “Is that a problem?” he asks, running a hand through his curls. “It looks empty enough from here.”

  “Empty of large animals, maybe,” I reply. “Not empty of life.”

  “Let’s go around,” Helos suggests, rising to his feet and rolling his shoulders back. “It’s probably not worth the risk.”

  I’m inclined to agree. With a small cough, I lead us around to the left, keeping my footsteps well clear of the meadow. The others fall in behind me.

  The ground begins to shake.

  Not this again. I throw my arms out, both for balance and to stop the others from advancing. There’s an uneven rhythm to the trembling, as if heavy weights are striking the earth. The ground rumbles upward before and below our feet, elevating us on a downward slope.

  “Back up,” I order, spotting the movement through the trees. A series of boulders, all different sizes. The stones are barreling toward us, fanned out in a half moon stretching left, right, and center—crashing through the underbrush, cracking a spruce fir straight in two. A blur of red fur streaks past me, scrambling for safety. “Go!” I shove them toward the meadow, where the land lies beautifully flat.

  We pound across the border and onto the open ground, trampling the lilac-crowned stems beneath our boots. We’re halfway to the center when the boulders cascade past the tree line and into the meadow, then immediately shatter into rivulets of pale pink blossoms.

  All of us pause to watch the threat dissipate. A few rogue strands of wind carry the flowers across the meadow and up toward the sky. I pull a feather-soft petal from my shirt and frown. “Cherry blossoms.”

  Helos huffs a nervous laugh. “Better than granite, I suppose.”

  As quiet settles over the land once more, we shift our attention to the stalks around us. They’re taller here than on the outskirts; several of them reach past my waist.

  “Well,” I say, peering around us. “I guess we’ve made it this far.”

  Helos brushes drops of water from his arms. “Wet, isn’t it?”

  I nod. Dew still clings to most of the purple globes.

  Weslyn starts for the southern end, leaving us to follow. Soon I have to lift my elbows in order to clear all the stems.

  “Are they growing taller?” he asks, brushing a few stalks from his path.

  I blink. When did they get so high? Suddenly, the tops crest far above our heads, as if we’re walking a cornfield in Telyan’s sprawling farmland. My pants are damp with moisture.

  A few steps later, Weslyn halts. Lifts a heel, then grinds it into the earth.

  “What is it?” I push my way through the towering stalks. I can hear Helos swearing beside me.

  “Listen,” Weslyn says, gaze still fixed on the ground. “The leaves are all crunching.” He swivels toward us. “But it’s not autumn.”

  Bending abruptly, I sweep my hands along the earth, which is mostly bare dirt. A finger of fear strokes the length of my spine.

  “Weslyn,” I say, rising slowly. “There are no leaves.”

  He blinks at me. “What?”

  “There are no leaves on the ground.”

  “Yes, there are.” Helos crouches low and grabs at the earth. “But they’re wet and soggy as anything in here. Look.”

  He extends an open palm. Nothing’s on it. Only empty air.

  “We should leave,” I tell them, heart hammering in my chest.

  “What?”

  “There’s nothing on your hand, Helos!”

  “What are you talking about, I’ve got a—”

  He breaks off. Drops his hand.

  “What do you see?” he asks. “Around you, right now. What are you seeing?”

  “Stalks,” I answer cautiously. “Higher than our heads. They’re golden brown, like wheat.”

  The color drains from his face.

  “That’s not what—”

  Weslyn inhales sharply, balling his hands into fists.

  “What?”

  “The water. It’s burning.”

  I stomp closer and study his forearms, bare beneath the rolled gray sleeves.

  “Do you not feel it?” he asks, clenching one of his dry wrists. “How is it not hurting you?”

  “There’s nothing to feel!”

  Helos swears and slaps his ankle, then lifts a pant leg. “Fire ants.”

  He stomps around, but I can’t see a single insect.

  “What’s going on? Why are we seeing different things?” Weslyn demands.

  “It’s not just seeing,” I reply. Scrunching my nose, I circle in place. “Do either of you smell smoke?”

  They stare at me blankly.

  “Let’s go,” Helos says, grinding his shoes into the invisible insects.

  “Which way is out?” I retort.

  Each of us points in different directions.

  “I know this is south.” Lips pressed thin, Weslyn lowers his hand. “I was walking in the same direction the whole time.”

  “That’s like trying to cut a straight course through the woods,” Helos says. “You may think that it’s easy, but eventually, all trees start to look the same.”

  “I could see where I was going until a few moments ago.”

  “We’ve pretty well established that you can’t trust what you’re seeing!”

  “Fire,” I breathe, gesturing behind Helos. “We have to move.”

  “There is no fire!” Helos shouts.

  The flames are coming closer, licking the stems with greedy limbs, the acrid scent singeing my nostrils. They can’t be more than ten paces from us.

  “What if there is?” I shout back. “Who’s to say which is real? What you’re seeing or what I am?”

  Weslyn exhales slowly. “We need to—”

  “Move,” I say, tugging Helos out of the fire’s path. Feathers are needling the inside of my skin, offering, insistent. “I’ll fly above and—”

  The world goes dark.

  I freeze.

  Shake my head. Rub my eyes with the heels of my hands.

  “What is it?” Helos asks close to my ear. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t see,” I mutter. The snapping of the flames has died away, along with the smell.

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing.” Panic is throwing itself against my rib cage, ra
ttling my chest. I can feel the feathers poking through my skin.

  “I don’t think shifting will help,” Helos says gently, touching my arm and sounding suddenly composed, more controlled. “Whatever this is, it’s affecting our senses. That won’t change in another form.”

  “So how do we do this?” Weslyn asks, the voice farther off than I remember him being. With an effort, I urge the feathers to recede. “What do we trust if we can’t trust our senses?”

  I mash my eyelids together, then open again, to no avail.

  “We trust each other.” My brother’s tone is decisive. “If anyone hears anything odd, or spots an obstacle, we avoid it. No matter if the others cannot.”

  I nod, but Weslyn doesn’t reply.

  “Agreed?” Helos presses.

  “Yes.” Weslyn’s voice is rather breathy. “And in that case, we should move.”

  “Why, what are you seeing?”

  “Rattling.” He pauses. “I hear rattling.”

  “Like a snake?”

  “Like many,” he says.

  “Then let’s go.” I take a step to the side.

  “Not that way!”

  My heart leaps into my throat. His voice rarely raises beyond its usual pitch. “You lead us, then,” I say at last.

  At the sound of boots crunching something like hay, Helos places gentle pressure against my shoulder blades. Maybe thirty paces later, color and shapes flood my vision.

  “It’s back,” I say, resisting the urge to cry out. “I can see again.”

  Weslyn glances back from up ahead.

  The landscape around us has changed. No longer do towering stalks mask the horizon. Instead, sunflowers blanket the grass, their damp yellow tops playing host to dozens of bees. Yew hedges clump around the perimeter, evergreen and unnaturally shaped, nothing that would normally grow in these parts.

  We follow Weslyn for a time, swerving around barriers we cannot see, ducking low to the ground when he drops. I steer them clear of a giant ravine in the earth and make them cover their ears when the piercing cries grow so loud, I’m afraid they might shatter our eardrums. At one point, Helos yells for us to follow him before they grab us.

  Somehow, we never seem to close the distance between our current position and the meadow’s edge. All we do is track nearer to the border, and in the span of a blink, it recedes.

  After our escape from opponents we could not see, Weslyn and I trail Helos with dispirited steps. When the better part of an hour has passed, Weslyn halts without warning.

  Wide-eyed, hands fisted, he stares rigidly into the distance.

  “What are you seeing?” I ask, noting the veins that appear ready to jump out of his skin.

  Weslyn only stares.

  “Tell us,” I urge, as Helos retraces his steps.

  Weslyn shakes his head. “It’s not an obstacle.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It does not matter.” His tone sharpens. “It isn’t real.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know, all right?” He waves a hand vaguely in my direction. “Keep walking. I will follow.”

  The manner in which he speaks wards off further questioning, and in response, my stomach clenches in irritation. I don’t know why he insists on shutting down any time I get close. Twisting away, I catch Helos frowning before he leads us onward.

  “Does anyone else see storm clouds?” he asks after a while.

  “Everything keeps changing,” I groan, struggling to tamp down my frustration. The meadow has recently become a bog, tepid water and wan, wilting reeds. Along the border, puffs of steam arc skyward in fractured spirals. “The sky looks dark now, but it wasn’t before. First I saw the stalks, then a garden, then a streambed. Now it’s more of a swamp, and the outskirts are always—”

  I grind to a halt, my response trailing off. And that’s when I realize.

  “What do our surroundings look like to you?” I ask. “Whatever you’re seeing, is it wet?”

  “Now it’s a grove of hickory trees,” Helos replies. “Surrounded by pockets of mud.”

  “It’s open for me.” Weslyn shrugs. “Like a barley field at harvest time, but after rain. It’s damp.”

  “I bet it’s the dew,” I say firmly. “Or whatever the water is. I think that’s what’s affecting our senses.” Moisture has beaded along my arms and seeped into my shirt and pant legs. The boys perform matching examinations of themselves.

  “If you’re right,” Helos says, “then we should try to dry off. But even if we do, as soon as we try to leave the meadow, we’ll just get wet again. The only way out is through the damp.”

  “Maybe that’s just an illusion to keep us here. If we’re dry, we might see a path.”

  “Or there could be levels to it,” Weslyn puts in, sounding tired. “Maybe the wetter we are, the worse it gets.”

  We fall silent, considering.

  “Let’s change,” I say at last. “There’s no harm in trying. Dry off and put on new clothes.”

  After a beat, Weslyn sheds his pack and turns around. Helos and I follow his lead. Grabbing the worn towel from my pack, I strip off my damp pants and shirt and rub my skin until it’s dry. Then I throw on a fresh set, green and gray, noting gratefully that the moisture on my boots hasn’t seeped inside. When everyone is ready, we straighten and face the tree line.

  It’s much closer than it looked before, maybe twenty or thirty paces away. Around us, the lilac-topped stalks are back, but there are small gaps between the bunches, and none reach higher than our calves.

  I confirm with the others that we are all seeing the same.

  “Okay then,” I mutter, studying the ground before us. “Step carefully.”

  Moving at a turtle’s speed, we advance toward the perimeter with delicate, tentative steps. The motions feel faintly absurd, but I’d rather have my wits about me, and I don’t break from the course.

  “The river take me,” Helos mutters, throwing his arms behind his head.

  “Just follow us,” I say, “even if you touch it. We’re almost out.”

  Someone inhales sharply, and my ankle brushes against the stalks. I grit my teeth against the moisture. The view ahead hasn’t changed.

  When we’re only a handful of steps away, Helos exclaims loudly from behind.

  “What’s wrong?” I pivot quickly, seeing Weslyn turn in my peripheries. “Helos?”

  My brother is stamping the dirt, the movements rapid, frantic.

  Then he drops into the ground, and the earth swallows him whole.

  FOURTEEN

  “Helos!”

  I launch myself at the spot where he vanished and tear at the earth with reckless abandon, my fingers soon stretching into claws. The lilac stalks bend around me, brushing my arms, my ankles. I don’t care. My claws churn desperate tracks in the dirt, but my brother’s head does not emerge.

  Suddenly Weslyn is yanking me upright, away from the place where Helos disappeared. I scream and spit like a wildcat, twisting to get free, to resume my search—but he traps me firmly against him, his grip like iron. “Helos!”

  “Rora, stop! Look, I’m here!”

  Impossibly, Helos materializes in front of me and holds my face in his hands. “I’m here. It’s okay, I’m right here.”

  I stop fighting and blink at him, tears blurring my eyes. “How do I know you’re real?” I demand, my voice cracking on the words. “Which one is real?”

  “I am, see?” Helos steps outside the meadow, smiling a little.

  Weslyn releases his hold now that I’m no longer struggling, and I follow my brother, scraping the dew from my skin. He’s still there. When I look back at the place I’d seen him vanish, there’s nothing but a yawning crevice just beyond where I was digging. I must have nearly fallen in. “I thought—I saw you—”

  “It’s all right,” Helos says, pulling me into a hug. “We’re out of it now.”

  I clutch the front of his shirt a moment, breathing slowly to try to blot o
ut the panic. The gash in the earth looks deep and dark, probably new, and I twist around to look at Weslyn, who’s standing a short distance to the side, hands in his pockets, turned slightly away. He’s watching me.

  “Thanks,” I say quietly.

  His expression softens a little as he nods, then looks away.

  * * *

  Helos was right; storm clouds crowded the sky while we were tramping through the meadow.

  The rain breaks that afternoon. Leaves and detritus cling to our cloaks while we trudge through the muck, boots squelching in the mud as we leave the cursed meadow far behind. The trees are denser here, and older, their mossy trunks an arms-width wide. Gray-green lichen drapes unevenly along the branches. It gives the area an almost haunted feel.

  Thunder crashes far above, and wind continually knocks the hood off my head. For a while I resort to holding it in place with my fingers, then abandon the attempt entirely. Helos keeps looking behind, trying to watch for followers since it’s difficult to hear much above the downpour.

  I share his apprehension. We’ve been trekking most of the day, yet we haven’t even come across a single elk. In fact, we’ve seen no animals beyond birds and the occasional ground dwellers ever since crossing the river. It makes no sense. This area is brimming with wildlife.

  If anything, given the recent exodus of magical people to the west, and the sudden surge of magic that’s drifted east, I expected to find the Vale more crowded. Or, perhaps, some crisis great enough to disrupt the land magic’s usual course.

  But beyond the swish of the breeze, which has recently turned to rain—there’s nothing.

  I try to stifle these concerns in light of the more pressing issue at hand. Our current priority is reaching the giants, but advancing in this weather is nearly impossible. I’m about to suggest we seek shelter and wait for the worst to pass when Helos loses his footing and slides a few paces downhill.

  For a moment he just lies there on his stomach, not moving. More sinking sand? I’m already lurching forward, but then he shouts something inarticulate and pounds a fist into the earth.

  Weslyn gets there first. Wordlessly, he offers a hand and pulls my brother to his feet.

  Helos examines his front, which is now entirely covered in mud, and swears.