Forestborn

by Elayne Audrey Becker

  “Perhaps we should—”

  “No,” he interrupts, predicting my train of thought. “We’ve come this far. Let’s finish it.” The unspoken message is, Let’s go while everything else takes shelter from the storm.

  Wherever “everything else” may be.

  I wait for Weslyn to voice his opinion, but he hasn’t said a word since the rain began.

  “All right,” I relent, raising my voice to be heard above the din. “Let me lead for a while, at least.”

  Helos gestures to the rise behind him, as if to say, be my guest. Stepping carefully, I move to the front and take us up the hill, grabbing wispy trees and sticks lodged in the ground whenever I can to help me balance. My boots slip more than once, driving my knees down into the pliant earth, but I manage to avoid any falls worse than that.

  We hike for several more hours, into the early evening. To distract myself from the battering wind, from my waterlogged boots and drenched clothes, I order my mind to focus instead on the after—after we save Finley, after Helos and I prove ourselves as harbingers of healing and not death. After I knock some sense into my friend where my brother is concerned, since out here, the distance between royal and commoner doesn’t seem so very far. I saw Finley’s indecision that morning at Castle Roanin. I can fix this, I know it.

  We stop only to choke down a miserable meal or drain our water supply. During one of these pauses, I uncork my waterskin and hold it skyward, attempting to catch a few stray drops of rainwater. Weslyn mirrors me silently, while Helos massages his ankle.

  By the time the ground levels out into a relatively flat expanse, my calves and thighs are screaming, and I have lost all sense of the time of day. But I’m alert enough to call a halt through panting breath when the horizon sharpens into focus. My heart skids in my chest at the sight of the mist before us.

  We’ve reached it.

  A thick layer of fog, nearly opaque, drifts like a silvery-blue cloud among the shadowed forest backdrop. It winds through the trees, hugging trunks and hovering waist-high above the grass. The sight is even more unnerving than when seen from the slopes of Niav. I scan the distance, left, right, and straight ahead. The mist stretches as far as I can see.

  “What do you think?” Helos asks, stepping up beside me. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, thank fortune, making it much easier to hear.

  I shake my head, considering.

  “Is it dangerous?” Weslyn asks from my other side.

  “Could be,” Helos replies, glancing down, then behind. He retreats a few paces and seizes a twig from the ground.

  When he’s back at my side, he snaps the twig in two and drops one of the pieces into the mist.

  It vanishes before it hits the ground.

  All three of us suck in a breath. Circumventing this could take hours. And it could ultimately lead to nothing; for all we know, there might be no other way to reach the giants than to trek directly through.

  Helos makes a comment too quiet for my ears to pick up, then extends the second half of the twig, dipping one end in the fog while keeping a loose grip on the other.

  Nothing happens.

  “Strange,” he murmurs, waving the stick back and forth a little. Then he drops it into the mist, and it disappears like the other.

  No one speaks. We’re all exhausted and soaked to the bone, and the thought of trying to navigate a way around this—particularly when we’re so close to our destination—is enough to push me over the edge.

  I can’t fall apart, I remind myself, running my hands over my face. Finley is depending on me. Don’t fall apart. Do something.

  I swivel round and scan our surroundings, hoping for inspiration.

  And stop at the sight.

  “Uh, Helos,” I mutter. Both boys turn, and I point to the stick—both pieces of it, lying one atop the other in the place they were taken from.

  “I didn’t hear them drop,” Weslyn says.

  He’s right. The sticks haven’t made a sound. It’s as if they just materialized there out of nothing.

  I search the ground at my feet and settle on a small pebble, which I hurl into the mist with all the force I can muster. Then I look down once more.

  The stone blinks into existence a few moments later.

  Weslyn stoops to examine the sticks. “They don’t seem damaged in any way,” he says, lifting one, then the other. I try the pebble and discover the same.

  “I think we should step into it,” my brother declares. “See if it shoots us back to this spot.” I gape as if he’s grown a second head. “Well, one of us at least. I’ll do it.”

  “Are you crazy?” I exclaim. “A stick looks okay, so you’re willing to just plunge right in?”

  “We have to try.”

  “We don’t have to do anything.”

  “So you’re willing to let Finley die without even trying.”

  I level a furious glare in his direction. “And if you die?”

  He turns away, arms crossed. “One of us should try.” And he thinks it should be him.

  Selflessness is making him stupid.

  “We’re not separating,” Weslyn says in a gruff voice, chiming in before I can berate Helos further.

  “Then we’ll all go.”

  “We can’t see what’s inside these objects.” I throw up my hands, exasperated. “They could look whole on the outside but be damaged within.”

  “They—”

  “Just … hold on a moment,” I say, “Before you go charging off on a suicide mission.” He’s convinced the mist won’t hurt us, but that kind of imagined kinship with magic can get you killed. And he should know that.

  He does know that.

  Where is this impulsiveness coming from?

  Pacing a short distance away, I find a leaf, so fragile it’s almost see-through, and pluck it from the forest floor. Then I step up to the mist and release it.

  Helos is the first to reach the returned leaf and holds it close to his face, turning it one way, then the other, running his fingertips along its sides. Then he hands it to me to do the same.

  “It seems fine,” I admit, after a thorough examination. I pass it to Weslyn.

  He studies the leaf, then drops his hand. “What’s the point of going in if we’ll only end up back where we started?”

  “Maybe we can push through it,” Helos suggests. “Figure out a way forward. Anything’s better than doing nothing.”

  “What about going around?”

  “If this doesn’t work, we’ll try that,” I allow, finally willing to accept my brother’s plan. “But we have no idea if there’s even a break in the fog, and we’ve been away for so long already.” I don’t articulate the danger in these two weeks of travel. The implication that every delay brings more people falling ill with the Throes, more deaths.

  Six weeks until King Gerar must side with or against King Jol.

  Weslyn’s rigid as a board, hands clenched tightly at his sides. I realize this must be hard for him, to continually confront a kind of landscape that’s long since faded from Telyan. But we really don’t have time.

  “Finley needs us,” I remind him.

  The words aren’t enough to uncurl his fists, but at least they spur him into motion once more. He strides up beside me, looking straight ahead.

  “We’ll take one step in. On three,” I add, glancing at my brother, who nods and clutches the straps of his pack. “One. Two.”

  On three, I step forward, just a single step into the mist’s cool embrace.

  Instantly, power yanks at my body, an invisible force taking hold as icy air washes over me. My hair whips my face, and shock roars in my ears. But before I can say or do anything, the air releases me.

  The first thing I do is confirm that both boys are okay. They are—each stands the same distance from me as before, looking equally shaken and bewildered. Then I focus on our surroundings.

  Mast-thin lodgepole pines. Sloping green land. The layered shadows of early evening. All eerily qu
iet.

  Unlike it had with the forest debris, the mist hasn’t bounced us back to where we started. It’s moved us farther north, to the hills near the base of the Decani Mountains. Easily a four-days’ hike from the spot we’ve just left, the place we need to be, and it takes everything in me not to drop to my knees.

  I open my mouth to tell them where we are, and that’s when the screaming begins.

  FIFTEEN

  All three of us speak at once.

  “What was—”

  “Where did it—”

  “Was that—”

  “A person,” I breathe, feeling the air around me constrict. “It sounded like a person.”

  My claim is met with silence. Muffled shouts sound in the distance, too far away to make out. My legs jerk forward.

  “Wait a moment,” Weslyn warns, catching my arm and guiding me back to the group. Wind rips through the trees, blowing sodden leaves onto my skin. “We have no idea what’s going on, or how they might receive us. We need to figure out where we are. You cannot go charging off blindly.”

  Another scream rends the air.

  But I can.

  I’m gone, boots pounding the earth like drums of war. There’s nothing to guide me but the cries echoing in my head and the snap judgment of where they had come from. Maneuvering through the forest would be far easier as a goshawk, but I don’t want to lose my pack. So I run, the movement pulling at my still-healing stomach. Swerving around the narrow trunks, leaping over arched roots, ducking under low-hanging branches.

  It isn’t easy. The ground is slick from the rain, and I lose my footing on a descent more than once, slamming into patches of mottled brown-and-green leaves—adder’s tail. A short slide across the forest floor rips open one of my pant legs at the knee. Flecks of dirt lodge themselves in my hair and on my skin, and some sort of insect stings me sharply in the forearm. I yelp at the pain and smack the bug aside, taking the opportunity to glance behind. There’s no sign of Helos or Weslyn.

  More shouting up ahead, much louder now than it was before. I slow to a more cautious pace as the signs of a struggle take shape—a low growl, a thumping noise, deep voices arcing high.

  “It’s getting loose!”

  “Cut its—”

  Vicious snarling serrates the air, rough and wrinkled, like sandpaper in sound.

  The blood rushes from my face.

  Horrible sounds. Dying sounds. Strangled, choking, utterly agonized screeching. Pinpricks of pressure jut up against my skin, just beneath the surface, fighting to break through. Whiskers in my cheeks, then feathers all over. As if my body can’t decide which need is more urgent: to hide or to flee.

  I will not hide, I resolve, rebelling against the first stings of numbness, the coolness spreading through my limbs. I will not flee.

  I step forward.

  The forest opens up into a grassy clearing peppered with wildflowers. I hover at the perimeter, several paces behind the tree line, melting into the shadows as the scene before me sharpens into focus.

  There are three men—one of them only steps away from me—in uniforms of navy blue, with red detailing on the cuffs and collars. Eradain colors.

  One of them is on the ground.

  It’s hardest to look at him, at the narrow face contorted in anguish, the deep crimson patches staining his front. The maimed stomach that’s been ripped to shreds, flesh and intestines spilling onto the grass and coating the knife at his side. Bile collects in my throat.

  A caegar stands over him, the elusive mountain wildcat with hypnotic powers, a massive swath of wired netting tangled around its back paw. It’s bleeding heavily from a cut on its flank.

  “Grab the net,” shouts the man across the clearing, tall and younger looking, with torn up arms, white skin, and a beard a lighter shade of gold than his hair. His comrade in front of me angles forward with obvious reluctance, leaping backward when the caegar fixes him with its furious gaze.

  The wildcat prowls toward him, as I knew it would. You can’t run from mountain cats. You can never run.

  But in numbers, you have a chance of beating one.

  “HEY!” I shriek, leaping into the clearing and turning my face away a moment before that massive feline head swings in my direction. The man beside me nearly jumps out of his bones. I ignore him and focus on the caegar’s small, rounded ears, on its shoulder, on the muscles rippling beneath its tawny fur as it takes a step forward. I know its game.

  “What the—”

  “Don’t look it in the eye,” I warn, cutting him off. “Do not meet its gaze.” The men must have struck the caegar first; these cats are solitary creatures who only attack when their prey is alone. I glance at the net that has snared this one’s paw.

  “Get out of—”

  “If its eyes find yours, you’re lost,” I say, voice rising so the one with golden hair can hear. The mangled man has fallen silent. “If you run, it will give chase, and then you’re dead. Raise your arms and your swords. Make yourselves appear as big as possible.”

  “Listen, girl—”

  “DO AS I SAY!” I bellow, not to force my point, but to startle the caegar. It flinches at the outburst, then growls as I step closer to the man on my left. Our shoulders are almost touching.

  He spreads his arms wide, as do I, shouting all the while. The caegar steps toward us, and I yell even louder. Where’s Weslyn?

  Where is my brother?

  Every nerve in my body is on fire. Arteries, veins—the tingling has returned, blossoming from my core to my extremities. No. I won’t. I can’t. These are Eradain men.

  The one with golden hair has started mirroring us, and the caegar takes a step back, fangs bared. Deciding.

  I struggle to remain focused on the scene in front of me as my fingers stretch and sharpen. The decision to fight, the need to stand my ground—my body is demanding lynx, though this wildcat would be twice my size, and it’s taking every trace of strength I possess to beat the claws back and resist the shift.

  I lift my leg to step toward the caegar—and collapse.

  The tingling in my legs is no longer the soft patter of raindrops. It’s needle-sharp, pulsing the length of my calves, insisting on a shift. I look up at my quarry, and in my distraction, I stupidly catch its gaze.

  The prickling sensation recedes, quickly replaced by a spreading paralysis that prevents me from moving—or feeling—my legs at all. The man at my side grabs me under the shoulder, struggling to hoist me up onto feet that no longer hold my weight. I yank my arm from his grasp and stare at the cat. The cat stares at me.

  I lean toward it.

  The few remaining whispers of reason thrash against my thoughts, demanding that I stop. That I stand. That I scream. The man beside me is yelling the same, tugging me to my feet each time my legs buckle, but the sound of his voice is growing as muddy as those of the forest around us. The caegar prowls toward me, and despite the haze in my mind, I find that I want it to.

  The man releases my arm and steps away.

  Someone blocks the view in front of me.

  “What—” I try to ask, but my tongue lays heavy in my mouth. No sound comes out.

  He says something, the person standing there. My brain can’t make sense of the syllables. I blink hard, shake my head, blink again. Focus.

  The pants blocking my view—black. The hair crowning the back of the skull—brown. This means something to me. It should mean something.

  Focus.

  I jostle my legs—and find that I can move them.

  Dizziness skews my senses as I surge to my feet, but the fog lifts at last. Weslyn. Somehow he’s here, standing before me, sword drawn. A broad stretch of steel the only thing separating us from the caegar.

  “Hasn’t anyone ever warned you about their eyes?” he murmurs, keeping his attention on the scene before us.

  “Shut up,” I tell him earnestly, royal or no.

  And I swear by the river, he smiles.

  Making every effort not t
o let the caegar catch me off guard again, I peer around his shoulder. Helos is still nowhere in sight.

  As if the thought has summoned him, my brother races past the tree line and into the clearing, stopping directly beside us.

  Now there are four of us together. Not to mention the one across the clearing, who looks utterly bewildered by the presence of so many newcomers. The wildcat looks at all of us, blood still dripping from its flank, and curls a lip in warning. It takes a couple of steps backward, then turns to flee—and stumbles over the wire netting.

  People explode from the trees, four by my startled count and all wearing the colors of Eradain, firing a device that ejects a dark net from its mouth like a web. It barrels into the caegar with the force of a mountain gale, sending the wildcat tumbling to the ground and enveloping it in a barbed blanket.

  “Grab it!” shouts one of the newcomers. She and her comrades rush to the fallen caegar, twisting the ends of the net into a knot of sorts and dragging their catch toward them. The wildcat writhes and scores the earth with its claws, screaming as the wire netting digs deeper into its fur.

  “What are you doing?” I yell, ignoring the stuttered protest from the uniformed man beside me and lurching forward. “It was backing away. It was leaving!”

  Helos utters a hurried warning.

  “Bloody ends, stay back!” answers one of the men. The cat’s flank is heaving to an irregular rhythm, lungs striving to draw breath despite the cords burrowing into its skin. Its pupils are dilated to twice their normal size. It’s frightened.

  The sight triggers a blaze of fury in me—pure, unadulterated wrath as forceful as a thousand suns, coursing through my veins. Surrounded, hunted, forced from its home. In the Vale, neutral territory. A haven. There can’t be more than a couple dozen caegars in all of Alemara. Their magic is dangerous, yes, but that doesn’t justify attacking them out of nowhere, and this one doesn’t appear to have done more than defend itself.

  “Why are you—”

  The man with golden hair rushes forward and runs his knife through the cat’s shoulder.

  “No!” I cry, watching in horror as he dislodges the red blade and staggers backward, triumph smeared across his features. The caegar’s body slackens.