The Wind-up Forest

by L. J. LaBarthe

  It was after midnight, of that she was certain. The door to the coupé compartment she shared with Piotr, Arkady, and Vasily was suddenly hauled open, and Larissa, Lyudmila’s oldest friend, stood there, pale and frightened.

  “We have to get off,” Larissa said urgently. “Quickly! Grab what you need and let us leave!”

  “There is no station for miles yet,” Arkady protested.

  “That is no matter. We can use the emergency lever to stop the train. We must go, Your Majesty.” Larissa looked at Lyudmila with wide, fear-filled eyes.

  “Why?” Lyudmila asked, even as she got to her feet, grabbing the small sack that she tied around her waist whenever she might have to shift in a hurry. It contained a few clothes, her papers, and Euros. She pushed her long, black hair away from her face in a gesture of irritation as she turned back to Larissa.

  “There are men”—Larissa was grim—“and they are asking about you. They spoke to Dmitry; he said he did not understand them. They were speaking Turkish,” she elaborated.

  “But he did understand?” Piotr asked.

  “Of course!” Larissa turned to peer down the corridor. “They mean to kill you. We must go!”

  There was no more arguing; Lyudmila was confident that if this turned out to be a mistake and Dmitry and Larissa had exaggerated, then they could run to the nearest station and board the next train. If, however, they were right and there were indeed men who wanted to kill her… well, she wanted to be as far away as possible.

  They ran in single file down the corridor, colliding with doors and walls as the motion of the train tossed them from side to side. Reaching the coupling between carriages, Lyudmila made sure all her people were with her, then nodded. Arkady and Vasily reached up and gripped the emergency stop lever and pulled.

  The train came to a slow, grinding halt, the noise a loud screech that made Lyudmila wince. Lights came on in compartments as people peered out into the corridor to see the reason for the sudden stop. Looking left, then right, Lyudmila saw five men, clad in black and holding guns, running toward them. She gulped.

  “We go. Now!” Piotr grabbed her hand and pulled her from the coupling, tugging her along into a run. “Shift!” he roared at the others. “Shift, damn you!”

  Lyudmila didn’t need to be told; she was already shifting into her wolf. Her running motion changed as muscles bunched tight and relaxed, and she raced toward the forest she could see in the distance. Beside her ran two red foxes; behind them ran four more wolves. Above them flew an eagle and an owl. And beyond them, shouting to each other in Russian, came the men with the guns.

  Lyudmila could hear a confused welter of languages coming from the train as people opened windows and peered into the night. Russian, Armenian, Georgian, and Turkish mixed to become indecipherable. She took a quick glance over her shoulder and saw one of the men aiming his gun.

  “Weave and dodge toward the forest,” she ordered, and her people did so, running as fast as their four legs could carry them. “Piotr, find out where we are,” she added, although Lyudmila already had a suspicion. She heard the beat of strong wings as the eagle above them veered away and toward a road in the distance. “Into the forest,” she ordered, and her people followed her, trusting her, as the sound of gunfire shattered the night.

  The trees were thick and the undergrowth dense, but still Lyudmila did not slow. The sack around her waist was inconvenient, but it was necessary. She shrugged to try and shift the burden, stumbling as her paws came down on a dead fall, the rotting wood splintering beneath the weight of an adult black wolf.

  “Lyudmila.” Piotr’s voice came to her, loud in her mind. She could hear the anxiety in his Russian as he spoke to her.

  “Yes?”

  “We are in Georgia. We must have crossed the border some time ago. The forest is the Vashlovani Nature Reserve.”

  Lyudmila swore, biting the curses off with savage snarls. Her companions continued to run beside her, and behind them, cursing as well, came the men.

  Larissa hooted and Lyudmila looked up, relieved to see the owl was arrowing toward a hill covered with brush and gorse. It would be a good place to hide, and as Larissa flew in front of them, leading them on, Lyudmila continued to run, continued to swear, and continued to wonder what was going on.

  Their pace slowed as the ground began its incline upward, and now they were able to move more silently. Piotr joined them, his piercing whistle alerting them to his return. Lyudmila gave a brief bark in reply, and they continued to move, scrambling up the hill that was now becoming harder and harder to climb.

  All of a sudden, Larissa appeared. She was hovering by a tree, and as Lyudmila turned her attention to the tree, she could see why. She stopped in her tracks, staring.

  In the center of the trunk of the tree was a key. It was tarnished and reminded Lyudmila of the wind-up trains and cars her father had given her when she was a child. Bemused, Lyudmila shifted back into her human form, ignoring the biting cold of the night now that she was not covered in thick, black fur.

  “What is this?” she wondered, staring at the tree with its key.

  “Perhaps it will bring help,” Larissa suggested. “The terrain only grows worse and the men behind us are catching up.”

  Lyudmila turned—it was true. And not only that, they had torches. She frowned, chewing her lower lip. Today was not her day to die. She was determined.

  As her people clustered around her in a protective group, Piotr and Larissa settling on her shoulders, Lyudmila gripped the key with both hands and turned. It was old, and it was stiff, and the wood of the tree and the metal of the key protested loudly, but soon, she was turning it until it could be wound no more.

  “Now what?” Lyudmila wondered, ducking into a crouch as the men coming toward them aimed their weapons in preparation to fire.

  She hadn’t really expected an answer; it had been a rhetorical question. Yet Lyudmila was so astonished by what happened next that she was rendered speechless.

  Music thundered from the tree and from other trees around them, a strong, martial theme, a call to battle, to war. Lyudmila had never heard such music. It sounded alien and ancient, as if it had been millions of years since there had been a need for it. As the music poured from the trees, light came on in the form of globes full of fireflies, and then, sliding down the trunks of the great trees, came the women.

  “Dryads,” Lyudmila gasped. She had never seen a dryad, but her friend Eleanora, a French witch, had told her about them. Amazed, Lyudmila watched as the dryads drew strong-limbed bows and shot steel-tipped arrows with unerring accuracy at the men. There was shouting, swearing; one man raised his torch, preparing to throw the flaming chunk of stick and rag at the trees, but the ground opened beneath his feet and swallowed him whole. A moment later, as the other men, felled by the arrows of the dryads, collapsed on the earth, they too were swallowed up.

  Piotr took wing, his talons scratching Lyudmila’s shoulder. She absently petted the cuts as he shimmered and the eagle was replaced with the man. “What is going on?” he asked in a hushed voice.

  Lyudmila shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  The dryads lowered their bows and the trees ceased their music. All grew silent, save for the sound of wind in the leaves of the branches several feet above their heads. Lyudmila stared at the dryads without embarrassment, taking in their skin, the color of oak, like the trees around them; their hair, which was jet black, shimmered with a strange green shine. They wore animal pelts tied together with leather thongs, and when they looked at her, Lyudmila saw their eyes were as green as grass. One of the dryads wore a gold torc around her neck, inlaid with emerald and jade, and oak leaves woven in her hair. From her clothing and bearing, Lyudmila surmised this was the dryad queen.

  “Your Majesty,” the dryad said, inclining her head, “I hope you are all right.”

  “Perfectly all right, thank you, Your Majesty,” Lyudmila replied. “Thank you for your help, it was very timely.”
>
  The dryad laughed, and the sound reminded Lyudmila of acorns dropping onto the ground. “Your Majesty, we did what we did because you needed our help. But now, we need yours.”

  “Anything that is in my power to do, I will,” Lyudmila said.

  “Thank you.” The dryad queen looked around the forest with a strange expression on her face. Lyudmila couldn’t begin to decipher it.

  “Dryads?” Piotr whispered to Lyudmila, and she nodded to him.

  “Your Majesty,” the dryad said, turning back to them, “you must call your friends, the Archangels. They are needed. The sacred has become the profane. They must stop it. They must find it and return it to its place of rest. They must use the talents of the Venatores. They must seek out the help of those who have helped them before, the nine of you with powers. They must also seek out those who are their equal and opposite and who wield the glass knives, who are led by the one with wings of tar. They must return the sacred to its home or all will be lost.”

  Lyudmila opened her mouth to ask a question, and then realized she had absolutely no idea what to ask. Piotr, however, was not rendered speechless.

  “What is it that is becoming profane?” he asked.

  The dryad queen regarded him, her gold-green eyes unblinking. “The holiest of things that still yet abides in this world, Piotr of Armenia.”

  “That… is not very helpful,” Piotr said. “Sorry, but it is not.”

  The dryad smiled at him. “It goes by many names and has many forms, but in the end, there is only the original which matters, and all others are but disguises. Tell the Archangels, Queen Lyudmila. They must fix this. They must seek it out and save us all, otherwise the balance will disappear and we will all perish.”

  Lyudmila nodded. “I will do as you ask, Majesty. However, the Archangels are… how do I put this? They are argumentative,” she said. “They will want details. Could you tell me what some of the names of this sacred thing are?”

  “Four of them are the Keepers,” the dryad said, “Michael, the Pure; Gabriel, the Strong; Tzadkiel, the Judge; Raziel, the Wise. They are tied to this sacred object above the others of their Brotherhood.”

  Piotr fumbled with the sack around Lyudmila’s waist and pulled out paper and pen. “I am writing this down,” he said. “So we do not forget any of your words.”

  “You are wise, Piotr of Armenia.”

  “And what are some of the names of this sacred thing these four Archangels are the Keepers of?” Lyudmila pressed.

  The dryad’s eyes glittered in the peculiar light of the firefly-filled globes. “It is known most popularly as the Holy Grail.”

  Lyudmila’s jaw dropped. Of all the things she had expected to hear, that wasn’t one of them. She and Piotr exchanged a look, and when she turned back, the dryads had gone.

  “The Holy Grail?” Piotr asked, his eyebrow raised in skepticism.

  “I have no idea.” Lyudmila shook her head. “I will call Raziel, but first, we are in Georgia, da? And they did not come for our papers on the train. This meeting is a setup. Go”—she turned to the wolves, foxes, and owl—“contact the other kingdoms of weres. Let them know that something is up and not to proceed to Paris.”

  “Should we tell them of what happened here?” Larissa asked.

  “Only that we were chased. Do not speak of the dryads or what their queen said.”

  Arkady snorted. “I am glad of that. I am not sure that I believe what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears.” He had, Lyudmila saw, shifted into his human form. He’d probably done it while she had been talking with the dryad queen. “I think we should go in pairs to find civilization to make our calls. Where will we meet you afterward?”

  Lyudmila ran her hands through her hair, pushing it back. “Archangelsk,” she said.

  “The city of Archangels,” Arkady said. “We will see you there, Your Majesty.” He shifted back into his fox shape and, with his lover at his side, loped off into the forest.

  When she was alone with Piotr, Lyudmila took his hand in hers. They started walking, the light of the globes above them sufficient for them to see where they were going. “This is very, very strange,” Piotr said. “The Holy Grail is a myth.”

  Lyudmila laughed. “So are shapeshifters and dryads to some, and yet, here we are.”

  Piotr pulled a wry face. “That is a point. What will you tell the Archangels?”

  “Exactly what the dryad queen asked me to,” Lyudmila said. “Come, let us shift. It will be less cold in fur and feathers.”

  Piotr kissed her cheek, put the pen and notepad back into her sack, and closed it carefully. “All right. There should be a valley to the north. Shall we call the Archangels from there?”

  Lyudmila nodded. “Yes.” Then she shifted, and once she was again the great black wolf, she loped north, the large eagle flying above her.

  They moved through the forest, and as dawn began to light the sky, the firefly globes vanished, spiraling up into the treetops. Lyudmila felt a twinge of sadness at their departure. She shook herself, then trotted down into the valley and, by a narrow creek, shifted back into her human form. She tugged a plain woolen dress from her sack and dressed, smiling at Piotr as he followed suit, tugging on a plain shirt and trousers.

  “So now we call?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Lyudmila frowned. “I do not know if this will work.”

  “We will not, until you try,” Piotr pointed out.

  Lyudmila stuck her tongue out at him, then closed her eyes and concentrated as she reached out, calling with her mind. “Raziel. Raziel, can you hear me? It is Lyudmila.”

  For several long moments there was silence, and then Raziel’s voice filled Lyudmila’s mind. She was so relieved that she had to sit down on the stony ground by the creek.

  “Lyudmila? What’s going on?” Raziel’s voice sounded startled. Lyudmila couldn’t blame him.

  “Something remarkable has happened. Can you and the rest of your Brotherhood meet Piotr and me, please? We are in Georgia.”

  “I take it you don’t mean Georgia in the United States.” Raziel sounded cheerful. “All right, I’ll get them together and come find you. What’s this about?”

  “I will tell you when I see you. Someone—something—might be eavesdropping.”

  Raziel replied a moment later. “Okay. We’ll be there soon.” The sense of him in her mind was gone, and Lyudmila opened her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Piotr sat beside her, holding her hand.

  “Da, my love. It has just been a long and strange night.”

  He snorted. “That is an understatement.”

  “We were born in Russia,” Lyudmila said with a smile. “We are experts at understatement.”

  Piotr chuckled and pulled her close, hugging her tight. She leaned into him, and they waited silently for the arrival of the Ten Archangels of God.

  Chapter Two

  STRIPPED TO the waist, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, Gabriel was sparring with Michael and unable to stop grinning.

  There was something primal and incredibly sexy about blocking and returning blows in hand-to-hand combat with his lover. They were not trying to injure each other—quite the opposite. They were demonstrating how angels fought and how quickly a battle could be over to a squad of Venatores.

  Those Venatores were sitting on the grass behind Michael’s subdivided mansion in Salem, Oregon, watching with mild interest. Gabriel watched them out the corner of his eye even as he parried a blow from Michael’s left wing and returned a hit of his own right forearm. It was difficult for Gabriel to keep focused on the fact that this was a training session and not a prelude to an afternoon of hot and sweaty sex with his lover.

  Michael spun on his right foot, and his left connected solidly with Gabriel’s stomach. Gabriel grunted, and even as Michael lowered his leg, he grabbed it and twisted, causing Michael to flip in midair, his wings flaring high to help him keep his balance.

  “Not fair,” Michael chided. “
They do not have the strength that we do.”

  “You kicked me in the gut,” Gabriel retorted. “What did you expect me to do, say thanks?”

  Michael laughed and held up a hand. “Let us take a break.”

  “Good idea. I need some water.” Gabriel grinned at his lover, and then he winked. Michael laughed once more.

  “Are you hurt?” Riley, the medical officer of the squad, was on his feet. He was a peculiar mixture of deference tinted with mild terror and concern for the well-being of the two Archangels.

  As Gabriel pulled a bottle of water to him with his power, he quirked an eyebrow at the young man. “Hurt? Not bloody likely.”

  “It was not so long ago that you were hurt, and badly,” Michael said. “And language, Gabriel.”

  Gabriel waved that off. “I got better, yeah? Yeah.”

  Michael sighed.

  “So you’re all right?” Riley was still hovering, and Gabriel looked at him, frowning a little.

  “Aye, I said I was.”

  “Sorry sir, sorry.” Riley retreated, taking cover behind the leader—the alpha—of his squad, a woman with black, wavy hair from Mexico named Angelique.

  “He isn’t going to eat you,” Angelique said. “He’s probably vegetarian or something.”

  “Michael-tarian,” Gabriel said with a wink. She laughed uproariously.

  “Pardon?” Michael regarded Gabriel in confusion.

  “I eat more than vegetables, Mishka,” Gabriel said, pasting an innocent expression on his face.

  It took a few minutes for Michael to figure out the double entendre, but when he did, his reaction was everything Gabriel had hoped for.

  “Gabriel!” Michael blushed crimson. “Language! Do not speak of such things in front of the children!”

  Gabriel laughed, and Angelique laughed harder.

  “Children?” she said derisively. “We aren’t children. I don’t think we’ve been children since we joined Venatores.”