by K. Ferrin
When she finally opened her eyes, she found the sun had travelled clear across the sky and was settling toward the west. She stared upward, enjoying the rippling effect the water had on the sky and the trees, and she imagined painting one of Rudy’s flower arrangements as if seen through this watery filter. With a sigh she sat up, stealing herself for Fern’s withering stares when she walked back into camp.
Ling brushed the water off her skin and pulled her clothes on, settling the leather bag with the grimoire in it across her chest. It was a beautiful evening. The sun was sinking in the sky, but its touch still warmed the land. Wildflowers and leafy branches bobbed happily as she passed. It was a far cry from the sogginess that surrounded Meuse. She liked this much better.
As she approached camp, she saw that Drake and Celene were at the fire, Celene cutting up something for dinner while Drake stirred the pot over the glowing fire. Dreskin and Fern were nowhere to be seen. Ling turned to go to Navire, but realized suddenly he had been moved. She opened her mouth to yell at Fern, certain it was her doing, before realizing what she was seeing didn’t make any sense at all.
The blanket Navire had rested on since they’d brought him to camp was exactly where she’d left it, but Navire himself was four feet away. She could see his tail and a portion of his hindquarters, but could see nothing of his head. She hurried toward him, realizing as she drew close that he was partially underground, and that his body was wrapped in bloated white ropes of some kind.
Ling yelled out as she ran to him, digging at the ground with her hands to free him. She was yanked backward violently.
“Don’t touch it! There’s nothing you can do; if you touch it you’re as dead as he is,” shouted Drake.
Drake had a hold on her and was dragging her away. As she watched, Navire’s body gave a sudden lurch and all but vanished into the earth. Nothing but his tail remained on the surface. In that moment two things happened. Ling looked up to see Fern and Dreskin emerging from a single bedroll. Dreskin’s mouth hung open in surprise, his hands paused in their occupation of closing his pants. Fern’s eyes were wide in fear, hands caught mid-act in tying back her mussed hair. Before this could fully register, Celene screamed.
All four sets of eyes turned in her direction. There was a moment of complete silence in which Ling realized Amalya was in the process of being taken just as Navire had been. She was underground from her chest down, one arm tucked down at her side, the other flung back over her head. Her head bounced against an unseen obstacle as whatever was taking her gave another heave. Her eyes were open, but staring and empty, already dead.
Celene reached out toward her. Ling felt Drake’s grip around her waist loosen and felt a whoosh of air as the woman sucked breath into her open mouth.
“Don’t touch it!” Drake screamed, but it was too late. Celene’s hand wrapped around one of the squirming, bloated strands and yanked as she tried to free Amalya.
Everyone exploded into action. The horses screamed as the ground beneath them began to churn. Fern and Dreskin sprinted across the open space between them and Celene and yanked her away from Amalya as Celene screamed once again.
“Get the horses,” Drake hissed in Ling’s ear, shoving her into action. Ling moved without thought, throwing saddles and bags haphazardly onto terrified horses as Dreskin and Fern dragged Celene away from camp, away from the ghostly visage of the skull trees. She was screaming, weeping, and even with one hand cradled against her chest she fought to get back to her daughter. Dreskin and Fern were hard pressed to keep their hold on her.
Drake ran toward the others, two horses neighing loudly, tossing their heads as they followed after her. Ling grabbed the other two before they could flee, but stared at the hole that Navire had vanished into. I swear I will make it right, Navire. I swear it. She felt the ground shifting beneath her, and she leapt onto one of the horses, kicking it to a gallop as she followed after Drake and the others.
She pulled her mount to a stop and waited as Fern leapt up to the second horse. Dreskin mounted as well, wrestling Celene into place in front of him. She screamed again, pushing violently against him, but he held tight. He let up his hold on the reins and his horse bolted, Drake’s in quick pursuit. Fern was only halfway mounted, and Ling could hear her cursing as her horse galloped after the others.
Ling held tightly to her mount, watching as the earth their camp had rested upon boiled as violently as a pot of water over a hot fire, thick white ropes as big around as her waist rose and fell in the dark earth, poking and searching. With a shudder, she turned forward and let her horse run. They moved fast, but the noise of the destruction going on behind her stayed with her for many long minutes.
Chapter Sixteen
They had paralleled the line of thorn trees for an hour, moving as fast as they dared through the trees and brush of the forest before slowing to a halt. Celene had screamed for half of that time before settling into a steady keening that set Ling’s teeth on edge. Celene straddled the horse in front of Dreskin—he had one arm around her waist even now, though she’d stopped struggling against him awhile back. Ling could hear Dreskin whispering slow, soothing words whenever Celene paused for breath. She sat slumped forward as if her muscles had forgotten how to function so overwhelming was her grief.
The remainder of the grudge Ling had harbored against Celene had vanished alongside everything else last night. When she’d read the grimoire that morning she’d realized immediately the rightness of what had happened with Dreskin the night before, and had settled on the same resolve. With the anger and hatred gone, she felt only grief for Celene’s loss. She’d lost a son already, and harbored a great deal of guilt about it. Ling wondered if she would ever forgive herself for what had happened to Amalya.
The horses snorted and pranced, as nervous as their riders. “We can’t go through now, not in the dark. We need to camp here, closer to the wall, and leave at first light. As long as we don’t make camp right over a root system we’ll be fine.” Fern’s voice was hard, brooking no argument.
“Great, we’ll just dig up our entire campsite to make sure there are no roots beneath us before we bed down for the night. Or are you suggesting we sleep up a thorn tree?” Celene’s tone was acidic with sarcasm, and she followed the words with a loud keening that caused Ling to flinch from its rawness.
“We can’t get any closer to the wall with that wailing going on. Everyone for miles around can hear her screaming,” Ling said. Drake, Dreskin, and Fern all turned to look at Ling.
“Right now they think we are dead and that gives us an advantage. Stealth is now our greatest ally. We were safe for the entire night last night. It took twenty-four hours for the roots to get to us. Perhaps it is the same here.” Ling turned in her saddle to face Fern. “What might we do to reduce the danger?”
Fern took a deep breath. “I…I’m not sure. Nothing is the same as it used to be. The Mouro have crossed the boundary. We’re not safe anywhere. They’ll soon begin encroaching on Brisia, and with the breach we’ll not have enough power to push them back again.” Fern rubbed at a spot between her eyebrows, her movement barely visible in the dark.
“Mouro?” Ling asked, but Fern didn’t respond.
Ling held her impatience in check. Fern had told her when they’d first met that Ling was one of them, one of the Mari, that she could ask anything, that there would be no secrets. But Fern had nothing but secrets. Fern never spoke with her, never sought out her company, barely ever even looked at her. She’d never mentioned a relationship with Dreskin, though the two clearly had one. And while everyone had said the Woedenwoud was dangerous, no one had said anything about bone trees and bloated things that attacked from under the ground, or encroaching Mouro, whatever they were. It was time for some honesty in this group.
“I think it’s about time we all had a chat. We are in this together, for better or worse, and we need to start acting like it.” She realized with shock she sounded a lot like her mother. “Now, to start, what ar
e the Mouro, and what is the Woedenwoud, really?”
Fern sighed, and urged her horse closer to Dreskin’s. She placed a hand on Celene’s shoulder. “Celene, I am sorry for your loss, I truly am. I do not wish to deny you your grief, but we are in a great deal of danger. We need to get closer to the wall, and to do that safely, we need silence. Can you find it inside you to mourn quietly, if only for tonight?”
Dreskin stroked Celene’s back and nudged his horse toward the wall. The others followed. Fern fell back to ride beside Ling. “The Mouro are those bone trees. I didn’t lie before when I said they are predatory. They are, as are most things in the Woedenwoud. They root through the earth, seeking warmth or the scent of blood, and grab unsuspecting victims from below. As for the Woedenwoud...we don’t know what it is. We know very little of it. The Mouro are the sentinels, the things that come first, and since we encounter them out here, outside of the Woud itself, we’ve had opportunity to study them.”
Celene had fallen silent now. Fern hesitated, as if she didn’t want to utter whatever was to come next, but she pushed on. “The roots of the Mouro are filled with poison, but not one that kills. It only paralyzes, allowing the tree to more easily drag the bodies to the base of the tree. It digests the flesh there, secreting enzymes of some kind that accelerate decomposition, allowing the tree to absorb the flesh. The bones are then taken up into the structure of the tree itself, as you have seen. The Mari believe most of the Woedenwoud survives this way, through poison and flesh.”
Ling shuddered at the thought. Navire had been injured and weak, but he may still have been alive when he’d been dragged under. Amalya most certainly had been. Ling thought back to Amalya’s wide, staring eyes and shuddered. She had been frozen as if in death, but in truth she’d been only paralyzed, watching as the bloated roots of the Mouro wrapped about her body and pulled her underground. She wondered if Amalya had died of suffocation once the earth closed around her, or if she’d been alive when the digestion began. In some number of months, if they passed this way again, both Amalya and Navire would be a part of one of those trees.
“The magic of the Woedenwoud is deep, Ling,” Fern continued. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s so deep, so powerful, it’s almost self-aware. The warlocks, even the Mari fear it. Those thorny trees, the Epina, were grown ages ago, long before this war, before the breach, in a time when warlock and Mari still called one another friend and still had endless magic to pull from. They were grown to hold the wild magic of Woedenwoud at bay, to keep its poison contained.”
Fern paused, and Ling resisted the urge to turn in her saddle and look behind her. The horses calmed as they moved farther away from the border of the Woedenwoud, their hooves thudding dully in the thick vegetation that blanketed the ground. Celene remained quiet, and the others had fallen silent as well. It seemed even that small distance from those skull trees helped ease everyone’s tension, but Ling only felt hers grow.
“Best we can tell, everything is poisonous in there. With magic like that, every plant and insect is at least somewhat self-aware, and that means they have found an infinite number of ways lure you and me to our deaths. Long ago we lost many to the Woud. The stories are scattered, but tell of plants that drip poison that will blind you from their leaves. Some, like the Mouro, can paralyze you with a simple touch; others can infect the air to make you panic, force you to run, or to enthrall you so completely you want to die, thinking you’ve gone to some magical eternal place. Some, like the Mouro, pull you down to the roots and slowly digest you while the roots suck up the minerals left behind. Others have mouths that can eat your flesh; others still drink your blood, leaving your body to other scavengers. Even magic might be our enemy once we cross the line and enter the Woud.”
“I am magic,” Ling said. It was a statement, but there was a question buried in those words. As far as she knew, nothing short of Grag unmaking her could destroy her. But a magic that was so powerful and so old that it was self-aware…what might that do to her? She wondered if it would make her stronger or drive her mad. Or maybe it would destroy her.
She turned to find Fern studying her, and she wondered how much of her thoughts had flashed across her face. Fern said nothing about it, however. “No one’s been in there in ages, but the books say the navire are unpredictable there, and they never are the same once they’ve been exposed to the Woud. Even when taken far from it. Being in there…” Fern shifted slightly in her saddle, gazing back toward the skull trees. Ling followed her gaze, but they were far enough away that even the white glare of the bones had vanished into the night. “It changes them somehow. It’s like they are awakened. Suddenly they refuse to do their owner’s bidding, or they twist the magic in such a way to make the result unpredictable and often dangerous.” Fern turned back and looked into Ling’s eyes. “I don’t want to scare you or upset you, but I don’t know what that place will do to you, Ling. I just don’t know. If we could find another way…”
Fern didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. They’d never make it if they attempted the coastal route they had originally planned on. Ling was surprised they’d even managed to make it to Nantes. Their success so far was purely accidental, the result of a massive border that was impossible to monitor and a ship of unprepared warlocks. They wouldn’t have that benefit on the coastal route. There would be far too many of the enemy to count on luck. They would travel through the Woedenwoud, or they’d fail.
They set up camp a short time later. They lit no fire, and, though they had plenty of food, no one bothered to pull any from their packs. Dreskin and Drake lay down with Celene sandwiched between them. Ling tossed her blankets on the ground a fair distance from the others. She leaned back against a tree—a normal tree as far as she could tell—and propped the grimoire open on her lap.
The moon was near full, and it illuminated the pages in front of her, but her pen was still. She had so much to write, but the words escaped her. Perhaps it was the wild magic of the Woedenwoud reaching across the barrier to affect her already, robbing her of the ability to write. She wished she had such an excuse. The truth was she simply didn’t know how to capture what she felt about what happened.
Ling watched as Fern knelt beside Dreskin and Drake for a moment before drifting away into the shadows. She kept her eyes on the spot Fern had disappeared into, and a moment later she watched as a massive dragonfly launched into the air and vanished. She no longer worried Fern wouldn’t return. They were in this together till the end, whatever that might look like.
Drake and Dreskin were little more than shadows in the night, Celene invisible between them. She could make out slow movement as one or the other of them rubbed Celene’s back or her arm, offering her human warmth and comfort.
Ling leaned back and stared up at the dark, intertwining branches above, the sky visible only in patches. She took a deep breath and pushed it out slowly, and took another, slowly forcing herself to acknowledge the truth she’d always known. Finally she put pen to paper and began to write. I am a harbinger of doom to any I pass. But I may also hold the key to our survival. It is no small weight to bear, but bear it I shall.
Chapter Seventeen
Ling had opened her eyes to discover she slept on the ground in a dry and wooded place, a heavy book on her lap. She was nowhere near Meuse, nowhere in Brielle; the dry ground and large trees were proof enough of that. She’d panicked when she’d heard people moving in the dark around her, and had hunkered down so they wouldn’t realize she was awake. But she’d kept reading, and as she finished the last page she felt overcome with emotion.
When she’d first heard the others moving about the campsite, she’d been terrified of them. That had shifted into almost indifference as she’d read, becoming so wrapped up in the story she’d all but forgotten where she was. They had waited as Ling read, sitting beside a fire. The flames were so low, the moon so dim, she couldn’t quite make out their faces or expressions. She could see them lounging together
though, sipping coffee and eating. Their calm acceptance, their willingness to give her space, to leave her alone, perhaps more than anything else is what convinced her of the truth of the book. They gave her the space she needed to process with a comfort that gave proof to their long acquaintance with her.
Bear it I shall.
She almost didn’t recognize the person who had written those words, but her heart swelled with pride at them nevertheless. She pushed the covers back and moved to sit with the others. Dreskin poured her a cup of coffee and handed it over to her. He touched her shoulder as he did so, smiling at her warmly. Fern handed her a thick slice of smoked fish and a biscuit. Ling knew she didn’t need to eat—she didn’t even feel hungry—but the act of eating was a comfort, and their offer of food felt like an offer of kinship. It was a small way of being with the others, of sharing with them, of being one of them despite her difference.
A cup of coffee sat on the ground in front of Celene, untouched. Food sat beside it, also untouched. She held a blackened stick loosely in her lap. She stared into the fire, oblivious to the others around her. Drake sat beside her, shoulder to shoulder. Celene had lost her daughter yesterday. A short time ago, Ling had taken her anger and frustration out on the girl, a shame she would carry to her grave. Now Ling felt Amalya was a missing piece in the puzzle of their group, someone who should be there who wasn’t. Just as Navire was. Ling eyed the stick Celene held, and felt a stab of emotion at what the woman must be feeling.
