Beyond the Forest

by Kay L. Ling

  The small beings needed help in overcoming a powerful being of a different species, called a woodspirit. She had brought blight upon their land and corrupted many of the inhabitants—who then became the aforementioned evil savages—and she had made herself queen. I confess that I was enthralled by the story, and I agreed to be transported to their world.

  The farther she read the more annoyed she became. Elias had never seriously planned to get involved in the gnomes’ problems. He didn’t care what the woodspirit did to them. By his own admission, after the gnomes took him through the portal, he went his own way and delved into his research. His gemstones were far more powerful in this new world. That, in itself, was a thrilling discovery, but then he located native gems that had astounding abilities. No, the plight of an oppressed people didn’t matter to him. He had a world full of fascinating gems to study—gems that would give him godlike powers—and he didn’t have time for anything else.

  He learned that using gems in this new world produced an unexpected benefit. His body became infused with their powers. Soon, he could perform amazing feats without even touching them, but if he went too long without handling the gems the infused powers faded.

  Elias had spent most of his life studying and experimenting, convinced that gems held the arcane properties his books claimed. Now, he had discovered a world where gems were more powerful than he had ever dreamed. Lana understood how excited he must have felt, but he had taken crazy risks, hurting himself and others in the process, hoping to become invincibly powerful. His smug, over-confident attitude in this passage really irritated her:

  I have met the woodspirit being, Sheamathan, many times, and she believes I am a powerful gem master from the Fair Lands. Why must you always worry needlessly? I am not afraid of her. I have an advantage. You see, I am able to use gemstones from our world as well as from hers, whereas she cannot touch ours. She is corrupt, and touching our gems burns her. Equally troublesome to her, I have discovered that gemstones from Shadow often behave in an unpredictable manner if they interact with gems from our world. She would be wise to fear me.

  Lana sighed over his lost opportunities. How could he have been so blind? He should have used Fair Lands gems to disrupt Sheamathan’s powers before he lost that advantage. If he had caught her off guard, he might have defeated her, but he hadn’t even tried. In his final letters, Elias finally seemed to understand what a mess he had made of things, and he decided to hide his ledger and letters in the jewelry store safe.

  I had planned to learn all I could and develop my powers, and once I was certain of my abilities I would have dealt with the woodspirit. Time seemed of no importance. But now, suddenly she has ambitions to rule our world, and time is of the essence. She must not be allowed to study our world as I have hers. Her lack of knowledge is our best, and perhaps our only defense.

  Lana blinked. A sudden chill swept over her. She stared blankly at the letter in her lap, thinking with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that the similarities between Elias and the man Raenihel had described were too numerous to be a coincidence. If she was right, though it seemed impossible, Elias was still alive, and in Shadow the gnomes called him Folio. She thought back to Raenihel’s words: “Would you risk becoming like the old fool, Folio? All his studying got him nowhere! A curse upon him! He lives in isolation in Strathweed, compiling folios full of knowledge that might have saved my people from torment and bondage.”

  If Elias was alive, it was due to gem powers in Shadow. The temptation to live several more decades, or perhaps even centuries, would probably be hard to resist.

  Elias’s letters had ended abruptly, and she understood why. Once he had become too corrupt to enter the Fair Lands, he couldn’t pass beyond the Amulet, so he had no way to get letters to Jules. Maybe they had spoken in person afterward, though, in Shadow. When Jules realized that Elias couldn’t defeat Sheamathan, he had gone to Shadow to challenge Sheamathan himself.

  Lana scrubbed her face wearily. The gnomes believed that Jules had driven Sheamathan from the Fair Lands. That didn’t make sense. The start of a headache throbbed dully at her temples. The woodspirit had turned him into a dog. So how could he have driven Sheamathan from the Fair Lands? Something had happened, though, because the woodspirit had withdrawn for generations. Lana shook her head. How would she learn the whole story? She might have to get answers from Jules. Judging by his letters, he was trustworthy.

  Jules planned to pit himself against Sheamathan again, which seemed a doomed mission, but maybe he didn’t care if he died fighting the woodspirit. Lana frowned. Even if he broke the enchantment—and that was a big if—he would age normally. Life would be different now. Blacksmithing didn’t exist. The world had changed radically. With the exception of Elias, every friend and family member he had ever known was dead. Maybe he felt he had nothing to live for. That thought made her sad. After reading his letters, she felt she knew him.

  She laid her head in her hands. Jules was right; she had misjudged him in his wolfhound form, assuming he was evil. He was honest, brave, and compassionate. He stood up for what he believed in, despite great personal loss. She felt shallow and selfish by comparison.

  On the next full moon she would go to the park and wait, hoping that the wolfhound she had always feared would come through the portal.

  Chapter 24

  Lana smiled as she walked into the living room and let Greg and Jordy know she was home. They weren’t pets, they were boys, but sometimes it was hard to remember that. While she made dinner they chased each other around the furniture, squeaking playfully. She hoped Lillian couldn’t hear anything downstairs.

  The rat-boys enjoyed mealtimes with her. It seemed cruel to eat human meals in front of them, but they didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes they all sat in the living room and watched TV while they ate, but usually they sat at the kitchen table. She had stacked pillows on the chairs for them.

  After bringing her bowl of chili to the table, she poured rat chow into two bowls, added a few greens, and called the rats to the table.

  “I have to read after dinner again,” she told them as she stirred her chili. She didn’t have time to entertain them and she felt guilty.

  “Gee, you sure read a lot,” Greg said, clearly disappointed.

  Jordy stopped munching his rat chow long enough to say, “No problem. We won’t bother you,” but he looked dejected.

  Should she tell them about Elias? What harm could it do? She blew on a spoonful of chili and studied the rats thoughtfully. Of the two, she trusted Jordy least. Aside from trying to attack her and steal the knife, she pegged him as an instigator. The boys’ under-age drinking party at the forest had probably been his idea because, quite honestly, he struck her as the type who did what he wanted and worried about the consequences later. That attitude could be trouble, she knew all too well after reading her ancestor’s experiences. Would the boys take Elias’s tragic story seriously and learn a lesson from it?

  “I’ll read in the living room. I know you get tired of being alone so much. At least we’ll be together.”

  “Great! If you want, you can read to us,” Greg said hopefully.

  “It’s pretty complicated stuff.”

  “So why do you want to read it?”

  “Because I need to learn things,” she said, and then paused. “I may find a way to turn you back into boys.”

  Jordy coughed a piece of rat chow across the table. “What?”

  “Wow! What kinda book are you readin’?” Greg asked excitedly.

  “It’s not a book.” She gestured with her spoon. “I’ll tell you what it is, but you need some background first.”

  They showed their teeth in brief smiles, looking pleased that she’d confide in them, and then began to eat again, crunching noisily.

  “When I was in the dungeon, I saw the wolfhound, who used to be the Challenger. He wants me to help him. If he can regain his human form, he plans to challenge Sheamathan again.”

  “Last t
ime he lost and got turned into a dog. What’s he plan to do this time?” Jordy asked.

  She frowned. She had asked herself the same question. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Don’t interrupt,” Greg scolded.

  She crumbled crackers into her chili. “He told me a little about himself and the Challenger’s Blade. We didn’t have much time to talk. He said there were secret letters that could verify his claims, and he told me where to find them.”

  “And that’s what you’re reading!” Jordy concluded triumphantly.

  She laughed. “Yes, I found the letters. They tell a lot about gem powers. Maybe I can find a way to defeat Sheamathan and break the wolfhound’s enchantment.” She sipped her water and waited for the rats’ reaction.

  “Wow,” Jordy breathed. He sat back on his haunches, his rat chow forgotten. Greg looked equally intrigued.

  “The Challenger’s name is Jules,” she told them. “He and my great-great-grandfather Elias were friends. Both were into gem lore. When Elias discovered the portal, he took gems to Shadow to see if it affected their powers. It turns out they were much more powerful there. Anyway, whenever he came home he and Jules got together, or he sent Jules a letter with the latest news. He expected Jules to be as excited as he was.”

  “But he wasn’t,” Jordy said when he saw her expression.

  She shook her head. “Not after Jules heard about mutant bugs, pythanium, and poisonous plants.”

  “Shadow was like that way back then?” Jordy asked.

  She gave the rats a couple of her crackers and said, “Yes. It was the same as today, but maybe the destruction covers a wider area now.”

  Greg nibbled a cracker. “Who’d hang out in that creepy place if they didn’t have to?”

  “Jules felt the same way. The next letter he got from Elias was even more disturbing.”

  “What did it say?” Greg demanded eagerly, ignoring his own advice not to interrupt.

  “Elias wrote that a lot of Shadow stones had dangerous—harmful—dark powers. But he experimented with them anyway. Worse, sometimes he used the gnomes as guinea pigs.”

  Ohhh,” Greg said. “Maybe he didn’t mean to hurt them. At least not at first.”

  “Yeah,” Jordy said, nodding. “He probably figured once he finished his experiments he could make it up to them later.”

  “Make it up to them? How?” she demanded, disturbed by Jordy’s cavalier attitude.

  “Dunno,” Jordy said, apparently unconcerned, as he nibbled his cracker.

  She put down her spoon and leaned forward, staring solemnly at Jordy. “Even if he could have made it up to the gnomes, what he did was evil and he harmed himself.”

  Jordy stopped chewing. He cocked his furry brown head and twitched his whiskers. “What do you mean?”

  “Once he started doing bad things that hurt others, it changed who he was—in fact, it changed him so much he couldn’t enter the Fair Lands anymore. He never saw his son or any of his family and friends again.”

  “That’s awful,” Greg said, sounding genuinely disturbed.

  “What a lousy end to his adventure,” Jordy agreed, avoiding her eyes.

  She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “From what I’ve read so far, our world—the Fair Lands—is protected by a force field. You know what a force field is, right?”

  “Sure,” Greg said. “I’ve watched lots of Star Trek reruns.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jordy said.

  She smiled. “Good. If a person from another world comes through the portal, they enter our protective realm, called the Amulet. If they keep going, they come to the border between the Amulet and the Fair Lands, and then they hit the force field and can’t go any farther. They can’t get into our world.”

  The rats exchanged glances. Greg said, “Like how my parents installed an invisible fence for our dog? If it tries to go through, it gets zapped.”

  She nodded, amused. “Yeah, I guess it’s sort of like that. Only it’s worse than getting zapped with static electricity. I tried to take something from Shadow into the Fair Lands once and when I left the Amulet it disappeared.”

  The rats considered this gravely.

  “Sheamathan is trying to “trick” this natural defense mechanism,” Lana explained. “First, she starts a disease inside the Amulet. Before long the defense mechanism doesn’t recognize the corrupted land as part of our world. It stops defending the land, so there’s nothing to stop the blight from spreading. As the Amulet gets bigger and bigger, Sheamathan will be able to travel farther into our world.”

  “Whoa,” Greg breathed. “I get how it works.”

  Jordy flicked his tail nervously. “Once she comes here, she’ll destroy everything.”

  “Yes. And anyone who did things to help her would have a tough time ‘making it up to us later.’” She caught Jordy’s eye and gave him a meaningful look.

  “Okay, I get it,” he said grudgingly. “But I didn’t know—I didn’t think giving Sheamathan your knife was that bad.”

  She said gently, “I don’t really know you, Jordy, but I can say with complete certainty that you need to work on who you’re becoming. Remember that electric shock you felt when we drove out of the park?”

  Jordy nodded silently.

  “That was the force field.”

  His mouth fell open in alarm as he connected the things she’d just said. “You mean it almost didn’t let me through?”

  “Yes, that’s my understanding.”

  “Wow,” Jordy said miserably.

  Right and wrong had just become personal, not just a story about somebody else.

  “Wow,” Greg echoed. The gray rat glanced at Jordy. “I felt a tingle, too. But not as bad as you.”

  Lana stared into her bowl, idly stirring her chili as she told the rats, “There’s a powerful gem master in Shadow called Folio. All the gnomes hate him. Sheamathan tormented and enslaved the gnomes and he didn’t try to stop her.” She paused, and forced herself to say the rest. “I just found out that Folio is my ancestor Elias.”

  When she looked up, both rats were staring at her, wide-eyed.

  “It’s too late for him to choose the right path. It’s not too late for you.”

  Jordy let out a choked squeak. He ran from the table, jumped onto the couch, and stuck his head under a pillow.

  “I guess I’m not very hungry,” Greg said. He went and sat beside his friend.

  Anything else she had planned to say could wait, she decided. The rats needed time to think, and she didn’t feel like talking at the moment. Thinking about Folio left her depressed. She finished her meal without tasting it, loaded the dishwasher, and went to get the ledger. When she came back, the rats were still sitting on the couch, looking glum.

  From time to time she stopped reading, looked up, and found them watching her, but they didn’t interrupt. After about an hour she found the material about transformation enchantments. She read through the material twice, hoping there was some mistake. This wasn’t good. She’d be putting herself in danger if she tried it.

  “What?” Greg demanded, breaking the silence. “It’s something bad. I can tell.”

  She looked up, heavy-hearted. “All the transformation enchantments use the bad Shadow stones. The ones with dark powers.”

  “Ohhhh.” Greg’s head drooped.

  “I wouldn’t know where to find the right gemstones,” she said, frowning. “I don’t even know what they look like. I suppose Raenihel might know.” She paused, considering. “If I only hold the bad gemstones a couple times, maybe they won’t hurt me.”

  Jordy let out a squeak and shook his head violently. “Forget it! You’re not turnin’ out like your ancestor Elias because of me. I feel guilty enough now.”

  She gave him a surprised glance, pleased but sad. “I really wish I could help you.”

  “I have a feeling that doing a bad thing, even for a good reason, is still bad,” Jordy said firmly. “We’ll find another way. At least I hope s
o, or I’ll never get to tell people I’m sorry for things I did.”

  She went over and kissed the top of his head. He looked up, startled. “What’s that for?”

  “For thinking about who you are and who you’re becoming.”

  He showed his teeth in that strange, disconcerting smile of his and she felt her lips curve in an answering smile. “Get some sleep. We’ll get up early and go on a field trip. Would you like that?”

  “Yeah, sure!” Greg said. “Where we goin’?”

  “Back to County Forest Park to dig up that alamaria. Now that you’re rats, I want you to touch it and see how it feels. After that, we’ll go to the campfire where I found it and see if anyone’s been around.”

  “Great! Let’s do it,” Jordy said, and then added warily, “if you’re sure I won’t get stuck inside the Amulet.”

  She smiled. “You’ll be fine. See you in the morning.”

  She carried the ledger to her bedroom and set the alarm for five thirty, hoping she could fall asleep right away. She had to be at the store by ten, but that should give them plenty of time.

  Chapter 25

  Shortly after six, Lana drove out of town with the rat-boys perched on the back seat. They stared out the windows, clearly enjoying their outing.

  The sky grew lighter, showing streaks of pinks and orange as they approached County Forest Park. Unfortunately, the rising sun revealed ugliness too, and she felt sickened by the spreading destruction. Looking from one side of the road to the other was a study in contrasts—healthy trees outside the park, diseased inside.

  The local paper had run an article about the blight. Experts were baffled, mostly because every kind of tree was affected, not just one kind. And not just trees, either—field grass, shrubs, moss, weeds—all diseased and dying. It didn’t make sense so people had all kinds of theories. Like ground water contamination, or buried toxic waste.