Him drew in close and lowered an arm across her shoulders. “I’m afraid they are, my dear, but alas, we have the treetops as our umbrella.”
“Then we should move on.”
What began as a random sprinkle soon evolved into large plops of rain drumming across the canopy of leaves hanging over the forest. The drums soon became a downpour of epic proportions. As buckets of rain soaked their clothes, Meredith noted with a sigh that Him’s treetop umbrella didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of keeping them dry.
“What do we do?” She held her hands upward, and the water poured straight down over them, into the sleeves of her tunic like a cold snake against her skin.
“We’re already wet,” Him shrugged.
“So we just keep on walking?”
“Why not?”
Sir Gwydion marched on ahead of them, his ready eyes carefully scanning the way, while Him led her through the rain, his occasional laughter and constant merriment enough to bring a smile to her face.
“Nothing ever gets you down,” she noticed, glimpsing his smile from the corner of her eye.
“What’s there to be down about?” He slipped through loosely wound wisteria around a maple tree and turned to offer his hand through it.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve spent so much of my life feeling worried or sad, that even the slightest trouble has the power to make me feel out of sorts.”
“And now?” His wet hand gripped her wrist as he pulled her through the vines.
“What do you mean?
“I mean now how do you feel? You said so much of your life was spent that way, but now how do you feel?”
She leaned back a moment, her shoulders straight as she looked into his eyes. Raindrops glided down her cheeks, over the slope of her nose and tickled her scalp. “I...I don’t know.” She admitted after a moment’s thought. “I suppose I do feel differently.”
“And why shouldn’t you?” He asked. “After all, it’s only a little rain.”
They traveled on while the drops played musically upon the leaves and earth. Occasionally the nightingale wove her woeful song into the pattern of the downpour, and Meredith couldn’t help but marvel at how beautifully the two sounds complimented one other. It was like an afternoon lament, though it managed to lift her spirits higher, especially whenever Him reached out to take her hand and guide her across some slick passage, worn, wet bark, or slippery moss.
Eventually the rain slowed to a steady drizzle that lasted well into the afternoon.
Sir Gwydion kept to himself while Him and Merry made the best of the situation and one another’s company. He told her stories of the forest, of his life and family. His mother was a priestess and his father had been The Hunter. He was very old and was a great warrior, and did not live long enough to really know his son. His mother walked the path untread.
“What does that mean?” She was watching their footsteps as they walked, the tangles of wet leaf and grass, old twig and limb. “The path untread? I don’t understand.”
“She was priestess, voice of the Goddess, and because my father chose her she now walks with one foot in our world and the other in the realm of the Gods.”
“Oh.”
“She is sacred now, and mother to all, and so she must always wander.”
Meredith thought she understood, but for the most part Him’s situation seemed nearly as lonely as her own had been. “How old were you when she left you?”
“I don’t remember, just a baby.” he admitted. “I only know she gave me life, and then she was called to the earth. She is the Sage Mother now,” he said. “All knowing, all seeing, mother to everything.”
“Have you seen her then since you were born?”
A thoughtful look stole his features, his exotic eyes turning for a moment upward in memory. “I did see her once,” he admitted. “I was a small boy. We were playing outside the village when I heard a voice calling my name, but there was no one. I followed it until it led me into a dark tangle of wood and there she stood.”
“Wow,” she marveled, more over the enchanted look he wore than the story itself. “Did you speak with her?”
“No, not a word, but I knew who she was right away. It took everything inside me to stand there and not run away.”
“Was she beautiful?”
“Terribly so,” he nodded, “and yet she was filled with light and laughter, love and peace.”
“Wow.”
“I don’t remember much after that, but Sylvanus came looking for me after nightfall. Says he found me curled up asleep on a patch of earth with a ring of purple flowers around me.”
His laughter was soft, like the raindrops on the leaves, and Meredith took great comfort in it. Before she even realized, she was talking about her own mother with an open lightness she hadn’t felt since childhood.
Sir Gwydion called out from up ahead, “I’ll have camp set up and my dinner devoured before the two of you ever see the blasted bridge.”
“Nonsense,” Him replied. “I can see the hideous thing from here.”
“You can?” Meredith hopped up on the tips of her toes for a better look, but saw nothing except a large clearing ahead.
“You’ll see it soon enough,” he promised, nudging her forward with a gentle hand on the small of her back. It wasn’t an enthusiastic gesture, but an unspoken sort of comment on wishing to come face to face with the devil before one’s time.
They peeled back the last few branches between them and the clearing, Meredith following close behind Him to make sure she didn’t slip.
The first time she saw the bridge she had caught only a glimpse of it over Him’s shoulder, and then he stepped again, obscuring her view. With each step they took she could hear the rushing water more clearly until it became so loud Sir Gwydion had to shout just so they could understand him.
“Where do you reckon is the best place to build a fire?” he bellowed back over his shoulder.
“Just find a spot and get it going. Poor Merry is soaked to the bone.”
“Poor Merry is soaked to the bone…” he mimicked in a sing-song voice she didn’t think they were meant to hear.
She pretended she didn’t, and as Him reached back to grab her hand, he drew her with him into the clearing beside the river, exposing, for the first time, a hideously warped bridge that loomed over everything in its proximity like a diseased shadow.
Thick, black vines claimed three quarters of the monstrous construct in a rather obvious attempt to pull it into the darkness that lingered on the other side of the river. The only part of the bridge that remained in the light was faded, the boards warped and misshapen, broken and rotted away. Green moss stained the old wood stretching across one of the longest bridges she had ever seen in her life, and she could hardly imagine how they were meant to make it across when they had no idea what lie inside the darkness on the other side.
Mouth agape, she felt herself lean warily into Him.
“Is that...”
“The Darknjan Wald,” he nodded. “So dark you cannot even begin to imagine what lies beyond that shadowed wall.”
She swallowed, and tried not to think about having to cross over it. It was hours until sunset, though still clouded over from the rain, and a distinct feeling like night clung to their side of the shore. “Perhaps it will be brighter in the morning.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Him murmured quietly, and then started away from her and toward the small camp Sir Gwydion had already begun building a fire for.
Suddenly Meredith felt overwhelmed and just a bit hopeless about the journey ahead. Perhaps Sir Gwydion was right, and she wouldn’t make it on hope alone. She crossed her arms over her chest, and then drew them even tighter, as if to hold herself in comfort.
She had to remember that this wasn’t something she was doing for herself. She was doing it for Christina, to save her from whatever horrors Kothar had planned, and she needed to bear in mind that failure was not an option.
A flicker of ancient memory rippled through her, a daydream of the place they now stood and the shadow that hovered menacingly over them, but just as quickly as it had come it fled again.
Him and Sir Gwydion worked fast to set up a reasonable camp, and with the fire roaring, Him approached her. “You are lost in your thoughts.”
Meredith shook her head and found a slow smile to please him. “I felt for a moment as if I knew this place.”
“Perhaps you did,” he lifted one shoulder into a shrug. “I’m afraid I won’t be very useful when it comes to jogging your old memories. You left this place long before my time.” She got lost in his gaze for a moment, the warmth and strange familiarity of them calming her fears. Strange how she felt no need to question his intentions or anything else when it came to him. She trusted Him in ways she had never trusted anyone else before, and though she knew they had barely known each other for the full cycle of one day, she felt as though they’d walked that forest together for the length of several lifetimes.
“I am heading back into the forest to hunt game for our meal,” he told her. “We’ll need all of our strength to cross into the Darknjan Wald.”
She nodded slowly and looked toward the fire, into the great shadowed veil that lingered over the bridge and obscured the sky. “I never...” she started that sentence uncertain of where she meant to go with it. It seemed absurd to say she’d never imagined she’d have to face this strange world and its darkness, even if it was true.
Him reached over and tucked his finger under her chin so that he could easily turn her gaze away from the darkness. “Will you be all right while I’m gone?”
“I’ll be fine,” she came back to herself and offered a slow smiled. “I’m sure Sir Gwydion will hold everything together.”
Appreciative of a clever quirk when he heard one, Him’s grin was the last thing she saw before he slid back into the woods and seamlessly became a part of them.
She wandered toward the fire and watched curiously as the pixie wrapped straps of vine across sturdy branches to make a spit so they might roast whatever game Him returned with. Though the rain had stopped, the trees behind them let go of the random raindrop from time to time, one of which fell onto Sir Gwydion’s forearm, causing him to twitch before scornfully sneering up at the trees.
Merry stood to the side and watched, arms crossed and head slightly turned. She could tell that it bothered him, his face melding into an unguarded sneer from time to time. “You and Him, you live day to day like this?”
“Not exactly,” he didn’t even look up from his task. “It’s not every day we rush headlong into foolish ventures simply because we can’t stand the thought of disappointing a pretty face.”
“You think I’ve made him come along, do you?”
When he didn’t answer, she toed the damp earth of the riverbank with her shoe and watched the patterns it made as the water rose momentarily to the surface.
“You’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t like me. But is it really me, or do you just not like for Him to enjoy anyone’s company that isn’t yours?”
“I beg your pardon,” he stammered, finally lifting his dark gaze to her face. “You make it sound like I’m some jealous lover, when that is hardly the case. I simply don’t approve of how easily Him follows his heart into whatever foolish quest presents itself and bats its eyelashes the most flirtatiously. It is his decisions I disapprove of, and unfortunately you happen to be directly related to the worst one he’s made in years.”
“I did not ask Him to come along.”
“No,” he agreed after a moment’s silent. “You did not, but it seems he had very little control over his choice either way. I am not a fan of fate, or what have you, and hardly chance to put my faith in forces I can’t even see.”
“You are a logical voice of reason then.” She sat down across from him on the face of a large stone and held her hands out to the fire. Her clothes were still damp from the rain, and they made her skin feel sticky. “I never put much stock in things like destiny either. My sister was always raving about how this or that was fate, or how the hand of destiny had intervened, but I never quite knew if I believed it myself.”
“Wise decision, that.”
“But see, now things have changed,” she went on. “I’ve become part of a whole new world, and everything I learned from Sylvanus suggests that fate has brought me back to this place.”
“My father used to hang idly on mystic words, prophecies and what not. When I was but a wee lad, he left on a quest that was imparted to him by a mystic. The mystic told him it was his fate to brave the Darknjan Wald, and so he packed his satchel, said goodbye to my mother, my sisters and me. We never saw him again, and so tell me how that was his fate?”
Meredith shook her head and watched the shadow of the fire stretch against the shore. The roar of the river had quieted once she got used to it, but like a subtle hush underneath everything it flowed on, always rushing on its way.
“That is why you do not want Him to go, why you wish not to go yourself.”
“Is that not reason enough?”
“It is,” she agreed. “It is more than reason enough. I am sorry that I have brought you so much sadness in all of this.”
He stopped wrapping the vine for a moment and lifted his eyes toward her. The sun was lowering behind him, but the shadow of the Darknjan Wald cut the light in half, as though the very darkness itself thrived upon the radiance it devoured.
There was a resigned sense of sarcastic acceptance on Sir Gwydion’s face when he finally said, “It isn’t your fault, I suppose. It seems it is our fate.”
They were silent until Him returned, but there was no need for either of them to actually say they’d come to some sort of understanding. Him dropped three small hares next the fire, and then sat down cross legged to begin skinning them.
“It isn’t much,” he held the first one out to inspect it, “but I am sure it is more than we’ll find once we’ve crossed the bridge.”
“Besides,” Sir Gwydion sighed, “the game over there would poison your blood, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
By the time Him had finished skinning their dinner and set them up on the spit Sir Gwydion had fashioned, the sun was falling in behind the mist-shrouded mountainside, and though it was still half-light the darkness from the Wald made it seem like midnight. There was the comfort of nightsong, frogs and crickets against the rush of the river and the constant spit and crackle of the fire.
The companions were quiet, each of them wrapped tightly in their thoughts. Meredith pushed away the tempting images from her dream that morning and cast a sidelong glance at Him. There were far more important things on her path than the man seated beside her, and yet all she could think of was Him.
He stared deep into the fire as though it had enslaved him. Its orange light flickered against the green of his eyes, enhancing the color and making the deep olive tone of his skin appear brown as nut.
How could it be that in the world she came from there were no beings as beautiful and perfect as Him? He was the very essence of life, the wild forest, the trees, and all one might expect to find within the woods. She lifted her gaze to the antlers that set him apart, and found that even that which was most different made him incredibly desirable. Taut muscle flexed as he leaned inward to turn the spit, and as she watched him move she only wondered for a moment what had come over her. She had never desired anyone the way she did him, and that lack of experience made her question herself again and again.
“Just a few more minutes,” he announced. He moved back into his seat and noticed the way her eyes explored him. A faint smile flashed against his mouth, and he looked away, as though he were playing shy. He waited, and then met her eyes again, this time lingering until she found the strength to look away.
It was the same throughout dinner, the two of them stealing glances in silence until Sir Gwydion finally announced that he had tired of thei
r company.
“I’m off to bed then,” he grabbed his satchel and started away. “I suggest you make the same decision sooner rather than later. Tomorrow will surely be the longest day of your lives.”
“Good night, Gwydion.”
Meredith watched his shadow begin unraveling the blanket in his pack, and then she looked away, upward to where the first few stars should have made light of the darkness, but the heaviness of the Darknjan Wald’s shadow cut deep into the night and blocked out the starlight above. Its very presence lumbered over them like a giant and she shivered as she felt its malevolence to her very core.
“It’s like it’s completely devoured any and all that is light,” she murmured.
“Hmm?” Him followed her gaze toward the shadow, and then nodded. “That is exactly what it’s done. That is the power of hatred. It swallows everything that is love and light.”
“And all of this came from the division of the two kingdoms?”
“Not all of it.” He wiped the grease from his hands. “The bridge once acted as a mutual divider between this kingdom and the goblin kingdom, but when the war ended and Kothar took to the goblin throne, the darkness began to creep across the bridge. Some say it is because he sacrificed the goodness of his soul for power, but it’s hard to say. I have no head for prophecies. That is my brother’s passion.”
“And your passion is the woods? The wild hunt?”
“My passion is life,” he explained. “Waking up every day and just going where the wind takes me. That is my passion.”
“And there is nothing that could tie such a spirit down,” she noted, a hint of sorrow in her voice. “Free spirits need to fly.”
“That’s not entirely true,” he grinned. “I’ve always known that when the time for me to settle into things came, my heart would know its place.” He reached across the space between them and lifted her chin so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes. “I have never seen such a shade of blue, and yet each time I look inside your eyes, I feel as if I’m home.”
The Goblin Market (Into the Green) Page 13
