by Simon Archer
“There is no need,” Marinka said, smiling warmly. “This is why we are here.”
“Let’s get going then,” I said. “We should put some distance between us and those thieves.”
“Agreed.” Nadeine nodded curtly. “We do not wish for them to return with greater numbers.”
I looked to Ione and Geraldo as Godfried started to hand off our horses to us. “Have you run into many like them?”
“Like the thieves?” Gerardo asked, and I nodded. “No. We ran into quite a few others like us at first, but I imagine they’ve all died or made their way to the center by now. Most people live in the center or other population hubs now, anyway. It’s becoming the norm.” He shook his head slowly. “I’m sure some panicked and rushed to your kingdom, as well. We ran into one other family headed in that direction.”
“For the most part, though, our people are friendly and helpful to one another,” Ione said softly before motioning in the direction of the underbrush where the thieves had disappeared. “Those two were the exception, not the rule. I know you probably found the opposite on your last journey through our home, but those were desperate times.”
“As are these,” Gerardo said solemnly, placing a hand on his wife’s back.
We stood in silence for a few moments, letting that sentiment sink in, until Marinka was moved to speak.
“Leo is correct.” she said as she rose from her crouch beside the children. “We ought to continue on our journey as a precaution.” Then she turned to Ione and Gerardo. “The children could ride with me on my horse, or you could carry them. It is up to you.”
The two parents exchanged a look, and Ione bit her lip hesitantly.
“They may ride with you, if you are willing,” she said finally, running a hand through one child’s short hair.
“They will be safer with you than with us.” Gerardo squeezed the other child’s shoulders.
“Of course.” Marinka nodded to them, then she scrunched back down so that she was eye level with the kids. “You will ride on the nice animal with me. Is that alright?”
The children looked up at their parents quizzically, who nodded, and then they turned back to Marinka and nodded themselves.
“Good. You will be safe. There is no need to worry.”
Godfried distributed some more food and water to the group, and we remounted our horses to continue with our journey. We shortly came to a fork in the road, so I dismounted Bill again. It was a perfect place to find our bearings.
I drew a mage’s circle in the ash beneath my feet and began my navigation spell so that we would know which way to turn. I settled myself on one end of the circle, closed my eyes, held out my hands, and waited for my cello and bow to materialize out of thin air. Astonished gasps rose from the forest elves behind me, and one of the children yelped in surprise and excitement. Once I was comfortable on my airy seat, I set my bow to my strings, and began to play.
The bright music filled the air, lifting our spirits and bringing levity to our hearts. A giant compass made of gold appeared in the center of the mage’s circle and spun around on its axis for several moments. I focused intently on my memory of the center of the forest, telling the magic that that was where I wanted to go. It heard me, and the compass slowed, then finally settled on the branch of the beaten path to our left.
I finished my spell shortly thereafter and let the sound ring throughout our surroundings for a moment. As that final melody softened the dark pall over the trees, I rose up and watched my cello disappear off into the distance in a trail of golden dust. I then turned to face my companions.
“That was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard,” Ione said, her hands hovering over her mouth in surprise.
“And the most amazing thing I have ever seen,” Gerardo added. Their children squealed in delight, clapping for me.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, running a hand awkwardly through my hair. The praise felt good, but I never knew how to respond to it.
Marinka smiled at me then. “Yes, I really do love that song, Leo.”
“You guys did well too back there,” I said to my companions as I climbed back on Bill’s saddle.
“Ah, Nadeine did.” Marinka shook her head. “But I failed to cast my own spell effectively. It would not hold.” She was right. Her daggers had disappeared shortly after they appeared, and she had given up quickly when she realized that the rest of us had the situation handled.
“It’s alright,” I reassured her. “It’s different when you’re trying to cast spells in real time than it is in practice. That first night we were attacked in the forest on our last quest, I nearly didn’t react in time. It’s a weird experience.” I flashed her a smile. “You’ll get it next time.”
“Thank you for your kind words, Leo,” Marinka said, smiling wanly. “I will have to continue to practice ensuring that I do not waver next time, when the stakes may be even higher.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” I said, reaching out and squeezing her hand. Then I pulled on Bill’s reins and ushered him down the path my magic had revealed to be leading in the direction of the center of the forest.
12
The next few days of travel passed without incident. While we heard other forest elves a few times, we did not dare to interact with them unnecessarily after our experience with the thieves who attacked Ione and Gerardo’s family.
We also saw animals every once in a while, but they were usually long dead. One evening, when trying to find a clearing to set up camp, we found an enormous bear lying between some trees, groaning and tossing and turning in agony. We all looked at each other in shock and frustration, until Bernsten stepped forward, unsheathed his sword, and put the bear out of its misery. He turned away immediately after he did it, not wanting to watch.
“Do you think we could eat it?” Ione asked, watching the bear warily as her husband made sure their children didn’t watch its suffering and death.
“I do not see why not,” Nadeine mused. “It has yet to decay like the animal that made you ill.”
I stepped forward to the bear’s corpse and drew a circle in the blackened grass beneath our feet. With a quick song, I performed a spell to butcher and preserve the meat. Golden light enveloped the bear in a funnel, mercifully obscuring the dirty work from view.
The adults ate strips of the bear meat for dinner that night. Just in case, we gave the children more fish despite their protests in the event that we became ill. Nadeine’s observation had been correct, though. No one became ill, and the kids were happy to get some variety in their diet the following afternoon. The meat filled all of the empty space in our packs, and we felt lucky to have found it. It would certainly make up for the food we had lost feeding the forest elves, and then some.
All told, we reached the center of the forest about a week after we found the bear. The center was surrounded by a tall wooden wall that seemed to have been unaffected by whatever blight had cast itself upon the rest of the forest. The wood still had a healthy amber color, despite some blackened powder on its surface that had presumably fallen from the surrounding trees. In fact, the wall looked much more fortified than it had been when we had been there last, probably as a result of the forest elves’ heightened efforts to build up their infrastructure throughout the forest now that Viktor was gone.
We rode up to the side of the wall and Ione and Gerardo began to pound on the side, calling for someone to come and open it for us since unlike the wall surrounding the kingdom, there wasn’t really a guarded front gate, just different sections that could be pulled down. After several minutes of this, a voice called back from the other side.
“No one is allowed inside,” it growled. “I am sorry.”
“No, wait, we’ll starve,” Ione wailed. “We have children.”
“I’m sorry,” the voice repeated.
“Wait,” Gerardo screamed before whoever was on the other side of the wall could leave. “We’re not alone. We have kingdom elves and their ultimate mage w
ith us.”
The voice did not respond, but we could hear the forest elf it belonged to breathing heavily through the wooden logs that made up the wall.
“It’s true,” I called. “My name is Leo Hayden. I am the ultimate mage who assisted in the mad kingdom elf Viktor’s defeat. I am here with my companions Princess Marinka and Godfried of the kingdom’s royal family, as well as royal knights Bernsten and Nadeine. Please, this family needs your help, and we have been sent on a quest by the kingdom’s high council to meet with Amaka, Akash and the other center forest elves.”
The elf on the other side of the wall hesitated some more, continuing to breathe heavily. Then, a pair of small yellow eyes appeared above us at the top of the fence.
“Very well,” the raspy voice said, this time coming from above us instead of from the other side of the wall. “If you are who you say you are…”
“We are,” I assured him. The eyes disappeared and a small section of the wall creaked open, swinging inside to provide an opening.
“Quickly,” the voice said. “We don’t want anyone else taking advantage of the opportunity.”
We dismounted our horses and shuffled through the opening. Bill and the other horses, except Godfried’s who, like the younger elf, had never been in the forest before, seemed to recognize the wall and released some of the internal tension they had been carrying since we entered the forest.
“Thank you,” I said when I caught sight of the source of the voice with which we’d been conversing. The forest elf was very small and had bird-like features. “What is your name?”
“I am Lysander,” the forest elf said. “You’ll follow me.” He flittered forward on the beaten path which continued into the center of the forest. We followed him, pulling our no longer reluctant horses along with us. Godfried’s horse seemed to be a bit calmer now that its friends were as well.
“Are you taking us to Amaka?” I asked.
“Yes,” was the little elf’s only response.
I maintained my light spell to illuminate our way, as the center of the forest was just as dark and dead as the rest of us. My stomach fell at the sight of it. I had been hoping that the center, in all of its beauty and bustle of life, had been spared, but clearly it had not. The usual bustle of forest elves throughout the surrounding flora was nonexistent, and the usually fresh and vibrant air was dull and stale. All the same landmarks were there, but it was as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped, devastating the entire area and rendering it almost unrecognizable. A chill went up and down my spine. This had been such a beautiful, safe place and now it was just dead.
The remains of several treehouses lay on the sides of the beaten path, having fallen out of the trees when the leaves and branches had been destroyed. The usual hustle and bustle of the center was replaced by deafening silence, as no other forest elves were to be seen on the trails. There were, however, numerous pairs of eyes following us from the distance as we passed.
I hoped that, amidst all this devastation, that my friends were alright.
Lysander led us through the center of the forest, or what remained of it anyway, all the way to the great tree that was at the very center of the center. My face fell when I saw it. The once enormous, illustrious tree was now dead and black, slumped over like the rest of the forest. Where light had once emanated from its many windows, there was only darkness. None of the many treehouses that were once in its branches had survived, and most had fallen to the ground. The rest dangled helplessly from what was left of the branches.
Still, there was some hope, because hundreds of forest elves clustered around the trunk of what remained of the great tree. Despite all the destruction caused to the forest, many of the people still survived. This was where all the forest’s elves had been hiding, safe for now in the center of the forest.
“Wait here,” Lysander instructed us before flitting off into the crowd. While we waited for them, we just stood and stared back at the mass of forest elves who were staring at us. He reemerged several moments later with Amaka and Akash, the loose leaders of the center forest elves. They were both tall for forest elves, up to around my nose, and took the form of moose, in contrast to Freyja’s fox-like features. They each had long, thin lips and big black eyes that were always kind and welcoming, and this was no exception.
“Leo Hayden and companions,” Amaka said when she saw us, sighing in relief. “I was beginning to think you were no longer coming to help us.”
“Of course we came,” I said. “We wouldn’t abandon you.”
The kingdom elves nodded in agreement. I opened my mouth to ask about Freyja, but Akash spoke before I had the chance.
“Were you here when the blight hit?” he asked, his thick, moose-like brows furrowed together in concern.
“The blight?” I asked, confused.
“The death of the forest,” Akash clarified.
“Oh, right.” It was a fitting name for what happened. I shook my head. “No, we weren’t. It was like this when we got here.”
“Given that, we are grateful that you still decided to make the journey,” Amaka said solemnly before she turned to Godfried and the forest elf family. “And who are your new companions?”
Marinka placed a hand on the younger elf’s shoulder. “This is my cousin Godfried of the royal family.”
“You are very young,” Amaka commented, her own moose-like brows raised. Godfried shifted uncomfortably and kneaded his neck, avoiding her eyes.
“I have been training for this quest my whole life,” he said, though he was less confident than he used to be.
Amaka only nodded as she continued to watch him skeptically.
“And these are Ione, Gerardo, and their sons Kish and Tyr.” Marinka gestured in the direction of the forest elf family. “We ran into them halfway through our journey and decided to press on together to the center of the forest.”
“She is being modest,” Ione said earnestly, gesturing in Marinka’s direction. “The kingdom elves saved us from thieves. We would have starved without their help, long before we made it here.”
“Then we have even more for which to thank you,” Amaka said as she looking around at my team. Then she focused back on Ione and Gerardo. “You are welcome to stay here with us and share in what is left of our resources. As you can probably tell, we cannot offer you much in the way of shelter, but please, make yourselves at home to the best of your abilities.”
“Thank you,” Ione said, relief spreading across her features. “Thank you so much.”
“Yes, thank you,” Gerardo echoed gratefully before turning to us. “And thank you, again, for all of your help.”
“No problem,” I said, nodding in their direction.
“And be well,” Marinka added as she bowed her head to them one last time. “We will see you again. We are friends forever now.”
“Thank you,” Ione said again, and Kish and Tyr said the same in their tiny voices before Lysander led the family away to find them a place to stay.
“Let us find a place to sit,” Amaka suggested as she gestured for us to follow her away from the crowd and down the beaten path. Two long benches sat off to the side between two smaller trees, and we sat on one while Amaka and Akash took their seats on another.
“Is our friend Freyja al--” I began to ask, but I was cut off when, shortly after we sat down when both Freyja and her friend Ishida came running down the beaten path to sit beside their fellow forest elves.
“Freyja!” I called brightly when I saw her, rising quickly and running to embrace her. She squeezed me back enthusiastically.
“Leo!” she called back, and before she ran into my hug. I buried my face in her neck and breathed in deeply, enjoying the feeling of her body pressed against mine.
“It’s good to see you again,” I said. Indeed, as the kingdom elves would say, it had been far too long since we had parted. Then I looked over at the otter-like Ishida. “And you, too, Ishida.” She nodded back at me as I returned to my seat and
the forest elves took theirs next to Amaka and Akash.
“It’s good to see you too, Leo,” Freyja said, smiling brightly as she turned to the kingdom elves. “All of you.”
“You have been missed.” Marinka bowed her head to them, then, she started a moment as she remembered we had an extra team member this time. “Oh, and this is my cousin Godfried. He will be accompanying us on our quest into the mountains.”
Freyja arched a skeptical eyebrow at the young kingdom elf, but didn’t say anything. Godfried ignored this, bowing his head in greeting to her and Ishida.
“Now that we are all here, let us get started,” Amaka said and slapped her thighs to signal the official beginning of the meeting. “How has your journey been thus far?” She and Akash looked around at us.
“It has been… interesting,” Marinka said carefully. “The current state of the forest has presented many obstacles, particularly in finding food and locating our position in the forest. We met few other travelers, and some of those were hostile to us.”
“Yes, I am sorry about that.” Amaka shook her head gravely. “I’m afraid that some of our people have not reacted well to this dire situation, opting to grow hostile and look out for themselves instead of helping one another. Many have fled to your kingdom and are there now, I imagine. We worried that they had reached you before you entered the forest, halting your quest, but here you are.” She gave us a weak smile.
“Why flee to our realm?” Bernsten asked the obvious question. “Was it the lack of food and other resources?”
“Yes,” Amaka said sadly. “With your help, we have been able to store some food and stock up here in the center of the forest, so we have enough resources for a few more weeks. But that is not enough should the situation not be rectified. Every day, more families and individuals decide to leave in search of greener pastures in your city.”
“I am certain that they will be welcomed,” Marinka assured her. “Our peoples have entered a new era of cooperation. When the council hears what has happened, they will make sure that the forest elves who have fled to the kingdom are taken care of adequately.”