by Shane Lee
All rights reserved ©2020 Shane Lee
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed by any means or in any form without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Black Forest
by Shane Lee
Table of Contents
Chapter 0
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Epilogue
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
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0
Terra wasn’t supposed to be here, ever. Especially not at night. She knew that, somewhere inside. And she knew that if her mother caught her here, even just on the edge of the woods, she wouldn’t able to leave the house for a week.
But she had seen...
“Dad! Daddy!”
The black trees of the Dromm woods swallowed up her words without so much as an echo. In the inky darkness of night, the thick trunks of the forest looked like an unbroken castle wall.
If Monty were here, he’d tell her that she couldn’t have seen their father. That people don’t die and then suddenly decide to re-emerge from the woods. That he was gone for good. A harsh truth, and one only an older brother could deliver the right way.
But Terra was alone. Monty was asleep, and deeply. Same with her mother, and anyone else who might have stopped her.
Before she took that first step into the woods, she did hesitate. She looked back over her shoulder, towards the village in the distance. She thought about her mother. The family’s little farm. How tired Monty was, doing all the work their father used to do.
How happy they’d both be to see him again, if only she could catch him and bring him back.
“...Terra?”
His voice, still familiar, still in her heart. It was in the trees. She snapped her head forward, straining her eyes. If she could hear him, then he was close. She could find him.
Terra went into the forest and she didn’t come out.
1
Monty awoke slowly that morning, which was unusual for him. Most of the time Terra would be knocking on his door and then pushing it open, urging him awake so he could make her breakfast. She could cook something in a pan, probably, but she wasn’t able to start the cookfire on her own.
He opened his eyes to bright morning light forcing its way through the bare curtain over his window, which told him he was late in rising.
Still lying down, he turned his head toward his door, expecting to see Terra standing there waiting for him, perhaps holding an egg in her hand, faking hunger pangs. She’d done it before, and as silly as it was, it worked like a charm.
But his door was shut.
Monty sat up, his black hair falling into his eyes. It was getting too long. Same with Terra’s; her blonde locks practically touched her waist, but she would never let their mother cut them. Not without a fight.
He listened for Terra’s voice—her chatter was incessant, especially in the morning—but heard nothing. Perhaps it was earlier than he thought. Still, he hurried to get dressed in his working clothes. The air brimmed with cold and threatened the first frost any day.
He went to his mother’s room first. She’d been sleeping a lot lately, and he worried that she was ill. Someone in the village always came down with some sickness at the cusp of winter, and as much as they tried to keep it away, it was usually Terra who caught it first, playing with some friend, brought it home, and quickly passed it to their mother. If Monty was lucky and resourceful, he’d manage to avoid it half the time.
His mother’s door was ajar, which most likely meant she was still asleep. A quick peek inside confirmed her shape under the covers. Her room was even brighter than Monty’s. He saw that her curtain had fallen to the floor.
He thought about waking her, but if she was sick, rest was better. It was only in his effort to be silent that he realized how quiet it was without Terra and his mother awake.
Great, so she’s probably sick, too. Terra’s room was down the hall, opposite his mother’s. Her door was open. If they were both sick, or even starting to get sick, he was better off just letting them be. Maybe he’d get to avoid a few miserable weeks of coughing and emptying his nose into a dirty rag.
Rarely hungry in the morning, Monty walked past the pantry and to the front door, putting on his boots before descending the three steps that led out of the house.
Their farm, small enough to be managed mostly by himself, sat about three miles from the village of Irisa, named for the seventh saint.
He surveyed the land, a habit he’d picked up from his father years ago, even though nothing had changed with the farm. The small barn stood as it always did, at the left end of the farmland that stretched toward Irisa. Their two cows were inside, along with a pair of goats and their aging mare. Hidden behind it was their chicken coop and a small, fenced-in grazing pasture. The crops, doing well in advance of their final harvest, stood proud; corn and barley, mostly, with winter wheat to be planted soon.
A good crop also meant a lot of work, but Monty didn’t mind that as much as he did when he was—as he would say—a kid.
At nineteen, he was still a kid to a lot of people in Irisa, but he knew that a kid couldn’t handle this farm almost on their own, like he was doing. At first, when his father died, spending every morning in the field doing twice the work he used to left his body aching. But after over a year of that, he didn’t feel like a child anymore.
Maybe it was the bigger muscles, or the new responsibility. Looming larger was his father’s absence and his desire to fill that space, a spot that couldn’t be taken by just some kid. He loved the farm and his family, and the work kept him busy. He didn’t want to tend the land for the rest of his days, but now, especially, the farm needed his focus. His father had had aspirations like his, but he didn’t let them get in the way of the harvest.
Monty shook his head, pushing the thoughts away. It was too easy to get lost there. He walked to the barn first to check on the animals, snapping his fingers once in the brisk air of the morning as he set on his way.
The sun had gotten higher by the time he was done, but it was before
noon when he made it back to the house, dirty and ready to eat whatever would take the least time to prepare. Cradling a few eggs from the coop, he wedged the front door open with his foot and stepped inside.
His mother was awake, already working on some food. “Oh, good,” she said, eyeing first Monty and then his eggs. “Let me have two of those.” She plucked two eggs from him, giving him a tired smile, and cracked them both into the iron pan in about half a second.
His mother, Delila, had adjusted to life without their father fairly well after the first few months. Although he had been the one to handle the bulk of the physical farm, Delila had a way with words. Shrewd when selling their crop, when buying in town, and when overtaking her children’s stubbornness.
Monty was named for his father, Montille, but he was told he looked like his mother. Certainly he got his dark hair and eyes from her, though her frame was much narrower. Terra had been named for Delila’s mother, who had died before Terra was born.
“Did Terra come out to help you?” she asked.
Monty snorted. Terra had tried before to be part of Monty’s farm chores, at the insistence of their mother, but was not quite capable. “Maybe she went to town.”
“Don’t try to find a reason to go to town.” She sprinkled something on the eggs as they sizzled in the pan, then wrapped the seasoning pouch back up with deft fingers. “She probably ran off to the neighbor’s to play with Kensey and his brother.”
“Jeremy.” Monty knew where this was going.
“Yes, I know. Go and get her, please.”
“Mom...” The neighboring farm of the Gartens was a mile away. Monty had been looking forward to sitting down just for a moment.
“I’m cooking your lunch, just be happy about that.” She glanced at him, looking like she already expected him to be gone. “It’ll be ready for you by the time you’re back with her.”
The kitchen smelled good. Monty didn’t bother to argue, even though the Garten family had probably fed Terra already. Monty suspected their mother loved having Terra over because they didn’t have daughters of their own; they had two rowdy sons Terra’s age who drove Monty crazy.
“All right, I’ll be back soon,” Monty said, eyeing the pork his mother had been working on. She always did pork the best.
Back out into the sunshine, Monty hustled a little bit toward the Garten farm, his hunger urging him along. The Gartens were to the east, in the direction of the rising sun. Monty squinted into the fierce light, turning his head away. To the north, across an expanse of increasingly infertile land, rose the black, leafless trees of the Dromm forest.
His gaze hung there for a moment. The black forest was not terribly large, but it dominated the northern landscape of the village with its hundred-foot trees. You could make it from one side to the other in about a day if you walked nonstop.
But people didn’t do that.
The Dromm forest was said to be haunted. Or filled with monsters. Wild beasts. Some crazed tribe that survived off the dark magic in the obsidian bark, maybe.
It was hard to keep all the stories straight; Monty had heard so many over the years. He’d had such an interest in the woods as a child—a magical place less than a mile from his house where he wasn’t supposed to ever go? He’d snuck away from his parents’ watchful eye at least a dozen times to go in, and sometimes with a few friends.
The excitement had been real, but the results had been disappointing. No monsters; no ghosts; no loose spearheads from the Drommenmen, which was the name he and his friends had given the supposed tribe in the trees. Just black stains on their hands from touching the bark, something which they quickly learned to avoid so that they wouldn’t get a smack from their parents when they came back home.
Terra never went in, though. She didn’t share the same curiosity—far from it, she believed all the stories, even the ones that contradicted each other—and at eleven, she was eight years younger than Monty. He had lost interest in the forest by the time he might have brought her on one of his jaunts.
Still, the Dromm really was something to look at.
The Garten farm grew on the horizon until he could make out the shapes of their two boys chasing each other with sticks around the edge of their crop. As he approached, Monty braced himself for the assault.
“Monty! Get him!” Jeremy cried. He was the elder brother by eleven months, and he reminded everyone of that often and loudly. His messy blond hair was dirty with remnants of an earlier dirt clod fight, as was his brother’s.
“Hey, hey!” Monty held up his hands. “I come in peace, all right?”
They brandished their sticks, but they didn’t approach him. They knew Monty wasn’t above clocking them one if they swung at his ankles too much.
When he was sure he wasn’t going to be attacked, Monty lowered his hands. “Is Terra here?”
“Nuh-uh,” Kensey said. He was a hair shorter than Jeremy, and he wore the same excited and mistrustful look, hoping that Monty would decide to brawl with them.
Kensey had been known to lie. Monty turned to Jeremy. “Is she?”
“Nope, not here,” Jeremy said.
Jeremy had also been known to lie.
“I’m gonna talk to your mom and dad. You two...drop the sticks.” Monty stared them down. They didn’t listen, but they went back to chasing each other around.
He snuck by them and hurried up to the house, wrapping around the front to get to the door. It was open, and he could see their father inside, working the stovetop.
“Hi, Mr. Garten,” he called.
The man either didn’t hear him or was just ignoring him; the Garten’s father was particularly distant while he was busy with something.
Monty cleared his throat. “Mr. Garten?” Monty hated when that questioning tone rose into his voice. His own mother had been specific in trying to quash that habit of his.
“Speak like you have something to say, Monty,” she would tell him. “Or no one’s going to listen.”
“I’m just coming by to see if Terra is here,” Monty said.
Mr. Garten looked up from his cookfire at last. “She ain’t. Haven’t been since three days.”
“Thanks,” Monty said. He was happy to turn away. Mr. Garten wasn’t a pleasure to talk to, and sometimes gave him the creeps. It was hard to tell what was going on behind his eyes, or if there was anything there at all. His father had once told him that Mr. Garten had been knocked down hard by a mule as a kid and been a bit absent ever since. From the smell of the burnt fat in their kitchen, this morning wasn’t one of his best.
Monty considered trying to find Mrs. Garten just to be sure about Terra, but he knew if his sister was here, he’d have seen her outside. She especially hated the smell of burning things, so she wouldn’t be hanging about in the house while Mr. Garten destroyed breakfast.
“Waste of a trip,” Monty muttered to himself, and it wasn’t until he was past the boys’ stick war and jogging back home that he realized he didn’t know where to look for Terra now.
2
His mother had finished cooking by the time he got back and was putting their food into three wooden bowls. She looked up to Monty as he stepped inside.
“Did she wash up there? She gets so dirty playing with those boys.”
Monty shook his head. “She wasn’t there.”
She hesitated as she filled the third bowl on the table. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Monty said. He sat down at the table. “Kensey and Jeremy weren’t playing with her. And Mr. Garten said he hadn’t seen her in three days.” He started to eat.
“She wouldn’t have gone all the way to the Cherrywood’s. Not without saying something.” His mother leaned against the table, her food resting in front of her chair.
The Cherrywoods were the neighbors on the other side, and they were over five miles away. Monty knew Terra wouldn’t be making that trip unless it was on a cart, and only then if their berry bushes were in season.
“She’s not o
ut in the barn?” she continued.
Monty shook his head. “I was out there all morning. I just figured she was sleeping in, that she got sick.”
“She has been acting a little odd the past few days...” Delila walked to the front door and opened it up, looking out across the farm.
Monty knew what she meant. Terra had been a little distracted lately, and reclusive. It was peaceful, but it wasn’t like her.
“Did she catch a frog or something?” Monty took a bite of his bacon, crispy and hot. “Some cat had kittens in the barn and she took one? Or maybe she’s got an imaginary friend.”
“She doesn’t miss breakfast for silly things like that,” his mother snapped. She was short when she was worried.
“Okay,” Monty said. He knew she was right. He finished his food and said, “I have to swamp the barn. I’ll get a look around on the trip, see where she got off to.”
“Get back here fast,” she said, still looking out through the door. Her food would sit there until it was cold.
Swamping the barn was mucking out the stalls, finding the rotten hay, and cleaning out any carcasses of birds and rodents the barn cats left behind. It used to make him shudder, but Monty had gotten over that by the time he was eleven years old. Now it was just another chore.
For his mother’s sake, he hurried. He knew she’d just sit there staring out the window until he got back.
When the wheelbarrow was as full of refuse as it could get, he began the long trek to the compost pile. It was all the way past the crop and down a long path framed with tall weeds, towards the woods. The route wrapped around most of their property before reaching the dumping ground, beyond which lay the black expanse of the Dromm forest.
Monty gripped the well-worn handles of the wheelbarrow and hefted the bulk. The air had less of a chill now; he wore a thin sheen of sweat that glistened in the sun. He pushed the load away from the barn and around the field, where the tall stalks of corn blocked the house from his view. The sun was at his back for most of the trip, and he was grateful for it.