And they were not pleased to see me. Halting their progress toward me with much stamping, the group of uksarv wheeled away. One peeled off the body and cantered towards me, head waving back and forth to see me better. The uksarv slowed and lowered its horn as the distance between us closed.
Heart thudding, I dropped down to my knees in the grass and held my arms out to show that I had no weapon, that I was vulnerable.
The uksarv, a doe, heaved out her breath. Spring pollen clouded the air between us.
I dared not make a sound. She was slight, thirteen hands at the shoulders, the size of a pony. Her flanks were scarred, a testament to many seasons of mating and motherhood. She circled me, and as she passed my back, I looked forward and noticed that the uksarv were all female.
She came around in front of me and stopped.
I reached my hand out, palm open, so she could see it was empty, so she could smell me. Perhaps Sida’s scent clung to me under the stink of wool and wood smoke and human sweat. For a heartbeat, we were both still, watching each other breathe.
Suddenly, the herd sprang into motion. A lone, narrow, bristling-maned, barrel-chested buck was tearing towards them through the trees from the east. The buck gave a scream of masculine pride that was like the rip of an old branch tearing down the side of a tree.
My doe, the matriarch as I understood her to be, gave me one swift look with an amber eye and turned to meet the buck at full speed. She blocked him, and he veered sharply to the south. He tried to dodge her, but she diverted him with a prod from her horn on his left flank before he could throw back his hind heels. The matriarch gave a small rear and brought her fore-hooves down sharply and pawed the ground. The interloper backed away a few paces and then turned, striking back with his hind legs. The matriarch lowered her horn and chased him back, the buck attempting to kick back at her as he ran.
The matriarch took the opportunity of his flight to lead her does off to the east.
Forgotten, I edged backwards on my belly towards the woods. In breeding season, bucks were not to be provoked and this one was still too close for safety. Torun, pale and wide-eyed, grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me into the shade of the forest.
Crouching down, he flipped me onto my back.
“Are you hurt?” He leaned over me to pat my face, my arms. “I’m fine,” I said, sitting up.
He took my hands and pulled me up. I started to shiver.
Behind us, the buck screamed again. I looked over my shoulder. He had seen us and was rushing down the hill. Thwarted of his desire, the buck seemed intent on unleashing his fury on us.
I gave Torun’s hands a tug and then dropped them. “Come on…Run!”
We couldn’t run down such an incline, not really. We stumbled downhill, stepping swiftly over logs and between roots. I lost sight of the path.
The buck pursued us in a rage. Then—because we were not dead—I realized that something had changed. His pace had eased slightly. He had not run us down or stabbed us through with his horn, although he could have done so.
“He’s tracking us,” I gasped at Torun.
He nodded as we jogged on, our heels sliding in the dried needles and leaves on the forest floor. We were going too far towards the right, westward, so we tried to head east.
Through the trees, I saw that the buck had quickened his pace. His dun-gold body flashed against the dark trunks of the trees as he drew level with us on our left. He came near us until we hastily changed routes and veered right. Each time we tried to move east, he was there.
“He wants us to go west,” Torun said. “He’s herding us!”
My lungs were on fire, and now I felt my stomach contract. Why? Sida had run circles around me as a game and the matriarch had gathered her does, but what was this buck driving us to?
Ahead of us, the trees were thinning and we could see the sharp blue of the cloudless spring sky. Over the sound of our footsteps and our ragged breaths, I heard a rumbling rush.
Torun’s pace slowed and he pulled me to a fast walk. The buck had led us to a steep cliff edge that overhung the river.
Behind us, the buck gave a whuffling sound, reminding us to move. I glanced over my shoulder. He was pacing back and forth, blocking any attempt at escape with his head lowered and his horn pointed.
The river was no longer the muddy, swollen storm of the first days of the melt. It ran clear, but the current still flowed fast. I looked at the edge of the overhang. Below us, there was a ten-foot drop to the river. No rocks that I could see. Not a fatal jump, I thought. The breeze lifted and I caught a whiff of something rotten and sulfurous, like bad eggs. The stink was at odds with the fresh smell of the river and the forest, but I had no time to think about its source.
The buck unicorn was considering us, swinging his head back and forth to gaze with one tawny eye and then the other.
“Can you swim?” Torun asked, looking at my boots. I hastily shrugged off my pack and pulled my boots off. If they filled with river water, no amount of strong swimming was going to bring me to the surface. And unlike Torun, I had not grown up next to a swiftly running river. Torun was barefoot, and his narrow, calloused feet were etched with sap and earth.
“We’re going to have to jump far,” he said.
But the buck’s head had come up and his horn was pointed to the sky.
“We may not have to,” I said. My heart beating fast as my thoughts aligned.
The buck seemed curious now, rather than angry. His pacing had stilled.
We had reeked with fear during our run, but faced between him and the river, we regained our wits. This likely seemed interesting to him.
I opened my arms and curled my open hands upwards.
“Hello,” I said.
The buck took a few prancing, boastful steps towards me. There was now only a foot between us, and only half a step between us and the edge of the cliff. He was pompous and wanted to brag. He gave a little rear and struck the ground with his hooves.
Panicking, Torun grabbed my hand and pulled me back. I tripped into him, and as we tried to regain our footing, we stepped off the cliff.
Suddenly, we were falling, falling, looking up at the sky and then SMACK!
We hit the cold river water on our backs, knocking the wind from our lungs. In the force of the fall, I lost Torun’s hand.
Stunned, I let the current take me for a few moments and it pushed me to the surface. I took a first screeching, painful breath. I kicked my legs, but it was hard to keep my head up. I opened my eyes to see Torun nearby. The current was taking us fast down the river and the eastern bank ahead curved in. He spotted me and swam a few strokes towards me.
“Can you kick?” he asked, hooking me under one armpit.
I nodded, and we struggled over to the right side of the river, where the current slackened and our feet hit a muddy, rocky river bottom. Torun let go of me and stood up. I crawled out on my hands and knees and collapsed on the dry grass. We were shivering, but the sun was warm on our wet skin.
“I am sorry,” Torun said. “I should have stayed still.”
“No,” I rasped. “I should have explained what I was doing.”
I looked north, but I could no longer see the place where we had jumped. Torun pulled me up and we started walking slowly along the riverbank. I started to shiver. Torun shucked off his vest and handed it to me. Though the shearling lining was damp, it had repelled much of the water. The outside was soaked, but the leather blocked the light wind.
We walked side by side, our hands swinging a little with each stride. My knuckles brushed the palm of his hand and he curled the tips of his fingers over mine. It was the most natural and intimate of actions.
I kept my breath quiet, not wanting to disturb whatever had formed between us.
He also did not seem willing to speak, so I thought more about what we had seen
. Or what we had not seen. We had not seen Sida.
“The carving…did you make it after seeing those?” I said.
He shook his head. “I saw only one. She was small…between an uksarv voon and an utta.”
“Then you saw Sida,” I said.
Torun put into words what I was thinking. “Then where is she?”
I looked around. “And where are we?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Old Tales
We had washed up on the other side of the river, the Fenlen side. As we walked, the sun sank low and as the earth cooled, a mist had risen. I did not think we had gone so far, or even that we had been out for so long. But now, somehow, it was late. We stood still, both thinking the same thing. Night would fall and there was no way of getting home.
“Melina is going to be mad,” I said.
He looked at me sharply. “Go mad?”
“She’ll be angry,” I clarified.
“Ah.” He nodded. “Yes. And worried.”
We lapsed into silence again. There was nothing to be done.
His hold on my hand tightened a little. “We should find some shelter.”
The river was to our left, so we went right, stumbling over rocks until we found the face of the escarpment.
“We should not be here,” Torun said. I said nothing. He was right—being lost in a forest at night made it harder to find your way out in the daytime.
We turned and walked a little. Torun stopped suddenly in front of a boulder. He dropped my hand.
“This is the place,” Torun said.
“What do you mean?
“This is where we met.”
“How can you be sure?” It looked like any boulder shaggy with moss.
“This is the rock on which I sat. After Bettina, I ran. This is where I stopped. If I went farther…” He took me around the side of the boulder and rubbed some moss away to reveal shallow, worn away lines in the rock face. The curves of eyelids, hollowed out pupils, a natural slash forming the mouth. “This is where people say the Alvina set their borders, according to the old stories. Melina told me if I crossed over, I would be lost.” He shivered beside me. “If I believed in stories and in bad luck, this would be a sign. But I don’t believe. Come on.”
From the side of the boulder that was nearest to the forest, we made an arc southward. He seemed to know where he was going, even in the mist. Beside the boulder were a series of smaller stones curving south, like an arm. The last was slightly larger, a lump with a long extension pointing south, like a finger. I had not noticed any of these signs the first night—they had been obstacles underfoot, nothing more.
I saw another arm made of raised stones, pointing towards the forest. I wanted to follow it but went after Torun with hesitating steps. We were going south, along the ridge. I breathed in deep and my nose filled with the tang of rot, the same as I smelled when we fell from the cliff face. About ten paces down the path, there was another boulder. A hole for a mouth. Two slanting, suspicious eyes, the outline of a nose.
To our right lay another boulder, another face. The mist hid much from my eyes, but the path underfoot became wider, rockier, until it disappeared into a pile of rubble. We turned.
And there, shoulder high, was a break in the cliff face, revealing the snarling dark maw of the earth. Above my head were two holes carved out for eyes, two smaller ones for nostrils. The rocks were yellowed, and as I came closer to the cave, the colour deepened to an orange-red, like a huge, outspread mouth. The air reeked of sulphur. But the soles of my chilled feet warmed in the dirt. I curled my toes into the grit. It was as if the heat were coming from the ground.
“We shouldn’t go close,” Torun said.
“What is this place?”
“Alvina birlan. People go here to disappear.” He opened his mouth as if to say more, but then fell silent.
Did this have something to do with her? I could not ask directly.
“It isn’t safe, but we’ll be warm from the breath of the cave.” Torun sat down and crossed his arms over his raised knees. I settled a few safe feet away. It was too dark to pick wood for a fire and we had no flint or tinder anyway. But the rocks were heated by the bowels of the earth, and the soil was a rich and crumbling red streaked with veins of black.
“What is Alvina?” I asked.
“Not what. Who. It depends on who you ask. Some people say they are the old people who live in caves under the forest.”
“Oh,” I said. “Like the Old Folk?”
“What ‘Old Folk?’”
“Well…” I began. Heat began to gather in my chest. “Never mind.”
“No. Tell. What do you mean ‘Old Folk?’”
“A kind woman told me stories about them when my father disappeared.” I picked up crumbs of ruddy earth and ground them between my fingers. “She said they lived in the forest and lured away lonely travellers.”
The corners of his mouth gave a skeptical twitch. “I did not think you are the person who believes those stories.” The smile faded, and he dipped his chin to his chest. “You thought I was Alvina?”
“Well, I don’t know!” I felt queasy with embarrassment. I had never thought to ask Torun more about the place into which I had come. “Well, then, what are you?”
“Verian. Like you are Gersan,” he said simply, like he was sorting out chickens from geese. “That is our people’s name. Our language. But there are not many of us. If you go further east, people start talking Philistre. That’s what the queen and her ministers speak.”
Of course, Torun and Melina were not magical…they were just different. But I felt stupid for not knowing anything about this place and these people. There was no hiding my ignorance now.
At the sight of my mortified face, Torun broke out laughing and then stopped abruptly. “Thinking as you did, you let me…lure…you? You thought I might be a dangerous creature and you came anyway?”
“Just at the beginning! I was lost and then suddenly you were there. Then the house in the tree…and it was all mixed up with”—I did not say Bettina’s name—“and then I find Pa. After being just…gone…for so long.” I hated saying such things aloud. The hurt felt like it should belong to another version of me.
The silence stretched out.
“So, if you thought I was Alvina, Melina would be the Alvina woman who has kept your father from you. If we were magical creatures, your heart would not hurt so much?”
Worse and worse. “It made a sort of sense at first. For why he never came back for my mother.” My pulse was beating hard in my neck. I had never wanted to admit these things, even to myself. “My mother is beautiful, I think.” It sounded so foolish; most girls thought their mothers were beautiful, if only in the vain knowledge that they would one day resemble them. Ma was forceful, that was closer to the truth, and I resented and admired her for it in a way Pa evidently did not. “No…Ma is strong. Somehow, he had just walked away from her.” And from me.
“Hmmm.” Torun looked at me askance. He had insisted yesterday that he was not trapped here, that he chose to stay. But I felt trapped, and not only by Sida’s absence. I did not like having him look at me and know these things.
“Anyway, then I thought you could help me find Sida and not much else mattered after that.” I looked up and around at the gaping cave mouth, where the shadows gathered. “Well,” I said. “You are not Old Folk. I know that. And I am not Alvina. You know that.” There was an uncertain pause and I pushed through it. “What are the Alvina, then? Who?”
“There are different types of stories,” Torun said slowly. “Some people say that there was once a city here, hundreds of years ago. When our folk arrived, there was a battle, and the Alvina, the people who lived here, took refuge in a cave and never came out. And these stone faces are all that is left.”
I looked up at the mouth of the cave.
“And is this the place where they went underground?” I was beginning to understand why he didn’t want to go any further.
“Maybe.”
This story made sense to me. One of Victor’s books, The History of the Kings of Gersa, described great carvings of chalk made in the hillsides of West Gersa, depicting bears and wolves. The book said they were left by giants; Ma said the carvings were left behind by earlier tribes whose names we had forgotten.
“In that story, either the Alvina found another world below the forest, or they are the ghosts of the dead and take revenge on our folk. We live in the trees, some old people say, to trick the Alvina. If they cannot find us, they cannot bring us bad luck. But they can be appeased with gifts of milk and bread and honey cakes.”
I shivered. The lamb-girl…who looked like…who might be Bettina…had offered me just those things. But Torun wasn’t done.
“Other people say that the Alvina were cruel to the forest and cut down sacred trees. Then Earth Mother became angry and swallowed the city. The cave is her mouth. The forest took back what was hers. They say the uksarv guard the forest and the Alvina, in punishment, must guide souls between the lands of the living and the dead. For us, everything on this side of the river belongs to the dead.”
I shivered. “Is that why you don’t graze your sheep there?”
Torun shrugged. “That’s why we’re the only house this far out. The grazing is good, but the other shepherds like to give the forest space. This place is so wild, they say, that the uksarv cross the river into our lands.”
“But that doesn’t explain…” I fell silent. How could I explain what had happened to me? “But there is something strange about…”
“About what? A cave that stinks of death?” Torun seemed oddly agitated. “Maybe this is just a place where people run away from life. Do you see a great king’s city?”
I saw great boulders everywhere. There wasn’t a city, but there wasn’t anything that prevented me from imagining one here, either. I thought of the slash of autumn I had seen, the scream. What about the strange girl I had met in the forest so many years before? I thought about the impossible fact that Bettina and I were the same age, that Pa had walked back in time when he crossed the forest.
The Changeling of Fenlen Forest Page 10