by P. M. Biswas
The mammoth firs that towered above Tam were dizzyingly high. Just craning her neck to look at them made Tam giddy, in an odd sort of reverse vertigo. It was like standing on an upside-down cliff and staring down—or was it up?—at a sea so far away that it seemed to be from another world. That was what it felt like to look up at the canopy, ruffled by the wind like a surging sea of indistinguishable green. Tam couldn’t even calculate how long it would take her to climb any of those trees, in case she had to do so to find her bearings.
Thankfully she didn’t have to find her bearings. That was what Maple was for.
“You remember where the pond was, don’t you?” Tam bent to speak into Maple’s ear, which flicked again. “Take me there if you can. Hopefully the forest won’t trick us into wandering forever, like it’s said to do. Death by wandering does not appeal to me.”
They got to the pond sooner than Tam had predicted. Which was to say, before Tam had aged by fifty years.
The pond was still there, somehow tinier than before, and Tam’s skin goose-pimpled at the sight of it. It was just so… innocuous, so deceptively ordinary, that if it weren’t for the lack of ripples that should normally ruffle the surface of a pond, Tam might’ve thought she was in an average clearing. Thirsty as she was, she was tempted to drink from that pond, but who knew what it’d do to her? What if it transmuted her into one of those massive trees?
Well, at least Tam would be tall that way. For once in her life.
In the end Tam picked the safer alternative of drinking from her own flagon, sour and stale though the water was after sloshing around in a pouch of cowhide. She withdrew the flagon from her saddlebag and gulped down a few mouthfuls, but stopped before she would have liked. She had to ration her water. If the elves didn’t show up for hours—or even days—Tam couldn’t afford to be left waterless. She wouldn’t drink from the pond.
“Now we wait,” Tam said to Maple as she dismounted. Tam contemplated leaning against the same tree she’d leaned against whilst involuntarily siphoning off an elf’s blood, but elected not to. She leaned against Maple’s flank instead; it was better to be near Maple in case there was an emergency and they had to dash out of here.
The emergency occurred about half an hour into Tam’s wait. She was biting into a slice of dried apple when suddenly—out of nowhere—an elf dropped into the clearing.
From above.
What, did elves fly? Tam hadn’t seen a single branch sway under the weight of a body, so either the elves weighed nothing at all or they had invisible wings.
So Astar had wasted all of His special gifts on the elves. Tam couldn’t help but resent that. She herself couldn’t walk without stomping; stealth was nigh impossible for her. But here this elf was, all but materializing out of thin air.
The elf who’d landed in front of Tam was female. She had proportions similar to Loren’s—the slender, somewhat elongated limbs and willowy build—although she was dark where Loren was pale, her skin the shade of raven’s wings and her hair a lustrous sable that flowed over her shoulders, as if the night itself had transfigured into something glimmering and fluid.
The elf was also armed. She was an archer with a quiver on her back and a bow in her hands, and she had an arrow pointed straight at Tam’s face. Specifically, at Tam’s right eyeball, from only an inch away, poised to launch into Tam’s eye socket and then, from there, into her brain.
“Hullo,” croaked Tam, her apple rind sticking out from between her teeth. How undignified. This wasn’t the impression she’d hoped to make. “H-how are you? Nice day, isn’t it?”
The elf only looked at Tam with a flat, indifferent gaze. Tam got the feeling that it would not bother her to kill Tam then and there, any more than it would bother Tam to squash an irritating fly.
“I’m… I’m Tam.” The apple was stuck in Tam’s now-dry mouth, and speaking around it was a challenge. “Could I, um, could I shpit out this affle I’ve gof in my mouf? I can’t talk properly wiff it.”
The elf didn’t say anything.
Tam leaned carefully away and spat out the apple, expecting to be shot for moving without permission.
A disgusted sneer curled the elf’s upper lip. Hey, at least it was a reaction. Tam had begun wondering if the elf had frozen altogether, atrophied by sheer revulsion.
“Human,” said the elf at last, and goodness, though she resembled Loren in form, she definitely did not resemble him in manner. Tam’s instincts told her that this was because Loren wasn’t a warrior, and this elf was. Or it could just be that elves were distinct from each other, just like humans were, with individual and unique personalities. Tam would have to erase her own biases if she wanted to avoid being spitted by arrows.
“Yes?” Tam fidgeted. “Like I said, I’m Tam. Not ‘Human.’ I mean, I’m human, but my name is Tam?” By Astar, this diplomacy stuff was exhausting. And she’d only just begun. “What’s your name?”
“Why are you in our territory?” The elf barreled right over Tam. “And why are you armed?”
“I can take off the armor! I just. I figured. Going into the Wanderwood, it wouldn’t be wise to be unarmed. Just in case you”—Tam went cross-eyed focusing on the arrow tip all but poking her in the nose—“weren’t happy to see me? Are you unhappy? How could I make you happy again? Because I have a vested interest in making you happy, right about now.” The arrow tip moved closer. “Eeep!”
“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”
“That was an interesting way of punctuating a sentence. As for me, I’m here in peace! To establish peace. That’s what I’m here for.”
“You say you come in peace, but you bear the weapons of war.”
“Like I said, I can take off the armor and lay aside my weapons. If you would just let me. Or you could go and ask Loren about me.”
The elf stiffened. “How do you know His Highness?”
His what, now? “Loren saved my life. Here. By this pond.” Tam waved at it distractedly. “With those silvery threads of his. Is he a prince? I had no idea! He wasn’t regal at all. Have you heard him laugh? He coughs. Coughs. Who laughs like that?”
Now the elf was outright glaring at her.
“Not that I don’t respect your prince.” Tam cursed herself for that social faux pas. “I’m bubbling over with respect for him. I owe him a life debt, after all. It would be bad form not to respect the person who pulled your nuts out of the fire. Not that I have. Er. Nuts. To be pulled out of any fire.”
Tam couldn’t stop putting her foot in her mouth. If this kept up, she would wind up putting her actual, physical foot in her actual, physical mouth. What was happening to her? Terror had never addled her wits like this before. Then again, she’d never had the whole kingdom depending on her diplomatic skills. Her nonexistent diplomatic skills. That she didn’t have.
“Your armor.” The elf pointed her arrow at Tam’s breastplate. “Take it off.”
Tam jumped to obey. She fumbled with the straps—there was no Emeraude to assist her this time—but she did eventually manage to get her breastplate off. She did the same with her vambraces, and counterintuitive though it was to her, she laid her spear and her shield aside too. “There.” Tam beamed. “Look at that! I’m exposed to the elements and to your arrows. You could kill me easily now. Isn’t that great?”
“I could kill you easily enough before. There was no armor on your eye.”
“You’re such a pleasure to talk to. Did I mention that? No? ’Twas an appalling oversight. For which I apologize.”
“I am Nala.” The elf deigned to introduce herself at last. “Prince Loren did not inform us that he had met a human, let alone saved it.”
It? “Hold on. I’m not an ‘it.’ I’m a ‘Tam.’ I’ve said so about a hundred times.”
“Four.” Nala’s bow was still trained on Tam. “Four times.”
“Elves sure are skilled at arithmetic.”
“Just as humans are skilled at destruction.”
Tam tittered nerv
ously. Was that a neutral observation or a clever insult? Even Tam, as a human, couldn’t disprove what Nala had said. With all the wars the humans were currently embroiled in, they did appear to have a penchant for mass destruction. “Did we just go from jokes to depressingly accurate philosophical diatribes? Because I’m terrible at those.”
“Move.” Nala shifted behind Tam and poked Tam in the back with the arrow. “As you humans are also adept at lying, you may be concocting that tale about Prince Loren. I cannot trust you to remain unsupervised. I will escort you to the elven court myself.”
“Your faith in me is deeply touching.” When Nala poked her again, Tam squawked, “Ow! I’m moving, I’m moving!” To Maple, Tam said, “You. Stay. I’ll be back. I hope.”
Did Maple look worried, or was Tam just flattering herself?
No, she was just flattering herself. Because when Nala propelled Tam out of the clearing, all Maple did was put her rump toward Tam and start grazing, carefree as could be.
Traitor.
Meanwhile, Nala instructed Tam to cooperate… or else. “Don’t run. Don’t fight. Don’t so much as twitch in the wrong direction.”
“Got it.”
Thus began Tam’s awkward crabwalk across the forest, because she couldn’t bring herself to put her back completely to Nala, but she couldn’t walk beside Nala either. It resulted in a bumbling sideways march, highlighted by Tam getting slapped by overhanging foliage and tripping over pebbles that seemed to be conspiring to put themselves in her path. This place was malicious. It was just as she’d suspected. And Loren had said this was her heart’s home? Pfft. What nonsense.
To Tam’s surprise, Nala engaged her in conversation. Well. Interrogation. Still, it was progress.
“Who were you talking to, outside? About having created the elves?”
“Oh,” said Tam. “So you were spying on me even before I entered the woods? Very shrewd.”
“I am a Sentinel,” Nala said, emphasizing the term like it was a title. “It is my duty to patrol the boundary.”
“Right.”
“So who were you talking to? Was it a companion hidden close by?”
It was then that Tam understood the bent of Nala’s questions. “What, like an accomplice? Heavens no. I’m by myself. I was just, er. Having a casual chat with my god.”
Nala looked at Tam blankly.
“You know, gods? Deities we worship? Who’s your god?”
“We don’t have gods,” Nala said. “We worship nature.”
“Not nature goddesses? Wood nymphs? Fairies?”
“Cease your babble. Or I will cut your tongue out myself.”
“As opposed to asking somebody else to do it?”
Nala snarled.
Tam shut up faster than sweat evaporating in a desert.
This? This was how Tam had imagined elves to be. Not like Loren, who’d been harmless in comparison. What false advertising that was!
As they ventured deeper and deeper into the Wanderwood, the trees grew even more monumental, stately monoliths with branches as thick as human bodies. Very bulky human bodies. Like Borik’s.
The plants on the ground were getting larger too, and weirder. There were pitcher-shaped flowers with goblet-like stems, their petals as pink as skinned flesh, filled with a wine-red honey the exact tint of blood. The stillness at the outskirts of the forest was now replaced by the buzzing of dragonflies as big as Tam’s head, and Tam had thought she had the courage to defy armies, but this was just preposterous. She recoiled as a dragonfly whizzed by her, and Nala let out a short bark of laughter.
“Glad to be entertaining,” Tam grumbled.
“You must be a famous warrior among your kind,” Nala said scornfully. “Since you have such valor.”
Frankly? Nala could go stuff herself. With dragonflies.
But the dragonflies weren’t even the worst of it. The once-quiet Wanderwood was now teeming with wildlife. Critters darted in and out of the undergrowth, too fleeting to be identified. Only their eyes could be seen through the vegetation, round and glowing and fixed unerringly on Tam.
Once, Tam saw long, wickedly hooked talons vanishing between the leaves of a spiky bush. A hulking, shadowy silhouette drifted past behind the trees, a formless behemoth whose passage caused a mere rustling of leaves, as if it were floating above the earth and not treading upon it.
Tam was beginning to comprehend why the elves didn’t worship gods. They didn’t need to. They were surrounded by them. They lived among them.
Birds with orange-and-violet plumage soared far overhead, and Tam was relieved to see that they, at least, were ordinary—but when a pair of them swooped low enough to land on a nearby branch, Tam saw that they had faces like those of men, with deep-set, oddly intelligent eyes and no beaks, and that their three-pronged claws were just tapered fingers with sharp obsidian-black nails at the ends.
Tam’s stomach churned. It wasn’t even fear that did it—or not only fear. There was just a wrongness to how everything looked and behaved. Even the spiderwebs, which billowed gently between the trees like skeins of shimmering silk, had enormous spiders at their centers that glittered like precious gems, iridescent and blinding, each spider a conglomeration of hard surfaces that reflected the sunlight at a million colorful angles.
“Are those spiders made of stone?” Tam asked. “Because they—they look like they are.”
“No, they’re made of bone,” Nala said, like that was only natural. “They devour animals that stray into their webs and digest the skeletons, using the bones to build shells for themselves.”
“Egads,” said Tam. “That’s. That’s very. Impressive.” Yes, impressive. Not terrifying. “Why is it so quiet near the border of the forest but so, er, lively in here?”
“The outer limits of the forest aren’t real.”
Tam gaped at Nala. “Say what?”
“They are an illusion. That is why there is no life in them; they are in truth barren land, and the trees there are purely props, erected by our magic. Only those who know the way will succeed in crossing that illusory barrier and entering the forest proper. The rest will wander aimlessly in circles, never making it into the true forest.”
“Aha!” Tam crowed. “So we humans were right! That’s why it’s called the Wanderwood. Because you wander in it!”
Nala rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s called the Wanderwood because of all the wandering. What an astute commentary.”
“You reckon I’m about as bright as a hock of ham, don’t you?”
“We do not eat ham. Or any meat. We consume only plants that surrender to us freely.”
“Freely? Do plants have free will here?”
“They do everywhere. The fault is yours if you do not heed it.”
Tam’s last interaction with a plant had been plucking a tomato from a vine crawling over the walls of the palace kitchen’s gardens. She was reasonably certain that the tomato had not cried out not to be plucked. But then perhaps she could not hear what the elves heard with their flaring, pointed ears. Or perhaps the elves were just superstitious.
Given the mystery and the savagery of the woods around them, the elves certainly had reason to be superstitious. If Tam lived here, she’d be balking at every shadow.
Slowly, the wildness of the jungle began to gain a peculiar sort of architecture. The trees formed rows like corridors, and the canopy above formed tangled arches not dissimilar to the arched ceilings of Emeraude’s court. Subtle variations in the texture of the tree barks began to look more and more like doors. The yawning hollows in the trees’ trunks began to look more and more like windows, with vines falling across them like curtains.
“Is this what I think it is, or am I hallucinating?” Tam asked Nala.
“This is our city.” Nala gestured at the trees. “And these are our towers.”
Tam was possessed by the sudden urge to go into one of those towers and climb it to the very top. Nobody could fault her for being inquisitive, could they? Wh
at would the view be like from up there? It must be incredible.
The bases of the trees were as wide as large oval rooms, so it made sense that people could inhabit them. Squirrels inhabited smaller trees, didn’t they? “Did these trees ‘freely surrender’ themselves too?”
“Yes,” Nala averred. “We would never force ourselves upon nature like you humans do.”
“Your negative opinion of us is discouraging, but I can assure you that we aren’t complete arseholes.” Wait, was that acceptable diplomatic language? “Jackanapes,” Tam amended. “We aren’t complete jackanapes.”
“I doubt it.”
Tam goggled at a series of plants whose squat, bulging stems segued into horizontal, rectangular leaves—leaves as broad and sturdy as benches. “I could sit my entire arse down on those. Not that I would,” Tam added quickly. “That would be disrespectful. Would it be disrespectful? Do you sit on these plants?”
Nala ignored her and glanced up at a window. The vines curtaining it were drawn aside, and an elf leaned out, watching their progress below. “Ato,” Nala called up to him. “Greetings. Is His Majesty at court?”
“That’s where most everyone is,” the elf named Ato answered, eyeing Tam like Tam was a circus animal. “What’s this, then?”
“A human I found at the Pool of Healing.”
The elf raised his eyebrows. “It breached the boundary and reached the Pool?”
“Prince Loren discovered the human, injured as it was, and tended to it. He must have originally guided the horse to the Pool, and the horse, remembering the path on its subsequent visit, carried the human there.”
“The prince did all that? Why did he not speak of it? A breaching of the boundary is—”
“A serious issue, yes. Which is why we should warn the king.”
“Not to interrupt you,” Tam interrupted them, “but could you both please stop calling me ‘it,’ like I’m an object? It’s very offensive.”