Lex Talionis

by Keira Michelle Telford

  Having a map would probably help.

  A compass would suffice.

  She’d settle for directions drawn on a napkin.

  “Are you sure about this?” She looks skeptical. “If trekking around the Angau is only an extra day of—”

  “I want to go home,” Carmen snaps at her, unlatching the stable door. “If you want to stick with these wet blankets”—she points a finger at Bentley and Chapin—“be my guest, but I’m going through the Angau.”

  No map.

  No compass.

  Just blind hope.

  Silver shrugs. That’ll do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Two hours into their journey, they reach the entrance to the Angau. One dirt trail leads into the expansive forest, and a sign posted nearby offers information about its size and composition: forty square miles, of which approximately two thirds is made up of the dense evergreens responsible for blocking out much of the natural daylight.

  The sign warns travelers to stick to the path, and outlines rather graphically what might happen to you if you should stray.

  Dehydration.

  Hunger.

  A slow, painful death.

  Another sign on the other side of the path warns against entering the forest with the intention of committing self-slaughter. It offers a brief motivational message letting you know you’re not alone, and that you should talk to someone about your troubled thoughts before making any drastic decisions.

  For the first time, Carmen’s expression betrays a trace of uncertainty.

  “Did you let your mouth run away with you?” Silver asks, wondering if she’s contemplating changing her mind about taking the shortcut.

  Carmen shakes her head. “All we have to do is follow the path.” She urges her horse onward, feigning bravery. “No big deal.”

  She doesn’t feel like telling Silver how her last venture in this forest ended: with a badly broken leg and a mild case of hypothermia. Given that she’s the reason they’re all here instead of taking the much more mundane—arguably safer—route around the Angau, she thinks it’s probably best to withhold the explicit details of her last trip. Including the fact that she and Seven had a run-in with a group of Mercian highwaymen who’d entered the forest to plunder the goodies often found on or near the corpses of suicides.

  The broken leg came first.

  The hypothermia came later, when the Mercians threw them into a river and they had to walk the rest of the way in wet clothes. Seven very nearly died from pneumonia before they reached D10.

  Anyway, it won’t be like that this time, she tells herself. At a steady pace—with horses, and without a sickly, weakened Seven to slow them down—they should reach the other side of the forest in three hours.

  Easy peasy.

  She keeps repeating that in her head: easy peasy, easy peasy, easy peasy.

  And, for the first hour, she’s right. Everything goes according to plan until they stop for a pee break, and Silver decides to stretch her legs. Handing Fitch’s reins to Ria, she saunters over to the side of the trail and peers out into the tangled mess of trees, undergrowth and debris beyond.

  “Don’t go too far,” Ria cautions as she steps off the path’s edge.

  The floor is covered with moss, which thrives in this perennially dark, moist environment, making the ground soft and spongy underfoot. Fallen, rotting tree branches have become slippery hazards after the recent rainfall, and the rough terrain—with rocks jutting out here and there, and potholes concealed beneath leaves—makes walking difficult, even under the best conditions.

  Still, Silver presses on a few more yards, her ears and eyes straining for any signs of life. There aren’t any grazing deer, no prowling cave lions, no bears—nothing. All she comes into contact with is an enormous millipede crawling across the toe of her boot, and a massive, hairy spider clinging upside down to a tree trunk.

  Below it, at waist height, one end of a piece of yellow plastic tape—a stream of ribbon—is tied in a knot. The other end trails off into the distance, weaving between trees and around rocky outcrops.

  It goes so deep into the Angau that it disappears out of sight, and Silver’s curiosity is piqued. She extends a hand to touch the tape, wondering what she might find if she were to follow it all the way to its terminus.

  Finished peeing, Carmen reads her thoughts. “Don’t even think about it.” She beckons Silver back to the trail.

  “What is it?” Silver wraps her fingers around it and tugs, seeing if it has any give.

  It doesn’t.

  “They wasn’t sure.” Oliver watches from the trail, hugging his arms around his chest, not daring to leave the safety of the path.

  “Who wasn’t sure?” Turning from the tree, Silver’s foot slips on something.

  An empty whiskey bottle.

  She kicks it away without thinking too much of it.

  “People what are undecided about dying.” Oliver points at the tape. “They tie them ribbons up where they enter the forest in case they change their minds and has to find their way out.”

  Silver can see how easy it would be to get lost without using markers.

  “So at the end of this …” She runs her finger along a few inches of it, feeling how weatherworn it is.

  “There’s always something,” Carmen says factually, keeping the profound sadness of this place at bay. “Either a body, or evidence that someone was there. The closer we get to Mercia, the more you’ll see.”

  Reluctantly, Silver makes her way back to the trail. “Why?”

  “Mercians are an unhappy bunch. Isn’t that right, Oliver?” Carmen mounts her horse.

  “I dunno of a single family what ain’t been victims of the militia.” He follows close behind her. “That’s why I done a runner.”

  He needs Silver’s help to get up on the horse behind Carmen.

  “Did they hurt your family?” Silver boosts him onto the saddle.

  “Naw. My mam sold me to the rent man in lieu of her arrears, and he were gonna trade me to the militia for a few months off dues.”

  “Dues?” Silver settles herself behind Ria.

  “Every Mercian household pays Luther monthly dues.” Ria commands Fitch to walk on. “It’s protection money. If you don’t want to get your home burgled, or your daughters raped, you’d better cough up the coin.”

  “That’s extortion.”

  “That’s Luther’s way.”

  The next half hour passes in silent contemplation of that sobering thought, with Carmen and Ria both feeling lucky to be born Londoners. It also adds a sense of urgency, with both women desperately eager to be home and safe.

  By the time they reach what must surely be the halfway point of their passage through the Angau, the sad reminders of harsh Mercian life are becoming more frequent—as Carmen warned they would. Ribbons of all colors are stretched out from tree to tree, criss-crossing one another, wrapped around one another, woven under and over the paths other lonely souls have traveled before.

  Red.

  Green.

  Blue.

  Orange.

  Purple.

  A rainbow of color in a sea of trees.

  The stench of decomposition is faint, but pervasive. Each one of them smells it, but no-one wants to acknowledge it.

  “Why here?” Silver asks at last. “Of all places, why this forest?”

  “It’s peaceful.” Ria admires the untamed beauty of it, which would be serene, were it not tainted by death.

  “Listen.” Oliver cocks his head. “There ain’t even no birds.”

  He’s right. The forest is eerily quiet, and stays that way until the soft babble of running water becomes audible.

  “Follow that sound,” Carmen instructs them, steering her stallion off the trail.

  “I thought you said to stay on the path?” Silver holds Fitch back.

  “This river flows straight to the edge of the Angau—it’s quicker.”

  “How do you know? We’v
e past three or four different water sources since we entered the forest.”

  “I came in this way.” Carmen points to a large tree on which the letter ‘C’ is carved into the bark. “I know exactly where it goes.”

  Somewhat apprehensively—and much to Ria’s mounting unease—Silver persuades Fitch to fall in behind Carmen’s horse, heading deeper into the artificial twilight. The further they go, the worse the smell gets, and not a hundred yards in, something cracks beneath one of Fitch’s hooves.

  A human skull.

  The crunch of the shattering cranium echoes like a gunshot in the silence of the Angau, and the more attention Silver pays to the forest floor, the more scattered human skeletal remains she finds.

  This is starting to look frighteningly familiar.

  It reminds her of a similar—though much smaller—forest in Amaranthe’s Fringe District. It’s dense, treacherous, and it’s been used as a body drop for decades. Populated by a colony of feral humans who eat raw meat—fresh or rotting, they’re not fussy—and walk on all-fours, communicating through a series of intricate grunts and squeaks, the place is best avoided at all costs. Silver half expects to see one of these Lurkers spying on them from the darkness of the Angau, but none emerge.

  Small mercies.

  Further still and there’s evidence of more despair and troubled thoughts. An Authenticard has been nailed to the trunk of a tree where yet another ribbon has been tied. Beside it, there’s a handwritten note: Don’t come looking for me.

  This man, who entered the forest with uncertain intentions, clearly found clarity at the end of his ribbon and forged onward, deeper into the gloom. Silver can’t help but wonder where his body lies now, and if it’s hanging from a tree, or slumped by the roots.

  Silver and Ria duck to avoid a noose left dangling from a branch, the rope cut.

  “Do people come to remove the bodies?” Silver wonders aloud.

  “Sometimes.” Oliver twists his torso to look at her. “If they has any family left who ent been killed or kidnapped by the militia, and if they’s can even find the one they’s looking for when they do.”

  Another tragic thought.

  Loved ones traipsing aimlessly through this unsympathetic landscape, looking for something horrifically recognizable.

  While Ria closes her eyes and tries to focus on the warmth of Silver’s body, the now familiar peachy scent of her skin, and her steady, strong heartbeat, Silver finds herself scanning their surroundings, absorbing every little detail.

  Personal belongings are scattered all around: items of clothing; shoes; empty liquor bottles; backpacks; and collapsed tents, disintegrating with age. For some people, the search for answers must take days. Weeks even. There are tubes of toothpaste, food wrappers, and empty water bottles littered everywhere.

  Books.

  Magazines.

  Hairbrushes.

  Makeup.

  While the different fragments of life are innumerous and varied, the relics of death are all too alike. Hanging seems to be the method of choice. There are nooses suspended from branches, some cut, others not. There are coils of rope lying on the ground, and frayed pieces left behind where they fell after a body was hacked free. More often than not, though, the bodies are left dangling.

  Some of them are partially mummified. Silver eyes one with desiccated skin clinging tight to the top of the skull, the skin around the face dripping downward, as if melted, having drooped there by the force of gravity when the head fell limply forward following death. Others are fresher, the skin green and puffy with bloat, maggots feasting anywhere and everywhere they can get access to the meat.

  There seems to be very little predation, which goes hand in hand with the lack of animal life anywhere in the Angau. Corpses aren’t touched by anything more than feasting bugs and the occasional rat.

  Now and then, Silver spots a body lying on the ground. One such body—that of a middle-aged man with a balding head and mutton chop jowls—is in a seated position, leaning against a tree, a bottle of water still clutched in his right hand.

  Did he swallow pills? Silver hopes not. It can be difficult way to die. All too often, death doesn’t come smoothly. The person might end up incapacitated, and it can take days for the body to finally succumb. In this case, that’s days of sitting on a damp forest floor, immobile, suffering, and alone, with no hope of rescue.

  A small patch of crusty, chunky, congealed vomit beside the body is perhaps evidence of a failed attempt to expel the stomach contents. Did he change his mind at the last moment? Did he want to live? Too late.

  Silver’s stomach turns.

  She blames her pregnancy.

  Woozy and thirsty, she’s relieved when Carmen suggests they stop to let the horses drink, and to eat some of the rations given to them by Memina—if they have the stomach for it.

  Oliver doesn’t. Carmen tries. Ria picks at half a sandwich, but ends up donating it to Silver, who’s the only one able to properly get anything down.

  While taking a much needed gulp of water from a canteen in her saddlebag, she feels something break beneath one of her boots. Lifting her foot, she finds a woman’s compact mirror hidden under a layer of leaves and picks it up, a large fracture now running through the middle of it, warping her reflection.

  The woman who last looked in it must’ve seen her own reflection the same way: distorted. Only it wasn’t the mirror that was broken, it was something in her mind, causing her to see imperfections where there were none. Did she shed tears? Was she frightened? Did she have doubts as the noose was tightening around her neck?

  Ria peels Silver’s fingers away from the mirror and closes it up, shaking her head. “Don’t think about it, milaya. No good will come.” She places the mirror at the foot of a nearby tree, next to a woman’s umbrella.

  “What did you just call me?” Silver asks, trying to distract herself. “You could be calling me all sorts of names, and I’d never know.”

  “You’re safe this time,” Ria warrants. “I called you ‘darling’.”

  “What’s ‘love’?”

  Ria’s heart flutters.

  Eto, she thinks. This.

  Instead, she says, “The noun? Or the verb?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Uh-huh. If you want to say something like ‘this is love’, you’d say eto lyubov’. If you want to say ‘I love you’, you’d say”—she hesitates, catching her breath, wondering if Silver will recognize its familiarity—“ya tebya lyublyu.”

  But not here, her mind screams. Please, not here. A suicide forest is not the place for a love confession. Especially not in the presence of a Mercian.

  No need to fret, though. Whether one was about to come or not, she’ll never know. A few feet away, Carmen stumbles over a skeleton while looking for a place to pee, and she shrieks like a terrified mouse.

  The bones are completely intact, still encased in clothing: kicksies, corset, and high heels. Like the rotting man, this woman is on the forest floor, lying supine, her hands resting on her stomach. Her clothes are covered with dried blood, which appears to have emanated from her wrists, and a blood-encrusted razorblade is still pinched between the fingers of her left hand.

  If it were possible to see beneath her clothing, and if you knew what you were looking for, you’d find a collection of tiny, fragile bones lying on the ground directly beneath her abdominal cavity.

  A fetus.

  The reason for her woodland venture.

  Carmen looks away.

  The possessions left behind are almost as heart wrenching as the corpses themselves, and they tell stories of loss all on their own.

  Photographs. Deceased loves ones maybe?

  Dolls and teddy bears. Parents grieving dead children?

  There’s a fresh bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates placed beneath a cut noose. An ‘I Miss You’ card is blown across the forest floor, carried on a wave of leaves by the wind.

  There are many more Authenticar
ds nailed to tree trunks and branches, along with suicide notes and morbid poetry which are either scrawled on whatever the person had to hand, or carved into the trees.

  Disturbingly, Silver realizes, many of the hanged corpses have their feet touching the ground. They must’ve been determined to die. Hanging by a sharp drop is one thing—if the neck breaks, it’s quick and relatively painless—but to hang yourself at ground level …

  Silver shudders. To slip a noose around your neck, tighten it, and let your body rock forward so that your own weight is the only thing putting pressure on your throat must be a terrible way to die.

  It hurts.

  It’s unpleasant.

  It’s protracted.

  It can take minutes to pass out, and much longer for death to occur.

  Perhaps, for some, there’s simply no other choice. If you’re not athletic enough to climb a tree, you don’t have the stomach to slit your wrists, and you don’t want to risk taking pills and having the attempt fail, then a slow, painful death is your only option.

  Unless you have a gun.

  Shooting yourself in the face is pretty final.

  They ride on anyway, and nearing the edge of the Angau, daylight growing slowly brighter, Silver’s shoulder brushes up against a fresh corpse that’s swaying from a tree branch. It’s not discolored and it doesn’t smell, and the reason for that soon becomes obvious.

  It twitches.

  It’s only a postmortem twitch, though. Nerve impulses are still firing intermittently, the cells dying. As they pass by, his bladder releases, urine trickling down his leg. His bowels will follow shortly, and blood will pool in his penis, giving him an erection. He may even ejaculate.

  Since the bacteria in his gut are still very much alive, Silver’s not spooked when his stomach rumbles—she’s heard that before. On more than one occasion, she’s listened to the ghostly echoes of life coming from a dead Chimera’s belly. She’s also heard them gurgle, grunt, and squeak when rigor sets in and air is forced out through the trachea.