“You already can’t sleep during long nights, want more trouble?” Elsa asked, turning to Jahlil. “And I do know stories. If you wanted me to scare you, I would have done so ages ago. With great pleasure.”
“It’s just the Shaed,” Jahlil said with a grimace. “It’s too far to bother me here. Learning about the Shaed doesn’t scare me. What bothers me in Chaya are stories of daemons and vampires that sleep in our roads and sewers. The things that are close. Close enough to be real.”
“Well most of those creatures are right here in the forest,” I said. “And we’ll have to get through them to get to my sisters. I turned around to continue following Nikhil. He was only partly listening, paying more attention to the forest. I wasn’t sure if the noises or the trail meant anything to him. I kept a look out for footprints, but there was no sign of anything but animals. If my sisters had ventured this far, they wouldn’t be able to get back to Chaya on their own, even if they managed to escape somehow. They wouldn’t be scared, or at least not as scared as you would expect children of that age to be. Brave wasn’t the right way to describe it. Anasahara are analytical. We have minds and eyes that are always penetrating the world around us—not minds that succumb easily to fright or shock.
“Don’t remind me,” Mawlik muttered. “I’m already regretting following you here. Should have left it to the King’s Guard.”
The quirks of the forest became more visible as we moved along. Single leaves floated left and right in the windless air. The rain had changed shades, going from clear to a dark blue, almost berry-like color. As we walked deeper, there were even flakes of snow. They fell softly in the heat of the summer, and then melted instantly after touching the floor. We were already farther than I had ever been. Relatively speaking, this was still near the outer edge of the woods. You could cut around this to make it to Jidarth in a few days and avoid most of the marsh. Father always spoke of clearing a path straight to Jidarth, but no worker would ever chop down a tree from the Dwah Forest. Deeper in, there were places just as cursed as the Shaed.
“Look,” Nikhil whispered. He pointed ahead. We were walking up a hill. Before we could follow him to the top, he signaled for us to crouch. We did, and then slowly moved in his direction. I held my breath, hoping unreasonably that maybe it was my sisters.
The hilltop led to a raised plateau, and at the middle of it, there was a black swan. We were well hidden in the dark, and all of us were crouching below the edge of the hilltop, but the bird was still looking straight in our direction. It didn’t look right at us; instead, it stared into the space above us. It tilted its head, but otherwise remained perfectly still.
“Stop breathing so loud,” Elsa whispered to Mawlik and Jahlil. They both held their breaths, but then exhaled even louder several seconds later.
“It’s a black swan,” Mawlik finally said.
“Is it?” I asked. “It has four legs. Could be a deer.”
“Maybe a table,” Elsa offered from ahead of us.
“You know what I mean,” Mawlik grumbled. “Just surprised. They’re rare. This is the first time I’ve seen one. Never knew there were some in the Dwah Forest.”
“Maybe there aren’t,” Elsa said. “Maybe it’s lost like us. Or just here because of the blue moon.”
“They give good luck,” Jahlil interjected. “Or was it bad luck? Can’t remember actually. It’s one or the other. Father Clairmont mentioned it. An omen for death. Or… maybe an omen for riches.”
“That’s just superstition,” I said. “In Panbin they believe black swans signal luck and the coming of wealth. If you count catching one and selling it, then maybe. Otherwise, it’s superstition. But they are venomous, so best to stay careful. Not the safest of creatures to handle. Don’t get near its mouth and don’t touch its spit. They’re more aggressive when they sleep so we should be fine now.”
“When they sleep?” Elsa asked.
“When they’re sleepy, I mean,” I said. “Just before dawn.”
The swan opened its beak, the two ends splitting to an almost vertical position, and then made a loud screeching noise that echoed into the forest. Its tongue rolled around from the end of its mouth, outside of its beak, like the tail-end of an animal that had gotten stuck down its throat. Its teeth were sharp blades, flat like a razor, with indented points all around. Saliva dropped from the bottom of its jaws, turning into a white smoke when it touched the floor of the forest. Only when the creature opened its mouth could you tell it might be dangerous. Otherwise, it looked like a bird you might see right in the palace gardens. Four thin legs led into a body the size of a small horse, with two four-foot long wings that were as sleek and graceful as an eagle’s. Its neck was longer than a white swan’s, almost the length of its wings, and it had two bulging, elliptical eyes, wide enough to fit two bronze marks side by side.
The creature turned left and began barreling away into the forest, its wings flapping wildly at its sides. It looked like it was trying to take flight, but it only hovered a few feet above the ground before disappearing into the forest.
“That was strange,” I said. “Think it saw us?”
“Not sure, but if it did, it couldn’t have thought we were dangerous,” Elsa said.
“I mean, we might be small, but there are five of us,” Mawlik remarked.
“What if it went to get more?” Jahlil asked. “Think I’d rather face a vampire than a flock of those. Did you see its teeth? They looked like iron screws. Flat for crunching but still sharp at the edges. They’d turn our bones into sand.” He imitated a shiver as we climbed up to the plateau.
“We’re going in that direction,” Nikhil said.
“What? We’re following the swan?” Mawlik asked. He took a step forward, peering into the direction the swan had gone. “There must be better ways to die than that. The witch will give it to us quick.”
“We have no choice,” Nikhil said
“My siblings are that way?” I asked.
Nikhil bobbed his head before carefully leading the way to where the swan had gone.
“Are you certain?” Mawlik asked. “It could be a swan that smells like Dina.”
“Oh come on,” Elsa intoned, shoving both Jahlil and Mawlik forward. “With Queen’s Guard like the two of you, it’ll be a wonder if Chaya lasts more than a fortnight when Dina takes the throne.”
The swan had disappeared ahead of us, but it was easy to follow its path. It had left a trail of broken twigs and trampled leaves, and long, sinuous footsteps wherever it ran. It wasn’t until we were several minutes into its trail that Nikhil broke off in another direction. We sped up our pace, but kept walking in measured footsteps to make as little noise as possible. We were losing sunlight quickly, and under thicker parts of the canopy, it was already entirely dark. The moon looked brighter in contrast, but the details of the forest disappeared under its light. The shapes of branches or the footprints of animals turned into vague, colorless lines, void of form.
“I wish we’d talk more about Saythana and the history of the continents,” Jahlil whispered to no one in particular as we walked down a second hill. There were no oaks here, but the forest was denser, and filled with smaller, leafless trees. Several had grown so close together that their branches were tangled into wooden knots.
“Can’t say I disagree,” Nikhil said. “Mother is fond of stories of the prophet.” He paused at an opening in the trees, sniffed the air to make sure we were heading in the right direction, then continued, “When she first met Saythana, it was a violet night. I think we’re supposed to get one this decade. You know, when the blue moon overlaps with the red.”
I was watching the forest intently. It took several seconds for what he said to register in my mind.
“What?” I suddenly asked, louder than I had intended. Mawlik quickly hushed me.
“Saythana and the prophet Dh’hpur,” Nikhil said, also whispering now.
“And what happened?” I asked. “I only know she traded her soul to
him to save her people. I never heard a tale about their first meeting.”
“Dh’hpur didn’t give her soul up right away,” Nikhil said. “She tried to escape Saythana many times. She was always willing to give anything up to save her people, but Saythana was her last resort. That’s why there was so much good that came out of what she did. Discovering the new continent and bringing Raathism to the world. If she had sought out Saythana for selfish reasons, there would have been only death and destruction that followed in her wake. Like all the other times he’s come to our world. It’s why my mother likes her so much. Says she represents the highest of all virtues, sacrificing herself to a daemon to save the lives of her people and bring to them the religion of the new gods. We have one of her songs hanging right next to our statue of Yuweh in the cove.”
“How did she escape the first time?” I asked. I stopped paying attention to my feet, almost tripping on a branch on the floor. Jahlil helped me back up. It might seem unnatural for me to lose sense of the world like that, but it was more common than you’d imagine. Taa explained it as fatigue. When you try to see so much of the world all the time, your sight becomes tired. And when the rest of your mind suddenly moves its attention to something else, it tries to fall asleep without you realizing it, hoping you’re too distracted to notice.
“They met at the top of a cliff,” Nikhil said, holding one finger up. “Or a mountain, not sure. But above a jungle. The Mansasi Jungle in the old continent. The Man Eater Jungle. That’s what they call it now.”
“I know. Taa brings some of her plants from there.”
Jahlil continued the story in the best daemon voice he could do—a dry, croaky one that sounded like my father when he inhaled too much heelet tar. “Give me your soul, Dh’hpur, and I’ll wreak destruction upon your enemies, bring iron rain to those who might harm your people, summon the fires from the bowels of hell on—” His voice grew more hoarse as he spoke, and he eventually broke into a cough. Elsa rubbed his back while Mawlik tried to hush him quiet.
“But Dh’hpur said no,” Nikhil continued. “Saythana asked for her to come closer, to taste the flesh of her shoulders right then and there. He told her there was only death for her and her people without his help.”
“But Dh’hpur knew better,” Jahlil said proudly, recovering from his coughing fit. “She told Saythana, I don’t fear death, and she jumped from the top of the cliff. All the gods were watching the meeting intently. Raya, so proud of one of her own daughters, called on the wind to carry Dh’hpur to safety.”
I laughed, loud enough to earn a nudge from Elsa, then lowered my voice to a whisper. “If Dh’hpur had to end up giving her soul to the Dream Weaver anyway, then it didn’t matter much, did it? Raya couldn’t save her people. Only Saythana could.”
“Don’t say that,” Mawlik said, looking around nervously.
Jahlil and I both turned to him.
“Let’s stay in the gods’ favors, at least for today,” he pleaded, continuing to eye the forest uncomfortably.
“Just saying,” I muttered, this time to myself. I thought my argument sound, but he was right. It was best to stay in the favor of the gods for today.
“Well, that’s not entirely true,” Nikhil said. “Saythana looks for those of the purest of hearts, and corrupts them. The destruction around the world that follows reflects the corruption of the person Saythana chooses. But Dh’hpur died with a pure heart, uncorrupted, and so her sacrifice brought peace and tranquility to the land, safety to her people. Not the kind of death and ruin that always follows from his arrival.”
“Wait,” Mawlik interrupted, pulling his hand back and throwing up a fist.
Nikhil blinked slowly.
“Not your story,” Mawlik said. “That.”
We all paused for several seconds, looking around the forest. I would have been both surprised and impressed if he had seen something I missed, but it wasn’t something that he saw.
“What?” both Elsa and Jahlil whispered.
“That!” Mawlik said with a thin smile. “Listen. Listen carefully.” He pointed to the sky, and then gestured in the direction we were originally heading. “You don’t hear it?”
“I hear it,” I said, just now catching the faint murmurings of a rhythm. It was low, but if you caught a few notes, it was easy to follow the rest.
One by one, Elsa, Nikhil, and Jahlil each went from shaking their heads to widening their eyes and tilting their heads down to listen.
“I hear it,” Elsa said. “The drums. The flutes. Somewhere far, but loud.”
“Come on,” Nikhil said, hurrying down deeper into the forest. “It’s coming from the direction I wanted to go. I think Dina’s sisters are there. At the same place the music is coming from.”
There were moments when we had to stop running as fast as we could. When the forest became so dense that we had to find a way around a block of trees or a thicket of bushes by using a detour. As we came closer, I also caught the sounds of other instruments. Not just flutes and drums, but light strings, and different objects being banged together in rhythm with the rest of the melody. The louder the music, the more unsettled I became, trying to imagine what it could have to do with my sisters. I tried to think of every daemon one of the priests or nuns had mentioned in the Cathedral that had to do with music. None that were significant came to mind, but for a brief moment, I could recall my dream. Saythana, and his singing, and his voice—it all came to feel real, and I could almost hear his singing in the distance. The melody, the hum, the thrill of it. The sound of it over the music of the forest. The accents of it over the noises of the trees.
The canopy began thinning. We ran faster, and the music beat louder. I tried to remember Saythana’s song, the poem I had written sung in his own tongue, but it came back as a blank. The harder I strained to remember, the more the memory faded. After a hundred steps, it was almost entirely gone.
Night had fallen by the time we were close to the music. I was beginning to feel its thumps and bangs right through the floor and air. The sounds rattled off my skin like cold sweat, spreading in a wild way through the forest air. The light of the blue moon began rising to its high point, returning the details of the trees whenever it shined through the canopy. It wouldn’t peak until midnight, but it would get brighter every passing minute until then. My legs weren’t tired, but my feet stung with pain after breaking through at least two-dozen branches.
The five of us clumped up as closely as possible, eyes and ears alert for signs of movement. Now that nightfall was here, it wouldn’t be long before the real animals of the forest would wake. The blue moon would draw them out from under the earth, from stone tombs and fires, from the holes and cracks in giant oaks and broken tree trunks. I kept a bottle of holy water in my hand. Mawlik and Jahlil did the same, opening the caps of theirs and using their thumbs to keep the water from spilling. Nikhil gripped his sword tightly, resting it behind his left shoulder. It would have been dangerous to walk behind him, but the blade was too high up to reach me. Elsa said a silent prayer. I could always tell when she was praying, even if she wasn’t doing it aloud. Her eyes looked down absentmindedly and her lips would move in small quivers, like she was having an intense argument with herself.
There was chanting. You couldn’t hear it until you were close to the music—close enough to distinguish it from the instruments and whistles and bellows. Not just yelling or screaming, but the rhythmic and patterned sounds of a ritual in progress. It sounded crude and bizarre, the kind of feral elegy that Mother Mendhi spoke about in old tales, used to summon spirits and creatures of the nether. There were jungle sounds and animal noises and trees rustling without wind, as though the very forest had come alive to watch the ceremony. The rain fell harder here. Without a thicker canopy to hold it back, it drenched our clothes and hair, and made it harder to see past a few feet ahead of us.
We came upon a second hill. This one went far higher than the first, stretching to at least the height of the palac
e’s clock tower. The music was coming from just beyond it. The area around us curved upward toward the hill, and then it descended back down into a small valley. There were no roads in the woods, but if I were to guess at the layout of the forest, I would say that all the paths nearby led to this point. The soil here was thicker, much more compact. Even in the rain, you could tell it had been unturned for far longer than the ground we had already covered. I saw oaks again, but they looked brittle. Thin and spindly, as though someone had sharpened their trunks and hollowed out their insides.
“They’re this way,” Nikhil said, shouting to speak over the music. “They must be beyond the hill.”
We climbed as fast as we could to the top, but the rain had made the floor slippery. We could barely cross a few feet every minute. Even the stones and boulders along the way were too wet to get a good grip on. We crawled on all fours when the ground leaned too vertically, and slid across the soil with our knees when our hands could hold something steady. We slowed down near the peak. Nikhil ushered for us to stay low while he made his way to look beyond. There was a fire lit somewhere past the hill, lighting the forest outside the edges of the valley. Something else caught my attention just before Nikhil made it to the top.
There was a boy already there, several feet to the left of us, looking down blankly at the valley beyond. I turned to Mawlik and Elsa, who both shrugged with confused expressions and then nudged Nikhil to go toward him. I held a finger out, signaling that I would go myself.
“It could be a daemon,” Mawlik said, pulling me back by the elbow. He gave me a knowing stare. “Don’t just walk to him on your own. Let Nikhil or Jahlil go.” He tried to speak just loud enough to be heard over the music, but low enough to keep the boy from hearing us.
I glanced toward the boy. He had a disheveled appearance. A torn shirt, pants with burn marks, and a purple sash with rips around his waist. His hair was shaved low on one side, and grew long on the other. It looked done too neatly to have been by accident, but it added to the disarray of his appearance. The corners of his face were ashen and he looked like he hadn’t eaten in days. There were cuts behind his ears, and small lacerations running down his right arm. He sat on his hands, and his feet were swinging idly just beyond the top of the hill.
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