She entered the forest away from the clear path in which the tracks lay. Wavering leaves from the low-lying growth tickled her legs as she stalked among the trees, looking for a decent spot to sleep for the night. Within a few minutes, she discovered a sheltered area surrounded by tall plants on a nice patch of elevated ground that appeared unlikely to suffer a washout if a sudden heavy rain started. At a guess, she figured she had an hour and a half of daylight left. A wave of fear hit her, but no matter what she wanted, she couldn’t possibly get home before it got dark at this point. She’d walked too far away. She could only help Dad if she remained alive, so she decided to use the last bits of sun for self-care.
The rifle weighed so much she unloaded it first, letting out a groan of relief after leaning it against a tree trunk. Another grateful breath followed her unburdening herself of the backpack. Wisp left the canteens behind as well, keeping only the pistol and knife. Without all the stuff on her back, a second wave of energy hit her that made it seem possible to walk for another ten hours, but she dare not travel in the dark. She foraged until she located a spread of purslane. The area had some mushrooms as well, but they all had gills. Since she didn’t recognize them, she heeded Dad’s warning to avoid gilled mushrooms.
“If you don’t know what it is, don’t eat plants with milky sap, spines, tiny hairs, or thorns. Avoid plants with seeds in pods, or that taste bitter.” She scrunched up her nose. Dad had told her never to eat any plant that smelled like almonds, but she had no idea what an almond was, or smelled like. “Or anything with three-bladed leaves.”
A few minutes’ more hunting yielded some wild raspberries.
Neither the purslane nor the raspberries required cooking, which simplified things. She returned to her campsite with her dinner, set it on the backpack, and walked off into the woods, downhill, to find a spot to release the bad water. While watching the rivulet make its way off along the ground, she thought about how on their trip to the Jeep place, Dad hadn’t squatted when he let out the bad water. Maybe because he wore those ‘jeans’ as he called them. But she didn’t understand how he could get the bad water to go straight out in front like that. Even if she wore jeans (assuming such a thing existed small enough for her) she’d wind up making a huge, disgusting mess if she tried that.
Wisp sighed and wandered back to her stuff. She had far worse things to worry about than whatever magic Dad used to control his water.
She sat, munching on fistfuls of purslane and raspberries as the last vestiges of daylight gave way to the moon. Without the blanket-shrouded Haven, the night, even in summer, took on an uncomfortable chill. Wisp dug the blanket out of her pack and curled up under it, using the lumpy backpack as a pillow. She snugged the fabric to her chin, only her face exposed to the world.
Every snap or soft thud made her jump and stare in the direction it came from.
Her hands mushed into her chin; her whole body trembled. Without the Haven, the Tree Walkers could get her. She had nowhere to go. Mother’s annoyance had so rattled her that she hadn’t even thought about what she’d do at night when she ran out the door. Here she sat, with only a thin blanket between her and danger.
The blanket wouldn’t protect her.
Dad said the guns wouldn’t hurt the Tree Walkers.
Would the knife? She thought about it. Of course, roots and vines… a bullet would sail right through the tangle without doing much. The knife could slash and break. Wisp pulled her knife from its sheath and clutched it in two hands under the blanket. She refused to let the Tree Walkers take her without a fight.
Wisp shrank in on herself, peering over her blanket-covered knees at the darkness, begging morning to hurry up and get there. At every tiny noise, she twitched. Her mind played tricks, making each shadow turn into an approaching Tree Walker. She dare not scream, or even breathe too loud. Remembering Dad’s instruction to make her shape as not-person as possible when trying to hide, she lay flatter.
Mother, please protect me.
She closed her eyes and tried to believe that since she had been commanded to go find Dad, Mother would extend the protection of the Haven to her wherever she went.
She wouldn’t have sent me out after Dad if I’d get caught by the Tree Walkers.
Right?
Shivering, but not from the cold, she hunkered down and prayed to Mother.
Trail’s End
-12-
A heavy snap startled Wisp awake.
She jumped, dropping the knife in her lap and flailing at the blanket.
Five feet away, a huge buck froze stone still.
Wisp locked stares with it, her barely-awake brain unable to understand what kind of monster looked back at her.
When it clicked that something huge and alive had spotted her, she screamed.
The deer whirled about and took off into the woods, crashing through the understory and tearing branches off taller shrubs.
Gasping for breath, Wisp pressed herself against the tree, a hand to her chest, not moving until the rapid thumping of a running deer no longer reached her ears. She rubbed her hands over her face, yawned, then rolled onto her side, moaning at being stiff and sore.
“Ugh… just a deer.”
Tempting as meat could be, she decided against tracking it down since it had run away so fast, and she couldn’t possibly use all the meat nor even manage to get it home. I’ll only shoot a deer or boar if I’m starving. It’s wrong to waste it. If she did reach that point though, she planned to camp by the remains until she either ate them all or the meat rotted beyond being edible.
As soon as Wisp stood, a certain urgency struck her. She again walked away from her campsite, gathered a bunch of broad leaves, and found a spot to make ngh. There, she used the knife to dig a hole. Minutes later, with the evidence buried, she grabbed more purslane and raspberries for a hasty breakfast, and slugged down water from her canteen.
After pulling all her gear back on, she made her way again to the tracks and continued following them (hopefully) to Dad. She sipped from the canteen on and off over the next few hours, snagging more purslane and some creeping Oregon grapes to munch on the way. The bitterness made her cringe with each bite, but she could grab easy handfuls of them and they’d keep her fed.
The sun crept by overhead, worrying her with how much time passed and still no sign of Dad. About an hour past midday, walking grew easier, like she traveled along a slight downhill slope. The angle of the trees around her confirmed it. She followed the tracks as they swerved to the right around a dense cluster of pines. The trail looped back to the left on the other side, snaking past a boulder before veering off to the right again and disappearing entirely about thirty feet away where the ground became hard and rocky.
“No…” She looked around, but couldn’t find any more tracks. “The monster didn’t disappear. Did it fly away?” Her eyes widened. A heavy beast that could fly meant only one thing―dragon. “Eep!”
She ran to hide in the boulder’s shadow, staring up past the trees at the clouds. Over the course of several minutes, she spotted nothing bigger than a hawk gliding overhead. And though she felt like a mouse, the bird had no interest in her. With each passing minute, the idea of dragons drifted from terrifying to unlikely to dumb. A dragon couldn’t be here since they’d all destroyed themselves when they lit the world on fire.
How did people make dragons? She scrunched up her nose. Magic?
Flailing her arms, Wisp tried and failed to stand against the weight of all her gear. She grabbed the boulder and pulled herself upright. Mother wouldn’t tell me to go if I couldn’t do anything. I’m giving up too easy.
She walked to the place where the tracks stopped, and crouched. The ground, peppered with rocks, appeared too hard for whatever monster made the trail to disturb it. It had to go this way, but left no tracks in the dense, rocky soil. Wisp spun in place, staring out at the forest in all directions, but found no sign of any continuing trail. She shrugged the rifle off her shoulder and
tried with the scope, but other than a black bear and two cubs way off to the northwest, she saw nothing but trees.
“There has to be more tracks somewhere.”
Wary of danger, she carried the rifle despite its weight, and proceeded to walk out in an expanding spiral pattern from the end of the trail, scanning the ground for more tracks, blood splats, or some sign of which way the monster had taken Dad. She wasted over an hour before getting frustrated to the point of growling and drawing her foot back to kick a tree in a fit of rage.
She stopped herself before breaking a toe, and stood in place silently seething with shaking, clenched fists. “It’s not fair! Why did you take Dad away?! I don’t want to be alone.”
The echo of her voice faded in a few seconds, and she felt silly for shouting, which only made her angrier. Mother had trusted her to do this, and she’d done it wrong. She failed as a tracker, and she’d never see Dad again.
The dragons destroyed themselves.
At Dad’s voice in her mind, the anger building inside her burst into a great upwelling of sorrow. She shuddered, mouth open, silent tears running down her face.
But Mother still didn’t speak to her.
Before the explosion of sobbing started, she closed her mouth and collected herself. If she’d been bad, surely, Mother would’ve yelled, or told her to come home. Mother sent me. I can find Dad.
She hurried back to the boulder, which came up to her shoulders, and climbed on top of it. Looking down the length of the trail back the way she’d come, then to the left where it disappeared gave her a sense of direction. The monster that took Dad had been heading generally to the east. Not seeing any tracks here didn’t prove she’d never find any.
After taking note of a few distinctive trees and another huge rock in the distance that lined up with the trail, she climbed down and resumed walking. Without a rut to walk in, she moved at a more cautious pace, splitting her attention between the ground, her immediate surroundings, and distant landmarks.
The downward incline of the terrain increased. An hour past the boulder, she reached the edge of a drop off with a hill so steep it qualified as a cliff, studded with green vines and protruding roots. Gazing at a potential fall many times the height of her cabin caused an unpleasant sensation like a spirit had stuck its hand inside her to tickle the bottom of her stomach.
I bet the monster probably started flying here. If it jumped or tripped, it would’ve made a big hole at the bottom.
Wisp turned her back to the slope, crouched, and lowered herself over the edge before making her way down at a careful pace, hunting for roots to grab or step on so she didn’t slip and go tumbling. Wherever she encountered soft dirt, she stabbed her feet into the ground like knives, clutching soil between her toes.
At the bottom, she dusted herself off and turned her gaze out over relatively flat ground with thinner trees and less underbrush. Since no obvious signs of which way to go presented themselves, she decided to rest there for a little while, staring off into the forest. Eventually, guilt overpowered tired, and she resumed walking while gazing upward at the sky. The sun gave her an approximate idea of east, so she followed it, walking in as straight a line as she could manage until the sky dimmed with evening.
Within a few minutes of her making the decision to stop for the night, she caught sight of a large, sleeping monster up ahead.
Silent, she dropped to one knee, taking cover behind a huge pine. She lifted the rifle to her shoulder and put her eye to the scope while aiming at the form lurking in the weeds. The front grille of a long-dead car filled the crosshairs.
“I’m being dumb.” Wisp sighed and pushed herself back up to stand. “It’s not a monster. It’s a hunk of metal.”
Curious, she approached the car, keeping her rifle poised in case something less friendly than a rusting vehicle lived nearby. This car didn’t have the huge tires like the Jeep, only bare metal wheels. It seemed hardly possible for it to have ever moved on those. Some parts of the body had turned brown with rust while others remained dark green. Cracks crisscrossed the big window in front, but none of the glass had broken completely. She approached and tugged at the handle. The door pulled out a little, but stuck. A harder yank got it open, releasing a musty, damp stink.
She cringed, but after the initial blast, decided Mother’s shrine had a stronger (and worse) smell. Small beetles and other insects crawled around the bottom, a few on the seats, which bore a lush spread of mold.
Wisp frowned. She’d considered sheltering inside it, but Dad once said something about breathing near mold being bad. She slammed the door (shattering the window into a rain of tiny sparkling bits) and walked for a little while more until she found a spot where clover and chicory grew in abundance. The forest appeared the same in all directions, with no particularly great shelter or high ground available.
With a shrug, she set the backpack down by a tree and proceeded to collect a meal’s worth of chicory and clover. Dad once said something significant about clovers with four leaves, but she didn’t spot any, nor could she remembered what made them special. While gathering plants, she happened upon a huge, rotten log. That got her stomach growling, so after she carried the greens over to the backpack, she ran to the log and smacked it with the butt end of the rifle until a piece came off.
After breaking off a couple sections of rotting wood, she found what she’d hoped for: grubs. She collected a handful of the squirming critters and carried them back to her temporary nest. They tried to crawl off while she dug the deeper pot from the backpack, but none were fast enough to avoid being caught again.
She hunted down a branch, which she split into sharpened skewers with the knife. Next, she cleared away a spot for a fire. The area offered little in the way of non-live wood, so she took some pieces of the rotten log and used kindling from her pack. A few scratches of the ferro rod over the file got a fire going. She sat close, nursing the beginning wisps of smoke by waving air over it until the flames grew strong enough to handle the larger hunks of rotting wood. While she waited for the fire to grow, she stuck the grubs on the sticks, forcing their tubular bodies out straight, and whittled a crude rack to hold the skewers over the fire: two Y-shaped branches she jabbed into the dirt on either side of the flames.
By the time the sun went down, Wisp enjoyed a nice meal of fire-roasted grub with chicory and clover, which she ate raw. Sitting and eating let the fatigue of walking all day sneak up on her. Having barely slept her first night away from home, she struggled to stay awake long enough to eat. The once-scary noises of the forest failed to reach her mind. Her eyelids sank closed, popped open, and sank closed again. Chewing became a confounding task.
Wisp barely noticed the half-eaten fourth roasted grub fall onto her chest as she passed out.
Little Thief
-13-
A tickle at her chin woke her early the next morning.
She’d fallen flat on the ground, arms and legs splayed to the side. Something not terribly heavy perched on top of her chest. Wisp angled her head upward―and locked eyes with a raccoon munching on her grub.
“Hey!” she yelled.
The raccoon chittered at her and darted off with the grub in its mouth. She scrambled to her feet and chased, but the small fuzzy blur disappeared among the greenery after less than a minute.
“Grr!” She stomped, snarled, and growled again.
After plodding back to her campsite, she growled a third time. Two empty skewers remained on the rack, proof she’d fallen asleep before she could eat them… and the raccoon had probably feasted upon them first before being brave enough to steal the half-grub that had been laying on top of her.
Wisp made a hasty meal of the remaining clover she’d gathered, drank about a quarter of a canteen’s worth of water in one long series of gulps, and gasped for breath. Still trusting Mother’s help, she repacked her stuff, deciding to keep the Y struts in case she found more grubs, and set off toward the rising sun.
A littl
e over two hours into her walk, she stepped in bear ngh, and almost tripped over a root while scrambling to get away from the pile. Balancing on her left leg, she examined the brown smear mushed between her toes and over most of her sole, snarling again before scraping her foot on the ground as well as a nearby swath of greenery. She swung the rifle off her shoulder and carried it, giving serious thought to having bear for dinner that day―if she could find one.
At least it didn’t stink quite as bad as Dad’s.
“Am I going the wrong way, Mother?” asked Wisp.
Between the raccoon stealing her food and stepping in nasty, it sure felt like someone or something tried to send her a message. Dad had been pretty clear when he said Mother would speak if she ever thought her a bad girl. But, did that mean she had to be nearby? Could someone in the Other Place talk to people regardless of far they’d gone from a shrine?
Close to midday, she encountered another steep hill, this one upward and not too big, perhaps only twice her height. Wisp pushed past the weeds and plant growth, climbing up to a strange metal barrier. The odd fence only stood as tall as her hips, though it had many posts in the ground, suggesting it could withstand a lot of force. The purpose of such a squat barrier baffled her, since even a girl her size could get over it with ease. It ran along the edge of a flat rock-like surface that stretched into a long ribbon. Small weeds sprouted up from thousands of cracks in the surface, crisscrossing the stone path far as she could see before it vanished among the trees. Some of her books had mentioned ‘roads,’ and this place did resemble the pictures on a cover or two. She pulled herself up and over the barrier, testing the hard ground with a few toes before putting weight on it.
The dark stone warmed her foot, but didn’t burn.
Wisp gradually leaned onto that leg until she decided the road would hold her without breaking, then pulled her other leg over the barrier. Based on the sun’s position, she thought the path traveled north-to-south, but the thick trees made getting a good idea of direction iffy. For a minute or three, she spun in circles, staring around in all directions. Eventually, she decided to go straight across the road and deeper into the forest.
The Forest Beyond the Earth Page 10