Eyes of the Woods

by Eden Fierce

  The trunk barreled down, crashing first into treetops, the noise like explosions beneath me. Helplessly, I followed its path. For just a brief moment, I hoped Hopper’s Tree had made a pathway for me, but my fall was broken briefly when I landed on a branch with my ribs. The air was forced from my chest, and I cried out in pain. The collision caused me to flip end over end, changing my trajectory, and my arms and face were sliced and cut by hundreds of smaller branches, my head, hips, and legs beaten relentlessly by the larger ones.

  When I couldn’t imagine being in any more pain, I hit the ground, and a burning began in my back and through to my stomach. I lay there, gasping for air. When I found it, my breath shot from my mouth in quick, white wisps. The burning exploded into full-blown agony. My legs were a mangled mess, bent and pointing in different directions, and I was both glad and terrified that I couldn’t feel either of them. One of the bones had cut the skin on my left forearm, and it was protruding out like a bloody, pale branch.

  “Father!” I screamed as loud as I could. My voice carried through the pines, but it didn’t feel like it lifted high enough to clear the ravine. No one knew where I was, and unless William had been brave enough to tell Father what had happened, I was going to die alone.

  I looked down to see a branch protruding six inches from my belly. I reached down with my one good arm and touched it. My breath faltered, and I began to cry. I had felt for weeks that the day of my betrothal was the end of my life, but I was wrong. It wasn’t the betrothal that would kill me. It was the woods.

  I was a bloody mess of flesh, lying at the bottom of a ravine, and all I could think about was how disappointed my mother would be that the dress she had made for me was ruined. It was hard to tell where the dress ended and the wounds began. I was covered in red silk and my own blood.

  Pinned to the ground, I looked above me. The sky was clear and so far away from the torchlit roads in town, the blackness above seemed to be crowded with stars. Two forms barreling down the path of the ravine caught my attention, and I recognized the nightwalkers who had killed me.

  One last time I cried out for Father, knowing that no one but the nightwalkers would hear. He had always been my protector, and in that moment, alone and bleeding in the dark, his name was the only word my voice could find.

  The earthy smell of the damp forest floor filled my nose, and I coughed. My chin was warm with my own blood, a sign I was hemorrhaging internally. My thoughts went from help and survival to hoping I would lose consciousness before the nightwalkers reached me. I had no way to defend myself, and they would likely revel in stripping my flesh from the bones while they ate me alive.

  And so I waited for death and hoped for a quick one. I let my eyes wander to the sky, the trees of the forest making a perfect frame for the stars. There were millions of them, and I sighed at the beauty of it.

  A tear fell down my temple and into my ear as I heard dead leaves crackle above me. They were here. My pain had just begun.

  “Be still,” a young man’s voice said.

  I looked up to see the same pair of eyes that hovered above my wall.

  “It’ll only hurt for a little while. Just don’t fight it.”

  “Fight what?” I said, my voice sounding like someone else. Someone small. Someone helpless. Someone in fear.

  My head was throbbing, and warm blood mixed with sweat ran into my eyes. I wanted to lift my hand to see how badly my head had been split open, but it didn’t matter. I was going to die.

  “I’m going to save you. But they’re coming,” he said, looking at the creatures now running full speed to our location.

  He was going to spare me. Kill me quickly before the others reached my broken body.

  “Just keep breathing,” he said. “It’ll be over soon.”

  THE YOUNG MAN PUT ONE ARM BENEATH MY NECK, the other beneath my knees, and then pulled me straight up, off the branch that had impaled me.

  I was too weak to scream, instead holding my breath and whimpering. The young man set me down, tender and careful, and then leaned his face close to mine. His lips brushed my cheek.

  He whispered softly into my ear, “I’ll make it stop, Eris. Just hold on.”

  His mouth traveled down my jawline and then in a straight line down my neck, stopping just below and behind my ear.

  He blew a nervous, cold breath, sending a shiver down my broken back, and then his teeth touched my skin. When his short fangs broke the skin, I winced. When he clenched and pierced my neck, my eyes grew wide, my mouth opened, and I gasped.

  After several moments the young man, hesitant but determined, pulled away, licking the wounds he had inflicted on my neck. Then he sat up, watching. My breaths were now shallow and fast. I felt myself dying, falling away into darkness.

  My agony was rewarded with those familiar but sad eyes. “Just a little bit longer,” he begged. He touched my shoulder, and my entire body spasmed. My back arched, and a terrifying scream ripped from my throat.

  An invisible fire traveled through every vein, every nerve of my body. The young nightwalker hadn’t drunk from me. It had bitten me. I was changing. No. No. No! How could this be my fate? Father was right. In a few moments, my throat would be overwhelmed with an insatiable thirst, and I would suffer a fate worse than death, a fate worse than betrothal. I would become a monster.

  “Please, just let me die,” I grunted.

  “I said the same thing. I promise, Eris. It will be okay.”

  I wanted to cry, but the tears did not come. I would never have tears again or see my family. I would be the hated. The hunted. Roaming the woods with these killers, my family of nightwalkers, whom I would help hunt the villagers…running from my father and brothers.

  How selfish I had been. This was worse. This was Hell.

  Please, God, let me die! Don’t allow me to survive this! I prayed those words silently over and over, wishing I could see anything rather than the sympathy and pain in my father’s eyes as he hunted me just to put me out of my misery. His only daughter.

  I would rather endure a thousand falls and a thousand agonizing deaths than to see the look in Father’s eyes when he saw me for the first time. When he saw what I had become.

  My legs twitched, then straightened, and I moved my toes. I screamed again when the bones popped back into position.

  The young man hung over me in a defensive crouch. “Go away from here! She’s claimed!”

  One nightwalker was male, the other female. She spoke first. “Give her to us,” she demanded.

  “No,” the young man said.

  “Don’t make us take her from you,” the male said.

  “We can talk about this later. But not now. She hasn’t much time.”

  The female’s eyes grew wide. “You mean to change her? You can’t, Daniel! You know what she’s done!”

  The male took a step forward, and Daniel lowered his chin. “Do you challenge me?” His voice changed from the comforting tone he had used with me to a frightening one. He sounded intimidating. Evil, even.

  The nightwalkers wavered and then backed away slowly, their eyes dancing from me to the young man. Without another word, they retreated, disappearing into the Glades.

  Hours passed while the poison spread throughout my body and mended my wounds. Not only were they fixed, but they also were stronger. I felt a surge of energy throughout my body. If Daniel hadn’t been sitting over me, I would have stood up and ran. My eyes sharpened, and I could not only see the stars, but I could also make out how many there were. Hundreds upon thousands, just like the leaves on the trees. My ears also tuned in to the sounds of the forest, from the line of ants marching up and down on a tree, to the sound the wind made as it breezed over a stone on the ground.

  Even with my senses flooded, it wasn’t overwhelming. Everything I could see, and every sound I could hear seemed natural. It occurred to me that turning was not the worst thing that could have happened to me. I felt invigorated and strong, but the thirst hadn’t hit yet.
That was when I would lose my mind.

  The pain was nearly gone when Daniel’s brows pulled together. “I’m going to lift you up, Eris. Take you somewhere safe while you heal. They’re coming.”

  Without another choice, I nodded, and let him take me into his arms as if I weighed nothing. He was about my age, maybe a year older, and appeared strong, but not bulky like my cousin Ander. As soon as Daniel was upright, he whisked me up and out of the ravine, through the brush, to a small, vacant den. He had moved unbelievably fast, typical for nightwalkers, but it wasn’t the blur I expected. Even in the dark cavern where he still held me in his arms, my eyes missed nothing. I could make out every crevice in the rock, every speck of dirt on the ground.

  I closed my eyes. My lips quivered. It was almost over. I had turned.

  Daniel only moved his mouth. “No matter what you hear, it’s important that you stay quiet. They can’t help you now.”

  I frowned, confused by what he meant. And then I heard him.

  “Eris!” Not only did his voice boom across the Glades, but I could also hear the worry, anger, and fear. “Eris! Where are you? Eris!”

  Another burst of pain, this time in my chest, sent me writhing in pain. Sturdy arms held me as I fought to twitch, move—anything to get away from the unbearable burning blowing through my heart. I opened my mouth to scream, but a cold hand pressed against my mouth.

  “It’s the venom, Eris. This is the worst of it. Try to relax.”

  I struggled, slapped at him, and arched my back in response to the pain. But Daniel held me tight, whispering small offerings of comfort. He ran his fingers through my hair and watched me with sympathy in his eyes.

  When the pain finally subsided, I let my entire body fall against the stranger holding me. Not because I was exhausted—I felt I could run forever and not get tired—but because the entire ordeal had been emotionally tolling. My father was less than a mile away, searching desperately in the woods. I wanted nothing more than to go to him, but I knew if I left the cavern, not only would it not help him to see me alive, but he would also be devastated, and he would most likely put an arrow through my heart.

  It was then that the smells of Father, my brothers, and other villagers, including William, infiltrated my nose. I waited, wondering when I would bolt again.

  “Daniel?” He looked down at me. “Don’t let me hurt them. Don’t let me hurt my family.”

  He shook his head. “You won’t.”

  As they grew closer, the sweat on their skin, their breath, and even the smell of their hair seemed to saturate my senses, and I could hear their hearts like a dozen different drums. The louder my father’s voice, the more surprised I was that I didn’t want to mindlessly chase them down to kill them. There was no insatiable thirst. Maybe it was because I was a newly turned nightwalker, but even that went against every story I’d ever heard about them. That was why Father was hell-bent on hunting down anyone in our territory who was rumored to have changed. According to our lore, the uncontrollable urge to feed was immediate.

  Every time Father called my name, it broke my heart. Then Clemens and Lukas joined in, and I wanted to crawl deeper into the cavern until I could no longer hear them.

  “It’s better for them to believe you died at the hands of a nightwalker than for them to see you truly die by their own hand.”

  I turned away from him and covered my eyes.

  “Shall I let you go?”

  I nodded.

  “You won’t try to run to him?”

  I shook my head no.

  Daniel relaxed his arms and stared at me with soft eyes while we waited for the voices calling my name to get farther away.

  “He won’t stop looking. He’ll need to see a body.”

  “He came through the ravine. He saw enough of your blood. He probably thinks you’re dead, and nightwalkers fed on you until there was nothing left. That’s what we’ll hope.”

  “Hope?” I snapped.

  “It’s better than him continuing to search for you. Better than your father continuing to hope. To live the rest of his days in unrest.”

  I knelt down and wrapped what was left of my dress around my bare legs. “I’m going to kill them.”

  “Who?” Daniel said, two lines deepening between his brows.

  “The nightwalkers who killed me.”

  MY EYES FLASHED OPEN, and I sat up, finding myself in the center of a handwoven bed, each end tied to branches. I swung back and forth just a bit, and then I looked down. I was at the top of a tree, so high it seemed like a mile above the ground. Regardless, I could see everything on the ground perfectly. Hear the small animals moving about, their hearts beating, the bugs crawling on the ground.

  I looked down, noticing I was covered with a thin, dark blanket. Dried blood and dirt stained my skin as well as my dress, which was now crusty and stiff. I wiped at a blood smear on my forearm where the bone had just hours before been jutting out from my skin. I was no longer pale; I was white as the snow that capped the mountain range along the horizon. I clenched my hands, digging my nails into my skin. No matter how hard I pressed, my skin did not break. I jumped from the hammock to a branch, quick and lithe. It was effortless, and it was as exhilarating as it was alarming. I was graceful. I was dead.

  The night before could have been a terrible dream, except for the hole in my dress exactly where the branch had stabbed me through my back, jutting out of my abdomen.

  My fingers slowly ran over my skin, evaluating my legs, my feet, my face…It all felt normal. Better than normal. My once-blond tresses were soaked in my own blood, and pieces of leaves and small twigs were woven in. I probably looked like the monster I was.

  I longed to be home with my family, to tell them I was alive. A heavy sorrow overwhelmed me, and for the first time, my new body felt strange. I was crying, but nothing came from my eyes.

  I pulled my hair to one side, picking out the debris as best I could, and then twisted it into a thick braid. I would have to sneak into town at night to find clothes. Any attempts to retrieve my own from our home would be suicide.

  “Hello?” I called softly.

  My ears perked up to hear sounds of a creature climbing up the tree, and then Daniel appeared.

  “I’m here.”

  I watched him as he stepped inside the makeshift room. The hammock I awoke on was fastened to just a few of the hundreds of branches that had been bent in and formed in a circle to make up Daniel’s home. It reminded me of the nests the village weavers made—spheres made of branches that hung from the treetops. Except this was much bigger, big enough for the two of us to stand in, five feet apart, and Daniel’s was woven within the treetop, instead of hanging from it.

  Daniel’s dark-red eyes stood out from the browns and grays of his home. I had been trained to attack or run from eyes like his my entire life, but they were familiar.

  “Was that you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Watching me. Was that you on the wall at my house?”

  He crossed his arms and shifted nervously. “I’ve seen you before … hunting in these woods. Your actions and reactions made me curious, I suppose.”

  “You call that an answer?”

  He laughed once. “I guess not.”

  “You call that an answer?”

  His eyebrows shot up. He was clearly surprised by my forwardness. “You are certainly your father’s daughter…Yes. It was me.”

  I nodded, satisfied. If I had seen the face that was attached to those eyes, I wouldn’t have had nightmares about them. He had a gentle look. His red eyes were round and kind. His jaw was strong, with just a hint of pointiness to his chin. Even paler than pale, he was more attractive than any of the young men in my village, or in any village in Ona. His dark hair was long enough to move when he did, but too short to fall into his eyes, and his stature was a lot like Clemens’s: lean, but broad shouldered, and very tall. I wondered how he fit into that hammock.

  “I slept,” I said, voici
ng the sudden epiphany.

  “Pardon?”

  “I slept. I didn’t know that was possible for nightwa—for me. Now.”

  Daniel tried not to smile. “I think there is much that may surprise you.”

  “Like the thirst?”

  “You noticed that too, did you?”

  “I thought that…I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “We’re not mindless, bloodsucking monsters, no. We do sleep, although we don’t require much. And not all of us feed on humans, although some do prefer the taste. I’m not one of them. We also don’t burn or explode in the sunlight, although that’s my favorite myth.”

  “I’m not sure if thanking you is appropriate.”

  Daniel walked slowly, orbiting me like the moon regarded the earth. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  I glanced around at the various sticks and branches, bent just enough that they wouldn’t break, woven together tightly like a gigantic wicker basket. It was amazing.

  “Did you build this yourself?” I asked, stepping to the doorway and looking down. We were very high, too high for any human to even see the nest.

  “I did. Don’t be too impressed. You should have seen my first try.”

  I looked over, seeing dozens of nests just like Daniel’s, all hanging from the highest branches of the tallest trees. Realizing we were just one of many nightwalker nests, I swallowed.

  “You’re safe,” Daniel said. “No one will bother you.” He was leaning against the far wall with a patient, kind expression.

  “I’ve hunted them. I’m their enemy.”

  “How many have you killed?”

  His question made me pause. “Just the one.”

  “Precisely. We watch you more closely than your father. If I thought they wouldn’t accept you, I would have let you expire.”

  “Accept me? They know I’m here? That I’ve been changed?”

  “All of them. Not all of them are happy about it, but they’ll come around.”

  “Like the two who killed me?”