by J. K. Barber
Sitting down and shaking out his boot, Jared looked up to see an owl watching them from a nearby tree. The woodsman looked into the owl’s large eyes and sent out his thoughts towards the bird. This close, and with eye contact already made, the link should have been instantaneous. However, Jared met a type of resistance he had never encountered before.
The bird had not been startled, and therefore skittish about the contact, but instead it was as though the bird knew exactly what Jared was doing and had thrown up a wall around its mind, locking the woodsman out. Before Jared had the chance to ponder this strange occurrence any further, the owl launched from its branch and flew into the darkness around them. The bird was gone, as was Jared’s chance at borrowing its night vision to help them travel the forest more safely. At Sasha’s insistent urging, the pair continued their stumbling path through the woods.
They continued on for another half an hour or so until Jared could take it no more. “We have to stop, Sasha. I can barely see my hand in front of my face. If one of us trips and cracks his skull open, it will do your sister no good.”
Sasha stopped and turned towards Jared. Even in the darkness, Jared could see the set of her shoulders. She was determined, which Jared knew and could appreciate, but he also knew that she wasn’t stupid. She had to see the logic of his words, he hoped. Sasha stood for a moment, her body language shouting stubbornness and defiance, but then Jared saw her shoulders drop.
“You’re right,” she sighed, “and you know how much I hate that.” There was a touch of levity to her voice mixed in with exhaustion. She was tired and, moreover, she knew it. “It’s just that… well… she’s my sister,” Sasha struggled for the words. “Do you have any brothers or sisters, Jared? I’m embarrassed that I never thought to ask before this.”
Now it was Jared’s turn to struggle for words. “No, um, I mean… er… not that I know of. I’m an orphan.”
Sasha stepped closer and placed a hand tenderly on his forearm, sympathy clear in her voice and gesture. “I’m sorry. That must be hard to be alone in the world.”
This close, Jared could see what faint light there was reflecting in Sasha’s eyes. He stared into them and was lost for a moment, and he felt his breath catch in his chest. For a brief moment, he didn’t feel alone. All he felt was her closeness, so near that he was able to smell her. It was not the scent of perfume that filled his nostrils, as he often found when he was close to other women. Sasha’s scent was different, like tempered steel in a field of wildflowers, and its oddity drew Jared even closer until their faces almost touched. He felt her warm breath on his lips.
There were other scents as well: soap-scrubbed skin, hair smelling of ripened strawberries in the sun, sweat, metal, and… fear? He thought. Jared sensed fear coming from Sasha, and he immediately backed away.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t… I shouldn’t… I mean we should…” Jared took another step back, looking at the ground between them and shrugging off the awkward moment.
“Make camp!” Sasha blurted, “You’re right we should make camp, it’s late and we should get in bed… get some sleep! Sleep! We should get some sleep, it’s late and we have a long day ahead of us.”
Jared hurriedly began the task of clearing a space on the forest floor for them to lay out their bedrolls. The night was not cold enough to require a fire, even though Jared would not have risked one if it was, given the dense underbrush and possibility of pursuit. However, the slight chill in the air made setting up their tent seem prudent. The woodsman busied himself setting up camp and did his best not to notice Sasha out of the corner of his eye, as she shed her armor. She struggled with the straps, but Jared was too uncomfortable to offer help.
Once their tent was set up and their bedrolls arranged inside, Jared volunteered for first watch. He set his pack against a tree, laying his unstrung bow across the top and then sat down. He winced as he rested his back against his pack, forgetting the long gash there. The needlework there was probably ready to come out the way it was itching.
Jared stretched his legs out before him to keep his muscles from knotting up as he rested. Chuckling to himself, Jared drew three arrows from his quiver and stuck them into the ground beside him. “I hope you’re in some place safer than me tonight, Gabe,” he whispered to himself, remembering his friend. Looking past the tent flap, he saw Sasha pulling her blanket up to her chin and watched her quickly nod off to sleep.
Jared peered up at the dark covering of leaves above their heads. He knew that a full moon hung overhead, both by experience and some inborn sense. Ever since his first bonding with the great she-wolf, it had affected him in ways that he had not expected. He was somehow able to feel the lunar cycle without needing to look into the sky at night. Furthermore, his senses had become keener. His attitude towards other people had become wary, as some new set of instincts told him that the two legs were dangerous to him and his pack. Only, Jared did not have a pack. He had ventured alone in the world, after he and Sirus had parted ways.
Jared closed his eyes and could hear the older man’s words ringing through his memory. “I’m not trying to control you. I’m trying to protect you, although I’m not even sure why, as stupid as you’ve been acting.” Sirus was a bear of a man, literally. He had been tall in stature and heavy of limb, his body mostly covered in thick brown hair. “Why do you insist on fighting me on this? Haven’t I told you what people will do?”
In fact, Sirus had told Jared several times what people often did with people like them, but Jared had known no other person besides Sirus and his parents, and them only in the vaguest way. Jared remembered people who cared for him and loved him and then he remembered only flames and screams.
Sirus had been his only family, yet his company had become tedious and exasperating; the large man’s first bonding had been with a bear, and the older woodsman had often reminded Jared of the animal. Sirus was slow to move and stubborn, but when he did start moving, it was best to stay out of his way. The other ursine trait that Sirus had picked up had been his protective streak that had finally become too much for Jared the night they had parted ways…
“I know what you say Sirus,” Jared had all but screamed. “But I want to know, and sitting here in this smelly musty shack isn’t going to teach me anything!” Jared had already filled up his pack with his few belongings and had it slung across his shoulder.
Sirus had looked down on Jared, his mentor standing head and shoulders taller than the young woodsman, the light from the fireplace reflecting in his dark brown eyes, now almost black in the dim radiance, and puffed out his barrel of a chest. “Fine! Go! But if you leave, don’t plan on coming back here ever again, got it?”
“Yeah, I got it, old man!” Jared had inflated his own chest in response and then strode out into the night. He hadn’t seen Sirus since, but he remembered the older man’s roar that followed him out into the evening’s encroaching darkness.
Sirus’ roar turned into a female’s scream and caused Jared to bolt awake. He had drifted off at his post. Sasha was yelling in her sleep and thrashing around in the tent. Jared stumbled to his feet, fearing that another one of the creatures that had attacked them on the road south had found them. In three long strides he covered the distance to the tent and flung open the flap with his left hand, as he shook the sheath from his sword with his right.
Jared saw only Sasha in the tent though. Bending down, he looked into the deeper shadows under the canvas, straining his eyes to make sure that she was alone. He placed his left hand on Sasha’s shoulder to shake her awake. “Sasha, what is it?”
Sasha’s eyes flew open wide, and she grabbed at Jared’s wrist, trying to twist it into a painful position. However, Jared had half-expected such a response and quickly pulled his hand back. “Sasha, it’s me Jared. What are you screaming about? Are you okay?”
The swordswoman’s eyes finally focused on Jared, and she came to her senses a little. “It’s her! She’s here! We need to go!” S
asha scrambled out of the tent, almost knocking Jared over in the process. She grabbed her breastplate, but thought better of it and flung it to the ground. Sitting, she rapidly began tightening the laces of her boots; ever practical Sasha had slept in her boots for expediency but loosened the laces for comfort while she slumbered.
“Sasha, wait,” Jared said. “You’re making no sense. Who’s here? Where do we have to go?” He tried to speak as calmly as possible to her, to get her to slow down, but she wasn’t paying him the least bit of attention. He stepped forward, putting his foot down across her sheathed sword that had fallen out of the tent in her haste and now lay on the ground only a couple feet away from the frantic swordswoman. Knowing that she would go nowhere without her sword, Jared simply waited as she strapped on her shield and began looking around.
Seeing the sword under Jared’s foot, Sasha reached for it, noticing first his foot and then Jared standing on it. She looked up at him. “What are you doing? We need to go.”
“Now that I have your attention perhaps you’d like to tell me just what in the Great Mother’s name is going on?”
“She’s here, Katya is here, in this forest right now, and she’s scared.” Impatience saturated every word that came out of Sasha’s mouth. The young female warrior gestured vaguely to the west and reached again for the sword under Jared’s foot. “She’s in that direction.”
“How do you...” Jared began to ask.
“I don’t know!” Sasha screamed at him. “I just know, okay! Now either help me or get the hell out of my way!”
Jared had seen Sasha upset in their short time together, but never like this. Sadness, anger, fear and impatience all warred in her eyes, and the last place Jared wanted to be was in her way. He took a step back, and Sasha snatched her sword from the ground. Not bothering to fasten the weapon to her belt, Sasha snapped her right arm out, and the sheath flew from the naked blade. The stilted moonlight glinted off the long straight blade, and Sasha stalked off into the night. Left with little recourse, Jared followed her.
Making no effort to hide her presence, Sasha stomped through the dense undergrowth, using her sword to hack a path when her bare strength did not allow her to push her way forward. Jared, on the other hand, stepped lightly using Sasha’s ruckus to cover his movements. If they did run into someone or, Jared shuddered, something out here, they certainly were not going to sneak up on it with Sasha trudging around. However, if whomever they ran into thought there was only one and not two people traveling through the haunted forest in the middle of the night doing Mother knows what, it might give them an edge. The only problem was that Jared’s stealthy movement was slower than Sasha’s marauding gait, and he began to fall behind.
Luckily, they came out into a small clearing, and Jared attempted to close the gap between Sasha and him, taking long soft steps as he moved up behind her. His eyes flew to the left as he saw movement and raised his sword over his head, hilt back and point facing forward in a defensive stance. Suddenly, an owl burst from the bushes and flew shrieking overhead.
“Sasha!” A strange voice called from ahead of them and Jared turned, sword still raised. He barely had time to register a shadowy figure in long dark robes stepping out of the trees ahead of Sasha, before Jared rushed forward.
“Look out!” The voice called again, as the dark figure raised his hands and muttered something. The night suddenly flared as bright as day, as lightning flew from the figure’s hands striking Jared. He felt the impact in his chest, and then it felt as though his body had been dipped in boiling oil. Every inch of his body screamed in pain as he was thrown across the clearing into the trunk of a massive oak, slamming his head against the ancient tree. Darkness mercifully clouded over Jared’s eyes, and his vision went completely black.
Chapter 19
Light stabbed into Jared’s eyes, as he slowly opened them. At first, all he could feel was pain, pain in his eyes from the daylight beaming through the leaves overhead, pain in the back of his skull from where his head had struck… something. He knew that he should know but his memories were still cloudy. He remembered a bright flash of light and then flying… and then crashing. That’s why his head hurt; he had banged it against the tree… a tree in a forest. Jared’s head swam a while longer and then things began to come into focus. He had been in the woods with the red-headed girl. What was her name? He thought. Sasha! That was it!
Sasha was looking for her sister… whose name he could not remember. Sasha said she had found her, and they went to the clearing, where there was lightning, pain, and darkness. Now, it was light. He was on his back, and there was still pain. Pain was good though; pain meant he was still alive, and if he was still alive…
“Sasha,” he croaked weakly. It was meant to be a scream, but his throat was dry. He began coughing. Someone raised a waterskin to his lips and shot a gush of blessedly cool water down his throat.
“It’s okay,” he heard Sasha’s voice say, as he greedily gulped at the water being offered to him. “No, no,” the voice said gently, “don’t take too much, little sips… that’s it.” Jared slowed down his drinking. There was something wrong with Sasha’s voice, it was quieter. No, not quieter, it was somehow meeker, as though some of the steel had drained out of it. Not a disagreeable change, but one that Jared definitely noticed.
Jared opened his eyes, squinting at the bright light and waited for them to adjust. He saw Sasha leaning over him. The light, and maybe his head wound, were playing tricks with his eyes. Through the blur of his vision the swordswoman seemed softer, the angles of her cheekbones more curved and less angular. The face was not unpleasant to look at, just different. Also, as his eyes adjusted to the light, Sasha’s hair looked darker, almost black instead of its fiery red. A waterfall of raven’s feather-colored hair framed her soft face, and her eyes were so brown that they almost appeared black.
Jared started. Sasha’s eyes were green, not brown. What was going on here? He thought. The woodsman tried to rise but felt strong hands push him back down onto his bedroll. He looked again at the dark-haired woman who leaned over him. She had not moved. The hands that held him were not hers. He lolled his head to the side and looked into familiar green eyes. This was the face he knew, a strong face, surrounded by red hair that caught fire in the morning sun. It was morning, Jared realized as his head began to clear further.
“What… who…?” Jared asked, confused. His voice was stronger than it had been before, and the haze in his head had somewhat receded.
“Easy, Jared,” the green-eyed woman said in a voice that the woodsman recognized as truly belonging to Sasha. “You had quite a night and need to rest a bit more.” Sasha helped him sit up and rest against a tree. Jared could feel the rough bark against the bare skin of his back, as he settled into a comfortable reclining position. The scent of something smoldering still hung in the air, and Jared looked down to make sure it was not him.
His studded leather jerkin and the shirt beneath had been burned clean through by the force of the energy that had struck him. He raised his hands to his chest, gingerly placing his finger tips to the large pink scar over his heart. It was tender to the touch, and Jared winced.
He felt another set of hands gently grab his wrists and slowly move his hands back down to his sides. Jared looked down to hands on his arms, noticing that they seemed different from Sasha’s. The fingers holding him were smooth and delicate, whereas he knew that the swordswoman’s were strong and calloused from years of weapons play. Jared’s eyes followed the arms, lighter of skin than the red-headed woman’s. They were also pale and slender, not the tanned well-muscled arms of someone who spent hours in the sun, as Sasha had. The alabaster complexion of her arms disappeared into the voluminous sleeves of a velvet robe the color of the sky just before dawn, a blue so dark it was almost black.
His eyes traveled up the robes. It was hard to tell under all that fabric, but Jared guessed this woman was almost the same height as Sasha and of roughly the same build. Velve
t gave way to long black hair, which in turn gave way to a familiar face, familiar yet different. Whereas Sasha’s skin was tan, colored by the sun, this woman’s face was the same ivory color as the hands that had gently moved his arms. Whereas Sasha’s eyes were the deep green of emeralds, this woman’s eyes were the rich chocolate of freshly turned soil on a forest floor, deep and almost black in the shadows of her face as she leaned over him.
“Jared this is my sister, Katya,” Sasha said, tilting her head towards the young woman in the blue robes. “Sister, this is Jared. He helped me find you.”
Katya blushed. “I’m so sorry about last night. I thought you were attacking Sasha and well… I overreacted.” Katya bowed her head further and pulled a small folded piece of paper out of one of her pouches. She unfolded the paper, and a faint scent of mint filled the air. Inside the paper were dried leaves, crushed into a course powder. Katya reached for the waterskin but Jared put his hand over it, shaking his head. “Oh, it’s okay,” Katya said. “It’s just…“
“Sleepwell, yes I know,” Jared finished for her. “It dulls pain but it also dulls the senses and I think I’m feeling dull enough right now.” Katya’s eyes went wide.
“You know about Sleepwell?” She asked.
“I know quite a bit about the forest and the plants that grow in it.” Jared gestured at the woods around them, wincing in pain. “Okay, maybe not this forest, but still, I know a little about herbcraft.” Jared saw a look exchanged between Katya and Sasha, and the swordswoman shrugged.
“Right,” Sasha said, returning her gaze to the woodsman. “If you’re awake, then you’re feeling better. How long until you think you can travel?”