by J. M. Lee
He was shouting now, and she shouted back over him, clenching her hands in fists.
“There isn’t. It’s either go to the castle or run back home, and I’m not letting go of my brother so easily!”
Kylan let out a loud annoyed groan.
“You’re so stubborn, I’m surprised you can let go of a bola long enough to throw it!” he cried.
“Says the one who couldn’t hit a target if his life depended on it,” Naia shot back. “I let go of how I felt about you Spriton back in Sami Thicket, you know—so that you could travel with me. And look how that’s working out, eh!”
Kylan jerked as though she’d struck him. He looked down, and she knew she’d won the argument. He gave up.
“There’s no other way,” she said again. “So this is my way.”
Naia pushed past him and entered the thick brush after Tavra, away from the Black River that would have otherwise taken her all the way to Ha’rar. The journey would be meaningless if she had to stand before the All-Maudra and represent a brother she might not even truly know. Kylan’s voice was already fading behind her, muffled by the thick leaves and the early sound of rolling thunder.
“But the heroes always find another way,” he said.
Her response was in a mutter she doubted he could hear. “Maybe in tales, but this isn’t a song for telling.”
Any minute, she expected the distressed sighs of Kylan picking up his things, tromping into the woody brush after her. Hearing nothing, she turned halfway, looking to see if he was coming—but he wasn’t. There was nothing but green and purple leaves, red and brown branches, darkening light, and thickening rain.
She was alone.
Chapter 20
Naia trekked between dark-leaved trees with huge barrel-size trunks, and rocks covered in wriggling purple moss studded with hairy polyps. Black-winged scaly things swooped and flapped in the canopy overhead. The purple rocks eventually gave way to lumpier rocks that grumbled and moved as she walked by, shifting away from her and burrowing deeper into the mulch-and leaf-covered forest floor. Naia’s footsteps were loud and harsh as she stomped her way through the brush, although she hardly cared who heard her. At the very least, it frightened the crawlies and hundred-legged armor-ants from her path so she didn’t have to worry about stepping on them. Though her sense of direction was good, it was getting dark, and the storm clouds were moving in, hiding what little was left of the Brothers’ sunlight in the sky. Still, she had to continue, and she no longer had the clear Black River to guide her safely to her destination. She broke a branch off a tree she passed, snapping the twig into smaller and smaller pieces until it was merely splinters, and then she tossed them away in disgust.
Thunder broke overhead, like an egg cracking and pouring out huge endless drops of cold wet rain. Naia looked for shelter nearby but found none, and all she could do was pick up her pace and move forward. She thought briefly about Kylan, but pushed the thought from her mind. He’d made his choice not to come with her. Anyway, by now he was probably halfway back up the falls. Maybe he’d even make it to urVa’s before long—that would be nice for him, safe and warm next to the hearth with a hot cup of ta. Naia, however, would be stranded in the muddy, cold, dark, shadowy forest on account of doing the right thing.
The rain came harder, streaming in soupy rivulets as the land sloped downward, carrying leaves and twigs as if they were tiny boats on a raging river. As the slope steepened, going from a gentle decline to a deep hill, Naia had to grab on to the drooping fronds and branches to keep from slipping. Finally, though, it happened—a tree’s leafy tendril was so slick with water that it escaped her grasp as soon as she put her weight on it. Then she was tumbling, tumbling down the hill in rolls and bumps, thrashing through short plants with burrs and fine feathery leaves.
At the end of it, she spilled into a shallow puddle of mud. Coated head to toe in muck, her head spinning, she spit out dirt and leaves. Although in pain and still a bit dizzy, she felt lucky not to have collided with one of the many protruding boulders or spiny trees. Naia patted around for Neech, unable to find him. Then a chirp and a squeak came from above as he glided down, unharmed—probably having let go of her as soon as she’d tripped. Plucking him from the air, she hugged him tightly, more for herself than for him.
“Yesmit!” she swore, but even the curse offered little relief. Alone in the mud, surrounded by the looming black tower-trees, back and shoulders aching, she let out a scream of frustration. As it echoed back to her, she put her face in her hands and wept. She didn’t even know exactly why. Maybe it was for no one thing in particular, but nevertheless, the tears came out faster and harder than even the rain overhead. Naia didn’t know why it had come to this, or had to be this way. If Gurjin was a traitor after all, her entire journey until now had been a waste! If they’d captured him, surely they would force him to stand his own trial—so what was she doing out here in the cold and wet, alone and miserable?
I’ll hear the truth at the Castle of the Crystal, she told herself. She imagined the warmth within the castle’s sturdy walls—and food, there ought to be hot food and maybe ta like urVa had served. One way or another.
She jumped when something cold and rubbery nudged her elbow. Out of the mud came a bulbous-eyed wide face, followed by a grub-shaped body. The mud made a sucking noise as the Nebrie surfaced, the fresh rain washing grime from its oily head and back. Unlike the Nebrie of Sog, this one was a youngling, maybe even a baby—no longer than twice Naia’s height and as big around as a village drum. It nuzzled Naia’s arm again, burbling and cooing, and Naia found the ache of a smile on her lips as she reached out and petted the thing’s round nubby forehead.
“This mud and rain suits you just fine, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Did your mother leave you here while she went to forage? You shouldn’t come up out of the muck for just anyone. It could be dangerous.”
The Nebrie’s mouth opened in a toothless smile. It rolled from left to right, dipping its face back into the mud and blowing bubbles. Naia laughed despite herself, and as she did, the tightness in her chest relaxed. She sneezed, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand. As if it made a difference in all the rain.
“I’m lost,” she told the Nebrie as she petted its leathery hide. “I thought I knew the way, but it feels like I’m only running in circles.”
Naia’s entire body rocked as the Nebrie shoveled its face under her arm, burbling. Opening her mind, just a little, a gentle dreamfast formed. She saw the Nebrie’s mother, big and purple, pulling up weeds from the pond bank, chewing them up before spitting them back in a pulp for her pod of children. Though the meal wasn’t something Naia was keen to try, the vision was touching all the same. In return, she tried to dream back, thinking of her and Gurjin’s shared Name Day. Her sisters had tied bright ribbons and bells to every one of her locs. The Great Sun had been warm that day, and Gurjin had not yet left for his post at the castle. They had stood together before the people of their clan, eager to take on the responsibilities of their blossoming adulthood.
The Nebrie squealed in delight, and Naia let the memory fade. Careful not to send the thought in dreamfast, she remembered the Nebrie in Sog, with its frothing maw and lethal tusks. This was how Nebrie were supposed to be: happy, content to play and wallow in the bog for all the day. Not swollen in a rage, mindless in an empty state of pain—not like the ruffnaw in the burrow, nor the tormented Cradle-Tree, whose branches still surrounded her. Thra was in pain, in sadness, and it originated at the Heart of Thra: at the Castle of the Crystal. Though the castle had not been Naia’s original destination, after all that had happened, it did not seem a coincidence that it would be where she would seek the truth about Gurjin.
Sighing, she stood and looked down at her mud-stained clothes. If she had brought her pack with her, she was sure its contents would have been strewn all up and down the slanted hillside, but as it was, she still ha
d everything she’d rolled down with, tied safely across her back and to her belt. She had what she needed. She could make do. If no one would shed light on the labyrinth of questions, not even the soldier of the All-Maudra, then she would have to be the one to find the way herself.
Still, as the pouring rain ebbed again, and the Nebrie settled down to sleep in the mud, something felt incomplete in the quiet. Naia looked back up the hill and saw no one, so she turned ahead. She was still alone, and there was nothing to be done about it now.
She said her farewells to the Nebrie, shushing it back to sleep before brushing off the larger clumps of grass-matted mud from her tunic and traveling onward. Though tracking Tavra in the dry daylight might have been possible, the dark and the rain had made the trail invisible. For a moment, she panicked, realizing she really was lost. Even if she had wanted to turn back, find her way south and home, she wasn’t sure that she could in the rain. Her footsteps quickened in her worry until she nearly tripped on an upraised root, shaking herself out of her wandering daze with a spark of hope. She was not really alone in the wood—anything but! Kneeling, sighing in relief, she placed her hands upon the root and reached out in dreamfast.
“Are you listening, Olyeka-Staba?” she asked.
She closed her eyes and gave her touch some pressure, focusing on connecting with it, with feeling its presence, roots deep in the earth and branches up in the clouds. It seemed the tree remembered her, for its dreamfast was warm and gentle.
I seek the Castle of the Crystal, Naia said. Can you show me the way?
As if she had been lifted by wind, held aloft by the branches of the Cradle-Tree, Naia saw what the tree saw. The Dark Wood was a vast body of green and black, filling the valley formed between two bodies of highlands: the Claw Mountains to the northwest and the Caves of Grot to the northeast. In a clearing to the west, a day’s journey from an elbow of the Black River, was the Castle of the Crystal. Its shining black shape jutted from the flesh of the wood like a clawed hand clutching at clouds.
The tree’s voice spoke in the language of leaves in the wind, roots in the ground.
There resides the Heart of Thra . . .
When the dreamfast ended, the darkness of the night felt blinding in comparison. Naia closed her eyes and remembered the way, hoping the vision would stay fast in her memory as long as she needed it to guide her.
“Thank you,” she said to the Cradle-Tree. Again, if it responded, she couldn’t hear it, save for the gentle creaking of branches in the night wind.
Naia turned at the snap of a twig and what sounded like familiar heavy footsteps, but in the dark she saw little, and the sound did not come again. She remained immobile, hand on the Cradle-Tree’s root, holding her breath and straining her eyes and ears. Many things made noises in the night in the wild, of course, and it had been the same in Sog. Yet something seemed different now, closer, familiar . . .
“urVa?”
The presence faded from her awareness, moving back into the shadows in a rumble of thunder from the south. Naia waited only long enough for another crack of lightning to flash overhead before she hurried onward, hoping she might make it to the castle before the second storm front brought its wrath upon the Dark Wood.
Chapter 21
Lightning lit the way, once even striking the top of a tree so it burst into sparks and flames that were quickly drowned by the rain now cascading sideways from the clouds. The downpour came with a vengeance, though much of it was intercepted by the broad leaves of the tower-trees that increased in number and frequency the closer Naia came to the castle. Though she couldn’t yet see her destination, she could feel it. Omnipresent, like thousands of eyes watching her from above.
Naia stopped in her fleet jog when she heard something—a snarl, perhaps, or just thunder. The memory of the sound echoed, though her ears heard nothing more, no matter which way they swiveled. She longed for the bigger eyes of a night bird, or maybe the flanged nose of a ruffnaw. Anything that might let her senses pierce the thick night in the impenetrable wood.
A warm draft of air brushed off the skin of her cheeks and then was gone . . . then came again, and her stomach nearly turned: it was breath, wafting from the darkness, from some creature so hot and close that its exhales settled on her shoulders in silent heavy waves. The scent of it was somehow familiar, yet wrong—but she didn’t have time to puzzle over it.
Holding her own breath and moving as little as possible, Naia peered through the dark. She both needed desperately to see and yet dreaded to catch sight of whatever was out there. The lyrics from Kylan’s song came unbidden and danced through her mind, setting fire to her fears and imagination.
But the cold wind died still and he heard in the dim
Monstrous breath heavy through pointy-toothed grin . . .
Naia clenched her fist and pushed away the idea. The Hunter was a monster of song, recited over campfires to frighten younglings. Whatever was out there, watching her, was probably just a hungry predator who was hoping for a Gelfling feast. That was the way the world worked—in a great circle where the hunters became the prey, and so on.
Yet Kylan had seen something the night his parents were taken. The dreamfasted memory was Naia’s, now, too, and she didn’t know what to believe.
Now the Hunter waits behind him . . .
Something moved in the shadows, and every one of Naia’s nerves fired, propelling her in a rapid dash away from the movement and the breath. Amid the thunder and crackling lightning, the sounds of branches and brush snapping under her racing feet, she thought she heard the ragged breath of a monster, but she refused to look back for fear of being snapped up by whatever it was that chased her. She ran and she ran, jumping and ducking, every leap taking her closer to the castle where, she could only hope, the blazing torches and mighty drawbridge would beckon her to safety inside. Tavra would be there, and the Skeksis Lords, and Gurjin—
The sounds of her pursuer abated and then evaporated altogether, and Naia slowed to a cautious, quiet walk in hope of catching her breath. Had she outrun it? Had it given up? Or was it merely waiting to catch her off guard? No, it was still there, just outside her range of sight. She could feel it circling, and in the ultramarine flashes of lightning, she made out shapes—not anything solid, but textures. It was like rustling, gathered cloth or fur, but shiny in spots as well, as if it were scaled, with a long whip-sharp tail that slithered behind it. It moved in and out of the wood as if it were one with the shadows, black and dangerous, wild and ravenous. Naia shuddered with fear when, in a low hissing voice, it spoke.
“Gelfling . . . yes . . . closer . . .”
Naia’s heartbeat quickened to a new height. Whatever it was, it was intelligent enough to speak in the Gelfling tongue, to recognize her alone despite all the other quarry in the wood. When it let out a long rasping chuckle, she smelled its breath again.
“Closer . . . come closer . . . so lively . . . so rich . . . come closer . . .”
Out of the dark, a hand-like claw beckoned her. Paralyzed by fear, pressed with her back against one of the tower-trees, she watched the form step half within sight, as if materializing out of the inky black. It was huge, with a long cloaked back spiked in feathers and spines, and on its face was a mask the color of bone, hooked down and carved with two black holes. It loomed closer, but it was not until she could see the glassy burning eyes within that she smelled its breath again and, with a dizzy rush, realized what the familiar scent was. It was Gelfling lacing the monster’s guttural, spit-bubbled words—the scent of Gelfling, her people, saturated the masked hunter’s entire being, from its thick cloak and toothed mantle to the scaly hooked hand that was outstretched, ready to snare her around the neck.
A rush of fur and spines exploded from Naia’s shoulder, shooting toward the monster’s claws and latching on in a plume of barbs and teeth. The Hunter screeched in surprise, wheeling backward and thras
hing, trying to dislodge the tiny muski that was locked on with spiny poisonous teeth. Jolted into motion by Neech’s attack, Naia pulled a bola from her belt and swung it, holding the counterweight as a handle and smashing the other end into the monster’s head. It landed with a CRACK against the grotesque bone mask, and the thing’s shrieks escalated to wild screams. It finally flung Neech from its claw, clutching its cracked faceplate and heaving enraged, strong pants. It fixed Naia with a glare so fearsome, it took all her strength to remain standing . . . But then, without another word, the Hunter slithered backward, enveloped again into the night from whence it had come.
Naia stood in the rain, shaking, clutching Neech to her breast and doing everything she could to remain standing. The rain was pouring in sheets now, and the cover from the canopy was patchy at best. A cough came from her throat, and she realized she had been holding her breath tight in her lungs; another cough and a heavy shudder came out as she slowly remembered how to breathe. The Hunter was gone, at least for now.
Neech squeaked and squirmed, nipping her fingers and startling her to life. He whined, and she nodded, lurching into motion. They had to make it to the castle, to safety. At this rate, she feared she might collapse from the cold that was driving straight through her skin to the bone. Urging her legs to move, she stumbled onward, hoping it was the direction the Cradle-Tree had shown her. Then again, everything looked the same in the dark, and she half expected to find herself back where she had started.
She looked down when her foot landed on something hard and flat. Half-buried in the soil and brush was a stone slab, as wide and long as she was tall. It was engraved with three arcs converging in the center where they formed a triangle, and spiraling out from the center of the shape was writing. What was the tablet doing here, and what did it mean? Searching the ground for clues, Naia was surprised to find another slab—and then another, all trailing end to end. They weren’t tablets, she realized. It was a path. Hoping against the complaining of her body and her blistered feet, she followed the stones, one by one, as they became gradually more pronounced, each with a different engraving. With a gasp of relief, she saw light ahead—and then, suddenly, the wood cleared and she was standing at the foot of a humped drawbridge spanning a thick murky moat.