The Wildest Woods

by S. K Munt

  I sagged a little. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ I said softly, but still somewhat stiffly, wondering if she enjoyed pointing out the fact that whore or no whore- I was as fucked as she was. ‘It’s nice to have a little more certainty, even if it’s not the kind of certainty that I wanted to have.’

  Lady Lucida frowned at me. ‘Not everyone gets everything, you know. You are young, beautiful, powerful and tenacious, and that is more than a lot of people get so my advice to you would be to take that string of diamonds that you earned during your time there, and find a way to use it to build a new life for yourself- one so wonderful that you’ll never give motherhood a second thought again.’

  My hand went to the cold stones around my neck. ‘I didn’t earn this- they stole something from me, and so I stole something back from them. If I sell it then it will feel as though I’ve participated in the transaction, so any happiness that I know after will forevermore be tainted by the knowledge that they paid for it with their jewels and that I paid for it with my fertility- and such a thing is priceless.’

  ‘Maybe some people feel that way but that’s not-’

  ‘Well that’s how I feel, Lady Lucida. I will allow you to go on prostituting yourself and if you conduct yourself with kindness, professionalism and grace than I will not judge you for it. But do not suggest that I use Barachiel treasure as a foundation to build my kingdom upon because if I do, that will give them grounds to claim that it belongs to them if it’s ever discovered, and I’d sooner live in a cave then know luxury thanks to them again, especially seeing as how I’ll never forget what it truly cost me in the first place.’

  ‘With an attitude like that, the life of a cave dweller is the only kind you’ll ever know,’ she said, her tone scathing. ‘You, and all of us that follow you.’

  I smiled serenely. ‘There’s more to life than living in the lap of luxury, Lady Lucida. You’re strong, beautiful and tenacious and that’s more than anyone else gets- so my advice to you would be to forget about my string of diamonds and the fear that you will end up in a cave, and working on being kinder. I don’t hold much value in all that I learned in Eden but I do know that you can’t suck dick well while sneering at people, and you’ll never be anyone’s favourite again unless you learn to retract your fangs.’

  Lady Lucida snarled at me and huffed off, and although I chuckled to myself, it was a hollow victory and one that made me aware of how cold and toothy I was becoming too. I’d been simmering deep inside for days over what the Barachiel men had taken from me, but now that Lady Lucida had confirmed that I was probably barren for life- I was practically boiling alive with the desire to neuter the two princes that had held me down for that fucking ritual in the first place!

  I’d thought that I’d made my peace with the fact that I’d never get to be a mother back in Eden because honestly, who could imagined raising children in that kind of place? But now that I’d had a few days to see the loving way that other families interacted one another outside of the palace, the barren pill was becoming harder to swallow. Of all the promises that Barachiel men had made me, how cruel was it that the only one they’d kept was the promise to render me infertile?

  And how foolish was I for having hoped, for even one moment, that I’d ever be completely free of that family’s hold on me?

  Lady Lucida had returned to her little clique and was obviously relaying to them the fact that not only was I awful, but that I had no intention of cushioning their futures with my jewels, but everyone else was packing up so that they could move on with their lives so I did the same thing- unclasping my collar with shaking hands and shoving it deep into my pocket as tears slipped silently down my cheeks.

  I had stolen those diamonds as surely as the Barachiels had robbed me of the ability to have children, and I did not doubt that some day, someone was going to come for them. When they did I’d return them- but not before I’d made them understand that everybody had the right to procreate and that such a sacred thing could not be sold.

  And I’d do that by ripping off the genitals of whoever had the balls to come after me in the first place.

  *

  The path was wide enough for the sleighs to be used again, so we covered a lot of distance that afternoon despite the fact that the wind pushed against us the whole time, and by the time the sun had begun to set, Martya assured me that we’d covered at least eleven kilometres, which was impressive. It was a dangerous path to be sure, because we were constantly at risk of either toppling off it and into the river, or over the other edge and into the forest below, but I forbade people from walking more than three abreast, and that got us through the day without any fatalities, though one mischievous little boy, Trajan, seemed determined to scare someone off the precipice because he kept on shouting ‘Boo!’ at people, making them flinch and stumble. He probably would have done that all day because he didn’t seem to have parents around to pull him up on his behaviour, but he tried it on Sam and because Sam heard it coming with his gift, he managed to swing around in time to return the favour- damn near scaring the little boy into the river himself. Trajan burst into tears from fright after that and spent the rest of the day glowering at Sam from behind, but he didn’t try to scare anyone else and we were all grateful to Sam for that. Seemed he was better with kids than he thought!

  It was so strange, to have to follow a path towards an unknown destination. Most people that found themselves in our position had ended up there because they’d gotten lost and were trying to find their way home... but we’d gotten ourselves lost on purpose with the sole intention of finding a home- any home- and the only clues we had to finding what we were looking for were: ‘Head north,’ and ‘Follow Larkin,’ and that wasn’t much to go on. Where had Satan seen us ending up? In my head, and I was looking for a turquoise lake like the one in the old drunk’s story, but you’d hardly be able to make a home by one in weather like this, even if it existed, so what did Satan expect me to find? A cavern system within a mountain that was large enough to accommodate us all? Another underground railway station? Or in her prophecy, had we been wearing fur and happily building igloos? Every possibility seemed as plausible as becoming cave-dwellers did (there were plenty of those around, popping up in the oddest places!) but my muscles locked up in anticipation of claustrophobia as I tried to imagine making a home out of any of them, especially considering how comfortable my last life had been.

  Turns out, I had been a little spoiled after all- at least as far as climate control and nice bed linen was concerned.

  It was stranger still to be hypothetically plotting things like setting up camps for the night when we didn’t even know if we’d have to, or if we’d miraculously stumble upon whatever it was that I was supposed to find any minute now. I didn’t know if I’d be safe going to the east or the west, high ground or low… if we should be trying to fish the river to forage up as much food as we needed, or if we needed to make a camp as soon as possible in order to survive the night. I had my bearings now, but I was just as lost for them, so I did all that I could do and followed the river. Perhaps the truth to my destiny lay at the beginning of it, at whatever place the rain was collecting enough to maintain such a vibrant stream of fresh water, but when we came across a massive bat cave at a bend in the river- the biggest one we’d seen yet- I stopped caring about what lay ahead and started working towards laying down my weary head instead.

  ‘Are you sure this is safe?’ Vanessa fretted, as others looked around for bears.

  ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t keep going?’ another asked, but I was too tired to respond to them. No one was thrilled at the idea of sleeping with bats, not even me, but they started to fly out when I lit a few fires inside, and I couldn’t tell you if they returned in the night or not, because as soon as I snuggled up next to Sam and burrowed my face into Bastien’s furry hood from behind, I fell fast asleep in that cold, riparian camp without one bloody thought towards everyone else’s well-being.

  17.


  The Wildlands

  Larkin

  Thursday August 25th AA644

  Though the storm had drifted south, I was told that we copped the end of it that night because while I slept the dreamless sleep of the dead, some of the others apparently clung onto one another for dear life and cursed my name as the fires were blown out and the winds had shrieked loudly and powerfully enough to shake the rocks that we’d sought shelter beneath.

  All was still when I woke up, but after I pried Sam’s arms off of me (he swore he’d snuggled in for warmth and nothing else) and stumbled outside to investigate, I saw that with the morning’s grey, glaring light came much enlightenment for the terrain around us had been covered with a fresh layer of snow, and that ominous grey clouds were creeping our way from the north- clouds that looked twice as heavy and as low as the ones we’d seen the day before.

  ‘Another storm is coming,’ Bastien said, coming to stand beside me and stretching, and I nodded, wondering if this was the one that Arial had predicted originally, because the air had teeth that was biting into me. ‘Think we’ll make it to your turquoise lake in time?’

  I looked at Bastien to see if he was joking, but the smile on his face was kind. ‘You’re the guardian angel,’ I said motioning to the wilderness around us. ‘What do you think?’

  Bastien turned me so that I was facing to the east, and pointed to a snowy valley in the far distance, calling my attention to a sight so beautiful that I caught my breath. ‘I’d say if that’s possible, anything is.’

  Although the forest still dominated the land to the east, we were on the other side of the Sleeping Giant’s now and there were quite a few valleys lying in the foothills of those gigantic mountains, creating clearings in a handful of areas that I presumed had been lakes once. One particular clearing was huge, but it wasn’t empty like the others because a pack of at least thirty horses had just emerged from one side of it and were galloping across it towards the other.

  ‘Oh my gosh!’ I rushed forward to track them with my eyes, but the hill that we’d slept within blocked my view of most of that great valley and so I turned and rushed through the cave in order to exit out the other side, leaping over people as I squealed that there were horses running past and that they should all come look and see. When I emerged out the other side and onto the trail again the horses were already halfway across that valley and I had to scramble up the side of the cave in order to get the best view of everything behind it, but it was thrilling all the same. Not only because their proximity was a clear sign that non-predatory mammals could survive in that land for an extended period of time, but because they reminded me of us- a bunch of displaced but determined creatures blindly following a leader across the wildest part of earth despite the fact that they did not belong there.

  Everyone cried out in surprise when they saw the horses with their own eyes, and I feared that the rocky outcropping beneath me would crumble under the weight of so many people clambering over it, but their evident delight thrilled me even more than the horses themselves did.

  ‘This is amazing, Lark,’ Sam said, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around me so that he could rest his chin on my shoulder in order to see past me. ‘It’s a pain in the ass and I could have done without you rubbing up against me all night, but it’s quite the adventure all the same.’

  I chuckled nervously as I wriggled out of his grip, sacrificing watching the last of the horses disappear into the trees in favour of not being embraced. I knew that Sam wasn’t flirting with me and that he didn’t know that he was making me uncomfortable because my mind was blocked by the amber, but he was a very sexual creature by nature and because I was the only person around that he’d made any kind of real connection with, I tended to get broiled by that potent male Nephilim energy of his by default. Under different circumstances, the way his breath had just tickled my ear would have thrilled me because he smelled like leaf littler and musk and was as beautiful as the reddest of sunsets, but under my circumstances, it made my stomach lurch. Maybe the day would come when I’d be okay with him and Bastien hugging me, but that day wasn’t today.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said lightly, getting down onto the ground and rubbing my hands up and down my arms to warm myself because I’d left my cloak and my jacket inside where I’d used them as bedding. ‘I’ll sleep next to someone else tonight. I was just too exhausted to think things through.’

  ‘That’s not necessary-’ Sam began to say, but when he landed on the ground behind me and looked around, his eyebrows shot up. ‘Wow,’ he said, scratching at his ear studs again. ‘This is different. I didn’t notice yesterday because it was so dark when we arrived but Jesus…’

  ‘What?’ I asked, but when I turned around and saw what he had seen, my eyebrows shot up too. Snow was all over the place there too, but the terrain beneath it had changed as it wound around the river bend, and it was such a drastic change that I didn’t know whether I should celebrate it, or run in fear. ‘Oh… okay…’ I walked closer to the edge of the river, peered over it and narrowed my eyes. ‘Well, shit- I guess we walk faster today, hey?’

  So we did.

  I could not get over the changes in the land and as the day progressed, it just kept on changing, which made me feel queasier. The canyon wall was gradually sloping lower- so low that I could actually see the silhouettes of the trees that grew along its edge, but I couldn’t fly up there to check it out better because the sky was lowering with it, inch by heavy, grey inch. The river was rising too, rising and widening and though that diluted some of its ferocity it continued to swerve gently towards the east- making me worry that it was going to lead us to the ocean instead of a freshwater lake. I didn’t know if Satan saw us sailing to freedom but if she did, I hoped like hell that she was willing to provide us with an ark and not expect me to build one like Noah had, because I knew less about building a boat than I did about building igloos!

  The biggest change was the land to the right of us though, because we were no longer suspended high above the forest, but walking practically level with it, and instead of being choked up with Devil’s Claw as it had been before, the woods were suddenly full of conifers, elms and hemlocks too- all of which were overburdened by piles of snow that made their branches tremble threateningly. The ground was sloping downhill still, but the trees closest to us were tall enough to loom over our heads anyway, bathing the trail in a lacy shadow that made me feel like I’d run through from one side of the cave in the morning and had exited the other in the afternoon instead of seconds later.

  Some of those changes ought to have made me feel more secure because the odds of any of us falling to our death had just been halved, but they didn’t, because being level with a more hospitable forest meant that we were now on more level ground with whatever dwelled within it, and because of the snow, it was going to be practically impossible to tell a boulder apart from a Salt And Pepper bear- a fact that we discovered not one hour into that hike when a baby cub barrelled out into view on the path in front of us, making Martya scream at my side.

  I didn’t see the cause for alarm because as far as I was concerned, the tiny bear was the most darling thing I’d ever seen, but two heartbeats later the mother came out looking for it, and I was so shocked by the sight of it looming up out of the forest in front of me that I practically widdled myself in fear. It was close to seven feet tall and the sound of its agitated snarl made every hair on the back of my neck stand up, but I didn’t understand how perilous the situation was until Windsor came barrelling forward with his axe at the ready, shouting that he ‘had’ it, just as he had with the wolf back in The Wildwoods. Montgomery came up behind him, fitting a bow into his quiver and commanded me to get out of the way, but I couldn’t budge an inch despite the fact that pandemonium was breaking out all around me.

  I didn’t know anything about bears aside from what I’d read in books and had been taught at school, but I did know that hand to hand combat with one was likely to get Windsor and
anyone that tried to help him killed, so I screamed at him to leave it alone when he drew it back and with a grunt, shoved him off the path and into the tree-line, commanding him and everyone else that was listening, to run. The people closest to the bear and I did as instructed and darted into the forest, skirting around the bear and screaming hysterically, but Windsor whirled on me and called me a string of foul names, telling me that my tree-hugging ‘thing’ was going to get everyone killed and was a good indication that I’d get all of them killed if we ever had to face off with the Barachiel family too, because I was clearly a coward that didn’t understand the concept of survival of the fittest.

  I saw red and shot flames at him out of reflex, and not only did they shock him into a retreat, but they alarmed the bear enough to cause it to stagger back a little, looking more agitated but less sure of itself. I screamed at Windsor that he was welcome to get himself covered in animal blood in a forest full of predators if he wanted to, but that he could forget traveling with us unless he took a dip in the frozen, raging river after to wash it all off because we wouldn’t be walking anywhere with someone that smelled like a fresh kill. Though his eyes widened somewhat, he didn’t actually acknowledge that there was any sense in what I’d said until much later (months later, actually) and the last thing he said to me before he scooped up Trajan and raced him away through the forest was that the bear could have me- he was through trying to protect a woman that didn’t have the sense to protect herself.

  The others at the back of the pack stared from me to where Windsor had gone and back to the bear with eyes round as saucers, but none of them seemed to know what to do or where to go. Sam moved to step forward, his face hardening with grim determination as he sized up the bear, but I cried out for him to get Bastien and Martya out of there and that was the last thing I said before the bear realised that I was good and distracted and came lumbering towards me a second time.