The Wildest Woods

by S. K Munt

  I screamed and backed up, holding up my hands again and shooting two more balls of fire and light its way and the rest of The Sequestered took their cue and bolted into the forest too with Sam, Martya and Bastien leading the way but crying out for me to be careful. One of the fireballs hit the bear at the top of one of its hind legs but the other missed and hissed a path through the air to its baby and that did it- it turned away from me and went after its cub as it yipped and pawed at the ground in front of it where the flames had landed, startling it. I sucked in a breath and moved to run after my friends, pleased that I’d distracted it if nothing else and praying that I had time to get around it and catch up with the others, but then I heard a small voice cry: ‘Larkin wait for me!’ and the mama bear spun around as I did.

  No!

  My blood turned to ice when I saw that Serif had waited behind for me, and now a good ten metres separated us. Sensing that it had a better chance of devouring this smaller, less flammable creature, the bear roared and began to race at Serif, getting down on all fours and shooting forward with shocking speed. I went into autopilot again and though I did not remember most of it after, somehow I got my cloak off one of my arms and started running at Serif too. The youth didn’t scream when he realised how much trouble he was in and instead, lifted his tiny little shanghai in self defence, but he never got to pull back on the band- one minute one of the bear’s massive claws were striking out towards him and the next, Serif was howling in agony and I was lifting him off the ground.

  The next few moments blurred by, but by the time I had caught up to the rest of The Sequestered, Serif was bleeding profusely from the jagged tears that the bear had carved down his right forearm and my wings were flapping so hard in my panic that I apparently knocked over the first two people that raced to our aid from behind me with them. Serif was crying in sharp, ugly little gasps, but he clung to me as I screamed for help and told me that I’d saved him, I’d saved him… over and over again until I couldn’t see his pale face through my tears. Martya and two of the witches stepped forward to tend to Serif’s wounds with the little first aid kit that they had and I tried to disentangle myself from his desperate grasp, but Serif clung to me and refused to let me go, so I had no choice but to sit there and watch as his wounds were irrigated, covered with some weird herbal remedy to stave off infection and then bandaged. My claustrophobia floated to the surface of my nervous system (the last time someone had held me this tight they’d…) but my concern for the boy’s welfare overwhelmed my concern for myself, keeping me pinned beneath him.

  ‘I’m so glad you were there…’ Serif choked out, his face contorting with pain as his fingers crushed mine. He wasn’t that much smaller than I was, not really, but his eyes were so bright with vulnerability that he looked centuries younger than me then. ‘I thought I’d be able to save you but…’ he sobbed and buried his face into my cloak, which was still half-hanging off me. ‘Thank you Larkin. I guess I’m not ready to become an explorer yet, am I?’

  ‘Of course you are,’ I said, my throat tight. I couldn’t look at his wounds- they were so deep! How close had he come to having his arteries clawed out of his wrist? ‘You just need to pick on a smaller bear next time, hmm? Work your way up to wrestling the bigger ones?’

  ‘I think I’ll leave it to you to fight them in general- just for a few more years,’ Serif said, closing his eyes and wincing as Gabrielle tightened the bandage, ‘at least with you around, I can go on adventures and live to talk about them after, right?’

  ‘Right,’ I said as my eyes filled with tears again and my heart swelled with hope. He wasn’t flirting anymore and he wasn’t trying to be brave- he was just a kid that had been scared out of his wits and was now holding onto the one person that made them feel safe- me.

  I smiled then as I realised that it was possible to feel like a mother after all- even if you didn’t have a womb.

  *

  We got moving again almost as soon as we’d patched Serif up, and though it hadn’t proven to be the safest place to be, Martya returned to my side, making little notes on the map that she’d borrowed from Bastien as we went- the kind of notes that measured distance and left me in awe of her because I had no idea how she managed to keep track of such things. Nor did I know how she and Sam could write while walking, because even reading while walking made me sick.

  ‘Look at us, huh? Just going for a casual trek in the wilderness…’ she glanced at me, and I couldn’t help but notice how becoming the winter was for her, for her Rubicon cheeks set off her auburn hair and hazel eyes prettily. It was a shame that Sam was too preoccupied by his own notebook that day to pay her the kind of attention that she’d clearly tried to snare from him earlier when she’d tried walking at his side. ‘I know you’re not happy about how all of this came to be, but you’ve got to admit… the future feels brighter out here, doesn’t it?’ She held out her palms and snowflakes immediately began to fall onto her maroon gloves. ‘Now that we’re free?’

  ‘I’m still deciding on how free I am… being the devil’s actual advocate and all... but yes, I am appreciating the open sky, or I was until it started to drop down on us.’ I looked around me, suddenly feeling very confused- and like a thoughtless twat. ‘Where is your family though? I thought you said that your parents and brothers were all involved with-’

  ‘They are, but they stayed in Calliel to keep an eye on things, you know? Once we’ve established a village or whatever it is that we can manage to establish, some of us will go back for the others. For the time being, they’re expecting us to be gone for at least two years before we can return for them but I hope it will be sooner than that.’

  I frowned at the idea of returning to Calliel even two years from then, but asked: ‘Are they safe?’ instead as I pulled my cloak more tightly around myself. The temperature was dropping again, and fast! ‘I know you said a lot of people that are linked with us don’t know what it is that they’re linked to, but your family has obviously been involved in this crusade of revenge against the Barachiels for awhile, so how have they avoided detection for so long?’

  Martya’s grim smile was re-directed back out at the snowy forest around us. ‘Because they’re Blue Collars and farmers, Larkin, which means to the Barachiels and the rest of the nobility, they are beneath notice. They don’t rebel, they don’t gossip, they don’t practice religion and they didn’t blame The Barachiels for my death so they slipped right through that big ol’ crack in the caste system quickly and quietly and they’ve stayed hidden in there since.’ She sighed out a cloud of frosty air. ‘I still can’t work out if that’s a comedic or tragic element in all of this, but I know having Adeline thriving in the inner sanctum for so long has generated a bit of trust for us.’

  ‘Our spine is the one part of our body we never get to see, and yet it is the part that supports us the most,’ I agreed, thinking that over and narrowing my eyes at a massive chunk of ice that was churning along the river. ‘So long as it does what it’s supposed to do, of course, we don’t give it a second thought. But should it snap-’

  ‘The rest will fall, eventually,’ Martya finished solemnly. ‘And they will fall, Larkin- they must. I know you have mixed feelings towards them but-’

  ‘Did you know that Karol released the people who scored highest in the PCE the year of our birth in your name the other week?’ I asked quickly, blowing into my hands to make it seem more casual, but she stiffened all the same.

  ‘To get you into bed, Larkin,’ she said tersely, and though I’d noticed how hard she’d been working to keep her personal agenda out of our conversations over the past few days, I saw the shadows of her truths slip back behind her eyes now as she closed the book and slipped it under her arm. ‘He made a big, grand gesture for one dead whore-’

  ‘Martya!’

  ‘Sorry, for one dead Companion... to make another feel grateful to him.’ She looked at me quickly and yes, those hazel eyes had darkened. ‘If I’d lived, and if we’d been his
, I don’t think it would have once crossed his mind to release you or anyone else on my behalf, do you?’

  I sighed, looking down at my boots and frowning at how deep my footprints were becoming. ‘I’d like to believe that he would have but… I guess I don’t know what to believe and I probably never will. Ora swore that he loved me in the end, as did he, and if that was true then I suppose there was no limit to what he would have done to make me happy… but he never would have become infatuated with me in the first place if I’d been his to enjoy rather than to long for so I guess you’re right- I just don’t know if that makes him evil, or just someone whose potential went untapped for a very long time.’ I blew out a breath and confessed: ‘But I do know that if all of the things that he did for me when he believed that he was in love with me came from his desire to make me his wife and his equal and not just his toy, then he wasn’t evil, Martya…’ I remembered the costume that he’d had made to woo me with, the way Ora had said that he’d demanded permission to change every rule in order to marry me, the way he’d brought Lindy and Coaxley over to celebrate my release so I’d have some family there, and the way he had granted my freedom... and tears stung my eyes- hot ones. ‘In fact, he could have just been the most incredible, loving, thoughtful man on the face of the earth.’ And I scared him out of a window! Thank the heavens that Satan cleared that from my conscience and brought him back, because if I’d had to live with that… well, I wouldn’t of, would I? That’s the whole point?

  Martya didn’t know all of the intimate details so she made a face. ‘You thought that about Kohén once, didn’t you?’

  I nodded, hugging myself tightly now that I could feel the wind picking up again. ‘Yes, but there was a difference- Kohén brought me Liberty… but Karol granted me it. He is many things and a lot of them were awful- but he was trying to change.’

  Martya looked at me, incredulous. ‘Please tell me that you’re not harbouring some-’

  ‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘Absolutely not! I am far too rational to fall for a man like that, and far too smart to know that a man like that would never fall for me anyway… not in a way that would last… but you can’t help the way you feel and the truth is that I feel like Karol was compassionate, kind and most importantly, determined to make the world a better place in the end, regardless of what motivated him to try and change in the first place. I do not have romantic feelings towards him and I’ll never have such feelings for any man again thanks to the things that I was subjected to under his family’s care, but I don’t hate him anymore. In fact, I feel sorry for him.’

  Martya sighed, glancing behind her. ‘I can at least empathise with you as far as being unable to control your feelings goes. Sam’s got to be the worst possible candidate for a love interest around here, and yet every time I look at him…’

  I chuckled, looking back to where Sam was so focused on his work that the tip of his tongue was poking out between his teeth in a comical fashion. He looked ridiculous but that focus softened him, and I could see why Martya was developing a crush. ‘I agree that he’s got to be the worst candidate…’ I looked back at her. ‘But the heart wants what it wants. With any luck he’ll get his soul back soon enough so why don’t you try and steal a kiss and see where it-’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Martya said sharply, and I blinked, surprised. ‘He doesn’t want me Larkin- if I leaned into kiss him, I’d end up falling flat on my face.’

  ‘He’s not looking to be anyone’s boyfriend…’ I agreed carefully, looking back behind me to see how far behind the rest of The Sequestered were, because we were rounding yet another large bend in the river and I didn’t want anyone to fall behind or wander off in the wrong direction now that the snow was falling more heavily. ‘He wouldn’t even know how to be one, but I know that he still craves a woman’s touch, so if you approach him carefully-’

  ‘I’m very aware that he’s up for a good time and believe me when I say that if he wanted one with me, and if the chemistry was there, I’d offer myself up as a casual fling in a nanosecond.’ Martya looked straight ahead at the track, eyes flattening as she tucked her ears under her wool hat. ‘But he wants someone else, Lark- in fact he’s obsessed with someone else and I know that because he’s been sketching her all morning.‘

  My eyebrows shot up because I thought he’d been writing about me, and I was relieved to hear that he had someone else on his mind, even if that someone wasn’t Martya. ‘He can draw?’

  ‘As true to life as a photograph,’ she confirmed, now tucking her hair into the collar of her jacket. I looked behind us and saw others were doing the same- everyone but Sam who’d lifted his book so that it was vertical in order to make sure that the powdery snow did not fall on his work. ‘That’s just one more thing that makes him sexier than hell to me... but I’m not interested in being kissed by someone who’s imagining that I’m someone else, you know? I already tried to be someone’s favourite once and I failed dismally- I won’t lower myself to jostling for a man’s attention again, especially now that I’ve seen what he looks for in a woman because she and I don’t have one single physical characteristic in common.’

  I cringed, thinking of the remarks that Sam had made about the twins. Clearly he went for bombshells, but Martya was attractive too, so what was the harm in her at least trying? ‘Tell me who it is! I can imagine her picking her nose or something, and Sam might lose interest when he sees that in my mind, yeah?’

  ‘If he sees that in your mind he’ll see your intentions too, so no.’ Martya looked at me and smiled a smile that did not meet her eyes as she threw her arm around my shoulders. ‘But thanks for the offer. You’re a good friend, you know that?’

  ‘As are you.’ I squeezed her back, frowning when I suddenly noticed that as we were rounding the bend, the forest beside us was falling away again. Not downhill, but outwards, tripling the width of our path in the space of a few metres. ‘One day, I’m sure we’ll look back on our adolescence and laugh at the silly things we thought mattered, right? Like crushes… and balancing books on our heads...’

  ‘I hope to, but until then…’ Martya pointed ahead and to the left and when I followed her gaze with my eyes, my heart sank, because our entire future had just vanished- under a wall to wall blanket of white nothingness that was paired with a wind that was so intense that it immediately began flinging about the loose strands of my hair. ‘You might want to worry about that instead.’

  But I couldn’t respond- I couldn’t do anything but stare at the blizzard that we were about to walk into- and the valley beyond it that was already vanishing beneath it- and think that even hell had looked more inviting than that part of the north did that day.

  18.

  The Wildlands

  Larkin

  The valley that had appeared in front of us on the other side of the river bend seemed to be twice the size of the Wastelands and had a horizon of its own on two sides, but with a backdrop of nimbostratus clouds above and behind it that blocked my view of everything from the mountains to the coast, while the blizzard blocked out almost everything else behind a screen of snow that had more movement, direction and harmonies than a symphony. You could still make out the pronounced lie of the river and a section or gorge wall above it on our left, and the forest behind us and to our right- but the mist that was creeping across to us between both was already beginning to veil those massive landmarks too, and soon I feared that we wouldn’t be able to see a foot in front of our faces for it.

  My heart began to beat frantically and fearfully, and as though they had picked up on my terror the way a wild animal does, the winds began to intensify a second later, bludgeoning us with swirls of snow and mist the second that we began to emerge from the woodlands and causing the other people behind Martya and I to cry out in shock and fright.

  ‘This is at least negative twenty!’ someone cried, and my heart spasmed. If it was negative twenty here, then what was it going to be like ahead of us when the forest and the canyon
vanished completely? How would I know if we were walking across a field of ice or into a sea of it?

  On Bastien’s command, (I was too bug-eyed and slack-jawed to voice one of my own) we came to a halt so people could take a moment to prepare themselves for the onset of the snowstorm. It was going to be a wicked one, I could tell, because the grey, engorged belly of those clouds appeared to have swallowed the mountain tops whole and were racing towards us with a craving for human flesh- flesh that would turn to snow the moment its icy breath hit us anyway.

  We are so going to die! I thought, still too dumbstruck to move- never before had I seen snow flying in horizontal sheets like that, sharp enough to cut us into ribbons, even through our furs. We are going to die and it’s going to be all my fault! Mine, and Satan’s!

  But I was apparently the only one that thought that for certain because the others were still going to great lengths to avoid death as diligently as they always had. The only baby boy in The Sequestered, Nadeem, was pressed into my arms as his mother begged me to keep him warm so that she could carry her other son, and before I could protest she was off, scooping her four year-old off the ground while thanking me for being an angel. The baby had dark olive skin, almond shaped eyes that were as jet-black as his thick head of hair was (traits he shared with his mother and brother) but he proved to be nowhere near as grateful as she was for my assistance, because he started to wail the second that she walked away.

  I started to fret more now that I had such an adorable, vulnerable burden to bear... but I tucked the baby into my jacket and then began to button him up, hoping that the tightness of the fit would hold him in place without smothering him. Someone stabbed a torch into the snow in front of me and took off without saying another word, and I gave Satan a hysterical piece of my mind as the baby’s fists tangled in my hair and its sobs intensified- a conversation that sadly, remained one-sided. How fucking long did she need to rest for anyway? Would we get to trade at some point so she could plough through the snow while I curled up into a warm bed in hell?