25

“Do you not find it oppressive?” said Udinny as they pushed on through the ferns.

“Find what oppressive?”

“This, the forest, it is like walking through a never-ending cave.” He looked up. The trees of Harnwood were huge, some further around the trunk than two big people could reach, and tall enough they made you dizzy when you looked up. But above he could see light; the canopies of the trees never quite touched. It was as if they could feel one another. Between the treetops ran a million cracks, letting in a light that fed the ferns and small plants of the forest floor. Vines encircled trees, floatvine waved lazily as it reached upwards, moss fell in soft rivers, creatures flew or floated or crawled or ran around the great trunks. Brightly coloured mushrooms and strange fruiting bodies were everywhere, on the floor, the bark, the branches and a fair few of the animals. Through his cowl he felt the web of life stretching out around him, not through trying; it was simply a constant, an awareness of the world.

You need me.

He locked the voice away.

“Caves are dark,” he said, and carried on through the ferns.

“But the weight,” she said, “can you not feel it? And the eyes, everywhere, watching us. I do not feel welcome in this place.”

“You are not,” he said, “neither am I. It tolerates us.”

“You talk like it is aware of us, what nonsen—” He turned to see Udinny had tripped over a vine of some sort and was picking herself out of the fern and leaf litter.

“Maybe it is more aware than I thought,” he said. She frowned at him and he turned away to hide his smile. It was coming to the end of the second eight and the light was beginning to wane. He knew they should find somewhere to camp.

“When will we find the boy?” asked Udinny. “We seem to have been walking forever.” Cahan nodded.

“I had hoped to have caught up to him by now,” he said. They had been three days in the forest.

“A child with short legs should not be outpacing us.” Udinny sounded out of sorts, still sulking about her sweetcakes being gone.

“The forest does not work like the land, a straight line for one is not for another.” Udinny stopped. He heard it as a ceasing of the hiss of dead leaves she trailed through. He turned. “What?”

“You have made me dislike this place even more,” she looked around. He shrugged but it had not escaped his notice that, since they had encountered the shyun, the monk had become less bright. As if until then she had not truly understood that they were alien to the forest, and the forest was alien to them. “It is like the forest is some vast creature, and we are travellers through its guts,” she said.

“It is not such a bad way to think.” The monk stared at him, and he realised how scared she must be, this woman who was so unlike him. Small where he was big, not used to this place, born in a town where the great forests were only stories told to scare people. Raised with tales of Wyrdwood gods and their dark deeds, or, worse, stories that here the Osere of below had found a way out of their confinement and hid between the trees, waiting for prey.

“I have no wish to be eaten by the forest, Cahan Du-Nahere,” she said.

He had no belief in old evils; what lurked in the forest was strange, unnatural to them maybe, but it was part of this place. It fitted here, it was not some creature bent on enslaving the people to a dark will. Udinny had left her life behind in the name of a god. One who he thought all but he had forgotten, one as dead and powerless as a fallen tree. Yet, the monk had come with him, walked into the forest with only the faith of Ranya as a guide.

Brave or foolhardy? He was not sure.

Ranya was for the lost, but she told people they could be found. As he stood there, watching the monk shrink into herself and the forest begin to glow as the night creatures filled the air with their calls, words rose to his lips. “Though you think you are alone, I walk by your side, and guide each step.” The monk looked up, blinked.

“You really do know her,” she said quietly, “she spoke those very words to me. We are chosen, Cahan Du-Nahere. You and I.” Her words made him uncomfortable. He had been told that before, and it had ended up as nothing but lies.

“Come, Udinny, let me show you how I track the child,” he pointed forwards. “It may take your mind off the presence of the forest.” Because she was right, it did have a presence, one he had been aware of it all his life. Even when he had been locked away in a monastery, far from the forests of his childhood, he had dreamed of these green and gloaming spaces. They had existed in his mind as somewhere to run to when the rigors pushed upon him by the trainers of Zorir became too much.

The monk and the forester walked through the breath of trees, their presence disturbing the interconnectedness of the place, even while they tried to be a part of it. Crua had once been a land of many gods, though few that ever did anything or showed their faces. And yet here, Cahan could not help but believe they were in the presence of Crua’s one true deity, the forest.

The monk stared at him, the spikes of her hair had wilted in their travels. Cahan pointed. “If you look you will see some of the fern leaves glint silver in the last of the light.” She nodded. “That is where the leaves have been turned by the passage of the child.”

“How do you know it is not an animal?”

“Partly because we have been following his trail. But also, animal tracks tend to weave through the undergrowth, they are looking for food and they do not move in straight lines like the boy does. And,” Cahan reached out and took a tuft of wool from a thorned vine, “every so often I find material torn from the child’s clothes. Animals do not dye their fur.” Udinny took the wool from him and stared at it.

“How long does this silvering last?” It was a good question and she looked brighter than she had done since they met the shyun.

“About a full day, but after that the broken leaves will begin to die so you can still follow the path.”

“And have some idea of time, how long it is since your quarry passed?”

“Aye,” he said, and knelt, finding a broken leaf and showing her the broken stalk. “See, the sap is forming a hard crust? For this type of fern that takes about half a day.”

“It is different for all plants?” She looked at him.

“Yes, and I do not know how long it takes for all of them, only the most common. To study the forest is a lifetime’s work.” She nodded, looking at the broken stalk. “Why don’t you lead for a while, Udinny?”

“Me?” said Udinny.

“You see the path, do you not?” She nodded. “Well, follow it until you find a place that looks like we should camp there.” The glow of the forest was brightening while the light from above was dying.

“I will,” she said, “thank you, it is good to feel useful.” They walked onwards into the gloom. Being given a purpose had filled the monk with a new energy. She strode ahead, using her stick to push through the undergrowth, not even stopping to eat berries from the trees and the few bushes they passed. He let her walk further in front of him than he was comfortable with, hoping to make her feel like she truly led. Udinny walked up a gentle incline and when she reached the top she turned and shouted back. “I see a camping place! And I long to rest!”

She ran.

“Udinny!” he shouted, for it was foolish to run towards anything in Harnwood. He chased her, reaching the top of the crest as she reached the beginning of the clear ground she had seen. His blood froze. It looked like a perfect camp, a wide clearing of undisturbed leaf litter between tall trees. The monk running towards it as fast as she could, lifting her robe so it did not impede her legs. Cahan shouted again, “Udinny, stop!” But she was not listening, only running. There was something joyful about her.

She did not know she ran towards her death.

He could not stop her.

A spear did.

Cahan did not see the thrower, only saw Udinny fall as the spear pierced the ground before her. The sudden appearance of it shocking her. She tried to stop, but was going too fast and tripped, rolling in the leaf litter. Quickly up and scuttling away from the spear on all fours. Another spear fell in front of her, forcing her back up the hill. Cahan continued running towards her. Another spear drove her towards him. When he reached the monk she was babbling. Her eyes wide with fright.

“Shyun,” she said, voice slick with panic, “it is a shyun spear! They took my cakes, didn’t even eat them. Now they try and kill me!”

“Come away, Udinny,” he pulled her up by her arm, and backward at the same time, away from the clearing.

“They tried to kill me, Cahan!”

“No,” he said, “they saved your life.” Her brow furrowed, puzzled.

“By throwing spears at me?”

“By stopping you,” he said. “That is not a clearing.” He pointed at the leaf litter. “That is a littercrawler nest.” He helped her up, walking her away.

“I have been bitten by them before,” she said, “and I know how to make the Allbalm poultice, it is not—”

“Remember how we saw the plant-eating gasmaws, and the spearmaw that ate them? How they were the same creature but different?” The monk nodded. “Well, there are different types of littercrawler, Udinny.” She stared at him, still confused. The spikes of her hair drooping at the ends, making her look comical in her confusion and sadness. “I will show you.” He looked around and found a large rock. It took all his strength to throw it as far as the clearing and it splashed down into the centre of the large pool of leaves before them.

A moment of silence.

As if all the creatures of the forest knew what was to come and quietened in anticipation.

The centre of the lake of leaves erupted. Huge, thick tentacles as long as four or five people in a line, shooting out of it. Following the writhing tentacles a massive, black-carapaced body. Within the tentacles Cahan saw the beak of the littercrawler opening and closing, making a sound like wood shattering. The huge creature cast about with feeding tentacles as thick as tree trunks. Black ropes reaching in every direction, waving madly as if each had a mind of its own. Running along the edges of the leaf lake, twisting up and round the trunks of trees. Hungry, trying to find whatever it was that had disturbed it. When it found nothing it let out an ear-splitting shriek.

“Ranya’s sore feet,” said Udinny, staring as the creature continued to churn up the leaf litter in frustration. “It would have eaten me and I would barely have been a mouthful. Truly this place hates us.”

“No, Udinny,” said Cahan quietly, “it does not hate us. It does not care about us at all.” As if to show how little it cared, the littercrawler gave up its search for food, the vast black form slowly vanishing from sight under the leaves until once more most would never know there was anything but a clearing there.

He thought he heard something behind him and turned. Nothing.

“They saved me,” said the monk, standing and brushing leaves from her robe. “The forest children saved me.” Then she raised her voice. “Shyun!” she shouted. “I apologise for thinking badly of you! I will never eat sweetcakes again without asking Ranya to bless you!” There was no reply but the gentle sigh of the wind between the trees. Udinny looked about, licked her lips then nodded to herself. “Maybe, Cahan,” she said softly, “you should lead for a bit.”

“The child’s tracks led right towards that,” he said, staring at the leaf litter. “You were going in the right direction.”

“Our search is over then?” said Udinny sadly. He shook his head.

“No. We will camp here on the rise. In the morning when the light is better we will go around the other side of the nest. See if the child made it past.”

“Past the creature?”

“The forest called to the child, Udinny.” He pulled his pack off his back. “It may not care about us, but it wanted him. It has its own purposes and I doubt it was to feed the boy to a littercrawler. Though I suppose only a fool thinks they know what the forest intends.” The monk took her pack off and rolled her neck to get out cricks.

“Will we be safe here?”

“I think so,” said Cahan, looking around, “it seems the forest children are watching over us.”