I awoke. Judging the time of day proved impossible inside the Great Forrest of Suel, so I had no idea how long I’d slept, only knowing it hadn’t been long enough. My mouth tasted like a latrine, and my lips were dry and gummed together.
Something nudged my side, and for a moment, the dream blossomed in my mind—the flight, the Svartalf, the oppressive loneliness—but only for a moment, and then it faded like early morning mist. I forced my eyes open, and the same oppressive black murk from the night before greeted me. I remained exhausted—as if I hadn’t slept at all.
Fretyi nudged my ribs again and whined a little. I looked at him, and he wagged his tail, seeming to smile. The morning sounds of my travel companions came from the camp behind me while I scratched the pup behind the ears. “Time to eat, eh, ravenous one?” He cocked his head to the side and treated me to a playful yip. “Yes, I’m getting up, and yes, I will find you some food.”
“About time you woke up,” said Jane. “I thought we’d have to tie you to Slaypnir.”
“I didn’t sleep much, judging by how I feel. What time is it?”
“Your guess is as good as anyone's. No one got much rest, though everyone slept.”
“It’s this place,” said Veethar. “Unnatural.”
As if that explains this place, I thought. Although, maybe to Veethar, it does.
“Come on, slug-a-bed. Everyone’s already eaten and ready. I’ll feed those bottomless pits you call puppies,” said Jane. “Come on, puppy,” she said in a lilting voice, and just like that, puppy and wife both forgot all about me.
“Veethar, what caused this place to…to…” I shrugged, not knowing the right words to describe the place.
Veethar shook his head. “Everything is broken. The chains of bits that make things as they are, seem to be corrupted, changed. The life here…feels less like life and more like the truykar.”
I glanced at the surrounding trees, remembering the shambling, maggot-infested truykar we’d encountered in the Darks of Kruyn and shuddered. “Are these trees…undead?” My imagination painted a picture of reaching tree limbs and grasping roots in the darkness surrounding our camp.
Veethar shook his head, though he didn’t seem sure of himself. “No, they are not revenant trees. I’m not even sure such a thing is possible.”
“If it were possible, the Dark Queen would be the cause,” said Meuhlnir.
“No, Tyeldnir, these trees are alive, but they live a corrupted life.” Veethar shook his head. “Even that makes no sense,” he muttered.
“On Mithgarthr, a forest called the Red Forest surrounds a nuclear power plant that exploded—”
“A what?” asked Freya from across the camp.
“A place that generates electricity by splitting atoms—like a controlled explosion of great power. Anyway, this plant, Chernobyl, had a huge steam explosion that blew the containment building to smithereens. After that, a fire broke out, and it spread the radiation in the wind, raining particles on the surrounding forest. Look, none of these details are important. The point is this: that radiation killed off all the microbes, insects, and fungi that cause dead things to decompose, so the trees, the leaves, everything that dies there, will never decay. When they die, they stand or lay where they fell, forever in the state they were in the day they died.”
Veethar shook his head. “No, that hasn’t happened here, and further, these trees, these leaves, they are still alive but frozen in time.”
“Even the leaves on the ground? They’re still alive?”
“Yes,” said Veethar with a shrug. “They follow the cycles of the year, but nothing dies, nothing decays.”
“That’s spooky,” said Sig.
Veethar nodded gravely. “I’ve seen nothing like it.” He walked over and petted the nose of the closest horse.
I ate a few bites of bread and cheese and submitted to Sif’s ministrations and scolding. Afterward, we set out on horseback, feeling as if we were riding at midnight.
We rode until we were tired and hungry before we ate and rested—or tried, anyway. It took real effort to fall asleep in that place.