Sly

The Godswoods breathed with something in the air, something old. Older than the palace stones, older than the Lake, and probably older than the days of men. It unsettled me in ways I couldn't put to words. It crawled over my skin, and a promise of the unknown licked at my senses and fogged my nerves.

Curse Davery for sending me here, knowing full well I hated this place.

Thank Shadow I was with Graham at least. 

Following the clearly marked trail, I reached Graham's small house in the Godswoods. Relief hit me when I was finally not alone among the creepy trees anymore, and Graham was in front of his house, splitting logs. 

Barking from the front porch had Graham look up, wiping sweat off his brow with the back of an arm. He had a scraggly beard that nearly hid his mouth. It made reading his face difficult, and he was an odd one to begin with.

His monster of a shaggy white dog bound off its resting place on the porch, racing across the yard to greet me. 

"Settle down, boy," I put my arms up to defend myself. "You know who I am!"

"Down, Bear," Graham said, and his beast stood back, leaving me alone. 

I brushed the dust off of my tunic and looked to Graham. "Davery sent me to help you."

Graham nodded, scratching his chin under his beard. "Winter 's a ways off yet."

I shrugged. "He says it's to help you, but really it's to punish me for doing something he thinks was stupid."

Graham leveled those sharp eyes at me. "And did ya?"

I shrugged again, looking away. 

"Mm-hm. Well, there's a spare axe on the porch. We cut only the felled trees here, but you're welcome to work on that pile over there." Graham nodded toward a couple of small fallen trees that he had dragged into the yard. Somewhat recently from the look of them.

I took the few steps to the porch and picked up the intended tool while Bear followed me around, wagging his tail. Looking over my task with a sigh, I pulled some of the dead wood aside to start chopping it up.

"Don't forget, Sly," Graham said, stopping me before my first swing. "If it even looks like it could still be alive, don't cut it. You don't want to cut from the living things in these woods."

A shiver overtook me as I looked over to Graham, then down to my pile of fallen trees.

"I'm pretty sure I checked that pile good," he offered. "If you want me to look at anything just holler."

And then he went back to swinging his axe as though he hadn't just said those things.

I looked down at my pile again, scrutinizing the fallen branch at my feet. It looked good and dead. I ran my fingertips along it. It seemed dry. I took a deep breath, praying to the gods that I wasn't about to cut living wood, then I swung.

The misty space under the giant trees echoed softly with every smack of the axe. Even with the pair of gloves I had to borrow from Graham, who's hands were far larger than mine, the rough axe handle was wearing a blister on my thumb. Adding to my annoyance was the constant throbbing of my now purple jaw. Thankfully Graham didn't say a word about my bruise, but then, he rarely said a word about anything.

"Last one." Graham's voice echoed slightly.

I jumped at Graham's words, the first sound beyond the chopping of wood and the snoring of his shaggy white hound I had heard in a few hours.

"Last one what?" I snapped, too irritable to keep up pleasantries. Graham turned his lazy gray eyes towards me for a moment, then back to the ground of the clearing.

"Last log to cut." He bent over and tossed a neatly cut piece onto the pile between us, then pulled a few loose chips from his dark beard. He walked a couple paces and dragged the last fallen branch from the edge of the clearing to his spot.

"Thank Shadow," I sighed.

I sat on the ground, happy to drop my axe and flop onto my back for a moment. A furry white face trotted over to lick my nose.

"Ugh, get off." I pushed the hound out of my way and sat up. "I don't know what you've been eating, Bear, but your breath stinks."

Graham had nearly halved the log in one swing, his arms bunching with practiced muscle as I watched. Letting my eyes wander to the living woods around me, I wondered again that we ever tried to build with wood in Unays. It just didn't seem worth it to risk taking the wrong things from the Godswoods.

When Graham tossed the last piece on the pile, I looked back to our task. The whole pile of cut pieces left something to be desired. Some were wet, or worse, still greenish. Those at least would dry out by winter when we would need them. 

Graham sunk the edge of his axe into the stump he used for splitting and wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. His hound trotted over to him, begging for a scratch behind the ear, which Graham obliged.

My arms ached in rhythm with my jaw, but at least we were finally finished. I stood, brushing dirt off my backside before approaching the pile of wood and helping Graham cover it with a large waxed canvas.

"Finally," I sighed. "See you later, Graham. I want to get back before dark."

"Wait. Take this back." Graham grabbed a bundle of sweet-smelling Maplewood from his cabin doorstep. "Burn it for the Hunt."

I took the bundle in silence, studying the smell.

"An offering?" I asked.

Graham just nodded in response. Of course, someone living in the Godswoods would worship Claw, god of the hunt and wild things. 

"We'll burn it on the festival for you," I said.

Graham didn't seem to need to say anything more. Instead, he nodded at me with those lazy eyes and walked the opposite way of the clearing into the woods, shaggy hound behind him.

I glared at his back, watching him move with ease through the thick, tangled underbrush that had tripped me dozens of times already today.

"Goodbye to you too, Graham," I muttered. "I'll give your best to my brother."

If he heard me, he didn't show it. Eventually, he disappeared, off doing whatever it is he did alone in the Godswoods all day, and I walked in the direction of home.

The unsettling feeling of being watched started up again the moment I was alone. I kept a hand near my knife and the other had the bundle of seasoned sticks tucked securely under my other arm. 

Graham kept a path somewhat clear of underbrush that led to Unays, but one could never entirely snuff out the things that grew here. I traversed it as best as I could, but parts of the path were overgrown, and sometimes it took several minutes of careful searching to find the next leg of it. As I wound north I became less sure of the path I followed. I thought it was clearer of debris in the morning, but I had also been half-asleep. From what I could see through the canopy of leaves, it was mid-afternoon right now and I wasn't even near to the edge of the Godswoods. Which unsettled me, because by now I should have been out of the trees.

A snapping branch clicked in my ear. It wasn't from underfoot but from somewhere to the left. I froze, nearly dropping the bundle of offering wood from Graham. 

The forest was not somewhere I knew how to move quietly. Even Graham didn't move without sound underfoot and he lives here. I moved only my head, licking my dry lips and keeping my breath quiet enough to hear any more sounds. The Midlands was mirth with stories of the strange things that happened in the Godswoods, and I prayed that all I would see when I spotted the source of the sound would be a deer or a bird.

Another snap. A horse snorted softly. I let out a slow breath. It wasn't some creature of horror, but if the wrong person found me in the Godswoods I could still be in trouble. 

Now that I could pinpoint the location, I heard more sounds that let on it was not a lone horse and rider, but the soft footfalls of many. A chill sparked through me in sharp contrast with the warm, damp air of the Midlands. The steps were moving slowly, probably so as not to catch the horse's foot in vines. They would come into view any moment now, and my body was rigid, ready to flee.

I chanced a look around me. The trees grew so far apart that I felt exposed. Any motion to hide would end in so much movement and noise it would be pointless to try. But the crunching grew louder, and I had to either face what was coming or run. Something snapped behind me, I turned slowly to find the point of a carved stone arrow leveled to my throat.

"Duwa'ine juda?" A woman stood before me with feathers braided into her brown hair, which had been coated with green paint. Her light skin was mottled with brown mud, designs swirled in it by fingers when it was fresh. She wore a simple doeskin dress with one sleeve on her shooting arm to protect it from errant bowstrings. Her feet were bare save for a leather tied to the bottoms of them and held on by thin cords wrapped around her ankles. Between the mud and the paint, she would blend right into the forest. 

I stared at the wildness of her for a long moment, when the point of the arrow pushed forward, poking into my neck. The Godswoods walkers weren't just myth.

"Juda!" The woman demanded, her eyes hard and sharp on me.

"I don't..." I swallowed gently, and the arrow was drawn back a fraction to let me speak. "I don't know what you're saying."

The woman let down her arrow and stepped right in my face. She was so close that our hot breath mixed between us for several heartbeats while the forest woman stared into my eyes. I was afraid to blink.

"Aivel!" She called towards the group that had steadily approached from the north. I turned her head just enough to move my eyes over the group now in plain sight. They were all something out of stories. I've never felt more exposed in the Godswoods than in that moment, and that's saying something..

Men gripped rough spears and thick bark shields. They all had mud smeared on their exposed arms and green paint in their hair. They were clothed in leather and hung feathers and rocks around their necks and through their braids, adding textures and colors that helped them blend into the trees. There were thirty or so of them, and they surrounded a lone rider. I was wrong about the horse, on the back of a huge black elk was an ancient woman with the milky white eyes of blindness. Her hair paint was white. Everything she wore was white. A beacon of it, nothing like the camouflaged people surrounding her. A sharp contrast to the solid black elk that carried her effortlessly.

Sleight movement revealed a ring of archers, like the one who found with her arrow at my throat, in the trees around the ancient elk woman and her escorts. They were all women or children, the older ones carried babies in slings in their backs. Some of the children carried dead rabbits and squirrels they had hunted while walking.

"Wayula Aivel." The woman startled me when I was distracted with the sight of the Godswood walkers, and she prodded me with her arrow. A girl no older than fourteen or fifteen stalked forward, bow in hand. The two forest scouts exchanged words in their tongue, and the younger one prowled right up to me with no fear.

"Who you?" she asked, stumbling over the words. 

I tried to control my surprise and barely kept hold of my bundle of wood, but I was so out of my element here in the thick air of the Godswoods and surrounded by wild forest people, that all my usual composure had left me. My tongue flicked over my dry lips before I answered.

"My name is Sly." There wasn't a point in lying, and I doubted this woman's grasp on the language was strong enough to talk my way out of the situation anyway.

"My Aivel." She pointed to herself as though I was a simple child. "Ai-vel."

"Aivel," I repeated, which seemed to satisfy the forest people.

"Sly, why you here?" Aivel asked.

"I'm going home, to the city," I answered. A glance at the spearmen told me that all eyes were fixed on my exchange with Aivel.

"Ci...ty." Aivel rolled the word around in her mouth. "City?"

"You know, Unays, the clay buildings? The big lake? Rivers?" I tried to think of more landmarks, not that there was much else in the Midlands besides the lakeside city-state and the Godswoods, but one of the words clicked with Aivel.

"Lake." Aivel nodded. "Lake."

"Yes," I said slowly, hopeful. "The big lake!"

Aivel turned and uttered something quickly to the first archer woman, then pulled my wrist and began walking. A demand to follow.

"Where are we going?" I asked. Aivel had led us away from the forest people and to the east.

"Lake," she answered. Then she let my wrist go, and ran forward.

Ran was perhaps the wrong word to use, because you can't really run in the woods. 

"Wait!" I called. "I can't go as fast as you."

My guide paused long enough to look back at me, grunting and pointing at her feet. I looked down to see what she wanted to show me. Aivel jumped from one thick tree root or vine to the next, she wasn't actually looking for solid ground to step on. 

I wanted to smack myself. Why hadn't I tried that? The thick roots of the Godswoods were everywhere, and they were more than sturdy enough to hold my weight.

After I got the hang of the roots, we traversed the vines with a speed I didn't think possible, even carrying the maple wood bundle. Aivel was visibly exasperated with me for being so slow, but eventually, she stopped us.

"Lake." Aivel said, pointing to a body of calm water just visible through the trees. It was a large pond at best, but with the language barrier, it was probably accurate enough.

"Oh, no I need Lake Unays." I turned, and Aivel was gone. 

My heart skipped a beat. "Aivel?"

Nothing. 

"Aivel?" I said, a little louder and with a little more panic.

Still nothing. Just the sounds of the Godswoods around me, and nothing else.

I was alone, and I couldn't even retrace my steps to Graham's cabin.

"Shadow," I whispered, and pressed two fingers to my heart, then brow in the gods' blessing with my free arm.

I took a deep breath and looked around.

Okay, I was at a lake, those had water, water in the Midlands either runs in or out of Unays, right? I walked towards the water, it was still as glass. I had never seen such still water outside of a mug. How could there be a lake if water didn't run through it? There wasn't so much as a trickling creek in or out of it. Wandering through the trees following Aivel turned me around so much that I wasn't even sure which way north was anymore.

I sat hard on a root, bundle of wood in my lap and a slack expression of disbelief. The thick canopy over the forest was at least open where the trees stopped growing around the lake. With some open sky, I watched until I could get a feel for the movement of the sun, then I had an idea. I jabbed a stick into the damp ground, a trick I'd learned from Dirk. Its shadow would tell me more about the movement of the sun than my eyes would. 

I just hoped the little time I had before it dipped over the treetops would be enough. If I could find north, I could get home.