24. Dark Forest Darker

The Wanderer, they called him, though his real name was Torryn. But descriptively, The Wanderer was accurate. He lived off the land mostly, hunting game and gathering herbs and mushrooms. He avoided the big cities, sleeping rough and fending for himself.

He had lived all his life in the country. His parents had died so long ago that he kept only the vaguest of memories of them. He did recall an image of a dark-haired woman bending over him. He assumed that it was his mother.

Sometimes he’d stop at a village and sell game for coin. Coin was useful when he needed new arrowheads or felt like sleeping on a soft bed occasionally.

Right now he was making for one of his favourite villages – Restwatch, a small farming community where he knew there would always be a warm fire and a bed at the inn.

Last night’s rainstorm had left him soaked. He had laid out his clothes in the morning sun, but as he lay naked on a mossy rock, the most amazing and terrifying thing had happened. A dragon had flown directly overhead. He didn’t remember how he knew about dragons – he guessed that his mother had told him stories about them when he was very young. He used to think that they were real. As he grew older, he realised that they were just stories that parents told to terrify children. He remembered having been relieved when he found this out. Dragons were terrifying.

The one that flew overhead had obviously been in a fight. It dripped blood. A large drop fell right by him as he lay on his rock. It hit the ground with a splat and smoked, as though it were very hot, while he scrabbled to gather his clothes.

If dragons were real, then…

No. No dragons existed. No dragons had ever existed. They weren’t real.

One additional glance at the smoking pool of blood was all that was required to get him back into his clothes and into the nearby forest, where he would be safe from attack from above.

He knew this forest. He knew it had a name, though he couldn’t remember what it was. He had skirted it often, stalked deer here. There was a clearing a little way in where edible mushrooms grew.

He didn’t remember it being like this.

It was like the forest had experienced a hundred years of growth since he was last here. Paths that he remembered as clear were choked with undergrowth. The canopy above was thicker, and blocked out more of the day’s light than it had. The boles of trees were thicker, rougher, and more moss-covered.

He shivered. It was also chillier than he was used to, and his damp clothes weren’t helping.

He followed his accustomed path, though it was much more difficult now. He had to use his knife often to hack away undergrowth that was blocking his way. He glanced upwards frequently, but he didn’t see the dragon again. Doesn’t matter, he thought. If it was around, and he was caught away from cover, he would be as helpless as a rabbit in a snare.

He found his way blocked by a thorny bush that shouldn’t have been there. Perplexed, he searched for a way around it.

If he could make it to the top of that boulder on the right, he’d be able to drop down to the other side. But he’d have to use the branches of that tree to hoist himself up. An old, cracked deadfall might be able to help him with that.

As he was planning, he heard a rustle in the undergrowth nearby to his left. He froze.

As he watched, a centipede easily four feet long emerged from the bushes, its many legs rippling like waves as it scuttled by his feet.

He knew from experience that regular-sized centipedes could deliver a painful bite, and a fever that could last for days. And this centipede was monstrous.

He’d heard someone say once that if you liked frightening people, you should be a centipede.

Torryn was very frightened right now, but he held his ground as it went past him and disappeared back into the forest. In fact, it was quite a while before he could even move.

When he did, he stumbled and almost tripped on a loose rock on the moss-covered ground. His damp clothes now completely forgotten, he started to collect his bearings. The tree, right, and the boulder.

Breathing heavily, and not without glancing back down at the undergrowth, he placed a hand on the tree he intended to climb.

A sudden noise made him jump, his heart racing. Something struck the tree, right by his hand. An arrow, though not like any arrow he had ever used for hunting.

He watched as the bright red ribbon attacked to its nock end drifted down until it hung vertically from the thin arrow embedded deep in the wood.

As he stared at it amazedly, two more arrows struck. He could see that the ribbons took the place of fletchings. One part of his mind admired the ingenuity of this solution to the problem of stabilising arrows in flight. Such arrows would not have much range – there would be too much drag on the ribbon for these arrows to fly very far. That meant that whoever had fired these arrows must be close. Very close.

He saw them when he turned – they were much shorter and lighter than he was, with long black hair that did not quite cover their upward-pointed ears. There were three of them. All held light recurve bows, each with one of the strange arrows nocked, with the ribbons gathered in their bow hands.

“Uh… hello...” he stammered. His heart felt ready to burst from his chest, if one of these strange little people didn’t put an arrow in it first. “Where did you come from?”

“We have always been here,” one of them replied with a strange accent. The two others glanced at each other, then back to him. “Leave our forest immediately.”

That was so much what Torryn wanted to do right now, but he couldn’t.

“If… if I leave the forest, the dragon will see me.”

“The dragon is long gone,” replied the small man. “And so should you be. Your kind is not welcome here.”

“My kind?” Torryn asked, confused.

“Humans.”

Torryn blinked. This was too much to process. First the dragon, then the mysterious way the forest had… changed since his last visit, then the centipede, and now a group of tiny people who referred to his “kind” as humans – implying that they themselves were not.

“Okay...” he said feebly.

“Leave now. Tell others of your kind that they are not to come to the forest. Next time we will not be merciful to those we find.”

“Okay...” Torryn said again. It was all he could think of to say. He turned and started back up the path he had arrived on. His knees were weak, but the further he went, the faster his legs took him, until he was virtually running.

He burst out from the forest into sunlight, the road and the river nearby. Blinking, he turned back and looked, but he didn’t see any of the little people in the forest that had suddenly turned dark and grim.

Panting, he turned back towards Restwatch. He had to tell someone about this.

He had to tell everyone about this.