Chapter Twelve Vina
Chapter Twelve
Vina
I promise you I had a wife. I know I wed her. I remember, she was going to visit her mother. She said she would be home in a week. It’s been three months.
I cannot recall her face or her name.
Something is wrong, Amina. Her mother’s village is gone. I went there and found nothing but fields. I searched for her name and her face in my heart and I could not recall them. I wake weeping, but I don’t know who I weep for, or where she died.
Please, Amina. Dear sister. I had a wife, didn’t I? What was her name?
Source: Confiscated correspondence between Ibrahim Saddiq (deceased) and Amina Khan
Archivist’s Ruling: Destroy. No further action required.
The ancient forest. Vina couldn’t help but feel unease about traveling through its depths.
There were so many tales about forests—haunted, enchanted, wondrous, and eldritch—that all those dreamt-up woodlands had melded together, making the forest as chimeric as the Palace, a changeable roiling sea of green.
But beneath the magic, the shifting trees and twining tales, lay a deeper truth.
The forest was the oldest of tales. Before mortals knew how to name love or hate, lust or anger, they knew the woods, and they knew how to fear what lived in their darkness.
What had mattered to Vina, when she’d still been green to her knightly training, and the calluses on her hands had been fresh, was that the forest was dangerous.
She and the boys had been taught by Sir Maraid—a grizzled, broad knight with a scar over her left eye and cropped brown hair. Vina had been more than half in love with her, and that had made her inclined to listen attentively, in the hope their mentor would notice her. Alas, it was not to be.
“The woods’ll be full of temptations,” said Maraid.
“Comely beauties, rich fruit that’ll poison you, gold that belongs rightly to forest wights.
You want to be canny and careful when you’re on a mission.
Trust none of it.” She’d walked back and forth in front of her squires, all of them standing to attention.
“They’re also home to things that belong to deep, old tales.
The kind people no longer speak of in polite society.
And they’re home to other kinds too. Undesirables. ”
“Undesirables?” Matthias had piped up, softly baffled. “What does that mean?”
“People unwelcome in our fair cities and towns, lad,” she said. “You’ll see. Besides, nothing I say will rightly prepare you. Knowing is different from knowing.”
And that was all Maraid had ever said about the ancient forest.
“Tell me,” Vina said to Simran, as they walked through the gloomy streets. “Have you been into the forest before?”
They’d left the streets lined with gas lamps and moved onto lightless roads.
They’d walked for hours—on Vina’s insistence.
Buses and hansom cabs would be watched. People on foot were more likely to go unnoticed.
It helped that Simran had dragged some kind of magic around them that drew the shadows close and made them stick.
“I’ve never had a reason.” Simran was looking straight ahead. The moonlight reflected in her eyes, liquid silver on black. That was the mark of the magic in her—it made her strange even in the darkness she’d cloaked herself in. “I prefer cities.”
“You mean you prefer London.”
“What other cities matter?” Simran shrugged. “I had my fill of woods with Bess. I don’t need aught else.”
“The home of your friend Bess—that was a copse of woodland, conjured from a small local tale. This forest is…” Vina searched for the words. Made of ancient tales? A sentient, cunning creature? She couldn’t be sure of that. “Older,” she settled on. “It’s older.”
“I know it’s dangerous.”
“You don’t understand,” said Vina. “This woodland, this forest, it’s not like any forest you’ve seen before.
It’s ancient. Primeval. You know that, but you don’t truly feel it in your bones.
It’s… I don’t know what it is, but it feels like one of the oldest stories, half dead.
Every wood that has come into existence since looks like an echo of it, once you’ve seen it. That’s how it feels.”
“That doesn’t frighten me. I’ve seen worse.”
“Until you’ve experienced it, it’s…” Vina sighed. “Knowing is different from knowing,” she said finally, echoing her old mentor.
“I suppose I’ll learn soon enough.”
Simran looked pensive.
Vina hesitated. They’d fought so recently. Simran didn’t even like her. But eventually, she said, carefully, “What happened to you? After you left me in your flat?”
“Your pale assassin’s been busy in London,” Simran said. “He’s killed other Elsewhere-born incarnates. I saw one. She was—young.” Her jaw tightened. “I’d guess he doesn’t like our kind particularly, but he killed Bess too, and she was old Isle blood through and through.”
“He killed Soren as well,” Vina said. “A friend of mine. He was Isle-blooded. I don’t think a hatred of Elsewhere is what guides him.” After a breath, Vina said, more gently, “I’m sorry you had to see the young girl he killed.”
“Me too. I’m sorrier she’s dead, and the assassin isn’t. But we’ll fix that.”
Simran hefted the pack her friends had given her higher on her shoulder. Her expression was determined.
Highgate Wood loomed in front of them. From the outside the trees were simply trees—glossy brown and green, with golden leaves carpeting the soil beneath them. Vina could hear the distant hooting of an owl. It was a pleasant scene.
She knew better than to trust it.
Simran was already striding ahead. She was beyond the tree line when she turned back and raised an eyebrow. “Are you coming?” she asked.
Vina gave a playful bow, then followed.
Mist bloomed under their feet as they walked farther into the woodland.
“So,” said Vina. “How will we find this library?”
Simran drew out a compass—it was strange, made of wood with a faint green burr of lichen on its surface, its needle a brassy gold.
“The cunning folk gave it to me,” said Simran. “They told me to head to the darkest part of the forest.”
“Of course,” said Vina brightly. “The safest part.”
Simran snorted and tucked the compass away in a quick gesture, almost a sleight-of-hand trick. Vina would have missed it, if she hadn’t been watching closely. Simran had deft hands. She’d proved that when she’d stolen the limni ink.
The deeper they walked, the more the landscape changed, deepening into ancient strangeness. Moss and bluebells covered the ground, in a carpet so thick it swallowed Vina’s boots up to the ankle. She could hear distant rustling—animals in the undergrowth, and wind pressing cold hands to the trees.
A shiver ran through her, all animal warning. Wherever they were, they were no longer in Highgate Wood. That wood had acted as their portal into this deep forested land, this ancient tale woven into the Isle.
Night surrounded them, but even without a torch in hand Vina could see through the shadows.
It wasn’t her vision she had to thank for that: There were lights floating through the trees.
Will-o’-the-wisps, fae things sent to guide travelers astray.
Vina watched them warily as Simran steered them through the trees, in a looping, winding motion, following the trembling needle of the compass.
The darkness was already growing more oppressive. The silence too.
It was broken by a yawn. Simran covered her mouth, glaring at Vina, as if daring her to say anything.
“We should rest,” said Vina.
“We should keep moving.”
“I’m afraid I’m absolutely exhausted,” Vina replied, giving an exaggerated yawn that made Simran narrow her eyes to slits. “I can’t possibly go on. We’ll have to rest here and move at first light.”
Simran’s nostrils flared as she huffed, but she didn’t argue. She had to be tired. The circles under her eyes were like licks of black paint.
“You think it’s wise to sleep here?” Simran asked.
“I’ve slept in this forest before. As long as we have light and someone to keep watch there’s nothing to fear.” Probably. “I’ll stay awake and start a fire.”
“You’ll need wood for that,” Simran said, after a pause. “I’ll find some for you.”
Vina almost cautioned Simran not to walk away, but she bit her tongue. Simran was a witch. She could take care of herself.
Simran returned with wood, and they started the fire.
They were silent for a while, sinking into the peace of the forest after the chaos of the last few days.
The warmth of the fire was unbearably good.
They hadn’t packed for the winter cold, no bedding or extra woolens, and Vina hadn’t realized how deeply the cold had already wormed its way into her bones.
Simran sat with her chin tucked against her knees, staring into the darkness. The compass sat at her feet.
Vina leaned forward and adjusted the logs in the fire. The heat warmed her face.
“Do you truly believe killing the pale assassin will free us from our tale?” Simran asked.
Vina paused, hands stilling. “No,” she admitted. “It’s just a hope.”
“That hope is very foolish, and it’s going to hurt you when we’ve gutted him and our tale’s still in us. Not as much as it’s going to hurt me to get stabbed, of course.”
“It’ll hurt me too,” Vina said. “Alas. We truly are tragic figures. Do you think there’s food in the pack your friends gave you?”
“When I trapped you and argued with you earlier, you were a great deal sharper,” said Simran, sounding displeased that Vina had dulled herself into more blunted company. “Don’t you care that we’re going to die?”
“Of course I care,” said Vina. “But now that I’m not tied up, I don’t see much point in yelling.
Do you?” One look at Simran’s face confirmed that she probably would prefer yelling, so Vina relented, and turned finally to honesty.
“If it helps, I truly don’t want to stab you, Simran. Or stab myself. I like being alive.”
Simran looked away from her again, head angled to the darkness, concealing her features.