31. Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Cold, fat drops of rain splattered across moss and stone, creating a treacherously slick surface on the bridge, and forming a curtain between herself and the trees. It was afternoon, but night may as well have fallen.
Lux adjusted the dagger within her cloak. She didn’t want to confront the phantom any more than she wanted to face a howler, but if it became inevitable, she felt better about her decision knowing she wasn’t entirely defenseless. The wrongness of it all gnawed at her nerves. No soul, dead or living, should be wandering amongst a devouring wood as if they were companions. The wraith was tied to Ghadra in some way. It was tied to them all.
With a hand outstretched for balance, Lux stepped over the stones. The downpour had come out of nothing, as it often did, and now she was soaked through to the skin. She shivered as it seeped through her hood, wetting her hair and dripping along her spine. The cold coupled with the gloom should have sent her back to try again another day, but there wasn’t time.
The death-carts weren’t slowing, and Lux had an inkling that when the Festival of Light allowed the line to be crossed, the previously saved rich would be saved no more. How long before she was next?
Her thick boots kept her feet dry, but nothing else was by the time she stood beneath the canopy of the trees. The leaves were wet, black, and dripping onto her upturned face. Rainwater stung her eyes as she slid her gaze deep within the boughs.
It was silent. The wood didn’t whisper. Their branches didn’t beckon. The trees were asleep.
Or they waited.
The death-carts dumped their cargo within the clearing once every day now. One large wagon, loaded with the dead, as the horses and their drivers had been run ragged keeping up with them before. Lux knew all she required was patience and the phantom would come to her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a patient person.
With a tight grasp on the handle of her dagger, its hue an exact match to the surrounding trunks, Lux crept deeper amongst the trees. A stray drop found the fabric draped over her body now and then, but otherwise the rain never met the forest floor. Twigs didn’t snap beneath her feet and leaves didn’t crunch. For there were none. Instead, Lux’s boots sank into thick black moss that sponged and oozed dark liquid across them. There wasn’t any avoiding it—it coated the entire floor.
The clearing fell away from her vision; it was the farthest she had ever gone. The farthest any of the living had gone, save one. Her mind whispered it wasn’t possible. The cloaked figure couldn’t live and remain here, but if it wasn’t, that only left one alternative. Because Lux didn’t believe in ghosts.
Her breaths sent puffs of white billowing from her mouth and nose, and her fingers numbed around her blade. She’d had the foresight to pull gloves on, having learned at least one thing upon entering the frigid forest the first time. Well, that and never to touch the treacherous trunks. Her remaining hand was kept securely within the pocket of her skirt for exactly that reason. If she were to stumble and fall, she would rather collapse face-first amongst the oozing moss than feel the icy fingers of a tree’s soul enclose her again.
No one knew how far this perilous forest extended because no one who ever left to investigate it returned. Lux knew Finias had never ventured further than the outskirts in order to ensnare his prey, and why would he? She had certainly never planned to. Yet, here she was, traipsing about the wood as if it didn’t pose an imminent threat to her life with every beat of her heart.
A slope in the earth rose before her, sudden and deceptively gentle. Lux strained her eyes in each direction, but from what she could see, it extended indefinitely. So she climbed. The moss was slippery, and every step made it slicker by the inky-black substance released around her footprints. And finally, the trees grew tired of the game. They offered their assistance. Branches bent and curled toward her, coaxing, extending.
Let us help you.
She couldn’t touch them. She couldn’t let them touch her. She climbed faster, but her boots slipped from beneath her, and the dagger plunged into soft moss until it reached hard soil deep below. Lux clutched it like a lifeline, refusing to use her other hand to steady herself. For a moment she didn’t move. The branches didn’t either. She felt the wood breathe.
And then she fell.
The blade pulled free, and Lux collapsed to her front, her hands clawing for any hold. There were none, and when she came to rest at the base of the hill once more, she pulled herself onto her knees to stare down her body.
Dark liquid dripped from her. It coated her clothing, her boots, and the blade. She could feel it dripping from her chin, and she wiped it away with quick, furious strokes that only smeared it further. She gagged at the putrid scent. Her gloves were soaked through.
She did manage to catch a drop before it fell into her eyes, having no idea if the mess was harmful or not. She certainly wasn’t about to risk it. She wouldn’t even sniff a rare wildflower if it grew, beautiful and sweet, in a place like this. Nothing could ever be trusted here.
Lux walked along the base of the slope, avoiding the shimmering wet place her body had created as she slid. The wood was darkening. Too much time passed in this place. Resolved, she studied the blade in the waning light, dripping black droplets onto the floor beneath it. Then she drove it into the moss of the hillside. Liquid pooled around the shaft but, as with the blade, it rolled off without so much as a stain. Impenetrable.
Her gloved fingers dug into the soft substance next: she winced against the feel of it soaking through to her skin, puddling in her sleeves. Steadily, she began to climb anew. Using the dagger as an anchor, and with steady, slow steps, she ignored the curving boughs this time and reached the crest at last.
Saints above, devil below.
The forest stretched on and on in every direction she looked, fading beneath a setting sun she could sense but not see. Her breaths grew rapid. She’d expected it, but it didn’t make the fear any less palpable. Everything changed at twilight.
A shadow fell across her.
Lucena.
Lux slipped down the opposite side of the slope. More dark droplets peppered her face.
Lucenaaa.
Something moved beneath her fingers, and Lux jerked them back. Using the blade, she pushed off the ground, climbing to her feet. She wiped at her eyes. Then wiped them again.
A soft, silver glow emanated from the tree before her. Another tree lit the same at her right. Though many of the trunks remained dark and eclipsed in shadow, more and more shone with a steady, eerie light that extended up through their branches, highlighting even the veins of the leaves. She’d never seen anything like it.
“What is this?”
Her words were less than a whisper, but still they were snatched, drawn up and through the boughs.
And from far away, a faint flicker answered.