6. Vireth #2
I sigh, and sit back on my heels, so needled by my own curiosity that I make the riskiest decision of all. I will stay with this human for a while—at least until he rouses and I can ply him with my questions. It would be unfair for me to leave him now, anyway, as helpless as he is.
My fortune teller inquisition will have to wait.
We cannot stay here, though, close as we are to Hollowmire Castle and its hungry bog.
Down by the stream, I cut down two young saplings and lash them together, then tie the human’s cloak between them to fashion a makeshift palette.
“We’ve got to find safer ground, Handsome One,” I say softly to the horse. “I can lead you, but your master won’t be able to ride. Do you think you could help me with this stretcher?”
I’ve no idea if the horse understands me, but it feels more polite to ask than to simply throw a rope around his saddle and hitch up his unconscious rider.
I needn’t worry, though—the beast stands perfectly still while I lift the human onto the palette and fasten it to the saddle.
From the human’s pack, I pull out a fine wool blanket and tuck it around him, which will hopefully keep from jostling his injuries too much as we make our way deeper into the wood.
Nibblebones scampers back and forth while I tend my care, sniffing at the horse—who exudes extreme indifference to my corpse weasel—and diving in and out of the human’s bags.
“You may pilfer food only,” I tell her sternly. “That we may replace. Everything else belongs to the living human. His treasures are not grave goods for you to hoard, little one.”
She chitters indignantly, and emerges with a large chunk of bread clamped in her mouth. The horse steps cautiously, and it sends a sharp ache through my chest to think of this animal being injured and yet clearly so loyal to his master as to trust a strange fae in a stranger forest.
I walk at the horse’s head, gently holding the reins to guide him better to even, smoother ground. I know this part of the forest well, and there is a ruined cottage a few leagues in, coincidentally on the way to the village that I’d planned on visiting, anyway.
We follow the clear stream as it winds through the trees, and it strikes me how peculiar this autumn is.
The early chill, the strange nights of frost, the paltry harvest from land that’s always been fruitful and fecund—whatever it is that’s shifted the balance of nature’s rhythms or perhaps angered the gods, it’s reached the interior of the forest, as well.
Sunlight struggles to reach the ground here, the birch and willow trees that border the bog giving way to thick oaks, elms, and a few evergreens.
Reaching out with my keen senses, I feel for the detritivores and decomposers that should be more numerous than anything.
The answering sensation I get is wrong. It’s not absence, exactly, but something closer to… waiting.
Shaking off the prickling sense of wrongness that swirls in my gut, I pause every half-league or so to check in on my charge.
He sleeps fitfully, mumbling and sweating through some unseen terror.
I suspect he’ll begin thrashing around again and open up his wounds, so I lash his arms and legs to the frame of the stretcher and hope whichever god oversees ignorant humans is feeling merciful.
After a few hours of plodding and careful encouragements to the horse, we reach a dense part of the woodland lorded over by towering oaks more stooped and gnarled than at the outer edges.
Between the ring of trees sit the remains of a river stone cottage, once roofed in timber and thatch, now pockmarked with holes that would let the sunlight in if there were any.
Next to the back of the cottage is a feeble lean-to that once served as a stable, so I unhitch my makeshift stretcher at the cottage entrance and lead the horse there.
“Nibblebones, did you find any feed in the human’s bags for this animal?
” I ask, pulling a dirty but mostly sound pail from the corner of the lean-to and carrying it down to the stream.
I scrub it out with a handful of sand and fill it with the cool, clear water, then lug it back up and set it down for the poor beast.
While the horse drinks, Nibblebones emits a high-pitched squeak and tugs at the top of a bag, unearthing a small amount of oats and horse bread.
As soon as he finishes drinking, I dump half the contents into the bucket and offer him a gentle scratch on his withers.
I unsaddle him and carry the gear and bags into the cottage, which looks a little worse for wear.
There’s a small table and two chairs that are almost certainly rotten, and a bed covered with a mold-eaten straw mattress. The floor beneath the holes in the roof is covered with piles of brown and rust-colored oak leaves, and it appears something has been nesting in the hearth.
“Well,” I say to Nibblebones. “I hope our guest isn’t particular.”
I do my best to clean up as much of the cottage as I can without proper supplies and drag the human onto the bed. He moans softly—the sound coming out raspy from between his dry, cracked lips.
“I seem to remember humans needing to eat and drink more often than is prudent,” I say aloud. “Little darling, would you perhaps be able to catch us a rabbit tonight?”
Nibblebones scampers off through the front door and I head back down to the stream to refill our waterskins. I check in on the horse, who seems to be dozing peacefully, and refill his empty feed bucket with water, as well.
Though I can hardly see the sky through the canopy of dying leaves, I can scent the birth of storm clouds high above.
Rain will come tonight—possibly sleet. Fortunately, the roof of the lean-to will protect the horse from the worst of the storm, but the human and I will be decidedly less comfortable in our cottage—rotting and open to the elements.
Eyeing the holes in the roof, I summon a surge of mycelium and send it up the walls, directing the hungry filaments to the rafters above.
With a little encouragement, several large flat mushrooms erupt across the ceiling, siphoning up the damp rot and effectively plugging the holes in the roof.
It’s a temporary solution. In a few days the mushrooms will devour the roof entirely.
For now, however, the human and I will at least remain sheltered, warm, and dry.
Inside, I offer a small amount of water to the fitful human, tilting his head up and tipping the waterskin in.
He sips at it, which gives me no small amount of pleasure, and I dab a bit of my healing salve on his cracked lips.
I must remember to tend to him often, so that his fragile body does not wither away like so many other things beneath my touch.
Nibblebones returns as I’m getting a fire going in the hearth, a young rabbit clutched in her bloodstained jaws.
“Oh, well done! Thank you, darling. This human at least had the foresight to pack a kettle, so we can have rabbit stew this evening.”
Ever the ideal companion, Nibblebones takes the heart and innards of the animal while I skin and prep it for our meal.
In the small pot it goes, along with a few small brown mushrooms I summon from a patch of bare earth near the hearth.
I’m certain these are safe to eat, even for humans’ sensitive constitutions.
A quick jaunt around the outer edges of the cottage yields a scraggly bunch of wild thyme and a few mellow alliums, which will do nicely.
With the modest stew bubbling away over the hearth and the human still sleeping soundly, I peruse the outer boundary of the cottage grounds.
Young fae used to come here for clandestine romance, but it seems that whatever has begun to siphon the joyful harvest from our land has also infested our people with a dark malaise.
There are no recent hearts carved into wooden beams, no evidence of sweet, fumbling trysts, just a peculiar sense of foreboding that would have warned any more sensible fae from this place.
Perhaps I should be more sensible. Down at the stream again, I cannot shake the sense of being watched.
All afternoon it has dogged me, but reaching out with my senses has not yielded a predator or unearthed anything other than my own paranoid imaginings.
Mayhap it’s the latent effects of stress after what was a truly devastating departure from my home, but something tells me there’s another force at work than just lingering emotional fatigue.
Frigid rain begins to mist down between the gaps in the trees, and what small sounds I’ve become used to in the forest are now lost behind the whisper of water droplets upon leaves. The human might be getting cold—I should return to him.
Before I go, I act on some deep-rooted, protective impulse and sink to my knees, plunging my fingers into the earth and sending out another network of mycelium—this time in a wide ring encircling the cottage and stable.
I dig deep into the darkest reserves of my power and push, and a ring of knee-high toxic red toadstools begin to fruit along the filaments’ path.
Things that are determined will make their way through, of course, but the poisonous growths are enough of a warning to keep smaller threats at bay.
Wiping the loamy crumbs from my fingertips, I make my way back inside the cottage.
The smell of fragrant stew sends a hunger pang through my belly, and I reckon the human must be hungry, as well.
Filling his small cup with a bit of broth, I sit gingerly at the top of his bed and pull his head gently into my lap.
His eyelids flutter and he moans softly, but he does not fully rouse.
“You should drink. Your body seems determined to empty itself.” I tip the cup to his lips and murmur encouragements as he consumes it in little sips. When he’s drunk almost the full cup, I refill it from the kettle and serve it to him again in the same way.