CHAPTER TWELVE #2
Behind him, an errant and violent gust of wind shook the leaves of the rowan tree.
Intent on his path, he did not notice. If he had, he may have marked it strange that only the rowan tree, and no other, shook.
His note ripped free of its fastening, and the gust left the tree behind, carrying the note whirling beneath the pines and between the beech leaves, soaring above asps and adders, tumbling over sticks and stones and pink writhing worms, until it was snatched from the air by a deep flowing stream, where his words were slowly steeped in smothering wetness before a carp, mistaking the missive for something to eat, swallowed it whole.
As he walked, though it slowed him even further, he made great effort to mark his way. He slipped the flowering branch from his bag and left a trail of plucked blossoms, counting them as he went, one every ten steps. Trepidation pushed him forward as surely as it called him back.
But as the clouds dissipated and the mist lifted with the rising sun’s heat, as the rowan, his beacon of vigilant white in a sea of shrouding green, vanished from sight behind him and he saw no signs of Anya, nor any other life, his trepidation morphed into something far meaner. Desperation.
There were no signs of her anywhere, no indication of which way she had gone.
He didn’t hear the strange cry, or any other sound, or – whatever it was that had felt like his name.
He didn’t know what had possessed him to think he could find her.
The spirit of a nobler, stupider man. No; a whispered urge of madness – from hunger, from blood loss, from the claustrophobic presence of the ever-watchful trees.
Now, his rational self prevailed. He should have remained where he was and left Anya to her fate, be it crusade or prank or folly. He should march onward, alone.
Then, he remembered something she had told him. You’ll feel strange. You might…hear things. Stick close to me, and you won’t get lost.
He should go back.
He did, following the trail he had left, counting steps and blossoms. The numbers had not changed; in the stillness of the day, none of the flowers had stirred.
Even if he didn’t have the blossoms as proof, he knew he had come from this way as he knew the weight of his own hands.
The sun, finally revealed, had barely moved.
He couldn’t have possibly walked that far. It was impossible.
The rowan tree was nowhere in sight.
“Alright,” he said aloud. The sound of his own voice anchored him.
Never mind Anya’s ghost stories, or uncanny premonitions, or strange sensations he wanted nothing to do with.
It wasn’t that the forest had rearranged itself around him – he had simply lost his way.
Nothing unusual about that. It could happen in any forest. In the city, even.
Whatever had held Anya back was no longer his concern.
Out of his hands. She would find his note, anyway.
She had her bow, her strange arrow. Her cunning, her courage.
He had a map, and a gun. Food. Some of his blood. Most of his wits.
There was nothing else to do but find the meadow.
He found the cleanest looking log he could, perched delicately upon it, and reached into his rucksack.
Gnats circled his sweating face, incessant as the guilt he felt unfolding Anya’s map.
She didn’t really need it, he reassured himself, swatting the bugs away.
She had led them as far as she had without consulting it once.
The thing had been buried under piles of junk in her cabin.
She knew these woods like the back of her hand.
But another voice nagged him: You can count every step, and know every stone, every path, every tree with a lover’s attention…
He ignored it, the same way he had ignored her directive to stay behind. How her open eyes went glassy when his words, carved precise as a glyph to insult her, did. How he’d said them in what seemed an increasingly futile effort to steel himself against those very eyes.
How badly he wanted a cigarette.
Instead, he ate again, turning back to the map as he spread some of the liverwurst over a dry slice of rye. He still had nothing resembling an appetite, but knowing how much blood he had lost, how close he teetered on the edge of blacking out, he forced it.
He had no idea where he was and barely knew how to read a map, even one professionally drawn.
This map, filled in over years and scrawled in an unsteady hand with a goose feather and blackberry ink, was not crafted with a stranger’s eye in mind, full of landmarks only someone already familiar with the forest would know.
Rook Hollow, Bramble Slake, Bosquet Mire. All meaningless to him.