Chapter 10.5 The Woods
After a restless night of camping in the Werewood—jerking awake at every hooting of an owl, every rustling of wind in the treetops—we wake the next morning with shadowed eyes all around.
If, late at night, the howling of creatures that sounded like wolves happened to echo across the treetops from a great distance away, we are able to convince ourselves in the morning light that they were just that—wolves.
Ordinary wolves, and nothing at all to fear.
Marton is yawning hugely as he scrapes clean the empty porridge pot by the fire, readying to set out for the day.
Cherry is pinching and fretting at the frayed edges of her clothing, eyeing Vakhrin warily as he repacks his bag.
The two of them had a mild skirmish last night.
After we had made camp and eaten dinner, Vakhrin tried to clean and bandage Cherry's feet with boiled water and strips of cloth, and she pulled away in horror, refusing.
Vakhrin cursed her foolishness and spouted off a lot about infection and princesses that was at turns practical and distinctly unflattering.
Cherry's temper rose, she refused more vehemently, and then she turned her eyes on me in silent entreaty.
So of course I cleaned and bandaged her feet, while Marton frowned at me from beside the fire, and Vakh fumed and nosily slapped his bedding into place somewhere behind me.
There's been no talk of anyone carrying anyone this morning, but I fully believe it's coming.
They may have fought last night, but I can tell that Vakh's concern for her is honest. I'm not averse to it, so long as it's equally innocent and one-sided.
Vakhrin respectfully and untiringly carried Cherry all day yesterday, only setting her down when we stopped to rest. It was efficient, although it necessitated me taking the lead while Marton guarded our backs with one hand on the pommel of his sword.
Still, Cherry wasn't in pain from walking on blistered feet, so I was satisfied.
Today, I study the cluttered forest ahead, trying to discern from its shadows if it will yield what we're looking for today as it did not yesterday.
Or if it will yield fresh danger as it did not yesterday.
"Do we have any sort of heading?
" I wonder aloud to my companions. "Or is the plan still walk-aimlessly-into-the-forest-until-something-tries-to-kill-us?
"
Marton scratches behind his ear with a downward curve to his mouth, dark eyes considering the forest as mine do.
Vakhrin responds, shoving a flagon of water into his pack, "I had hoped one of us would sense something—give us some idea of which way to go, or which to avoid.
"
"Do you—ah—often sense things?
" I sense things in an ordinary sense—sight, smell, hearing—but something tells me that isn't quite what Vakhrin means.
He turns a speculative gaze on me, reddish brown brows coming down over his eyes.
"Chimera all have a...sixth sense. An ability to—well, to tell about things.
It's how I sensed you coming, back in Olio.
I felt your eyes on me, before I saw or heard you.
"
"Well," I say. "I don't think I can do that.
" That doesn't seem fair at all.
Vakhrin looks unconvinced.
"I'm certain you can."
"What do you know about it?
Have you met many dragons?"
"No.
.."
"Then I don't know how you would be the expert.
" I'm feeling prickly at the accusation that I'm not able to do something I should be able to do.
"But all protectorkin should—"
I silence him with a wave.
"You be the expert on your species, how about that?
And I'll be the expert on myself."
Vakhrin just sighs.
"And what about that singing thing you did?
" I ask suddenly. "When we—When your—You sang to me, once, in your manticore from.
Like you were trying to speak." When his grandfather was dying before our eyes.
Vakhrin's eyes darken, no doubt at the same memory.
He responds mechanically. "That is the auria.
The language sacred to the manticore. Only our mouths can make it, and only in our manticore forms."
"Hmm.
" There doesn't seem to be any other response to make to that.
Do dragons have a secret language as well, I wonder?
Another part of my heritage I've been shut out from?
I don't like thinking about that.
"Perhaps we should be moving on," Marton speaks up, saving me from this increasingly unsatisfactory conversation.
"Excellent idea." I pick up mine and Cherry's bags, and Vakhrin picks up Cherry, who squawks and clings to him.
She quickly realizes what she's doing and slaps him on the chest, glaring instead.
Vakhrin's face is stoic, but a twitching near one eye and the corner of his mouth make me think he is trying very hard to maintain that blank expression.
I'm sympathetic on Cherry's behalf, but not enough to do anything about it.
She is so much taller than me, after all, and no trouble at all for Vakhrin to carry.
And I can protect her much better with my hands free.
"The forest has to open up at some point," Marton reasons as we set out, falling into step with me despite his rearguard duties.
His eyes are bright on the murky woods ahead.
"I imagine that will be where any dragons would set up camp.
Somewhere they can take off and fly from.
"
I nod in agreement.
This lines up with what I had considered yesterday about my own flight capabilities.
"But how do we find the place where the woods open up?
" I glance into the tops of the trees overhead, thick as ever, as we walk.
Marton shakes his head, at a loss.
"How did you get to Ithyma?
" I ask instead, as the thought occurs to me.
"Didn't you have to cross the Werewood to get into the country?
"
"I went the long way around," he responds, "as most travelers do, crossing north through Olio and circling east into Ithyma.
"
"Was it a very long journey on foot?
Where in Philostia is your Academy located?
"
"The Academy is pretty well towards the middle of the country.
I took a coach most of the way north, and then bought supplies near the Olion border for the mountain crossing into Ithyma.
"
"And how long did it take you to make it to the old castle?
" I'm trying to imagine it in my head, Marton beating his way through the wilderness alone, grimly determined to reach his destination.
I can't quite picture the easy-tempered scholar I've met in that setting.
More likely he went whistling along, cheerful in the face of adversity, eyes full of starry dreams as he scaled the mountains.
The thought makes me smile, at the same time as I feel inexplicably sad.
He's just so...good.
And I am not. I think, not for the first time, how his proximity to me can only ruin him. Endanger him.
But how can I refuse help from anyone willing to give it, when Cherry and I need it so much?
We know nothing of the world, and would have no idea where to go to find a dragon without the information of the two men who travel with us now.
It's a galling realization, but a comforting one.
No, I cannot possibly send Marton away from me yet.
Not when I need him to ensure that Cherry can go home to the capital someday.
And I can go with her.
I frown again.
Something is...missing...from that image of the future.
I shake my head to dislodge it, attending to Marton's answer to my earlier question.
"It was about two weeks.
" Marton thinks for a moment. "Maybe three.
It may have been more like a month," he finally amends.
"One day was much like another. Endless walking, up and down again, and up and up and up again.
I had my map, and I asked around where I could for directions to the ruins of the old Ithymian palace.
" An ironic laugh and a glance down at me, eyes warm.
"Many people warned me of the terrible danger there.
'A beast with a hideous visage, and a thousand teeth,' they said.
The warnings only spurred me on with greater excitement.
I felt I was very close to something real. "
He seems full of pleasure at the memory, but I consider it with unpleasantness. "A hideous visage and a thousand teeth?" I repeat. "That sounds more like Vakh than me."
Behind us, Vakhrin chokes on a sound of indignation. Marton laughs vibrantly beside me, and I have to hide a smile. For a moment, a feeling of familiarity and friendship surrounds me. A feeling I have only experienced around Cherry before.
The smile melts from my face, and confusion swamps me.
I realize what was missing from that earlier picture of the future, and the realization isn't a good one.
Because isn't this all a mistake, if accepting Marton and Vakhrin's help to get Cherry back to her role as the Ithymian princess bonds us to them in the meantime?
If, at the end of this, I find it as impossible to let them go as it is to let her go?
And will Cherry feel the same about these boys as I do by the time our travels with them come to an end? Will it matter?
They are both foreigners, and one of them is a monster like I am. It will be hard enough to convince the king to accept me back into the fold, if it's possible at all.
I don't know much about our country's relations with Philostia, but I can't think of any reason why the king would accept a foreign scholar into his capital or his court. That place is only for rich nobles and dignitaries. Much less a wayward manticore out of Umrahs.
No, when Cherry and I go back there, we will have to go alone.
We will have to say goodbye to the scholar and the manticore.
The thought is a gloomy one, and I resolve to spend the next several hours or days of walking—however long it takes—reconciling myself to that inevitable parting.
I will not become anymore fond of or bonded to them if I can help it.
I will build a wall between my heart and their inadvertent charm.
In a small, background part of my mind, I note that this is the opposite of the resolution I made earlier, to open my heart to everyone.
But, I reason, that measure only refereed to trusting people when I could, rather than assuming the worst of everyone.
I can trust people and still keep myself from loving them.
I can. This is a perfectly reasonable plan.
It's the next day, just before evenfall, when the forest suddenly opens up around us.
We walk out of the thickening gloom into a wide expanse of sky.
A sky we have not seen so clearly in days.
The sight makes my heart leap, and I long to fly up into it and stretch my wings.
I haven't worn my winged form in days, confined as I've been to my human one.
Vakhrin distracts me from this desire by tensing into near complete stillness in front of me.
I immediately tense as well, my mind jumping back to what he said about his sixth sense.
He can sense danger before anyone else can.
He stands at the head of our party now, Cherry in his arms. He can't defend anyone like that.
I surge ahead, stepping halfway in front of him as I follow his line of sight—
The clearing we've entered stretches out endlessly before us, a wide, grassy meadow that terminates when the forest resumes its dense growth on the other side, perhaps a league or more away.
And between our party and that forest stand the figures of a man and two women.
They are up to their calves and knees in the tall grass and wild flowers of the valley, which sway about them with the wind. And their eyes are fixed in our direction.
My heart pounds like a battle drum as I coax my eyes to sharpen, observing the strangers more closely.
The man is perhaps in his mid-forties, spots of gray hair showing at his temples, though the rest of it is dark.
One of the women is about the same age, maybe a little older, with silver streaked all throughout her flowing hair, while the other woman looks younger than either of her companions, perhaps thirty years of age, her jet black hair cropped off at her jawline.
Both of the women wear shapeless sack dresses, while the man wears simple robes.
And all of them look ever so slightly...off. Their skin has a sickly bluish pallor, as if they are deathly cold. Their expressions are not friendly.
In the corner of my eye, I see Vakhrin very slowly easing Cherry to her feet. "Behind us," he quietly instructs.
Across the clearing, all the three of the strangers straighten up.
They heard that, and their eyes watch Cherry with interest as she slips away to go and stand next to Marton.
I hear Marton's sword scrape metallically as he eases it a fraction of an inch from its scabbard.
I flick a hand behind my back frantically, telling him to stop. The sound cuts off.
But it's too late. Down in the meadow, the younger of the women smiles. There is nothing unusual about her teeth, but the sight makes me shiver all the same.
There is something wrong, wrong, wrong with them, my pulsebeat tells me.
The older woman nods to the younger one, and the young one grabs the hem of her dress, shucking it off with one fluid motion.
My stomach sinks. The woman bounds forward, and in a flash her nakedness is replaced by the form of a monstrous blue dragon, half again as large as I am.
And...on closer inspection, that is not all that's different.
Rather than four powerful legs and a set of wings, this dragon has two massive hind legs, and as she braces herself on the ground and heaves forward to roar at us, I note that her front legs seem to be connected to her wings, like a bat's.
The tips of her wings end in a set of taloned paws, which she uses like hands, tearing up great clumps of earth as she digs her in her claws.
Not dragons, then. Not quite.
From Vakhrin's vague descriptions, I think these creatures must be wyverns.