Chapter Two #2
They made damned good eating, though, and the quills—once cleaned and treated—had roughly a million uses. It was a generous trade for what amounted to a few sacks of nuts.
Dipak didn't have a thief. He had someone willing to trade meat for nuts and berries.
For, he realized, delicate things. Small nuts hard to pick off the ground and break open without crushing the nut inside, and berries easily smashed if you didn't have fingers suited to the work of picking them through the dense, thorny foliage.
How intriguing. Not a person, then, but some hungry beast too big or with the wrong appendages for nuts and berries, but a beast that clearly liked those things.
A beast that had waltzed right past his wards and alert spell. Crafty little fucker.
Sadly, the mystery would have to wait. He needed to focus on shelter today, no distractions.
So he field dressed the pheasant and strung it to his pack, put out the fire and made certain it was good and doused, then scrubbed the campsite as free of signs of human use as he possibly could.
Then he gathered his belongings, filled his skins with water, and headed off munching on berries and nuts.
He hadn't been walking more than a couple of hours, to judge by the increased daylight, when he heard a sound that didn't belong in the forest: footsteps not his own.
Following the sound, he turned toward it just in time to see someone come tumbling out of the underbrush.
A man—a young man, with pale brown skin and long, black hair that almost looked more dark blue in the bands of sunlight that fell across it, worn in a braid that fell over one shoulder until he flicked it back with an absent motion.
He was tall, a little taller than Dipak in fact, with a lithe, muscular frame suited to running, swimming, climbing.
His clothes were…strange, a mishmash of styles, like he'd rifled through a pile of used clothes and picked out what fit him with no other parameter.
He was beautiful in a sharp, angular way, like a rocky beach or a jagged cliff. His eyes were blue, and Dipak wished, for no good reason at all, he could truly see how vivid they were.
The man smiled with the force of a summer sun as he approached Dipak. "Hello! We don't see hu—strangers in the woods very often! Who are you?"
He didn't have a bag, or a sword, or even a knife. No cloak or hat. Nothing that would be expected of someone hiking through the woods. His boots were good quality, but that was the only part of his attire that made any sense.
"Dipak," he said slowly, stepping away when the man drew entirely too close. "Who are you? Do you live here?"
"I do! My name is Euclid."
"Yew-klid? What kind of name is that?"
The man laughed. "My kind of name." He spelled it out, which just made it stranger. It wasn't a name Dipak had ever heard before, but then again, he was hardly a fucking scholar. "What brings you to this forest? Don't they call it forbidden or something?"
"Yes, they do… I'm here on…business, you could say. I'm looking for something."
"What are you looking for? I know the forest well. Maybe I can help you find it."
"I don't need help, least of all from some stranger who looks like he dresses in the dark and pretends to live in a forest where everything wants to kill you," Dipak snapped.
Something about this man was strange. He didn't trust strange people in the city, and trusted them even less in dangerous forests.
"Go about your day, stranger, and I'll go about mine.
" He didn't bother to wait for a reply, just turned sharply and strode off.
There must be some trick, some mischief afoot. He hadn't thought there were creatures in these woods capable of illusory magic, but it also wasn't like people had explored the Forbidden Forest in great detail.
As he passed by an enormous, half-rotted goblin oak choked by blood ivy, Euclid appeared from behind another tree, making Dipak rear back in nasty surprise. His boot caught a root, and he went flying back, landing on his knapsack.
The pheasant! Frantically slipping free of the straps, he turned around and yanked the bag up—and slumped in relief to see his future dinner was nothing more than a bit ruffled up. He hadn't crushed it.
"Are you all right?" Euclid asked, peering down intently at him. This close, his eyes almost seemed to swirl with blues and greens, the oddest trick of the light that Dipak had ever seen. He offered a hand, but Dipak ignored it, pushing to his feet on his own.
And swore as pain jolted up his leg. He looked down to see that he'd caught his shin on a rock or something in the fall, leaving a nasty gash—and ruining his perfectly good pants, damn it. He could patch it with a piece of his cloak, but that was just one more damned thing to do—
"Here, let me help," Euclid said, and knelt in front of him.
"Stop—" Dipak froze, words forgotten, as the familiar tingling heat of healing magic rushed through him, and as Euclid withdrew, he saw the wound was completely healed, scarred over even. "That— How did you do that?"
Euclid blinked slowly at him. "What do you mean? Do what?"
"Heal my wound that quickly and thoroughly?"
"Did I— Is that weird? That's how it's done. Why would I take a long time and not finish the job? Is that how hu—other healers do it?"
Dipak stared at him, flummoxed. "Thank you for the help, but I really just want to be left alone."
The man pouted. Pouted for the love of the gods. "New people rarely come here, and I've never seen a person like you."
"Like me?" Dipak asked. He was one in hundreds of thousands.
A face easily forgotten, just another body honed for war, used up, and then discarded to be replaced by younger, fresher victims. No one would be able to pick him out of a crowd if they were paid in precious jewels to do it.
Well, except for his eyes. "Never mind. I don't care.
Leave me alone. How many times do I have to say it? "
Of all things, Euclid shrugged before stooping to retrieve Dipak's bag and hand it over. "You shouldn't keep going this way. You'll run into a nest of red-claws."
Dipak took the bag and shrugged it back on with a stiff, "Thank you." Bemused, not remotely sure what to do with this strange man, he brushed by him and continued on his way.
And heaved a sigh when, a moment later, Euclid was right back at his side. He remained stubbornly silent, and at every opportunity tried to veer away to lose him in the dense forest, but every single time Euclid would pop up again—from behind a tree, or a boulder, or a large bush.
His movements were always quiet. His mouth was always moving.
Always smiling. He chattered on about everything, from spots to avoid to places to seek out to how much he liked eating berries and fish, on and on and on, until Dipak had a throbbing headache.
How could one person talk so much? And be so fucking happy the entire time?
It was like somebody had breathed life into a lump of sugar.
The sound of running water drew his attention from a rambling dissertation on what kinds of fish were the tastiest, and he veered away again to follow it. Loud running water, like a waterfall. He pushed by trees, through some dense scrub—
And came to a little clearing.
It…it was perfect. A small pond fed by a waterfall about the height of two people stacked. Clear space for working, a small hollow, not quite a cave, just to the left of it that would be perfect for storing foodstuffs…
Strangest of all, there was an actual cabin. It was run down, covered in ivy and other plants, but sturdy-seeming beneath the mess, made of heavy logs that would have taken significant effort to haul here.
How was there a cabin in the middle of the Forbidden Forest? And what were the odds that he'd just come across it like this? "Who lived—"
Euclid was gone.
What in the name of the nine gods was going on around here?
Shaking his head, deciding questions could wait, because he wasn't about to snub such a precious find no matter how strange the circumstances, Dipak carried on into the clearing.
Flowers were scattered about, along with clover and other common field plants.
Evening insects buzzed about in the cool air, their soft glow stirring memories of catching them as a child while his parents looked on, speaking quietly, usually with worry in their voices.
What would they think of him now, fallen so far after climbing so high? Probably nothing good. His parents had been loving, but stern and strict, and would have likely said it was what he got for reaching too far beyond his lot in life.
Dipak set his bag down beside the open doorway, just visible through the mess of vines and weeds.
He sadly had not been able to bring a machete with him, so his hunting knife would have to suffice.
Stripping down to just his undershirt, he set to work hacking and tearing, casting the piles of ripped away foliage into a pile to use for burning later, until he had the door and most of the front of the cabin cleared.
Finally able to get inside, and with the windows cleared to lend the space light, he took stock of what he really had to work with.
It was a single room, which he'd expected, with an old bed in one corner, a table and kitchen area in the other, and an old rocking chair in front of a large fireplace.
On either side of the fireplace were shelves stacked with all manner of abandoned paraphernalia—books, pots and jars, tools, a small chest, the kind for holding jewelry or the like, candlesticks, lanterns…
This was the cabin of a homesteader, living quietly off the land. Had they left eventually? Died of age or accident in the woods? Whatever had happened, it had happened a long time ago.