Chapter 7 #2
When he opens his eyes, a small girl stands in the place of the fawn.
Roughly the same size, this girl seems to be a child as well, her features young.
She wears a nervous smile on her lips, her eyes the same doe-like black as before.
Her dark hair is pulled up into a long ponytail cascading down the back of the robe she wears, red fabric trimmed in gold, which moves fluidly as she bows her head to the Forest God.
“Sorry,” she says, glancing up and meeting his gaze. “I wanted to receive you all properly.”
“Don’t play coy,” the Forest God says, but her voice holds no anger. “You’re too curious for your own good.”
The girl bows her head again, deeper this time. “Sorry, Am-sa. Forgive me?”
The Forest God steps forward, smoothing a few of the girl’s loose strands of hair back, and Basuin catches the faintest smile taking over her mouth as she does.
It’s a strange gesture, unlike the harsh front she’s put on in front of him.
Maybe the ice in her glare is reserved only for soldiers, like him.
“Go, then.” The Forest God gestures toward Basuin. “Introduce yourself.”
The little deer-girl steps in his direction, also bowing her head, but not as deeply. “I’m Qia. I serve the Forest God.”
Basuin blinks down at her, grinding his molars, fumbling with his words. “Hello,” he says, unsure of what to say. “I’m Basuin of Ankor.”
“And I’m Yaelic!” He bounds toward Qia, bowing lower. “I serve the Wolf God.”
Qia gasps, her hands flying to her mouth. Behind her, the Forest God looks away.
“The Wolf God?” Qia stutters, her brown eyes widening into the moons that mark the month’s end. She bows her head again, hands wringing together in front of her. Basuin takes a step backward, grimacing. There’s a sore on the inside of his bottom lip that his teeth want to worry.
“I’m not—That’s not who I am,” he says, waving it off, his eyes glancing back and forth between Qia and the Forest God, the trodden path beneath him and the canopy overhead. He doesn’t know where to look. “I’m just Basuin, of Ankor.”
Qia looks up, brows furrowing in confusion. She takes in his figure, worry swimming in the depths of her doe eyes.
“But—” she starts, and is silenced by a wave of the Forest God’s hand which catches her gaze.
“Qia,” she calls again. “You can show them the way.”
In a fit of quick movements, Qia bows her head to Basuin first, then to the Forest God twice.
“Yes, of course, Am-sa,” Qia says, grabbing the skirt of her robes.
“Come this way, Wolf God, sir. Yaelic, too.” She starts moving, her hands clasped together and hidden in the red sleeves of her robe.
Every few steps she looks back to make sure they follow.
Yaelic bounces right behind her, chattering about something, but Basuin stays a few feet behind.
The Forest God, as quickly as she came, disappears. She’s done that before—in the forest, as he ran to save the wolves. He lunged to grab her and she spun right out of his grasp, dissolving into the trees.
The wound the wolf-man made inside of him rings with a searing pain. Though he doesn’t bleed and there is no entry or exit made from his skin, Basuin aches. Not even a knife through his chest, not even a lead bullet, could hurt in the way this has.
There are other people in Gyeosi, he realizes, the further they move inside. Other spirits, maybe, but like Yaelic and Qia, they all look human. Small huts are carved out of the trunks of trees, tiny houses built from mud and fallen branches, quilted leaves and dried hay for roofs.
And more than that, sprawling roots from trees almost as thick as the watchtowers the Xalkhans build carry these homes as well.
There are stairs made of thick slabs of bark linked by woven rope, ladders the same, that lead all the way up to the top of the forest until the canopy is so thick it blocks out the sky above.
Each spirit they pass greets Qia warmly, then shoots some version of a smile at Yaelic. But Basuin, they eye warily. Maybe he looks like a spirit, trailing after two children, still covered in ash. Or maybe, all they see is an enemy, like Hami did.
None of the spirits ask for his name, and for that, Basuin is thankful.
“Have you seen Hami?” Yaelic asks Qia, but she shakes her head.
“I was told he’s here,” she says. “We can look for him tomorrow. I’m sure you’re both tired.”
Once, he was. Now that he’s stepped inside Gyeosi, it’s like he’s been recharged. As though drinking in the air here and filling his lungs with the fresh smell of leaves sticky with their life-sap and earth wet from the rains has given him a new reason to be awake.
Still, there’s an air of unease running through the village, an undercurrent.
Basuin can’t tell what it is, but as they pass by the open clearing at the center of the village, a group of women are sitting on their knees and crying.
They bow their heads low over a blanket spread with someone’s belongings. Someone dead.
One of them looks up, toward the sky, but catches sight of Basuin. He looks away but their sobs continue.
“Elka,” they cry for the sun god. “Stop the fires they brought here. Stop them from salting our home.”
The image of Shaelstorm, cleared by fire and wood axes, burns his mind the way the legion has burned through the forest. The wolf-man nips at his sternum, his heart-bone.
Basuin doubts even Elka, who bloomed the sun and throws it to rise and fall, could stop the legion.
Ithika, god of the oceans, couldn’t either.
He still doesn’t know why Kensy brought them here in the first place. Kensy wouldn’t have known of spirits like these, of gods on the island.
Then, quieter, from a girl who wouldn’t be old enough to even join the legion, a scoff. “Pray to our god,” she seethes. “Ask our god to do something about the godsdamned army.”
Across the way, he spots her—the Forest God, again.
She’s standing among a group of two others—a tall, tall man draped in long and heavy robes, whose dark hair falls in straight lines down his back and shoulders to trail the ground, and a shorter, glaring creature with dozens of thin white scars standing out among their dark skin.
They find Basuin first, beady eyes narrowed at him.
Then, the taller spirit looks as well, much more at ease. Curious, if anything.
The Forest God doesn’t look at all. But she bids them goodbye with a nod of her head, then turns to walk in Basuin’s direction. They bow to her as she goes.
“Are you afraid of heights?” she asks, completely out of the blue. The first words she’s spoken to him since he entered Gyeosi.
He snorts. “No.” He wouldn’t be a legion captain if he was. Soldiers, good soldiers, can’t afford to be afraid of anything at all. Basuin doesn’t fear even death. Not anymore.
When Yaelic answers similarly, she nods. “There’s a hut for you two, beds to sleep in.”
“And Hami?” Yaelic asks again, a thread of pleading mixing in his tone. The Forest God’s whole demeanor shifts and softens to something gentler.
“He’s safe,” she tells him. “He’s staying with Ko, the oak tree.” She gestures toward the towering man and his unsociable companion. “You can visit him in the morning.”
Yaelic shifts from foot to foot, fist balling in the dirtied fabric of his robe. “Okay, Am-sa.”
The Forest God’s eyes slide to Basuin, scanning over him yet again, and he prickles under her gaze.
The hand he’s clutched to his chest, on the left side, falls.
Out of muscle memory, his spine straights and his shoulders roll back for routine inspection.
Her eyes narrow, tracing the hard lines of his body.
What is she looking for in him—proof that he’s dangerous still?
Good. Basuin is dangerous. He hopes that everyone in his village knows it.
Then, she turns her back to him without saying another word.
Qia scrambles to catch up, walking alongside the Forest God at double her pace to stay in tune.
The Forest God is smaller than he thought.
Qia’s just a child, small and barely taller than the Forest God’s waist. But the god herself, though fierce with her presence alone, is much shorter than Basuin.
He would tower over her if they stood toe to toe. He doesn’t want to get close to her.
They’re led to a larger house, one built on a platform that seems as if it were cut from a fallen oak; round and thick, like a saucer.
When she pushes the maroon cloth aside to let him in, the interior of the hut is bigger.
More room has been carved out of the tree it’s built into, creating a large space in the front and an area for a few beds in the back.
It’s not so different from the bunks in Ha’riste, the ones for squadrons, not much bigger than the length of a bed and enough space for a personal trunk and a washing basin.
The captain’s bunk, of course, was bigger.
Not that Basuin ever spent much time there.
He was a war hero, on the front lines. Not a political pawn.
“Qia.” The Forest God gestures for the deer-girl. “Fetch them some water, please.”
“I’ll go with you!” Yaelic lunges for the chance, even as Qia’s cheeks pinken at his enthusiasm.
“Sure,” she stutters. “Of course.” Then, with a whip of her long ponytail, Qia skitters out of the hut and Yaelic follows, skipping down the bark stairs.
“Don’t worry, Forest God,” he mocks before she has a chance to speak first. “I’ll leave for Shaelstorm in the morning.”
“Good luck.” Whatever gentleness moved in at Yaelic’s presence is gone, replaced by cold, hard eyes. “I’m sure you’ll be accepted back easily, Wolf God.”
“Don’t call me that.” He takes a step toward her out of necessity. The Forest God takes one step backward, out of his reach. “I’m not a god. I’m just a man.”
She stares him down. “Do you truly believe that?”
The wolf-man inside him lunges. Its teeth tear into Basuin, shredding his flesh into nothing but dog chow. He covers his mouth with a trembling hand, so he won’t puke up the entrails the wolf-man slices into paper-thin ribbons. There’s so much blood.
Listen to me, it gnaws on one of Basuin’s ribs. You died, as all things do. But I gave you life again. I am the god that possesses your empty body. I’ve given you power so that you can serve your duty, little soldier boy.
Duty, again. A soldier then, a soldier now. A soldier in life, and a soldier in death. Not until he lays in the Blacksalt Sea will he be free.
You are the Wolf God, it snaps again at him. Chosen to protect this forest. Chosen to protect the Forest God.
He looks at her, rage boiling him alive, eyes wide and searing. “I did my duty. I get to go home now.” Home—when he thinks of it, he makes himself think of the Blacksalt Sea.
The Forest God cuts her eyes at him, onyx that could scar a man. “Do you get to go home, Black Wolf? When your people are killing mine?”
Basuin flinches at the name in shame, head swimming and hands hot. “I never wanted to come here.”
“But you did,” she says, and she’s right. “You’re getting in my way. I brought you here out of kindness, for Yaelic, since he’s bound himself to you. How gracious a god you are.”
A roar of protectiveness rises in him for no reason. “Don’t speak of Yaelic,” he spits out.
In a flash, the Forest God clears the space between them and is nearly slick to him—only a sliver of space between his chest and hers.
Though she cranes her neck up to look at him, her glare is more fearsome.
But Basuin doesn’t cave. He stands straight and still, nostrils flaring as he looks down to meet her dark gaze.
She’s a bullet, quick as a gun goes off.
“My duty is to save the forest your army is destroying,” she snarls. A wild animal. “You’d do well to remember that, god or not, you don’t belong here. You’ve killed my people—be lucky that I’ve yet to remove you from the picture, Wolf God.”
Her chest breaks with every heaving breath, eyes glittering with something silver and something deeper.
Rage colors her glare into twilight. The dying light of day.
He needs to look away—to anywhere but her.
Anywhere else, because the way she wields her tongue she might as well hold a knife to his skin and bleed him now.
Fuck off, he wants to tell her. At that, the wolf-man digs its claws straight into him with a kind of pain that scratches at his brain and makes him want to vomit again.
Before he can say anything else meant to harm her, the Forest God falls back to her heels, the rift between them growing until he’s left with nothing but the scent of soil and something floral. Then, she ducks out of his room.
Tomorrow, he’ll go back to Shaelstorm. He’ll do as Kensy says. He’ll beg Tehali to undo her work in saving him and stitching him back up and make her kill him like he should have asked her to in Valkesta.
He’ll ask to go home this time. Plead and beg and scream. Take me back, he’ll ask at their feet and on his knees. Back to Ankor. Even if his mother isn’t there anymore.