5. Chapter 5 #3
That didn’t mean I was glad of the blood on my hands. It had worn out its welcome and it only had itself to blame. I might have never tried for an eviction if It had never lashed out.
Do you hear me? I said. This is on you.
Nothing.
I had been listening to the wood with my whole body, the way It had taught me, glad of the knives strapped to my hip, glad It had ever grown bored enough to teach me anything at all, because the lessons were coming in handy.
I heard it, even in this waterlogged, silent place, before I saw it.
Something large and black stepped into our field of vision, perhaps twenty yards up. I’d been about to yank Serich’s arm and dive behind the nearest tree for cover when he grabbed me, slinging me against his chest as he drew us against the chalky bark.
“What is it?” I breathed into the hollow of his throat.
I felt his pulse against my cheek, boundless, bunny-quick. “I’m not sure.”
“An animal? One of those things that call from the wood?” Those creatures had, I assumed, the look of a human, because they had the voice of one. That thing I’d seen the night It killed John Dale had looked like a child.
Serich shrugged helplessly: I don’t know.
I peered around his shoulder and the thick trunk of the tree. Serich’s hand contracted on my waist, but he didn’t pull me back.
Hooves and horns took shape first as I squinted.
A stag, but a stag unlike any I’d ever seen.
Massive yet skeletal, as though no meat lay beneath its coat.
Smooth black flesh clinging tightly to overgrown bones.
Vaporous mists drifted around the antlers, and it was the antlers that frightened me, monstrous and twisted, sharpened like blades, nearly as tall as I was. How could the beast even lift its head?
“Stag,” I whispered. I’d leave it at that for now.
“Should we wait until it passes?”
I eyed the pops of glutinous crimson at the stag’s snout. “Definitely.” The creature seemed slow and sedate at present but I hadn’t any idea how fast it could move if it caught something in its sight.
There was something darkly beautiful about it, though. Once you got used to the antlers you noticed the ivy spiraling about them, how beaded dew shone from those knifelike prongs. The eyes were dead black but large and liquid-looking, the lids low and sleepy.
An odd sense of relief swelled in my chest. The wood had begun to show its true self. I knew we’d have worse than a carnivorous stag to deal with soon, but this I could handle.
Off to bed with you, I thought, when the stag eventually began picking a delicate path through sodden leaves and shrugged off through a stand of trees.
“It’s gone.” I pushed myself off of Serich, but he clapped a hand over the one I had braced against his chest.
“No fellows following it?” he whispered, the warmth of his hand seeping into mine.
“It was very much alone.”
We started off again, scanning the landscape.
Trees abounded, thick and close, burly roots wrestling one another beneath nests of softly glowing white flowers.
The light here was as gray as it was in Monde’s End, but it glittered in the wispy fogs as though miniscule stars sparkled through its pores.
Serich looked around doubtfully, as if he too wondered if the wood had been trying to hypnotize us into believing we were safe. “Maybe it’s only the animals we’ll run into in daylight.”
“Maybe not even then.” I’d seen no ground animals, though there were burrows in the earth.
I’d searched the trees for nests and found nothing yet, unless they were too far up to see.
So much for fanged cats as large as giants who breathed hellfire.
There wasn’t a chance in hell Serich and I would miss their footprints.
“The stag looked sleepy. I’ve not seen another living thing, not even a squirrel.
We’ll move as quickly as we can during the day, find shelter just before dusk. ”
“And if there isn’t any shelter?”
“Climb a tree,” I said. “Strap ourselves in as best we can. The things that wake at night might see us but we’ll have fair warning, at least, even if they’re able to climb.
” I eyed the bow and arrow at his back. I hoped he knew how to use it.
My demonic teacher had known little about archery.
I’m not a fucking centaur, It had said when I’d asked.
“We’ll have a job starting fires to keep warm.” Serich kicked at a wet branch in his path, which flew a good five feet before falling noiselessly to the earth. “Everything here is too damp for kindling.”
“Fire will be the last thing we want come nightfall. That would draw things right to us.” I wondered if our scents would linger in the paths we would take, calling the creatures that lived here to wherever we bedded down.
Would we have to cake ourselves with mud, clap wet leaves to our clothes, smear our faces with sap?
“Right. Then we’ll have to keep each other warm.”
I bit back a sardonic smile. How jealous those girls in Monde’s End would be if they knew Serich’s pious body would be keeping me warm in the night.