The Forest’s Opinion
The Forest's Opinion
Guruk
I knew we were lost approximately seven minutes before I was willing to admit it.
The path had been straightforward enough as we’d left the market.
It started as a clear, well-traveled road east, the kind that had seen enough boots to know where to go.
But as the afternoon deepened and the trees thickened, I noticed a bend in the light that did not quite match our direction.
Too much afternoon gold on the left side of the canopy.
The shadows falling at a slight angle to where they should be.
I said nothing. I kept walking.
Five minutes later, we passed a mossy log I recognized. Large, split along its length by some old lightning strike, with a cluster of red mushrooms at its western end.
I said nothing. I kept walking.
“Guruk,” Sammy called from behind me.
“Mm.” I stopped for a beat.
She pointed at the infernal wood. “Is that the same log?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “There are many logs in the forest.”
Squatting to inspect it, she ran her fingers over the edges. She stared back at me. “That is the same log.”
My jaw clenched. “It has a similar quality—”
“Those are the same mushrooms.”
I sighed. To the caves with it, I thought the old orc curse.
“We are,” I said, with what I considered admirable composure, “temporarily misaligned with the path."
Sammy opened her notebook and wrote something. I caught a glimpse: Guruk-speak for lost.
I stomped in place to punctuate my point. “We are not lost.”
She snapped her notebook shut. “We have circled the same log twice.”
“We have,” I paused and reconsidered. No sense arguing the inevitable. “The forest has old magic in it. Older than the village. Some parts of it were enchanted long before any settlement arrived, and they have their own...” I searched for the word.
“Opinions?” Sammy offered.
I nodded, pleased at this word. “Yes. Opinions.”
“So…” She glared at the log. Then, at the path ahead, which curved away into the trees in a direction that felt subtly, persistently wrong. “The forest is rerouting us.”
“It would appear so.” I ran a hand through my hair, tugging at the strands and willing the forest for an answer.
“To where we need to go rather than where we intend to go?”
“That is the old magic’s nature, yes.”
She thought about this for a moment, pen tapping against her notebook. Something shifted in her expression. Her gamer face crashed down over the mild exasperation like a visor. “We’re not lost,” she said, pen brandished at the ready like a sword. “We’re respawning.”
I did not know what respawning meant, but I recognized the tone. It was the same one she used when she had decided that a problem was an opportunity in poor disguise.
“Yes,” I agreed, hoping the forest did not prove me a liar.
Berry, from their post on my shoulder, chittered in a stream, saying in their way, sure, let’s call it that.
We made camp in the clearing the forest delivered us to.
I recognized it as optimal the moment we stepped into it.
Three sides were sheltered by old growth, while the fourth opened to a strip of darkening sky.
A natural fire ring of stones was already present, as if placed there by someone who had been through before and thought ahead.
The ground was soft with purple moss and last season’s leaves.
A stream ran at the clearing’s far edge, close enough to hear and use as needed.
The forest, whatever its opinions, had good taste.
“Oh,” Sammy said, stopping in the center of the clearing and turning slowly. “Okay. I'll allow it.”
As if we had a choice. I smirked. “Generous of you.”
Another flip of her pen in my direction warned me off. “Don’t push it.”
I built the fire while she unpacked what we needed, moving around each other in the easy, unthinking way we had developed at home on the farm. She handed me things before I reached for them. I caught her pack strap before it fell from her hands without either of us breaking stride.
Berry found a suitable branch at the clearing’s edge and arranged themselves on it with quiet comfort.
The fire caught. The sky above the open strip of clearing went from blue to amber to the deep rose that meant the stars would be clear tonight.
Sammy sat cross-legged near the fire with her notebook open, but she was not writing. She stared at the sky.
I sat beside her. Not touching, just near. The fire glowed between us and the trees, and the night sounds of the forest began: low calls, a quiet settling, the exhalation of a wood going still.
I had been carrying something since the market. Throughout the afternoon, I had been deciding how to put it down.
No sense putting it off. Sliding closer, I brushed my little human’s arm with mine. “Sammy?”
“Mm,” she said, her pen skimming the surface of the paper.
“There is something I need to tell you.”
The notebook closed with finality. She set it to the side and turned toward me. “I’m all ears.”
“At the market,” I began, scratching absently at my forearm. “At the western edge, while you were with the crystal-reader,” I kept my voice even, steady, without hurry, nothing that could be mistaken for urgency, “I saw the deputy.”
The fire crackled between us.
“Stoneclaw’s deputy,” she said. Not a question. “The skul-gargoyle.”
“Yes. Out of uniform. Far from the village, far from any route his duties would take him. He was at a map and travel stall near the western road.” I paused, recalling the deputy’s dark mulberry wings snapping behind him.
The skul-gargoyle only stood about as high as my chest, much smaller than their gargoyle cousins.
Still, they were formidable and not to be taken lightly.
“He accepted something from the proprietor. Something small. Then, he left back toward the village.”
Sammy sat motionless.
“I said nothing in the market because I did not want to speak in the open.” I watched her face for the slightest shift in expression.
“I have been considering, since then, whether I was certain enough to tell you at all. I did not want to worry you without cause.” I exhaled, taking her hand in mine.
“But I find I am more certain than not. And I do not want to carry it alone any longer.”
The stillness held for another moment. Then Sammy’s fingers closed around mine.
“He knew we were going to the market,” she said, voice flat and precise. “Our messages to the sheriff?”
I drew her into my arms, needing her closer. “I see no other connection.”
Seated in my lap, she turned to face me. “You told Stoneclaw we were heading to the crossroads market.”
I nodded. “The night before.”
She absorbed this. I watched it move through her; the pieces assembling in the order she needed them. Her gaming skills helped her turn over the information, sorting, connecting, and filing. I had learned not to interrupt her process.
“The deputy is working with whoever has been tracking us.” Her eyes shifted side to side as if piecing together a puzzle. “The night traveler Pell saw. The shadow in the bracken.” Her jaw set. “The thing that’s been ahead of us this whole time.”
“Yes.” I hesitated, then gave her the rest. “I believe the status messages are the channel. Which means I have been sending our location to the wrong person every night since we left.”
Sammy’s expression went through several emotions in quick succession.
I watched anger arrive first, a clean, hot flash of it that tightened her eyes and the corners of her mouth.
Then something colder and more deliberate moved in behind it.
She spun so that her back rested against my chest, plunked her fist under her chin, and stared at the fire for a long moment.
“Okay,” she said at last. “Okay.” The word landed differently the second time. “So we use it. We keep sending messages, but vague ones, nothing specific. Let him think we don’t know.” She looked at me. “Can Berry reach Stoneclaw directly? Without the network?”
“A direct transfer, yes. It takes more from them.” I motioned to Berry, who had been listening from their branch with their tails unmoving. “But it is possible.”
Berry chittered once. Yes.
“Then if we need Stoneclaw to know something real, we use Berry.” Sammy’s pen had appeared.
She was writing in short, rapid lines. “Everything through the network stays vague. Direction. General wellbeing. Nothing about our location.” She looked up.
“Is that what you’ve been doing since the gnome village? ”
“Before that,” I admitted. “Since the first night on the road. I wasn’t certain then. But something felt…off.”
She studied me. “You’ve been protecting me this whole time.”
“I've been trying to.”
“From the road, from the mudslide, from the night, from the network.” A complicated expression moved across her face. “Guruk. You could have told me.” Her hand slowly moved to cup my face. “We’re partners. You don’t have to face anything alone.”
“I know.” I met her eyes. Placing a soft kiss on her forehead, I added, “You are precious to me, my heart. And I am an orc. It is in my nature to protect.”
Her cheeks turned a delicious shade of pink. Then, a flash shone in her eyes, and she jumped up abruptly, shouting, “Side quest!”
I smiled at the change in her mood. “What now?”
“A minor mission,” she declared. “Expose the traitor.” Plopping down again cross-legged, she wrote it in her notebook and underlined it twice. “It’s a side quest. We do the main quest first, which is to find my friends. But the deputy doesn’t get to walk away from this Scot-free.”
Before I could ask about this Scot and what he had to do with the deputy, she continued, her pen clicking.
“Stoneclaw needs to know. When we’re home and it’s safe to tell him properly.”
“Agreed,” I said. “If there’s a threat to the village, then the sheriff needs to know.” I swallowed; the stone in my chest a lump of empathy for the male. “Even if it is his deputy.”