Into the Deep Wood

As they reached the river, ash began to swirl in invisible currents of air. It got tangled in Val’s hair, and a thin layer of it appeared on Marat’s shoulders and in the hairs on his forearms.

It was as if the land had plunged into a solemn, deathly winter in the night. Behind them the city burned with flames licking the sky and its heat unrolling down the mountain.

At the river’s edge, Marat came to a stop.

“Shit.” He muttered for the second time that night.

Downriver, where the next city lay, rose a large dark column of smoke.

“We’re trapped.” He muttered, looking back and forth on the water in hopes of finding an abandoned boat. Maybe one a fisherman had tied up that night, meaning to return in the early morning.

The sounds of faraway screams carried on the wind. Neither of the two dared to think of the people they had known and shared their meals with.

Val, most of all, did not dare to think of the All-Mother. The woman’s face… her eyes… the voice that had wheezed and rattled out of her throat.

She knew it, she would know it anywhere, for the rest of her life.

From the rumble of the fires and desperate cries of the people rose another sound.

Thunderous gallop of approaching horses’ hooves sent a panicked shiver down Marat’s spine. There was little they could do now.

“Tighten your bag.” He instructed the fear-stricken Val suddenly. “Leave nothing loose. Make sure the leather is bound as tightly as it goes.”

She looked at him questioningly but turned and pulled her satchel forward.

“Come on.”

Holding his bag to his chest, he stepped into the water.

“You’re joking, surely…” The words left Val’s mouth, but she had already followed him in, the cold biting at her legs and weighing down her dress. They took a few more steps, the current strong, fighting to remain upright.

He turned to her.

“Listen to me. If we are separated, remember that where this river leads is north. Beyond the River Cities stand forests; between them lay vast steppes. If you walk away from the river, to the east, and keep going - you will come across small villages in the plains. Do not go into the cities. Never between stone walls.” His hand was on her arm, helping her steady where the water meant to take her away. She saw the look in his eyes, and she hated it.

“Marat.” She put her hand on his. “How many times are you going to tell me these things? As if I am not coming with you? Where you go, I go.”

The look on his face didn’t change, but his hand fell. The cold of the rushing waters had numbed their legs and stung as a thousand needles where wet clothes stuck to their skin. Buildings collapsing somewhere far away sent thunder roaring through the valley, the air so thick with ash it became hard to breathe.

“Hold on to me!” Marat shouted, the rushing currents nearly drowning out his words. She made a jerking movement to catch his arm, but the water swept her up, feet slipping on algae-covered river rocks below.

She screamed, but it, too, was lost in the unconcerned roar of the river as both of them were pulled rapidly downstream.

For a heartbeat, everything went silent aside from the sound of water rushing into his ears. He kicked and, with his one unrestrained arm, pushed to the surface. On his other clasped Val, although her efforts to stay afloat had been more valiant than his.

By the All-Father, he hated swimming.

Strange how his mind calmed in times such as these. He knew they’d make the plunge, even if his mind and body dreaded it. The River Cities burned as the river carried them on, and left the giant trunks of black smoke reaching for the stars as deathly trees - growing incessantly upward and stretching their branches across the sky.

He wheezed, the ash clinging to his tongue, the inside of his cheeks, and coating his throat.

His muscles seized from the cold; they could not stay there too long, or they would not have the strength to swim to the riverbank.

He felt her hand tugging, trying to shake him out of this trance, and realized that she was trying to motion toward an eddy in the river. They both felt the speed of the waters break for only a moment, and swam with one last push to the shore.

Marat pulled himself up on solid ground, and behind him, Val, hanging onto their satchels.

They nearly crawled onto the dry ground of needles and moss beneath the pines. Both breathing hard, they lay on their backs on the spongy forest floor.

“We should keep going…” He said, thinking only of the crown of fire on the hill - an entire army that had spread out and gone to every corner of Chelkalka, surely.

“Marat, no.” Val sounded so pathetic, her voice trembling from the violent shivers. “We are wet, our things are wet, please, can we just wait until morning?”

He sat up, scanning the other side of the river. There were thick trees and fallen logs, no trails, and no signs of dwellings nearby.

“Only a few hours. We’ll make a fire out of sight.” He agreed begrudgingly, the weight of his soaked clothes and his own chills vibrating across his skin suddenly becoming too real.

A small fire, two people, and one very long day. So unaccustomed to the sleepless nights, neither knew how or when, but both had fallen asleep fast, slumped against each other in front of a small fire inside a circle of dirt - the needles and pine cones cleared away.

That night, there was a nightmare. A nightmare woven from shadows and echoes, a nightmare that consumed. A nightmare that swallowed Marat whole.

The fire was out when they awoke, and both shivered under the limited cover of their few dry belongings, thanking their respective gods it was summer and they did not freeze to death.

Val dumped the remaining contents of her pack onto the ground. The straps and cords on her bag held tight - and it was only the outside pockets that had become soaked. It was to her great relief that the journal had gone unharmed, tucked in the middle of a pair of shoes and a bundle of yeastless rosemary flatbread.

“An hour, max,” Marat said, sitting with his feet by the newly blazing fire. Val could not help but notice the slight wiggle of his toes at the welcome heat. She sat down next to him.

“Now what?” She asked, and as if that question had broken an unspoken barrier, both of their faces dropped.

They were tired. Not tired as after a hard day’s work, not tired after a late night –even one spent running. This was an exhaustion that echoed in the almost empty glass of hope.

Now what?

There was nothing. The River Cities, however vile and foul they’d turned out to be - they were their only hope, and then, they weren’t.

“We get away from Korschey’s soldiers, that's what,” Marat answered her eventually.

Val, seeming to think of something, dug into her bag - and produced a worn and slightly wrinkly - but still legible hand-drawn map Marat had made.

“Where are we?” She asked, laying it out.

Marat looked at it closely, and then, holding it against his knee, he sketched beyond Chelkalka - adding both river and forest and what looked to be the plains beyond.

“Right here. The river did not carry us so far, but far enough. Beyond the pines are still the steppes,” he paused, giving her a not-so-serious look, “that you so adamantly refused to learn the directions to.”

She smiled.

“I’ll learn directions when I don’t have you around to show me.” She said, and earned a frown from him. “What is beyond the steppes?”

“It is not what is beyond, but all across. Small villages, and then–” he drew a larger circle, with a smaller one inside of it, “just a small city, but the first in these plains. It sits on the border of the Deep Wood. We will want to avoid it if we can, to walk around it is an extra day but we cannot risk them having taken the city and billeting their soldiers there. It is the first large settlement on the northwestern end of the kingdom.”

“How far?” She scanned the piece of paper. It did not look promising.

“Seven days by horse… for us, fifteen at best.”

“Why there if you said we must avoid it?” She turned the map but found it impossible to tell because he had drawn nothing above it.

“It sits between the Deep Wood and a desert of ice. There is no wildlife there and barely any plants. It is not a place the living go willingly. And certainly not poorly supplied like we are.”

“Hmpf.” Val nodded in understanding and set the map down. “So, the North then?”

“The North.”

“Why?”

“Because we are safer in the territory not currently under siege or ran rampant with berserking warlords at each other's throats.” He said, a bit of annoyance seeping through his tone. “A mouse can live a long time in a house, should the house be large enough to hide.”

“Unless the house has a cat,” Val muttered, and Marat did not answer.

They both thought of who must have led the army and was now only a few leagues away.

Johannes.

Searching, hunting.

For them.

“We should get going,” Marat said, his voice weary.

They walked through a forest of evergreens for the better part of the day and into the night, stopping again only to sleep for a few hours. By noon the next day they’d come out of it with nothing but wide plains ahead.

The summer heat had scorched the stalks of grass but preserved the younger blades underneath. So unlike the lush vineyards of the River Cities.

A herd of wild horses, only visible as small spots far ahead, crossed the horizon. Their appearance only made Val feel like everything had become so far, and so hard, in just a few days.

That night, there was nowhere to hide a fire. Were they to light one, it could be seen for great distances around. The wind picked up, and they lay low, only wrapped in blankets, huddled up closely against one another.

“Can I ask you something?”

Val looked up in complete disbelief, Marat’s eyes steadily on her. He had never been the one to come to her with questions asking for permission.

“Of course…” Seeing the seriousness on his face, she felt guilty for how giddy this made her.

“You know, you truly do have to know where we are going.”

“That was not much of a question.” She noticed, disappointed.

“I’m serious, Val.” He pulled her close to where she was pressed against his chest, and he did not have to look her in the eyes any longer. “If anything happens. You have to understand. We did not come this far for you to wander off and fall into a sinkhole somewhere in the woods.”

“Please, do mark all the sinkholes on that map.” Came from somewhere near his armpit.

“Val.”

“Alright… but I do not want to talk like this. Not right now.” She gave into his seriousness, and they remained silent for a while.

“Can I ask you something now?” She stirred.

“Yeah.”

“Why do you even bother holding my hand through it all? You’ve never had to - but you did.”

He sighed, and she felt him grinding his teeth as she waited for an answer.

“I’m afraid to lose you.” He said finally. “I am afraid to lose you through no fault of your own.”

“Now, maybe, but it was not always this way. You still guided me every step of the way. Kept me from danger, from hunger, from myself. Why?”

Another long pause.

“I suppose because you are worth protecting.” She felt his body shift uncomfortably, but he continued. “I saw from the beginning that you’d been unlike anyone I have had in my life. I did not realize it then. But, you are pure, Val. You remain so even through the horrors that you have lived. Near half your life you spent in the clutches of the Nothing, and you came out - still you.”

“I’m not so sure you would say that if you knew me before her.” She said quietly.

“I did not know you before. But, I saw how a girl who I meant to sell into slavery had remained behind when I’d been injured. Near carried your captor, twice your size, even when your legs buckled underneath you. You could have left and been better off.”

She squeezed her arms ever so slightly tighter around him; she did not remember this story as he told it.

“You’d worked hard and without question when someone offered you anything. You watched a desperate, pained man who’d drowned his pain in an evil indulgence - you rescued him from the clutches of those depths. Selflessly and without question.” He continued. “Your heart remained soft, feeling. And I don’t think I understood how difficult that is. I thought it weak, I will not lie to you. But, I was ready to put an arrow in that young girl. I aimed, and I felt nothing. She is alive because of you.”

The wind whistled above them, drowning out all else, allowing this moment of privacy for the two of them.

“You… you are better than I am.” He said. “Through you, I feel I can still touch that good. And that, for the sake of more than just me alone, is infinitely worth protecting.”

She felt herself tear up, but hid it for the fear that in his fashion, Marat would ruin the moment with a snide remark. But instead, she felt his arm twitch, trying to pull her even closer - when there was no closer to go.

“I love you, Val.” He said, his words barely audible, although she felt them vibrate through his chest. “That, is why I am afraid to lose you.”

“I’ll never leave…” She could not help but sob into his shirt, a weak reassurance.

“That is not the only way to get lost.”

Val woke with a start, her cheeks burning up and her stomach queasy. With an acrid taste in her mouth, she reached for water, but none was to be found, her hands instead grasping at dirt and dry grasses. Her vision swam, memories honing in on the fire, the serpent, the Wound.

She propped herself up, then lurched forward and stumbled, her knees buckling under her. With near no warning, she retched into the grass.

Val stared ahead at the contents of her stomach soaking into the dirt. It was as if the violent burst had shaken loose some tingling and ringing at the back of her head, and a sensation that felt like a memory overwhelmed her. Why had this been so familiar…

“Oh gods…” she jerked back and away, backing her shoulder right into Marat’s chin, who’d been awoken by her heaving.

“Not again…” She whispered. “Oh gods no, not again!”

“Are you alright?” he helped her up and back to the blankets, his brows drawn together, a knot of quiet foreboding growing in his chest.

“Marat… she said…”

“Val, it doesn’t matter what she said.” He reached forward and pressed the back of his hand against her forehead, pulling it away with a frown. “You’re ill.”

“I’m not.” She shook her head, but she wished she had been. “My mouth tastes of fig wine.”

“More of the Hag’s tricks.” He sighed dismissively. “We’ve been through a lot, Val. We walked into the Wound’s corruption. The further and sooner we get away from it, the better.”

But there was a feeling, in his gut now, that there was some validity to her fears. It had been just over two weeks since Fauna’s Day.

…had we killed the child in your womb, the next would be a boy…