Into the Deep Wood

Yaroslav met them at the gates, as promised. Now that he wore traveling clothes and had a pack at his back, he looked a lot less like a disheveled tavern drunk and a whole lot more like someone you would not want to match strength with. His pack alone was twice the size of Val, stuffed full. A leather baldric crossed his broad chest - a heavy flanged mace fastened at its lower end and bending toward the back. The man saw Val’s eyes linger on it.

“Admirin’ Anushka, are ya?” He laughed. “Don’t get any ideas. She is a married woman.”

They set out immediately, Ivan and Yaro leading the way as Val walked a few steps behind.

She could not get the vision out of her mind, and more of it returned to her like an incoming tide the further they got away from the town.

They walked along the road, stopping when a cart or sled passed. The road had been somewhat cleared, the snow plowed by large heavy oxen. They’d see these processions go by, men walking behind to spread salt and ash to keep it from freezing again.

“Where do you come from?” Ivan asked Yaro as they stopped again as a short, wide horse pulled a sled behind it full of bundled men and burlap sacks.

“All over, brother. Originated as a young, scrawny boy by the western sea. As you can tell, that was a long time ago, both in age and waist size!” He laughed heartily. “Father owned several fisheries and loved the water. But I had no such devotions. Wanted to see the world beyond the Iron Wall. Found I preferred it very early on. The void critters, too, slinky things.”

Val laughed behind them. She’d never heard the Nothing-touched described in this way.

Yaro glanced back at her, pleased to delight.

“I’m guessing you’re from the coastal plains too.” Yaro continued, looking to Ivan now. “But yours is not as cold as ours. If I had to guess, a farmer boy like you, Ai-Jabrahn.”

Ivan looked surprised.

“A keen eye.” He commented.

“Your accent, too. It’s slight, but if you spend enough time on the road, you learn to hear such things.”

“Then I have failed in my craft and hope that others are not as sharp-eared as yourself.” Ivan laughed.

“Hm.” Yaro considered him. “A soldier then, my guess is a pathfinder. In the heart of the North. You ought to be more stealthy, boy.”

Ivan’s face reddened.

“No sweat off my brow.” Yaro continued. “Could not care less for the war.”

“How do you travel through the states with the travel blockade?” Ivan asked.

“I don't!” The man answered. “Been in the North for eight years. Six of those in the Deep Wood. Damned time skips. Went in chasing a Leshy; devil runs awful fast for being a thousand years old with the walking stick and all. Didn’t even want to hurt him, but he gave me dreams of a voluptuous wood nymph and then took off with my entire supply of cabbage cakes.”

This got a chuckle out of both of his companions.

“Love me some cabbage cakes…” Yaro said wistfully.

It was very late and far past dark when they stopped. The cold had been harsh, but he cleared enough space for their tents to fit side by side and lit a fire. Ivan had gone into the brush and came back out with heaps of dried branches and grass from beneath the shoots. They put this under their tents to keep them off the ground.

When the two had produced their remaining pieces of the Cloth of Plenty, Yaro’s eyes lit up immediately.

“Well, call me a donkey in a sheep pen!” He exclaimed, receiving very questioning looks from the two. “I’d recognize that pattern anywhere. But… where’s the rest?”

“Gone,” Ivan told him simply, closing the door for any further questions. He laid out his piece and a loaf of bread, butter, and roasted fish rolled out with it.

Val handed Yaro a piece. When he set it down, it revealed a generous bowl of cream pudding and boiled eggs. When Val unfolded hers, the sweet and savory smell of cabbage cakes rose in the air. Next to them was a plate of cured salo. At the sight of this, Yaro’s eyebrows raised, and eyes lit up.

Looking at it briefly, she picked up hers and offered it to Yaro.

“I’d rather we switch.” She said, smiling, "I truly cannot stand salo and love cream pudding - if you’ll allow it.”

He gratefully nodded, pretending that her words had not been to spare him asking. They shared the meal, each eating their fill. Everything but the pudding, which Val kept entirely to herself.

The red-bearded man fell asleep first. Yaro’s snores were so loud they shook the air around them. It was almost funny had it not been such a real threat to the quality of their sleep.

Ivan and Val sat by the fire, wrapped in blankets and almost uncomfortably full.

“Why did you only do every other house?” He asked her.

“We did not have enough to do every one.” She shrugged.

“How do you choose who eats and who starves?” His voice was not accusatory. It was quiet, with something else behind it.

“I do not get to choose.” She said, her eyes focused on the fire and hands hovering so close to its warmth that her palms stung from the heat after the freezing cold. “They do. I can only hope they are kind to their neighbors, as they will never lose anything the cloth gives them by sharing it.”

Ivan looked at her with subtle interest, his eyes studying her face.

“You have a lot of faith in people.” He commented.

“Someone once told me that it was what they loved most about me.” She said, and he thought he saw the fire reflect more intensely on the moisture in her eyes.

They sat a moment in silence before Ivan took the deepest of breaths, willing himself to speak.

“What happened back there,” he said, not looking at her for fear that he would not finish his words, “Yaro was right. It made people think you a witch, possessed.”

“And,” His words made the corners of her mouth go ever so slightly down. “Do you?”

“Yes.” He said honestly after a moment. “I do.”

“Hm. Why did you then come?”

“Because,” he started to speak, realizing he had no answer prepared, “I think there is more to you than that.”

She looked at him, and he pulled his legs closer to his body, and the blanket tighter around.

“But, you have to tell me. You have to tell me everything. Otherwise, I don’t know if I can go on. There are things about you that are terrifying and unusual. And I have trust, but you cannot ask a man to live on trust alone - that is reserved for the church and the All-Father.” He smiled. “And I don’t think you are either of those things.”

She shifted uncomfortably and sighed. Val knew that she could not go on forever the way she had. And she knew that alone she would not make it far - the world was harder than she remembered.

“Alright.” She agreed. “Ask.”

He shook his head.

“If I ask, I might miss important things, because I do not know them. I wish for you to simply tell.”

She hated it when he’d been clever.

“Alright.” She felt her heart beating harder at the thought. She wanted to lie, to make something up. But, a part of her yearned to bare her soul to another. To speak of things that she’d never spoken of before. “I am not a witch; let me start with that. But, I met the witch, the Hag. And she kept me locked away in the Glade for a long, long time. I missed nearly half my life there before I got out.”

She felt the knot in her throat when she realized that she would have to speak of him if she were to tell the whole of her tale. She was not sure she could do that.

“I was held captive after, for a short while. I walked without restraint, but it was in a direction I did not wish to go.” She continued. “One of my captors died when we came across the Legho. The other was gravely injured. We did not make it far before a kind farmer picked us up on the road. We were both closer to death than not.”

“You remained when your jailer was injured? Why?” Ivan asked.

He had not taken his eyes off of her while she spoke.

“He would have died.” It had not been a lie.

“Were they slavers?”

“No.” She shook her head. “They were slaves themselves. I was the bounty that would have freed them from their debt.”

“They were hunters…” Ivan said suddenly, realizing this was where her blade and journal came from.

“Yes.”

He did not ask further, so she continued.

“We lived on the farmer’s lands for a long time. We had to leave because there was a death, and we were to be blamed.”

A lie.

“We went to Midtrade City…”

“--you and your captor?” He interjected, surprise on his face.

“Yes. By then, a friend.” She sighed, unsure if she could piece it all together without revealing to him what had made her such a valuable find. “We were there when the Eastern King was killed. We ran, and we were chased. For a long time, we were lost in the southern desert - I did not lie about having been there. They found us, chased us into the mountains, and there we were forced into a cave. After a few days, it led us out onto the shores of a lake.”

His face changed slightly.

“Why were you pursued so far?”

And there it was. It was either a lie she could not return from or a truth that may put her in danger again. Val looked at Ivan, studying his face, taking in the blue of his eyes, his expressive mouth, and his posture. And, she decided.

“The man that chased us, he’d known that I was a Golden.” She said, keeping her eyes on him, looking for his reaction. It’d melted slowly from a cautious curiosity to confusion - and finally, disbelief.

“You?” He muttered, and she nodded.

“I do not wish to speak of it.” She said, hopeful that he respected those words. It seemed like he wanted to say something else, but his lips pressed together purposefully, and she went on. “The Iron Wall was closed to us. We’d gone on to Chalkalka. For a long time, we remained there.”

“The River Cities?” He said, surprised. “But they were burned?”

“We were there when Korschey’s armies came. We escaped.”

“No one escaped. It is well known.” He shook his head, and she shot him an annoyed look.

“We did.”

He seemed to do the math in his head. It had to have been years.

“We ran for a long time, trying to get to my home village. We did not know where it was; we were simply going north, away from the man that hunted me.” Her eyes drifted back to the fire, and she was uncertain that she could tell him the next part. Uncertain that she was prepared to even think of it. “They caught up to us. Only I escaped.”

It was brief; she did not say too much, but tears still sprang to her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they welled up fast, too fast, and spilled onto her cheek. The sensation came with the cracking of her voice. “I made it home shortly after.”

It was so unexpected, but she felt Ivan’s arms wrap around her shoulders, and without thinking, she sank into them, shaking. The blanket fell away from him, and he did not say a word as she sobbed violently into his chest.

“You loved him.” He said quietly; it was not a question. She nodded her head against him.

They sat like this for a while. He did not ask for the rest of the story, even though none of it had explained to him the strangeness of her nature or why she had been in the Glade. They simply sat, even after she stopped crying, his arm around her, leaning on each other as the fire cracked.