Into the Deep Wood

The two men had gone to sleep, and Yaro’s snores once again rose above the crackle of the fire. Val sat hugging her knees, as close to the flames as she dared. The same thoughts raced through her mind so fast that she could no longer keep up.

The Hag, the threads, the voices.

The red hot iron.

The spine-chilling face of Korschey.

And then, it was the fire. In front of her, the campfire burned, and in her eyes she saw within it the barn. She felt the heat of it as she once had, desperate, throwing herself against the thick, scalding, hot wood. Helpless against the dying screams of the men. One of the voices could very well have been his.

She shook it off, not now, she did not have the strength.

Her stomach clenched, and she felt something coming from the darkness of the trees. Her eyes focused on the black abyss beyond the first of the large trunks. Something was in there.

Just beyond sight. She was sure of it, although nothing moved aside from the gentle swaying of the branches and creaking under the weight of snow on top of them.

“Ready?” Ivan said in a hushed tone behind her, and she jumped - clenching at her beating heart.

“Gods!” She hissed out at him. “Why would you startle me like that?”

He grinned.

“Just checking if you were asleep. You were so still.”

“Is it time already?” She asked him, looking for the moon - to her surprise, it had already made it above the treetops.

“Hm. Maybe you were asleep after all.” He sat by her. “I’ve got it now, you can use my tent if you like - take your own blankets in.”

“And where will you sleep when Yaro takes watch?” She grinned at the corner of her mouth. “Goodnight, Ivan.”

“Goodnight,” he watched her walk to the row of little, low tents. “Valeria.”

The Witch.

All-Father save him.

Ivan laid back, unconcerned with falling asleep. It was as if all the lamps burned inside his mind - so bright that no amount of fatigue could make them withdraw. For days now all he could think of was the Witch.

He’d heard her scream while he was at the tavern. He’d been the first to arrive to the locked door. She was on the bed, struggling for air, and another scream came from her - one so wild that it did not even sound like her own.

He thought this was no nightmare. He thought it sorcery gone wrong.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and felt how badly her stiff muscles were shaking. Men came, and they brought her to the cool floor - she’d been burning up. She screamed again, and it sounded as a word.

Sister.

She screeched. More people, someone splashed water in her face. Her eyes shot open but they were not her eyes, rolled back in her head they looked milky and blind. And, he felt fear. Fear of her, and what was worse - fear for her. How she thrashed, they could not hold her down.

He’d been ready to leave before then.

He had talked himself into it just prior. There was a life outside of her, but how easy it was to forget that. Bewitched, he needed distance to forget.

But, seeing her, feeling her pain, the only thing he’d wanted in the world then was to make it stop for her. To bring it to an end. But, even then, he yearned to get away. The devils danced under her skin, and in her eyes, he could see the Nothing’s hollow glow. And yet…

…and yet, she had never been more human when they spoke. Behind every word was a story longer than she cared to tell - but he had seen it in the pain on her face. When she broke down, it was as if the Glade had shattered around her, leaving only a sad, lonely girl.

In that moment, pressed against his chest, she was so small. He knew from the moment she called her captor a friend that it was not. Her voice had cracked.

There used to be someone out there that she once loved so greatly that the absence had not left her whole. Loved so hard that the warm heart inside of her had hardened and cooled.

And yet, he saw it as she walked home to home, handing out the pieces of a precious thing, the cloth. Willing to go without, so they would not.

It had been in there, it was not extinguished yet.

But even so, he didn't know how she had gotten to the Glade, how it was that she kept the company of monsters and performed rituals that shifted the world around them, how it was that she had become involved with the evils in the dark.

And that, it made her dangerous still.

He did not believe for a moment that she had been a hunter. The way she moved, the way she stood, the way she flinched away from spiders clinging to the corners in the inn.

No, she was no warrior. But the things she carried, they had been another’s once. And now, he knew who, if not by name, then by reputation.

“All-Father help me.” He whispered into the night. If only he could think of anything else. If only he could shake the feeling that what she was looking for was something she would never find.

The bird-woman’s words.

He found that he hoped she'd been speaking about him.

If I were you, I would stop looking for ghosts and start looking for the living.

Val lay so still she could not even hear her own breath. She felt the pull, the beckoning of the Nothing in the woods. It was not luring but rather asking her to come.

And so, she did.

She got up quietly, slipping her snow boots on. Pushing the tent opening to the side, she looked out to the fire where Ivan lay, facing away from her. Surely, he’d hear the snow creak and crush beneath her feet.

She circled as silently as she could around the tent. Stepping forward - the snow crunched, and she froze - but heard no movement at the fire. She was sure that he must have fallen asleep after all. Gingerly, she took more steps - and more again until the snow gave way to solid ground, and she stood at the threshold of the forest.

She had not known why, but she took the snow boots off her feet - and stepped barefoot onto the frozen ground - but it had felt as warm as a grassy knoll in the summer sun.

Val walked, her gaze lost among the trees. And, as her eyes adjusted, she saw them.

Crawling over every tree, following her slowly to match her pace, were chorts. Dark as the trees themselves in the night, their mutated limbs could have been the branches so strangely did they stretch and bend.

She began seeing their faces. Grotesque skulls with black, shiny skin pulled over them, lower jaws dangling loosely as if hanging only by a couple pieces of sinew. Their lack of eyes did not impair their faces, following her as if they did see. They cocked their heads at her, but only continued on, behind her, next to, and ahead - never coming lower in the trees than right above her reach.

She walked on, slower, feeling the soft call. The air warmed, and she shed her coat, dropping if off her shoulders and onto the ground.

A clearing was ahead.

As her feet touched the warm grass beneath the moonlight, she felt a rush of her blood from the tips of her fingers down her body and up the back of her neck - tingling all up and down her scalp. She closed her eyes, allowing it to wash over her, its warmth overtaking the leftover cold. She realized it was not the ground or the air that had warmed - it was her.

“Valeria.” She whispered, and every crawling tree whispered it back to her.

Valeeeeeeeeeeriaaaaa. Valeriiiiiiia. Vaaaaaaaaleria.

The chorts descended.

They circled her, staying low to the ground. Their backward, twisted limbs moved as insects would, crawling, scuttling, their legs and arms moving in rapid succession. Each the size of a man, they filled the clearing but remained cautiously back, giving her space.

One separated from the others, approaching her tentatively.

She slowly opened her eyes. It was a horrific creature, its neck so warped that its head sat almost entirely on its right shoulder. Its bone-skinny arms pulled it forward, crawling low to the ground. It stopped right within her reach. Val looked at it, feeling the tingling in her blood slow.

She slowly raised her hand, reaching for the creature. It shifted closer, its jaw falling open and being pulled closed again. Her fingers touched its forehead. It was oily, and beneath the greasy membrane was an uneven, bumpy layer of thick, harsh skin. The creature did not recoil.

Valeeeeeeeriaaaaa. Valeeeeeriiiiiia. Vaaaaaleriaaaa.

She felt its hunger. She felt its obsession. She felt its fear. Its crippling, deep, painful fear.

Her eyes ran across it; she had never seen one up close. When her eyes focused on those beyond it, she saw they were closing in.

And then suddenly, they weren’t.

It was as if black rushing waters - all had dashed to the trees - a lit torch coming toward the clearing from the woods.

“Valeria!” It was Ivan’s voice.

He stepped into the clearing, and from every direction, his distorted, angry, and grotesque voice echoed back at him.

Valeeeeeeeeeeriaaaaa. Valeriiiiiiia. Vaaaaaaaaleria.

“NO!” She called out to him just as his free hand drew one of the scimitars. The rush of chorts threw themselves forward from above.

Barefoot, Val took off toward him with a desperate movement. His face reflected first fear, then, upon seeing her, determination.

Some chorts hit the ground; others lunged branch to branch through the trees toward him.

Val took him down with the full force of her body, the torch falling to the ground, the flame weakened in the dew of the grass - and then extinguished completely. His arm flew around her, as her body landed on top of him - between him and the chorts.

Her face next to his, she whispered in a barely audible voice.

“Trust me.”

The chorts were all around them, like wolves circling their prey, only the clicking of their joints breaking the silence. But, they kept a certain distance from the two, unwilling to come closer to Val.

“Don’t let go.” Again, she whispered, slowly sitting up, holding his arm against her - forcing his body to remain pressed to hers as she moved to be upright.

Val was kneeing now, Ivan’s arms draped around her, his eyes on the monstrous deformities moving all around them by in the night.

Her lips did not move, but her hands did, as her eyes once again fluttered closed.

One.

Two.

Ten.

Twenty. She could feel them all. The threads were thin and sharp. So cold in her hands.

Every single one, as touching the first chort, whispered through the tether its starvation, its loss, its dread.

She moved her fingers, intertwining the threads in a rhythmic pattern. When one's tension slacked, she would gently pull it back in, making sure it lay next to another without pulling it too tightly. She had not wanted them to snap.

Not like the Zabava’s had.

The Nothing, we were here first.

He’d discovered too late that she was gone. The wind blew, and the flap of the tent revealed no one inside. The Witch was gone.

He did not hesitate to grab the double scabbard and a torch. It had not even occurred to him to wake Yaro. His single-minded thought was to find her.

Her footprints had been clear in the snow. The fact that she got past at all would have had to be sorcery. He followed them quickly - his stomach twisting when he realized they’d gone directly toward the Deep Wood.

“All-Father guide me in the absence of light” he whispered the prayer. A pair of small gray shapes appeared in the snow at the boundary of the trees. It had been her boots. “For the Nothing is ever trying to extinguish the candle…”

The leaves crunched, as did small sticks - cracking against his boots as he ran - but where? He did not know. Forward, where in his gut he knew her to be - toward the whispering scent of decay. Chorts.

It was so cold, even more so here than it had been in the prairies. Here, the moisture hung heavy in the air and seemed to gather every bit of frost within it. It was not long until his coat had dampened with sharp crystals of ice.

How had she gone without her boots?

Ahead, he saw a figure on the ground, and in the dark, he rushed to it - thinking it to be the Witch, dead, in the forest. But it was only her coat. Lined with fur and white stitching around the collar.

“Valeria!” He called out, and he thought he felt the draft pick up, chilling his exposed skin. He ran forward still. “Valeria!”

The trees parted up ahead; he saw the faint blue light of the moon crawling across the grass. There was movement there, too much to have been just a person.

“Valeria!” Against his instincts, against anything he knew to be the right thing to do to stay hidden in the wilderness, he ran forth–

The light of the torch expanded past the trees as his foot hit the dewy grasses. It fell on dozens of wet, reflective skins. Limbs, bones, thin-starved torsos - horrible heads atop shoulders on twisted spines. For a second, all had turned to him with their nonexistent eyes.

And there, in the very middle, stood the Witch.

Her back was to him, hand raised. All that she’d worn was a pair of leggings and her undershirt. She turned a moment after they did, the look on her face that of a waking cat - and not a person who stands at night in the devil’s pits.

Filled with a steeled resolve, he stepped forward, drawing his blade from its scabbard.

She screamed something - and ran for him - trying to get away from the beasts. They scattered from the light, only moving away far enough that its reflection had stopped its burning into their skin, and in the same moment already circling back and away from it - all toward him.

Her body hit his head on, so unexpectedly that breath had left his lungs. He did not drop the scimitar, but the torch had gone flying to the ground. As his body hit it, the impact radiated through him and onto her. Was she… restraining his swordhand?

“Trust me.” She whispered into his ear, her breath hot - as was her skin. She was burning up. Beyond her, the grotesque shadows moved, blocking out the rest of the clearing - blocking out the trees on the other side.

But, they had not approached.

“Don’t let go.” It was a rasp as her body swung back, guiding his hand with it - forcing him to sit up against her as her knees hit the ground. Her face was so close, he could feel the moist heat of it - and see the sweat bead on her skin. His gaze moved from her neck to lips, to her eyes - to her frosted-glass-like rolled-back eyes. She twisted, forcing him against her back. Her hand pulled his, and unconsciously his fingers closed around the fabric of her shirt.

The monstrosities loomed around them, their dry joints creaking as they shifted their weight, their arms and legs so tangled that you could not tell one from ten. Only then did Ivan hear their whispers.

Valeeeriaaaaa. Valeriiia. Vaaaaaaaaleria. Valeeeria, Vaaleeria.

They were not tearing them to shreds.

Her arms rose, as if she was holding something up to them. But, her hands were empty. Her body jerked, and he gripped tighter, afraid she would be torn away. He saw blood well up on her fingers - as if she had cut herself. Her fingers moved. Slowly, deliberately, as if something tensed against them. More thin streaks of blood appeared across her hands and palms.

The Witch trembled, and he pressed his chest against her harder, his arms desperate to both pull her closer and away from the devils slowly climbing over each other to get nearer. He could feel her heartbeat. It beat far too slowly. The heat coming off of her was almost too much, as sitting too close to a fire with cold beating at your back. This sensation sent a ripple down his skin, and through to the hairs at the back of his neck. He felt himself tense.

Her fingers were… weaving.

Another cut, longer, deeper - and she jerked forward as if trying to catch whatever it was that sliced through her. Blood ran down her arms, dripping onto her shirt, onto his arm around her waist, onto her knees - and onto the dirt below where it had grown darker.

He wanted to reach for them - help her - get her away from whatever it was - but he couldn’t.

Trust me.

Again, her body thrust forward - and Ivan saw the malformed horrors move back, as if in unison. What was much, much worse was that he felt his own body respond to her movements.

“Just a little more…”

He felt her chest heave with the words more than he heard her, it was so quiet. He felt the dampness of her shirt where her sweat had soaked through and suddenly became aware of the rosemary and thyme smell of her hair.

The creatures moved away slowly, never turning their back, but retreating up into the trees. Ivan watched as one had pulled itself up with several of its limbs, and in front of his eyes it melted into the branches. It had not hidden - it had not left. It simply melted into the contorted and gnarled wood - as if returning to it, as if it never was.

And so did each and every one of them, the Witch’s hands slacking more and more until the very last one disappeared among the bark, and her hands dropped limply on her lap.

She sunk into him, the heat retreating from her body rapidly. He grabbed her tighter, cradling her head in one arm, and carefully lowering her onto the ground. He could see the thin steam rise from her skin. Her hands and arms were a gruesome mess, and her breathing was becoming faster.

Her eyes closed and then opened, the light of the moon barely reflecting in their green.

Ivan threw his coat off and wrapped her in it, holding her as she shivered even in the thick lining of the fur.

“You’re okay.” He said quietly, reassuredly. “It’s okay.”

She did not speak, only offering him her wheezing breath. Ivan went to stand but sat back down urgently.

“Maybe we can wait here a minute.” He said to mostly no one. He heard her stir, and she, too, sat up.

“I am so cold.” She said, her voice so small that it almost got lost within his coat.

“I would really insist we stay here a moment.” He looked uncomfortable. She raised her eyes to him, her brows drawing together in question.

“Oh.” She said, and he could almost hear the blood rushing to her face as it got very, very red.

“It isn’t that.” He said, deeply flustered. “It’s all the fear.”

“Yeah.” She sounded as if she was going to laugh but was too tired.

“Is it too early to ask as to what happened?” Ivan said, desperately trying to steer the subject elsewhere. “I mean, why did you...”

“I’m not sure I can tell you.” She sighed.

“I think it might be a bit late for secrets…”

“No,” she shook her head, “I am not sure what happened. I heard it call, I heard them call. And I answered.”

She raised her hands, in the darkness of the night the blood looked as liquid tar.

“I answered…” She repeated quietly.

Around them, the rustling of leaves in the trees created a hushed murmur. Within it, almost indistinctly, you could hear a whisper.

Motheeeeer. Mooother.