Into the Deep Wood

“I will not ask where you’ve been.”

Yaroslav stood beside the burnt-out fire, his hand on the flanged mace at his hip.

“Or what you have been doing.” He said, looking the two up and down - their hair stuck to their skin with sweat, Val shivering, and the back of Ivan's coat dirty as if he had rolled it on the ground without dusting it off. “Because I think that is pretty obvious to everyone.”

He looked back at the cold coals.

“You can just ask me to take a walk. Near froze my ass out here when no one woke me up for my watch.”

Ivan reddened, not doing anything to dissuade Yaro’s remarks. Val only brushed past him to her tent, her arms hidden in her coat sleeves.

“Excuse me,” Ivan muttered, hurrying to disappear in his.

“Like wild rabbits.” Yaro sighed.

By midday, they reached the pine forests - leaving the Deep Wood behind. Val wanted to speak to Ivan about what happened, but Yaro had not left them alone even for a moment since the night before. Not that she felt she needed to explain herself, but out of anyone in the world - he had been the only one who had known and had seen it and had… touched it.

Had he not been there, it would have been easier.

Or, so she thought.

They would not have hurt her. She knew this, even though she felt their ravenous need as she caressed each thread. They were so tired and afraid.

Standing in the middle of the clearing, she felt her hand tremble as she laid it upon the chort’s head. It was ugly, inhuman, just a sack of bones and flesh rotting away and ridden with disease. Yet they still hurt.

She’d not known what to do when she had grasped at the Zabava. She’d lost control because she did not know how to give the tether slack. She’d been careless in her disgust for its misdoings and snapped it. And she didn’t have to. She knew that now.

She heard them. When the Hag screamed, so had she - and she heard the silent cries of every single one. She still carried the old crone’s scent, the Glade, and they sensed it.

They cried out to their mother - to free them. They must have cried out for a long time, getting their threads snapped upon death just to get pulled out of the Wound and start it all again.

She’d lied to Ivan.

She’d known exactly what she had done because it had been difficult - because it had been the hardest thing she had ever taken on. She took their threads and unbound them from the tangled weave of nonsensical crossovers and knots. Threads strung so tight that a thousand years, their edges sharpened - struggling at the pull of the creatures on the other end. It hurt them, and it hurt her when she put her hands on it.

She had been lying to herself as well.

It would not have been easier if Ivan was not there.

Oh, how she wished it was.

But, in her desperate attempt to save him, to hide his scent, she allowed him to save her instead. Like diving in a river with undercurrents that move too fast, she’d gone in with her whole self and was swept away. His hold on her had kept her from being pushed to sea.

But now, she knew where she was going. It was never the Glade. It had been the Hag. The Hag’s hands had pulled and tugged at all the threads, and at time itself

And she had to go to Korschey to find her.

Ivan stopped. He looked out at the sky and the nearby trees.

“The logging town is near.” He said.

“Some tracking you got, brother,” Yaro said, impressed. “What did you say you are, an Oathfinder?”

“Pathfinder.” Ivan corrected him. His eyes met Val’s, and both looked away immediately.

“Keen eye.” Yaro patted Ivan on the shoulder and then leaned with his leg against the stump of a neatly cut-down tree. “Nothing gets by you.”

The three walked into the courtyard of the lumber yard to the smell of pine and ash. Only one man had been out there when they approached. He had been sitting on a dugout stump, eating a boiled egg and coughing into a napkin. He tipped his hat back when he saw them but did not stand.

“Ey.” He said as if that had been the full of his statement.

“Well met, brother.” Yaro’s stubby, rounded arm shot out for the man to shake.

“Ah.” He coughed again, wiping his nose of the sawdust. “Suppose so. Who are ya?”

“Yaroslav. Son of Unrik.” He introduced himself far more formally than he had to Ivan or Val.

A father’s name would have immediately placed you in your appropriate social standing and distinguished you from ten similarly named people in any given room.

Val remained quiet.

“Nikolai, of Zarev.” Ivan introduced himself.

“Hm.” The man’s eyes lingered on Ivan. “I’m Art. I suppose we should go inside.”

Val shot him a questioning look, but he pretended he didn’t see it.

Inside the longhouse, nine men sat at a table, drinking and arguing over the validity of someone’s story. When they saw Art and the others enter, they grew quiet.

“For pigsake Art!” One of the men yelled. “Don’t bring that plague in here.”

Art sniffled, then coughed into a rag again.

“Nikolai of Zarev.” He said point blankly, nodding at Ivan, and turned to leave.

A large older man stood at the end of the table, eyeing the three of them.

“So you know the passcode.” He said, his voice so low it had almost made the dishes rattle on the table. “Speak freely; there are no strangers here.”

“All-Father preserve you.” Ivan greeted him. “Ivan, of Ai-Jabranh.”

The large man nodded.

“Well met. I am Viktor, but to you I am Hamza.” The man considered the other two. “And who are they, pathfinder?”

“Yaroslav…” The red-bearded man huffed, a bit wary.

“Valeria.” She said, trying to smile slightly. “Well met.”

To call it a logging town would have been a great disservice to the very idea of towns. Truly, it was a longhouse, a kitchen, a bathhouse, and ten small cabins scattered around the edge of a mountain. A wide dirt road led down into the valley below, although rather snowed in at this time of year.

Hamza led the group of men Ivan spoke of - a safe haven for pathfinders in the North.

They were greeted with food and drink, much of which Yaro consumed on his own without needing an invitation. Ivan was met with warmth and sat down just to be asked many questions and ask many in return. This time, he stayed clear of even a single sip of beer or wine. Val noted this as fairly funny.

There were no women here besides an old cook and a younger woman who cleaned the cabins. The rest were men, stern and avoiding her at any cost, likely because of Yaro and Ivan.

So, she wandered around in the afternoons, listening to birds and enjoying the sounds of people living their lives. There was something so calming about the chimes and thuds of everyday chores. She watched a pair of finches and a nutcracker spin in the air and fight over something one of them plucked out of a tree. The birds around the Glade seemed only decorations upon the backdrop of the Deep Wood.

Everything had felt more alive here.

She’d been looking out into the trees, trying to find a red woodpecker she had seen earlier when Yaro sat beside her.

“Beautiful evening.” He remarked, huffing at the effort of bending to sit.

The air was frosty but not so that it was unpleasant. The snow seemed soft, and it fell in large, fluffy clumps.

“It is.” Val nodded, her face unconsciously falling into a soft smile.

“The boy did good.” Yaro breathed out, still adjusting his belt - until finally, there was a clang and pop - followed by a sigh of relief as it stopped cutting into him. “So glad to have something besides cabbage cakes and dry fish.”

“I’ll trade you, so I never have to eat cream pudding again.” Val laughed.

“I never asked.” Yaro started, “Where it is you and the lad are going? Seems like a thing a person ought to ask.”

“Hm.” She shrugged lightly. “Different places, I suppose. I need to go to the capital. He… I am not sure he knows where he has to go.”

“You aren’t going to the same destination?” He asked, surprised. “I thought they were jokes around the campfire when y’all would start bickering like that.”

Val shook her head.

“He has a home to go to. I look for mine still.”

“You know…” Yaro’s voice changed slightly, but Val could not tell exactly how. “The boy is taken with you. One might say there could be a home there.”

“It is not my home.” She said quietly, lowering her eyes.

“Could have fooled me the way you two run around.” He chuckled. “I’ve walked lots of roads, Val. There are lots of inns, women, and trophies to speak of. I didn’t always use to be like this.”

He laughed, patting his large belly.

“Who is Anushka?” Val asked suddenly.

“A clever girl, who knows what a man most wants to speak of - and then asks him.” Yaro looked out onto the trees fondly as if remembering, his hand on the mace at his hip. “I’ll tell you, but only because Ivan is not here. You keep this between you and me.”

Val gave him a reassuring smile.

“Anushka was the most special of people I have ever had the pleasure of sharing air with.” He mused. “She was as gold to a man who has never seen it - could change his life, but he would not know what to do with her.”

He sighed.

“She was the best thing in my life, from the dawn of mine - to the dusk of hers.” The look on his face made Val’s throat tighten; there was but one expression that people got when they spoke of love lost. She’d known. “I was not a good man to her, Valeria. I was not. There are so many things I would change now if I could. My eye was always on the road, always on whatever gifts I could bring out of the Deep Wood. And then it was, I got held up. Could not return to her as fast as I told her I would.”

Val’s eyes did not leave his.

“We weren’t official or anything.” He gave a chuckle that held no mirth. “Just kind of knew. That there had not been another single soul. But then, she left me. And it has been many years now. And I wish I could say that I’d moved on.”

She heard the drink in his words, but his eyes confirmed their truth.

“I haven’t spent the last six years in the North. Or eight? What did I even tell you all?” He held up his fingers, but his brows only furrowed, and he waved the thought away. “I haven’t been anywhere. She died, and I went - I went, and I walked right into the wood. I willed for something, anything, to eat me there. A death I surely deserved. A death I’d chosen over her.”

He ran his hand across his face, wiping either sweat or tears - Val could not say.

“But then, a nymph picked me out - that part I did not lie of. I spent years getting fat with her in her underwater home.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask - how should I know? That’s where I was.” He shooshed her. “And now, I’m old, and the nymph kicked me out because I’d aged as a mortal does. And I don’t know what is happening in the world anymore.”

She put her hand on his but said nothing.

“You find a home.” He said after a time. “Because time does not stop, and at the end of it, you don’t want to end up chasing sprites in the dark.”

“Did she…” Val was not sure if what she was about to say was silly or not, “give you that mace?”

“Oh, this?” He looked surprised to remember it was even there. “No, bought it off some blacksmith second hand. But, the nymph got awful pissed that I’d named it that. Have you ever had an angry tussle?”

“No!” Val laughed.

“Well, maybe next time you and the farmboy sneak out on your watch, you can slap ‘im up a bit. See how it feels.”

With the night came the biting cold. It had not snowed that evening, and the air was filled with the smell of freshly cooked food and the aromatic pine tree scent coming with the steam of the bathhouse. Val had not been this excited to bathe in a long time. Her options were fairly limited in the Glade - it was a basin or go swimming in the swamp.

When her bare feet hit the hot floorboards of the steam room, she nearly yelped in excitement. She’d gone in right as everyone else had sat down to eat - to ensure she would be alone.

The hot, humid air filled her lungs and made her feel light as air. The smell of the forest was so strong here that it clung to your skin long after you left.

The middle of the room housed a massive stove, and next to it was a metal basin with cold water from a nearby spring. She’d been in a bathhouse like this back at the farmstead, and her village had a smaller - simpler one, but this had been built of rough-hewn logs by men who had a limited number of luxuries at their disposal, and they would be sure that this had been built to serve them well.

It was so dark. A lantern was in a far corner, but it fogged quickly and did not last long. Val knew she had an hour - an hour and a half before people would begin filtering in - and she had no wish to be present for that.

She let down her hair and laid out the linen towel she’d been wrapped in - sitting down on it as the wooden bench had already been too hot to the touch. The hot air caressed her skin and soothed the winter aches; even her cut-up hands felt more at ease.

“You’re not of here!” She heard a small, creaky voice and immediately scrambled up, pulling her towel to cover herself. At this, she came eye to eye with a small, naked man, sitting atop the hot stove.

He was little - the size of a glass of milk. His head was comically large, too large for his body, and his face was overgrown with white-gray hair. She recognized the description from the journal - this was a Bannik. It was a creature of the bathhouse, a nosey little spirit that kept the coals hot and the steam pouring. Were one to make it mad or disrespect it, it often went as far as to burn the bathhouse down.

The little man jerked at her sudden motion.

“No one is supposed to be in the bathhouse yet. No one. Not for an hour.” He declared sternly.

“Could I please?” Val asked, feeling that this had no chance of not being a comical encounter. “I do not want to catch them here; I’d rather be alone.”

“Hmpf.” Little hands on his little hips, he considered her. “What will you give me?”

“What would you want?” Val asked.

“A fir.”

“A fir,” Val repeated. “A whole fir?”

“Of course not a whole fir, what are you? Where would I put a fir?” He regarded her as if she was a halfwit. “Give me three fir branches, and you can stay. And you can come back for three days while no one is around. Three days.”

He held up three small fingers to prove a point, or perhaps just give her a visual presentation for better understanding.

“...could I owe you?” She asked; the thought of leaving the serene bathhouse for the winter night's chill to find a snow-covered fir sounded just… terrible.

“Owe me?” He said as if it had been a foreign language. “No one has ever asked that of me before.”

“I’ll bring you four tomorrow.” She smiled. She liked the little man. His attitude had made her greatly miss Sirin.

This offer seemed to please him.

“Four. Tomorrow.” He confirmed and happily climbed down to offer her a ladle full of cold water. “You seem like you need it.”

She took it and went to bring it to her lips when the little man screamed.

“NO! Oh, but why do I make these deals - pour it over your hair, girl, your hair.”

“Oh.”

Val bent her head forward, her long hair falling over her shoulder and hanging onto the floor. The icy water from the ladle stung her as it cascaded down her neck, hair, and scalp.

Another one was handed to her - and then again - until her whole head had been washed. She ran her fingers through it and noted that it had smelled of rosemary and thyme.

“What are you?” The Bannik asked suddenly, his wrinkly face twisted with suspicion. “Underneath your grime, you do not smell like the others do.”

“I am Valeria.” She said, surprised that she felt no need to hide her name.

“That tells me little to none.” He shook his head. “Now tell me what you are, or I will kick you out of my bathhouse.”

She thought a moment. There was no answer she could give that would have been truthful - she had simply not known anymore.

“I guess,” she said, “I am strange.”

“I know this.”

“I can feel your thread, and I can unbind you if you want.” She told him carefully, watching for his reaction.

“My what?”

Val felt a bout of embarrassment. These were words only she used, inside her head or with Sirin.

“I can…” She tried again, “feel you.”

“No. No, thank you.”

Gods.

She sighed and closed her eyes, reaching for the thin, warm thread running to the Bannik. The second her fingers grazed it, he jumped back.

“You stay away from that!” He snapped at her and then stood on the other rim of the stove, watching her carefully. “You aren’t the Deep Wood Mother. You do not look like her.”

Val felt a spark of interest at this.

“You mean the Hag?”

“The Hag?” He made another face, but it was lost amid the white bushels of hair. “Why would you want anyone calling you that?”

“I am not called that; she is.” Val tried desperately to explain, her patience about to give out - the only thing that kept her from snapping was that she really, really wanted to take a bath.

“I know who you speak of. And she has no name.” He cut her off.

“What do you know of her?” Val asked. But he shook his head.

“I will speak of it no longer. Do not bring such things to my bathhouse.”

They sat silently for a minute, each looking the other over - or - at least on the Bannik’s part, smelling.

“What do you eat?” Val asked, remembering very few details about him from the journal.

“Sweat.”

“Sweat?” Now it was Val’s turn to make a face.

“I come here, I clean, I prepare, I light the coals, and I steam the baths - and I cannot simply have some sweat?” He was getting angry at her all over again.

Despite being disgusted, Val was pleasantly surprised that there had been very little malice in the little man. He was small and angry, but she could not find a reason that his presence would be unwelcome - at least, excluding polite company.

When she left the bathhouse, fresh and clean, the first thing she did was pluck five of the best fir branches she could find - and take them to her room to dry before the next day.