Into the Deep Wood

Volkograd was the oldest and largest city in the four kingdoms.

At its heart stood the enormous royal palace. It housed nearly four thousand people, including nobility, their extended families, high-ranking officers, and a considerable number of servants and staff. It was named after its most prominent feature, a tower at its very center built high into the skies and entirely out of glossy, black stone—the Obsidian Palace.

Obsidian had been a volcanic glass-like stone that long ago used to be found in the depths of the tundra near the sea. It was known to be a stone closely tied to sorcery, and shortly after the Obsidian Palace was complete, the sea had taken the mines back - obliterating them in its hungry ice - encouraging rumors that it was an affront to the gods.

Although the entirety of the city was gated, much of the wall that exclusively led to Shanty Town, the outermost slum district, had been in ruin with no plans to get it fixed. The security seemed to be reserved exclusively for the well-to-do and the people who served their needs.

This was precisely where Val and Ivan had entered the city during the cover of the night.

They made it up to the gates but did not approach, sizing up the number of guards and soldiers on the walls.

“All accommodations are on the other side. I do not imagine they get a lot of travelers through here any longer and it might be tricky to get in..” Ivan said, his worried look counting more than twenty men within immediate sight.

“Ah yes,” Val grinned, “Accommodations. Gods forbid, only feather mattresses for us or I shall not accept the invitation.”

“I would sell my good arm for a feather mattress right now.” Ivan groaned. “I’m not as young as I look.”

They walked a bit closer, watching small groups of people and individuals come up to the gates. They presented papers, which the guards thoroughly reviewed before letting them in.

“What are those?” Val asked. She’d never seen that happen.

“Citizenship papers and vouchers of commerce.” He answered. “Only those who are here to benefit the city can enter Volkograd.”

She thought a moment.

“Name a city far from here. Make it a large one.” She told him.

“What?”

“Trust me.”

He paused, looking at her, trying to figure out if it was another joke he had just not understood.

“Erm…” It was as if he had suddenly forgotten every single one. “Within the barrier?”

“Within the barrier.”

“Chernovod.”

“Great. Just follow me…” with that, she took off toward the gate.

Her sudden charge forward had taken him aback so much that he immediately fell more than five steps behind. He did not even have time to stop her or protest when she marched up to the guard.

“Papers.” One of them said. He looked tired and incredibly unenthusiastic to be there.

“Good evening.” She smiled. “I am sorry, I seem to have run into an issue.”

“Then take it to the Outskirts.” He sighed. “Get out.”

“We were caught in a storm, my guard and I.” She continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “Unfortunately, they got wet - and before I knew it, they had disintegrated.”

“If you don’t speak Common, you should learn. Get out.” He repeated, his irritation showing. His tone had brought another man over, keeping a close eye on the two newcomers.

“I am a physician,” Val said. “I’ve come from Chernovod by my master’s beckoning. If you turn me away, his wife cannot give birth without the blessing of our gods.”

She let down her bag which made the two soldiers grip their weapons tighter, the shadows on their faces growing. She reached in and drew out her hand full of vials and herbs - the strong scent of yarrow and mint oils passing over the men’s faces. Her other hand lingered, and she also pulled the bone necklace from the Hag’s hut out.

“She cannot give birth without the blessing of our gods.” She repeated adamantly, shoving the finger-bone necklace in his face with such determination that it made him purse his lips, examining it.

“Who is your master?” The other man asked. This caused her to pause a moment.

“Lord Yaroslav.” She blurted out.

Their faces were blank, as she guessed they would be if the number of nobility in the city had matched what Ivan had told her. One looked to Ivan, sizing up the man as if trying to determine if he looked like a guard escort.

“Have him issue you new papers, you will not pass without them again.” He shook his head, and Val did her best to hide how nervous she had been - and how suddenly relieved.

“Lord Yaroslav resides in the High District.” Ivan chimed in from behind her. “Surely there is something you can do that she may not be bothered with this at the inner gates.”

The man shot him an angry look as if Ivan had appeared out of thin air just to spit in his soup.

“You get that far, you ask the guard to send word to Lord Yaroslav and get you a passage slip.” He said. “I’m not your envoy.”

Val glanced back at Ivan, turned, and walked through the gates as the guard stepped back.

“Smart and eye-catching.” He laughed as they got further away from the gates. “That was risky, and I don’t think we would have had a second opportunity to enter if he turned us away.”

Val forced a smile. Her heart was pounding in her chest, she had never done such a thing - never had been able to lie with such a straight face. Gods, but she felt her hands trembling.

The first building that looked like a boarding house was where they’d stopped. The man at the front had smelled strongly of tobacco, and when he spoke, his teeth were horribly discolored and sparse.

“Two-week minimum.” Was his ineloquent greeting. “Up front.”

Ivan stepped forward, reaching his cold, stiff fingers into his pockets. Val hurried to get by him and get the coins out of her bag. The look he shot her suddenly made her stop in her tracks. It was so intense and foreboding.

Ivan paid, and they received a flimsy metal key in exchange. It opened the door to a foul-smelling room that seemed like it had not seen better days, even in its prime. In the corner were mouse droppings, and the bed was a simple straw mattress laid atop wooden planks.

“Don’t do that.” He said when the doors closed.

She looked at him with scorn.

“You don’t have to–”

“No.” He interrupted her, holding up a hand. “I do not care what you do elsewhere; my pride is not at stake. You do not do that in Volkograd. Your boldness as a woman got us through the gates; no woman but that of high status would have dared such a thing. Anywhere beyond, you cannot take charge. You cannot pay. And you cannot introduce yourself before I introduce you.”

She closed her mouth, but her expression remained.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, “it is the way it is. We do not want to draw attention to ourselves and nothing will single us out as foreigners that do not belong more than that.”

“It was never this way where I am from.” She said, and her face relaxed a bit.

“Volkograd is Korschey’s, not the peoples. And Korschey… he is cruel.” Ivan sat on the mattress and immediately sank back into its poor structure. “It is the assembly place of all nobility. And there is nothing they like more than ensuring that all know that. The only thing worse than being a low-born man is being a low-born woman here.”

“I understand,” Val said, although her face betrayed her continued annoyance. She pushed her bag into the corner and sat by him. “I just… I have a hard time with that.”

He only looked at her in response, and so she continued.

“I spent much of my life with someone else making the decisions. It was not always… bad. But it had made me weak and lost. I don’t want to be that person anymore.”

He put an arm around her.

“I’ll let you boss me around.” He said, smiling. She did not smile back. “For what it’s worth, I would have never thought that of you had you not told me. Whoever it is you were, I didn’t know that person, and I don’t know that person still because they no longer exist.”

“It is kind of you to say that.”

“I believe it.”

“I’m just not so sure you understand it.”

“In that case, I hope to.” He laid back, his body visibly pained from the action. It had been a long week.

“Why are you so kind to me?” She asked suddenly.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

For a second, she looked for the right words to say.

“There just aren’t many people that are that way to anyone.”

“Hm.” He pulled his injured arm up to his chest where it could rest comfortably. The swelling had become worse since the first day, but there had been no odor to indicate an infection. “I suppose I was raised to look for something in all people that had made them deserving of respect - and grew to know that there had been no exceptions to this. Don’t get me wrong, there are many of whom I change my mind about. But it is right to lead with kindness first. You deserve it more than anyone; your heart deserves it more than anyone.”

She leaned down and kissed him, allowing herself to fall at his side on the small bed.

“Besides, I thought you would eat me if I weren’t.”

The light of day truly revealed the city around them. The streets had quickly filled up with people, and the snow that fell overnight had already been stomped into the ground, producing gray and brown slush. Market stalls stood among the crowds, each peddling freshly baked bread, animal skins, and pickled goods. The people's clothes were old, and most had been patched with cheap burlap thread. Men urging their horses on sat atop rickety wagons carrying boxes and barrels of various sizes.

Above it all hung a low cloud of smoke from fires blazing within the hearths and stoves of the homes.

In the distance, giant towers stood behind a veil of gray. Atop them round domes stood - reminding Val of onions in their shape. Beyond them and an even thicker cloud of smoke, was a monolith of a tower - black, tall, and reflecting the sun's light as if it had been made of glass.

“The Obsidian Palace,” Ivan said as they strolled between the merchants hurrying about their business. “I’ve only heard of it. They taught us what to look for, but they could have never taught us this - All-Father’s mercy but it is a giant.”

Val took in the city with wide eyes. All just seemed… gray. It’s buildings, its residents, its very soul.

“Could you go over why we are here again, for me?” Ivan asked as they rounded another street corner. “We are here to find someone? Someone in the High District?”

“I think.” She nodded. She hadn’t seen or heard the Hag since the night of the hot iron. She had tried to reach out so many times, and so many times she was only met with dark and silence.

For all she knew, the Hag was no longer alive.

But then again, at one time, she had her head cut off and still returned.

Val questioned the wiseness of letting Ivan know who it was she wanted to find. His trust was almost blind in her, but, everything had its limits. And if anything would have been it, the Daughter of the Nothing would have been a good candidate.

“Care to elaborate?”

“It’s someone imprisoned there.” She said. “In the palace.”

He stopped in his tracks.

“Big lift.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.” He sighed. “You know, we could head south. If we can get out of Roska…”

“Ivan…”

“Then we could keep going until we reached the sea. My family’s orchards.”

“What?” She looked at him blankly, and he caught himself - at that moment regretting having said a word.

“Look,” Like putting together a puzzle, his face was flushed and concerned. “I always figured… I don’t know, you talked about looking for someone… and I thought maybe you weren’t anymore.”

He would not look at her, but her eyes did not leave him. Only one purpose lingered in her mind for many years - one destination. She needed the Hag; she needed whatever it was she only briefly touched on in those moments –a force, a tug so hard that it had seemed to pull all the threads at once. She could not be sure any longer if the Hag could control time, but there was something else there that Val wanted to find now.

But, if she had truly let go…

Had she let go?

He stood before her, flesh, blood, his kind blue eyes and welcoming smile. Warm, real. She could reach out and touch him. She wanted to reach out and touch him.

He wanted to show her olives.

“I don’t know.” She said quietly. “But, I have to find out.”

The look on his face hurt her heart, although almost immediately, he tried to disguise it.

“Then, I suppose, let’s go back to the inn and figure out how to get inside.”

They spent the next week watching the High District gates by day and spending the nights at each other’s mercy in the darkness of the small room. It was as if, with every passing day, Val had increasingly found her eyes lingering on him. Gods forbid he would meet hers –the tension that would arise from it would grow tenfold by the time they were alone, turning into something devastatingly wonderful.

He still clutched his hurt arm to his chest, wincing whenever something hard had brushed against it.

Val’s hands healed fast, although the cuts had left fresh pink scars all up and down from her arms to the tips of her fingers. She hid her hands when they were in public and tried to avoid looking at the mess they had become.

Ivan would leave for periods of time. He would return with foods that were not their much-despised pieces of the Cloth of Plenty. Val did not ask where else he had gone.

During these times, she would bring the small black spider out of her pocket and watch her crawl around the desk - ducking in and out of the crease in the journal’s binding. The face on its back changed its expression regularly.

The spider liked drinking water, but only from little drops spilled on the table. It liked to crawl up the candle - but only when it was not lit. But, most of all, it liked sitting on Val’s hand as she sat at the desk and perused the journal.

“Valeria.” Val would tell her and wait to feel the thread. It had not changed at all since she had first found her. There was something so different about the creature. She felt no thoughts, emotion, or anything when she reached out to it—only the light, fragile string bound between them.

And then it would craft webs.

Val had never seen such spiderwebs before. They were intricate and always different. The spider seemed to do this without any intent to catch prey - Val had never even seen her eat.

“I’ll name you.” She finally said. There was no entry for the spider in the journal. No mention of it at all. And, as she did with every new creature, she wrote it a journal entry of its own.

The Spider with the Face of a Woman: An entry.

Very small, found in a pine tree in the woods. Fragile thread, does not speak. The face on its back changes as it feels. It drinks but does not yet seem to feed. I’ve named her Arachne.

She hid the spider from Ivan as she had with the other creatures. He was uncomfortable with such things, and she did not blame him. And, after Zabava, she did not wish to risk his well-being by exposing him to a potentially deadly beast.

It took another week until they saw a fine carriage approaching the gates. Nobles did not often leave nor arrive, secluded in their own safe and lavish city within the High District. But this carriage had been ornate, painted with every color one could imagine. On the doors of it was depicted a scene of beautiful women with tranquil faces sitting at the water’s edge. Its large windows had been opened for the fresh air of the warming winter day.

However, it was what was inside that made Val stare in disbelief.

There sat one of the ugliest creatures Val had ever seen. It was a deformed and deathly thin woman. Her skin was gray-blue and spotty with the damage of the sun. Her lips were thin and protruded forward as if a soft, fleshy beak. Her hair grew in patches from her scalp - not unlike batches of cattails in the swamp. But, most concerning of all was that she had no eyes.

The carriage was stopped while its driver handed papers to the guard. The passenger sat deathly still, her head facing forward toward the horses.

“She’s beautiful…” She heard Ivan whisper. Her head snapped around to look at him so fast that even her thoughts had not yet caught up.

“Are you mad??”

“Are you jealous?”

Val stared at him, appalled. She had even begun to doubt her own looks if he had thought them both beautiful, but then the guard handed the driver his papers back, and the gates creaked open.

There was only a moment.

“Valeria!” She shouted, trying to establish the tether between them, and people all around turned to scowl at the crazed woman. All but the creature. It slowly turned its head, its beak-like lips parting in a smile that grew so wide that it began to wrap around her head.

Now then. What’s this?

It was as if someone had dragged a metal fork across a clay plate; the voice was harrowing.

I smell you, but I know not what you are.

Val found she could not speak. The thread was slick, like silk in her hands. It had lulled her until her fingers simply fell away from it. Still, she heard the voice; the binding reached for her now from the other side.

Curious. You smell like her.

The creature waved a hand and the driver hurried to get down and open the carriage door. The monster stepped out.

The full of its body was even worse than its face. The creature’s hip bones protruded out even wider than her shoulders. She wore a dress that fitted closely enough to see her ribs underneath - although a dress so beautiful it would have otherwise made Val catch her breath.

Her arms ended in fingers so long that she could probably reach all around Val’s head with just one hand.

“Wait there!” It called the driver. It’s voice was feminine and melodic. “It seems I have someone to meet!”

Val glanced at Ivan, and to her dismay, she saw his face was red, and he stared only at the creature. She looked back and forth between them, truly sickened by the notion.

“I trust your name is Valeria, my dear, as you have shouted it from across town?” The creature’s smile remained. Up close, Val could see it was full of little square teeth.

“It is.” She answered, suddenly feeling that she had made a grave mistake. The storm beast had been far too much - and she had made the same mistake now. Whatever this was, it was far stronger than she. She could not grasp the thread - her fingers weakening even near it. She prayed that the middle of a busy street would save her from whatever came next.

You see me then?

“I do,” Val muttered.

“Poor soul!” The creature mused in her sweet tones. “I simply must dinner with you soon, alas, no time for it now.”

It waved to the driver, who almost fell in the snow, trying to make it over as soon as possible.

“We do not have papers,” Val said, seeing a crowd gather around. She suddenly remembered Ivan’s instructions not to introduce herself first. But, how silly the notions of polite society had seemed now with the monster standing over her.

“Papers,” It said, and the nervous man ran back to the carriage to retrieve something from the trunk behind it. “When you return to the gates tomorrow at noon, tell them you come at Lady Katerina’s humble call.”

Val nodded as the driver returned, hesitated, then handed Ivan a bundle of papers bearing a red stamp.

The creature’s smile remained as she turned and walked back toward the carriage.

“Til tomorrow then!”