Into the Deep Wood

“Not. For. Trade.”

The sudden tension in the room sent Val impossibly closer against the wall. The Hag, forgetting her new knickknacks, stood taller than the girl had seen her stand. For a moment, she looked as if she was towering over the men, seemingly ready to pounce.

The older man who’d named himself Marak took a step inside the room, his head tilting subtly, carefully considering Hag's reaction to his request. “If I were to offer you sapphires? Gold? What is this, girl who cannot speak - you do not part with her?”

“Not for trade.” the Hag repeated.

“What is she to you?” he asked, examining Val with greater interest. “You do not keep around things you don’t want to trade. It is not a meat animal you’ve trapped - she’s hardly bones. What is it that you want with her?”

In one blink, the Hag stood between the man and Val. The other, younger brother, had come back in.

“Not. For. Trade.” She hissed now. “And you aren’t welcome anymore, young hunter. Go on your way! Lest you become the meat animal,” she paused, having a thought that gave her chuckle, “or perhaps a steer, never a bull again. Can choose to go or your fate you should know.”

The two were standing chest to chest. Val thought their shadows cast were far longer; they looked as tall as the ceilings of the hut. She felt her whole body crying to retreat. This was not her fight. She felt it was not a fight over her either - the man did not want her. He wanted to know what the Hag wanted with her instead.

Erlan saw his brother tense; the exchange had turned hostile with the crone. They had been there many other times, and this had never happened before. There was a mutual benefit to their arrangement.

Now that the Hag had revoked her invitation, they could not enter the hut again if they stepped over the threshold to the outside. Likewise, with the Glade, were they to go beyond the limits of her domain, they could not enter again without her blessing. This standoff could happen only here, at this very moment, or not at all.

Erlan had hoped that it would not come to that. They had survived and conquered many beasts, and he was confident in his blows, but this was no beast, no mere creature from the Nothing. This was a spirit as ancient as the earth, and no one lived to document any accounts of violent encounters. She was a fiend of greed and games, delighted in her thieveries and tricks. She was many, yet she was one. A mind all but gone in her legion of internal conversations.

And this is why Marat was intrigued, willing to risk so much - the Hag had been a source of rare items that a person might live a lifetime and never see. The brother knew that for there to be a living human, one that had shown signs of abuse at the Hag’s hand but not death, there must be something very special about this girl.

But he was not a stupid man.

“Grandmother, forgive my hasty nature. I am but a man, and in the presence of great beauty, I cannot think.” Marat had said, “And yours truly traverses most.”

She’d cackled, suddenly warming up to them again - her hands, which were raised and ready to scratch, fell to her sides - and then appeared cupping his face. The fear that she would peck him on the face momentarily flashed across Marat’s mind. Vile.

“Such simple mind, always afloat with thoughts of flesh! Born of a mother always calling to fate to get back in.”

“Your company alone, Grandmother, puts all to shame.” Erlan chimed in, “How could contest it any other who walks this earth?”

“Your hair a waterfall of silver strings fit only for a poet’s violin.” Marat had edged toward the table to sit again.

“Your honeyed tongues should be ripped out, devoured for dessert.” She said but moved to pull a chair out for Erlan, who moved more carefully than his brother out of the doorway. “You speak and speak; should feed you to the chorts. They like the chatty ones.”

“Grandmother, we only wonder how one such as you would tolerate a child - one so demanding of your precious time. She eats at your table, yet what does she give back?” Erlan asked, all three again seated.

“You ask too much, too many questions at my door.” She kept pushing back but had visibly grown friendly to them once again.

“Grandmother, but surely only a treasure is worthy of your companionship?” Marat continued where Erlan left off, “To think that you would waste your time on something so insignificant as that.”

“Stupid man! Stupid man with simple thoughts believes his eyes and knows he not!” Indignant, the Hag had fallen for the trap. “Not but a golden goose I’ve got!”

In the heartbeat following, both brothers understood why the old woman had so tenaciously defended her possession of the girl. Both were stumped at the revelation. Neither had words, momentarily forgetting their clever plans. The Hag did not notice this and continued.

“A golden goose! Her feathers plucked; she cannot fly away this night! A noose, I’ve got.” She celebrated, taking their silence as wonder and astonishment at her wit, her bragging now only firing up her pride. “I’ve tasted the moon’s blood on her; she smells of myrtle and wilted lilies, and those will sprout upon her grave should I so choose.”

“Grandmother, but a gift like that, why waste it here in your green glade? For surely there will be no gold without the egg.” Marat said carefully, now that they knew she would never part with the girl. They only had to reinvoke the invitation so that they could return - prepared. Or maybe not at all. It was yet to be seen.

“It is, but what I do is my business, and nosey mouths need not ask what nosey ears care to hear.” She replied to him, cautious again, her mood souring. “The gold I find within the girl is mine to eat.”

They were unable to trick her into inviting them back. When the morning sun rose, they’d left the hut, never to return. Both deep in thought, they did not speak during their descent or journey through the grasses. Pausing only right before leaving the lands, both looked around thoroughly. The pasture, the bog, the bouldered hill. The gathering pit at the other edge of the meadows. They assessed all carefully, for any opportunity or fault. Then stepped across - back into the Deep Wood.

“She has something of hers,” Marat said as they sat around the fire, rabbit roasting on a makeshift spit. “I think, her name.”

“The poor girl must have been there for years,” Erlan noted. “One does not look so thrashed and thin in a couple of months.”

“Who knows, the Hag does not keep to the laws of time. She shifts the forest, and she forces seasons out. We could have been in there for an hour or a month. She could have arrived a child to these lands.” Marat observed, “And if she ever leaves, a crone herself.”

“She’ll never leave.”

They sat with only the crackling of the flame before them, both deep in thought. In planning. Whichever way they tried, there was no way to pull this off. It was beyond what they could do - the girl could not leave the glade and live. No cleverness or trickery would get them any closer. No beast or plant combined and burned, no sage, no prayer would give them a gate to walk through. Nothing could free the girl to leave with them.

“A name curse, maybe?” Erlan offered after a time. They’d known a bit about the rituals of far away lands that had found ways to enslave the remains the Nothing left after the Great Encounter. Although just whispers in the wind, they’d gathered them and twisted them into both curse and blessing. But these people lived far away, and they did not betray their secrets. The Hag did not need specks of the Nothing’s existence. She was the Nothing herself. It was below her to dabble in the ways of men.

“What would she need with a name curse? Now, if she’d eaten it, there would be little left of the girl. Certainly not enough to claim her to be Golden.” Marat said. “We cannot go back in. She had to leave on her own. She has to find her name. The Hag thinks herself clever, the last place the girl would look.”

“The Hag IS clever.”

“Not clever enough not to tell us about the Golden.”

“She is not afraid of us. She could have handed us the girl and known we could not leave with her.” Erlan leaned back against the blanket roll. They hadn’t slept in a couple of days for more than a few hours, afraid that the Hag would jump and they would not find the glade again. The forest would not move as long as they could see the tree line. And they could not see it if they slept.

“We can speak with the girl.” Marat finally suggested. The idea was met with silence from Erlan.

“You know the Hag would smell us anywhere near the border.”

“The Hag knows we are near still. She can smell that we have not left.” Marat sat up; his own words had led him to a plan. “We could not get close enough for the girl to hear without revealing ourselves, but something else can.”

Erlan quizzically looked at Marat, and then what his brother had been saying dawned on him.

Throughout the years since they were only kids the older brother had been more capable than he in forming plans and setting traps. Erlan had been faster on his feet and better versed in medicines. But if this were to work, Marat forever would supersede him in his skill.

“It’s dark now. Put out the flame. They will come out.”