"Just leave it alone," Alcon said as Sheera entered the forest clearing.
She paused, unsure what he meant by his words until she spotted the youngest three hunters clustered around a black brick of plastic and glass at the far edge of the clearing. Alcon, the huntmaster, stood away from it, as did the four other more experienced hunters and...
Briera, the chieftainess.
Sheera pulled in a deep breath of the scent of the tall pines with their spice-colored red bark and breathed out, willing herself calm. What did the chieftainess want today, that she was joining the hunters so early in the morning?
A giggle burst from the younger hunters, and Sheera glanced over to see one of them nudge the plastic brick with his foot and then jump back, like he expected it to be a snake that bit him. She rolled her eyes. Young ones.
"The human who dropped the device must have strayed far from the path," a voice behind her said in quiet amusement.
Sheera kept her surprise to only a twitch, turning to scowl at Kaide. He grinned and hefted his spear over one shoulder, deliberately showing off his rounded shoulder muscles under his woven green-gray shirt. She pretended not to notice and arched an eyebrow, then turned back to the cluster of hunters.
Stars. Briera was watching. Kaide's older sister stared at Sheera blankly for a moment, then looked at Kaide and motioned him forward with a jerk of her chin. Kaide slipped past Sheera, his brush of contact lingering a little longer than it should have. The beaten-gold cuff in the tip of his ear twinkled against his dark curls.
She nudged him with the back of her hand and when he looked at her, motioned to her ear. With a nod of thanks, Kaide took the cuff from his ear and slipped it into her hand. "Keep it safe for me, will you?" he asked, and winked.
"Kaide," Briera said sharply.
Kaide left Sheera and walked up to his sister's side.
Sheera put the ear cuff into her pocket, even though she'd rather have tossed it into the bushes. Kaide was altogether too sure of her reciprocating his interest. Her fingers brushed the warm plastic of the lighter--another human device she'd found abandoned while hunting yesterday.
When she looked back at the rest of the hunters, Briera was staring at her. Sheera forced a smile. Did the chieftainess merely disapprove of Kaide's preening around her, or did Briera suspect she was carrying a forbidden human invention in her pocket?
After a moment, Briera merely nodded to her and looked away.
A loud, blaring alarm ripped through the clearing. Sheera had an arrow drawn from her quiver before she realized the noise came from the human device. Three sharp blasts, and then it was done.
The three younger hunters had scattered, and the boy held his hands up, eyes darting nervously to Briera.
"I didn't touch it, I swear on all the stars and the moon!" he said quickly.
Huntmaster Alcon raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps next time you will do as you were told and leave it alone. Come." He motioned the three young ones closer.
Sheera approached the group as well, keeping to the side. She glanced over at the device and noticed a yellow block coloring the previously glossy black screen. What had the human who dropped it been doing, this far from their hiking path? Humans didn't often stray--they liked their neat little paths that snaked all through the woods and mountains. Follow the colored markers, wear bright colors to keep from getting lost, wear smelly things to scare away the wild animals. It was a good thing the humans rarely ventured into the Deep Forest.
As Huntmaster Alcon began giving the day's usual orders--stay away from humans, don't let them see you, hunt the hidden valleys and Deep Forest where natural magic hides everything from the humans--Sheera's mind wandered. She scanned the area of the forest around the plastic device, noting the scuffed pine needles where a blanket had lain, the footprints around it.
"Briera asks that you keep your eyes out for two things," Alcon continued, catching Sheera's attention again. "As you know, our magic runs dry. We and the other tribes are searching for more sacred water, but it is difficult to find nowadays. If anyone sees anything unusual, please, let us know. And..." He hesitated for a moment, then said quietly, "You know the situation with the Altiena tribe is difficult. Be on the lookout for anything untoward." He nodded a dismissal to them.
Sheera looked up to the slivers of sky visible between the pine branches, dug her boots into the pine needles and earth beneath her, and breathed in deeply--inhaling the scent of wet earth, of pine and pitch. Grounding herself in preparation for the hunt.
When she looked down again, Briera had disappeared, along with most of the other experienced hunters. Huntmaster Alcon stood with the three young hunters, motioning towards the trees.
As Sheera walked past the human device, the screen lit up, and she could read the letters on the yellow block. Amber alert. She mouthed it silently, slowly. Then she looked over the rest of what she could see on the screen. Missing: Danny Williams, age 8, last seen in the vicinity of Bear Cave wearing...
Her stomach knotted. A missing child. An elf child of that age would know how to behave if they were lost in the forest, but a human child? She doubted it. And Bear Cave was on the edge of one of the humans’ national parks, where the line between forest and Deep Forest blurred.
"A hundred years ago, we elves would have been the ones who stole the child," Kaide said from behind her, his tone light and joking.
Sheera turned and frowned at him. "This is hardly a laughing matter, Kaide," she said sharply. She looked between him and the group of young hunters, then raised an eyebrow at Kaide. They hardly needed to feed any anti-human feelings any of the young ones might have, even if it was by way of a joke.
He had the grace to look slightly chastened. Sheera turned away and started for the forest, struggling not to snap at Kaide any more than she already had.
"Listen, I'll keep an eye out for the child," Kaide said. "I'm already hunting near Bear Cave today anyway. Does that make it any better?"
"It helps soothe ruffled feathers a little," Sheera said, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes.
Kaide nodded, then turned and headed east, his feet making little sound on the pine-needle-littered forest floor.
Sheera slipped into the southern woods and stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust from the brightness of the clearing to the relative gloom of the thick pines. She adjusted the quiver on her hip as the depths of the forest stretched in front of her, sweeping on endlessly until the gloom swallowed up the trees or the mountains and valleys obscured them. Every time she left her treetop village and went down to the feet of the trees, it always astonished her that it could be so dark.
She walked slowly forward. Here, so far away from the humans' hiking trails and their camping lodges and black-topped roads, the forest was still--so still that the wind sounded like someone whistling. Bark crackled as a squirrel leapt over her head.
Some of the tribal elders told tales of copses deep in the mountains where you could hear the plants growing, where strange animals roamed, and where the elves could speak with the trees, learning the wisdom borne from their many years.
She wasn't sure she quite believed the part about the trees speaking, but she did not doubt there were many strange things in the world that neither human nor elf understood. Her own mother--who had grown up in the forests north of here, where the trees were smaller and the underbrush thicker and the air so humid it felt hard to breathe in the summer--had told her stories of seeing strange, glowing creatures that she could never get a good look at. And one of the hunters her age swore he'd once seen a moth the size of a man.
She had never seen any creatures like these herself, though she longed to. It seemed like every village elder had these types of stories--and yet, out of all the elves she had met of her own age and younger, only the one had ever spotted anything strange. She wondered if she'd ever be able to see something so wondrous, especially if the magic was drying up.
Still, it was stories like these that gave her a healthy respect for the forest--and why she was so worried for the human child. She hoped Kaide would find the child and be able to get him back to the humans.
A twig cracked under her foot, and Sheera started at the noise. She had allowed her mind to wander too far afield, not paying attention to her surroundings as closely as she should. Why was she so cloud-headed today?
She looked around, reorienting herself. She'd come down from the mountainside clearing into one of the valleys tucked between the mountain roots. Birch trees stood scattered through the thin underbrush, their white branches growing tall enough to reach enough sun between the thick pine needles. A ways ahead of her, she saw a thick cluster of blackberry vines. A few weeks ago, those vines would have held a bountiful harvest, but now they bore just a few shriveled berries. She could clearly see the scuffed dirt of a well-traveled deer trail to one side.
She slipped around the trunk of one tree that was downwind of the trail and settled to the ground, tucking one leg under her body and leaning her shoulder against the tree trunk. This way, she would be partially shielded from the sight of any animals that came down the trail. As she waited, she took a couple of arrows from her quiver and propped them against the tree trunk, ready to snatch at a moment's notice.
As she settled, the forest settled around her, the wildlife forgetting her presence. Birds fluttered overhead. The stem of a dead leaf poked her leg, and she shifted a little to get more comfortable. There was a drowsy stillness hanging heavy in the air. The wind in the treetops shifted. Sheera leaned her head against the trunk and listened. It sounded almost like a whispering song--the tune reminded her a little of a lullaby her mother had sung to her as a child.
Sleep, child...
Why did her eyelids feel so heavy? She'd slept fine last night, and the day was still young despite the shadows under the pines.
Sleep, child, sleep and forever dream...
No, that wasn't right. "You're getting the words wrong, mother," she murmured softly.
Her eyes drooped again. She leaned more heavily against the tree. The bark felt strangely soft, with a texture almost like moss. Her fingers relaxed their hold on her bow.
No, child of the forest! Awake!
Sheera lurched upright as something stung her ankle. She tightened her fingers, the leather grip of her bow reassuring. A loud creak echoed from the direction of the berry bushes.
Sheera glanced sideways at the bushes, trying to keep her head still and her breathing even. Something moved in the darkest tangle of bushes, something that made the tips of the berry canes rattle a little. For a moment, she thought she saw a face of moss and bark, green eyes glowing malevolently from thorny brows.
She looked down at her ankle. A green vine wrapped tightly around her boot, the thorns digging past the protective leather. The vine disappeared in the bushes. She tensed, feeling her heartbeat hammer even harder in her fingertips.
The face moved, and gentle creaking noises came from the center of the bushes.
What was it waiting for? Sheera recognized the eyes of a predator in that face. It had its prey--why wasn't it moving?
She glanced back at the arrows she'd propped against the tree, and as her eyes left the bushes, the creature yanked her forward. Sheera let out a shout of alarm and threw herself onto her side, digging her hand and elbow into the ground. Her fingers caught on a knobby tree root sticking from the ground and she grasped it, digging her fingernails into the bark. Vines creaked and rattled as the creature tugged hard. Sheera hissed in pain as the thorns dug deeper into her ankle.
She dropped her bow. It would be useless against a creature of wood and vine, anyway. Her hunting knife was on her other hip, pinned between her body and the ground. Her fingers slipped on the root.
She didn't want to know what would happen once she'd been dragged into the blackberry bushes.
Sheera fumbled for her knife and felt a hard little rectangle in her pocket. What was...
The lighter. The human contraption the chieftainess would have told her to destroy, if she'd seen it.
Sheera yanked the lighter from her pocket and pressed her thumb into the little button on the top. There was a flick, and a little flame licked from the top. She released the root. Instantly her body slid a few feet closer to the bushes. She sat up and reached forward, passing the flame across the vine around her ankle. She didn't hold it there long enough to catch the vine on fire, but just enough for it to singe, to make the creature feel heat.
The creature let out a creaking hiss, and the vine withdrew, unwinding from her ankle and slithering back so quickly into the bushes that she almost thought she'd imagined it.
She stared into those eerie green eyes and held up the flickering lighter.
The eyes blinked once, twice...and then they were gone. The blackberry canes stopped rattling. And the forest went unnaturally still.
Sheera stared at the bushes for a moment longer, but the creature seemed to have disappeared.
She stood, her legs shaking, and pressed her hand against the bark of the birch tree. It no longer felt warm and mossy under her touch, but cold and hard. The valley was dimming. She knew that it would get dark here sooner than the rest of the forest, since it was a valley...but it still felt too dark for the time of day.
How long had she slumbered? Surely not so long that the day would be going gray. The back of her neck prickled. Somehow, she knew--a deep, dark sense at the back of her brain and in the pit of her stomach--that if she didn't leave the valley before it became fully dark, she would never make it out alive.
She turned and ran back the way she'd entered the valley. Roots caught at her toes, trying to trip her. The trees seemed to press close around her, the stuffy air clinging to her skin. And the valley seemed to elongate, stretching away from her. Sheera ran faster, her chest aching, but still she couldn't reach the end of the valley, where she could see the little trail she'd followed earlier.
Something cracked overhead and she stopped, setting arrow to bow and drawing it before looking up. The tops of the trees were dark shadows in the darkening sky, but she saw no movement, no swaying of branches.
She stopped and hunched forward, breathing heavily as she looked around. She'd barely moved a few feet from the berry bushes. It was as if the forest itself didn't want her to leave.
Sheera put her bow down and flexed her fingers, trying to stop their shaking. There were stories about this, she knew. Stories about people getting caught in hedge mazes, in copses of trees that seemed to have no exit. But here...there were no towering hedges, or trees growing so closely together you could barely step between them. It was just a valley.
The skin on the back of her neck prickled again.
No, it wasn't just a valley. There was magic here. That was the only explanation.
Sheera stood and looked around, forcing herself to really pay attention. The rocky sides, the trees, the berry bushes--all looked like a normal part of the forest. But now that it was getting a little darker she could see a faint, flickering light on the other side of the berry bushes.
She reached into her pocket and felt for her lighter, then slowly approached the bushes. They didn't stir. She gave them a wide berth anyway.
On the other side of the bushes, she could see an archway built into a hillside. A pale blue glow flickered along the sides of the archway, and as she drew closer she could see worn glyphs etched into the stones, many of them overgrown with moss and half-covered by the ferns that dripped from the earth surrounding the archway. She could hear water trickling inside the cave.
She ducked down and stepped in.
The interior of the little cave wasn't much more than ten feet across. The polished rock floor was slick with moss and a thin layer of water, deepening to a pool at the back of the cave. A tiny waterfall ran down the back wall into the pool, and on a stone at its base, she could see the broken, decaying remains of baskets and pottery bowls. Crystals glimmered from natural sconces, places where the cave wall had been scooped out to provide a setting for the luminous rocks, but the water also glowed a gentle, healthy blue.
Sheera knelt down and dipped her cupped palm into the pool of water, then dripped it over her ankle. The stinging cuts from the bush-creature's thorny vine died away. She knew that they wouldn't be healed, but it had taken the pain away.
"Yes, child, it is a pool of the sacred water, if you had any more doubts."
Sheera whirled around.
A massive white stag stood just outside the archway, his spreading antlers preventing him from leaning into the cave. Sheera sucked in a gasp and stepped back, reaching for her bow, before she realized...she recognized that voice.
The stag dipped his head. "I was the one who called for you to awake."
His voice rang--not in the clearing, but in Sheera's mind: gentle and calming, but not sense-dulling like the bush creature's lullaby had been. She stepped forward, pressing one hand to the stones of the archway. She was half-afraid that if she fully left the cave, it would vanish altogether.
"This valley..." Sheera stopped as her voice trembled. The cave, the bush-creature, and now the stag. "This is a magical place, isn't it?"
The stag dipped his head once more in acknowledgement.
"How did I come here? It was an ordinary valley. I don't understand."
"The tree you rested against." The stag stepped to the side, and as he moved, Sheera saw a pale white mist drifting off its body. Silver specks flecked his flanks. He nodded at the large birch tree on the other side of the berry bushes. "As you settled in for your hunt, you went around it widdershins."
Widdershins. Movement counter to the sun's path across the sky. Sheera remembered hearing an elder once say that if you circled widdershins around anything, you should be prepared for magic and the inexplicable to appear.
"Had you not gone widdershins around the tree, you would even now be walking home from a successful hunt, your kill slung across your back."
Did she imagine it, or was there a smile in the stag's words? Sheera tentatively smiled back. "Thank you, guardian of the forest, for waking me. You saved my life."
The stag dipped his head in acknowledgement, then glanced upward as if scanning the treetops. "You should leave, soon. The wild side of the world is not a friendly place for human or elf at night."
"I--" Sheera glanced back at the pool of water. "My people use this for our magic. It has been in short supply lately. Do you mind if I take some back to them?"
"Take some, and share it freely. But do not be greedy.”
Sheera quickly emptied her waterskin and dipped it into the pool. Finding more sacred water wouldn’t solve everything her people faced--but perhaps it would help ease their burden. And if the Altiena tribe were no longer worried about the dwindling magic, perhaps they would no longer be aggressive.
She could hope, and sometimes hope was just what people needed.
Sheera straightened up and turned to thank the stag, but he was gone. How had such a large, magnificent creature moved so quickly and quietly?
But she had no time to stand about and wonder. She could see, even standing in the archway of the cave, that the gloom was deepening. She would have to follow the stag’s advice.
Sheera jogged across the valley, again skirting far around the berry bushes, and approached the birch tree she’d leaned against. Slowing, she carefully circled it again, this time moving from east to west, following the sun’s course, deosil, the opposite of widdershins.
A brief second of vertigo swayed her, and Sheera blinked. When her eyes opened, she stood in what appeared to be the same valley. But the sun was shining brightly through the yellow birch leaves overhead.
Beside the berry patch, a small herd of deer startled, then turned and ran, their hooves loudly rustling the fallen leaves. Sheera put her hand to her side. If she was quick enough, she could bring home the sacred water and a deer… But her bow was gone.
She looked around the valley, then burst out in a laugh. A couple of crows cawed above her, apparently startled.
“I left my bow,” she told them. “I left my bow on the wild side of the world.”
She uncapped the waterskin at her side and glanced down, watching the soft glow of the sacred water dance inside. “Well,” she whispered softly. “I guess I will just have to go back.”
***
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Widdershins to Magic