Martin barely noticed a streak of faded red on one of the trees he passed it. His gaze was on his feet and the crushed moss on the path to Alyce’s house. His pace was too fast, and his basket of tarts banged against his thigh as he walked, but he did not slow. He should not have left this late, and would have to spend the night with Alyce, but that had been his wish when he had run from his mother’s house and his mother’s words.
He would be lucky to reach Alyce’s before dark, and did not think he would beat the approaching storm. The winds howled through the canopy above him and sent needles and leaves across the path. The air smelled damp, and his skin prickled with the energy in the looming clouds.
The light was fading. Martin pulled his cloak tighter and tried not to glance up, not even for the distant flash of lightning and the following boom of thunder. He passed a row of white rocks, and then something that might have been thunder—merely too-close thunder—shook the forest floor and made him stumble to his knees.
When he got to his feet again, the white rocks and red paint were no longer visible. He couldn’t see his footprints behind him or before him, and the trees were unfamiliar in the rapidly growing darkness.
Martin swallowed as he debated what to do. Forward, or what he thought was forward, would take him to Alyce, if not out of the woods. He took one step, only a single step, from where he had been, and saw it in a flash of lightning. Sawsomething. Something as large as a standing bear but not shaped like one. Something alive and moving. Martin could hear that, too, below the wind and the thunder—measured, steady rustling.
A giant stepping through the underbrush.
Martin bolted away from the noise and the shape, and away from Alyce and safety, although he didn’t think of that until his lungs were raw and his chest was tight, and he had to stop to breathe or fall over in a faint.
He’d lost the basket, though he couldn’t remember when. His legs shook so much they could not support him, and he tripped and landed on his hands and knees over the exposed roots of a tree, mud slipping between his fingers.
It must have started to rain while Martin had been fleeing for his life. The roots were slippery, but the trunk of the tree was still largely dry. Martin felt his way into a nook between some of the roots and pressed himself to the trunk. He held still, trying to slow his breathing while peering out from beneath the bottom of his hood.
The rain was pouring now, obscuring what little Martin might have been able to see, though he realized after a few moments that the forest had gone quiet again except for the sound of the rainfall. He was also dryer than he’d expected to be, and tipped his head back to find out why. The black void above him might have been a shelter of tangled branches. If it was, it was the first good thing to happen to Martin today, maybe in months.
Martin ducked his head again and held his cloak tight around him. He was mostly dry but he could still feel the damp and cold, and could not keep from shivering. He was a fool. Of course, he was. Martin the odd one, who had ignored the warnings and now paid the price for it. Even if he had lost the shape—thething—in the dark, if it had really been there, Martin still had a long, miserable, fearful night ahead of him. Perhaps longer, since he did not know where he was or how far he had run. He might be lost in the woods for good, and the only people who might look for him would not know he was missing until it was too late.
Martin turned his face to muffle his shuddering breaths, and shut his eyes, and trembled inside his big brown cloak.
THE RAIN STOPPED during the night. Martin woke to birds chirping and a beam of sunlight creating a patch of heat on his shoulder. Except for his icy toes, the rest of him was fairly warm as well, which did not make sense. He was stiff and his neck hurt from how he’d leaned against the tree trunk. Yet he was warm.
When he looked up, the massive branches of an old oak crisscrossed above him almost like a thatched roof of a house. A small laugh burst out of him, sending a jolt through the warmth at his side, and Martin stared with disbelief into the large eyes of the doe curled against him.
“Hello,” he greeted her softly in wonder, imagining that she must have been just as cold and frightened last night as he had been if she had thought cuddling with a human was a good idea.
But she blinked, and in another second, was on her feet and gone.
Martin stared after her, then glanced around at the water drops falling slowly from above, and the steam rising from the forest floor as it warmed in the sun. As far as he could tell, he was alone except for the calling birds.
He patted the tree as he slowly got to his feet and said, “Thank you,” because he’d always be foolish. Then he stretched and started walking. He picked west, because, unless he was being fairy-led, the town should be in that direction, but he was filthy and exhausted and hungry, and it was not going to be a pleasant walk, or an easy one.
When he had been walking long enough for some of the tension to leave his muscles, butnotenough to have covered the distance he had run the night before, not possibly, he found himself in front of three white stones. And there, right behind them, right in the center of the path, was his basket.
The food inside was ruined, so Martin left it for the birds. But the basket was undamaged. He smiled as he held it once again, and decided not question anything else, at least until he was out of the woods, and headed down the path back toward town.
MARTIN NOW KNEW more about what the woods were like at night than anyone else in town. Yet, only weeks later, he was still late to return home after a day spent with Alyce, baking for her since she had no patience or gift for it. She’d told him to stay the night. But there was nothing in the woods worse than what was in town, which Martin had told her without meaning to. Alyce gave him a thoughtful look and suddenly seemed to stop her worrying, only quietly reminding him not to dawdle, at least.
No storm had rolled over the forest today, but the air was blue with dusk, and Martin was still some distance from town. He was hurrying along the path with his head down, thinking that once the sun went behind the mountains, he would be dependent on whatever moonlight made it through the trees, when he heard the noise.
Animals, when hunting or when avoiding predators, tried not to make noise.
Martin stopped, straining to find where the sound was coming from. That he had been safe last time did not mean he would be safe now and he should not have assumed so. The loud, yet still distant, thumping was his heart in his ears… or a large creature on two legs moving slowly over bracken and moss and damp soil.
Bears did not move like that. Neither did lions.
Martin started walking again, faster, looking back over his shoulder as he went, and didn’t see the burrow until right before he caught his toe on the edge of it. He flailed his arms to keep his balance but couldn’t stop his cry of pain at the twist in his ankle.
The steps behind him got louder, faster. Martin lurched down the path, biting his lip and cursing himself. Of course, he did this. He was always daydreaming and foolish, always odd, always wrong. There was too far to go, and he could not move quickly now.
A sharp, metallic cry split the air and that was all it took for Martin to leave the path and tuck himself inside the hollow of the nearest tree.
The noises stopped, but Martin didn’t move. Not for a long time, not until it was truly dark, and he didn’t think he could put weight on his ankle for any longer. The hollow had stopped being a good hiding place once the sun had set and the mushrooms ringing it started to glow in blues and purples.
More of the mushrooms lined the path, he saw when he returned to it. He had never noticed them before, but the mushrooms were small, and he usually avoided the woods at night. Bright spots of purple and blue followed the human-made trail, then veered away, then vanished, only to reappear in scattered groups of twos and threes among the shadows.
