“Mama?”
“Shh, my love, I know,” Mara tried to soothe, but the words tinged the back of her tongue with bitter tension. She heaved the saddle from Mizzo’s back and lugged it into the trees, tossing it behind a log. Not exactly hidden, but at least not sitting there at the edge of the trees like a beacon pointing her way.
“Mama, I’m tired.”
“I know, Nick. Just a second.” She removed the blanket and gave the horse a single pat on the neck. “Thank you. I’m sorry to leave you like this.” Eli wouldn’t have lied to her about the horse finding her way home, would he?
Best not to think about Eli.
Leaving the horse at the edge of the trees, Mara focused her mind resolutely on the next step. And the next step, at present, was to start walking.
She went to where Nick sat with her pack and slung the bag up onto her shoulders.
“Mama, where’s Lili?” Nick asked, pushing to his feet and rubbing at his eyes with his fists.
“He’s going to catch up with us,” she said. Lied? Depths, what if she’d now told this poor boy two lies about two men? What lovely bookends on his colorful shelf of childhood trauma. Not to mention the way her own heart clenched with fear.
Don’t think about it.
“Let’s go.” She tried, for a few steps, leading Nick by the hand, but he was tired and cranky and confused. And how could she possibly offer adequate soothing when she was also tired and cranky and confused. And scared. And worried.
Don’t.
There was no one to catch her if she fell anymore. She was all Nick had. All she had.
She bent down to heft Nick into her arms, and if he felt heavier than usual, that was just because he was growing so fast. Not because there was no one else to take him when her arms got tired. And anyway, she wouldn’t get tired. She was strong.
Holding Nick and ignoring her already protesting back, she plunged deeper into the woods. Already, with the trees still thin around her, she could tell that these woods were of a different character than those she’d traveled before. Ashfall had possessed a rugged innocence, a newness that made it wild and forbidding but also simple. Easy to reckon with. Loftland had echoed like the cavernous entryway to the Depths, everything divine from the sunlight to the hush of the rainfall. Powerfully and overwhelmingly safe.
The Smokestacks felt neither safe nor simple. Neither new nor divine. They made the holiness of Loftland into something pale and introductory. If that land of towering pines had been the entryway to the Depths, these vine-draped, fat-trunked behemoths marked the far end of the eternal journey, where the road circled around and spat the soul back into chaos, squalling with indignant despair.
Here, the trees put down roots that dwarfed their thick trunks and heavy canopies. She felt them writhe their slow, searching dance beneath the earth, plunging down to where soil became rock and cracking that rock where it lay. Here, no inch of soil was untouched by growing things and by the ceaseless churn of life from death, the sweet odor of decay and new beginnings.
Mara clutched Nick closer as trees pressed in and the way became a thick tangle. Thorns grabbed at her sleeves, and she was forced to turn and walk backwards, using the protection of her pack to force her way through a wall of prickly vines. She saw the trail she left behind, clearer than a scattering of white confetti. Broken vines, trampled leaves…
But Eli had said nobody would follow her, and she had to believe him. What else was there to do?
Not think of Eli, to start.
She walked for half an hour. When she looked up, she could see little pricks of white-yellow light through the overlapping leaves, so she knew the sun was out, shining diligently overhead. And as it climbed toward its apex, Mara plunged deeper into the forest and darkness crept in. Soon, it was too dark for the vines and thorny shrubs, thick underbrush giving way to damp, choking emptiness. All that remained was the mushy carpet of soft mulch and the occasional red-leafed fern.
And the mushrooms.
Once her eyes adjusted, Mara saw them everywhere. A dizzying number of sizes and shapes and varieties, some of which even she didn’t know.
She stopped to crouch beside a rippled wave-mold, cascading over the side of a fallen log. Even in the darkness, the streaks running along the surface were a vibrant, piercing blue, pulsing with eerie luminescence.
“This one is called Sea’s Charm,” she told Nick, unsure why she did so. To convince him that everything was normal? To convince herself? She rose from her crouch and carried on. “It’s poisonous to eat, but if you mash it up really, really well and let the liquid separate, you can put it on burns to stop the pain.”
Nick dropped his head against her shoulder. “Mama, I’m tired.”
“I know, my love. You can go to sleep if you like.”
He did. Not right away, but slowly as she walked. His body quadrupled in weight, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
What was her next step? Had half an hour passed? Which way was north? Was she still heading east?
If Eli was with her, he’d have insisted they stop for a break by now. He would have seen how she was sweating under Nick’s weight.
Don’t think of Eli.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
She stopped, laying Nick carefully on the ground and pulling out her water flask, her compass, and the pocket watch.
She didn’t know what time she’d entered the woods, so she had to guess. Resolving to go fifteen more minutes east, just in case she hadn’t come far enough, she pocketed the watch and pulled out the compass. She’d been heading more north than east, but had kept her course better than she expected.
She drank a few sips of water and instead of thinking of Eli or whatever faceless enemy he’d gone off to fight or what nightmares might visit her and Nick if they spent the night in this forest without him or how she could possibly finish the journey alone, she made a mental catalogue of all the food she had with her, and what she might have to forage to feed them.
She also thought of her next step, which was to keep heading east for fifteen minutes and then turn north.
Easy.
Stowing her flask, she lifted Nick and made an effort to sling him over her shoulder like she’d seen Eli do—resting more on her pack than on her body. It worked well enough, and she set off with her arm clamped around his legs and the compass in the palm of her other hand. She could barely see the face of the compass in the dark, the north-pointing arrow a narrow sliver of white that could just as easily have been a glint off the glass casing, but she found her heading.
As she walked, with Nick sleeping and vulnerable, her own vulnerability rolled over her like a cloud blocking out the sun. These woods–dark and close and ancient and new–pressed in on her back, screaming with life. The trees conspired beneath her feet and whispered secrets overhead.
So, she did the only thing she could think to do, and she began to whisper secrets back.
“I know you don’t want us here,” she murmured, looking up at the dense canopy. “I’m sorry to intrude. But we’re on the run and we were in a lot of danger, and the people chasing us know they’re not welcome here, either. And as much as I respect you more than them, I fear you less. Not that you aren’t fearsome. You’re very fearsome. I don’t mean any offense, it’s only that I don’t get the sense you’re malicious. And they are.”
Somewhere to the right, distant but still too close, a twig broke. Mara almost stumbled, her heart rapping urgent knuckles against the backside of her ribs.
“I admit, though, I’ve always wanted to visit. Even if I wasn’t being chased, I might like to explore you a bit if you were open to it.” she said. “I have a bit of a passion for plants, and I’ve read in several sources that the Smokestacks boast the greatest variety of plants and fungi on the continent. Perhaps in the world.” She’d also read that the Smokestacks boasted the greatest variety of animal life and an array of magical creatures surpassed only by the sea, which was more frightening to her than intriguing. But that didn’t seem worth mentioning.
Before she could go on, her eye caught on a vivid splash of yellow. A vine, the stalk thin but with broad leaves the width of her palm that clung to the trunk of the tree around which the vine had wrapped itself, contouring to the canyons and ridges of the bark.
“See, now, this is magnificent,” she said, not having to feign the excitement in her voice. “Only a few leagues past the treeline and you’ve got rubifel growing right up out of the ground like a charm.” She rubbed the pad of her thumb over the velvet softness of a leaf. She longed to take one of the leaves–just one. The milk of the rubifel leaf was the most magically potent mood enhancer in the natural world–in league with the influence of a skilled persuasive magic user. Rubifel was also petulant and temperamental about its conditions and refused to grow in anything but rich, black soil and deep, persistent shade.
“I’ve got rubifel seeds in my pack, you know,” she told the plant, the forest, the thick air around her. “I brought them all the way from The Capital. I tried a few times to get them to grow, but I never could replicate the conditions. I was always accidentally exposing them to too much light. Did you know even direct lamplight is deadly to a rubifel sprout? You probably did…”
She moved on, walking and talking, telling the forest the silly secrets of her heart. As time went on, she ran out of silly secrets and found herself confessing deeper, more painful truths. She told the woods of her dreams with Davy, of the lies she’d told her son, of her fear that her time as Davy’s wife, as glorious and sweet as it had been, may have softened her to the world in unwelcome ways. Of her uncertainty that there would be a place for her where they were going, and that she would be strong enough to take it if there was.
When she started rambling toward her uncertainty that they would make it to the Enclave at all, without Eli, she decided it was time to wake Nick. An hour had passed as they moved steadily north, and according to her watch it was time for lunch. She stopped and roused her son, hoping she’d be able to keep him up through the afternoon so he would sleep at night. His poor body would be so confused by the switch in sleep schedule without Eli’s magic to help him adjust.
Don’t think of him.
She plied Nick with bread and cheese–some of the remains of Tiff’s generosity–and ate an apple, listening to the sounds around them.
Birds chirped and rustled about in the canopy above, small animals scampering in the carpet of leaves below. There was a comfort in the constant chatter, albeit a raucous and headache-inducing comfort. There were more than birds and rodents in the Smokestacks, she knew. Land squids. Wooly trolls. Mammoth wolves. Striped boar. And worse–dark, powerful creatures that even the strongest warriors couldn’t kill or defeat. Only survive or evade.
“Mama, where’s Lili?” Nick asked through a mouthful of bread and cheese.
Don’t.
“He’s taking care of some things, sweet pea. He’ll catch up to us.”
Nick looked around, forehead scrunching. “It’s scary here.”
The apple turned sour in Mara’s mouth. There were so many sides of Nick she’d learned to carry–cranky, sleepy, hungry, angry, whiny. But she had never adjusted to his fear, which always draped itself around her like a dead body.
“What makes you say that, love?” she asked, swallowing her apple and squaring her shoulders against the weight.
Nick lifted his own little shoulders and dropped them in a dramatic shrug. “It’s dark.”
“It is, yes,” she said thoughtfully, looking around. “But we’ve been in the dark a lot on our journey, haven’t we? And we’ve learned to use our other senses. What do you hear?”
His nose wrinkled and he took another bite of his cheese, discarding the bread on the ground beside him. Mara sighed and picked it up, brushing off the leaf-matter it had accumulated and helping herself. Once Nick set aside a piece of food, he wasn’t likely to pick it back up, and they couldn’t afford to be wasteful.
“Nicky, can you tell me what you hear?” she prodded, trying to keep him engaged and out of his mind. Trying to keep herself engaged and out of her mind.
“Birds,” he said, then smiled mischievously at her. “Chirp, chirp!”
Mara laughed. “That’s right! What else do you hear?”
He took another bite of cheese. “Mama, where are we going?”
Oh, well. But she’d take curiosity over fear. “We’re going to the Enclave, Nicky. To visit your grandma and grandpa.”
“And Dada?”
The bread lodged itself in her throat, and Mara had to take a sip of water to wash it down. For some reason, she actually wanted to tell him the truth. This felt like the right time–odd considering that there really could be no worse time.
In the end, she trusted her intellect over her instincts and nodded with a rigid smile. “Yes, and Dada.” Stowing her water flask back in her pack, she stood and slung it over her shoulders, reaching out a hand to Nick. “Come on then, love. Let’s keep moving.”