They spent the next day traveling through an endless expanse of unfamiliar countryside. The forest which Amara had spent so much of her childhood playing in ended after only an hour or two of walking, opening up into a grassy shrubland which was mostly flat and nearly devoid of trees. Evander made a point of trekking up each of the few hills they came across, ostensibly to check their surroundings. Amara was mostly content to let him lead—she wasn’t confident in her sense of direction now that they were outside of the village, and Evander was a trained hunter. He knew how to read the land in a way she could only guess at, and before long she felt a sense of gratitude for his quiet competence.
She realized early on that leaving the village had been very hard for him, much harder than it’d been for her. It was in his tone rather than anything he actually said or did; a prevailing, genuine sadness at having left Shiloh behind. He tried his best to sound confident and cheerful for the task ahead, but she could hear the effort in his voice. Out of respect for him, she decided not to bring up her own feelings about leaving, and did her best to steer the conversation towards other, less serious things. It felt strange to talk with him like normal—as if the last two days hadn’t happened—but after a while it seemed as though Evander’s sadness had mostly passed.
Hours of walking passed before the grassland abruptly ended, transforming into row after uneven row of astonishingly tall green hedgerows. The highest of them towered well over Amara’s head, and even Evander seemed dwarfed in comparison to a few. Navigating through the overgrown hedges required finding gaps large enough for them both to pass through, and doing so usually took a very long time. It was almost as if they’d unwittingly entered a maze, though whether it was man made or natural was impossible to tell.
They completely lost sight of the surrounding countryside after walking through the hedgerows for several hours. Evander seemed perplexed at the sheer size and amount of hedges, and despite Amara’s teasing refused to admit that they’d become lost. When the sun began to set they decided to settle in for the night beneath the bows of a fairly sizable tree, tucked snugly between two house-sized hedgerows. After spending the entire day traipsing through the countryside with her rucksack, Amara was so eager for sleep that she simply laid out her bedroll and went straight to bed, flatly declining Evander’s offer for dinner before falling asleep.
She dreamed of a black-haired man sitting on her shoulders, ordering her about in a strange, indecipherable language. His words flowed into and out of her ears like a rushing stream of water, but despite not understanding them she felt compelled to try and obey. He became more and more irate with every mistaken movement she made until he was angrily flailing his arms about, making him even more difficult to carry. At her wits end, she finally threw him off her shoulders, and when she turned back to look he’d transformed into a small child, crying and screaming in pain as he writhed about on the floor.
Something forceful shook her awake. When she opened her eyes Evander stood over her, resting a hand on her shoulder. She’d never been so happy to see him.
He retracted his hand and she sat up, grimacing at the vivid memory of the dream. It was now early morning, and she could see the sun’s light just beginning to crest the eastern horizon through the hedgerows.
“Were you having a bad dream?” Evander asked.
“Terrible.”
“Hmm. I had a bad one, too.”
He’d made a campfire sometime after she’d fallen asleep, and was cooking something over it in a pan that smelled absolutely delicious, a delightful mixture of bacon and fresh bread. Looking at the fire she could feel the same sense of bodily command, and she reached a hand out to it, willing it to diminish slightly.
“Hey, knock it off!” Evander exclaimed. “You’re gonna mess up breakfast!”
“Sorry. What are you making?”
He sat down before the fire, turning to give her a charming, excited grin.
“My dad calls it sloosh! It’s really simple, just a mixture of bacon grease and cornmeal. But it’s really fortifying. Nothing better for when you’ve got a long day of walking ahead of you.”
“It definitely smells good,” she said, scooching closer to get a better look at the pan’s contents.
“Did you notice anything last night?” he asked.
“No. I was dead asleep. Why?”
“I found some dog tracks out in the hedgerows earlier when I went to gather firewood,” he said. “Pretty big ones.”
“We’re being followed by dogs?”
“Dog, singular. I only found one set of tracks.” He paused, and mild concern entered his tone and expression. “Never seen dog tracks that big.”
“What’s the matter, you don’t like dogs?”
“Huh? I just don’t like the wild variety. They’re never too concerned about where their next meal comes from.”
“You’re the one eating bacon grease.”
“Well, you’re the one who’s gonna eat it with me.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Well maybe I won’t.”
He gave her a dismissive wave, smiling. “Aww, go ask the dogs for breakfast, then. I’m sure you’d fit right in with the pack.”
She stopped herself from rolling her eyes, then summoned up the biggest frown she could possibly muster.
“Are you calling me a bitch?”
Evander opened his mouth to respond, then abruptly shut it. He then sheepishly scratched the side of his face.
“No?” he eventually offered.
A silence descended between them, and Evander’s gaze shot awkwardly between Amara’s face and the fire. She kept up her frown, but was more than a little delighted at having made him squirm.
“You know, now that you mention it, I’ve always been a dog person.”
“Shut up, Evan. When’s breakfast gonna be ready?”
“Any minute now. It would’ve gone faster if you’d started the fire for me.”
Amara raised her hand to the fire once again, willing it to diminish until it was snuffed out completely. Wisps of white smoke rose from the charred wood, and she tried to will the fire into restarting, but to no avail. It was now inert—she couldn’t feel anything from it.
“I don’t think I can start them,” she said. “It has to already be lit, I think, for me to have any control. I’m not sure, though.”
“So what you’re saying is you just ruined breakfast.”
“I guess,” she shrugged. “Sorry.”
He gave her another grin. “It’s fine. The pan’s still hot enough for it to finish cooking. Well, probably.”
“What about you? How does your power work?”
“I’m not too sure, either. I think I’m really strong now. Like, really strong.”
“Is that it? I just thought you had hands of steel or something, judging by the way you tore down that door.”
“Nope. Here, check this out!”
Evander leapt to his feet and approached the closest hedge. After taking a few moments to scan it, he reached his hands between the leaves and gripped the trunk beneath, and in the next moment the entire hedge began to shake and lift into the air.
Amara looked on with growing shock as he lifted a massive section of the hedge into the air, roots and all. Dirt sprayed in a small cloud around him as the roots at the bottom of the hedge rose up to his chest. Seeing him suddenly pick up an entire hedgerow was one thing, but what was truly strange was how easy he’d made it seem—the hedge came out of the ground as though its roots had simply decided to offer no resistance.
“Wow!” Amara exclaimed. “You really are strong!”
Evander set the hedge back down and took a step back, slapping dirt and flecks of bark off his hands. He had a proud smile on his face when he turned back to Amara.
“Is there anything you can’t pick up now?”
“Not sure, honestly. I tried a bunch of different things before we left, but almost everything felt light as a feather. Even dad’s smithing anvil was easy to lift.”
Amara frowned at him. “So you could’ve just torn a path through these hedgerows this whole time? Why did we spend all that time looking around?”
“Mara, we’re supposed to be laying low. Ripping a swath through the countryside is, like, the complete opposite of that.”
“You just don’t want to admit that you’re lost,” Amara said, accusing.
“I’m not lost,” he replied defensively. “East is towards the rising sun, west is where it sets. We’re somewhere in between.”
“I think your brain has been replaced with muscle.”
“Your mother’s replaced with muscle,” he snarked, then approached the campfire. “Breakfast is ready.”
He sat back down and gingerly reached into the pan. Amara held her hands out, and he quickly transferred a slender piece of the sloosh to her. After blowing on it a few times to cool it down, she took a careful bite. It was delicious—the bread was perfectly warm, and its texture was soft and flakey. The flavor of bacon was strong, but it lacked the meat’s overwhelming richness.
Amara let out an approving noise before attacking the rest of it. Evander gave her an amused smirk, then took a bite from his own piece.
“I guess between our powers we don’t have to worry about any dogs,” Amara said through a mouthful of food.
“Maybe,” he replied through his own food.
“Hm? Maybe what?”
“The tracks I saw were huge,” he said. “Whatever left them was the size of a bear.”
“Are you scared? Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
He rolled his eyes. “My hero. C’mon, let's finish breakfast and get going. Time’s wasting.”
They finished their meal quickly, then packed up all their things. When they were ready to set off, Evander insisted on continuing the search for natural paths through the hedgerows, much to Amara’s chagrin.
----------------------------------------
The maze of hedgerows ended after a few more hours of walking, and they entered into a land of tall grass and rolling hills, interspersed here and there with small, burbling streams and brackish pools of standing water.
They’d taken a short break at one of the streams they’d found—just a short halt to collect some water to boil later on—when Evander suddenly pointed at something off to the west, back the way they’d just come.
“Look!”
Amara followed his gaze, and at the top of a nearby rise stood a huge animal, what looked to be a dog with yellow eyes and brilliant white fur. Its snout was lowered to the ground, sniffing at something, but it soon raised its head and locked eyes with Amara. She could feel something strange happening to her once their gazes met, an odd sort of buzzing in her brain, not painful but certainly noticeable.
“I feel something weird in my head when I look at it,” Evander said, worried.
“So do I.”
“That’s the biggest fuckin’ wolf I’ve ever seen.”
“A wolf?”
“Yeah. I’ve never even heard of them getting that big.”
It began to move down the rise towards them, trotting with a serene sort of grace. Its eyes remained locked with Amara’s.
“Something’s very wrong here,” Evander said. “Let’s go, Mara!”
In response, Amara turned away from the wolf and ran across the stream, heading east. Evander instantly joined her, and together they sprinted through thigh-high grass towards the next rise. When Amara looked back over her shoulder the wolf was no longer moving at a trot. It was already past the stream, running after them.