It was old Poe.

His face was gone. The skin had been torn off, as though someone had slammed him face first into a gravel pit and dragged him through it. Bone peeked at her from beneath the gory mess of pulped, rotting flesh. But Lili recognized him anyway; there was no mistaking the gap teeth, or the simple wedding band he still wore, ten years now since his wife’s funeral. He still had his necklace of wolf teeth around his neck. Flies buzzed, and the stench of rotting meat rose in waves from the dirt where he lay.

They hadn’t buried him, but they had covered him with a sheet. She thought they might come back to do it later.

Lili pulled the sheet back over his head. She recognized the sheet, recognized the patchwork of a dozen summer dresses, now faded with age. It was from Rosa’s house. It had always lain on her daughter’s bed, the one that had married and left for the city. Rosa had always kept the room the same, as though her girl had only gone to the market and would be back any day now.

Nora had not come back. And now Rosa was gone too.

Everyone was missing.

Lili staggered back to her feet, trying to swallow the vomit that was rising in her throat. The village was small. Lili had trapped and hunted animals since she was a child; she’d seen blood before. She’d cleaned her kills herself.

But this was Poe.

The world was spinning. Dizzy, she staggered back up the path.

There was no questioning it now. Lili had to find her aunt.

It was noon now, but the sunlight didn’t seem to quite reach the village anymore. The trees had grown menacing. Whatever light that made it beneath the canopy seemed murky, grey.

It was as though the sunlight itself had grown sickly.

She breathed through her nose. The smell of rot seemed to follow her up the path to the cottage.

Lili had to find her aunt.

She would have to go into the forest.

Alone.

----------------------------------------

The men had arrived earlier that day. Lili had been in the cottage, the windows and doors barred with the shades pulled down. Her aunt had been stern before she’d left: “Do not open the windows or door. Not for anyone. Even if it sounds like me. Don’t open the door. Don’t look out the window. Do you understand?”

Lili had promised, and promised again and again, until her aunt had been satisfied. At first Lili had wanted to go with her—she wasn’t a little girl anymore and hadn’t been for years now—but her aunt had reacted so angrily that Lili had quailed beneath her glare.

“You’re not a witch yet,” she’d scolded, “and you’re not ready for anything like this. I promised your mother I’d keep you safe, and I will. Stay here.” And then she had shrugged on her travelling cloak and taken her walking stick from its place at the wall, disappearing out the door.

That had been what—four days ago? Five? It was hard to tell, but it had been days and days. Her aunt had not returned.

The water in the cottage had gone stale. There was food left in the pantry, but they hadn’t stocked it for winter yet; soon, there would be nothing to harvest. Lili had been thinking about food, about water, and about her aunt when she heard unfamiliar voices outside.

Inside the cottage, it was dark. She had not dared to light a fire in the fireplace, so all she had was a single, smoky candle that made her eyes water. She’d needed that candle, though. She’d needed to do something, anything, to keep from going stir-crazy in the dark, and to do that, she’d needed to see.

“No one there, either,” someone said, and the voice most certainly a man’s, and a stranger at that. “This village is completely empty.”

“Any bodies?” Another voice. This one sounded authoritative, as though he were used to giving orders and being obeyed.

“No,” said someone else, and she realized it was a group of them, though how many was impossible to tell. “Only the one body by the footpath. Poor son of a bitch.”

“Right. The houses are clean, but empty. That one—” and she thought he must be pointing at something, “—still has the table set. Like they disappeared while they were eating. The food’s gone bad, so it’s been a while.”

“Did you check all the houses?” Footsteps. Lili’s heart began to thump in her chest.

Maybe they could help her.

Don’t open the door for anyone. Even if it sounds like me.

Maybe it was a trick.

“We did. This is the last one. Probably empty, though.” They were nearly at her door.

Lili stared up at the eaves, eyes tracing the curling symbols carved into the wood itself. They were protective spells. Lili was not a witch, but she had been raised by witches. She could read old lutravulta as well as anyone.

She could only feel magic if it was being actively cast, though. She had no way of knowing if the protective spells were holding. Her mother had told her once, long ago, that her aunt’s work felt like someone humming into her ear. “It’s very irritating,” she had said, “and I wish she’d figure out a way to do it quietly.” Lili had yet to hear any humming, though the hair on the back of her neck rose in response to any strong magical working. It was just a feeling that she got, but that was as far as her sensitivity ever went.

There was a compulsion spell in the rafters. They hadn’t been invited, so if it was still working, they would feel compelled to leave.

Lili wasn’t sure if she wanted it to work or not.

Someone rapped briskly on the door.

“Hello? Is anyone there? We’d like to talk to you.” He rapped again, harder. “Hello? If you’ll pardon the intrusion, we’re coming in.”

Someone started turning the knob.

“It’s locked.”

“That’s—huh. That’s the first locked door we’ve had, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t just locked. It was barred. Lili blew out the candle and sat quietly in the corner.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Well—should we—?”

“Don’t be crass. Try the windows.” She heard them split up and move around, rapping at the closed wooden shutters. Those were barred from the inside, too.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in here. It’ll be like the other houses.”

“Agreed. This is a waste of time. Not to be impertinent, sir, but we need to follow up that blood trail before it gets cold.”

Silence. Lili hoped they wouldn’t try to break something to come inside.

Thumpthumpthump. Lili jumped as someone knocked on the closed shutters with a heavy hand.

“Is anyone there? We’re not here to hurt you. We’re rangers. Imperial rangers.” It was the man with the authoritative voice. “We’re here to investigate disappearances on the road. The one through Duskwood.”

Lili wrapped her arms around herself and said nothing.

Had the rangers been sent all the way from the capital? Why? Nobody had cared about disappearances before. Why now?

The man sighed. “Right, we’ll move on then.”

Lili sat in the dark, listening to their footsteps move away. Poor son of a bitch. Who? Had they found someone? She sat there thinking about it, turning the thought over and over in her head, until she could no longer stand her hunger. She ate some jerky and a handful of nuts, mindful of keeping the cottage dark. She had wanted some tea, but she could not risk a fire, so she drank the water stale and lukewarm.

Poor son of a bitch.

Who?

----------------------------------------

It had turned out to be Poe. Lili hadn’t wanted to go outside. Not because she was afraid of her aunt, but because her aunt had been afraid, and that had frightened her. Underneath the anger, there had been fear. It had taken Lili the bulk of the days she had sat alone in the dark to recognize it, because she had never seen her aunt fear anything before.

After that, the thought that they had found her aunt refused to leave her head. They had said poor son of a bitch, she had reasoned, so surely it had been a man. But what if it was just a manner of speaking? City people spoke differently. Lili knew that because her aunt had sometimes taken her to Porrin, and the people there were always speaking in rapid, clipped tones with words that seemed designed to fill up all the empty spaces in a conversation. Maybe rangers from other places spoke differently too.

She was running out of water anyway.

The men had been wandering around the village. They hadn’t disappeared.

She needed to know what was going on.

So she had left the cottage to find the little footpath that wound its way up the only dry path through the lower marshland.

And now she knew: people were not only disappearing. Something had killed old Poe in a most horrifying way.

Lili had to find her aunt. Now.

There wasn’t much she could take with her. She dressed as though she was going hunting—sturdy boots, trousers, a wool shirt with a leather jerkin full of pockets on top and her thick autumn cloak—and of course she took her knife. After some thought, she took her small hatchet too, letting it dangle from her belt alongside the knife. Her bow, the string, a quiver of arrows strapped to her thigh, and finally, her spear.

She needed to travel light. How much food did she need? It was impossible to tell. Water, she knew, wouldn’t be a problem—there were many fast-running streams everywhere—but food was another story. Travel rations. Enough for…three days? She could still forage. They hadn’t had the first snow of the season, not yet.

She wasn’t going to be cooking much. She took her flint and steel anyway, just in case, and then the single box of ever-last matches they owned. It was nearly as old as she was. Finally, she considered taking a candle.

The darkness seemed to be seeping in from the forest.

That was a stupid thought. But then again, Lili had been raised by witches.

Maybe it wasn’t a stupid thought.

She packed as many candles as she could fit into the pouch sitting snugly at the small of her back. She would have liked a torch too, but then her hands would be full. The spear would slow her down enough.

Did she need the spear?

She remembered Poe’s face, the way the skin had been shredded off in strips.

She was taking the spear.

Lili looked around, unable to shake the feeling that she was missing something. Perhaps she was, and would regret it later when she ended up needing it. Or perhaps she was just afraid, hesitant to step into a forest she’d grown up in—a forest that had fast become unrecognizable and…dark.

No. She had to be brave. Her mother was gone. Lili hadn’t been able to do anything in the face of her illness, but her aunt wasn’t ill—she was just missing. Lili would find her.

She was still alive.

Lili would find her.

The trouble was knowing which way to go. Or more precisely, not knowing which way to go.

Her aunt’s trail was days old by now, and the forest had grown strange and wild. Wilder. Tree roots seemed to have swelled, protruding rudely from the ground to trip her. Vegetation suffocated the view in every direction, thick and leafy as though they were in the height of summer rather than the tail-end of autumn.

It was impossible to get her bearings. All of the trail marks she had used were gone. Familiar landmarks, like her little tilting rock man—so called because it had looked like a tilting rock man—seemed to have disappeared over night.

And it reeked.

Under the smell of soil was an undercurrent, an odour that made her uneasy. It was disgusting, though she couldn’t say why. It didn’t smell like normal rot. It was something else, and it made her nose itch and her eyes water. It made her lungs feel dirty somehow, as though whatever it was had seeped into her insides.

She didn’t know how she was going to find her aunt in all this.

Lili had thought about it before leaving. The last glimpse Lili had had of her aunt had been her silhouette against the trees to the northwest, where there was a hidden trail running deeper into the mountains. Lili had walked that same trail many times because it led into the mountain itself.

There was only one place her aunt could have been going, and that was the old shrine.

Except now the trail was gone.

The only way to find the mountain path was to go up.

Lili leaned her spear against the base of the tree and started climbing. She had to stop and rub her hand several times, convinced something oily had been oozing out of the bark; she’d been wrong every time. Her hands were only sticky with sap and sweat.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling the tree was sick.

Reaching the top, it was as though a veil had been torn from her face. The sky was blue. The sun was hot for autumn, beating down on her head and shoulders as though to make up for all the shade she’d been sitting in. Lili turned her head. She had been going in the right direction, somehow; the village was behind her. She could see her own cottage from here, though it looked lonely and abandoned.

There was smoke in the distance.

Some enterprising soul – or souls – had built a fire. She had a feeling she knew who.

Well, she wasn’t going that way. She turned her face to the northwest, seeing the jagged peaks of the Wrym. Supposedly, the mountain range looked like a dragon with its mouth wide open, its teeth pointing up into the sky.

Lili had never really been able to see it, to be perfectly honest. They just looked like mountains. Lili glanced down and tried to memorize the lay of the land the best she could. The canopy was thick, though; she couldn’t really see any landmarks except for the obvious. In the distance, she spotted Oldon’s Oak, its venerable old branches stretching high into the sky. If she made it to the oak, she’d be able to find her way. She could follow the stream—it was close, the closest thing she could use to mark her path—and as long as she didn’t get confused at the fork, she would be fine.

Lili shimmied down the tree, more confident than she had been. When she hit the bottom, she reached for her spear.

It was gone.

She whirled around, suddenly afraid. Had someone followed her? The forest was eerily quiet; there was no bird song, and she could hear nothing in the bushes or foliage. Everything was still. The ground had no signs of disturbance.

And yet her spear was gone.

Lili circled the tree. There was nothing. Her spear, which she had left leaning against the trunk, had simply disappeared.

She pressed her wrist to her mouth and bit down, a nervous habit she’d supposedly outgrown.

Her spear was gone.

Her hand went to her hatchet. Very slowly, she turned full circle with her eyes on the trees.

Nothing. No wind. No birds. No critters.

Nothing.

Lili could feel her pulse jumping in her throat.

Slowly, Lili began to move. She wanted to run away, but she’d grown up hunting. If there was something here—a predator, four-legged or otherwise—running would be a fatal mistake.

She couldn’t run. She had to walk.

Slowly, slowly, she began her trek to the little stream that would lead her to the river. That’s right. You can just walk in the stream. She didn’t like getting her feet wet, but if something was here, if something was following her, then…

She suppressed a shudder.

The stream was just up ahead.

Just…up ahead.

…Where was the fucking stream?

The forest was silent. Lili couldn’t hear the water, though by her estimation she should have been close enough now to hear. Instead, all she could hear was silence and—

—No. Not silence. Not anymore.

She could smell woodsmoke. It was faint, but she could definitely smell it now. Woodsmoke and…

Blood.