“Got it,” I said. I made a zipper motion across my mouth and mined throwing away the key. Ferrith shook his head in confusion and turned away. Only then did I realize just how many cultural references to Earth I was going to have to get used to not translating correctly.
Not one to mince words, Ferrith turned around and jogged on. The ogres followed.
The forest on the other side of the claw marks looked pretty much exactly the same as what we’d been jogging through all morning. I almost would have said there was no difference at all if it hadn’t been so eerily quiet. The trees might have been the same, but I stopped seeing little forest critters. It sent the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
We jogged in that silence for what felt like an hour. I nearly jumped at about a dozen shadows in that time, but we seemed to be having good luck. I tried not to feel relieved when we reached our destination in case that somehow jinxed it. Despite not seeing anything around of note, at some point Ferrith just held up his hand to bring us to a halt and announced, “We’re here,” in a quiet voice.
Our destination turned out to be a stretch of trail like any other. I couldn’t see anything special around, just a young sapling that had taken root next to the creek. As soon as we stopped, the fatter of the ogres walked over to the nearby creek and plopped down on its belly. Its splashing was obviously louder than anything else we’d done, but by the time Ferrith scowled at it and opened his mouth to say something it was already lying down. He just let it be. Its chest was heaving in air as it laid there like a slug, sucking down water directly from the stream. I understood where it was coming from. If someone asked me to jog a tenth the distance it just had I probably would have felt just as pathetic.
A curt gesture from Ferrith convinced Grog to lower me to the ground gently. He was panting noticeably, but still seemed less tired than the ogre that hadn’t even carried anything. Once I was let down, I hopped around a bit to get the blood flow going. “Are you going to explain what we’re doing out here now?” I asked Ferrith in a low voice.
He put a finger up to his mouth and shook his head. I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t like some quiet talking at this point was going to make more noise than that ogre just had, but I didn’t want to press the issue. Ferrith made himself busy studying that sapling I’d barely remarked on when we arrived. I couldn’t see what about it could have possibly justified this trip. It was maybe about as tall as Grog, with a decently thick trunk. About the most interesting thing to say about it was that whatever had prevented the other trees from taking root closer to the creek hadn’t affected it. It didn’t look “special” or anything, just another of a million of the same species of pine growing in the rest of the forest, from what I could tell.
I left Ferrith to his study of the tree and walked downstream from the fat ogre to take a piss. The whole situation came off as a tad odd to me. This guy had jogged hours out of the way through ostensibly dangerous land to… what? Stare at a sapling? Hopefully he’d satisfy my curiosity about it later. I looked out across the grassy field beyond the creek while I finished draining my bladder. It was pretty flat aside from a few tiny hills. Maybe a mile or two distant it looked like there was another forest across the field. No stags in “monster” territory.
A bug landed on my arm as I was about to leave; a reminder of how annoying nature could be. The thing had a fat thorax like a bee, only it was all black and had a needle-like proboscis sort of like a mosquito. I stared at it, carefully not moving in case it decided to either bite or sting me. “Don’t even think about it, buddy,” I whispered to the little insect, raising a hand to swat it at the first sign of misbehavior.
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The gnat—that’s what I decided to think of it as—jabbed me with its little sucker. I felt a slight pinch, then before I could swat the thing it shriveled up and died. I flicked it away, nodding appreciably. “I tried to warn you, dude,” I told the dead bug. I figured I was probably poisonous to it or something, what with my completely foreign physiology. All things considered, not having to deal with gnats while I was in Earris brightened my mood. The day was going pretty good. We’d even successfully avoiding attracting the attention of whatever monsters Ferrith had been so worried about!
I heard a thump from behind. My heart about leapt out of my chest as I whipped around. It turned out to just be Ferrith. He was standing over the sapling he’d been studying with his sword out. It was now lying on the ground, branches settling to indicate the sound I’d just heard was it collapsing. I thought it was strange I hadn’t heard Ferrith chopping repeatedly at the trunk after the way he’d apparently been forced to handle the wounded ogre the night before, but when I saw the blade of his sword I realized why. It was glowing red with a sort of inner heat. I hurried over to see what that was all about, but before I reached him he turned off the glowing somehow and returned it to the sheath on his back.
“When were you going to tell me you had a magic sword!” I whispered excitedly when I got close.
Ferrith looked up at me, then over to the forest, then back to me. He raised a finger to his lips again to indicate silence, but that didn’t stop him from whispering a response to my question. “Now’s not the time,” he said.
I nodded my understanding and didn’t press him despite my burning curiosity. I knew I’d technically already broken my promise not to talk twice, but it was seeming more and more like his extreme caution hadn’t actually been justified. Not to mention he’d just felled a tree; that was way more noise than any amount of whispering. I watched Ferrith climb over the fallen tree. He walked to a specific spot, leaned down, dug into the pine needles for a specific cluster, then picked out just one or two needles from that cluster to store in a pouch at his hip, tossing the rest. I watched him do this a few times; not seeing what differentiated the needles he kept from the ones he discarded.
“Can I help?” I whispered after a minute or two of watching. He looked up at me with mild annoyance and shook his head. I wiggled my fingers. “I have dexterous hands. You said so yourself.”
“You can’t help,” Ferrith insisted.
“The faster we get this done, the faster we leave,” I explained to him. “Just tell me what makes some of the needles special and I’ll bring you some.”
Ferrith turned his attention back to the clump of needles in his hand, plucking out a single one he liked. “I feel them,” he explained briefly. “It’s not something I can teach. Just wait. I’ll be done soon.”
Normally I was fine with waiting, but with my phone busted to shit I didn’t have anything to entertain me, so I decided to try to walk around the tree sapling the way Ferrith was to see if I could “feel” any special pine needles. It turned out he was right. I didn’t feel a thing. I tried grabbing a random cluster of needles anyway, but when I brought them to Ferrith for inspection he just threw them away. “Well I hope whatever contract this is for pays a lot,” I whispered, “because this sucks worse than those harpies.”
“Not a contract,” Ferrith said absentmindedly while he picked through another cluster of needles.
“Oh? So they’re magic then? Is that why you can feel them?”
Ferrith paused his inspection and glared at me. “Don’t ask me about the needles,” he said. “It’s private. Do you know what that means? Private?” His tone was so serious all of a sudden.
I threw up my hands. “Fine. I won’t ask,” I replied in a low voice. “It just seems after we came all this way it would only be common courtesy to—”
“Waaaah!” a baby’s voice cried out from the dark forest behind us. I stopped midsentence, completely not expecting to hear something so familiar out here in the middle of nowhere. It sounded like a human baby.
Ferrith’s face went slack. “We have to go,” he said in a normal speaking volume, suddenly unconcerned with staying quiet. “Immediately.”
“Waaaah!” the baby continued to cry.
“Because of the baby?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“That’s not a baby,” Ferrith said. He pinched off a small clump of needles, not looking them over this time as he unceremoniously shoved the rest of them into his little pouch and cinched it shut with quick, industrial movements. “I’m sorry,” he said, “We took too long and made too much noise. You’re probably going to die now.”