The rain begins on the third day and by the fifth the ground is nothing but mud, like the forest itself is morphing into a bog. Even Dauntless slows in the muck and it feels like I’ve been questing for weeks instead of days. The rain is so hard we hardly talk and eventually give-up trying. Well, most of us anyway.

“Is there anything you can do about the weather, sire?” Asks Dauntless.

“What?”

“The weather sire, is there anything you can do about it?”

The pull my hand through my soaked hair. “Like stop the rain?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Of course not.”

“Horse knots? What are those?”

I lean closer to my drenched steed. “I said of course not. How could I control the weather?”

“Well you can talk to me, can’t you?”

It’s a fair point, but I can’t save Dauntless nor myself from the clouds and their flood of tears. Fortunately, they exhaust themselves on day six and I can hear myself think again; there are even a few rays of sun to brighten my mood. But everything is still wet, feels cold, and looks…ugly. The trees are different now. They’re taller, wider, and twisted, like they’ve been contorted into shapes that resemble monsters more than plant life.

So long as they don’t come alive like in some horror movie. I don’t need any of that creepy crap.

I also hear the voice more clearly. That was the one nice thing about the rain: it blocked much of the wailing. “Leave Jastin, just go, leave us alone” and derivations therein. During the rain it was muted, with the droplets serving as the ultimate white noise for any mysterious voices. But now it’s back. I hear it while I walk, when I rest, when I eat, when I dump.

Am I going crazy like that prince from the book? Or maybe he wasn’t crazy and I’m really being spoken to. Which is worse?

I’m not interested in going crazy, or being possessed, or whatever happened out here before. The voice is so annoying I’m tempted to turn around just to get the damn thing out of my head. I can’t even tell the others because I don’t want them to think I’m going crazy. I mean maybe I could tell Cyrus, but Myran? Forget about it. He’d just use it against me. Maybe even challenge me for leadership.

“Sire?” Dauntless asks. “Sire, are you alright?”

I nod slowly. “Yes, yes I’m fine. Why?”

“You were talking, sire. I thought you wanted something.”

“No, I’m fine Dauntless.”

Talking? What did I say?

“Very good, sire. My apologies for bothering you.”

I slap the horse on his rump. “Dauntless you are many things but never a bother.”

“Thank you, sire. I believe that even being an ass is better than being a bother.”

“Indeed,” I say. “If you were more of an ass perhaps you wouldn’t be stumbling so much on these roots.”

The horse laughs.

“Care to let us in on the joke, hero?” Cyrus calls from behind me. “I think we could all use some humor. Wouldn’t you say, Myran?”

The elf is several steps behind the cleric and I’m wondering what his reaction will be. But he continues to plod, head down, without comment. T

“Or perhaps you disdain humor?” The cleric tries again.

Now Myran’s head bobs up. “Humor? Yes, this whole journey is becoming a joke. Damned rain and bugs and plants. I hate it all.”

So much for levity. “Surprising to hear that from an elf,” I say. “Isn’t the forest your home?”

“Don’t you tell me what it means to be an elf!”

I cannot win with this guy.

Stolen novel; please report.

We lapse back into silence which not only removes any humor but also leaves my ears more open to the voice. It’s eerie, ethereal, urgent, and insistent. Each step forward I take the louder it grows, and the more frequently it comes. It grates on me, gnawing at the edge of mind despite my efforts to ignore it.

“Leave. You don’t belong here. Go home.”

Right. I get the point.

We push onward through the day and into the early hours of the night. The sooner we get to the center the better by my lights. When I finally call a hault everyone collapses from exhaustion. Even Dauntless. The cleric munches on some food, but I don’t even have the energy for that.

“Leave. You don’t belong here. Go home.”

Ugh.

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

I startle awake. Something is licking my face. I leap to my fit and draw my blade expecting some kind of trouble. Myran stirs beside me, or maybe he was already tossing? Either way I reach toward him.

“Stop,” says a voice. I look down. It’s a glowing rat, or at least the eyes are glowing. I’ve seen hardly more than a gnat in this forest and now there’s a rat talking to me. “Don’t disturb the others.”

The rat seems scared, twitching. I kneel down to it, wiping the sleep dust away from my eyes. “What’s wrong? What’s happening? Where’d you come from?”

The rat looks around nervously. “No time. No time. Come with me, please.”

The scrunch my brows. “No time for what? What’s the rush?”

“She’s waiting,” the rat’s eyes are darting this way and that.

I grab my sword. “Who’s waiting?”

“Angel,” the rat says, almost inaudibly.

“The angel?” I’m too loud and Myran stirs again.

“Shhh. Yes, she sent me for you.”

Finally some help.

“Alright then, lead on.”

The rat moves slowly so that I can follow. It’s nighttime and the light of the five moons helps me little. But those eyes. They’re like little emeralds bouncing through the darkness, and though I stumble on roots now and then I never loose my way as the rat waits for me patiently.

“Please hurry,” says the rat as he leaps over a pile of leaves.

“I’m doing the best I can,” I huff.

“Must hurry.”

The rat picks up the pace and I fall flat on my face. “Stop!” I pull the guck away from my eyes and see the rat, stopped, looking back at me. “I can’t go that fast.”

The rat walks back to me, its tail literally between its legs. “I’m sorry. I’m just afraid of the god.”

“The god?”

So it’s true? Maybe.

“The god of the forest. The old elven god.”

“You mean the dryad?”

“Yes, before the elves worshiped the Maker, before they’d heard of the temple, they worshiped the dryad.” He looks around in fear. “And now she’s back.”

“What does she want?”

“To be the god of the forest again. All the forest.”

So not just this so-called elder wood. She wishes to rule all of it.

“She will kill you if she you don’t obey.” The rat continues. “She will send the husks.”

Husks?

“So we must hurry. We are almost there.”

“Ok, ok,” I say, taking a last swipe at my dirtied pants. “Lead on.”

The rat goes a bit slower this time and always stops when I stumble, but it’s still a brisk pace and it shakes whenever we have to slow, like the trees are going to come alive and gnar off its tail.

Which won’t actually happen right? I mean should I ask just to be safe? Oh whatever.

“Is that why I’ve seen no animals?” I ask instead. “Do they fear the forest god?”

“Yes,” puffs the rat as we step into a particularly mangled grove of trees. “Many are hiding from her. Those who have not joined her. They don’t want to be caught.”

“You must be brave then,” I say. “Going out in the open like this.”

The rat stops moving. “No, not brave. Just stupid.”

I tilt my head. “I don’t understand. Why stupid?”

“Because I was caught.”

I do a double take. “Wait. What?”

The rat puts his tail between his legs. “I’m sorry. I really am”

“Sorry for what?”

I hear laughter. It’s not me. It’s not the rat.

The voice is back.

It’s taunting now. “I warned you to leave.”

My skin feels suddenly clammy. The rat isn’t moving.

“Why’d we stop?” I look around. “Where’s angel?”

“Sorry,” the rat says again quietly. “Goodbye.”

And like a mouse after cheese it bolts, darting into the brush as fast as you can blink and I am left alone in the dark.

“You see,” comes the voice again. “These woods are mine. And so is everyone in them. Even you now, Ethan.”

I draw my sword and spin around, looking, searching, but all I see are trees. Big, fat, ugly trees.

“You have no purpose here. You are not of my woods. Not of this world even. You should have left when you had the chance. Now your chance is over.”

There is a cracking sound. Sounds, actually. Wood splintering, then breaking, then exploding – like a mighty belch from a frat boy after a six pack. Then I finally see them, emerging from trees like toys from boxes in some kind of twisted Christmas. The so-called ‘ghosts’, or ‘rebels’, or whatever stumble out into the night air. They look like elves, but they glow like ghosts. In truth I think they are neither; instead they remind me of….zombies.

“You will be made to join us now,” the voice says. “You will come to know and worship me as they have. And you will become –”

I shudder.

“A husk.”