Autumn in Harrow was warm. Food was plentiful and the only real danger was the living forest, which could be safely ignored with an axe in hand or enough fire in between you and the treeline. But now it was midwinter, food was scarce and a single misstep in the snow could lead to misery.
Slate watched as grim faces walked around the town, ignoring the cart that had been dragged into town by a horse. Its harness caught on its ribs and tore at gaping wounds across its hindquarters. It foamed at the mouth. The fat trader who normally steered the cart into town this time of year was absent. The splintered cart held a few measly bags of flour, far from the plentiful heap they had hoped for. As he watched, a family led the horse away. No-one stopped them.
The town lumberjack walked up to him, fiddling with the axe hanging from his belt. He hadn’t logged in months. He shifted from side to side and ran a hand through his beard to dislodge some of the frost that had crept into the hollow of his throat. His missing ring finger was painfully obvious. He was not alone in that. Winter had stolen many things from the borough of Harrow.
“Slate,” he grumbled, “we need that flour. We’ve run low on near everything.”
“I know.”
“The Stern’s daughters are dead and buried.”
“They got the horse.”
“Too little too late.”
“I know.”
The lumberjack paused to clap his hands together and beat away the cold.
“That horse couldn’t have made it back if anything really dangerous was stalking the roads.”
“Michael, stop. It went for the trader.”
“Best to go now then, before it gets hungry.”
Slate gave the man a pitying look, then gestured at the shattered cart lying in the town square, its back half completely torn to pieces.
“The claw marks. They’re big. Whatever it is, it’s still hungry. Michael, if we’re going, we need to be sure whatever it is doesn’t come crawling into our beds.”
“Just you and me, sheriff. We’ve got enough magic between us to keep ourselves alive.”
“That’s how it’ll have to be,” he conceded, “if we have to go.”
They fell silent. They watched as the townspeople struggled to break the cart into manageable chunks, dragging them back to bitter hearths. The pieces had been locked together by ice. Some cast hopeful looks at him.
“Magic won’t help us,” Slate continued, “I’ll struggle to even light the hearth today.” He snapped his fingers but not even the slightest glow of warmth crept from his palm. Michael grimaced and his mutilated fingers tapped at his axe.
“But we need that flour don’t we?”
Slate crossed his arms and trained his eyes on the skyline of frost-shattered trees. They would need to crack open the ribcage of the forest and hope the bones wouldn’t bite back. He set his jaw and tried to look like the sheriff he was. He snapped the icicles off his boots.
“I’ll need to borrow an axe.”
“I’ll make sure everyone knows we’re going,” Michael nodded and strode off. His steps were trailed by the slush snatching at his heels.
Slate watched him go, then stomped his way into the communal hearth just off the main square, watching them struggle to throw part of the cart onto the pile. Sarah, a young woman, a child really, sat next to the fire pit clutching at her ribs and trying to stop her teeth from chattering. He marched over to the dead hearth and focused.
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He tried again. Again. Again. Until finally, all his warmth pooled into a single spark and fell from his palm onto the tinder. Sarah dived forward, protecting the spark from the wind with her body. Her hands and knees bled onto the floor.
Slate fought back the urge to shiver and stood up. Few were strong enough to light the hearth in times like these. A boy followed him with his eyes as he moved to walk out of the hearth. His lips were blue and he was motionless.
* * *
Where the path was clear it was near blocked by overhanging branches and everywhere else it was buried beneath a foot of snow. On either side of the track roots desperately curled up from beneath the snow, seeking for warmth. They looked on, the blackened teeth of the forest.
The sky was stained a dirty grey that bleached the colours from the forest. The air stank of rot. The smell leapt at them in wafts like some corpse was beating its rotten wings. The cold had shattered what few trees hadn’t been cut down near Harrow, leaving them exposed on the ridge, backlit against the low light of dusk. Their trunks were the exposed ribs of the forest, burnt black by the mountain winds.
When they’d trudged through the slush for an hour in silence, they came upon a fallen tree that blocked the path. The fingers of boughs pointed accusingly and cracked like bones beneath their axes as they cleared the way forward. Michael took a step back and made to speak.
“Everything is dead.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” Michael pushed forward. He tapped his axe against a trunk blackened by the cold, one of the few that remained mostly intact. He kept tapping, until eventually a root crawled out from under the snow and snapped at his ankles. He kicked the root off of him and stepped back. “Last spring that would’ve killed me, grabbed me by the ankles and flung me about until I was nice and tender.”
“I know,” Slate motioned to the fallen tree blocking their way, “are you going to help me here?”
“You still don’t get it,” Michael brought down the axe in a heavy overhand that thudded into a branch, “if our trees are dead, what’s eating the traders?”
“Not the trees,” Slate watched the branch writhe on the ground, curling up like a spider. He kicked it off the road and into the snowdrift to their left. It joined a growing pile of firewood. They kept hacking away at the branches until finally, mercifully, they made their way through to the other side of the path. There they found why the tree had fallen.
A carcass on its side, ribs stretching nearly three meters high, sat just off the path. Desperate for some kind of nutrition, a couple trees had uprooted themselves and flung themselves onto the corpse. The bones were picked dry, but the trees laid in a desperate stranglehold around the bones and held them in a grim facsimile of life. Small patches of fur were frozen to the bones. It smelt painfully clean.
“Those things normally eat the trees, Slate. I don’t like this.”
“Me neither,” he stepped forward and tapped the bones, habit forcing him clear of the thicker tree branches, “normally, when the big ones die out, the pack hunters’ disappear almost overnight. It’s always the” -- he stepped away from a branch reaching for his face -- “trees.”
Michael nodded and hefted his axe. They marched on, hacking their way through a forest too frostbitten to fight back. The only relief from monotony was the irregular heartbeat of their boots getting swallowed up by the snow. Slush slatter pat. Slush slatter pat. One tree cut down. Slush slatter pat. Eyes watching on. Slush slatter pat. Two more carcasses. Slush slaughter pat. Bony fingers poking through from snowy graves. Crush slatter pat. Another tree. Slash slatter pat. Fingers feeling warm. Slush slatter spat. Can’t. Feel. Can’t. One more tree. Slush. Slatter. Pat.
Then the other half of the trader’s cart found them. It snuck up underfoot, the planks already almost completely buried. The harsh sound of it breaking underfoot pulled to pieces the snowblind reverie both men had been stuck in.
It brought them sharply to bear on the small clearing, with the trees opening onto a frozen lake. They kicked at the snow, searching for the flour they’d come so far to find.
Slate’s worries thundered in his ears as he dug deeper and deeper, gloves soaked through already. Beat. Nothing. BEAT. Nothing. Something. He caught at a corner of a bag with numb fingers. It felt like they weren’t his. Scrabbling at the snow, he pooled his magic into his hands, trying to soften the hardpacked snow. He tugged and tugged desperate to—
“It’s watching us.”
That kernel of warmth inside him shriveled up and hid, his heart froze and laid still, but it went on.
Beat. BEAT. Beat. BEAT. Black eyes watched from above, leathery wings folding as it settled into a tree. Wings. Hunger.
“What is it?”
“It’s one of the nightmares.”
Slate resisted the urge to whip his head around. For a moment he felt warm breath dew on the back of his neck, and his sweat freezing on his brow. But nothing. Michael’s eyes were wide, and every muscle in his neck was taut as a razor.
“In a tree above us?
“Yes.”
“How big?”
“Big,” he shook, “It knows I’m watching it. Slate, it knows I’m watching it.”
Slate reached for his axe, and felt his fingers slip and slide over the haft. Then he heard it. A hissing intake of breath reverberated in his chest, echoed in his skull. The temperature dropped and he felt, rather than saw, the trees all around them split open in the bitter cold. The kernel of warmth inside him bitterly held on, an ember glowing defiantly.
Absentmindedly he noted an expanding ring of frost. It entombed the trees around them and covered his gloves with ice, until it stopped and left a clear line on a tree not fifty meters away.
A beak opened and closed with a tense snap. Its wings shifted, and Slate felt the frigid air press upon his back. It crawled around his neck and clawed at his throat. His mouth was dry. He heard a frigid crack and could only wish it were the trees.
“I’m going to look.”
“Don’t. Please, Slate!”
He unhooked the axe from his belt on the second attempt and had to fight to lift his boots from the snow. He turned. A severed arm hung lifelessly from its beak. He could see the trader’s wedding ring. It was not the trees making that sound, but human bone. He looked up into its eyes.
White bone and sinewy violence stared down at him. Its leathery wings appeared to vanish into the mottled snow or drift into the stained sky with a moment’s inattention. He stepped to the side, and the slush slatter pat was deafening. Its only reaction was to shift, holding the horror trees at bay without moving a muscle. He dragged out the sack of flour and took a step onwards. It followed only with its eyes. Michael followed his example.
And step by step they began to head back. Slush slatter pat. BEAT. BEAT. Step. Step. BEAT. Slashslaughtersplat.
“It’s following us,” Michael whispered.
“I noticed,” Slate jittered. He paused for a moment, then handed over his sack of flour to Michael. All the while he kept a white-knuckle grip on the axe. He forced out the words: “You head back first. Don’t forget the firewood.”
* * *
Michael paused before taking the sack. He desperately looked inward for that fire, but its absence whispered of cowardice. He took a step towards home. Slush slatter pat. Something slithered down a tree and onto the snow proper.
It was silent. It was gone. He spun. Slush slatter pat.
He listened in, praying for the sound of footsteps. The silence spoke; it shivered and said to him:
“Slush. Slatter. Pat.”