I left the privileges of home with my parents’ entreaties to see reason still ringing in my ears. I planned to return to them with a story like no other.
“I’ll be the first to speak in another tongue,” I said. “I’ll be the first to learn the myths of another race.”
"You'll be the first in our family to die in a northern jail," my brother replied.
I travelled swiftly and the pleasures I found on the outermost steppes buoyed my spirits for the descent into northern territory. The king of Giftahl cares nothing for Saltleaf Forest and no patrols or hindrance of any kind prevented my entering it.
From above, you can see the Highhome Peaks in the distance, if that is what they are. They range north and west like little mounds of earth on the horizon. I planned to cross through the middle of the forest, documenting the magical creatures and lush abundance I would find there on the way. I lost my way immediately. I didn’t understand how the land wrapped around itself, refusing to allow any straight lines to exist within its borders. It seemed to roll over and stretch at night like a sleeping animal, me being a bug that crawled across its fur. I didn’t know about the paths that connected its few fixed points like a web in the wind between branches.
I wandered to the point of near starvation, failing even to find my way back out again. I know now how fortunate I am that I arrived in autumn and not in summer, when the worst of the predators here roam the land. Hungry and desperate and ready to admit that my family had been right, I finally stumbled across a Sevener. I had begun to wonder if you people were a myth, like the fantastical creatures that you are rumoured to live with.
The man I met appeared from between the trees like a leaf blown in the breeze. His movements were so fluid and graceful that I thought he was a spirit come to take me away from the world of the living. He wore fine jewellery made from carved wood and pressed flowers, hung from tiny holes in his earlobes. He wore blue and green paint on his face, so that to look him in the eye was like gazing down on the forest from the southern heights. He took pity on me and brought me to his village.
His name was Feren and his clan was named Levonin, after the Levon falls. They’re a confident and assured people, though with an air of gloom about them as though they were constantly in mourning. It hung about their populous village like the smoke of funereal incense.
Feren and his wife fed me back to health, while I peppered them with questions about the forest. During the day they hunted and travelled, and his children taught me to play a game called sevenstones. I remember the conversation one evening when Feren returned.
“You’re looking more colourful, Kastor. Less like a ghoul that has forgotten the sun. You’ll be ready to return home soon.”
“I’ve told you; I don’t want to go back until I’ve met the beyobacks. I’m sure those mountains in the North are where they live.”
Feren laughed, as he always did when I mentioned my quest. His wife, Lin, shot him a disapproving frown and patted my shoulder. Feren said:
“The Hallin have stories about the beasts in those caves. They call them hoarders. I don’t think they ever talk about them reading and writing. Besides, the mountains are too far. You’d never make it by yourself.”
“Perhaps I’ll meet one of these Hallin. Perhaps they’ll help me find them, and I’ll find they are something more than just beasts.”
Feren looked at me like he was trying to unravel a knot that someone else had tied.
“What did you really come here for? To prove something to those you left behind? It’s not worth it.”
“I came to see things that don't exist in the world outside. Won’t you show me anything? Some of the stories must be true. Can’t you take me to see a bear or a sea raven?”
Feren smiled.
“I’ve been alive for thirty-nine years, and I’ve only met a bear three times. As for a sea raven, even the oldest woman in our clan hasn't seen one since her childhood. We all yearn to look up at silver wings beating the air, to watch as the greatest spirit cuts a path through the sky. They say that when we see them fly again, the fortunes of the forest will be revived.”
“What about the sorcerers? Are they real, or has nobody seen one of them in years either?”
“What’s a sorceror?” Feren asked. His children listened now, and Lin pulled the pot off the fire and leaned in to hear.
The 'sorcerers' of Saltleaf Forest are the stuff of wild fantasy at home. They appear in stories told to dark rooms packed with eager dinner guests, gathered to hear something forbidden and dangerous. As hushed nobles lean forward on cushioned seats, sucking hot pipes and dried fruit, the poets tell of folk in the forest who wield a power to rival the mightiest of priests. They’re usually wicked, often deviant and always capricious. They’re as likely to curse the heroes of the story as they are to help them. I should have paid those stories more heed.
“They’re probably a rumour and a myth,” I replied. “In our stories, there are men in this land who can talk with animals. They can heal wounds at a touch like the priests of Farlean, but they don’t make vows to any of the gods. I’ve heard they can even ride beasts, that they can bend the plants and trees to their command and-”
“Silence!” shouted Feren. Lin fumbled with the pot and yelped as its contents scorched her. The children’s ears pricked up.
“Daddy, Daddy!” His eldest jumped up and down. “Is he talking about the evil spirits? The ones that sent dreams to Tarry last summer? They told him they could teach him to listen to the wind and talk to the sky, that if he left the village to be with them -”
“I said silence!”
I sat stunned. I didn’t know what mistake I had made. I didn’t know how they feared to see their children led astray. I waited quietly while they put them to bed and when they slept, Feren came to my side.
“There are some things we don’t talk of in front of our young, except to warn them of dangers they should mind. What you call sorcerers we used to call medicine men. I stay out of their world and keep them out of mine. We don’t let our children know they are really humans, or were at one time. We don’t tell the old stories of their wonderful gifts and miraculous deeds. We refuse to give them any new blood.”
“Where do they live?”
“There’s only one left that I know of. He stomps around by the waterfall and the lake. I know that look. Don’t even think of it! It’s time for you to go home, young man. Go back to your own people. Make your stories up, if you must. Teach them to play sevenstones and tell them you saw a sea raven and a bear. I'll draw one on those pieces of paper, if you like.”
I promised him I’d prepare to leave in the morning, then I rolled over and pretended to sleep. I felt like a gambler who watched a month's pay slip through his fingers, only to win a fortune on the final roll of the evening. I’d learned a little of the forest’s ways. On a quiet day, I could hear the falls from the edge of their village. Like an idiot, compounding folly with folly, I slipped out before the first light and made my way in the dark. I moved carefully, as I had learned to, following the sound as my guide. As the morning light filtered through the leaves, I felt the cool spray on my skin.
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The Levon falls are spectacular. Had I seen only that one sight I would have left the forest happy. The noise they make so deafens your ears that your other senses sharpen in contrast. The air smells crisp and fresh and it clings to your body, drenching it in water droplets so fine they hang about you like a cloud. There are colours everywhere, except when you look at them directly, as though a colony of rainbows climbs the falls, dancing at the corners of your eyes. Where you set your gaze directly, you see only the purest wall of liquid white.
I wandered in amazement for a while, until a voice startled me that came from in front but out of my sight.
“What are you here for, outsider?”
“I came for knowledge,” I replied.
A thin, bald man emerged from the forest, or from the air in front of me. I could not decide. He had an obdurate look in his eyes that spoke of a long and difficult life. He went away and returned with a bowl. It contained thin, white needles which Feren had taught me to recognise.
“Would you poke around for a berry in a bowl like this?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t poke around barrow needles for anything,” I replied.
“What if I told you the berry was the sweetest in the forest? The sweetest you’d taste in all your life. Would you try to find it then?”
I took the bowl from him and slowly, carefully pushed the worst of them aside. A bright red, heart shaped berry with tiny seeds all over the outside sat at the bottom. Gingerly, I took it and tasted the fruit. I can’t describe it except to say that it tasted like the gods’ food.
The old man nodded, and he led me to a cave near the bottom of the falls. He sat me down opposite him and stared into my eyes.
“You’ll do,” he said after a long time. “You're foolish enough to become wise. You’ll be my apprentice.”
Like the gambler who has swung from poverty to wealth on a single roll of the dice I rolled again, heady on the fumes of fortune. This was the great vindication of my journey. I would return with a prize like no other! I had earned this, I told myself. I had earned it by going where Feren and his people did not dare.
He opened doors of understanding that exhilarated and terrified me. I saw how fragile and vibrant every life was. How each thing in existence stands upon the nature of a hundred other changing things. I saw how one thought could transform the world. How my mind could reach through the branches of chance, find other possibilities and make them real. The paths became visible to me, glowing under my feat. I began to see creatures that were hidden before like the shuffling, black shadow that followed him around. He never mentioned the beyobacks or other forest legends and I lost all interest in them. What were they, compared to this? A childish dream that I was lucky I had followed, because in doing so I had stumbled upon real power.
I should have read the warnings. Despite his ability to heal any cut, the Levonin never brought him their sick and injured. The first time I saw him angry he flew into a rage and swore vengeance against a cloud with an unusual shape. Once I watched him count ants out of a nest and demand they account for a missing worker. But I did not see a dangerous lunatic. I saw an eccentric, lonely and powerful old man who was willing to share his secrets with me. I was flattered. I thought I had been chosen. I didn’t realise that he was desperate. He was dying, and no one else would take the gift from him. The Levonin had barred their children from his kind, weaving stories of warning around the dreams he used to call them. They knew that, for him, madness and power went together like berries and thorns. Like medicine and poison.
The more I learned the harder he trained me. He always wanted more than I could give. He set tests and mocked me when I failed them. My abilities grew, but so too did my resentment, and there were many lessons I could not master. I couldn’t work out how he spoke to the animals. I tried to heal injuries, but I could only manage to dull their pain and delay the effect. My first taste of his medicine had promised limitless possibilities. When I tried to explore them, most collapsed into failure. And the poison began to creep through my mind.
Over the winter that followed he slowed down. He looked old when I first met him, but still vital. That changed, as though his body had been waiting for me to arrive before giving up on life. His madness worsened and, as it did so, his cruelty grew. He insulted me every day. He’d say:
“You’re not the one I wanted. You’ll fail. You’re useless. You don’t even belong here. You don’t deserve the gift.”
Then later he would come to me crying and begging, saying that he’d made a promise and needed me to fulfil it.
“You must survive to make the sacrifice. She needs you to survive, to make it all worthwhile.”
“Who?” I would ask, and he would look at me with scorn and tell me I wasn’t ready. For all I knew he was talking about someone imaginary, an old friend who had long since died. Perhaps the one responsible for the missing ants.
He began to play tricks on me. He provoked animals to attack me. He did everything he could to spur me to the greatness I would never reach. I lived in terror in those final days together. He was wild and desperate, and in our last argument he said I would not last three years. I’d started seeing things. I’d begun hearing voices. I knew that he’d infected me with his own madness, and I hated him for it.
One day it was too much. I was too tired, too scared and too full of rage. He lashed out at me and I... We... I fled. I travelled north, quickly this time along the paths, but something followed in my steps. His awful pet. His familiar, as cruel as its master, attached itself to me.
It doesn’t matter where I go, it’s always here. It speaks to me sometimes and gives me advice. I do my best to ignore it, but it’s a step ahead of my own mind. It tells me not to travel somewhere so I go there to spite it, and I know it’s pleased when I arrive.
I can never return home afflicted as I am, but I cling on to my old life as an anchor. That’s why I returned to looking for the beyobacks. I’m going to solve this riddle of their language, the one that nobody else cares about, because it will keep me sane for a while longer. It’s the only desire I have that I trust, because it arose in me before I was cursed.
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Kastor and Oli sat in silence after he finished his story. The first threads of orange light found their way through the trees and lit Kastor’s face enough for Oli to read his mood. He smiled softly and watched the river with a peaceful sadness.
Oli had always seen adults as fixed entities, like the landmarks of the forest that never moved. They had passed through and survived their childhood, and however it had shaped them was how they would remain. He had never known a grown up to really change. His father was always a little grumpy in the mornings and affectionate in the evening. His mother liked stories with sad endings, even though they made her cry. Whether he understood these things or not, they were constant, fixed points in the fabric of his world. But here was a grown-up who was changing before his eyes.
He thought about the story, and those his own parents had told him of evil spirits whose messages in dreams were wicked lies. Pasha had them one summer and her parents wouldn’t let her out until Elder Mildred decided enough time had passed. They told the tribe she was poorly, but Pasha had confided the truth to Oli. Had one of those crazed men been calling to her in the night? He shuddered. But he wondered what else the grown-ups had hidden. Not everything about the medicine man sounded unkind.
“Didn’t you realise that he was warning you at the beginning? What did you think the berry in the thorns was for?”
Kastor blanched.
“It was hardly obvious. And why warn someone about a trap you’re leading them into?”
Oli shrugged. “Lots of reasons. Perhaps he had to. Fair play. Or,” Oli lowered his voice, speaking gently, “maybe it wasn’t a trap. Just a choice.”
Kastor snorted.
Oli didn’t broach the subject again. Instead, his thoughts turned to the end of the tale, to the demon that now stalked Kastor.
“What’s a familiar?” he asked.
“They’re spirits that serve a human for life,” Kastor replied, wincing and glancing around. “Only the most powerful of the medicine men knew how to bind them.”
“I saw it on the first night.”
“I know,” said Kass looking at Oli. “And you saw me while you shouldn't have been able to. You would have been the apprentice of his dreams. It’s like you have the gift already.”
“It scared me the first time, like you scared me. But after that it didn’t seem so bad.” He almost elaborated that the second time he saw it, the familiar seemed as lost and confused as Kastor.
“It’s not after you, it’s chasing me.” Kastor reassured him.
Doubt niggled at the edge of Oli’s mind. Something about the story, or Kastor’s telling of it, did not make sense. Hadn’t the demon fought alongside him when he came to Oli’s aid? Hadn’t it stunned the soldiers with its terrible cry? And the tale did sound familiar. At least, the flavour of it did, if not the details. Was the madness that Kastor was descending into a price worth paying for the peace he had felt by the side of the river? Were the berry and the thorns worthwhile together? Kastor interrupted his reflections:
“I’m not coming into your village. I’ll take you back and leave you there. You can point me down the path to the Highhomes from where we part.” Then he looked up, indicating the growing light.
“Come on, let’s get you home.”