Chapter Eleven

“Sula!” something screamed at her from a hidden spot between the trees. “What have I told you about going into the Hyle Forest alone?”

A jolt of fear straightened the girl stiffening her. She turned to face the voice, but when she recognized her papa emerging from the darkness, she cast her eyes to the overgrown foliage at her feet in shame. “You said I was forbidden. Because of the beasts.”

“No, not beasts, Sula,” Arktos said, shaking his head. Sula could not make out the emotions on his face as even in the clearing, as the light shone only faintly between the canopy above. Was he angry? Relieved? Worried? “Far worse than beasts—daemons—lurk in these hallows. Monsters of all kinds that will do unspeakable things inside the forest’s depths.”

“I’m not afraid of them,” she answered with a harumph.

“Of course not, you stubborn girl.” Arktos did not laugh away her obstinance as usual. He must be angry, Sula decided.

“I am not stubborn!” she roared, becoming angry herself. “Its not being stubborn. I am not afraid of the Daemons, because I know the Goddess will protect me

Arktos took a few steps further and as he drew away from the shadows, Sula noticed his jaw was clenched. She recognized it as the look he always wore when a wolf had caught the scent of the flock. Sula felt relieved when he offered his hand. “Goddess or no,” her papa warned, “one can never be too cautious, cub.”

***

Sula’s memory faded as the world around her came into focus. How desperately her papa had pled with her not to go into the Hyle Forest then. Now, she ran through its towering conifers, faster than her legs could manage, faster than the guards of the wall could ever hope to pursue, and faster than even her racing thoughts. Here and there she even ran faster than her own good, catching a foot on an exposed vein from a velos tree. More than once, she tumbled into a scattering of quill-like needles that gathered in piles beneath its branches. But no matter the tumble, Sula scrabbled back up to her feet at pace, too afraid reality may be one step behind her, ready to unleash its unrelenting sting.

She dodged—at times deftly and at times a second too slow—the thousands of low-hanging arms that grabbed at her from a thousand trunks in every direction, each one hoping to tangle the cub in its claws. Sula felt the clean cuts from many across her shoulders and sides. The longest of the branches reached far into her path and tore red-hot streaks across her cheeks and brow. But Sula ran on. She did not dare stop.

She wove through a maze of deadly pillars that grew up around her at every turn she tried to make. No matter where Sula’s scanning gaze fell, all it found was the streaks of green and black swirling around and closing in upon her.

Each step she took plunged her deeper into the thicket. The deeper she plunged, the more the forest’s unnatural silence seemed to envelope her. Only the plod of her footfalls against the soft turf and a louder, trailing thump that matched her step for step, were audible over the silence. Whether the thumps belonged to some predator that had caught the scent of blood—either hers or that of the horse that she had slain that still covered her right arm—or whether they were a trick of her imagination, her fear echoed as it pulsed from her heart into her ears. She did not know what it was, and she would not slow to find out.

After over an hour of running, Sula found the forest had grown so thick that she could no longer make out the path she tread. As such when she did come upon the rotted husk of a red aspis tree that had fallen across her path, Sula shambled blindly forward into it. The fallen tree knocked her shins out from under her and toppled her over headfirst. Far worse than the tearing of pin-like leaves and twigs at her exposed skin that she had come to expect, the crash brought her a new kind of panic.

The cub landed from her topple with a thud. Her head slammed backwards against the husk that had felled her. Her eyes went black for a moment after the impact as she felt a smooth pull at her legs like a daemon dragging her into the depths of Hell. She turned to her stomach and began to claw at the ground, but the soil slipped just beyond her grasp. Desperation rising, she kicked hard at whatever had a hold of her foot but could not loose herself and became further entangled in its grasp. Twisting and turning, Sula fell over the edge of a small cliff and landed with another thud at its base. Sula’s dagger clanged on the rocky soil beside her.

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With the metallic screech, Sula’s conviction to flee fled her and the adrenaline that had dulled her hurt before now faded. Every scratch and bruise, from the smallest prick to the deepest gash, all at once began to ache in an awful soreness that might have made Sula relieve her stomach if she had had anything in it. Worse than all of those stings, the throbbing stab of her shins overwhelmed all other senses. Sula wailed and shrieked, letting loose the hurt she had held back in her flight all at once in a barrage of hot tears and sore shivers. But it was not her injuries that made her yelp like a puppy too slow to scamper free of the weight of a caravan wheel.

No, all at once, propped helpless against the sharp incline of the small ridge she had slid down, the gravity of where she found herself, stuck, in a cursed forest. She could feel the evil around her. It paralyzed. She swore she could see, flittering in the light between the trees, twisted shadows of daemons and wicked creatures danced and stalked and hunted. Sula felt their hungry gazes encircling her, ready at any second to pounce upon the now weakened prey. With each rustle of the brush, Sula cowered further into herself, forming a little ball of bruised and scored flesh.

Even if the defenseless cub could close her eyes or cover them with her hands, still the rancid odor of rot and refuse lingered below the trees, creeping ever closer. Sula hoped beyond all hope that the stench’s source was the notoriously noxious polip tree berries.

Though she might block her nose from the forest’s stench, she could not dampen its eerie silence. Her screams, which she could feel rising in her lungs, even seemed to fade before they reached the wind.

But it was none of these horrors that brought the cub to tears. Rather, it was the crushing dread of being alone, of dying alone, that squeezed the silent yelps from Sula’s chest. No one could help her now. Aunt Kaleia and Uncle Philos, even if they searched for her, would not find her. She had run too far into the forest’s depths. She would never see them again. Her papa, who would always rescue her when she was lost or nurse the cuts she got running through the thickets, was gone, maybe even dead. She tried to choke the thought down, but she could not.

If he was truly gone, she might have been content to die here herself, rooted fast to her final resting place, slowly strangled by her traitorous mind. But something shook her from her resignation. A blood-curdling howl, more monstrous, more visceral than the daemons that terrorized the shadows of her mind, awakened the most primal of urges in her. Sula wanted—no needed—to live!

The unsteady girl leapt to her aching legs. Luckily she had not broken them during her tumble. As she hobbled through the most densely lined path, she felt only a stinging aggravation left in her shins. After another hour of slow progress, leaning upon thorny branches for support, the pain in her legs faded and she could run again.

And run she did until she came to a small glade tinted orange by the sun’s setting chariot. At the edge of the glade flowed a stream, easily crossed in a single step. Sula paid no mind to its size, falling at its bank and cupping its water into her mouth. As soon as it touched her throat, Sula’s breathing became slower and less strained. Whatever beast had made that terrible sound was long behind her, she thought. As were any pursuers that had dared to seek her out beyond the wall. For now, she was safe, at least from known threats.

She tarried long at the stream, washing away from her skin the blood and dirt that had not stained, cleaning out the worst of her wounds, and straining the crimson and ruddy water from her cloak and tunic. Sula wished she could wade in the refreshing waters of that ankle-deep stream longer, but when the orange glow of the sky darkened to black, she knew it would be better to be free of it. A clearing such as this, Sula thought, would make her an easy target in the moonlight. So, Sula dressed quickly and moved from the glade back into the shade of the conifers.

With the darkness came an even emptier silence. Sula could not help but to fill it with her own racing thoughts. Visions of her father flashed in her eyes, brimming them in tears. The times he had scooped her heavy body up in his arms and carried her to bed beside him. The times he would tell her tales late into the night and when he thought she had nodded off, he would try to slip away to his own bed. It always caught him by surprise when, a step from the entryway, she would call him back for just one more story. Or the other nights when even a story would not do and she made him sing her to sleep.

Never again, she caught herself thinking and then choked down the thought. No, that’s not true. The guard was mistaken. The same way he thought she was dead, was the way he thought her dad was dead. Somehow he had escaped. The person the Prince had hanged was not him, but someone evil who deserved to die instead. She would see Papa again. He would sing to her again.

Even as Sula thought these things, she did not believe them. The silence around her only fueled her doubts. So, she broke it. Taking up the tune she had imagined her papa singing her to sleep, Sula whistled out the melody of “Nothing Better in the World.” Of course, the poor cub knew the words and how they praised the greatness of Argonia and her King and her Goddess, but Sula could not bring herself to sing them. In fact, she tried her best to push them out of her mind.