Chapter Thirteen

Sula awoke around midmorning. A scattered ray of light off the sun’s gleaming chariot poked through the thicket and shone into the cub’s drowsy eyes. Though the wolf had been awake for many hours, or perhaps the whole night, he did not dare stir. He knew Sula needed her rest and would not have roused her for the world. Nor would he have been able to even if he tried biting her awake, for that night’s sleep was the deepest slumber Sula had ever experienced.

If the little girl knew that in the days and years to come she would not sleep more than three hours without shaking herself awake from endless nightmares, she might have rolled back onto her side and pulled her companion close to her chest to try to steal away another hour or two. But Sula did not know. Instead in a bit of a panic, she decided she had already slept in too late. Too late for what, she did not know, but too late nonetheless.

As a result of her heavy sleep, Sula was slow to rise. When she finally managed to, her grogginess pinched her legs to the turf. The wolf, realizing the girl had finally stirred, stepped out of her grasp and stretched its back. Abandoned of the dry warmth of the wolf’s pelt, Sula became aware of a layer of wet dew atop her grassy bed. Its chill jolted her. If she did not stand quickly, Sula thought, the dew would soak her cloak and tunic, leaving her wet all day and likely chaffed all night. So, wiping the last bit of sleep from her eyes, Sula stood to start the day. After a deep yawn she and the wolf plunged into the brush, guessing on which way to go.

The forest, which appeared wholly different in the morning sunlight, lost the supernatural viciousness that had nearly consumed Sula the night before. Now the trees stood tall and straight encircled in their beautiful branches of green, purple, and red pin-leaves. The grassy patches that lined the paths between the trees were much wider than Sula had imagined in the dark and had a silver luster that reminded her of glittering scales of talonfish darting this way and that way across a stream. Ruddy brownstones rose up here and there about the path and seemed to make up most of the forest in the areas it sloped. Through the trees, Sula could make out the familiar signs of life. Tweeting birds whizzed from tree to sky in great flocks, flooding the sky with their brilliant burgundy feathers. Branches rustled from the movements of prancing hare and cautious hind.

Yet the silence of the previous night remained. No matter how loud the singing of the forest thrushes or the shifting of the winds through the trees or the thudding of rockfalls or the howling of her wolf-companion, the silence hung over her. Or, rather, it hung beside her—inside her. Like her shadow. It moved in line with her and distorted the world around her so that all was left hazy and discolored.

The silence was at its worst when Sula found herself thinking of her papa and the Goddess. But mostly her papa, of whom she could not help but think. He must be alive, she told herself. The guard was wrong about me, so he must be wrong about Papa, too. But try as she might her brain could not convince her heart. With every protestation, the silence grew.

Sula decided to push these thoughts from her head. For a time, she had mild success focusing entirely on what was in her view. There, she thought, are clustered three evergreen mushrooms. You can eat those ones. That is a battalion caterpillar, they are hunted by armored beetles, though they often form units to fight them off and will occasionally feast on any they defeat in battle. This tree with the yellow bark and red buds is a monk’s tree. They are known for their smokey smell.

But this was only effective for so long, because with each observation she had to choke back a memory of her father. Papa had loved evergreen mushrooms in his venison stew. I remember when I used snowcap mushrooms instead and his cheeks puffed up a bright pink. It took me three hours to make a salve that could bring down the swelling.

Papa used to find battalion caterpillars while he worked the fields and bring them home for me at the end of the day. They made green cocoons in the hut that looked almost like goblin pea pods and did not hatch for a whole moon. When they did the caterpillar had died and reincarnated into something much more beautiful, but Papa said it would not be right for us to keep something as pure and free as those fairyflies inside and he made me set them loose.

I remember when I once fell from the highest branch of the monk’s tree near the house. Of course, Papa had been there to catch me. Splayed out against the ground, I laughed. He laughed too. After that day he always winced when he raised his arm above his head.

These thoughts and many like them haunted Sula worse than the terrors of the night prior. She would have much preferred the twisted, encroaching darkness to the surreal possibility that she would never see her papa again.

There was some consolation in that she no longer felt as alone as she had the night before. The wolf was good company. He did not talk much which might have been a decent distraction, but he was willing to endure her hugs and pets. In fact, he looked forward to these going so far as to rub against her leg as she walked. Sula nearly tripped over him more than once.

Perhaps the best part of her companion was his kind eyes. He never looked at her with anger or judgement when she broke into random fits or when she seemed to fall away from herself entirely and stared blankly at her feet. That is not to say his eyes were the empty eyes of a dullard. Quite the contrary, they brimmed with compassion. Sula could see the care in his sidewise glances and they brought her a comfort she might not have lived, or might not have wanted to live, without.

Through the trees they walked, each trying to match the other’s pace and for the most part succeeding. Sure, Sula sometimes fell behind, lost along some pathway of though, caught pondering the shape of a particular tree and how it reminded her of the life to which she could not return. At those times the wolf would patiently wait until she broke free of her trance and caught up to him.

It was during one of these stupors that Sula, having paused at a brownstone formation with cracks and ridges that looked almost like a verse spelled out in knots, heard a shaking of branches just beyond the narrow path. This was not the typical rustle of chipmice or the slithering of a green-horned salamander. There was a desperation in its thrashing that Sula recognized.

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As if to confirm her suspicions, there was a faint cry of “Help! Whoever is there, help me, please!”

Instinctively, Sula darted into the brush, but after clearing the low branches, she took pause. There was something about the voice, something about a desperate voice in the forest that made her wonder if it were not some fay’s trick or a guard’s ambush. However, her curiosity had grown too hungry to sate without moving forward to discover the owner. So, rather than rush forward, Sula moved slowly and cautiously, but with feigned composure.

“You there!” the voice called out before she managed to locate the source. “Would you mind helping me down from here?”

The voice beckoned her eyes up, into the branches above. There, Sula found a young man, hanging upside down inside a prison of tightly knotted bramble. He could not have been any older than twenty-five, she thought. He had a slender face with the pale skin she had often associated with priests of the Water Goddess or nobility. Those Argonians who did not need to tend their own fields.

He might have been tall and thin, but the way that he was woven into the vines, such things were impossible for Sula to tell. His thick, black hair flapped against his forehead as he swayed back and forth in his suspended trap.

The young man held out his right arm in front of him. It was his only free limb in Sula’s reach. Dangling beside his arm from his neck, was a black-steel chain. A pendant of some kind was attached to it. Not recognizing the symbol, Sula could not help but gawk at it with covetous eyes. It was a circle of some kind with spokes in the center. As it twirled through the air, it left an afterimage of a ball. Mesmerized by the display, Sula counted eight radial lines expanding to the outer circle like the spokes on a wheel.

Without thinking, Sula reached for the necklace, but stopped herself. It was too late, she had stepped out from the branches and revealed herself to the stranger. His dark eyes lit up at her out-of-sorts appearance. She must have looked quite the sight. Tangled within her hair was mud and twigs from her trounce through the trees. The scoring of the branches and needles had left streaks of blood across her cheeks, not to mention the bruises and cuts that covered the rest of her skin. Even her cloak was not spared red as the horse’s blood that had drenched it just one day earlier now clung to it like dried clay. In every way she looked wild.

“Oh, what rotten luck!” the young man lamented. “Please, if you, honorable spirit, are a Hyleid, spare me. I did not mean to pluck this forbidden fruit from your sacred grove, it’s just… Aw, who am I kidding. You already know the truth. I wanted to try it. Perhaps make a wine of it. I do apologize.”

Sula stared at him blankly. She know only vaguely of what a Hyleid was, but she had no idea why one might be mad that he wanted a fruit. He marked the confusion on her face and a wave of relief washed over him. She could see the tension uncoil in him from his toes to his shoulders.

“You are not a protector of this forest, are you?” he said with a smile. “I apologize for the mistake. I have been hanging here so long the blood has started rushing to my head, making me see things.” Sula eyed him without answer. After going on and on for a while longer without a word from the girl, he sighed. “Are you even listening? Here, if you help me down from here, I will share the fruits of my labor.”

The young man reached out his arm and revealed a round, golden fruit. But it did not draw the girl’s interest in the same way that his pendant did.

“Get it, fruits of my labor,” the young man pressed, clearly disappointed his joke had not so much as drawn her eye. “Ah, forget it… A little help would be appreciated though.”

Sula thought this the perfect opportunity to sate her curiosity. “I suppose I could help you,” she hedged. His ears perked up. His wide eyes begged her to finish her request. “But only if you give me your necklace in return.”

“Necklace?” he wondered then noticed the pendant dangling down his nose. If Sula had had a better look at the funny fellow, she might have noticed his cheeks drain to an even paler white. But he was looking down into his chest, so she did not catch a glance before they relighted with an idea. “Oh, I had nearly forgotten about it entirely. It’s such an inconsequential thing. I don’t think it would be of much value to you, I am afraid.”

“And why is that?” she huffed at his polite refusal.

“It is just that… Well, it belonged to my father and his father before him and is really only important to me. A product of a bygone era.”

The cub’s eyes glowed fierce at the dangling man and he lost his resolve. He turned away. With his free arm he tucked the pendant back into his shirt, but to no avail, for gravity pulled it back down his chin.

“Those are my terms,” Sula said. “Good luck getting out on your own. By the looks of the knots around your wrist and ankles, all your struggles have only wound up with you even more stuck.”

“‘Wound up…’ That is one way to put it,” he chuckled to himself. Then, remembering his desperate situation, he pleaded with the girl. “Please, ask of me anything else. The chain is my last memento of them. Let me keep it.”

“Fine, keep the chain, I will take the pendant.”

“That’s not fair!” he launched. “Besides, the way you speak of it, you don’t even know what it is.”

“It’s not fair for you to ask me to save you with nothing to offer in return,” she feigned a frown, but knowing she was close to victory pressed on. “Then tell me what it is and maybe the knowledge will be a fair trade.”

“Fine!” he shot, struggling again with the vines on his feet. “But you must promise to save me after I tell you.” She nodded and the dangling man continued, “The pendant is a symbol of the Akademia. Do you know of the Akademia?”

“Only a little,” Sula admitted. “Papa used to talk about it. On the days I listened to his teachings well, he used to say I would be a wonderful student there. On the other days he used to say that I must have got his brains.”

“That’s more than enough,” the man continued. “My father and my grandfather were both students there. As was I up until recently, but that is beside the point. In my grandfather’s time, this used to be the icon of the Akademia. At entrance they would give you an empty one with no spokes. Once you graduated, they would give you this one. It means ingenuity and dedication. These days though the thing’s worth no more than the black-iron it was made from. No, it’s not even worth that.”

Sula eyed the young man, trying to gauge whether he was a truthful person or not. His explanation had seemed truthful, but for some reason she found that the flame of her curiosity had not been quenched. Was there more to the pendant? She decided that without the young man, she would never know.

“I gave you my word,” Sula said with a disappointed sigh. “And I can’t bring myself to steal someone’s family keepsake… Alright, hold still while I get you down.”