Chapter Fifteen
The three of them continued onward, stomping through the overgrowth and navigating around fallen timbers that blocked their path. Underfoot, the crunch of dry leaves and twigs grew louder in their relative silence. Once or twice, the young man who joined their party looked over his shoulder, wondering if the squawk in the distance belonged to a sparrowhawk or something more sinister. Though, no matter where he scanned, the dense forest afforded him no hint at what secrets lay within its depths.
Despite the noises, the only signs of life were the girl and wolf ahead of him and the shadows that seemed to dart from tree to tree as though following behind him, watching with bated breath. He too took a deep breath to calm his nerves. His lungs and nostrils were filled with an overly sweet scent that left a tingling sting. There was no escape in sight. How long would they travel before reaching any kind of civilization? Leuther wondered if he would make it out alive.
It was not long before the yellow beams that poked through the canopy above washed the entire forest in hues of red. Night would be upon them soon and they had found no good spot to setup camp. But soon enough, the faint sound of a rushing stream could be heard ahead. Sula charged forward as Leuther and the wolf struggled to keep pace with her. Sula pushed through the spikey brush, paying little mind to new scratches on her bloody forearms, and revealed a stream.
It was rather wide for a stream, spanning nearly thirty paces, but the bottom was shallow and the current weak. Sula’s thirst had grown so unbearable that when she reached its bank, she collapsed and slurped up its surface, not even bothering to cup it in her hands. Leuther fell beside her and submerged the entirety of his head. As for the wolf, he could have gone many more miles without a drink, but even he had begun to feel a dryness on his lips that he soon remedied with slow laps of the cool water.
After Leuther had quenched his thirst, he drew his head from the water and began to scrub the grime and mud from his arms and legs. The gunk flowed downstream past the wolf. He pulled his head away at its sour taste and snarled at the clean young man. Sula too had managed to slurp up all her stomach could handle. Feeling as though she might burst, she forced herself away from the water. Even then, as ached as it was, the cub’s belly let out a ferocious growl that drew the others’ attention.
“I am rather famished myself,” Leuther admitted. “Perhaps we could stop here for the night and find a bite to eat before we shrink away into nothing.”
Sula nodded. She believed the stream would afford them many comforts. Aside from the obvious barrier, it would serve as a kind of alarm for anything that dared approach them. But, perhaps most important was the luxury of drinking her fill when the sun rose the next morning. There was no certainty they would find a better source the following day. Though the leaves and pines of the trees were well-nourished and as green as emeralds, for people the forest might as well have been a desert. The needles did little to collect the rain and the trees took all the water they could from the muddy turf. The wanderers were lucky to find such an oasis so close to night fall.
Still, however lucky they were, if they did not find food quickly, the group would be forced to sleep on an empty stomach—as foraging in the dark would be much too dangerous—and such sleep is never restful.
So, they split into two groups. Leuther was, of course, sent off to the opposite bank alone to look for edible fungi, while Sula and the wolf were made to scour the near bank for berry bushes or fruit trees.
Leuther had only gone a little way down the bank before his search came to fruition. The scholar had learned during one of the Akademia’s lessons on herb cultivation and botany the marks of truffle clusters. First off, and luckily, most of the dirt around the riverbed was damp, the perfect kind for truffles. With those conditions, he knew he need only scan for hermit-pines, named so for their solitudinarian growing pattern, and he would have a good chance of finding those universally sought after, burgundy treasures.
Leuther knew that if there were truffles to be found, he could find them by digging into discolored spots, almost burnt brown, in the hermit-pine tree’s shade. He could make out three such trees in the distance. The first was too far from the stream to have enough moisture in its soil. As he passed the second he found none of the dark brown spotting that betrayed the fungi’s location. The third tree, however, gave him pause.
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Though there were none of the typical spots to be found in its vicinity, Leuther noticed a spattering of small, holes no bigger than a wine vase’s neck that riddled the ground before the tree. He concluded they had been dug out by a chipmouse or chiprat in search of some delicious treat. The sheer number of tunnels disheartened Leuther. He wondered whether it was even worth it to spend his time searching a field that seemed to have already been scavenged. As if to answer his doubts, a chipmouse no bigger than his thumb jumped from one of the openings, dragging behind it a dark, grooved sphere that looked almost like a fruit. But Leuther knew otherwise. The chipmouse had a truffle!
He set to work in a flash, clambering over to the tree and breaking off one of the sharper branches. Using this as his tool, the scholar moved to the hole from which the chipmouse had emerged. He stabbed his spear’s point into the soil and began to dig. He dug until he felt the stir of tendrils beneath him. He had reached the roots. As if in celebration the wind howled around him and blew the sweat from his brow before he could wipe it with his sleeve.
Setting aside his tool, Leuther dropped to his stomach and sank his arm in the hole he had dug. With one eye pressed firm against the ground he licked his lips in focused anticipation. Leuther did not have to rifle long before he felt a ridge-covered lump growing off of one of the roots. He plucked the lump from the soil and took in the sight of its burgundy flesh with a smile.
The truffle filled Leuther’s hand and had ridges almost like a pinecone or a stone. Satisfied with it, he placed his new treasure on the ground next to him. A hungry mire mink poked his brown head from a nearby hole and slunk towards the truffle, but Leuther was too quick and whacked the poor creature away without a second thought.
After the incident, the scholar decided that it might be best to keep his treasures on his person. He must have stuck his arm in fifteen times before that hole’s wares were depleted. Each truffle Leuther would rub clean and place in a pouch he made by folding over the stomach of his shirt. All said, rushing back to camp after he had finished his treasure-truffle hunting, Leuther felt more than a little smug. Truthfully, he moved so quickly hoping to parade his triumph for both his companions to see, especially Sula.
As for the girl at whom Leuther so wanted to flaunt his success, her hunt for berries did not go quite so well. Any trees or shrubbery that might once have held fruit had been stripped bare by pecking birds or nibbling beasts. No matter where Sula or the wolf looked, they could not spot even a single shriveled fruit left behind. It was as though the forest itself had plucked off its bright colored adornments in favor of barren lifelessness. Sula began to wonder if even the forest’s own seeds could not survive its creeping decay.
Sula and the wolf eventually decided to go their separate ways to cover more ground, or rather Sula decided and explained the plan and the wolf seemed to grasp it. Sula was initially hesitant with her own idea, but remembering she had already survived this cursed place alone before—and had little reason left to live anyway—she trudged on, desperate for sustenance.
Look as she might, she could find nothing. After an hour of nothing, the cub decided to give up. But as she began her sulking back to camp, a loud howl sounded nearby. She recognized its timbre and ran as fast as she could towards it, paying little mind to the bugs and little beasts she trampled over to get to its source. She did not even stop to consider that it may have been one of the forest’s tricks.
The wolf, whose white jowls were stained a light red, turned to Sula as she approached and rubbed the bush before him with his nose. In the bush were thousands of clusters of small, dot-like berries that shone red as a maiden’s lips.
“You couldn’t have waited until I got here!” Sula complained to the wolf who paid her no mind as he continued with his meal. She patted him hard on the head, cupping his ear. He could not tell whether she was truly angry with him or teasing. Her hit was just hard enough to be vindictive and just soft enough to be playful. Whichever the case, the berry-stained beast let out a pitiful whimper and tucked his tail between his legs in guilt. “Don’t worry about it,” Sula continued, not taking her eyes off the fruit. “Besides, I’m here now. I can just reach out and pluck some for myself.”
She did just that, reaching out with trembling fingers. She popped a few from their dark, stick-like stems and let their juices run down her skin. For a second she might have imagined a tingle, but she attributed it to her hunger, which had consumed her to such an extent that her extremities shook.
She drew the berries close and took in their smell, an incredibly sweet aroma. The cub wondered if they tasted as sweet as they smelled and started to plop one into her mouth. But as it reached her lips, something slapped her cheek, causing her to spit it out. The other berries in hand fell after an equally vicious blow.