Chapter 4 The Ashwauk Woods

Roland dared not move nor even utter a sound as he eyed the edges of their blades and waited for them to initiate the encounter. An odd thought occurred to him. Did I make a request for these guys? Did I ask for help? Is this part of the magic?

One of the men finally spoke. “I am Cohasset. What is your name?”

Roland let out a deep sigh of relief at the expression of civility. “Listen, I don’t know where I am or how I got here or what,” he babbled in giddy exhaustion. “All I know is that I’m lucky to be alive, and for some reason that I may never figure out, someone’s after me. I mean, really after me. I swear I didn’t do anything to anyone, and I just want to get out of here, leave everyone alone, and go home-”

The two made no response. In the middle of Roland’s speech, they simply turned and ran into the woods. Neither offered an invitation to join him.

What got into them? What did I say? Roland could not shake a gnawing fear that something in his words or actions had seriously offended them. Or maybe not; maybe they had never intended hospitality. But then they were not threatening to kill him, either. Compared with his what he had encountered on the island, that was more than hospitable. He was not the type to force himself on anyone, but with only a river between him and the psychopath who had sworn to gut him at his leisure, he began to think that his inherent personality, or rather lack of one, was a luxury he could no longer afford. Survival demanded that he be at least a little assertive. Better to leech on to rude, mysterious men with no ax to grind than risk another lonely encounter with people who seemed obsessed with bringing his life to the worst possible conclusion.

He bolted through the woods after the two, and caught up within a few minutes. They neither slowed their pace nor took the slightest notice of his presence.

Magic powers! I keep forgetting! Maybe it had not been exactly textbook stuff but he had gotten to the other side of the rapids--a second wish fulfilled. Third time is the charm. I wish these two would stop and speak to me. As he thought the words, he instantly wanted to take them back. What if these wishes were rationed out, as so often seemed to be the case in the stories he had heard. What if he had just used his last one on something as dumb as a request for conversation?

Hours later, no one had spoken a word. Either the magic didn’t work or I’ve run out of wishes.

Roland continued to tag along after them, trying to get a handle on this magic stuff, feeling as welcome as a wood tick. Their silence was suffocating, highlighted by his clumsy snapping and crackling through leaves and twigs, he alone disturbing the sacred stillness.

He spent the rest of a long day of travel thoroughly humiliated and discouraged. Although the circumstances were alien, the feeling was familiar. Despite an entirely fresh setting, perhaps even a different time and place, his status had reverted to its customary rank, upholding the previous world's judgment of him. He commanded no respect—anywhere. That was putting the case mildly; he seemed to repel respect. He could hardly imagine what respect would feel like. Now he guessed he never would. No longer could he take refuge behind the flimsy excuse that circumstances were to blame for his status. The fact was, he could travel to the ends of the earth, even clear out of the known world, and still people would look through him as if he were not there.

But then those goons back at the river noticed me, and where did that get me? Maybe respect isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Being a nobody might not do wonders for self-esteem but at least it was safe. When swimming is shark-infested waters, the last thing you want is attention.

They finally stopped, again without a word, just as darkness settled over the forest, and made camp in a narrow, winding hollow. The one who had identified himself (weeks ago, it seemed) as Cohasset cleared away a small tangle of creeping vines and used his knife to dig a shallow depression in the dirt. There he built a fire. While his companion disappeared into the woods, he fastened a slab of meat to a two-pronged stick and waved it over what Roland viewed as a rather pathetic fire. Little flame, less smoke.

A few minutes later, however, juices were sizzling and dripping into the flames, where they produced hissing flashes of flame. While mesmerized by this sight, Roland tried to map out the day’s travels. He had always enjoyed maps; when he was younger, he had often designed elaborate charts and imagined himself following their guidance toward great adventures, perhaps even buried treasure.

His new companions (the word seemed ridiculous, but he could not think of an accurate way to describe their wisp of a relationship) had taken him through bogs and woods. They had stopped only for drinks at a cold spring or at one of the dozen or so brooks and streams that had crossed their path. By Roland’s reckoning, based on widely-spaced glimpses of the sun through the forest canopy, they had been bearing west most of the time, occasionally north. He estimated they had covered maybe 12 miles, but it could have been 6 or 20.

A wedge of hot meat plopped into his lap, interrupting his thoughts. He glanced up at Cohasset, who turned away without comment. Without hesitation, he picked up the offering and chewed on it, burning both his fingers and the roof of his mouth. While it felt good to put something in his stomach, the meat was tough, unevenly cooked, and gamey. Not to be picky, but it needs salt, too.

As he gnawed in silence, Roland grew anxious for clues as to where he was and how he might return to normality. But he had not yet figured out how to broach the subject, or any subject for that matter, with his aloof travel mates.

“How is it that you speak the Common Tongue and yet do not understand it?”

Roland at first imagined himself in a dream within a dream. He blinked at Cohasset. The orange glow of the coals danced across the man’s face as he chewed his meal. Not once had this stranger ever looked directly at Roland nor did he do so now. Nonetheless, Roland finally came to the realization that he had been addressed. He stammered, “I, I do speak. I mean, I know what you’re speaking. And I do understand it.”

Cohasset fed a single stick into a fire. “Do your people burden you with names that cause shame?”

Roland stared at him, trying to figure out where this line of questioning was headed. Roland wasn't a great name and he did not particularly care for it. But it never reached the level of shame. As for Stewart, well, he was okay with that.

“No,” he answered, tentatively.

A long silence. “Then why do you conceal yours?”

“What? How did you---what makes you think. . .” But in replaying Cohasset’s words of greeting, he began to see what had happened. “Didn’t I . . . hey, I’m sorry. I guess I was just so excited to run into someone who wasn’t trying to kill me, I wasn’t, you know, quite . . . When you asked me my name, I guess I. . . Oh man, is that why you’ve been mad at me all this time? 'Cause, like, you told me your name and I didn't tell you mine?

“We are not angry,” he said, evenly.

“But why did you, you know, turn around and start running and you never said another word?”

“You seemed intent on making a speech. Given the circumstances, it seemed a poor use of time.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Roland stammered an attempt at an apology. He blushed as he imagined the impression he was making, or rather, reinforcing, with his latest salvo of incoherence. “Look,” he said, making a supreme effort to speak calmly. “My name is Roland Stewart.” Desperate for contact with a real, flesh-and-blood human presence, he stuck out a hand and offered a pleading smile.

Cohasset broke away from the fire’s hypnotic hold and studied the outstretched fingers. “I see nothing in your hand.”

“Uh, it’s a custom where I come from, you know, to shake hands when you meet someone.

Cohasset stirred the coals with a stick so short that Roland wondered how he kept from burning his fingertips. Somehow he could poke around in a fire without releasing ashes into the air. He interrupted his efforts to allow Roland to demonstrate on his rigid, leathery hand.

“A greeting ceremony,” said Cohasset, nodding.

“I don’t know if I’d call it a ceremony,” said Roland, adopting what he hoped was a friendly tone, and hoping to God he could succeed in forming at least one lucid, complete sentence before Cohasset took him for a total ass and gave up on him. “It’s not that big a deal. Actually, we have some less formal ways of doing that.” On the spur of the moment, he demonstrated a high five.

Roland would not have sworn it, but he thought Cohasset’s eyes had acquired a twinkle in the dim firelight. “Did you practice this greeting dance upon your friends on the island?”

“Are you kidding? I never got close enough to say ‘boo’ to them before they grabbed me.” He shuddered as he recalled what he had witnessed: the fall into the river, the sword, and that horrible voice. Shaking his head to clear away the images, he focused again on Cohasset. With the stifling silence finally broken, here, at last, was at last a chance to get some answers of his own. “I don’t mean to pry or be a pest or anything, but can I ask who you are?” he asked, hugging his chest to keep warm. “I mean, I know your name but, like, what kind of people are you and where are we?”

“We call these woods Ashwauk. The Wood-That-Grows-Dark-Before-Sunset. Kinnic and I are Meshoma.”

He offered no more, as if that information should clear up all the loose ends in Roland’s life. Struggling to control his anxiety, Roland kept pushing. “So do your people rule this land or is someone else in charge? And can you tell me what year it is?”

“We do not give time a number nor land a ruler.”

“I wish you could point me to someone who does,” Roland muttered in frustration.

“You were with such people on the island.”

Would you stop bringing them up? Every time the subject arose, he was forced to replay his narrow escape at the expense of at least one of his captors. He relived the dread that it was tenderhearted Curly Red washing down the rapids. He relived the deadly, almost hypnotic threat that followed. Shivers of fear ran through his already chilled body. “Well that’s another thing. Can you tell me anything about them? What’s the deal? Are they some kind of survivalist outfit?”

“They are Topoha who dwell in the great village of Rushbrook. But they have been on the river island for many weeks. We do not know why. Meshoma are not welcome among the Topoha. Less so on the island. They guard it as if it held the treasure of their souls.”

Roland studied Cohasset’s calm, shadowed face in the flickering light. “If you’re not welcome, what were you doing there?”

Cohasset’s dark eyes danced as if the memory brought him pleasure.

“We were traveling nearby. We heard voices and sounds of dogs in pursuit of quarry and wondered at the cause of this. When we saw you, it took no wisdom to see you needed help.”

Roland brightened at the confirmation that these men had recognized and perhaps even sympathized with his plight. It was not outside the realm of possibility that they cared about him, in a sort of impersonal way. “Well, it’s a lucky thing I found that magic rope, or you would have been too late.”

Cohasset studied him curiously, then returned his gaze to the coals. “That was magic?”

“What, the rope? Hey, luck like that just doesn’t happen. Think about it; if it didn’t pop up just when it did, I’d be swinging from a tree right now, watching them do creative things with my intestines.”

“It seems a powerful coincidence. A rope happened to be exactly where you desperately needed it.”

“Well, yeah,” Roland admitted, not sure of Cohasset’s point. “I mean, what can I say? That’s the magic. I was wishing for something like a rope and boom! It just jumps out of a river. Does stuff like that happen to you, too? ‘Cause that’s where I’m at now. I figure I must have stumbled into some really heavy magic. It has to be because there is nothing else that even comes close to explaining what I’ve been through today.”

Cohasset made no answer. The silence stretched out so long that Roland feared he had given insult yet again and had blown his connection with his new friend--until he noticed looked somehow different. Again, he would not have sworn to it, but Cohasset’s eyes seemed to have acquired an even livelier twinkle in the dim firelight. Suddenly the thought struck him. “That wasn’t your rope, was it?”

The twinkle intensified.

“Oh, man, it was you!” Roland said, sheepishly. “Geez, I should have--How dense can you get?! Like a rope would jump out of a river in the middle of nowhere just when I happened to need it! Well, thank you. You saved my life.”

“You are welcome.” His meal over, he quickly extinguished the fire with handfuls of sand.

“But how did you get across the river to tie it to that tree?”

“The Meshoma have traveled this way since the days of our ancestors. The island is one of the places where their spirits linger. It is sacred ground. We would not dishonor it by building a bridge to it as the Topoha have done to the north. In the coldest winters, my people cross the frozen waters. We set ropes against the times when those who need to commune with the spirits wish to cross while the river flows. But we cannot do so now since the Topoha have taken the island and turned it into a fortress.”

“So are you enemies with the, what did you call them--Topoha?”

“We are at war with none, yet wary of many. Especially the Topoha of Rushbrook.”

“Well, I can’t thank you enough for what you did,” Roland said, a little uncomfortable at being so deeply in a stranger’s debt. “Wait a minute! What about the rope suddenly breaking at just the right time. That was after I made a wish to get across the river. Or not too long after. That was magic, wasn’t it?”

Cohasset plucked a long, flat blade of grass and held it up between both hands. A black beetle crawled along the blade. “Was it magic that those who found you on the rope lack not only skill with the bow but sense as well? One of them panicked and cut the rope.” As he said this, he bit through the grass blade near his left hand. That end of the blade fell but the beetle continued crawling.

Roland prayed it was not Curly Red or Crabford who had experienced that brain freeze of cutting the rope, although each certainly had the potential.

“Had they considered well,” continued Cohasset, “they would not have tried to stop you in that way. They would have done this.” He shook, twisted, and jerked the grass until the beetle toppled off.

“You’re very good with visual aids,” said Roland, shuddering as he pictured the long fall and sharp rocks he would have encountered. “Okay, maybe it wasn’t magic. But it could have been,” he insisted. “What if my wish was what made the guy cut the rope?

“The one who cut the rope paid for the mistake with his life. Do you wish to claim responsibility for that?”

“No, I guess not. You saw that, huh?” How many times would he have to replay the grisly thing? What is this--a nightmare within a nightmare? Is any of this real?

Suddenly, Roland was bursting with the urge to speak of the bizarre events, just to see if Cohasset had an explanation for them. I mean, if that wasn’t magic . . .

“Look, you wouldn’t care to hear a really strange story, I don’t suppose.”

“Have you the power to see the thoughts of others?”

“No, it’s just that I know you’ll think I’m crazy--”

“If you know what I think, our conversation has no purpose,” said Cohasset.

Roland winced and took a deep breath. “Here’s the deal. I was sitting in a library in another world, minding my own business, when suddenly everything explodes into flame and I find myself smack dab in the middle of this strange island.” As he said it, he could not help but feel a little important, as if the fantastic trip certified him as a celebrity. The press would fawn all over him once they got wind of his story. Maybe then people would pay attention to him.

If they believed him. If he ever got back. Neither premise seemed remotely possible at the moment.

“I understand your story."

“What?” Roland had hoped for mild tolerance at best and had been prepared for outright ridicule. He stared at the shadows in which his host was preparing for sleep. “Excuse me, but do you mean you understand what I’m saying? This sort of thing doesn’t sound strange to you?”

“As strange as if the seasons flowed backward, autumn following winter.”

“But you believe me?”

A blanket flew from out of the darkness and wrapped around Roland’s head so that he barely heard the muffled, “Yes.”

“You said ‘yes’? Really?!” cried Roland, pulling off the blanket and unfolded it. “I mean, it happened to me and I don’t believe it. Why would you, for one moment, assume such a crazy story is the truth?”

Cohasset let another long silence pass before answering. “I have seen how the Topoha guard the island. I have heard you walk in the woods. I have seen you fight against the rope. To breach the river island, you would need stealth greater than any Meshoma. It is easier to believe your story than to believe that you possess such skill.”

Oh, ha ha, thanks a lot.

Along with a prick of irritation at the insult, a pang of anxiety arose in Roland’s chest. Why is the dude putting out the fire on such a cold night?

The more time he had to reflect on his situation, the more fear took hold of him. Fear of the murderous Topoha, of course, had dominated his thoughts ever since that pucker-faced whacko had singled him out for death. But the other fear--dull and aching--flooded over him as he looked up at the stars. How had he ended up alone in this corner of the universe, fenced off from everything and everyone he knew?

He stared intently at the clusters of brilliant stars overhead. Perhaps somewhere his parents or his roommate (funny, he could not even think of his name at the moment) were looking up at the same scene. The idea of even such a flimsy link with his past conjured up a small bubble of hope.

But what if these aren’t even the same stars? For a long time Roland pondered his lonely predicament, until finally he yielded to exhaustion and sleep.