Sadie paced the flagstone floor of her apartment. Clutching a mug of hot mead in her cold hands she strode past her hearth, to and fro until she felt almost dizzy.

She knew about spirits of course. She believed in spirits. She believed in an afterlife. But she had always thought of it as more… metaphorical. Less tangible. She had never actually encountered a ghost before. Never seen actual spirits. Never felt their desperate presence as they struggled to reshape themselves, as the hare had done.

Sadie shivered and took a deep gulp of the honeyed liquid, spilling a little down her front.

She needed to collect her wits. She was a better ranger than this. Meticulous. Careful. She didn’t pace. Her hands certainly didn’t shake badly enough to spill drink all down her nightshirt.

She had to think clearly. What did this mean? The image of that eerie mass of writhing colours, twisting into the shape of a hare before her eyes, illuminated from within by a pulsing light... it was something she felt would haunt her until her final days.

Sadie dropped herself into the narrow armchair by her fire, poking at the coals. The familiar warmth of gold fire was comforting after the cold, supernatural lights of the Darkwood.

Working the braids out of her long black hair, Sadie ruminated. Whatever that small pearly light was, it had wanted the hare. It had come for it. Claimed it. The hare had even wanted to follow, but had seemed… stuck somehow. Frozen to the forest floor just the way Sadie had been.

It was as though Sadie's whole being had been gripped by the forest itself, unyielding. Possessive. Sadie had not liked that feeling. Not in the least. She had never felt so small, so powerless, as feeling held utterly in place by forces unseen. By the will of an ancient and alien mind.

The hare had been caught betwixt and between, and had unformed itself to follow the intruder. That beautiful beacon so unwelcome within the Darkwood.

Blue had followed globs of gold had dripped apart from glowing green, until the hare was gone. At least, gone in spirit. Sadie had already delivered its carcass to the butchers' station. Though she considered herself less superstitious than her ilk, Sadie had been glad to be rid of it.

It was apparent to Sadie now that there was more to the living creatures she hunted than merely their tissue.

And she was determined to learn what that was.

✦✦✦

Sadie stepped into the artificers' workshop with some trepidation.

The alchemical stations were clean, well lit, littered with a colourful assortment of herbs and powders, feathers, talons, and clippings of fur.

Liquids bubbled pleasantly within bulbous glassware affixed to spiralling copper tubes. Several green-robed apprentices worked at grinding roots to a fine dust, as the bronze-robed masters tuned several instruments of bone and crystal.

Under normal circumstances, Sadie loved observing from the side benches as flowers became paste became distilled essence. It was all rhythmic and meticulous, the predictability of it soothing.

Today however, she felt as though she were stepping into uncharted territory, certain she would be laughed at. Or at the very least recommended to take a leave of absence to attend her impending insanity.

Sadie took a breath and admonished herself, approaching a stocky woman in bronze who was fiddling with several taps.

“Sister Carmine, may I have a word with you, please?” Sadie whispered. “In private, if possible?”

Sister Carmine looked up, as if startled by the presence of other people in the room. “Hm? A word? Oh, yes of course, of course, I’ll be but a moment,” Carmine said, whipping her blonde braid as she returned to her taps. Sadie waited on a nearby bench for half an hour until Sister Carmine was finished.

“There, all done, my dear, thank you for waiting a few moments,” Sister Carmine trilled, beckoning Sadie to follow her through an arch into a smaller adjoining workspace. Sadie smiled to herself as she closed the door behind them. Alchemists never seemed quite aware of the passage of time.

Unsure of how to start tactfully, Sadie simply got right to the point. “Sister, what do you know about spirits? Specifically, spirits within the heart of the Darkwood?”

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Sister Carmine pursed her lips into a small 'o', before she bustled over to a bookshelf by the window and rifled through a stack of leather-bound codices.

“Sister James came to me a few months ago with a proposal—oh where did I put that thing—claiming that the Darkwood was filling with the ghosts of wee little beasties. Here—” Sister Carmine handed a heavy book to Sadie as she continued looking. “He wanted to study the nature of the phenomenon.”

“What did he find?” Sadie breathed, utterly relieved she wasn’t the only one to encounter these creatures.

“Oh, I denied his proposal, of course. Far too dangerous, what with the ferrifae, and of course, the living beasties—“

“Ferrifae..?” Sadie cracked the codex open, skimming her eyes over the neat script of Sister James’ proposed expedition into the heart of the Darkwood.

…would require twelve alchemists, and at least three senior rangers to ensure protection… I suspect alchemical uses for the remaining essences of animals, raw spirit formed at the nexus of soul and sinew… wish to capture the essences and study the potential…

“You know, the ferrifae, the keepers and claimers of spirit… honestly what do they teach you rangers over at the academy?”

“You mean, like the guardians of the ancient texts?”

“Oh, no no, those are something else entirely,” Sister Carmine sighed. “Here, take this one, too.” Sadie grunted as Sister Carmine slammed another book atop the one she was already carrying, awkwardly balancing them as she sat in a nearby chair.

“Is it possible, do you think? To do what Sister James proposed? Collect the spirit essences, study them?”

“Oh, yes, entirely feasible, I think.”

“Then, we must!” Sadie exclaimed, as she opened the second book at a random page.

…the siren calling beckons home those wayward spirits towards the deep caverns… rarely will they surface as they belong not to this world of living tissue, but to the under realms of spirit and wild magics… dangerous to living beings for they do not distinguish between incarnate and discarnate souls…

Sister Carmine tapped at the book Sadie was thumbing through. “This will catch you up to speed on the ferrifae. I’ve told Hildegard time and time again that you rangers need to know about the deep forests, but no, that’s need-to-know for only the most experienced and senior rangers because certainly no mid-ranking ranger could ever wander too deep by accident.” Sister Carmine gave Sadie a pointed look, as Sadie pursed her lips sheepishly.

“I was tracking a hare.”

“Mhmm.”

“I might have let it range further than was strictly necessary…”

“Hmmm?”

Sadie sighed. “I didn’t want to frighten it. I was tracking it from a distance to minimise the creature’s distress until I could land a clear shot through the spinal stem. Just because we need to hunt these beasts, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make an effort to consider their stress. Besides, the pelts are more viable, and the meat—”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” Sister Carmine smiled. “You’re a hunter with a bleeding heart and near to perfect preservation rates.”

Sadie huffed at the condescension but didn’t argue. She knew her fellow rangers humoured her somewhat unique approach to hunting, which took longer than most others were willing to spend for the admittedly small gains in pelt quality. Though, she had never realised she was building something of a reputation for it.

“Anyway, the hare went deep, so I followed,” Sadie continued, tracing her fingers across the page of the book in her hands. “I caught it. But then… as I lifted the carcass, the spirits sort of… fell away from the body. Then a shining thing of light and mist, maybe the size of a large pearl—”

“You encountered an actual ferrifae?” Sister Carmine gasped, clutching her chest. “Holy grief, child, you could have died!”

Sadie grimaced. She had suspected she had been in danger, but hearing it from Sister Carmine was unnerving.

“I couldn’t move… It’s like the Darkwood had a grip on me. The hare spirit… it was sort of… pulled apart? The spirits were almost dissected away in pieces…” Sadie shook her head, as Sister Carmine stood silent and wide-eyed.

“I thought you’d call me crazy,” Sadie laughed, a little chaotically.

“You’d be crazy if you went back,” Sister Carmine said, staring up at Sadie with uncharacteristic seriousness. Sadie simply nodded as the silence lengthened. “May I borrow these?”

“Pfah!”

✦✦✦

Sadie spent the next week pouring over the borrowed books. Sister James believed it would be possible to contain spirit essences within specially treated vials of quartz. His proposed hypothesis was quite detailed, for which Sadie was grateful as she had been unable to speak with him directly. Away in Starwood on placement exchange, according to the Master of Rosters.

The book on ferrifae offered less clarity. It would contain passages written with complex scientific lexicon, before abruptly switching to a style better suited to a work of scripture. It left Sadie frustrated and with more questions than answers.

As best she could glean from the book, the ferrifae weren't malicious... though they were dangerous. The most useful piece of information in the book was a footnote so small Sadie almost missed it, telling of a strange flower with yellow-gold petals and blue edging, growing only in the deepest recesses of the Darkwood. If properly utilised, it was said to ward away the ferrifae.

It took another week for Sadie to obtain two dozen quartz vials, hypothetically suitable for the containment of spirits. She examined them as she sipped tea by her window.

The window was narrow with old shutters that let in the cold, but she was one of the lucky few resident rangers with an uninterrupted view over the western horizon.

Beyond the sprawling lanterns of Grimwood Village lay the Ring Road, its purple quartz glittering in the light of the sinking sun. Beyond the Ring Road lay the Darkwood, a pocket of dense forest otherwise engulfed by the wider Faewood.

Sadie watched the crescent moon rise over the dark haze of the distant forest, lulled almost to sleep by the comforting thunder of the Great Fall echoing from the stone cliffs to the south.

Sadie sighed as she finished her tea, basking in her coveted view a few moments longer before climbing into bed.

Tomorrow, Sadie would venture into the heart of the Darkwood seeking spirits she might collect before the ferrifae got to them... or to her.