Further and further into the Shadowed Wood they walked, drawn by some irresistible force, enveloped in the radiant gloom of that ancient place. Even Arthur seemed affected by it, his tread on the mossy ground slow and inevitable, his big eyes blinking slowly in that strange green world of towering trees and luxuriant foliage.

Gradually, Britomart became aware that the heavy silence was giving way to living sounds, as if the inhabitants of the wood were growing accustomed to their presence and welcoming them in. She heard small rustles in the underbrush, followed by the chittering of a squirrel and an answering chitter from far above. She scanned the canopy and saw a small brown body and bushy tail ducking between leaves. Occasional bird calls sounded through the perpetual twilight, sharp and sweet as bells. She tried to locate their source and spotted a small bird with a russet chest hopping along a branch far above. She saw more of the russet-chested birds as they went along. Once, when a loud caw called her attention upwards, she found a large, yellow-taloned bird watching them intently. Its eyes seemed to pierce through her. She thought of the tales of animals in the Shadowed Wood that were not animals at all, but werebeasts who could turn human at will. There had been an almost human intelligence in those black eyes.

The thought stirred something in her mind: something that had been lulled into quiescence by the primeval enchantment of the Shadowed Wood. The Shadowed Wood. Britomart came to herself with a start. “Smudge!”she said too loudly, looking up at the boy on the horse. He wore a blank, dreamy expression. Britomart winced at the loudness of her own voice, though Smudge did little more than make the mumbling sound that he made when she tried to wake him up in the morning.

“Smudge,” she said again, more quietly but no less urgently, “you need to wake up. The wood–it’s got you.”

This time, Smudge did not respond at all.

Britomart drew Arthur to a halt and reached up to take Smudge from the saddle. He was docile as a sleepwalker. She set him down before her and was glad to see that he could stand. He continued to stare off into the wood around them, his pupils dilated in a dazed awe. She gave him a light slap. He did not react. She grimaced and slapped him harder. Still no effect. She tried once more. Nothing. Only a rosy patch showing on his cheek. “Fine, I’ll find another way,” she muttered to herself–or perhaps to the wood. The gentle woodland sounds around her had stilled, and she had the feeling that the wood and all its inhabitants were bending in to watch.

Hoping that she would come across a stream before the day was out, Britomart drew out the waterskin and upended it over Smudge’s head. Smudge sprang to life, doused and sputtering.

He glared accusatorily at Britomart from under sopping hair. “What’d you have to go and do that for?”

Britomart squished him against her armor in a hug. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m right here,” said a muffled voice. “Being slowly crushed to death by armor.”

Britomart promptly released him. Smudge’s face was even more grimy than usual. Some of the bootblack that she’d used to darken her armor must have come off on him. “Sorry about that,” she said hastily. “It’s just that I tried slapping you and it didn’t work, so if dunking didn’t work, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.”

“I was perfectly fine before you half-drowned me,” Smudge grumbled. He did indeed look like a drowned kitten. An irritable one.

“Stop and think for a moment. Where are we? Where were you before I half-drowned you, if that’s what you want to call it.”

“I was in the woods,” Smudge said crossly. His voice softened and the faraway came back over his face as he went on, “The trees were as big around as the baker’s cart, and there were critters like rats, but with tails big as a man’s hand and fuzzy as a lady’s collar, and they sat on their haunches and squeaked so as you could almost understand them.”

“Which wood were you in, Smudge?”

“The Shadowed Wood,” he said dreamily. He snapped back to alertness with a look of horror. “Freyja’s tits! We’re in the Shadowed Wood. It tried to eat me!”

“It didn’t try to eat you. It just…distracted us. It can’t get us like that again. We can see it for what it really is now. ” Britomart glared around at the wood, expecting to find it revealed as a dank nest of trees and brambles. It was as beautiful as ever. There was something uncomfortable about its beauty now, though: a threatening edge that set the hairs on the back of her neck on end. The occasional rustlings in the underbrush no longer felt friendly, nor did the beady eyes of the birds staring down from the branches above.

“’Spose we’d better go on, then,” Smudge said with an attempt at bravery that did not keep the quaver out of his voice.

“I suppose we had. I had meant to gather information from the villagers before searching the Shadowed Wood, but since we’re here, I think we might be better off going onwards than going out. There’s bound to be a sign sometime. There always is.”

“I don’t see any signposts.”

“Not that sort of sign. You know, a sign. A white peacock glimpsed through the trees, or the shade of a past hero gliding ahead.”

Smudge looked at Britomart oddly. She could feel a flush creeping up her neck. “I know they’re old tales, but if old tales are true anywhere, they’re true here. Come on, we’d better mount up.”

They rode on.

The Shadowed Wood seemed to stretch endlessly before them. The shadows pooled more deeply as twilight came in earnest. The leafy canopy dulled and darkened towards black. Britomart could feel Smudge starting to slump in the saddle as the weariness of the day caught up with him. She looped an arm around him and let him drift off. They would have to make camp soon. There was no point in pushing on through the night when they did not even know where they were going.

Britomart fought back a growing sense of disappointment and foolishness. She had been so sure, so sure in some gut-deep, unarguable sort of way, that the wood would take her where she needed to go, if only because it would want to entrap her in the same way it had Alfrick. She had been so sure there would be a sign.

She turned her head sharply as she saw a stirring in the trees to her right. The occasional rustlings in the underbrush sounded bigger now. She wondered if it was just her imagination. She squinted into the thickening gloom and wished that it were still light enough to see the squirrels. Surely it was just squirrels. She thought of the image of a bear rampant on the Brun family crest. Its claws had been very large. She thought of the old tales: the Blood Witch leading Queen Boemia, bound by her oath of year-long servitude, back to her lair in the heart of the Shadowed Wood. The words echoes through her mind.

The Blood Witch walked, and the brambles parted, and the trees drew back till they formed a path. She did not look back, but the queen did follow, for her honor was strong, and her oath did bind. And from the trees came the witch’s creatures to bear their fangs and gnash their jaws. There were bears sable-dark that tore all who wandered, and wolves fierce and hungry with flame in their eyes. There were panthers pitch-black and sleek as a nightmare, and foxes as sly as a traitorous friend. There were boars with great tusks, yellowed and bloody, and snakes that twined down from the grim, ghastly trees. And worst of them all were the ones with false beauty, that lured into death those whom they charmed: the birds blue as sapphires and deer gently dappled, the hares soft and silver, the butterflies gold. And foremost among them, white as a snowdrop, with great antlers fatal, stood the fell–”

“Horse,” Smudge mumbled sleepily. “Horse with horns.”

“No, it’s supposed to be a…” Britomart’s voice drifted off as she saw what Smudge was talking about: a pure white animal watching them from amongst the trees, its antlers curving gracefully upwards as if they were tree branches themselves. “...stag. Smudge, I think we’ve got our sign.”

The stag waited for them to approach, then bounded silently into the trees. Britomart flicked the reins, and Arthur followed. Every so often, the stag paused, just at the edge of their vision, as if waiting for them to catch up. After the third time, Britomart became certain that that was exactly what it was doing. Danger prickled through her. This was exactly what she had wanted, wasn’t it? She would find Alfrick, even if it meant walking into the same trap that had claimed him. She just hoped that, unlike Alfrick, she would be able to fight her way once she found him.

They followed the stag for what felt like hours. True dark fell and then lessened as a whisper of moonlight filtered down through the canopy. The stag was a pale flash among the shadows, always just ahead, always guiding them on. Smudge began to sag against Britomart in the saddle again, his return to wakefulness fading as the hours passed. Then Britomart heard it: the rushing of water. She thought of the empty waterskin and felt a surge of gratitude towards their strange guide.

This time, the stag waited until they had come almost alongside it, so close that Britomart could see its sides moving with its breath. The tips of its antlers came up almost to Arthur’s nose. They were as sharp as the stories said. But the eyes that looked up at her were neither vicious nor magical. They were wise and patient, and just a little bit wary. Britomart bent in the saddle and reached out a hand towards it. It fled. Within moments, the stag had disappeared among the trees.

Britomart straightened in the saddle to go after it, but something stopped her as she raised the reins. Perhaps it was the sound of running water–water that they could not afford to pass up–or perhaps it was the moonlight streaming down brightly ahead, promising a break in the trees. She turned away from the direction where the stag had fled and urged Arthur towards the sound of running water instead.

The trees thinned, then stopped. They came to a wide stream. Its waters rushed black in the moonlight, a silver sheen dancing over its ripples. Grass grew tall on its banks, and moss blanketed the rocks that jutted up alongside the stream. She could not tell how deep it was in the darkness. She wondered if they would have to ford it. For now, she would have to trust that the stag had led them here for a reason, even if that reason was merely to drink and refill their depleted waterskins so that they could continue their quest in the morning.

“We’re here, scamp,” Britomart said softly, gently shaking Smudge awake. The boy rubbed grubby hands against his eye. He started to say something, but it got lost in a massive yawn. “Found Alfrick?” he repeated when the yawn was complete.

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“We found a spot to camp for the night. We’ll find Alfrick in the morning.” It wasn’t precisely a lie, she told herself. After all, it could be true.

With Smudge deposited safely on the banks, Britomart unsaddled Arthur and led him to the stream to drink before filling her cupped hands herself. The water tasted as crisp and clear as the night air. She filled her cupped hands again and again until her thirst was quenched. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Smudge had joined her and was doing the same thing. She splashed water over her face, washing away the grit of the day’s travel, and filled the waterskin. Her face tingled in the chill air as her skin dried.

Britomart and Smudge ate their meal of hardtack, cheese, and jerky in silence broken only by the rushing of the stream and the crunching sounds of trying to chew through hardtack. At last, Smudge lay back contently. Britomart brushed the crumbs from her hands and went to tether Arthur to a nearby tree. She bundled Smudge onto the bedroll and found as comfortable a position as she could beside it, her head resting on the saddlebag. By unspoken agreement, they had made no fire, and the night nipped at her as curled up on the ground. She was too tired to care.

The familiar dream took her.

Through beasts and through horrors, through beauty foul and false, the Blood Witch led her, and the queen followed close. The Blood Witch led on till the queen ached for rest; then the lair of the Blood Witch loomed up ahead.

A castle it was, built of stone black and shining, and around it a wall made of blooms red as blood. Roses they were, petals unfurling, softer than silk, more fragrant than oud. But Queen Boemia looked with her eyes wise and piercing; on the roses she looked with a heart pure and true, and she saw what they were beneath all illusions: briars with thorns sharp as daggers of steel. So she plucked no rose as the witch led her onwards, through the wall of briars to the castle door.

Open it swung at a word from the Blood Witch, a word old as the elves and dark as them too. Then the castle they entered and the queen looked around her at beautiful servants and tapestries lush. But she looked with her heart and illusions soon faded; wights were the servants, and the tapestries vines.

“Will you eat?” asked the Blood Witch. “You must surely be hungry.” And she led the queen onwards to a sumptuous hall. A feast lay before her of delicate morsels, but illusions they were, over fungi and leaves. So the queen did refuse them and went to her chamber, guided by servants who were not what they seemed.

Her chamber was spacious and its bed soft as goose down, but she saw with her heart it was crawling with moss. So she slept on the floor with her sword at the ready, lest the Blood Witch betray her in the depths of the night. The Blood Witch took heed and sent no evil against her, lest her servants take harm from Boemia’s blade.

But the Blood Witch saw not the queen’s true intention: to search for a year for the Blood Witch’s heart. For not even an Old One could work such fell magic if she did not first tear the heart from her breast: tear her heart from her breast and keep it still beating, hidden away where no person could find. As long as her heart kept up its beating, nothing could kill her, neither dagger nor fire. So Queen Boemia searched while the Blood Witch entrapped her, entrapped and entrapping, our queen true and strong.

Britomart woke to the sound of birdsong and rushing water. She blinked muzzily at the light. It had that indefinable quality of earliness, as if the sun had not entirely woken up yet. She rolled over and blinked herself further into consciousness. Her first thought was that the sound of the water was making her desperately need to pee. Her second thought was that the bedroll beside her was empty.

She scrambled to her feet, calling for Smudge. The only response was Arthur’s whicker. She frantically scanned the nearby woods for the boy, then took off at a run towards where the stream curved out of sight further up.

Her heart skipped a beat when she saw a small figure crouched near the bank ahead. She hardly had time to register the waterfall rising up beyond him before Smudge looked up at her with a scowl and a finger pressed to his lips. Britomart slowed to a walk, resisting the temptation to put her arms behind her head to catch her breath. She wasn’t about to let Smudge see how winded she was from sprinting to look for him. Instead, she put her hands on her hips as she advanced on him. His scowl wavered under hers.

“I found tracks,” he whispered loudly as soon as she got within range to hear him over the rumbling of the waterfall not far ahead. He pointed at the ground in front of him with the hopeful, slightly guilty look of someone who has realized they are in trouble and is trying to get out of it.

Britomart did not move her glare from Smudge. Neither did she bother to whisper. “You went galavanting off by yourself in the Shadowed Wood, and you didn’t see fit to tell me? Didn’t it occur to you that I might wake up to find you gone and think you had been taken? Or eaten? Or turned into a tadpole? Which would be no more than you would deserve. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

Smudge fidgeted under her gaze. “Well, you were still sleeping, see, and I thought I would just explore a little–not far, mind, just a little, and maybe I would find something, and I did. I found tracks.”

“I don’t care about tracks. I care about the fact that you disappeared without a trace and without so much as a note–”

“–can’t write. So it’s not my fault, see.”

“–and without telling me where you were going–”

“–couldn't. You were asleep.”

“–and,” Britomart concluded, as if it were a particularly grievous offense, “you chose today of all days to wake up before me.”

“It was the whooshing of the river. Woke me up needing to piss like a who–”

“–whole herd of goats,” Britomart said, finishing Smudge’s words for him. “Yes, I get the picture.” She was suddenly very aware of the fullness of her own bladder, which she had forgotten in her panic over Smudge. “I’ll, umm, just investigate the woods over there to make sure they’re safe. Stay here. If you move an inch before I get back, I’ll…” she paused as she tried to think of a dire enough punishment.

“Flay me alive?” Smudge said helpfully.

Britomart narrowed her eyes. “I’ll keep all the cheese for myself.”

“Won’t move an inch.”

Britomart came back to find Smudge exactly where she had left him.

“You said you found tracks,” she commented, having had time for that fact to sink in while doing her necessary investigations of a nearby tree. “Show me.”

It was a mark of Smudge’s contrition that he did not remark that he had tried to show her before, and she had simply not listened. He pointed to a patch of moss. “It’s scuffed. Here.”

Britomart tilted her head as she studied it. There was a scuff in the moss as if a shoe had crushed it when somebody–or something–had walked over it, slipping slightly as they went.

“And here. And here,” Smudge pointed. “Spaced like footprints. Then he must have gotten sick of slipping on the moss and moved further towards the tree, because the tracks stop.”

“Could be,” Britomart admitted.

Smudge did not seem to notice the skepticism in her voice. He triumphantly declared, “I think I know where he was going. The waterfall. I’d bet you anything that if we go closer, we’ll find his tracks again.”

Britomart followed the boy’s gaze to the waterfall. It cascaded down from a rocky ledge that jutted out over the streambed below. The ledge extended far to either side before tapering off into wooded hillside. “That’s the last place he would go, assuming there is a ‘he’ at all. There’s nowhere to go from there except up a cliff.”

Smudge shrugged. “It’s where I would go.”

“That's because you’re a tourist.”

“Am not. I’m a knight’s companion.”

Britomart’s mouth quirked. She resisted the urge to ruffle the boy’s no-doubt-lice-ridden hair. “That you are. Let’s go look at your waterfall.”

Smudge insisted that they go slowly, watching for the tracks that he was sure would be there. Britomart indulged him, in part out of relief that he was alright and in part out of lack of a better idea now that their stag guide had abandoned them. The banks grew muddy with the spray from the waterfall. The ground became slippery with moss and wet rocks where it was not slippery with mud.

Britomart grabbed Smudge by the back of his threadbare tunic just in time to keep him from slipping into the stream as he let out a cry of excitement, pointed at something ahead. and promptly lost his footing. His cry turned into an indignant squawk as he was lifted off the ground. Britomart could feel the seams of his none-too-sturdy tunic straining; she hurriedly set him down on firmer ground before it tore and deposited him in the stream.

She wasn’t looking at Smudge, though. She was looking at the tracks he had pointed to in the mud along the bank. They were undeniably footprints this time.

“Guess you were right after all, scamp.”

Smudge indignantly tugged at his tunic. “Course I was. I’ve got the instincts of a hardened criminal.”

“You’re just quoting the magistrate,” Britomart said crossly. Not that the magistrate was precisely wrong, she thought wryly. But she would make an honest citizen of Smudge yet. Whether he wanted her to or not.

The tracks took them nearly to the base of the waterfall. Three, the mud gave way to a shelf of rock, and the tracks disappeared once more. The waterfall slammed into the stream with a crash of white foam, misting water over them. Smudge backed up to avoid the spray. Britomart stood stalwartly at the rock’s edge, looking out over the spray. Water droplets trickled down her armor and found their way into the joins. It didn’t take long before she backed up too. It was hard to feel heroic while damp.

Britomart studied the slick rock shelf that stretched the remainder of the way to the cliff’s base, where it disappeared into the concavity behind the waterfall. There must have been enough room to stand behind the falls, the way the cliff curved in like that. The rock wall behind the waterfall looked almost like it had been scooped out. She wondered if there might even be a cave back there.

A cave.

She turned to Smudge with a gleam in her eye that Willa would have recognized all too well. “How slippery do you think those rocks are?”

“Slippery as a greased eel on a skelpie-limmer’s table.”

That sounded very slippery to Britomart. “I think you’d better help me out of this armor.” She had no wish to end up pinned to the streambed by forty pounds of metal.

Britomart left her armor and boots by a nearby tree with Smudge under strict instructions to keep guard over it. She felt horribly vulnerable venturing into unknown territory with nothing but a woolen tunic, chemise, and hose between her and an enemy’s weapon. She touched the sword belt around her waist for reassurance. The sword did not help as far as feminine propriety was concerned–the court ladies would have a fit if they saw how she was dressed–but it certainly made her feel better about the whole thing.

The stone was, indeed, as slippery as a greased eel. Britomart barely caught herself in time to avoid falling in when the rebounding spray hit her in the eyes as she skirted around behind the waterfall. It took her a moment to realize that she had made it. The falls thundered down in front of her in a blue-white curtain, blocking out all but the muted, wavering sunlight that managed to make its way through. The water’s roar vibrated through Britomart’s sternum. For a moment, she could only stare.

And then she turned slowly and looked behind her.

It was there: the entrance to a cave, arching just high enough for a tall person to walk upright–arching into the unknown, into the dark.

Britomart unsheathed her sword. She stepped in.