Idony did not like sleeping very much.
She did not want to tell Bo or the new adults however.
It now felt that when she tried to sleep, he would be waiting for her. Like someone behind a door, or a pale face at the window tapping at the sill waiting to be noticed.
If she kept herself in that space between wakefulness and dreaming, she believed he could not find her. But she could still hear him. Muffled and distant yet close enough for her to make out the worlds that slithered between the gap.
"Where are you hiding my love?"
"Are you scared of me? Please come home, I miss you."
Sleep was trying to drag her down but she resolutely fought against its insidious grasp. She kept her eyes closed tightly and focused on something else. The sound of breathing, Bo snoring, the itchy feeling in her chest, or the shuffle of fabric.
"Argh, I need to get up! My leg... I can't feel it!" Bo's voice punctured the blackness of the near-dream and Idony sat up with a jolt. She then tried to fake a yawn and scooted away from Bo. Bo stuck out his left leg slowly, grimacing as he did so while holding his knee like it might fall off. "Sorry little sister but my leg really hurts."
"That's because you held it in a single position for too long," Rui Yifu's voice was sluggish with exhaustion, but Idony looked up to find him smiling at her. "Did we wake you up?"
"We can poke some of those needles into your leg," Tirunesh suggested from her spot.
"No, no thanks!"
Idony moved closer to Rui Yifu, who sat on the bedroll he had been pulled onto the day before with several books in his lap and three funny looking slabs of porous stone. She looked back up at his face and briefly tried to remember what he looked like when she first met him. But while her sleep-deprived mind could not conjure up much, she was certain he did not have sharp teeth or such large pupils.
"Those are all the things I can recall at the moment that speak extensively on the White Flame," Zhou Feng said, standing at the other side of Rui Yifu as though he had been there all along. Idony shrank back from him in surprise. Zhou Feng turned his head to her and gave her an apologetic smile. "Truthfully though, I never studied it much. I was a herbalist by birth, and then a doctor of the material form by studying. At most, we were warned about delving too deep into that subject."
"Understandable," Rui Yifu replied, returning his attention to one of the books in front of him. "Bo, where was it that you were told to go?" His eyes were focused on the contents of the books, flipping through the pages with scarred fingers.
"Shuang Que said it's some place called the Bone Willow Mountain," Bo answered, now rocking back and forth slightly while clutching his leg.
Zhou Feng tipped his head slightly, "there? It's not too far from this forest, relatively speaking."
Idony leaned beside Rui Yifu, who smelled like salt, and looked over the contents of the book he was looking at. The pages were a strange deep yellow color and the ink was a sickly grey color, threatening to fade from the page at any moment. The actual writing she could not understand a single lick of, but sometimes as he turned the page she noticed that the writing would suddenly change to an entirely different looking kind of writing. Rui Yifu made a 'hmm' noise. "How far, then?" Rui Yifu asked.
"If you leave the forest and continue going north, the ground will begin to turn into marshland. Keep going further north into the Marsh of Jade Corpses and by that point the mountain will be visible," Tirunesh explained, walking across the cramped room towards the tiny clay stove where she fiddled with the kettle atop it. "We rode there, once, long ago. But we ended up having to turn back. The horses did not like the terrain, and neither did those on foot to be honest."
"The Marsh of Jade Corpses sounds like an absolutely lovely place to stay, I can't wait to go," Rui Yifu muttered.
"Well, I am certain it was probably beautiful at one time," Zhou Feng offered. "When the Ancient Dynasty still stood, there were gargantuan statues of past emperors and empresses in that area, each stood near a false tomb-"
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"A what?" Bo asked.
"A false tomb, they were made to look much like a true tomb, but were in fact empty traps for any potential graverobbers. Nobody alive knows where the Ancient Dynasty's imperial families buried their dead anymore," Zhou Feng explained. "After the dynasty fell, the statues all toppled over, and the ground gave way to marshland. Once you get to that point, you can still see the statues laying in the ground. When we first saw them, I thought they were just hills."
Idony tried listening, but began to feel the itch in her chest once more. Like a scratchy shrub was rubbing against her lungs and heart. The room felt too crowded, the smell of old books, medicinal herbs, and blood was itching her nose. "Can I go outside?" She asked Rui Yifu.
"Is it safe?" Rui Yifu asked Zhou Feng.
"As long as she stays in the courtyard," he pointed to the door, "there's nothing to fear in the forest really either, but it is much easier for a child to get lost."
"Okay, I'm going now," Idony announced, turning around and walking quickly out the door and into the courtyard. The massive maple tree with its red leaves was unchanged from what she remembered and the smell of decaying leaves filled her nose. The weather itself was cool enough that she shivered lightly, but compared to the sticky warmth that had been developing in that room she much preferred the chill. She went over to the tree, balancing carefully on its massive roots to place her hands on the trunk of the tree and peer into one of the many holes that were drilled into it. Small pipes made of hollowed wood stuck out from some of the holes, slowly dripping a golden red sap into small clay pots. Curious, she poked one of the slow moving-near drops and looked at the sap on her finger. Then she licked it. It was surprisingly sweet and a more comfortable warmth spread from her mouth, to her stomach, then outwards, easing the annoying itching from earlier.
"Ah? Is that you there?" Zhou Feng called out.
Idony paused, looking back to the door. Zhou Feng was not there. Remembering the last time she followed the voice of someone familiar, she crept carefully around the tree, her eyes darting around to catch the glimpse of any monster or ghoul that would be lurking.
"Behind you."
She spun on her heel and felt her foot slip, grasping onto some low-hanging branches right as she was about to crash into the leaf litter strewn ground. Then she looked back, behind herself, and found Zhou Feng sitting at the tree.
He turned his head to her and gave her a soft smile, "I'm sorry. I did not mean to scare you."
His head extended strangely from the wood, a sliver of neck flesh remaining connected to a bare shriveled shoulder and thin ribs joined to the trunk of the tree. Only one arm was still free from the wood, the other disappeared into it and then reemerged uselessly half-way, a thin hand dangling with withered fingers. Idony stepped back carefully this time as she put space between herself and the partially entombed body.
"Don't be scared," he said, "I know this might be an unpleasant surprise, but I'm still myself."
"H-how?" She whispered. "...That stuff coming from the tree is coming from you!?"
Zhou Feng laughed, "yes! In a sense. All the trees in this forest are my children in a way, they each come from me. The sap from the tree is, in a sense, my blood."
"Why? Why are you a tree?" She asked in the same whisper-quiet voice.
"Mmm, it's a long story," he sighed, shaking his head. The tree's boughs quivered lightly. "Tirunesh sustained terrible wounds in her effort to protect me, we had moved northwards as far as we could from the site of betrayal and yet there was a limit to what any of us could do. I was poisoned, she was wounded. We were alone except for a single maple sapling. But the energy of the area was pure, and I was focused. If I could not save myself, I would save Tirunesh even if it came at the cost of myself. I saved her from death, but I gained this strange immortality through the tree. I could not move and could barely speak, and Tirunesh would not leave me. She fell upon her own sword to take the curse of the land into herself." He frowned, not with anger but with guilt and regret. "...We had a son, did you know that? Sometimes I think he would be about your age by now, but I know in fact he's likely long dead. I am a terrible father and a horrible husband."
Standing there and looking at the tree-devoured man, Idony could not help but feel like she had witnessed a confession of some sort. Perhaps not of a great secret but of something that had made Zhou Feng sad for a very long time. Idony did not know what to say and looked around for any inspiration on what she could respond with for the poor man's heart.
After a few moments that stretched on too long for the little girl to be comfortable with, she realized there were times where there really was nothing to say.
"Zhu'er?" Bo called out, "did you fall or something?"
"It seems your friends miss you," Zhou Feng said, "go to them."
Idony nodded her head, thankful for permission to leave, and went back to the open door towards the dim warm confines of the room. As she drew close she saw a shadow shift, sitting up. Then abruptly the shadow was up on its feet, revealing a pale golden haired beautiful woman with pointed ears and a gouged out eye full of crawling worms. "Everywhere I see is dust! It's dust! Make it stop!" She yelled, rushing straight towards Idony. Like the deer before an arrow, she froze in her spot as the screaming woman hurtled towards her. The strong hand of Bo latched onto her and pulled her away just in time to feel the passing breeze from the woman's speed as she ran. "MAKE IT STOP!" She shrieked again, running straight towards the entrance. "HELP ME AUERILI! MAKE IT STOP!"