Of Truth and Beasts

Out in the forest, Wynn pushed through thick brush with both hands. The farther she got from the open gulley’s strange lanterns, the darker it became. She didn’t dare take out a cold lamp crystal, for fear of being discovered, and she couldn’t call out to Shade for the same reason. There was no telling how Vreuvillä or the pack would respond to being followed.

Shade was one thing, but an interloping human was another.

Wynn clambered over a toppled tree trunk blanketed in moss and then halted. Stifling her panting, she listened for sounds ahead and glanced upward. Scant moonlight showed beyond the black silhouettes of needles and leaves.

A sharp rustle rose from somewhere nearby.

Wynn froze, wishing for that sound to come again. When it did, she stumbled on, tired, damp, and cold as she navigated by those brief sounds. That closer noise had to be Shade, and Wynn certainly didn’t wish to encounter other majay-hì instead. Even being disoriented by the night forest, she guessed they weren’t headed toward First Glade. Her direction seemed more southeast.

Droplets upon vine leaves glittered in the darkness. And then, somewhere ahead, she spotted more illumination than just errant moonlight. Quieting her breaths, she slowly advanced, worming far to the left until she gained a clearer view.

A dozen paces off, a low light exposed a clearing’s edge. That light didn’t seem to come from a torch or fire or even a lantern, as in the gulley. She’d barely taken three more careful steps when ...

Vreuvillä passed into sight within the clearing and headed straight toward a broad circle of slender aspens at the far side. The trees looked perfectly normal, if perhaps too pristine for a wild place. When Vreuvillä breached their circle, her hair began to glisten as if she’d stepped into a spring dawn. Silver streaks in her locks turned almost white, and her amber eyes sparked as she raised her face upward, for the light seemed strongest within the aspen circle.

Majay-hì hopped out of the forest to pace softly around the aspens. When one of them passed the clearing’s right side, Wynn noticed a shadow shift suddenly in the underbrush beyond it.

Shade hid there, silently watching the clearing.

Within the aspens’ circle, the priestess spread her arms low to the sides, palms forward, and spoke a stream of Elvish difficult to follow. Wynn was hard-pressed to decipher the words. In her time among the an’Cróan, she’d grown accustomed to dialects long forgotten, but this was older still.

Vreuvillä spoke again, and this time, Wynn made out the beginning of the utterance, but not the end: “Heed me, guide me, here and now ... cräjh-bana-ahâr.”

It sounded like a prayer or invocation, but seemed composed of pure root words. Wynn didn’t catch any conjugations or declinations into verbs and nouns, and the structure scrambled in her head. She struggled to translate all that she’d just heard.

I am at the end where you are at the beginning ... to speak between this moment and Existence. Heed me, guide me ... here and now ... Pain Mother.

The last of it turned Wynn cold. To what or whom had Vreuvillä called out?

A breeze began to build in the forest. Mulch on the clearing’s floor churned around the priestess’s boots. She curled her arms forward and inward, one after the other, as if pulling the air in upon herself. Fallen leaves between the aspens began rising in a column that turned around Vreuvillä.

Wynn braced against a young redwood as the forest shuddered under a growing wind. She swiped strands of hair from her eyes and stood mesmerized by what she saw. Then the back of her cloak jerked hard. The force nearly pulled her off her feet, and she twisted in panic.

Shade half crouched behind Wynn, biting down on her cloak’s hem. But an abrupt scratching, fluttering sound in Wynn’s head made everything grow dim.

Her stomach clenched as her mind filled with the sound of a thousand chattering leaves. Or was it more like swarming insect wings beating about in her skull?

The dark forest spun before Wynn’s eyes. She toppled forward, and her shoulder struck the young redwood.

—run ... run ... run—

Those memory-words erupted inside her head as Shade jerked her cloak again. But Shade’s effort only made Wynn crumple, sliding down the redwood to her knees. She barely raised her head, her fingers biting into the tree’s bark.

Amid the whirlwind in the aspen ring, Vreuvillä stared back at her.

Majay-hì wheeled and charged across the open space, but Wynn couldn’t take her eyes off the priestess. The last time she’d heard—felt—that torrent of buzzing in her head had been with Chap. This time wasn’t the same as when he spoke into her head in every language she knew. Nor was it like the memory-speak she shared with Shade.

Still, you spy upon us ... abomination!