The Wild (16 page)

Brushing off the seat of his pants, holding his right hand over a gash on his left biceps, he rose to his feet and saw that the trees had shifted again. They were still gathered close, but now a single path lay open to him, free of roots or stones or trees, as though the trail had been cleared specifically for his use.

He knew very little about these woods, but it seemed clear that Lesya's was not the only magic at work here. That sense of menace surrounded him like invisible smoke, and he began to feel claustrophobic. He had lost track of which direction might be east, but it no longer mattered. The forest had thwarted him. Only one path remained.

If he had any hope of returning to Lesya, or ever finding civilization again, he knew he had no choice but to follow.

J
ACK FOUND THE ENERGY
to run. It reminded him of his flight through the forest from the Wendigo, but this threat was more sinister and less known. It hid in the shadows beneath trees, under last year's leaf cover on the forest floor, and behind every trunk. Even when he sensed that the threat was now far behind him, still he ran. He did not once look back. He tried to reason that this was merely because he needed to look ahead, to make sure he did not run into a dip in the ground or the cruelly sharp stake of a snapped tree limb. But the truth was, he was scared of what he would see.

He hoped that he was going in the direction of the cabin, but his usual good sense of direction was blurred and confused. Those trees had aimed him a certain way; but once away from their influence, he changed his route, cutting
through a shallow ravine worn by a long-ago stream, then left again, passing a series of five fallen trees tangled like dead lovers. He was confusing himself, but he hoped that he confused whatever had been stalking him more.

And then somewhere to his right, Jack heard singing. It was the strangest, sweetest voice he had ever heard, and haunting at the same time. He thought of wind whistling through hollowed bones. His blood ran cool, yet the voice held no threat.

He found himself walking toward it, unable to avoid its allure.
The other way!
he thought.
I should be going the other way!
But the voice drew him on, and it was the words that gave him some comfort, at least. He did not understand them, but they were a language that he had heard Lesya muttering in her sleep. He pushed through a growth of low trees, closing his eyes as one thin branch scraped across his cheek.

Reaching the edge of a clearing, he saw Lesya. He paused, standing still within shadows beneath the trees, and tried to understand what she was doing. To begin with, his mind could not comprehend, and one word whispered inside him:
magic magic magic….

Lesya was the center of everything. She stood in the middle of the clearing, arms by her side and head tilted slightly as though listening, and she was as beautiful as he
had ever seen her. It was her voice that filled the air. He could not see her face—she was looking away from him—but he knew that while she sang, she smiled.

Jack had heard of snake charmers, though he had never seen the act performed. He'd once seen a man beguile a bull to do his bidding, and Jack himself had learned the subtle art of guiding a dog's attention. But he had never in his wildest dreams imagined this.

Lesya had the forest in her thrall. All around her, flower blossoms seemed to face her way, and branches seemed to sway with the rhythm of her words. Around her feet, grasses swished, and some daring shoots snaked across the ground to her legs, curling up around her limbs, across her waist, and higher. She looked down at the shoots and they drew back, but slowly.

Her song changed slightly, and shadows flitted around the clearing. Jack could not quite work out what they were—animals, he thought, though they moved just too fast for him to focus on them. He would track one shape, see it disappear just when he thought he had it centered, and then another would tease the extremes of his vision. He blinked hard a few times and looked again, but the shapes were still only that—suggestions of creatures.

He could smell them and hear them, and perhaps they were as amazed at Lesya as he.

Jack frowned, thinking back to moments before when the forest had been closing in on him, crushing him, herding him in a particular direction…but this was nothing like that. There was no malevolence here, only reverence for whatever Lesya held within her.
That was something else
, Jack thought, and he looked back over his shoulder into the motionless forest behind him.

When he turned back to the clearing, he saw, past Lesya and in the shadows of the facing trees, something gray.

“Oh!” Jack cried out, because he thought it was a wolf.

Lesya turned around. Her singing stopped. The forest became only a forest again; movement ceased, shapes stilled into shadows, and growth and decline followed their own imperceptible timescale once more. The gray shape vanished.

And for the space of a heartbeat, Lesya's face looked blank and hard.

“There's something in the forest,” Jack said, because he had no idea how to even begin asking about what she had been doing.

Lesya walked to Jack, touched his face, and looked over his shoulder into the forest behind him. She sighed.

“Come with me,” she said. “It's time I told you some things.”

“About you? About the forest trying to kill me?”

Did Lesya smile? Jack wasn't sure, but if she did, it was an expression he did not like. He had never seen a hint of mockery in her eyes until now.

“If he wanted to kill, he would have killed,” she said. “I need to tell you about my father.” She headed across the clearing without once glancing back, and Jack could only follow.

 

As they walked, Lesya talked. Jack listened in amazement, but also with some relief. Incredible though what she told him was, at least it went
some
way toward explaining what had been happening to him these last few weeks.
Magic
, he thought again, but it was something much older than that.

“My father is Leshii, an ancient Forest Lord, and he has lived in these forests for three hundred years. He came in the minds and hearts of Russian explorers, and he had a comfortable home here until the land slowly killed them. Hunger, the cold, violence, the local tribes—within three years of coming here, the explorers were all dead. But my father remained, because he had found a paradise. He claimed these forests as his own, protecting them, nurturing, enjoying places where the touch of man was rare.”

Lesya and Jack paused by a stream, and she jumped across to the opposite bank. He went to follow…and paused.

“It's too far,” he said, trying to picture just how she had leaped. He frowned, because the memory was hazy.

Lesya smiled across at him, then pointed down. “There are three stepping stones for you to use,” she said, and Jack started across. Even before he had reached her, Lesya was talking again.

“So far from home, my father was weak. The tribes here did not know him by the right name; their belief in other spirits, and their denial of him, was weakening him year by year. Summer would come, and he would dry out to almost nothing. And then winter, and darkness, and he would grow strong again in the haunted minds of men and women. He disliked preying on their fears, but that was his only way to grow. And he paid them back by protecting their herds, and warning them when harsh winters were closing in.”

“So it was he who tried to kill me?” Jack asked. He had seen magic and witnessed things that he could barely believe, but he was still far away from believing this. Yet the question did not feel foolish, and Lesya's answer was sobering.

“My father is mad, now, after so long here,” she said without turning to look at him. “And I sense that with you and me, he is jealous. It's only lucky that he is so weakened by time and disbelief.”

“So if I believe, will it strengthen him?”

Lesya stopped then and turned to him, her face grim. Yet her eyes still sparkled.
I could love her
, he thought unexpectedly, and he held his breath, waiting for the trees to close in and crush the love from him.

“You must let me worry about my father,” she said. She came close, touching Jack's face and looking at her bloodied fingertip. “I'll protect you.”

“And you?” Jack asked. “What about you? If he's your father, then…?” He frowned, shook his head.
What does that make you?
he thought, but he did not say that. She was too beautiful to question.

“I had a human mother,” she said. “A long time ago, when Father was still strong and could appear as a man, he met an Indian woman lost in the hills, took her in, cared for her. He knew that the time would come when their disbelief wore him down, and perhaps he thought that taking a human wife would avert that.” She shrugged. “She died giving birth to me.”

“I'm sorry,” Jack said, and Lesya smiled sadly.

She turned and headed away again, and minutes later they emerged into the cabin clearing.

For a second, Jack felt dizzy. He leaned against a tree and looked past Lesya at the cabin.
This is all too much
, he thought.
Living buildings, forest gods, and Lesya…Lesya, my
love, what was she doing back there in the clearing?
He feared her then, and realized that part of his confusion always had been fear. She was something he could never understand completely, and her beauty—and, perhaps, the idea that they could love—was clouding his mind.

“Of
any
human, it's you who can understand,” Lesya said, as if in response to his thoughts. “There are so many wonders!”

She fell to her knees, leaned forward, and placed her hands on the earth, smiling up at Jack.

He blinked.

And then Lesya was an arctic fox, loping across the clearing and disappearing behind the cabin.

“Lesya?” he said, looking around for her, unable to believe what he had seen. His acceptance of a touch of magic was being challenged every moment by things even more unbelievable.

A caribou emerged from behind the cabin, trotting across to Jack, dodging the many bright flower beds dotted around the clearing. It paused before him and snorted, smelling of cinnamon and the wild. He blinked…

…and Lesya was there again. She was breathing hard, as if she had been running. Her simple dress still sprouted fur in several places. Every inch of her smile included him, and was
for
him. He closed his eyes, but that could not shut
out such terrifying wonders.

He closed his eyes, but that could not shut out such terrifying wonders.

“Jack, there's nothing to be afraid of,” she said.

Jack opened his eyes again, and it was still Lesya standing before him, the incredible, beautiful woman who he knew it would be so easy to love. “Really?” he asked, because he could not help doubting.

“Really.” She came forward, her exotic, mysterious smell carried with her, and kissed him softly on the lips.

I believe you
, he tried to say, but he could not speak. She had taken his breath away.

She led him back to the cabin and inside, making him lie on the bed while she treated his many cuts and abrasions.

“I lost your book,” he said, realizing that he had dropped the Dumas novel during his flight through the forest.

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “I've read it many times.”

“Where did you—?” Jack began, but she placed her fingers across his lips as she had that first time.

“Hush, Jack. Lie back, be still, and let me tend these wounds. My father has many ways and wiles. He did not trap you this time, but where his spirit wanders, he controls those places completely. The largest tree to the smallest creature. I have to make sure he didn't plant infection in you.”

“Infection?”

“Fungal spores, fly larvae, poisonous plant extracts,
rancid fluids from dead things…the forest is full of dangers.” She smiled slightly, softly, as if thinking some private thought.

“I can wash…,” he began, but trailed off. She was using a soft, damp cloth soaked in some thick, warm fluid, and wherever she touched his skin, it tingled and warmed. It was a pleasant experience, and it felt cleansing. Even his cuts did not hurt so much when she touched them.

So he closed his eyes and let her clean his wounds, using the opportunity to think about everything that had happened. The thoughts swirled through his mind, different images flashing in and out, and there were so many wonders that it was impossible to focus on one thing. The terror he had felt surrounded by those trees, the blind panic that had led him to begin climbing, the rustling and whispering that had sounded so much like the forest conspiring to kill…all these were countered by the wonders he had seen in that clearing, and the things Lesya had told him. As amazing and unbelievable as her story had been, it was really the only explanation of what was happening to him that he could accept.

“What were you doing in the clearing?” he asked.

“Communing with the forest. I have many of my father's talents, and as a half human I also have needs.”

“Needs?”

“This cabin, the garden. My father does not eat, but I must.”

“I saw you…the fox. The caribou.”

“Another gift from Leshii. He can imitate the images of wild animals and plants. But I'm flesh and blood, as well as spirit and breeze, and so I am able to transform, to become them.”

“It sounds incredible.”

“It's very lonely.” She looked away and sighed, as if sorry she had gone so far.

I'm here
, Jack wanted to say, but he could not. How could he really comfort a creature like Lesya? She looked so human, yet she was something far different, and however alluring her person, however beautiful her smile, she was not a woman.
What are you?
he wanted to ask, but again, he could not say that out loud. He had no wish to hurt her feelings.