White Hart (8 page)

I crouch down to place my hand over the embers of our fire. They are as stone cold as I expected. We have work to do.

We crouch down together, arranging the fire and creating a spark. Casimir may be a pampered prince, but he is also a quick worker who never once complains of aching knees, even when mine begin to throb. When the fire lights, I could swear a glint of something shines in his eyes. Hope, maybe?

*

O
ur first night in the forest is a tense one. Neither of us says it, but we are both afraid that the fog will return. I’m not sure we have the strength to fight it away twice in one night. Even as I lay on my bedroll, the tang of sore muscles works its way through my arms and legs. I finally manage to close my eyes and drift away, but I’m all too aware of the fact Casimir is standing watch, and I’m not sure how much I trust him to keep us safe. He has shown that he is more capable than I thought, but even the best men are taken by the Waerg Woods. I’m not sure I trust myself anymore.

I wake at intervals, and even though I’d rather it didn’t, my mind wanders back to the night my father died. Sometimes I imagine the fight in the Fallen Oak. I picture shadows attacking Father and dragging Ellen away. They are never people. Those monsters could never be people to me. My fingers grip the locket around my neck.

There are a few things that don’t add up. If the Wanderers were looking for the prince, why didn’t they follow us into the woods? Someone was watching us that night. Surely that wasn’t a coincidence. Could it be possible that the watchers and the attackers were different groups? No, that wouldn’t make sense. So why aren’t they interested in the prince? He’s the most valuable person in the realm, well, except... except for the craft-born.

Unless their motive is the craft alone. Word of Ellen’s abilities has spread far and wide. The prince coming to marry her is big news. It will be the talk of the realm, whispered about in taverns and markets from the Haedalands to Cyne, maybe even the Benothalands. Through the realm, excitable peacekeepers will toast to their health and fat future children. Ellen will be transformed into a gifted young woman with indescribable power. They will say how she can heal the sick and mend the broken. That’s why they took her. They need her for something. The thought makes me queasy. They don’t know she’s lying. Whatever they need, I’m the only one who can give it to them, but I never will, not now. Now I go to deliver them to their gods for what they’ve done to me.

“Mae! Mae!” I’m shaken awake by a rough hand. For a moment I think it’s Father, and the pain comes rushing back.

“What is it?”

Casimir pulls me to my feet. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh!”

I rub the sleep from my eyes and listen to the forest. Anta chews on grass, and Gwen lets out a snort. The wind has calmed to a gentle breeze, and it allows me to hear creatures move through the branches, I don’t know what kind of creatures, some sort of nocturnal bird perhaps, but they are far away overhead so I don’t care.

“I don’t hear anything,” I say. “Let me sleep.”

Casimir raises his eyebrows and shoots me a stern glare that I imagine his servants receive when they disobey an order. I sigh, fold my arms, and wait for this mysterious sound.

Then it comes.

At first it sounds like the wind-up toys the carpenter made children back in Halts-Walden, the kind where you twist a handle to make them dance. The clicking drifts through the trees in such a way that you cannot tell which direction the sound comes from. One moment you snap your head to the right, but then the clicks sound louder to the left. It is as though I am being circled by an enormous wooden snake.

“What
is
that?” I breathe. When the clicks speed up I notice how my skin prickles into goosebumps.

“See,” he says. “I told you there was something.”

We stand, listening, for what must be ten minutes, but whatever is out there doesn’t come any closer. Every now and then, Anta raises his nose and snorts into the night sky, his eyes rolled back, and great jets of steamy breath coming from his nose. He knows that something is wrong.

“You should get some sleep,” I say eventually. “Whatever that thing is, it’s not going to attack us.”

I sit back down on the leafy ground and lean against a rotting log. The clicks are beginning to fade into the night. They still make the hair stand up on the back of my neck, but it doesn’t seem interested in attacking us.

“Don’t you want to know?” Casimir asks. His eyes shine in the moonlight, and his fists clench at his side. There is a rigidity about his features, a combination of utter fear and compelling curiosity. He wants to explore yet is afraid of what he might find. “Don’t you want to go and see what’s out there?”

“You want to investigate the wood in the pitch black?” I reply. “Not knowing where you’re putting your feet? Not seeing what’s dangling in front of your face?”

Casimir’s body ripples in a shudder. “Well, when you put it that way...” He settles down on the bedroll and props up his head to talk to me. “But have you ever heard anything like it in your life? Whatever that was, it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t flesh and bone like you and me.

“The way it moved, the way it sounded... It was bizarre. There are so many things in this place that I don’t understand. Do you understand them, Mae? How deep have you gone into the woods?”

Give me strength. I roll my eyes. This is going to be the longest night ever. If the Waerg Woods don’t kill me, Casimir’s incessant chatter will put me into a coma. “Would you please
stop talking
?”

Casimir regards me with narrowed eyes. “Fine.” He rolls over on his side so that his back faces me.

I find no peace in the silence. The mysterious noise has made me alert to every rustle and every animal call. My eyes roam the woods, looking for the shadows between the trees. The campfire and tavern tales come to me like dreams, the stories of the leftover magic in the woods, magic that has created half-beings, not quite magical or mortal—twisted and sick creatures that lurk in wait for you, ready to consume your soul. I hadn’t truly believed the stories until we encountered the fog. I only hope that we make it to morning without being attacked.

I sit and wait for dawn. In the distance, the clicking continues. It’s so far away, it’s hardly audible. Yet it continues as though it lies in wait for us. A hunter waits for the perfect moment to strike. That’s what the creature is doing. It’s waiting for the perfect moment before it strikes us. I feel it deep down in my bones.

*

T
he first light of dawn is a welcome sight. It filters through the trees and warms everything it touches; shades of yellow and gold dance on the forest floor, mingling with the green and brown leaves, turning dull grey tree bark into glittering gold. Casimir’s sandy hair becomes tinted gold, and his skin warms from its usual pale complexion. As I sit by the fire, I find myself wondering what his eyes look like in the sunlight. I’ve seen the pale silver of them at night and the warm grey of the daytime. I’ve seen the way fire can turn them to an orange gold. I wonder what early morning sunshine turns them to. Amber? Gold-flecked grey?

He stirs, and I look away, embarrassed by my thoughts, and I busy myself with the task of creating a breakfast from our rations. We have berries and goat cheese.

“Did you sleep well?” I ask.

Casimir rolls over and assesses me with a cool expression and firm lips. His face is in shadow, and I try not to stare for too long, aware of my thoughts from a few moments ago. It wouldn’t do to get soft on the prince, not after everything. Not when I have something important to do.

“Considering I’m stuck in an evil magical forest with a surly urchin girl for company, I can’t really complain.” He takes a handful of berries and examines them.

I don’t reply for a while. The apology is there on my lips, but to utter it would feel weak. I hate that feeling. And then I leave it too long to apologise without feeling foolish, so I clear my throat. “We should leave soon. We need to keep pace with the Wanderers so that their tracks do not go stale.”

“Sure,” Casimir mumbles. He runs a hand through his hair. “Plus we should find a stream or river. I could do with a wash. So could you.” He wrinkles his nose at me.

My cheeks warm, and I move away from him, gathering our belongings from the campsite. Is he trying to get back at me? Or do I really smell? I don’t know. When he isn’t looking, I try to angle my arm so I can sniff my armpits, but I’ve lived too long without caring how I smell. How do I know if that scent is bad or not? I don’t smell any different to the forest or to Anta or Gwen. I guess I’m more like them—a wild thing—than anything else. I will never be refined or perfumed. I’m destined to always belong in the forest.

“I thought you wanted to leave?” Casimir asks.

His question jolts me from my thoughts, and I realise I’ve been leaning on Anta, gazing into the distance. I turn and pack my bedroll and some of our food into Anta’s saddlebags.

“The tracks lead this way,” I say, examining breaks in low branches and clotted earth where horse’s hooves have pulled at the ground. The boot prints and the number of horses indicate these are Wanderer tracks. Unless there is another group of people travelling through the woods, but it is unlikely, considering the reputation of the Waerg Woods. We’re lucky it hasn’t rained yet. When it does, we will lose the tracks altogether. “But we need to listen for water as we ride.”

Casimir mounts his horse and nods. “Yes, my lady.”

I climb onto Anta’s back and ignore him. He can use his sarcasm on me all he wants. I’m not rising to it.

We ride in silence. The forest seems quieter in the daytime, perhaps because we don’t listen as intently in the day, and my thoughts are distracted by tracking the Wanderers. There are bird calls up ahead. The odd rabbit flits through the trees. I should nock an arrow on my bow, but every time, I let the moment pass. Truth be told, I was never a good hunter or particularly talented with a bow. I’ve only ever caught one rabbit, and I’ve let many more go. Father always handled that side of things. I never had the stomach for it.

“Do you hunt?” Casimir asks.

“Yes,” I lie.

He nods. “I thought as much. The eminent survivor, Mae of Halts-Walden, who lives and survives with her wits and her wits alone. I tip my hat to you, my dear.” He fakes a pompous salute.

I glare at him. “Have you quite finished being a twit?”

“Have you quite finished being mean?”

“Did you even sleep last night, or did you lie awake crying over what I said? Get over it, Casimir. It won’t be the last time I tell you to shut up until my father’s murderers are dead and Ellen is safe.”

“It’s ‘your highness’ to you,” he says in a quiet voice.

I shake my head and lean forward across Anta’s neck. “Have you ever met anyone so annoying?” Anta shakes his head. “Me neither.” I stroke his coat and ears.

For all my complaining, when Casimir is quiet, my mind wanders, and that isn’t always a good thing. When Father was alive and we lived our quiet life in Halts-Walden, my mind wandered about things like food, whether we had enough to trade in the market and whether Father’s knee was getting worse. Now I worry about our water supply. Did I pack enough? The prince drinks more than I do, accustomed to servants fetching him wine whenever he feels like it, no doubt. I don’t know the woods at all—I’ve never been this far in—I don’t know where the springs and rivers are, or what they are called. The only thing I know is that different parts of the woods are like different seasons. You can travel a matter of feet and find the temperature changes from warm to freezing. The normal rules of the world do not exist in the Waerg-Woods.

Around midday, we stop and eat. I wipe the sweat from under Anta’s saddle and make sure he’s comfortable. Casimir takes good care of his horse. He never whips or spurs her like some men do. Instead, he brushes her coat and removes burrs from her mane. At least I’m not stuck in the forest with a brute.

“All right,” he says as we eat a modest lunch. “This is ridiculous now. We can’t travel without talking to each other. If I’ve been annoying, I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean those things that I said. You don’t smell bad, and you’re not an urchin.”

“Very well,” I reply, biting into a slice of bread. It’s stale.

“And what about you?” he says. “What do you say?”

I shrug and avoid his eyes.

Casimir sighs. “You don’t really have to call me ‘your highness.’ I don’t really feel like a prince anymore, not with these dirtied clothes.”

“Father always said that it didn’t matter what you looked like or what you wear. It was who you were that mattered.” The bread is stiff and has a bitter aftertaste. Although, with the way my stomach is churning, I wonder if it is all because of the bread.

“He was a smart man, then,” Casimir says. “You must miss him.”

My eyelids feel hot and pressure builds up around my nose. I get up and pack the bread away in Anta’s saddle. “It’s time to go.”

“But, I haven’t finished—”

“I said it’s time to go.”

I shouldn’t be talking that way to royalty. He’ll probably have me hung for insolence when he’s back in Cyne with the king. I shake my head. What an idiot I am. Why can’t I ever keep my tongue in check?

“Fine,” says the prince. “My, you are a surly girl, for sure.”

Back on our mounts, we head through the low-hanging trees. Now we are deeper into the woods, I do not recognise the trees. They are tall enough to be oak, but the leaves are too small and numerous, with jagged edges. If I can’t recognise the plants it will make it harder to forage for food. We might have to take some risks as our supplies dwindle.

When Casimir realises I let the rabbits pass us by, he takes my bow and arrow so he can hunt. Even though I don’t say it, I’m grateful. And despite my earlier bravado, he chooses not to tease me about my lack of hunting. Soon we have rabbit to smoke over the fire after we make camp.

The forest is quiet—almost too quiet for my liking—with a stillness that hangs over us like a storm cloud. Casimir rides ahead, the bow in his hand, waiting for more movement in the forest. It leaves me alone with my thoughts, and soon I miss his inane chatter.