Collina served us supper, which was a very large cauldron of vegetable soup and a giant loaf of warm bread. The soup was red, and had dandelions floating in it. It looked and tasted lovely, but I felt uncomfortable all the while – she seemed too solicitous, and it was also odd that she’d had that much food ready to serve. Freydis and Caiside, however, seemed to enjoy themselves with no second thoughts.

  Collina arranged three cots for us around an iron stove in the front room of the cottage. The place still smelled like the bread she had baked. A fire had been going in the stove, although the day had been warm. Beside the cots, on the floor, were large pillows, and cushions, and comfortable chairs. The room looked very inviting, I suppose.

  I slept well; too well, because when I woke, Freydis and Caiside were gone. Their bags were still by their cots. I stepped out onto the porch, heard and saw nothing, and then retrieved my belongings. I wasn’t afraid that Collina was going to sneak in and steal our things while we had left the cottage, but nonetheless I just wanted my bags, bow, and shovel in my possession. I walked out, and back into the garden.

  It was as beautiful in the morning as it had been the previous afternoon. Off to the sides of the clearing the tops of the pines swayed slightly. I couldn’t enjoy it much, though, alarmed as I was about Freydis and Caiside leaving without waking me up. I suppose it might not have been reasonable to expect us to spend every single moment together on this quest of several weeks, but . . . in the presence of someone like Collina who clearly might have been a magical creature, I thought it would have been better to not split up.

  I walked down the garden far enough to see that they were not back there, and then turned back toward the cottage. I passed the duck house on the way.

  I took the twisting entrance path back out into the woods. I wondered if there might be some magic to it that would conceal it from me, and leave me trapped; but there was not.

  After the tight turns I was back out into the more shaded woods, and I noticed they seemed altogether more gray, or perhaps dull, than Collina’s clearing. It wasn’t just the high trees; the clearing seemed to have its own innate glow.

  I walked around the dense expanse that hid the cottage for a short distance, but I worried that I would lose the path back and so returned to it. Once back at the clearing, I sat down on the grass near one of the smaller trees that grew in the yard. I didn’t want to accept the dryad’s hospitality any further.

  I took out one of the kobolds’ rock-hard biscuits and chewed at it while I waited. All of a sudden that tribe seemed more welcoming and comfortable, to me, than this woodswoman we had met.

  *

  It wasn’t until nearly noon that the three of them appeared again, popping out of the pathway and ambling toward me and the cottage. Collina was in the middle, speaking quietly, with Freydis at her shoulder, listening intently, and Caiside on the other side.

  I raised my hand, but the three of them walked right past me. None of them even made direct eye contact, although Collina and Freydis both seemed to look quickly in my direction the way you might toward a child; or, actually, toward a dog. And not your dog. Maybe the neighbor’s dog, which was harmless and not your concern.

  They entered the cottage. I stayed outside. I just did not feel like entering Collina’s house, any longer, and I assumed that Freydis would come out soon to acknowledge me and perhaps talk about lunch.

  She did not. I stayed where I was for some time, just watching birds dart around. The clearing was silent, apart from occasional breezes through the bordering pines. So different from home. Enkel Kanindal was not a noisy town by any means, but there were always occasional hammer blows, wood being chopped or sawed, and so on. Here, the loudest thing by far was me trying to eat the kobold food.

  I grew more and more alarmed. My raging thoughts seemed incongruous in the calm clearing.

  Eventually I gave up, rose, and went inside.

  The three of them were gathered around the iron stove, sitting on the cots. Collina had made tea for them. The teapot was on a tray atop the stove, staying warm, but there was no fourth cup.

  “Freydis, Caiside,” I said. “We should be going. The hospitality here has been – welcome, but we need to move on.”

  Caiside looked at me, and then away. Freydis turned her face in my direction but again did not make eye contact.

  “Flicker,” she said. “I don’t see the rush in leaving. I would not want to offend our host Collina.”

  The dryad – there was no denying now that that was certainly what she was – smiled at me, then, with just a sickeningly complacent look on her face.

  “You’re not going to be taking up residence out in the yard, are you?” she asked me.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Freydis,” I said, “please come out and talk to me.”

  I exited.

  No one followed me.

  *

  I continued my wait out on the lawn under the tree. I wished I had brought Marley along, then, for the company.

  An hour went by, or two. The afternoon progressed.

  Eventually I saw Freydis and Collina walk out of the cottage through a back door, and head into the garden. They walked very close together, again, and did not even glance back toward me.

  I rose and went inside. Caiside was still sitting on a cot. She was just staring vacantly out of a window.

  “Caiside,” I said. “You were right. This dryad is bewitching. But I’m not the target, obviously. You need to get out of here. You and Freydis both.”

  She lifted her hands in the air in a sort of shrug.

  “Plans change, Flicker. We travel, we meet people. Trajectories are altered. When I first walked into Wastemoor, I certainly never thought it would introduce me to someone who would eventually cause me to walk to Enkel Kanindal. But I’m better for it. Better off knowing your cousin, and Collina here.”

  She reached into her bag on the floor.

  “Here,” she said. “You may take this. I think you can read it as well as I can. Slade was drawing it for you and not me, anyway.”

  It was the map. She held it out to me.

  I took it.

  “I’ll have this for safekeeping,” I said, “but we all have to leave. You are in thrall, Caiside. That’s not like you. The Mage couldn’t imprison you for good, but now this woman may have.”

  She didn’t look up.

  *

  Back outside, under the tree, I went back and forth about what to do. Should I stay in the yard that night and sleep under the tree? Should I sleep out in the woods? Should I just leave, and continue without them?

  Just as daylight was beginning to fade, Freydis finally walked out of the house. I was relieved that she was alone, but she wasn’t carrying any of her belongings.

  She came near. Her eyes were dull. She nearly looked like someone else entirely.

  She sang:

  The longer that I stay here and I think about Slade’s hoard,

  I feel no trove can offer me an adequate reward

  for leaving this cute cottage and its dappled farm behind.

  Perhaps the offer with that map is better left declined.

  That loot won’t be escaping iron doors placed under key;

  and Slade, or Flicker, or Canute, can go as well as me.

  And why trudge through the Drearwold, when that thicket’s so well-named?

  A girl who stays here with Collina really can’t be blamed.

  I think of Enkel Kanindal: mud streets; our endless sheep.

  With days lived just to rise and work, and then work more and sleep.

  With not much more to hope for as a break from constant slog

  than criers with some old news, or another’s travelogue.

  To every day breathe in this mountain air so new with pine:

  why should I not tarry with Collina? She’s divine.

  To start a home like this from virgin woods and watch it blossom;

  to do so on your own, with no one’s help, is truly awesome.

  Everything I need’s here – stores for winter, wood for fires;

  butterflies like maypole dancers, treetop birds as choirs.

  Think of evening walks here washed with twilight’s warm patina,

  followed by a warm hearth and a night next to Collina.

  She immediately turned and walked back to the cottage, again without looking at me.

  *

  In the twilight, I walked back out into the woods. I didn’t go far, but didn’t want to sleep in the clearing. I laid out my bedroll.

  Did it really matter if Freydis stayed here? I couldn’t force her to go on the journey with me. We weren’t youths anymore; she could do whatever she wanted, of course. The quest had been my idea, my invitation. And there was always a chance she would change her mind and come after me, I told myself; but that seemed very unlikely.

  And traveling by myself would be much faster, without having to slow down for Caiside. I had the map, and my bag. In the morning I could just go.

  thrall:

  tr?l "bondman, serf, slave; person obliged to serve someone else;" from or cognate with a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse tr?ll "slave, servant," figuratively "wretch, scoundrel." '