We ran away from the cottage as long as we could, eventually slowing down to a trot and then just a quick walk. I kept looking back at the sky wherever there were gaps in the pines.

  “I hope I don’t see towers of smoke back there,” I said. “I didn’t want to start a forest fire. It looks like I didn’t, so far.”

  Freydis put her hands on her hips and bent downward to catch her breath.

  “Do I owe you an apology,” she asked, “for getting taken in by her?”

  “No,” I said. “Could have happened to anyone. Would have happened to me if Collina was – so inclined. We had no chance.”

  “If we come across another, I think we need to just move away immediately,” she said. “I’m trying to think of what I could have done differently. I think it just doesn’t take her long at all to entrance one, and then it’s too late.”

  “That was the first I have ever actually met,” Caiside said. “Worse than an alkonost. With them, their targets can typically – get at least one or two moves in before the game is over, you know.”

  *

  We walked up to a point where the land dipped into a downward slope. We stood under the last of the pines. Ahead of us the trees, and the scrub below them as well, were lower, tighter. The growth was so dense that the expanse ahead of us was dark.

  We weighed our choices, still standing on a carpet of pine needles. They seemed especially familiar and inviting, now.

  “Shall we sleep here?” I asked. “One last night amid the pines before we move into – that?”

  “No,” Freydis said. “We have to go in, now. This is still too close to her, and she might come this far to look for us. She won’t pursue us into the drear, though.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me. On our walk. She doesn’t like to enter it.”

  “Even a dryad avoids it, then,” I said.

  We pushed in.

  *

  The trees were twisted, and gnarled, but it was the underbrush that made the going slow. It was overgrown and reached up higher than our heads, in many spots, and included vines with thorns. We wore our cloaks to push back the prickers, more than for warmth.

  There was no established path through the Drearwold; nothing to follow. Long stretches would pass in which the canopy completely enclosed us, so to navigate by the sun or stars we would need to wait for rare openings. Fortunately, the endless small ridges running east to west, as Miranda’s father Arran Waters had described them to us, were indeed there; or perhaps I should say unfortunately they were there, requiring us to constantly climb and then drop down. One benefit to that, though, was we knew which way north was: perpendicular to the never-ending ridges.

  “It would be very useful to know where we are, in here,” Freydis said, “so that when we come back, we can avoid this section of the woods, and Collina. But I don’t know how to do that, if there is no path.”

  “And since the pine forest looks alike no matter where you are in it,” I agreed. “On the way back we’ll have to either start right next to the river, and follow it down, or else head west far enough that we’re near the Death Crags hills, or the Gray Mount hills, and work south from there. But of course none of those Dwarves would appreciate that, and they’d be much more likely to haul us in.”

  We would climb up a little ridge, enjoy walking its level summit for about ten paces, and then let ourselves back down, over and over again. It was nearly impossible for Caiside to climb straight up the hard inclines, as Freydis and I could, so we walked oblique to the crests so as to make it a gentler rise. This made it feasible for Caiside, but she was still much slower than she had been back in the pine woods.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Between the ridges, down in the troughs, there were often large puddles. All of our boots became soaked, gradually. The stagnant water, when disturbed, smelled of decay.

  It was getting late in the day, by now, so we did not climb too many ridges before we stopped on one crest and laid out our beds. There would be no fire tonight, and perhaps not for many nights.

  *

  It was the most horrible night of my life. There was no sky to see, no stars. It was nearly blindingly dark down on that forest floor. There was no breeze. The sounds we heard were all disturbing – either odd creaks and cracks, or what must have been movement through the brush nearby. Several times we heard splashes in the standing water down in the bottoms.

  We had put our bedrolls very close together, closer than we had any previous night. I was close even to Caiside, from whom I’d been keeping my distance when I slept. I thought of sleeping there alone, and I don’t believe I could possibly do it.

  And beyond all of this – the darkness, the creaks, the movements – I saw something even more disturbing.

  I had woken up constantly, that night. The one blessing about the total darkness was that there would be nothing distracting to see, in those moments, and so I was able to fall back asleep.

  Until one time.

  There may have been a crack, or a footfall in water; regardless, for whatever reason, I woke up. And I saw – on the ridge opposite us, about twenty or thirty yards away – a ghostly form. It was pale blue, in the shape of a large man.

  And it was looking at us; at me.

  The man, or his reflection, whatever this was, was dressed like a traveler, in a long cloak similar to ours. He held a walking stick. While I stared at this apparition, I began to hear something. I was slow to even notice it, because it seemed to be coming from behind me. I was absorbed by the faintly glowing man, and ignored the sound, until I realized it must have been his voice.

  You dare roam

  – I heard, barely; and then, again –

  You dare roam

  I realized that the words were coming from the apparition, although they sounded as if he were right next to me while in reality he held his ground where he was.

  You dare roam in our still wold,

  and I would not see you leave.

  Each new mourned departure will another man bereave;

  another man bereave.

  A living human countenance.

  I must demand you stay;

  I must demand you stay and hold us through the doleful day.

  The plaintive wasted day.

  To be condemned to solitude

  and the reckoning recur;

  the sentencing recur, and all the memories that were –

  the memories that were –

  aspects that the seasons blur;

  the countenance of her;

  the countenance of her, and them,

  to lose them, and be cursed again;

  To be condemned to solitude

  and the loss of them, and her,

  is what no remnant would deserve.

  What no man would deserve.

  I moved my arm out of my sleeping roll to jostle Freydis, but then the apparition faded. It dissipated slowly, but it kept fading and then disappeared. I did not sleep again, and soon the dawn, somewhere far away, brought what dim light there was back to the Drearwold.