Chapter I

A man stood at the edge of a depression in a valley. The sun beamed down from its highest seat and he contemplated his next move. He could make it to the other side in time for nightfall, but the fog that had gathered inside made it impossible to see. He remembered the valley from years ago, if he stuck to the game trail with the slope on his right side, he could make it through without any problem.

As he descended into the fog, he left the view of sky and warmth of sun behind. He drew his fur clothing tighter to let less moisture in, but he felt it wick along the fur. Soon, his view was dominated by impenetrable grey that swallowed even the tips of the trees. Fern grew all around him and he stuck to the game trail as good as he could until something he did not remember crossed it: A brook. The trail seemed not to continue on the other side and the notch it had cut made a crossing impossible. He followed it down the slope with the intent to cross when the opportunity came.

At a shallow ford, he saw some good news: a rabbit stuck its head out of the brush of fern to take a drink. Here, he would set up a snare. Its pelt would be a good trade once he returned to the others. After he had set it up in some distance, he got up and looked around. Continuing on, he found no way back up the slope. Tall walls of dirt and roots blocked all trespass. He should have made it through the valley by now, but when he explored the other direction, he saw the ground flattening, not rising back up. Then he came across a feature he knew had not been there in that valley before: a lake.

It was surrounded by reed and his view did not reach the other side. He grew concerned. Had the rains shifted the land in just a year? Was he in the right valley? Had he missed the right trail when heading down from the path?

He walked around the lake hoping to find an outflow, but it proved too large to circumvent before the grey above started dimming. He found an elevation along the lake shore. He sat down and started to find shelter and warmth. He used his knife cut the blades of reed from the shore and assembled a soft bedding, twigs crossed above carried a roof made of reed. In some distance he assembled a fire of slimy and moist dead wood. With much trying, he managed to spark flames from old reed blades.

After this vital work done, he drank from a pottery canteen with adorning patterns on the outside and green glaze on the inside, precious and rare. He looked at the canteen, then flicked his finger at it to hear the hollow sound.

Come back safe to us. It spoke.

The fire fought fiercely against the moisture in the air. Carefully stacking wood and blowing into the fire, he managed to keep it going barely enough to boil some water and cook some of the stalks of reed. With his thin soup, meat and dried berries, he made himself a passable meal. He took his fur roll off his backpack and before he wrapped himself in, he placed a stick with a thick glob of tar next to the fire and as the tar melted, wrapped dry blades of reed around it. He knew things could come to him to rummage through his things, a quick torch could save his life.

In his dream, he wandered the mists still, happening upon a row of standing stones, with screams made of blood recorded on them, voices of those before him. He had not been the first in the valley, many had come before, and many had died, screaming names they could not remember. Then came the words of a survivor, not screamed in blood, but carved in effort and patience and all the previous stones screamed in agreement.

A carving of a blind creature, seeking to feed, seeking to live, and willing to devour everything and everyone in its path to get there. It possessed a misshapen body, abused from its original purpose to its new one.

The man stood before this carved stone and tried to take the warning to heart, but his mind was occupied elsewhere. Hazy thoughts of things he knew from his own life came to him but did not arrive, like bubbles in mud, heaving up but never breaking the surface. His strain did not ease, his path got more difficult, his knees sank into the mud of his mind. He looked around and only saw rapid impressions glued together by mist and forgotten memories. The screams of warning grew louder, the last efforts by lives snuffed, a choir of the forgotten refusing to fade. With an ever-growing urgency, they rose up against his blindness until the force was so great as to reverberate in every fibre of his mind.

He awoke in complete darkness. He heard something move. He tried to guess whether prey or predator, but a disgusting presence came along with the sound. He reached for his knife and got up into a crouching position, then reached for the tarred stick he had placed next to fire. Slowly he shoved it into the embers and a flame sprung alive.

The torch sent out its orange light but the fog rebuked it, turning into a hazy reflection to deny sight further than a few yards. A set of limbs swiped and vanished back into the unseen distance, but what the man had seen, they were long and thin, each witha  single claw at the end, stretched and elongated in greed by some blind hunger. The body of the horrid thing remained unseen, but the man knew that it was as thin and stretched as the limbs.

The man heard nothing but ever so careful steps by a dozen or more of those limbs. He gripped his knife closely and waved his torch around. He made sounds and yelled into the darkness, but the thing did not retreat. He saw wet glistening move beyond the orange haze. Then the movement stopped. A tension was building up and the man realized just in time.

He turned around and ran. The thing leapt towards him landing on the claws, digging into the moist soil but finding no food. The man ran and heard soon after scuttling and grasping behind him, shreds and chunks flew away, frons of fern cut by the scuttling limbs as if by whipping blades.

Up the hill the man ran and searched for a way out but saw not the drop in the ground. He stumbled, fell down, face first in the wet fern. He dug his fingers into the ground, shot himself forward and upwards, wanted to continue his run, but the short interruption had been enough.

The creature reached him, storming straight towards him, a round fleshy maw came into sight and opened to devour him. He swung his torch around, rammed it deep into the thing’s throat. It flinched back and squirmed but gave no sound. It reared up, shot forwards its limbs, scratching and thrashing. The claw at the end of each cut through the man’s clothing with ease, even into his flesh. He slashed his knife around, hit a few, severed one, but he knew he had to go for the body. A slimy wriggling thing, thinner than his arm, with four limbs, each spreading into four more like fingers. He slashed and thrust, the flesh of the monstrosity was cut easily, but no blood flowed out and no scream came. His grunts were the only proof that anyone was fighting in this unseen place, a man fighting a foe as silent and blind as a bush.

The cuts he inflicted showed effect while he ignored the ones he had been inflicted. He cut off limb by limb until the last was gone. The slimy wriggling thing lay motionless before him and he sunk to his knees.

In the light of his torch, he saw its fur, torn to shreds from the inside, and the head of a rabbit dangling halfway from its maw. Around the neck of the rabbit hung something he recognized: his snare.

He did not understand. He wanted to scream. But nothing came to him. What was any of this? This valley was not what he knew, this creature was not what he knew. He let himself fall backwards. Blood flowed from his wounds. He had no strength left. He closed his eyes.

The mists remained with the man in his sleep. He heard the screams of blood, screamed at him, warned him, not to look away, not to close his eyes, to never close his eyes. Then the screams fell silent, scared away by something else. The mists hid a being, like the water hides a fish as it swam closer to its prey. A thing preyed upon his sleeping mind.

Stay with us.

It spoke in a familiar voice, but as it spoke last, the memory faded and the acquaintance became a stranger.

Become hollow.

The man felt no strength to resist, no courage to look upon the ripples in the mist as the unseen thing came closer. From beyond, the place the fog was truly hiding, an appendage emerged, beset with a thousand teeth like rime upon the grass, glistening in the morning light, wrapping around his arm and digging its beautiful pain into the flesh of his mind.

The appendage tore his arm off and with a scream the man awoke. He saw his arm, not a bleeding stump but beset by the abhorrent thing, trying to swallow him whole limb by limb.

He thrust his knife in, tore the thing off, cut it to ribbons and ran off. He needed to run, needed to get away. He kept running upwards, kept hoping his torch would not fail him, kept hoping he would not fall another time.

Then a while council arose from the mist, a group of birches blocked his path. He needed to go around, but he heard something approaching. The thing was still not dead, or again dead no more. Cut to ribbons it had turned into a shapeless thing, not even a worm, but flailing as appendages. This was no creature, the man knew that now, it was flesh that refused to die.

He heard the bloody screams of the past, from the dreams through the mists they reached him and told him to turn around. He did and saw there upon the birches’ bark the eye. As if the trees themselves had grown aware of their surroundings, they saw him, witnessed him. They knew he was alive.

The horrid monster finally reached him. “YOU ARE DEAD!” He screamed at it.

It leapt, he stepped aside, he stepped on the shreds that remained, pressed it down. “YOU ARE DEAD! STOP COMING BACK ALIVE!”

The thing had still teeth on its flesh, dug them into his boots and tried to chew through with no mouth. “YOU ARE DEAD!” He took his knife and rammed it in. “SEE? YOU ARE DEAD!” He took his boot off and the knife made sure it did not move away.

With no food to chew, no flesh to rend and no way to move, the thing was finally dead.

“It is dead.”

He sank down to his knees and looked to the trees. The eyes looked down upon the thing stern. The man felt as if he could see their roots beginning to reach for the flesh.

“Take it. Feed off it. Make sure it stays dead.”

He finally let himself fall down for good. The bloody screams were silent, glad about the victory achieved in their memory. The man reached to his hip. A leather strap wrapped around a hollow space hung from his belt, inside a single remaining pottery shard from his tumble down the hill. He looked at it. On the inside a smooth glaze, on the outside a pattern that felt familiar, but he could not remember it. What had been this thing? What had been inside? He flicked it with his finger. He did not know what sound he had expected, but it was not this. He tried to remember. Someone had given this to him, hands that connected to no body or face, words were spoken to him in a voice that had no name in his memory.

What was this shard? Who had given it to him? What had they said to him? Why did he love them? He tried to remember, yet all he remembered was the bleeding dripping stump where his arm had been. Where his arm still was.

The unseen thing had taken it from him. He began to scream. It had been taken from him. The warm feeling in his heart he tried to remember had no place in this cold and damp place. He cried. It had been taken from him.

He swore revenge. He looked to the thing, still dead at the roots of the birch trees. He hated it and that which had made it rise again and again. A desire rose within him, a vengeful fire. His heart wrenched around an emptiness that he swore he would fill with hate and spite.

The man rose to his feet and held his torch higher, hoping to see more, but the fog remained. Nothing was stirring beneath it, for now. If he returned to his fireplace, he could treat his wounds with tar and reed. And if he ran out, then he knew that birches and pines held more ready for him. Maybe there was some fish in the lake. Snares he would not set up dead things could not be trusted to stay dead in this place.

He knew not what he had come to do, but he knew he would have to stand guard that the darkness would not take the flesh again, or any other flesh for that matter.

Chapter II

A woman and a man sat on the slopes before the valley. There was a thick fog hanging in the valley beneath them as the sun reached its zenith.

“The mist is still there.” The man got up from his position and grabbed his backpack. “I think we should just go. It’s not going to get better.”

“It worries me, Kaneros.” The woman furrowed her brow. “Normal fog just doesn’t last that long.”

“Well, you know, what do we know about this land, huh? If we want to get to the great water, we either have to go through or find a way around.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “You always do this, you kept running into stuff and places and I have to explain to Mama why your knees are scraped up again.”

Kaneros merely scoffed. “I got us here, Eleseria, relax your worries and stick to me.”

He set forth and Eleseria stood by until he was out of earshot, then grabbed her own things as well. “This is my journey, you were supposed to stick to me!” she muttered in a low voice.

Their descent into the forest occurred normally as they followed a thin game trail, which gave them hope some game could be found in this place, but after a while, when they first talked about taking a break and eating some of their rations, they noticed something unusual about the fog. There was not a single sound. Usually, even in the foggiest forests, they would hear things scurrying and singing, leaves rustling or trees swaying, but here, all sound seemed to be dead, and when they spoke, it seemed as if the words did not travel further than they could see. The world had vanished, all that was left was the lower halves of trees and ferns, so many ferns.

Eleseria saw that they had just reached the perfect time of the year for fern soup. “Maybe I can at least collect some fiddleheads, make us a stew later.”

“Leave it, I don’t want to wait a whole day for them to soak.”

“I meant more for when we get out of the fog.”

Kaneros turned around to his sister. “Where?”

“Out of the valley and to the great water, where the Prince is, idiot.” She moved her arm around the place.

“Oh...” He looked around. “Yes, maybe later.” Then he moved on.

Eleseria watched him walk on along the trail just a few more steps until he was almost gone, then she caught up.

It was not long after that they saw in a sudden fright that their trail was blocked. A wolf like a mountain boulder stood on the path, not in attention or aggression, just fixated, observing them, then it approached them directly.

Kaneros had his knife drawn immediately. “What is it doing here?”

The wolf seemed not aggressive or desperate, yet it approached them.

“Is it alone?” Eleseria readied her spear and looked around. Kaneros was getting ready for the wolf to pounce, but it seemingly just walked towards them, licking its lips and coming ever closer. Kaneros moved out of the way, but the wolf followed him, baring its teeth and opening its mouth as if the take a bite out of him.

“What is it doing?”

Eleseria stepped close, spear pointed forward. “Get away, you! We have no quarrel here, just let us pass!”

Now the wolf got more aggressive, upset that Kaneros would not stand still and be eaten. It sought not to kill him, just to eat him. Kaneros swung his knife around and took a step forward.

“HEY! LEAVE US!”

The wolf enraged, but did not bark or growl, just glare, then lunged forward.

Eleseria took her chance. She rammed her spear deep into its side, but the wolf did not howl in pain. She shoved, pin it in place with her spear, the beast whirled around, bit at the shaft, shattering it with a single bite.

“WHAT THE-?”

Expletives escaped both their mouths. Nothing should be able to bite through a shaft of the sacred elm.

“No! What? How?”

The bitten spear protruded from its side, but the wolf continued its assault, turned to Eleseria. It was now hungering for her.

Kaneros used his opportunity and launched himself forward. “NO!” He landed on the beast and tore it to the ground. It thrashed in anger and bit at him, but he managed to ram his knife into its neck, over and over again, into its throat and through every tendon that could move its head or jaw. Finally, it stopped moving completely. Kaneros got up slowly and Eleseria came to his side to help him.

“Are you alright?” He looked to her. “Are you hurt?”

“No, are you hurt?”

“No, just smeared in blood.” He wiped his hands on the wet ferns but unsuccessfully.

“Don’t waste time with that. Let's leave this place behind!”

They agreed and walked with the briskest pace they could muster, further down the trail, leaving the bloody fight behind.

They didn’t eat any rations or made any stop, they just hurried. Only when it felt like the unseen sun would soon set, did they take a short breather. Kaneros sat down on a fallen log and pulled a dead branch off to look at its globs of resin. “Maybe we should start a fire?”

But Eleseria felt differently. “I want to run all through the night until I can see the stars again!” she went ahead to demonstrate her determination.

He was about to get up when from behind them on the trail they heard a scraping and dragging sound. They turned around and saw the grotesque that had followed them. It was the wolf, no, not the wolf, its cadaver. It used its four legs like an injured man would use a single arm to drag himself along, each independently. Its head hung loose to the side and from the laid bare gash of its neck, a guttural greed sounded with a newfound maw. Teethed all around like a ring it breathed and hungered, rosy red flesh shot with black veins that pulsed with a defiled will to live.

“RUN!” Kaneros threw off his pack and so did Eleseria. They ran along the trail, the cadaver broke out into a gallop of limp legs and greedy demands.

Despite its broken body, its shambling gallop caught up with them slowly, until Kaneros turned around, knife drawn. “KEEP RUNNING!”

“NO!” Eleseria stopped. “NO WE GET OUT TOGETHER!”

He turned around to give her another command and as Eleseria looked at him, she saw the cadaver contort into a twist, launch itself towards him with an uncoiling motion.

The mass hit him, threw him to the ground. It sat above him, its new maw unsheathed into a tongue-like appendage. She stormed towards them, tried to push that thing off him, but its limb body merely shifted, turned and whipped a mangled limb her way. She fell abckwards.

Kaneros held the creature’s maw away from him. “RUN! RUN FOR YOURSELF!”

She saw blood streaming from his leg, claws had dug into his flesh as he tried to just hold the slippery maw away from him while the tongue wrapped around his neck. He looked into her eyes.

Eleseria finally lost enough hope to do as she was told. “I love you!”

“I love you t-“ The maw slipped through his fingers and teeth sank into his face. Eleseria ran. His screams of pain and spite were swallowed by the mists before she could take two breaths.

She ran as the light waned and darkness began to fall. She tried to follow the trail, but more and more stones and sticks became her hinderance and she began to trip and the game trail finally came to an end at a brook’s ford. She turned around. She did not want to wait, she did not want to rest. She followed the brook downwards; water always flowed to villages and towns.

It did not take long until moss tore from the ground beneath her feet and she slipped, fell forward down the slope. Mud covered her overdress, her head bumped into pebbles, grit stuck to her palms and sharp edges pierced her body. She hit the water below and was soaked in the shallow stream.

She got up and looked around. There was nothing she could see or hear, but she felt eyes upon her. Through her wet clothes, the air sucked the warmth out of her body. She tried to get up, but a sharp pain shot through her right foot. A pointed stone or thorn had buried through her sole. She wanted to take off her boot to see, but the pressure was too great. With the rest of her elm shaft, she hobbled along the brook. Maybe she could still make it

The pain and cold stripped her body of strength, her mind was filled with haze, she knew only the fear of what was behind her and that something was still watching. A nebulous feeling came over her. She tried to think of what she was looking for, not that she could see anything in the darkening mist, but she knew she just had to follow the brook.

Finally, she saw something. A lakeshore. She could not see the other side and a shred of a memory came to her. She was seeking a water so vast that one could not see the other side. All other things she had been told vanished into a mist, tears and gashes had been torn through her mind, through which memories flowed out and fog flooded in. Was this the water? Was this where the prince lived that had offered to take her hand?

No, something wasn’t right about it. Something was different with this place, something was missing. She looked up and she expected to see something beautiful and vast, but there was only the blank mists.

She walked along the lake shore. She wanted to call out but the eyes were still watching her, the monstrosity was still hunting her. Then she came to a new landmark, a wide, moss-covered mound at the shore, with a pointed top, from which smoke rose. It was a dwelling.

She limped as fast as she could and found a door of wooden sticks. She banged and screamed “HELLO? HELLO? PRINCE? HELLO? HELP ME!”

She stopped. She knew something was behind her. She whirled around and saw the eyes that had watched her. Deep-set, black, barely visible but by the wet glint in the depths of the sockets. The face was framed by long, white hair and beard that seemed to merge into the mists.

The man stood frighteningly tall just two or three outstretched arms away. He was thin, as if someone had rolled a chord of clay for too long, his muscles and tendons pressed through his skin. He wore loose pelts held in place with a horn-buckled belt, at his hip was a corroded copper knife, his feet were covered in remnants of boots, his limbs were wrapped in blades of reed thickly, in his left hand he held a dead rabbit, in his other a stone-tipped spear.

She fell on her behind. “Please, save me.” She whispered.

The man did not move, his face did not change, his eyes bored into her, so deep, so accurate, and she felt it asking her soul questions she had not the ability nor strength to deny.

“Please, help me, something attacked me and... something is hunting me. I can offer you...” She thought about what she could. All she had was gone but her clothes. She pulled up her skirt. She never learned how, but her body remembered that a woman could pay a man for just about anything. “I will give you anything!”

The man went down before her and grabbed her leg by the ankle. He took off her boot and looked at the wound underneath, then he stood back up, stepped over her and opened the door to the dwelling.

He stood inside, looking at her with expectation. She was perplexed but followed him.

On the inside, the dwelling was warm and dry, so very comfortably warm, she could not remember the last time she had felt this way. It was dug into the mound. The walls were reinforced with half-split logs and the floor was stomped clay. In the centre was a fireplace dug into the ground where coals and embers gave off the thinnest trail of smoke, which escaped through a small hole in the roof. In the back were piles of dry reed, layers of hides and pelts, bundles of sticks of various thickness and straightness, a storage of firewood, so many things cramped into a small space.

“Can you help me? I am wounded.” She tried to get his attention, but he searched for things at his own pace, threw firewood on the embers, looked through sticks until he found one he agreed with and finally he pointed to the ground. After she had sat down, he inspected her wound while she observed his face.

His skin was so very pale and although his hair was white and his skin was furrowed, he did not seem old. Worn, aged possibly, but not old, for some reason. His lips were thin with barely a tint of red, and all of it was like a masque until he saw something that seemed to intrigue him. He fondly touched whatever had lodged into her foot, stroked it, tested how deep it sat. With every contact, she felt the hard blade scrape against the bone in her foot, but she gritted her teeth. The man took some leaves and roots from a pouch and started chewing on them, then he grabbed the shard and ripped it out in a single motion.

The pain released and bloomed, blood gushed out of her foot, she yelped and gasped, then found herself again. The man had taken the chewed paste from his mouth and applied it to her wound, then started wrapping loose blades of reed around her foot, layering them up, then affixed them with some molten resin on a stick. The hot resin burned only for a short moment.

All the things that were happening felt disjointed and odd to her. “I thank you, I thank you so much! Can you give me some food? I used to have my own food, but... now I don’t.” Her head was still hazy, no longer from pain, although it still pulsed within her, but still. “Some food? Water? I’ll do anything. You can do anything, I promise I will leave tomorrow but tonight I need food!”

The man walked to the back of the dwelling and retrieved a drying rack with strips of meat still on it, then put it above the fire that was starting to grow again. He handed her a few of the already dry strips and she immediately took them, right from his hand into her mouth. They were chewy and tough, without salt or spice, but at least smoky. The fat had mostly dripped out but what little stuck to her fingers, she licked off.

After the man had watched her devour the meat and handed her some water and berries, he bent down and tugged on her clothes.

“Yes. I promised.” She took off her wet dress and the damp wrappings underneath, then laid back on the ground, shivering in both frost and frightful anticipation, but the man turned away from her to hang her clothes on the drying rack above the fire. He searched through his collection of pelts and handed her a few, then sat down on the opposite site of the fire.

She was confused only for a moment, sat down on a wolf pelt and wrapped herself into a much larger, brown one.

The man was not even trying to peek at her body, instead, he looked at what he had pulled from her wound. It seemed to be a shard of pottery, on one side smooth, on the other patterned. He observed it, felt it with his hands and fingers as if it was both new and familiar. He was sunken deep into his thoughts and observations.

“What is your name?” She tried to get his attention. “I am... I...”

He honoured her only with a quick glance but returned quickly to his thoughts and the shard.

“Do you know the way out of this valley?”

His eyes drooped into sadness as he looked at her and the sentiment was clear.

Like this, they remained. She just observed him and took in the warmth of the dwelling. She could tell by the opening in the roof that night had fallen and finally, the man got up, walked to the door and used two large branches to lock it from the inside. Then he laid down before the fire and wrapped himself into pelts.

She was confused as to what this man's life was. She tried to emulate him, get some sleep, but many things were keeping her awake. At first just the pulsing of the pain and the sound of rushing in her ears, but she soon noticed that there was no other sound. No birds in the night, no squeaking bats, no rustling leaves or groaning trees. The world outside the hut simply did not exist.

Until there was a sound. A dragging and shuffling. Her heart stopped. It sounded so close it might have been inside the dwelling. The man had sat up. His eyes glowed in the light of the dying embers. He walked to the door, took his spear and torch from the wall and looked back to the woman. She was to stay.

The shuffling she could hear, but the man seemed to make no sound when treading. The grotesque came from around the far side of the dwelling, having sensed the man.

She ignored the warning and peeked outside. She saw the flame of the torch amidst the mist cast its glow and a ray of shadow in the shape of the man. Then it started to move. Like a swallow made of fire hunting for flies above the bog, it turned and banked, and finally struck a target. A burst of sparks illuminated a figure that looked not like a monstrous wolf, but looked like a monstrous man.

The spear thrust, a lance of orange into the body, a toothed appendage thrashed, a maw lunged outwards, extended and bit. Despite the gurgling, roaring and thrashing of the grotesque, the man made no sound to counter it, no angry grunts, no scream, no expletives, just silent, flowing motion that glided through the mist. With torch and spear, he hit the grotesque, blade sinking in, torch sending embers into all directions and revealing for a moment the utter evil that the body of a man had become. In a single moment, her heart sank. The grotesque seemed so familiar to her, so similar, so... loved.

The cuts and stabs continued, until the spear’s shaft sank in deep into a head-like thing and the grotesque thrashed it apart. The man drew his knife and finished the grotesque head, cutting it loose and it finally, sank to the ground.

She stepped fully out of the dwelling, clutching the pelt around her shoulders. It did not yet seem fully over, there was a sound of liquid pouring out of hacked meat.

She walked towards him, limping carefully. He saw her and disapproved of her being there. He began to gather up pieces of flesh laying around the ground and when she stepped closer, she saw the head. A young man, younger than her, muddy-blonde hair, stubble and those teeth with the peculiar gap between the front most that she almost remembered. The lower jaw was ripped off and the tongue twisted into something new; pale flesh with black veins, grasping fingers with no bones and a maw with its own teeth. She wept for the young man, she did not know why, but she strained her mind so very hard.

“I know him!”

She took the head from the man and carried it herself. He handed her the torch for her to carry and gathered up the rest of both human and inhuman parts.

He loaded up his arms and wandered along a path that was marked with birch branches. She followed him closely and held the torch up for him. She saw that his armour of reed and pelts had been slashed, torn and ripped off, his back was bleeding from many cuts, but his body moved naturally, unchanged and unbothered.

They entered a wide path that had been cleared of trees and brush, at its edges stood wooden pillars rammed into the ground, they watched with eyes carved into the bare wood, some haphazardly, others in patterns like grids, flowers or hands. All these eyes observed a ghastly scene that flanked the path.

On poles there were skulls of animals, such as wolves and bears, but some deformed, bulged out, acquiring more jaws or teeth, beaks on the sides of deer skulls, rabbit skulls with three spines emerging. Dozens of poles marked a long way towards an unseen end from which the sound of flies buzzing announced the presence of the heart of this ghastly temple. He stopped before a large ditch in the ground, which in turn was dug before a birch tree and into which dead flesh of natural and unnatural kind had been piled up. The stench pressed its way down her nose and throat, into her guts, as if to extract more by force, but she caught herself, held the torch closer to fill her face with resinous smoke.

The man threw the flesh into the ditch, where it remained, and then turned to her. With a pole in his hand, he requested the head.

But she looked at the head again. She missed those eyes. She looked to the columns all around them, the flesh that did not live and realized what this all was, what ritual was to be completed. Finally, she looked into the dead-staring eyes a last time and a shred of something lost came to her.

“...os.” It wasn’t everything, but it was what she had gained back. “Os. You are to watch as well. Rest now, rest and watch.” She knew his place was not just among the others. She turned to the man and held out her hand. He gave her the knife and she sat down at the birch tree, putting the head on her lap and carving the eye symbol on the forehead, through the skin into the bone. “You don’t need those anymore, rest.” She closed those beautiful, familiar eyes. “Rest and watch.” She hung the head between the branches of the tree, so that he could watch and protect. “I love you.”

The man understood what she had done, even if she hadn’t yet fully. She looked to the him. “Let me look at your wounds, you can’t take care of those on your back.”

They returned to the lake, where she threw her bear pelt off and pointed to the water. “Let's get that blood off you.”

When he undid his reed wrappings and other covering, she saw his skin covered in scars, tiny ones mostly, from hundreds, thousands of scratches and cuts. His back had wounds still infected and festering, how he survived all that was beyond her. She rammed the torch into the soft shore and joined him in the water, washing him, then she brought him back inside to the fire and the soft pelts. There, she used a tiny reed to pick dirt and grit out of his wounds. He flinched not a single time and gave no sound as she pulled and peeled off dead skin.

“If you give me a spear, you won’t have to fight alone.”

He did not react.

“Even if you sleep on the other side of the fire, you don’t need to be alone.” A final shred came to her. “I am... ia. Ia.” She leaned against his back from behind. “Have you found yours again?”

He appeared to think for a moment, his eyes were scanning the insides of his head, searching for something like a dropped morsel on the ground. “Um.”

She wrapped her arms around him. “Um, I can make you acorn and fiddlehead stew. Not everything needs to be berries and dried meat.”

He leaned his head back onto her shoulder. His mouth opened and then closed again, he was still struggling with finding his voice. But in his eyes, she saw emotions bloom that he had forgotten, filling a space long vacant and although he spoke no word, she could tell what he wanted to say.

That would be nice.

Chapter III

The child found the calls of the birds had vanished and the path was very narrow now, a mere trail among the wet fern. Mist had rolled in and the child saw barely anything beyond the first few trees. Then there was a sound.

The child shirked back. “Hello?”

No answer came. Then another child stood on the trail ahead, blocking the way. It was thin and white like the mists. Its eyes were black and vast. It wore merely leather pants and boots. It stood there, as if it wasn’t sure what to do but to stand.

“Who are you?” The child asked the other one. “Are you from across the forest?” No answer came. “Do you want to play?”

Again no answer came, but another sound, from the left, then one from the right. Two lanky figures emerged, looked at the child with eyes deep set in cavernous sockets, a man carrying a stone-tipped spear and a woman carrying a reed basket. They did not speak, but took another step closer, from the left and the right of the trail.

The child ran. It turned around and ran back where it had come from, stayed on the trail and ran back out, never looking behind, just thinking of home.

The woman turned around, knelt down and got back to picking fiddleheads.