Spirit (7 page)

When I reached
the point where the trees twined together to make one gnarled trunk, I
hesitated. I was only about three feet from the ground. Jumping was the fastest
way down, but I was afraid the noise of my landing would finally disturb the
birds enough to become annoyed with me. But my hands were sore and my arms were
shaking again, not to mention how hard breathing with the pain in my side was, and
I didn’t want to cling to the tree anymore. Climbing down had been more of an
exertion than it should have been. I gritted my teeth, took one last deep breath,
and jumped, landing with a large cloud of dust and a distinctive thump. I
coughed painfully, gasping at the sharp stab in my side, and waved the dust
away from my face.

Two birds rose
up, flapping their wings and cawing, but they just floated back down, rearranged
their order, and continued to eat away at the carcass. I made a face,
swallowing the rising bile in my throat, and turned away from the carnage just
as one of the birds pried a glistening black eyeball free and gulped it down
with a
squish
.

“Thanks for the
help,” I whispered before I turned and started walking. Thankfully none of the
birds followed me.

Chapter 4

When I was up in
the tree, I couldn’t see anything different in any direction. No landmarks, not
even an end to the forest itself, so I just picked a direction and started
walking. Now that I knew what to listen for, I realized the forest wasn’t as
quiet as I had thought when I first arrived. Wings flapped in the distance,
strange sniffing noises came from the shadows, and claws occasionally skittered
on the hard ground. However, I couldn’t see any of the creatures making the
noises. I was just happy to have escaped the cat monsters. But every now and
then, I heard the call of something big, big and angry. The something that had
roared in answer to my screams. It took every ounce of willpower I still
possessed to keep walking and not curl up into the fetal position and just cry.

After what felt
like miles, I heard the distinctive sound of running water. I hurried toward
it, careful not to run for fear of making too much noise. I came upon a
babbling brook, shallow enough to cross on foot, but the current was fast
enough to look clear and inviting. I fell to my knees beside it and cupped my
hands, drawing some of the water up to drink. For one moment, I worried about
it being contaminated or getting sick from some invisible bacteria, but it
looked clear in my hands and it didn’t smell, so I pushed that fleeting thought
out of my head and drank.

It was crisp and
refreshing. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until the water broke over my
lips, and it was all I could do to keep from just dunking my head into the
brook and gulping down water until my stomach swelled. After I had my fill, I
splashed some water on my face, cleaning the cuts from falling through the
trees. The sleeves of my sweater were in tatters, but not so bad that I thought
I should rip them off. After all, these were the only clothes I had. I ran my
damp fingers through my hair, pushing it out of my face, wishing for a hair tie
as I gripped the length of it at the base of my neck.

I was sitting so
awkwardly my legs began to tingle, but when I shifted my weight, my ribs
protested. Being in a comfortable position seemed almost impossible now. I
pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them, and felt the dull
ache in my back where my wings would be, should be.

“Maybe this
is
Hell,” I mumbled, resting my chin on
top of my knees. Maybe Hell wasn’t an eternal cycle of pain and fire. Maybe it
was never feeling comfortable again, never feeling safe again, lost forever,
and always running from hungry monsters.

I suddenly felt
very vulnerable out in the open, sitting by the only source of water for miles
around. Reluctantly, I climbed to my feet, dusting off my jeans and clapping
the dirt from my hands. I needed to keep moving until I found somewhere safe to
hole up and figure out where I was and what I had to do to get out of here.

Looking left and
then right down the brook gave me no clue as to which way I should go. I
figured following the water would be best though. If I was here, then other
people had to be here too, and people never live far from water. Finally I
decided to follow the brook downstream, figuring it might open up to a larger
body of water, and if it did, people would most likely be there. I just hoped
looking for other people didn’t turn out to be my biggest mistake yet.

***

The journey down
the brook was tedious and boring while somehow still being one of the most
frightening things I have ever done. There were periods of complete silence
when even hearing the babbling of the brook was difficult. It made every step I
took sound like a thumping earthquake, and I was sure those cat monsters would
find me. Then I would hear hundreds of invisible creatures creeping and
crawling about in the shadows, always feeling like they were just behind me,
but every time I turned my head to look, there was nothing.

Every mile or so,
I had to duck behind a tree, trying to keep myself as tiny as the shadows, when
I heard the approach of some new herd of beasts. They ran in every direction,
making no direction safe. Some had claws that glinted in the faint moonlight.
Some had snapping jaws that clicked as they ambled by. Others still were larger
than any horse I had ever seen. But none of them were familiar to me; none of
them were from my world.

Eventually, I
stepped out of the shadows again when the last echo of clomping feet faded out
of earshot and no others followed for a time. Shoving my hands into the pockets
of my jeans, the rough fabric scratching against the cuts on my hands, I
continued on. My purple combat boots were dull and dusty, almost gray. I don’t
know why that bothered me so much, but I had to force myself to pick up my head
and stop staring at them as I walked.

I heard the
thunder of another herd of beasts across the brook, but faintly, still far off.
I kept my head cocked toward it as I walked, listening for it to grow louder,
closer, but not wanting to waste more time hiding until I absolutely had to. A
moment later, I heard a human voice whooping in triumph. Similar voices answered
the yell, making me stumble to a halt and turn toward the noise. The sound of
the running animals grew louder, and I knew they would be upon me at any
moment, but so would the humans I could hear close behind. I ran from the brook
to a cluster of trees and ducked between their close growing trunks, peering
out to watch.

Moments later,
the animals rushed into the clearing around the brook. They were small like
opossums, with pointy faces and long rattails, but they had little horns bursting
from their heads and their jaws jutted out past their front teeth, two sharp
tusks curling up and close to their noses. Definitely not opossums.

The voices of
the people chasing them rang out again just before they burst through the far
tree line, spears and bows and arrows in hand, mounted bareback on horses. The
horses were larger than any horses I had seen on Earth. They had to be at least
eight feet tall, glistening black fur with white fringe bursting at their
hooves, manes, and tails. Their whinnies sounded like screams as they reared up,
their massive hooves kicked in the air, and white puffs of steam erupted from
their pink noses. When their hooves struck the ground and they charged forward,
the earth trembled. Pure white dogs larger than Great Danes gamboled and ran
between the horses. The dogs had red ears and eyes, their wide jaws open with
excitement from the hunt. Their booming barks startling as they snapped close
to the ground, trying to catch the scurrying not-opossums.

I watched
wide-eyed as the leader of the pack of hunters, a man with long, flowing silver
hair, reared back a spear and flung it forward. The spear soared through the
air with a wobble before it
thunked
into the side of one of the not-opossums. A cheer rang out through the hunting
party followed by a wave of arrows, many finding homes in other not-opossums,
felling their quarries.

The hunting
group was a motley crew. I couldn’t even be sure that they were all in fact
people, as I had assumed from their voices. The silver-maned leader was very
tall and lithe, his limbs almost willowy despite the corded muscles under his
fair skin. His black eyes seemed to shine in the half light of the forest, illuminating
his angular face. When he jumped from his horse, he appeared to float to the
ground. His long tendrils of silvery hair danced in the air, revealing
overlong, pointed ears. When he stood, I saw his hair was long enough to brush
the backs of his knees. He was clad head to foot in leather in shades of white
and bluish-grey, and when he walked, his grey leather boots never disturbed the
dirt and dust. I’m not sure I had ever truly believed elves were real until
that exact moment.

He found the
animal with his spear struck through it and gripped the wooden shaft. He placed
one boot on the dead animal to hold it down and pulled the lethal metal tip out
of it. I looked away from him and the dead animal, not wanting to see the blood
gush out and stain the dusty ground.

The others with
him ranged in size and appearance. Some were just as lovely as him while staring
at others was almost unbearable. If I didn’t believe in any other mythical
creatures in the universe, I believed in them now from just looking at this
group. Two reminded me of the faerie tales of the trolls that lived under
bridges, with their gray skin and pot marked faces, bulbous noses and shoulders
nearly four feet in breadth, and wide mouths full of yellow and broken teeth.

There were three
smaller creatures, all of them on the back of one hound. Their green, leathery
skin was folded over and over on their faces, making ripples up to their
batwing-like ears. When they dismounted the hound, the tops of their heads
barely reached the dog’s chest. Their fingers were thin and pointy, much like
twigs, and they constantly twisted and twined their hands as they scurried
about. The lopsided and creepy grins on their faces made me decide they were
goblins. Other creatures I couldn’t name milled about, gathering the dead
animals and retrieving arrows, but none of them looked like something I would
want to anger. One in particular made the memory of my grandmother’s voice echo
in my mind. He was a formidable dwarf with meaty hands and a rust red cap
pulled low over his head, down around his ears. My grandmother told me that the
Redcaps stained their hats with the blood of their victims as some sort of
macabre trophy.

I had been so
eager to find some other intelligent beings, to figure out where I was and how
to get home, but looking upon that group, I realized how naive that had been.

The goblins
chattered to each other in their own language, and the others laughed and clapped
each other on their backs, talking about the feast they would enjoy that night.
The giant hounds shuffled around, lapping at the puddles of blood left behind
from the not-opossums. I made a face and felt my stomach flip. I swallowed
against the nausea, perhaps a little too loudly, because just then, one of the
great hounds lifted his massive head with his blood red ears pointing up and
turned out.

I froze, my
fingers gripping the tree trunk, not even daring to breathe. The alerted hound
stood stock still, only his ears quivering as he listened, but he was soon on
the move. He pressed his nose to the ground, sniffing loudly as he walked in a
dizzying zigzag, coming closer and closer. None of the rest of the hunting
party paid any attention to the dog as he strayed from the group, but I
couldn’t look at anything else. Feeling a whole different kind of sick, my
stomach knotted up against my spine as sweat broke out along my back and my
heart hammered against my chest. Seeming to hear the thundering of my heart,
the dog veered in my direction and began to gallop toward me. His eerie red
eyes locked with mine, holding me to the spot as I watched him barreling for
me.

I was screaming
in my mind to run, to turn away and just fucking go, but my body wouldn’t obey
me, and just as the dog’s massive paws launched him from the ground, I
screamed. The dog crashed into me with the force of a small car and my body
slammed into the ground, pushing all the air from my lungs and successfully
breaking my cracked rib. White hot pain lanced through my body. The pain of
breathing silenced my screams as the dog stood over me, two of his massive paws
on either side of my head, standing on my hair as his giant face leaned close
to mine. His nose was wet against my cheek and his breath hot and damp against
my face. I shut my eyes tight, not wanting to watch that mouthful of teeth
coming at me just before he ripped my face off.

When a few
moments passed and my face remained intact, I slowly cracked an eye open. The
hound still stared down at me with his fiery red eyes, but he wasn’t baring his
teeth. Instead, his mouth hung open as he panted and his tongue lolled out
before he licked the side of my face.

“Ugh!” I
managed, feeling the hot saliva coating the entire side of my face, even
catching a little of my hair.

“Balor!” a voice
rang out, making the hound pick up his head suddenly. “Balor! To me!”