Beyond the Forest of the Dead - End

7

It was all white and cold. The snow was clean and its taste was pure with youth. The snow was young. It whipped across my face as we sailed down the side of a hill any reasonable man would have called a mountain. My brother was beside me, wild and irrepressible, and we laughed.

And the memory was gone.

Night had fallen as I stood in the road that lead deeper into the valley or back into the hills and mountains and wasteland beyond. The bright stars hovered low in the sky and filled the empty sockets of the old God's skull with silver-mystery. I found my sword near the severed stump. The gap between the neighboring thorn-bushes stared at me and a sweat broke out across my brow even though the night was chill.

The weight of my pack was missing and I used it as an excuse to myself to back away and search for where I'd left it. Turning back toward the mountain I could see the fire that was burning on the ridge where I'd begun my decent into the valley sometime before, sometime, because I could not say how long I had stood there in my reverie with the skull in my hands and the memories that I knew were not mine ringing in my head.

I had an urge to turn back, to keep walking toward the ridge, toward the mountains, to find those swine-like beasts and kill them till there were no more or have them kill me and end this journey I found myself trapped within. The sword felt good in my hand and the skull dangled from left. If I had not stumbled over my pack I know that live or die the wasteland would have claimed me and from that there would be no returning. Instead I cursed then set sword and skull down and donned my heavy pack after placing the skull securely inside. I sheathed my sword and made no move to find a torch. The starlight would have to do or I would walk this road in the dark, but without shelter I would not sleep this night.

After a distance I loosely judged to be three miles I drew my sword again. The lines of bushes on my left had disappeared and what seemed to be another road angled off to my left and shrank with distance as it curved across rolling fields and depressions. At the corner where the road I followed met or perhaps fathered this other road I could make out a wall lit with the starlight so that it glimmered pale and white against the darkness behind it. I approached eagerly but with what caution I could muster. As I neared I could see the worked stone set together locked in place by shape and weight if not my mortar.

A wall. It had been long since I had seen the works of man; the ruin of the wagon back along the path through the hills had been the only thing of craft within the hills. I reached out and felt the cold stones and the slight grooves where they were joined. Somewhere there would be a dwelling. Somewhere I would find people again and perhaps sanity in this nightmare land.

The wall was not too high and I pulled myself over the top, pack and all ,with, what I can only say, a maniacal strength that I did not know I possessed. I fell with a crash and struggled to my feet amid the crushed remains of a small chicken coop long neglected and unoccupied. At first I kicked at the wire and broken boards with a sullen embarrassment but as I swung my pack back upon my shoulders I glanced up.

Outlined by the silver starlight a small squat figure sat upon the wall I had just crossed. It gave a grunt as its eyes met my own and threw itself upon me. My arms were within the straps of my pack when the standing-pig crashed into me. In its hand it held one of the short stabbing spears I had seen them with. The stone edge shattered upon the hairy vest and the swine-creature squealed in pain or outrage as I fell backwards and carried it with me.

***

The mud was cold and wet along the wall of the gouge, almost frozen, but it shimmered in the starlight except where the opening formed a black square that could not be illuminated. It drank the light of my torch and revealed nothing. The frame around the darkness appeared to be stone or wood that had been covered in a thick plaster. Something was painted or perhaps carved along its inner edge where it pressed against the void. Letters, figures, they seemed to move as the torch flickered, I could see them swirl as they crawled like wounded men across a field of blood.

And the memory was gone.

***

I let the straps fall from my arms and rolled to the side and then to my feet and grabbed for my sword. My hand slid along the steel blade as I pulled myself to my feet, touched the hilt and whipped the blade around in an arc. The early-morning sun was peaking over the stonewall behind me.

Daylight. I blinked and narrowed my eyes. The night was gone, fled in the moment of my relived memory. I was on an unkempt and weed-choked lawn. Behind me was the short wall of thick heavy stone and the shattered remains of the chicken coop. Ahead the lawn ran in a gentle slope till it reached a hedge of the same thorn I had passed along the road, but above the hedge were the high walls of some dwelling. The dark reddish brick had not been illuminated by the starlight as had the wall. I could smell the scent of roasting flesh and a grey-white smoke came from the top of the chimney high upon the roof.

With first one hand then the other I swung then settled the straps across my shoulders letting the pack rest high on my back. I kept the other on the hilt of my sword. The point of my blade was forward and at the ready as I trotted down the lawn. About me the wall curved to my right and from my vantage at the top of the slope I could see over it and into the empty roadway and the wide field beyond the wall. Spots of blackness moved across the field, crows or ravens or carrion birds picking at the turned ground for flesh and the waste of battles. Their claws and beaks would be painted with the drying blood of the dead. They seemed to form shapes like letters carved or painted on the frame of a doorway I did not want to remember and so I turned away.

The hedge was broken by an arbor long overgrown but with quick work of my sword I sliced away the reaching arms of the thorn-bush and crossed to the front of the house. The stone walk was cracked and weeds poked through the uneven paves. Steps led from the walk and curved as well to meet a wider stair. I could see the face of the house and it smiled at me, a smile that I returned with eagerness and longing.

She opened the door as I as approached. Her hair was longer, a mass of black curls. Her dress was faded blue and she was thin, the planes of her face sharp and her eyes hollowed deep. She raised her arms to embrace me, her lips touched mine and my own arms reached around her feeling the delicacy of her wings as I lifted her. Those wings, black as the ravens in the field.

"You are home," she whispered in my ear.

End

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Beyond the Forest of the Dead - Part 6

6

I ate my meal with more hunger than I imagined I still possessed but carefully I watched my supplies. The horsemeat would not keep and, though I had eaten as much as I could after finding the skinned carcass amid the remains of the broken wagon, I had no salt to preserve it and no place to properly smoke the flesh and most would go to waste. I could, as well, carry only so much of the tough and slightly burnt meat and I was determined to make it last. The creatures that hunted me, haunted my last few nights, were foul to the taste and thin. There seemed no other game in this wasteland. I had no doubt I would be killing more of the black-blooded fiends but had no desire to consume their flesh until no other choice was offered.

They were like short pigs that walked on two broad, cloven hooves with sharp-nailed three-fingered hands. They did not clothe themselves but wore belts of tanned skin and held small stone-headed spears in their short and powerful arms. These were stabbing spears not meant for throwing and they used them to good effect, but my arm and blade were long and I learned quickly to show them no mercy as they surely had no such feeling within themselves and would show none to me. I had seen them eagerly lapping at my blood even fighting among themselves for the mere taste at a small stain of it after they had wounded my leg and forced me to flee. The sight had enraged me and I returned, fell upon them, and slaughtered the small party of the standing-pigs. The irony of my eating of their flesh was not lost upon me.

The sun was rising toward noon but still some hours remained before the short day would end and another of the interminable nights began. I had seen smoke in the distance from the vantage of the ridge I'd camped at and the going down-hill on the worn track was a relief from the long journey first up the mountain then across the endlessly hilly land I'd been travelling. The boulders and split rock that had lined the track disappeared on this side of the ridge and became a rough land of short weed-grass and brambles. I was overjoyed. Here was life again instead of waste and barren hills.

I sat and let my fingers pluck out the tough curled growth. It was as thick as a woven matt. I dug into a patch with my knife and cut free a small square of the turf. The roots were long and oozed with a green-yellow serum, but the earth beneath was a rich dark loam and a fresh tantalizing scent arose that tickled my memory but could not quite recall.

Several miles went by and I found myself descending into a deeper valley that stretched far into the distance. If I was not mistaken I could make out the tops of trees in full leaf and nearer ahead were bushes and beyond them the squares and lengths of fields perhaps separated by the walls of gathered stone that had been unearthed by years of plow and spade.

The bushes were thorn, wiry stuff, but very green. They had obscenely long thorns of needle sharpness, curved like the beak of some predator bird and many had ragged strips of cloth caught in their grips. These fluttered in a rising breeze and tossed and waved at me as I neared them as if in greeting. I could hear the moan of the wind and a tearing sound high above me.

Looking up I saw many clouds white and fluffed. Some seemed to be a wave of men rushing toward the sun and the far horizon and the ridge I had just descended; others were ships, horses, a castle with a tower shaken down. I was bemused and almost I forgot the coming night and the creatures it would bring. These bushes around me would be too green to burn but the thought of trees and perhaps even people made me turn my eyes and my thoughts back to the trail I followed and not the clouds.

With a start I realized that the trail had become a road. Old ruts and the shape of hooves in what had been mud and was now hardened dirt filled the track. On my left the line of bushes slowly grew higher than I was tall but on my right the short scrub had become weeds and wildflowers. There was little color but for some white lace and a sprinkling of small yellow petals in a shallow ditch that still bore some water that must have come from a recent rain. If I could find a stream or spring I would empty the brackish liquid I'd collected from a mountain pond and drink till I would burst. I husbanded my water even more than the meat I'd collected, but thankfully my thirst had been kept at bay for most of my journey.

As I passed a line of bushes I thought I saw a face staring at me from amid the green and thorny branches. I rushed toward the spot and found only a section of hide vest still bearing a woolly brown hair on one side and the soft feel of worn leather on the reverse. Carefully I removed this trophy from its captive branches and to my surprise it came free easily without snagging or tears. It was surprisingly light and seemed clean; at least clean enough for a weary traveler with torn shirt and ragged canvas cloth for a cloak. It had a musk to it, not unpleasant, animal certainly, but something that stirred a feeling from the base of my spine to the back of my head. My groin stirred too and I hardened, the thought of my last love, her lips, her open thighs... I shook myself and would have tossed the vest back into its thorny embrace, but the nights had been cold and I had to laugh at my own embarrassment in this empty land. I could have walked these miles naked, traveled from... I paused and tried to remember but it was gone. Where this strange journey began was lost to me. Though I racked my brain and sifted backwards through my memories all that ever came to me was a door, black and empty.

I dropped my pack and set my sword, point first, in the ground at hand and ready as I slung the vest around my back and dropped first one then another arm through the holes. It settled against me like a second skin. The warmth came first from my back, then my chest and quickly suffused my entire body. I inhaled deeply and for the first time in longer than I could remember I could smell the beauty of the land around me. The lush greeness of the thorn bushes, the earthy mold and loam beneath them, the small tang of the weeds that poked their green stems from between the wildflowers as they fought for the bounty of the sun. A sharp and unpleasant scent crept into the rich odor and beckoned to me. I followed it pace by pace down the road with my naked blade in my hand.

The bushes looked the same since I'd noticed the first of them lining the road like a green wall. They smelled the same, but amid them was a foul stench of decay. My sword flashed out and severed them like a scythe through long summer grass. The wiry branches sprang apart. The steel touched on old thick brambles that were entwined into a gnarled limb like a gripping hand and parted it as if it were flesh. The stump of the bush was as thick as the thigh of a rich man and still my sword cut better than any axe. The roots came free of the earth like snakes, twisted and frozen, and I tossed them aside.  

In a shallow hollow of dark earth the body was curled into a ball. All bones really; naked chest, now ribs and spine, and pants of thick woolly curls and cloven feet. The head was turned inward with the long bones of the arm over it and a scattering of fingers, and knuckles and wrists before it. I reached down and lifted it out by a horn, small but pointed, that sat upon a human skull. The jaw fell away as I raised it and looked into the open graves of its eyes. The thrill of the God long dead but never forgotten came through me and I rubbed an affectionate finger along the edge of his cheek and remembered.

***

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Beyond the Forest of the Dead - Part 5

5

I awoke to darkness. How I clawed myself from beneath that tide of mire I do not know. I was still half-buried and choking with the drying muck on my lips, lining my mouth and throat. I could not reach my canteen, could barely move my arms, and I hacked and coughed myself raw but still felt and tasted damp decaying earth, as if I had been exhumed from a grave.

Laughter burst from my skinned and bleeding lips, crazed and uncontrollable, till tears came to me. Each wild exultation racking my lungs, searing my tormented throat, causing a dozen razors of pain to escape from my mouth and my only audience were the wheeling stars that listened from the cold black sky. With a despairing gasp my laughter ended and some measure of sanity returned.

The night was cold. The ground had hardened beneath me. The muddy wall had become a solid weight pinning me to the ground. At first I broke thick clumps of it free with my hands but then found the knife at my belt and used the keen-edged blade to slice and stab at the earth and then with frantic haste yank my legs free. I was thankful to find them whole and unbroken. They had long since succumbed to numbness and cold and I jumped to my feet, heavy pack with its extra load of dirt and clay notwithstanding, and stamped feeling and warmth back into them with pleasure and joy.

The night was cold but a fire burned inside of me; a fierce sense of life and victory, basic and feral, that I had never quite felt before. Death had held me in her embrace and would surely have drawn me down into her icy realm but I had broken free and lived. The air tasted cold and sharp and sweet as if a kiss still lingered from every woman I had ever loved.

My knife was still in my hands, clotted with mud, and I cleaned it on the hip of my trousers that had remained mud free beneath my sodden wrap of canvas shelter I'd been using as a cape. My face and hair were thick with dried mud and my hands filthy. I unshouldered my pack and drew a canteen from it. I wasted three mouthfuls cleaning the muck which I'd swallowed before drinking a fourth and putting it, regretfully, away.

Around me several lengths of the gouge were narrowed by the collapse of the wall and a scallop of land had been taken from the edge, but still there seemed no foot or handhold that I could dare to pull myself out.

I had judged the gouge to run somewhat to the North and East, and of course, South and West, but the stars did not look right. They were very bright and far too many and in no pattern that I had seen before. A silver glow made this gouge through the earth shine as the silver river had shone. Whoever had carved this path, and I did not doubt for a moment that men had done this work, had made some effort to place turns and bends in its course. Beyond the length where the earth had fallen I could see the turn begin.

The way for me was North or at least what I had thought was North during the previous day and so I kept the small fall of earth on my right and walked the silvery pathway toward what I could not hazard.

Atop my pack were several longer lengths of the wood I had broken from the ruined tree and with these I might have fashioned a torch, though my supply of cloth was small and my supply of oil even smaller, but the light from the stars was enough. In all my travels I had heard nothing of this place, not even rumors, and I had sought them out knowing well what my fate would be should I escape from Ang. Nothing in this wasteland made me fear that my sword could not deal with what I might encounter and with a sense only of precaution I unsheathed the blade and held it ready.

Past the turning the pathway began a series of sharp angles all right then straight then right again. There were four such when I found myself facing a branching of the way. The gouge now went in what I still believed to be vaguely North but on my right another passage was cut. I stood for first one minute then another undecided before choosing to explore and change my direction. The walls of the gouge were still as high, the banks of the silver-light river of earth still as unassailable. After a dozen feet I stopped.

Pacing from one side to another I counted each footstep then turned back the way that I had come. I paced the distance again between wall and wall in the passage I had been following. A smile came to me as I counted out six footsteps more. So small a thing, but finding some difference between one pathway and the next gave me hope. I did not question it.

I turned back toward this new, smaller passage. It ran straight and with as little bend as could be expected as any excavation through this mire. Soon there came a depression to my left and then another. These were no more than a dozen feet in depth and perhaps half as much wide. An irregular mound of earth floored each and the even line that formed the top edge of the wall was rough and irregular as well. I tried standing on these mounds thinking that the extra feet might help leap toward the top of the wall of the gouge but the earth was especially loose and muddy and I had no wish to be buried again.

After travelling no more than a score of yards I could see a dark space on the wall to my right. Unknowingly I slowed my approach and found myself creeping toward this dark space in the reflected starlight that came from the damp surface of the wall. My fingers were white along the hilt of my sword and I flexed them one by one so that my grip would be sure. With the point I reached out into the dark space and found nothing blocking my way. No I wished for some light and I backed away to prepare a torch.

I fumbled for my pack and dropped my sword then wildly glanced up preparing myself for an attack that did not come. All sense of cold was gone in that sudden taste of panic and with careful breaths I calmed myself. The torch was in my hand and with sword and flame I approached the dark opening in the wall.

***

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Copyright March 2014 By Jason Zavoda

Beyond the Forest of the Dead - Part 4

4

The roof of my little shelter had twisted in the night. The broken cut of bole had slid aside and reddish light shone down upon my unshielded face. I had thrown my arm across my eyes at some point but the powerful rays turned my flesh to a transparent orange haze through which I could see the outlines of my bones. The thought of the forest through which I'd passed came unbidden to my mind and all hope of sleep fled, hidden, and not to be regained.

With a groan I pulled myself to my feet and stared around me at the grim and fecal landscape. The last light of the day had not hidden anything that was disclosed by the bright morning sun except a breath of coldness which had not been present even during the darkest part of the previous night. I looked toward the ash of my unattended fire with an eye toward warmth rather than the desire for light that had been my main concern this past night.

I stirred the ashes with the toy of my boot and was rewarded with a few winking embers. With the remains of some burnt ends of sticks around the edge of the shallow fire-pit and splinters I shaved from some of the larger pieces of wood I had gathered but had not used I managed to coax the children of fire to life once more. I rubbed my hands over the growing flames and stamped my feet as the unseasonable cold began to settle firmly on the day. I ate the last of the previously fresh food, now grown stale, wilted or holding the first tang of corruption among the unsalted or dried meat I had brought with me.

At least the coolness of the day had worked to diminish the foul and unclean smell which emanated from the surrounding wasteland. As I stepped out beyond the edge of my small sanctuary, the bare and ruined walls that were once a dwelling, I found that the ground had begun to harden and the mire no longer promised a painfully difficult traverse.

With my short splinter-spear taken from the bole of the blasted tree I made better time, though to what destination I could not name. The cold increased and after an hour's walk, during which I found a field of stumps set evenly in the ground, some orchard severed almost to its roots, I stopped and pulled my rolled blanket from where it was tied to the bottom of my pack. It worked well as a poorman's cloak and I wrapped it around myself and my pack, looking, I am sure, as if I were some strangely deformed hunchback.

The land all about was flat and, once past the sad remains of the orchard, nearly featureless, and this was nearly my undoing. As I strode across the filthy brown landscape I had my eyes on the horizon looking for any sign of habitation or even any feature that would break the monotony of viscid slush which formed the outer skin of the earth, I failed to watch what appeared beneath my own feet.

One moment my feet were sloshing through the cold mud and the next I was stepping out over a gouge which ran snake-like from north-east to south-west as far as my eyes could see. I lost my splinter-spear I'd been using as a staff and fell full-bodied down with arms flailing like the blades of a windmill. It was, luckily, a short fall of only ten or twelve feet and the bottom of the gouge seemed even more thick with viscous mud than the ground above it. I arrived with a splash and concussed myself slightly with the force of my arrival. Spitting out a mouthful of the stuff I tried to wipe my face clean with a hand even more befouled than my lips and I began to sneeze out a brown spray in a series of stinging explosions that left my nostrils raw if not bleeding.

As I pushed myself to my feet I felt a rough surface beneath the mired floor of the gouge and worked my fingers around a firm edge of material. The mud did not want to release its prize and it took several minutes to unearth a square, short-sided wooden box about three feet long and a foot wide. The sight and feel of this work of man made me look at the gouge with care. There was an evenness to the distance between one wall and another, the floor seemed as level as could be expected in this medium of mud, fetid water and filth, and the height, barring some slippage, was also regular. Someone had dug this roofless tunnel through the earth; the small, short box was an artifact left behind.

I approached the wall at the point where I'd fallen and examined it. The surface was wet, ice-cold and muddy. Reaching out with the box in my hand I scraped at the surface and a clot fell away revealing ribs of wood as if they were the sides of a ship. Between the planks the mud protruded, pushed as if by a great hand to force itself out into the gouge.

Lightly, I ran the edge of the box along the wooden planks. They were slick and the clean line was covered in oozing mud within moments. Slowly I put more pressure against the plank. At first it did not yield but anger at my situation, frightened, cold, lost in a terrible land of nightmare, all this brought a flash of red to my eyes and a terrible strength that such incipient madness which had taken hold of me can bring. The small box cracked and split, I dropped the splinter-spear I carried in my other hand and brought that up against the plank, dropped the breaking box and with both hands pushed and pushed. My fight sank into the mud till they found some purchase and with legs, aback and shoulders I pushed. The mud was oozing forth in thick lines of the filth on either side. I did not hear the crack as the plank snapped.

The plank split in two and my hands pushed the jagged ends into the wet earth then the force I'd applied came back upon me. The world was silent except for the drumming of my own blood, the wild beating of my heart and the wall of the gouge vomited a tide of the clinging mud that pushed me back, snapped the revealed wooden ribs and buried me in a heavy, choking wave.

***

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Copyright March 2014 By Jason Zavoda

Beyond the Forest of the Dead - Part 3

3

The sun was nearing its height and I felt that there would be many hours left before twilight and the oncoming night. I carefully repacked my knapsack, placed the remainder of the fresh supplies away and drank a capful of water, careful not to waste any of my limited supply or to drink deep and long from the canteen itself as part of me wished. I knew not how long my supply would last and the thought of the green-brown stream with its covering of moss or mold that the furred creatures found so delectable made my stomach churn and put me in danger of losing all that I had eaten and drank.

I began my march down the valley, turning to the left, to the North, for no other reason than chance or fate; the facing of my head or the stance of my feet near the soft banks of the water. The sloping hills of ash-dune to either side grew flatter and lower, the stream, beyond the depredations of the furred creatures, once again had its coating of silver growth hiding the putrid color of the water beneath. As the dunes flattened the stream became wider, and, without testing its depths, more shallow. I had walked beside these sinking hills and spreading waters for several hours. The sun, a strangely scarlet hue, lovely as the curled petals of a rose, beat down heavily. I sat for awhile, drank a second capful of water, and fashioned a hood from a shirt within my pack. There was great heat, but it warmed my bones, and even beneath the strong force of that discolored sun I felt no discomfort and surprisingly little thirst.

Within a few miles the ash dunes were gone, replaced by a clinging grey mud. The stream disappeared as well, swallowed by the flat and gently rising land before me. There were a scattering of trees, mere stumps and limbless boles, but I shuddered at the thought of the forest left behind me. Cautiously I approached one and found it to be merely blackened and shattered wood. The muddy ground was rough and things shifted uncomfortably under my feet as I moved through the mire.

I came upon a wall of stone. It too was shattered and blackened, but it was the first man-made object I had seen since leaving the forest of bone trees; if those horrific constructs had been fashioned by man and not the work of some daemon's hand. In this muddy wasteland I was moved almost to tears to find something so mundane as a wall of bricks half my own height and extending no more than a dozen feet in either direction.

The ground was mercifully more solid around the ruined wall and here I decided to make my camp for the coming night. The curious sun seemed smaller and of a darker red than before. The glowing orb like that of some one-eyed and angry beast was nearing the far horizon and long rays of a slow red-tinged light made the muddy plain seem to be covered with blood and the surface undulate as if it were the back of some vast creature stripped of its skin and writing slightly as if in long-accustomed pain.

I settled down in the corner made by the two walls placing my canvas length down on the hard-packed ground. I had a square of waxed canvas as well and finding some displaced bricks secured it to the two remaining sides. With my sword, a sad use for a well-crafted blade, I cut a length of wood from one of the shattered trees and used it for a corner support of my canvas roof so it would not droop down. The weather seemed fine but I had no desire to have a stream of water run down upon me if rain should appear.

With the thought of oncoming night I returned to the nearest shattered tree and with sword and kicks and then the frenzied use of a handy brick I turned most of the remaining trunk into kindling. There were many good-sized pieces leftover to give me both the base components for a few torches as well as enough arm-length logs to keep a small fire burning through the night. One splinter of more than four-foot length I kept as a poor-man's spear. I doubted its ability to truly act in such a fashion but the needle-tip and sharp-edged sides of this tree-splinter brought a small fraction of comfort to my raw and jangled nerves.

I built my fire and settled myself in my poor shelter as darkness fell. There was no twilight. The long slow rays of the reddish sun flared briefly and then were gone and then night came upon me like the shutting of a door. My small fire seemed to struggle against the inky blackness. There were no stars. A mist or thick cloud seemed to have choked off the sky and swallowed the moon. The desolate waste around me appeared to harbor no life, but as I lay back a dreadful weariness came over me as if my life were drained from my body, and then I heard the murmur of voices from far off. I pushed myself up on one arm using all the remaining strength I could muster and listened.

At first the crackle of the fire is all I heard, but then the sound of voices crept in among the flames. I watched them as they danced amid the old fragments of tree as if they were freed from some wooden prison. The murmur rose in volume but I could find no meaning in the words. It spoke a red language which burned with golden melodies and sang cruel songs I could not understand till I awoke beneath the curious sun.

***

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Copyright March 2014 By Jason Zavoda

Beyond the Forest of the Dead - Part 2

2

I did not make myself another torch; instead, I am shamed to say, I fled. Several times was I cut by the wings and claws of the glowing moths as I brushed their cages in my flight. Their voices were a discordant note and the bones strung with the long hair of murdered women that suspended them from the ghastly branches rattled in accompaniment.

No more of the human worms accosted me on my retreat as my feet slid on the slick and muddy ground beneath the withered leaves of flesh and, panting with relief, breathless from my headlong flight, I stopped on the edge of the forest and found myself facing a land I had not imagined. Behind me, within the trees of bone, the horrid glowing moths again sang their song of yearning and hunger for the blood of man. It struck me now as oddly beautiful and haunting. I know now that some madness had come over me and my eyes were blinded toward the horror of the place while a demonic illusion of serenity and perverse stillness overcame my distraught senses.

This was a land of cold grey ash, as fine as powder. Had the land burned? Had some holocaust among the stars drifted its fine remnant across this land beyond the Forest of the Dead?

The way ahead sloped downward across a wavy dune of the ash; down toward a valley where a ribbon of silver cut across the bottom where, thankfully, no trees grew. No assembly of bones greeted me and I kept my back turned toward that collection of nightmares I had escaped. On the far side of the silver pathway the land sloped up again, a dark line could be seen from my vantage, a view across the top of that far dune; tall curving mountains, oddly crested with domes and cylinders like tops of some great palace and crenelated battlements of titanic size and majesty.

I proceeded down, my feet causing a cascade of the fine powder, but still my purchase upon the slope was greater than that upon the beslimed forest floor. As I descended amid the wave of ash first a score then a hundred then hundreds more of tiny bumps appeared around me. Small heads, roughly furred which erupted a dozen stalks for eyes, burst from the moving surface. Small bodies like the torso of a monkey on the body of furred spider clawed their way to the surface and danced upon the sliding face of the slope. They chattered like dinner plates thrown together and moved with an unearthly grace. My sword swung in my hand but the small creatures ignored me. I would have halted my decent if I could, but any stop or turn would have sent me tumbling and the silver path at the bottom of the valley grew closer and made me afraid once again.

With great speed I flew down the slope, but around me the furred creatures flew faster. Their legs seemed not to touch the surface and they reached what I could now tell was a stream, some silver mold or growth covering its surface, rather than a path. Now I wished to stop before plunging into its unknown depths, its unguessable consistency. My legs flew out from under me and without dignity I landed on my backside, my feet digging runnels in the ash, and with much relief, slowing me to a stop.

The furred creatures in their legion threw themselves upon the silver growth that covered the surface of the stream and, with short arms but the hands of a primate, began to stuff themselves. As they ate, bare patches of a brown-green liquid appeared and, though the creatures stood as lightly upon the silver growth as they had upon the slope of powdered ash, they avoided the rapidly widening areas of what I shall call water that their voracious appetites were creating. I watched with fascination and a growing hunger of my own.

In leaving my terrified mount behind I had not forgotten to remove my pack and canteens from its saddle. My provisions weighed more for a traveller on foot than I had intended, hoping foolishly that my horse would transport me, at least partially, on my journey, but now I could see what I could never have imagined; the forest, this land of ash and dunes, was no place for a horse, though neither was it a place for a man.

From my pack I drew forth the fresh provisions that I knew would not keep and found them still wholesome. In these lands I took no freedom from corruption as given and while there was none in my provender I failed to cast my eye upon my own soul. I ate and watched the orgy of gluttony that the small creatures committed on the surface of the green-brown water. Frankly I was fascinated by their appearance and their graceful movement and I was astonished at their ability to consume the vast quantities of the silver growth from the top of the stream.

For some, however graceful, their gluttony was their own undoing.  As they ate the creatures swelled about their middle till a sickly pinkish abdomen protruded from beneath their furred belly. A particularly swollen little beast staggered for a moment on the edge of the apparently stagnant stream before slipping one foot into the foul and thick water. A chittering wail came from its throat and it legs and eye-stalks wavered then thrashed as the creature was drawn backwards as if by an unseen hand, In a moment, punctuated by a wail like the edge of a broken dish scraped across a tiled floor and a desperate, feeble, clutching of its small hands at the silver growth, the furred creature was gone without a ripple or a last bubble of breath to mark its end; it was simply gone and it was not alone.

The quick and seemingly accidental death of the first creature spurred a general exodus of all the others. In a tide of grey-brown fur, wavering eye-stalks and spidery legs they leapt and ran toward the slope upon which I sat. I could not say why but I felt only a slightly euphoric sense of mirth come over me at their antics. Their plunge toward the ashen dune was fraught with mishap and many of the creatures touched the water only to have themselves yanked back and under the turgid stream. I rose to my knees and stared intently but could never make out what, if anything, seemed to drag these small amalgams of spider, monkey, and God alone knew what else, beneath the water with such force. Even a hand that was rendered invisible to my vision would have made some impression on the water of the stream, or so it seemed to me, but there was nothing but the chittering screams of the doomed and the susurrus of the returning creatures who quickly burrowed beneath the ash and disappeared from view.

I sat and looked upon the stream, now half denuded of its silvery covering, and wondered how I would cross.

***

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Copyright March 2014 By Jason Zavoda

Beyond the Forest of the Dead - Part 1

Beyond the Forest of the Dead

1

The Forest of the Dead has no trees except for the bones of man and beast twisted and woven into ivory parodies of bark and branch; the roots covered with brown and withered leaves shaped from flayed skin, the flesh dry and crackling to the touch. Small cages made from fingers and ribs hang from these branches and hold trapped glowing moths whose wings are sharp as razors and whose voices sing of their longing to be free.

A stale and slightly putrid wind blows gently through the forest rocking the cages and sending shadows of the once living to dance among the bone trees. Beneath the leaves of flesh crawl monstrous slugs, wide mouthed and ever hungry. They raise a wake of crackling leaves as they hunch and crawl across the beslimed ground. Footing is treacherous within the forest and bare patches of earth are black and oily from which only a wormlike pale grass grows.

I entered the forest with great reluctance, on foot as my horse would not cross the boundary of the ash-hills to the East of the city; its eyes were rolling, mad with terror, and froth and blood covered its muzzle till it seized the bit and wildly bucked till I turned its head back toward the West and the abode of man. I could not, myself, return, and so I dropped from my saddle and grabbed pack, and bedroll, and sheathed sword and let my mount go, which it did with a frightened whinny and a startled gallop. I watched it disappear along the trail that cut through hills of grey-black ash and dark slabs of broken rock that separated the city of Ang from the utterly evil land before me.

The forest did not stretch far, or so I had been told, though few would speak of this place or lands beyond and fewer still knew even rumors of what might be encountered or any hope past Hellish death that a traveler might have in such a journey. There was little choice and the death promised me by the Sorceror-Priests of Ang was grim enough to make even the sight and rotting corpse-smell of the forest preferable.

It was still hours before noon. I had fled the city of Ang before the rising of the sun. The walls have gateways but no gates and no soldiers to guard them for darker things that even the cruelty of man cannot match in their wickedness have been called forth by the Sorceror -Priests to protect their Temple-Palace and the walls of their unholy city.

My business in Ang was complete. I had drawn the red brush of vengeance across those who thought themselves inviolate and now must I pay the price. I looked at the bone trees and the leaves of flesh, the glowing cages whose sickly greenish luminescence was muted by the bright sun and heard the sweet and sorrowful voices of the moths, hugely swollen and strangely human-like with small arms that clutched at the bars of their ivory cages. I looked away; the glowing moth's freedom meant the blood of man and the stories of their ingratitude are some of the most prominent tales of this horrid land that I have collected.

I walked among the trees of bone with my sword drawn and a torch fashioned from the thigh of some beast whose limb I had hewed from a tree on the outer edge of the forest. What steel could not stop perhaps fire might and I had no other weapons except the strength of my arm and the determination to live or meet death not alone.

And yet fear was my constant companion. I laughed because of all the terrible places on earth this forest was the beginning of fear and what lay beyond it was said to be beyond fear as it was beyond hope. Suddenly there was silence. The singing of the moths had stopped, the wind shook not their cages or rustled the covering of withered leaves and behind me I knew without looking that something approached.

With a whirl I turned and my sword slashed at air and the torch fell from my hand. For a moment it sank beneath the dry brownish crust of flesh and then a tongue of flame licked up with a tinge of greasy rot that made my stomach churn. I danced back from it and something humped beneath the surface screamed. The black beslimed belly of the creature shot forward, its body rising above my six feet, and its sphinctered mouth, ringed with teeth like tiny blades, opened wide, wide, wide enough to swallow the torso of a man, and it screamed. The sickly white hide of the creature was afire. What oily secretion wetted the folds of the wormish beast I did not know but they fed the fire and the fire bit deep.

In a moment it was all ablaze, except for the blackness of its belly where it was smeared with filth. It twisted and sprang upward, twice my height, and slammed down onto the bared and muddy ground. The burning leaves were quashed in the spray of that mud. I had retreated even as the beast had made its vertical flight and glad I was that the fire had been put out before the floor of that Hellish forest was turned into a sea of flame that would surely have drowned me in its burning arms.

As that pale-fleshed monster twisted along the foul and viscous earth, its teeth snapping at the tongues of flame which caressed it where the black slime was not, I could see its face; its mouth drawn in to merely human proportions. That face, merely human described the outline of nose and eyes above that circular maw. Human, but human without arms or legs, crawling on its belly, hunching like a worm, damned as the serpent is damned, abased and diminished to such a horror of a life.

***

End

(If you are enjoying this story please consider sending a gift to jasonzavoda@aol.com 

through paypal

Comments here would be greatly appreciated)

Copyright March 2014 By Jason Zavoda

Beyond the Forest of the Dead - Part 1

The Forest of the Dead has no trees except for the bones of man and beast twisted and woven into ivory parodies of bark and branch; the roots covered with brown and withered leaves shaped from flayed skin, the flesh dry and crackling to the touch. Small cages made from fingers and ribs hang from these branches and hold trapped glowing moths whose wings are sharp as razors and whose voices sing of their longing to be free.

A stale and slightly putrid wind blows gently through the forest rocking the cages and sending shadows of the once living to dance among the bone trees. Beneath the leaves of flesh crawl monstrous slugs, wide mouthed and ever hungry. They raise a wake of crackling leaves as they hunch and crawl across the beslimed ground. Footing is treacherous within the forest and bare patches of earth are black and oily from which only a wormlike pale grass grows.

I entered the forest with great reluctance, on foot as my horse would not cross the boundary of the ash-hills to the East of the city; its eyes were rolling, mad with terror, and froth and blood covered its muzzle till it seized the bit and wildly bucked till I turned its head back toward the West and the abode of man. I could not, myself, return, and so I dropped from my saddle and grabbed pack, and bedroll, and sheathed sword and let my mount go, which it did with a frightened whinny and a startled gallop. I watched it disappear along the trail that cut through hills of grey-black ash and dark slabs of broken rock that separated the city of Ang from the utterly evil land before me.

The forest did not stretch far, or so I had been told, though few would speak of this place or lands beyond and fewer still knew even rumors of what might be encountered or any hope past Hellish death that a traveler might have in such a journey. There was little choice and the death promised me by the Sorceror-Priests of Ang was grim enough to make even the sight and rotting corpse-smell of the forest preferable.

It was still hours before noon. I had fled the city of Ang before the rising of the sun. The walls have gateways but no gates and no soldiers to guard them for darker things that even the cruelty of man cannot match in their wickedness have been called forth by the Sorceror -Priests to protect their Temple-Palace and the walls of their unholy city.

My business in Ang was complete. I had drawn the red brush of revenge across those who thought themselves inviolate and now must I pay the price. I looked at the bone trees and the leaves of flesh, the glowing cages whose sickly greenish luminescence was muted by the bright sun and heard the sweet and sorrowful voices of the moths, hugely swollen and strangely human-like with small arms that clutched at the bars of their ivory cages. I looked away; the glowing moth's freedom meant the blood of man and the stories of their ingratitude are some of the most prominent tales that I have collected.

I walked among the trees of bone with my sword drawn and a torch fashioned from the thigh of some beast I had hewed from the outer edge of the forest. What steel might not stop perhaps fire might and I had no other weapons except the strength of my arm and the determination to live or meet death no alone.

End Part 1