Lower Gales

“No, no!” Fen pointed, “That one’s the Queen’s Gale, see all the ivy? They planted ivy in there, and now it overruns the whole thing. Almost nobody goes in there anymore.” There was such an overgrowth of willows along the edge of the four-horse wide trail that I could hardly see the Queen’s Gale through their tangled, dangling branches. The sun had only barely climbed high enough to be its brightest yellow, the glossy pastel pinks and oranges of sunrise now an hour and some behind us. On the west side of the trail, there was the Gale River and across it, little hills curved lowly out of the ground, reaching trim meadows with few trees between a pointillism of white, yellow, violet, orange, blue, and red flowers.

Moxi turned sharply away from the Queen’s Gale, almost making a point of it. “Well, it would be not I that is familiar with such a dank and unkempt place. What would one think of me, were I spotted there?”

“My clan only sends our most tested soldiers into the Queen’s Gale,” Fen kept walking, “I’d think you were very strong indeed, m’lady.”

I flew along between them, “I’m sure there are very pretty things within the Queen’s Gale.”

“There’s six-no-eight foot wide flowers that grow on the side of trees, and they’re the worst smelling flowers in the world, but they instead smell good to small animals, I’ve heard. The elder told me there’s a group of witches there who lure young kids into the Queen’s Gale to eat them… and wolves, wolves, too!”

I landed on her shoulder and spoke softly, “Fen, did he tell you that before or after your Sevenday?”

“Before,” she nodded, “What difference does it make?” Fen continued ahead of us on the southbound road, humming to herself as she walked.

Moxi made us stop three times in the next hour, twice because she said something was in her boot, but then she wasn’t able to find whatever it was that had been bothering her. And once more for a reason she wouldn’t explain at all.

The trail continued alongside the widening river as more little streams joined it from the foothills in the west. Thinning and steepening, the road sloped downward until suddenly it dropped off entirely like a wall beside the river. Fen stopped, staring downward, then murmured to herself, “The road is gone.” It wasn’t quite gone, but the once-steep trail had crumbled into an impassable muddy slag.

“I could fly to the bottom,” I looked over it, “are either of you able to climb?”

“W-well, I could climb,” Fen started, speeding up a little with every word, “but it looks very slippery, and not at all stable. See, there was a mudslide there, see, you can see it. And, that means it can fall again, and then if I fell with it, well, I could get all hurt on the way down or even crushed by the rocks.”

Moxi pretended to yawn, “There is no way indeed, I would put my hands on a muddy thing like that. I suppose we’ll go back to town, now, and this whole silly adventure will just be a story to tell at a later date.”

I flew over the edge slightly, pointing down at a little, craggy trail connecting to the very bottom of the rockslide, “Where does that come from?” I asked, “We could get there if we went around to Nox Mountain, couldn’t we?”

Fen shivered, her tail standing on end behind her, “Th-that comes from the South Gale, but there’s no way through to there without going through the Queen’s Gale, and there are all such terrible things throughout the Queen’s Gale. If we go in there, we could be poisoned or caught in snares or cooked and eaten by…”

“Or, we could come out just fine,” I took a deep breath, “surely, it can be no worse than climbing down that rock face.”

“What if we swam across the river?” asked Moxi, “Then we could go around through the other side by the field of flowers.”

Fen ran toward the edge of the forest, “S-swim? There could be sharks in the river! It’s water, I hate being wet. It’s awful! Anyway, the Queen’s Gale isn’t so bad. I know three warriors who have gone in and come out alive!”

“How many soldiers do you know who have gone in?” Moxi ducked under the dangling willow branches, her boots crunching through low brambles.

“Seven…” Fen muttered, “And, all seven were much bigger and stronger than us, indeed!” She tiptoed behind Moxi, who was a good deal shorter than herself. Her shoulders arched backward and her ears pointed straight up when she heard the tweet of a songbird.

I landed on Fen’s shoulder to let my wings rest a while, and looked at what I could in the Queen’s Gale. We hadn’t properly backtracked to where the trail must have been, and it must have been a mile north of here or more. Instead, we found ourselves by accident on a makeshift trail, barely wider than Moxi’s shoulders, and which was already half overgrown with thorns invading the only places for my companions to put their feet. Only little spots of light ever made it through the thick canopy overhead, sparkling through in little clusters. When I looked left and right below the thicker trees, I saw the nighttime hiding within this forest.

A stream of light from above twisted downward until it flashed off a flower petal as tall as Moxi. It was purple-and-red with circular, chalky white spots across it like the head of a death cap mushroom. Moxi and Fen both covered their noses as soon as they saw it, but my wings twitched behind me. The taste of warm broth filled my mouth, and my nose teased me with a sweet scent. I blinked and I’d flown slightly off Fen’s shoulder, a few inches toward the flower’s open petals. There was a long crease down the center of the flower, and white points of teeth in its long, tentacle-like stamen.

Fen swung her claw out, snagging it in my dress and yanking me back to her, “They only smell good to small creatures. Very dangerous.”

“Just let her learn for herself,” Moxi stepped into a clearing and took a step toward a wide, hollow log. She yawned, “Oh, how comfortable! I think I’ll sit here a moment!” A pale and dead bird lay half-burried in the grass by her feet.

Fen sprinted forward, still holding me tightly in her paw, “Stay standing!” She hissed. She slowly set me back on her shoulder, drew her bow, its string creaking as she nocked a silver-tipped arrow. Fen slowly pulled it back, then loosed the arrow with a swish, splintering the side of the log.

It rolled to the side, screeching wildly, and black blood poured out of the log’s side. Moxi’s eyes widened as she watched it squirm back and forth, “W-what was that thing?”

“Vampire’s bench.” Fen slowly put her bow back, “When birds perch on them, they suck all the blood from them, totally dry. Well, they’ll do it to people, too. It’s really sticky, and you aren’t able to get up once you sit down.”

“Why’s all its blood black?” Moxi stepped further back into the clearing. A single ray of light cut down over her.

“That’s not its blood. I shot it right through the stomach,” Fen answered, “a mix of all kinds of blood, and mostly digested, too.” She followed Moxi to the middle of the clearing, where a slight creek ran perpendicular to the way we were walking. She mumbled, “That’s strange…” She pointed back the way we came, “I thought the Gale River was that way.”

I flew directly over the water, “We haven’t gone downhill either. We’ve turned north, that’ll take us back to the main trail, anyway.” It trickled quietly, and I could see the outlines of little fish going through it with a sort of haste like even they wanted to get out of the Queen’s Gale as quickly as they could manage. It took some pushing to get Fen to even jump over the creek, which is more than thin enough for her to step over with little effort.

My wings beat behind me as I scanned over the area. There were so many little sounds that all faded into one thing, the calls of birds of all sorts that normally I’d be wildly cautious of just became little hoots and squeaks. Then, a loud groaning croak, and a splish of wet feet hopping against the rocks by the creek. I darted back to the side of Fen as the projectile tongue of a frog slashed over my shoulder, narrowly staying in the tiny gap between my head and the top of my butterfly-like wing. Moxi ran toward it, stomping her feet and yelling like she was trying to scare off a bear, and the frog hopped back into the creek panickedly. “Coward!” She screamed after it, “Craven!”

“It’s about as tall as your foot, Moxi…” Fen cleared her throat. She continued on, “I didn’t know fairies could react so quickly.”

“I heard it before I saw it,” I saw a large gap in the willows and ivy widening toward a thin, gravel road ahead, “There! The trail!”

“Land ho!” Moxi hollered.