A Lost Land

True to Daigay’s words, the party reached the lostlands while the sun still shone.

Setting off down the mountain at dawn when day’s first lights blazed across the sky, erasing the stars, the wagon bumped along through the weeds grown high and stones dislodged by their travel. At the mountain’s base was a sparse woodland, trees enough to limit visibility while not demanding Jackbee trot in serpentine motions, spruce to provide shade and pine with their delicious needles. No one was hungry enough for those, but the foliage hung there tantalizing all the same.

“It’s so quiet,” said Mouse. “Has anyone seen any animals?”

“None at all,” replied Joshua. Restless, he had leapt from the wagon some time ago and no walked on the opposite side as Ol-Lozen, hand never more than a few inches from his hatchet. Its edge hummed, freshly sharpened, ready for use at a moment's notice. He brushed away a strand of hair fallen in front of his eye. Grown out during their travels, the rag tied around his head was losing effectiveness with each passing day. The hair had darkened from all his time spent in the wagon talking with the girl. “Deer should gather around these parts when weather cools. By now we should have seen at least a buck prowling for mates. A bird? Haven’t heard one call.”

“Better we remain so lucky, and are not noticed by any creature.” Daigay’s voice was lower, speaking no louder than required. “We cause enough ruckus as it us.” The children took the hint, sealing their lips.

Ol-Lozen hand lingered on the hilt of his people’s sword. He had taken to the tick as a measure to calm the heart hammering his ribcage. Protection in hand, ready to be drawn, was a potent relaxant. He did not say so aloud, but their combined scent was as much a scream as speech. When the trickle of running water kissed his ears, he had to fight to stay clothed.

Sadly, the river was not one worth tearing off clothes for. Its water were receded, bed nearly dry save for an emaciated ribbon of spit dribbling down the wide, empty channel. Withered fish carcasses laying in the dirt had been picked clean for appetizing morsels. Joshua brushed his silver necklace, and muttered small words for the deceased.

“We’ll head upriver,” Daigay said.

For a time they walked alongside the waterway. Every so often was a puddle gripping its last dewdrops, watching them pass from the shade, too little liquid to provide a reflection of their wan faces. After a while the dribble started to gain strength; they were coming up on the dam.

What they found was a congealed mass of carmine impeding the river, flowering and deathly for the spirit to behold. Daigay pulled on the reins of Jackbee, her hand flying to his neck. A small whinny passed his snout, but that was all.

“Stick close to the wagon,” she commanded through a whisper. “Do not stray beyond the leave I give you, if you hold any affection for the others you travel with.” From her bandaged hand flew a deluge of shimmering waves, the magic enveloping them in an oblong bubble beyond which the world quavered as if underwater. What ambience the forest had offered thus far diminished down to a mouse’s padding across the carpet, and the sounds of those within echoed off the enclosed space’s barrier, extending perhaps a four-foot radius from the wagon and Jackbee in every direction.

Daigay held still, listening, eyes to the shifting skies, and when secure to do so raised a bridge from the once-dry muck of the river. She motioned for the others to follow. While crossing, the travelers were afforded a close look at the blockage: thickets of ruddy vines, and growths with stubby, purple-veined petals. Both land and water were choked by the rubbery mat, their vines snaking upward constricting the trees. Joshua reached down to one tendril near his sandal and pulled until it snapped. There was a sickly odor of burnt sugar released. Ol-Lozen worried at his nose; its smell numbed the edges of his nostrils.

“It will only become denser as we press on. No sense trying to prune it.”

The haze obscuring their vision grew murkier as well. Above the vines of the lostlands floated a mist like the first haze of night tinged crimson. Up close it was thin, and easily ignored. The further one looked, the greater the gloom, to the point the farthest sights appeared drenched in night.

Focus became difficult as well. Protected by the shimmering barrier they may have been, but it distorted their sense of time by sporadically altering the amount of light they received at any given moment. Ol-Lozen’s certainty they had not been under its shield for more than an hour slipped if he paid too much thought, so he kept his thoughts to the barrier’s edge nearly brushing his shoulder. He could walk standing straight so long he kept his pace equal to the wagon’s own. It was something, in his mind, that felt productive. Against the nervous buzzing in the base of his skull it proved a balm.

When Daigay shot up her arm with the universal sign of “halt,” he realized it wasn’t only in his head.

A flurry of shadows passed overhead, and the buzzing diminished with each pound of blood in each pair of ears. He counted five in the split second of their appearance. Five of those tendrilled yellow, black scabbed creatures. It was enough to grind his teeth.

Snap

Daigay whirled around. Shimmering chains encircled Joshua and dragged him close enough to clamp a hand over his mouth before he gasped. The boy panted, eyes bulging in their sockets, limbs bound to keep him motionless. “Shh. Shh-shh,” she whispered, looking to the forest floor. Where the boy had stood, a twig lay snapped in half. She held him until he started to relax, and his muscles were flaccid.

“Ol-Lozen, check on Mouse. You, boy,” she mumbled to the only one fitting that description, “Get to the wagon. Now.”

The Orkan nodded, sheathing the length of sword he’d pulled in the split second of action. A page turned in the silence. The girl’s back was to him, finger tracing depictions of muscle groups in the tome atop her lap, but the bored indifference she tried to exude was betrayed by her quivering digit. He exchanged a nod with Daigay while the terrified boy crawled towards relative safety of wood and fabric.

They continued again through the forest. The ground raised and fell more unevenly further in, slopes stumbling progress at inopportune times. Branches reached down with sharp fingers intent on snagging skin and loose ends of clothes, and broke with cracks like gunshots when successful. Often when Daigay’s hand fell on Jackbee’s fur, the act for whom it was intended lost certainty: reassurance, of course, but for whose benefit? Skulking around the forest like rats wore down both their resolves, the ever-present threat of discovery sandpaper to their hearts. Twice more the party was forced to halt when the buzz of Incursion wings grew close. Each pack doubled the size of the one previous.

Passing through a narrow gulch, Daigay grabbed her steed’s reins suddenly to freeze him. With a whisper of motion she beckoned closer Ol-Lozen, pulling on the leather binds to turn Jackbee from the stone faces bookending their path. Black puddles of shadow overlapped the wagon and provided cold shade. “We cannot go this way. Infection – and more than you could ever hope to combat on your own.” She swallowed hard. “A whole pack of minotaur.”

Even bereft of colorful description, a shiver coursed around his guts. “Can we not push through on tiptoe?” he muttered.

“If we weren’t part of the world. I can render us invisible, not intangible. No, as we are we risk waking them, and so this road is denied us.” She brushed a tattered strand of damp grey from her face. “We will need to double back. Delayed as we’ve been, I see only one way forward now. We must pass through Goldhome-In-The-Dell, where smooth roads will hasten our journey through the lostlands, though it is territory of the lostlands itself, like as not to be inhabited by Incursion. It is a town many miles from here.”

“Safer than fording a few corpses?” Even as he spoke he could smell the musk of animal bodies, carried by winds with the stench of decay between the gulch’s stone bookends.

“Safety is a luxury we can ill afford, and its price only steepens with the length of our stay.” A hand between the donkey’s shoulders encouraged him to start turning. “Help the old mule turn the wagon so we can be off. I dare not wait about longer than necessary.”