Child of the Forest

After the others left, Alden took a little scent-masking powder from his pouch and rubbed it over his exposed skin, especially his face. To keep the rain from washing the powder away, he pulled up the hood at the back of his clothes. Then, relying on his powerful sense of smell, he followed the scent left by the shadowcat.

He was not tracking the beast alone because he wanted to complete some legendary ten-prey trial. He had seen something man-made on the shadowcat: several carefully woven vines tied around its body. Their position and shape did not hinder the animal's movement, but they would help anyone sitting on its back keep balance.

The shadowcat was enormous, but not large enough for an adult to use as a mount. A child's body, however, would fit it well. An ordinary child would be lucky not to be eaten by such a beast, and even a legendary skinchanger could hardly control a shadowcat while still young.

The ability to command a shadowcat in the forest, combined with a body the size of a child, made Alden think of one possibility at once: the shadowcat's master might be one of the children of the forest, a people said to have vanished completely from the south.

Driven by intense curiosity about the children of the forest, Alden moved through the trees. After about half an hour, the scent of the shadowcat grew much stronger, mixed with many other distinct fragrances.

He could not identify a single plant from those fragrances, yet he felt they were connected to every plant at once. If he had to give that scent a name, breath of nature might be the most fitting.

Alden slowed his steps and made every movement as quiet as possible. With the rain masking him, he hid his approach almost perfectly and drew close to the place where his target waited.

In the dense forest, a small patch of grass appeared with strange abruptness. On it stood a mound covered in sod.

It looked like a mound, but it was in truth a small house made of branches, stakes, lichen, and earth. The outside had been disguised. Anyone who did not look carefully would take it for a simple rise in the ground.

The shadowcat he had followed crouched outside the mound-house. The fawn it had taken had already been torn apart. At its feet were three or four shadowcat cubs, each no larger than a kitten, now eating greedily.

More than the shadowcats, however, Alden's attention was drawn to a stranger leaning against the mound, body completely covered by a cloak. The shadowcat showed no desire to attack that person, almost as if the stranger were its master.

Even so, Alden could still see in some instinctive movements that the shadowcat retained a measure of aggression toward the cloaked figure. When a cub tried to approach the stranger, the mother caught it and pulled it back, then bared teeth and claws in warning. That was clearly not the behavior of a mount toward its rider.

What puzzled him even more was that although he had not seen the stranger's face, he felt a vague familiarity, as if he had seen someone like this before.

While Alden tried to remember where he had seen such a person, a patch of sod on the mound suddenly loosened. A small camouflaged wooden door opened, and a short humanoid creature came out carrying a wooden bowl. It went to the stranger and offered the bowl.

The child-sized creature was exactly like the children of the forest in old tales: dark chestnut skin, large ears and eyes, three fingers on each hand, clothing woven from bark and leaves, a crown of flowers on its head, and a dagger of polished stone at its waist. She looked frail.

Anyone who judged one of the children of the forest by appearance would suffer for it. In ancient days, they had fought the First Men to a standstill. They were skilled with spear, dagger, and other weapons, possessed exquisite close-combat arts, and knew many forms of magic. It was no exaggeration to say that if a hundred ordinary soldiers entered a forest to fight one of them, that single child of the forest could easily kill them all.

The human seemed to have an excellent relationship with the child of the forest and trusted her completely. After accepting the wooden bowl, he pulled back his hood, revealing the face of a middle-aged man, and drank what was inside without hesitation.

When the human removed the cloak and revealed his face, Alden felt even more doubtful. The face was strange. He had never seen that man before. Yet the sense of familiarity grew stronger instead of fading.

As that sharp contrast between strangeness and familiarity troubled him, something suddenly rubbed against his foot. He looked down and saw a shadowcat cub leaning against his calf, rubbing back and forth as if using him as a convenient scratching post.

The cub clearly came from the same mother as the others in the clearing. Unlike its siblings, however, it was not black. It was white, and the stripes on its body were not gray but deep black. It looked more imposing than the others. Among forest beasts, though, a white shadowcat was at a great disadvantage. Whether hunting or being hunted, it stood out far too clearly.

As the white cub rubbed against Alden's leg, it made a series of pleased little sounds. They were not loud, but they were enough to draw the mother shadowcat's attention.

Under those circumstances, even though Alden had hidden himself as well as he could, he could not escape the beast's wild instincts.

The shadowcat immediately turned toward him and growled low, full of threat. At the same time, it swept several cubs toward the feet of the child of the forest.

The mother's sudden movement put both the human and the child of the forest on alert. The man on the ground stood at once and drew a longsword. The child of the forest drew the black dragonglass dagger at her waist, while her other hand naturally settled on a pouch there. Something dangerous was likely inside it.

Since his position had been exposed, Alden could no longer keep hiding. He did not draw his weapons. He only placed his hands on the hilts of the twin swords at his waist and stepped out from behind the screening brush. Amusingly, the white shadowcat cub followed him out and pressed against his foot, refusing to leave even when it heard its mother's call.

Alden had no attention to spare for the cub at that moment. As he stepped out, he immediately made his position clear. "You do not need to be afraid. I am not your enemy, and I will not harm you." He pointed toward the shadowcat, which was ready to pounce at any moment. "I followed it here. It took one of the animals my hunting party killed."

The child of the forest seemed to understand the Common Tongue. When she realized the shadowcat had been tracked, she angrily snapped two phrases at her mount in a language Alden had never heard. The shadowcat lowered its neck and gave two aggrieved huffs, as if wronged by the scolding. Then it bared its teeth at Alden even more fiercely.

The child of the forest was about to question Alden's identity and ask whether anyone else was nearby when the human beside her lowered his guard and sheathed his sword. He made a gesture to her and said, "Do not worry. He is not an enemy." Then he looked at Alden. "I did not expect to see you here. You are moving too slowly. After all this time, you have only reached the kingswood. I thought you would be in King's Landing by now."

Alden paused. The words sounded as if the man knew him, but both face and voice were unfamiliar. The problem was that the sense of familiarity had not faded because of that. It remained.

That sharp contrast between unfamiliarity and recognition quickly led Alden to one possibility. He tested it. "Are you the Faceless Man from New Barrel?"

"Such sharp perception and observation. If your name ever appeared on a list, I certainly would not accept the contract." The middle-aged man nodded and smiled.

Alden studied the Faceless Man's new face, then his gaze fell on several wounds across the man's chest and abdomen, wounds that had nearly opened him from ribs to belly. "It seems your task is complete."

The middle-aged man looked down at his injuries and nodded. "There were complications, but yes. It is done."

As he spoke, the child of the forest tugged at his clothes, apparently reminding him of something.

"Right. I forgot to introduce you." The Faceless Man's manner was remarkably warm. "This is Spark, an old friend of mine. I survived this time thanks to her." Then he pointed to Alden. "His name is Alden. People call him the Bear-Hunter."

"You are Alden the Bear-Hunter?" Spark looked at him with surprise after the introduction. She spoke fluent Common Tongue, and from her words, she clearly knew of him.

Alden bowed to her. "I did not expect my name to be known even among the children of the forest."

"I heard a singer perform the Bear-Hunter's song in a village outside the forest," Spark explained. Then she hummed the tune in the unknown language she had used earlier. It was the same melody, but sung by her, it far surpassed the effect it had in the Common Tongue. "I like the song very much. But you are very different from the Bear-Hunter in the song." She turned to the Faceless Man with a question. "Is he truly the Bear-Hunter?"

"Yes. He is the Bear-Hunter," the Faceless Man replied. "You should know that all legends contain exaggeration. They cannot be believed entirely."

Spark lost interest in the truth of the song and turned her attention instead to Alden's ability to attract a shadowcat cub. She walked up to him, looked him over from head to foot, circled him twice, and asked in puzzlement, "You are not a skinchanger. You are not a greenseer. There is no magic on you. Why is this shadowcat cub so close to you?"

While Spark spoke, the white cub clung to Alden's leg with its claws and tried hard to climb him. It could not manage it no matter how it struggled. In the end, Alden bent down and picked it up. Once in his arms, the cub immediately quieted, showing an intense closeness to him.

By contrast, the other shadowcats, adult and young alike, showed only strong rejection and wariness toward Alden. Even with Spark suppressing them, the instinctive hostility of beasts did not diminish at all.

"I do not know either." Alden stroked the cub in his arms, genuinely at a loss. He did not know what power in him could make the white shadowcat cub so close, but he was certain it did not come from Peacekeeper. None of Peacekeeper's combat memories had anything to do with beasts. The cause could only lie in the former owner of this body.

When Spark failed to find a reason, she soon lost interest. She turned and scolded the shadowcats and cubs. The mother looked once at the cub in Alden's arms, then carried the remaining cubs and the food one by one into the mound-house from which Spark had emerged.

Seeing that, Alden took the white cub by the scruff and offered it back to Spark.

Spark did not take it. "Since it has chosen to follow you, you may raise it." Then she turned to the Faceless Man. "The medicine will take effect soon. Your body will recover quickly. Now our debt is fully settled. Do you agree?"

"Yes. Our debt is settled." The Faceless Man nodded, then added, "But we are still friends, are we not?"

Spark's expression was firm. "Friends do not bring danger to friends. Do not come to me again. You carry too much trouble. I worry you will drag me into it."

With that, she turned and went into her tree-house beneath the mound. The Faceless Man smiled bitterly.

Just as Spark was about to close the door, she added, "If something like this happens again and you come back, you had best bring a gift tempting enough for me. Otherwise, I will not come out to see you."

She shut the wooden door heavily.

At those added words, the Faceless Man smiled.

Then Alden suddenly felt the ground tremble slightly, as if with a small earthquake. The raised mound-house before him began to sink. Soon, the ground that had bulged upward gradually flattened and became a level patch of grass. Then the grass began to grow wildly, rising to his waist before it finally stopped. The tall growth completely covered every trace of the child of the forest's dwelling.

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