Oli pushed through the final steps of the climb under the hazy heat. He could not get used to the strength of the sun outside from under the forest canopy. He caught up with Joturn by the cave entrance staring down at the land below them. Joturn looked up as he arrived and patted the ground beside him. Oli sat and the elder touched his shoulder, though he kept a little space between them. Oli couldn't see as far as last time. The forest looked larger with its borders obscured in the haze. He could see the lake though.

  He stared, as he always did now when he saw it, transfixed by the only thing in this landscape that mattered to him.

  “What do you see?” asked Joturn, gently.

  “It’s just... Blackness. The darkness comes out of it like the opposite of sunshine. It looks like it wants to suck everything inside.”

  The old man closed his eyes and then opened them, looking again as though what he saw might have changed.

  “It doesn’t look like that to everyone. It doesn’t look that way to me.”

  “What do you see?”

  “A brilliant mirror. It’s almost like a second sun in the forest.”

  “What does it mean that I see something different? Which is the real one?”

  Joturn stared at his hands and played with his fingers before replying.

  “I don’t know, Oli," he admitted. "It’s beyond my world.” He turned his head and looked into Oli’s eyes. “But I can promise you this: it’s best if I take you to Scursditch. These dreams started since you met him, didn't they? And even he does not trust them. I'll go to the lake and find out what you're dreaming of, and I'll find our clan there too, if I'm lucky.”

  Oli was not convinced. If Joturn sees a different lake, how can he find what causes my dream? The thought occurred to Oli that perhaps only he could find his mother there, but he did not say it. He knew it would sound absurd, spoken out loud. How could his mother, Winilind of the Hallin, be invisible to Elder Joturn?

  "Why don’t you trust Kastor?” he asked instead. “It seems like you hate him sometimes, even though you're always polite."

  Joturn rested his craggy forehead on his hand and rubbed it. Oli wondered if this was one of those questions his Father would have told him not to ask. Sometimes, adults did not want him to talk about what he saw in their hearts. But Joturn did not seem angry. He looked down the slope and then looked up thoughtfully.

  “I don’t hate him, Oli." Joturn lowered his voice, even though Kastor was well out of hearing. The medicine man had insisted on joining them, but had only just set off up the slope.

  "But he’s not the first I've met. We said we wouldn't tell these stories, but there’s no point in hiding them from you now." He pushed at the dirt with his foot. "When I was your age, my parents went to a medicine man. There was one near the Lujin, back then, who used to swim between the saltleaf trees in summer. My parents thought they were still good people, that if you followed the example of Tion, gave a gift sincerely and asked for nothing in return, they would see the wish in your heart and grant it.

  "I couldn’t stand the man. My parents saw what they wanted to see – a character from the stories. I was the same age you are now and I saw a mean and nasty loner. I was a little like you as a child, Oli. I saw people clearly, even when they hid from themselves. We spent an afternoon watching while he talked to his imaginary guests, asking us to answer the impossible questions they put to us and mocking us when we had no response. He talked to the trees, the rocks and the birds. He wailed and stamped his feet when he felt they slighted him. And my parents were so respectful. They showered him with gifts. Pieces of treasure they had traded for hides on the river, food for the winter, wine... He took it all without a word of thanks.”

  “What did your parents want from him?” Oli asked.

  “They wanted a cure for my sister. She couldn't hold down food and blood was coming out behind. The healers said she had only days left and my parents went to the medicine man in desperation.

  "After they’d given him everything they owned and listened to his insults, they told him about my sister. He smiled and handed them an apple. I’d never seen them so happy. They practically danced on the way back to the village. They gave my sister the fruit and she held it down. The next day her stomach didn't hurt a bit."

  Joturn paused and Oli waited. He knew the story was not over.

  “If that had been the end of it,” Joturn continued, “we might have started visiting them again. But soon the hunger came. She ate everything that was set before her and more. She ate my parents’ shares of the meal. She ate mine. Whenever they weren’t looking, she ate into our stores. She cried herself to sleep at night, begging for more food and woke screaming in the morning, clutching her aching belly. The clan tried to help, of course. But she was never satisfied. She was always hungry.”

  Joturn stopped talking and Oli looked up. He rubbed his eyes and Oli saw them shining. Joturn sniffed and looked away.

  “When did it stop, Elder Joturn?”

  “When she died,” he whispered.

  Oli was shocked. He had never heard of Joturn having a sister and he had never before seen the elder shed a tear.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Joturn looked at him and smiled.

  “It’s ok. It was a long time ago. But I still see his smile when he gave my parents that apple, and I hear her screams. He was an evil man. I could smell evil on him the moment we met. I can smell a lot on a person when I meet them.”

  “Do you think Kastor is evil?” asked Oli, with a gentle challenge in his voice.

  “No. But he can’t help us, Oli. I don’t smell evil on him, but I smell something else.”

  “What?”

  “Tragedy. Shame. A desire to die. You see so much in a person, don’t you see these things, too?”

  Oli could not deny it.

  “He’s not an evil man, although I dare say there is evil in his past. But his destiny is dark and I don’t want to see you or your mother or anyone else you dream of pulled inside it. Do you understand? The fates wrought by medicine men always affect others. My sister’s hunger consumed our supplies at the end of autumn. I almost starved that winter. When you get mixed up with them, you mix up all your loved ones, too.

  “I understand, Elder.”

  "Look, he's coming. I'll light a torch."

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  They moved quickly but Oli’s thoughts remained behind them in the forest. Joturn walked in front and Oli walked behind Kastor. He watched the medicine man as he limped, scouring the sides of the tunnel with his eyes. Was he like the man Elder Joturn had told him about? Was his destiny as dangerous? Was Kastor's teacher, the miserable old bastard, as he called him, as wicked as the one who had tricked Joturn's parents?

  As Joturn led the way, his free hand lingered near the rough spear that he had fashioned since their escape. He was ready for any sign of the hoarders. Kastor instead muttered to himself and poked around the walls, straining to find something that could be considered a sign. How will he react when he finds nothing? Who will he blame this time? Even if they found these strange new letters, thought Oli, that wasn’t what Kastor truly sought. He sought to delay the curse that stole over him, little by little, day by day. And from that, he had already told Oli, there was no escape.

  When they reached the fork, Joturn let Kastor choose their direction.

  “We’ll go down the right side first, then come back and try the left,” Kastor whispered.

  “Check one side today. The torch won’t last any longer. We can come back tomorrow for the other.”

  “Why did you only bring one?” Kastor hissed.

  “I don’t have a limitless supply of cloth and tallow.” Joturn spoke in a low, firm tone. Perhaps he had grown tired of feigning friendliness. “I’ll need it when I take Oli to Scursditch. If I catch something tomorrow I'll render more. Until then, I’m not using the last of it.”

  Kastor regarded Joturn with his eyes narrowed. The sweat on his face reflected the red light of the torch.

  “Then go back. You owe me nothing. Leave me with the torch to search for as long as I like.”

  Joturn shifted his weight and looked at the ground. He mumbled to Oli:

  “Come on, boy. Let’s go."

  As the shadows moved, Oli thought for a moment that he saw the wings of the demon. He understood Kastor’s intent and he knew that Joturn did, too. He had given up. He wanted to lose himself in these tunnels before he could lose himself in the labyrinth of his own thoughts. And Joturn was merely relieved to be rid of him. It made Oli angry. He stood still.

  "We can't leave him. Kastor, come back with us. I'll help you make more torches for tomorrow."

  Joturn stopped. The torch illuminated his tensed shoulders. He replied, slowly and dangerously:

  “No. You will not push us into this folly a second time. I am your elder and you will obey me. Leave him.”

  Joturn had never spoken to him like this before. The merest hint of disapproval had always been enough to terrify him into obedience. His voice croaked.

  "It's not right, Elder Joturn. He won't find his way back out!"

  Joturn spun to face him, scowling. Before he could retort, Kastor interjected and provoked his simmering fury further.

  “He fears me, Oli. Don’t blame him for it. He's right to. But he fears you, too, you know.”

  Oli was stunned. Was it true though? Kastor had articulated something which Oli had so far sensed without naming. Joturn had been strange with him since they met. When he came close he did so deliberately, as though he were fighting his own instincts to the contrary. Did he wonder if Oli already carried the same bad luck that he attributed to Kastor? He thought about Joturn's sister and looked at the elder, whose eyes now burned in anger. Joturn stepped suddenly forward and jabbed his finger in Kastor’s direction.

  “How dare you, Poison Man! I do not fear a child of my own clan. I fear for him. For what paths best left untrodden you have opened.”

  Kastor sneered as Joturn’s voice rose and he responded in a mocking tone:

  “How little you know. As if I could open paths for someone like him.”

  Joturn continued as though he had not been interrupted:

  “But I do fear you. I admit it. We thought your kind extinct and were glad of it. Who knows what you’ve done to him out there alone in the forest? Who knows what you have done without him even noticing?”

  At this, Kastor’s sneer turned into a scowl.

  “What I've done to him? Oh, what I could have done! I know what he is now. I know what the old bastard wanted. I could have led him there to his death days ago. And you!" Kastor stepped forward and they faced each other with barely an inch between them. "You don't even know what I've thrown away – for a boy to whom I owe nothing. My own salvation!"

  Kastor shoved Joturn angrily back and lurched out with his left hand, slapping at the hunter’s head. Or rather, he swung through the place where Joturn’s head had been. Even in the darkness and caught off guard, a reflex that had survived for seventy years reacted without thinking.

  Joturn sprang up and grabbed Kastor by the throat, thrusting him backwards down the narrow, forked path and up against the side of the tunnel.

  "Tell me what he is to you! Enough of your secrets! Tell me what your master planned!"

  As the torchlight dimmed and swung around, Oli cried out:

  “Don’t! Elder Joturn! Kastor! Don’t fight!”

  Neither man was really angry with the other. Joturn wanted to fight with the man who hurt his sister and Kastor wanted to vent his rage with the forest. But that rage could kill either or both of them.

  Kastor threw himself upon the elder. Oli knew the change had come upon him – the same one as when he fought the soldiers in the grove. The silent, furious attack was not that of a wounded and weakened man. The two of them fell to the ground, rolling over one another and the torch suffocated beneath them.

  The darkness enveloped Oli. He felt suspended in a void. He staggered out of the way of the scuffling men and bumped into a wall.

  Then his eyes adjusted, and he saw it.

  “Stop!” he cried. His fighting companions did not hear.

  “Stop!” Oli shouted again, this time as much in excitement as in fear. “Stop fighting and look!”

  At first, he was only aware of a new source of light, as though someone far away had lit a torch that burned green. The new glow came from an incandescence around and above them. The scuffling bodies near his feet went still. His eyes adjusted and the glow coalesced into lines and patterns that shone in pale green clusters from the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. The whole tunnel they had walked down was framed in strange symbols and designs that seemed to hang in the darkness, just bright enough to illuminate their surroundings. It was the very torchlight they had used to search for them which had kept them hidden.

  "Look up, Kastor,” he breathed. “You’ve found them.”

  How long have they been here? Part of our own forest that we've never seen. What else have we looked right past?

  Both men scrambled to their feet.

  “It’s real," he heard Kastor whisper. “It’s true.”

  They stood in amazement, staring at the patterns, the fight forgotten. Kastor traced his finger over one of the glowing symbols, following its arcs and lines as though he were learning to draw it.

  “I think this means ‘home,’ according to the notes Hastam left. And this one means ‘food.’ They are both together. Could that mean... a storehouse? A place they ate together. Look, these are numbers! They don’t use digits. Just a different letter for each number, so of course they don’t count far – but what do they mean here when they are doubled up?"

  When Oli’s mouth finally found the words, he asked the question that struck him as far more important than the meaning of the symbols.

  “How is it all glowing?”

  Kastor stopped moving.

  “I don't know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “These marks,” said Joturn, finally breaking his own stunned silence, “are not the work of beasts.”

  Joturn’s unspoken question was clear to Oli. Who made them and where are they now?

  “Come on, Oli, let’s go,” said Joturn, pulling on his arm. “Someone else’s world begins here, and our world ends.”

  This time Oli did not resist.

  “Can you get back by yourself?” Oli asked. "You don't need the torch now." What he meant to ask was whether Kastor intended to return.

  “I’ll manage,” Kastor replied, too engrossed in the drawings to look at them as he spoke.

  Oli and Joturn walked beneath the glyphs until the tiny point of light that marked the tunnel entrance came into view. As they approached, the return of daylight obscured the symbols from their sight. Another hidden world faded gradually from his view.

  They sat together in the same place they had waited for Kastor at the start of the day. They waited for him to emerge from behind them, neither of them sure that he would.

  "Do those signs appear in any of the stories, Elder Joturn?" Oli asked.

  "None, Oli. There are stories we didn't tell you, and stories that it seems we never knew."

  "Do you think the hoarders made them, or someone else? What do you think they say?"

  Joturn shook his head and shrugged. Before this year, there had never been anything the elders or his parents could not explain. Now they seemed to know nothing at all.

  They gazed in silence over the forest and again the lake drew Oli's eyes. There's another place they know nothing about.

  How can I get there? he asked himself. Joturn draped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close.

  "I'm not afraid of you, boy. I never could be. I only want to protect you, to get you back to your parents and the life we know."

  Oli leaned into the embrace and rested his head against the elder's chest. He breathed in and out in time with Joturn and basked in the glow of the old man's affection. He soaked it up, the way he would enjoy a moment of sunlight at the end of autumn, appreciating it all the more because he knew it could not last.

  How will I find a way there, if he won't take me? I've never been able to find a way anywhere.

  He'd have to wait until an opportunity came. Oli was good at waiting. Then another thought occured to him:

  What if I wait for so long it becomes too late? What if I've been waiting all my life?

  Perhaps it was time to find his own way, whether he knew how to or not.