The well-worn path by the riverbank, though winding and undeniably adding days to their journey, offered a sense of relative security after the chilling encounter near the werebear's village. The air here was cleaner, smelling of damp soil and wildflowers, the rustling of leaves in the gentle breeze a soothing counterpoint to the oppressive, watchful silence that had clung to the edges of Anansi's Forest. Low, however, walked with a coiled tension, her gaze constantly scanning the dappled treeline, her hand never far from the scavenged throwing knives at her belt. She couldn't shake the knot of worry tightening in her chest. Leonotis's impulsive, arrogant decision to take that cursed shortcut still annoyed her, a frustration that bubbled fiercely beneath her hardened exterior, yet it was uncomfortably intertwined with a deeper, more unsettling fear for him.
Jacqueline walked beside her, her usual ethereal grace slightly subdued, her steps less like a water nymph gliding over land and more like someone treading carefully on unfamiliar ground. Her blue eyes, often lost in the distant sorrow of her own private ocean, now held a flicker of active concern as she watched Low's restless vigilance. She had witnessed the sharp, biting words Low had directed at Leonotis before he'd stubbornly veered off towards the shadowed maw of the forbidden woods, but she had also seen the raw anxiety etched around Low's eyes, the way her knuckles had whitened on her pouch of rocks. It was a stark, almost painful contrast to the pragmatic self-reliance and emotional detachment Low usually projected like a shield.
They encountered a small band of traders, not hunters this time, huddled around a crackling fire by the side of the path as dusk began to settle. Their faces were weathered by sun and wind, their clothes travel-stained and patched, their eyes holding the weary caution of those who lived by the road and its countless dangers. A pungent aroma of roasting river fish and strong herbs hung in the air. Low, ever cautious, signaled for Jacqueline to wait, then approached them slowly, her movements fluid and non-threatening, though her hand rested near her knives.
"Greetings," she said, her voice neutral but clear. "Good evening for a fire. Have you traveled far today? Or perhaps… through Anansi's Forest recently?" She tried to keep the last question casual, but a thread of urgency wove through it.
A grizzled man with a bald, sun-browned head and a beard like tangled grey moss looked up from whittling a piece of wood. He shook his head decisively, his eyes widening slightly at the mention of the infamous name.
"Anansi's? Gods and spirits, no, girl. That place is cursed, plain and simple. Spiders the size of hounds, some say wolves, with venom that'll melt your bones from the inside or, if you're unlucky enough to survive, cause terrible hallucinations that'll drive you mad. Lost a good lad in there years ago, my own nephew. Took a 'shortcut,' he said." The man spat into the fire for emphasis, the hiss and pop of it underscoring his disgust. "Best avoid it, unless you've got a death wish or you're Anansi himself."
His words, delivered with such grim certainty, confirmed Low's deepest fears, tightening the cold knot in her stomach. She exchanged a troubled look with Jacqueline, who had followed her approach, her silence a heavy presence. The girl's usual detachment seemed to waver, a hint of genuine unease coloring her delicate features as she absorbed the trader's grim account.
Later, as they continued their journey under a sky beginning to fill with stars, the weight of Leonotis's absence, and the dire warnings about his chosen path, seemed to settle heavily between them. Low, surprisingly, broke the silence, the words tumbling out as if she could no longer contain them. "He's… he's just a stupid kid," she said, her voice gruff, kicking at a loose stone on the path with unnecessary force, as if trying to convince herself as much as Jacqueline. "Thinks he's got to do everything fast, prove how strong he is with that new magic of his." She scowled at the memory of his defiant face. "Reminds me of some of the younger ones at the orphanage. Always trying to be the toughest, the loudest, but they just end up getting hurt, or hurting someone else." A flicker of raw sadness crossed her face then, a brief, unguarded glimpse of the vulnerability she usually kept so fiercely hidden.
Jacqueline listened quietly, her gaze thoughtful as she navigated the uneven terrain. She had observed Low's interactions with Leonotis – the sharp rebukes often delivered with an underlying current of exasperated affection, the grudging respect that sometimes softened Low's hard edges. It was a dynamic utterly alien to her, whose own relationships, even with her closest attendants, had always been dictated by the rigid protocols and emotional distances of her royal life beneath the waves.
Hesitantly, Low continued, her voice softer now, the anger spent, leaving only a raw ache of worry. "It's… you get used to being on your own in a place like that orphanage. No one really looks out for you, not truly. You learn to rely only on yourself, to build walls so high no one can touch you." She glanced at Jacqueline, a flicker of uncharacteristic vulnerability in her eyes. "Trusting… it doesn't come easy. But… he's just a kid. A foolish, reckless kid. And he's… he's trying, I guess. In his own idiotic way."
Jacqueline nodded slowly, a dawning understanding in her own sapphire eyes. She had always valued her solitude. A wave of unexpected, sharp grief washed over Jacqueline, so potent it made her stumble slightly.
"I… I had servants once," she said, her voice barely a whisper, the carefully constructed walls around her own emotions momentarily crumbling like sea-worn cliffs. "Mbuna… he always fussed over the smallest details, convinced some catastrophe was imminent if my favorite coral comb was misplaced. He was always concerned." A smile touched her lips. "And Betta… he pretended to be bored by everything, especially my father's functions, but he was fiercely loyal. He once wrestled a creature that tried to snatch one of my spell books." Her gaze drifted to the horizon, a profound sadness clouding her blue eyes, making them look like the deep, sorrowful sea itself. "They… they were lost during our... My journey here. I… I never even got to say goodbye properly."
The memory of Mbuna's perpetually worried frown as he inventoried her pearl collection for the tenth time, and Betta's dramatic, put-upon sighs whenever she requested a rare sea-blossom from a particularly treacherous reef, surfaced with a sudden, painful clarity.
The admission hung in the humid night air, a shared moment of unexpected vulnerability between two very different girls, bound by a mutual, unspoken concern for a reckless boy and the surprising, discomfiting weight of newfound companionship. The longer path, it seemed, was not just safer, but also a place where such fragile, unexpected connections could take root and, perhaps, even thrive.
***
A searing throb pulsed in Leonotis's leg with every shallow, ragged breath. Anansi's Forest, he thought with a detached sort of horror, more than lived up to its venomous reputation. Sticky, silken threads, almost invisible in the gloom, clung to his clothes like ghostly fingers, and the air hummed with the unsettling, multi-legged skittering of things he fervently hoped were just hallucinations from the spider's poison, but feared were horribly real. He leaned, shivering, against the gnarled, slimy trunk of an ancient, moss-covered tree, the damp earth chilling him to the bone despite the humid air. Hours – or had it been mere minutes? – had blurred into a nightmarish, disorienting cycle of stumbling through tangled, grasping undergrowth, his heart hammering, and desperately evading the clicking, hungry mandibles of spiders the size of his own head that seemed to drop from every shadow.
Panic, a cold and clammy serpent, coiled tight and suffocating in his gut. He was lost. Utterly, terrifyingly, hopelessly lost. The arrogant confidence, the burning impatience that had propelled him into this green, whispering hell, had long since withered and died, replaced by a gnawing, bone-deep fear and a desperate, aching longing for Low's sharp, grounding wit and Jacqueline's quiet, steadying strength. He'd been a fool, a reckless, prideful fool.
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to ignore the kaleidoscopic, nauseating patterns that danced behind his eyelids. He focused on the faint, emerald hum that now resided within him, a nascent power that felt both alien and intrinsically part of him. The green magic, still a wild and untamed thing, stirred hesitantly at his command, though his control, especially now with the venom clouding his mind and sapping his strength, was shaky at best. He pictured Low's determined face, the fierce loyalty that burned beneath her cynicism; he pictured Jacqueline's serene gaze, the deep well of unexpected power she held. He needed to reach them, to anchor his desperate intent to their presence.
With a grunt of effort that sent fresh waves of pain lancing up his leg, he extended his root sword, willing the magic to flow, to obey. A thin, vibrant green vine, no thicker than his little finger, snaked out from the gnarled tip, quivering with a nascent, almost desperate energy. It pulsed with a faint, inner light, a fragile, verdant beacon in the oppressive, suffocating gloom of the forest.
Low… Jacqueline… find me… he thought, pouring all his fading hope, his terror, and his desperate, urgent need into the living tendril. He imagined it reaching them, a tiny green thread of connection cast across the vast, unforgiving woods. He imbued it with a whisper of his presence, a faint, almost imperceptible echo of his fear, his regret, and his desperate plea for help.
Slowly, painstakingly, fighting against the encroaching dizziness and the venom-induced tremors in his hand, he directed the vine upwards. He guided it through the dense, interlocking canopy, hoping against hope it would find a clear path above the suffocating, poisonous foliage. It snagged on unseen leaves, twitched erratically as his concentration wavered, its precious light dimming and flaring like a dying firefly with each wave of nausea that washed over him.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of strained effort, the glowing tip of the vine reached a small, tantalizing opening in the leaves far above, a fleeting, pinprick glimpse of the pale, overcast sky. With a final, shuddering surge of his will, his vision greying at the edges, Leonotis released the tendril. It drifted upwards for a breathless moment, a fragile green thread against the vast, indifferent grey, before being caught by a gentle, almost imperceptible breeze.
It spiraled away, a tiny, desperate message carried on the wind, a magical SOS cast into the vast, swallowing wilderness. But the forest was immense, its secrets ancient and closely guarded. The tendril was small, its light weak, its magical signature fainter than a dying breath. It was a whisper in a storm, a single green leaf falling in an endless, uncaring forest. The chances of Low or Jacqueline finding it, of them even noticing its fleeting, fragile presence in time, felt infinitesimally, terrifyingly small. Yet, it was all he had left. A fragile thread of hope cast into the deepening green abyss.