In Antas Forest Part 2 - Tracking by Night

PART 2

The woods were shrouded in a fog that brought Titus’ visibility to just a few feet, as if the pitch-black forest wasn’t hard enough to navigate. Drops of rain cascaded from the canopy above, hissing at their demise upon the yellow flames. Titus wiped his soaked face, growling to himself. It wasn’t wise to do this: he was unfamiliar with the territory, could barely see, and had no good reason to trust that this wasn’t a set-up from Arlene or some unseen nemesis.

The one good thing about the damp soil was that it held deep impressions from Arlene’s boots. He had tracked them directly from her bedroll, and twenty minutes later they were still meandering through the heather. At times they were shuffled like she slipped or was startled, but they kept on. The woods were silent except for the sharp cries of cevin cats, and the chatter of bats above. Titus kept his free hand on his dagger’s pommel. Those weren’t the real threats; the real ones you didn’t see or hear until it was too late.

A softer rhythm began to seep into his mind. At first he thought it to be the wind, but as he followed the tracks it grew in volume, babbling in the darkness. Almost too late, he saw the flicker of white water reflecting his torch. He held up just short of the creekbank. It was a foot above the water, which rushed by with surprising swiftness for its relatively narrow and shallow depth, bouncing off rocks and fallen timber to create the seething white foam.

Titus knelt, soiling his pants as the damp ground seeped into his pants. The tracks vanished at the water’s edge. They were evenly spaced, like Arlene had just walked right over the edge without a running start or hesitation. The opposite bank was just a few feet away, but impossibly dark to see anything more than the obscure dark shapes of bushes and tree roots jutting out along the side.

Titus leaned over the bank, holding the torch low to look for footprints, blood stains, anything that would explain what had happened. Nothing. He stood up straight, rubbing his eyes. This all felt off, and he was in no mood to find out more. He was leaving right now, getting out of these woods as soon as possible.

That’s when he heard a splash. He spun on his heels, dagger flashing out in an instant. At first he sighted nothing, then saw the wriggling figure in the water, thrashing about and churning up a mess of water. Then they went still.

Titus looked around. He tried to listen over the water, and he heard nothing out of the ordinary wildlife and bubbling creek. When the figure rose from the creek his bowels nearly dropped out of his body and his heart thudded to the floor of his rib cage. He could feel sweat mix with mist along his body, making the handle of his weapon a slippery mess. His heart drummed in his chest.

“Stand fast!” He bellowed.

The figure paused for a moment, a slight laugh escaping their lips. Then they proceeded forward again, pulling themselves out of the water with something hanging from a nearby tree. Perhaps a vine or fallen tree branch, it was too dark to tell. Titus dug his feet in the soil.

“I said stop!”

“Relax,” the figure shot back in a hoarse whisper. “It’s just me.”

Titus peered into the darkness, holding his torch forward.

“Arlene?”

“That’s what they call me,” she said, wringing out water from her dress and shaking off like a wet dog. Titus winced as some of it splashed against him. He approached her, dagger still at the ready. Sure enough, her sparkling green eyes and shock of auburn danced in the torchlight. Her face was flushed red, dripping wet.

“What are you doing?” He hissed. “I’ve been tracking you down for a mile! It’s dark out here, and dangerous to!”

Arlene rolled her eyes as she bundled up her curls and squeezed a bucket’s worth of water out of them. “No need to get in such a twist. I’m quite alright. Just went out to refill my canteen. I had no idea you would even wake after the way you passed out.”

Titus snorted. “A drink? The sky is damp with moisture and the trees drop rain from the sky, and you walk a mile through the woods in the pitch black. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking it was none of your business,” Arlene said, picking up the hem of her dress and striding past him, head held high.

“That isn’t an answer,” she shot back, rushing to grab her arm.

She whipped her head up and stared him down. “If you want some answers, you should start giving some yourself.”

“This isn’t the time,” he said.

“Then I’ve no time to measure myself up to your expectations,” she said. She wrestled her arm free and took off again, despite having no light source to guide the way.

Titus launched a stone over the creek bed with an angry kick. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Back to camp.”

“In the dark. With no torch. Soaking wet.”

“I’ve managed far worse dilemmas.”

Titus rolled his eyes, and it took everything in him to not burst into a tirade at this silly, foolish woman. She disappeared out of view. He paced back-and-forth, arguing to himself. She was a terrible traveling companion, endangering both of them and then giving no good explanation for it. Water? That was a lie. He remembered her climbing over the bank and wringing out her hair with both hands.

“Didn’t even save her canteen,” he muttered.

He scrambled along the bank, peering into the water where she had fallen in. Despite the darkness, it took him less than a minute to find her canteen, lodged between a root and a smooth river stone sticking out from the shore. He sheathed his dagger and snatched it, keeping his balance on a cluster of roots.

Turning back to haul himself up the bank, he noticed the same hanging contraption that Arlene had used. With his free hand he reached out and grabbed a hold. It was rough, but not like a vine. It had coarseness like a fibrous cord. He held the torch to it and gasped. His instinct was to step back, and he nearly took a tumble into the water himself.

He righted himself with a mixture of balance and high-itched gasps that he would never admit, even in face of certain death. They were high-pitched enough to be confused for a cevin cat in heat.

This time he grabbed the hanging thing and pulled himself to shore before inspecting it. Torchlight revealed a thickly weaved rope. His eyes followed it up to a perpendicular branch it was tied to, then down to the base just below his hangs where it had been rounded off into a noose.

He swallowed hard. The lump in his throat didn’t go away. His arms felt weak as the rope laid across his weathered fingers. Something was very, very wrong. He looked back at the way Arlene had wandered. IF that was even her real name. Just had much had she been lying about?

All the myths of Antas Forest came rushing into his mind. The boat with legs. He instinctively got farther away from the creek. The Woman in Green, who promised help to little children, and they were never seen or heard again. Those verdant irises flickered in his mind. But he wasn’t a child, and she had snuck away stealthily. Unless it was some sort of concocted ploy, meant to throw him off the trail.

He shook his head. What was he thinking? These were myths and nothing more. Arlene was a strange, untrustworthy woman, but she was still a woman, not some creature of the night wearing a meat suit. That’s what he told himself, but every tree branch creaking, every plant that snapped beneath some tiny foraging animal arrested his attention and pulled his imagination out of it’s drawer.

He tried to focus on the decision at hand: should he go back to camp with Arlene, or should he light out for Brunehaven right here, right now. His pack was still back at camp with provisions, and while he could rough it and simply not eat, coin was necessary for his ferry across the marshes, coin he had forgotten about in his bleary-eyed haste to discover Arlene’s whereabouts.

He hurried back for camp. Whether or not she was something more than she had let on, he didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her, and if she had the chance to rifle through his belongings, he had no doubt that she would. So distracted and rushed was he in his attempt to get back to camp, that he nearly stumbled over her when he caught up to her.

She hadn’t kept on very long, opting to take a seat on a rotten stump, where she had untangling her hair in the dark, her legs dangling out over the path. He scowled at her.

“What manner of woman are you?”

She chuckled, not bothering to look up. She simply rose with the lightness of a feather on the wind, and began to meander again as Titus held the torch ahead of them. Titus had asked a serious question, and his mind was swirling with a million thoughts, but that didn’t seem to spoil her mood one bit. She did speak at last.

“It’s late. We’re both tired. I understand that you have questions. I promise that I will answer, but not until we’ve both gotten some much-needed sleep.”

“That’s not good enough,” Titus said through gritted teeth. I’ll allow you to change into dry clothes, and then you will answer me, and answer me honestly”

He stepped in front of her, her locked jaw and glaring eyes looking even more menacing in the untamable shadows of the torch. He jabbed a finger into her sternum. “You like to talk? Wonderful. But if you give me one more dishonest, misleading answer, I won’t just leave you, I’ll cut you down.”

Arlene stopped in her tracks. For the first time the smile faded from her face. Her eyes lost a bit of their flicker, and her cheeks puffed out, but at last she breathed out a sigh. “As you wish,” she said. She brushed past him with a pat on the shoulder.

Her compliance was somehow even more shocking, than her wandering into the night for a mile, falling into a creek with a noose hanging from a nearby tree, and then sitting in the dark doing her hair while he had a crisis of decisions. Or at the very least, it was quite close.

They made it back to camp without event, and rather than hold up a blanket for her to change in privacy, she simply had to step a few feet into the darkness. Titus rekindled the fire, stuffed his coin purse inside his inner jacket pocket, and twirled his dagger in his hand, making mental wagers on if she would come back into the light or wander away. He decided that if she didn’t appear in five minutes, he was scooping up his belongings and leaving, never to return for her, or to these dreary woods.

But return she did, dressed in riding pants and a blouse as she threw on a thick fur jacket and tossed her drenched dress over a log near the fire. She had this coy smile on her face, as if nothing had happened, as if Titus was the crazy one. Now that she was sitting here, he wasn’t sure what to say. She flashed a bright smile his way, crossed her legs, and rested her hands on her knee.

“Ask away.”