Young Writers Society

~1860 words

Chapter Eleven:

To watch his woods fill up with snow 

‘Arglesnarg,’ the leshy hissed at them as it stumped towards the train. Evian stood looking at it stonily, the muscles in his neck taut. He shook his head. They should not be here.

He shook his head again. This was not a good place to be.

‘Where are we?’ Lira whispered from his side. Evian glanced at her; her face was chalky-white, her cheeks a bright, blotchy red. She looked frightened, her eyes wide, her forehead scrunched up. Evian wondered if his expression was a reflection of hers, the kind of fear that you caught sight of and felt, in your heart, that you ought to be afraid, too.

They were in the Forest of O’Gluhm, the forest that popped up in geographical defiance, as if to show the world that a desert and a thriving forest (pithole, Evian thought venomously) of dangerous beasts could live in harmony with each another.

No one really knew how the Forest had sprung up, except that close to a thousand years ago, a dragon was rumoured to have been murdered here. Dragon-murder—when rentai killed off dragons—was uncommon among the sister races, seeing as they were so similar to one another in so many ways. In fact, it was so uncommon that when it happened, the killed-off dragon or rent would unravel in its entirety, its scales turning into stone, its breath seeping pure magic into its surroundings.

That was what had happened in the Forest of O’Gluhm close to a millennium ago, but Evian had long since learnt not to believe in stories.

He did not have the time to explain this to Lira, who was still looking at him oddly as he gaped at their surroundings—at the needle-like grass, at the trees that seemed to be dripping with jet-black sludge instead of leaves. He could not explain to her that the reason the forest was a dangerous place for the train to stop in was because it was owned by one Inspektor Bonn, and that Inspektor was the cruel, heartless, callous man who had taken Eleanor away.

His knuckles were white as he curled his hands into fists. Even Lira seemed to be far away as she spoke, ‘Where is it? Where are we?’ His head was filled with fog again; was it because of tiredness or was it just an effect the forest had on him? The leshy dragged a large, rootlike foot—but with toes—along the ground, its very-much-human eyes concentrating on Evian’s own. He shook his head. Lira shook his shoulder. There was a lot of shaking, he noticed, all in all.

One thing he knew was that they had to get out of there. Again, he wondered why the train had stopped, but wondering did nothing to help his situation. He kept a wary eye on the leshies as they made towards the train, very slowly, their feet still largely made of root. It would be best for him to bang the door in their faces, he thought, his mind oddly slow and sluggish. He held a sweaty palm to his temple and squinted into the forest. They should just hide behind a large carton … or preferably in a large carton … and wait for the train to start up again. Perhaps there was something wrong with the engine. Or perhaps Bonn had noticed the train passing through and instructed one of the forest mages to stop it.

Evian sincerely hoped it was not the latter.

He raised his hand and began to slide the compartment door shut, but in his haste, the end of his shoelace caught beneath the sliding door. His feet were pulled out from underneath him as the door banged shut. Evian swore as he fell, his elbows banging against the ground.

‘Ouch,’ he said. Sparks flitted above his eyes, the ceiling above him swinging. He lifted his head off the ground—too quick, far too quick—and the world swung wildly around him again.

It took him a second to notice that the door was open once more.

Evian blinked. Hadn’t he just closed it? He blinked again, but nothing changed. Lira, having stepped out of the way when he fell, was behind him, clinging to said door and gasping. She looked just as surprised as he did. No, Evian decided, she could not have opened the door. Yet, the wind biting down on his face was all too real. Goosebumps rose along his forearms. It was an uncomfortable testament to the fact that he had absolutely no idea what was going on any more.

He got shakily to his feet. The leshies peered at him, smiling slyly, their teeth glinting despite the lack of sunlight.

‘Arglesnargle,’ the first leshy said. ‘Arglesnargle,’ the rest of them echoed. Lira’s death-grip on the door loosened; she let out a giggle. Evian looked at her in surprise and shook his head.

Along the train, someone screamed.

Lira paled again. He moved towards the door; they leaned outside and saw that a leshy was clinging to the side of a train. Its teeth were like spires: long, sharp and very, very yellow as they smashed into the window. Evian looked away, at the leshies moving towards them. He gulped. Then he blinked.

When he opened his eyes, the leshy had its hand resting against the door to their compartment. Lira stifled a scream, her back pressing into Evian’s side. She was cutting off the circulation in his hand.

Evian forced himself not to panic. Closing the door now would be futile; the leshies moved too fast.

‘They do not appear to be friendly,’ he said, rather unnecessarily, and Lira scoffed, looking at him oddly. He prised her hand off his and jumped off the train. Tentatively, he stuck his palm out towards the nearest leshy, who looked at him with hatred gleaming in its green eyes. ‘Go on then,’ Evian muttered, shaking his hand in front of the leshy’s face. ‘Go on.’ He gestured wildly at his hand again, aware of how stupid he must look, aware that if the leshy wanted it could sink its teeth into him any moment now….

‘Shake the hand,’ he said, first in Adreitian, then in Tolmac, the forest tongue. ‘Purrt et shajti.’ He rocked along the balls of his feet, staring at the leshy intently; it stared confusedly back.

In his piratehood days, Evian had befriended a man whose name was either Johanstonn or Hohanjon—his mouth was always too full of tobacco for anyone to ever understand him—and he had informed Evian stoutly that the best way to deal with a leshy was to shake their hand. ‘Prejend tah shek et,’ Johanstonn/Honajon had said, ‘den rip et clean orf.’

This leshy did not look as if it particularly wanted to shake Evian’s hand, though. And Evian was not sure he could rip its hand ‘clean orf’ if he tried, either.

But he had no other options besides giving into his stupidity.

He waved his hand somewhat stiffly, nodding his head towards it as if to tell the leshy to take it. It bared its teeth at him, looking back at its—his? her?—brothers in confusion. The other two leshies mumbled something before heading off along the track, walking considerably slower than Evian knew they could. Perhaps it was their way of attack, to encourage their victims to underestimate their speed before they pounced? He frowned at the leshy near him, retracting his palm slowly when it did not oblige him.

It jumped forwards before he could form a single, coherent thought and sunk its fangs into Evian’s palm. He yelled out. Lira screamed shrilly, saying something in a language he could not understand. Blood spilled from his hand as if it was a leaky faucet, droplets rolling down his arm and staining his shirtsleeves red. He flailed, but the leshy just sunk its fangs in deeper, and a gnarled hand settled itself on his shoulder. Evian tottered, taking deep, shuddering breaths when his mouth was not otherwise engaged in yelling. The entire forest became a swash of blacks and greys and dark, murky browns as he spun, round and round, trying to get the leshy off.

Lira bounded forward and grabbed onto the leshy, slipping as Evian pulled her along, too. She grunted and thwacked the barklike tunic the creature wore.

Evian’s yelled out for Lira to go away, to go back into the compartment, but all his insistences froze in his throat and slid into the pit of his stomach when he realised…

Frost was rising up the leshy’s back. It howled, even with its teeth stuck firmly in Evian’s hand, and Lira tugged it backwards. She thumped the leshy’s back again, her expression absolutely bewildered, brows furrowed as if she had no idea what she was doing.

The leshy clinked to the ground and the forest swum around them. Evian felt light, as if he were levitating, and he shivered when a cold breeze struck his sweat-drenched body. He looked down and he realised that the needle-like grass had given way to a blur of colour. The ground was flat. He twisted his body around, but the train was nowhere to be seen. Lira was hovering nearby, a strange blue mist wrapping itself around her ankles and climbing up her face. He could have counted every freckle on her small face, as ashen as she was. Her eyes were dark and her hair was even darker against her ghostlike skin. Ghostlike…. She was, Evian realised, as he tried not to choke on his own spit … she was translucent.

And she looked like she was about to faint.

Somewhere in the chaos of things speeding past them—or were things speeding around them, or were they speeding through things?—Evian had failed to notice that his hand had stopped bleeding. There was nothing left of the injury at all, save for four smooth, silvery scars where the leshy had punctured his skin. Smoke rose along his shins … now his thighs … now it engulfed his waist, and in the silent, whirling chaos, Lira somehow managed to swim towards him and grab hold of his shoulder.

The colours settled into shadow. There was a brilliant, blinding whiteness. A light breeze tinkled around him and brought with it strange, tuneless music that nonetheless sounded quite pleasant. It tickled his ears. Large snowflakes drifted in around them, not grainy, but as dainty and smooth-looking as petals off some foreign flower. Evian reached out to touch one, but his fingers had scarcely skimmed its surface when the breeze developed into a full-blown hurricane.

‘Lira—’ he began, but the snowflakes turned to ice—iceflakes? he thought—and walloped at his face until he could see nothing but billowing white, hear nothing but the sound of ice crashing into ice, like a meeker form of thunder. He wrapped his arms around himself and, in the ruckus, managed to curl up into a ball. He hugged his knees to his chest. Slowly, the icestorm waned.