Lost frontier

By Martine Carlsson

A vast grey zone on the maps, the forest has always been seen as a place of grisly tales, outlaws, and disappearances. The men had travelled around through more civilised paths, leaving the woods alone. Until the country came in need of a new float.

For the first team of lumberjacks, it's a routine job. Select trees and build a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martine Carlsson
• Release date: Nov 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9789198392371

Martine Carlsson

Martine Carlsson lives in the middle of the Swedish forest. Martine is French and graduated librarian and historian from the University of Liege.

Book preview

1

The fava beans on the trellis had turned into a washed-out yellow shade. Ojinita pressed a pod between her trembling fingers. The mouldy fibre burst open, exposing a gluey larva to a premature demise. The parasite wiggled and fell onto the crispy leaves. The brown face swayed upwards, inquiring. Out of its shelter, the unformed insect tossed and thrashed about, but its meagre, chitinous side opposite its fat, milky one was the stamp of dead. Corrupted parasite in a rotten fruit. One among the hundreds that grew in the beans, the peppers, and the squashes. Voracious white worms which, regardless of their appetite, had hatched too late in the season to reach full metamorphosis. They would destroy, turn weak, and die. All in vain. Ojinita laid her hand flat on the cool earth and dug with her fingers. The soil was as lumpy as dough. She squeezed a fistful of it and felt the water slip. A soft lament escaped her lips, and she sniffed back the first drops of a runny nose. It was too late to pray to the bountiful Wahangka. The crops were ruined.

The white light of day had cracked a starless night. With a firm grip on the trellis, Ojinita staggered to her feet. A light shiver ran through her shoulders. She picked up her beaded tobacco pouch, pulled on her shawl, and turned towards the closest rope stairs spiralling down the trees. A heavy mist hung between the dark shapes of the trunks. In the pen, no snout peeked out of the pigs’ lean-to. Despite the first birdsongs breaking the cold silence, the village was still plunged in dreams. A hand on the rope, her confident steps on the planks led her up onto the platform. Dewdrops dribbled from the thatch roofs. The moist boards under her bare feet led her to the main esplanade, where fish dried high on a line of racks. The skin too hard and the heads too firmly rooted to the poles by their gills to be snatched by birds. Stealthy as a marten, Ojinita waved forth between the huts, the jars, the hanging grain sifters, and river sieves, and farther on across the ladders crisscrossing the village. Here and there, she cast a glimpse at the sleeping bodies beyond the doorways, until she reached her home.

In the half-light, she dropped her pouch to the side, plunged her hand in a jar for a handful of cranberries that she tossed into her mouth, and squatted by the flat stone. In its centre, kindling already lay in a bundle. While she chewed, Ojinita produced sparks with two stones. She spat into a mug of simmered goo, poured the mixture into her mouth, and resumed the mastication. Above the small fire, she put a kettle of water on a stand. Revelling in the warmth grazing her fingers, she opened her palms to thaw out the morning chill. Despite the immediate relief for her old knuckles, worry pinched at her heart. It was too cold for the season. Too cold for their village.

Bare feet thumped through the doorway. Her mouth full, Ojinita beckoned the girl to kneel by the fire. Tongue clacks and a curtain of waving dark hair saluted her. Ojinita smiled. New wife. First one. She quietened the girl with small pats on her shoulders. Her hands grasped down her too-slender arms and trailed lower onto the huge belly. Her callused palms massaged the stretched, brown skin, already oily with ointments. A tiny shape kicked against her fingers. She would see this one before the last leaves fell. Ojinita leant forward and emptied her mouth on the girl’s belly. Then her hands resumed their moves, impregnating the skin with the pulp.

You’ve done well, she said with a nod. Not long now.

The Grandmother smiles upon you, Snipe-Ojinita, the girl whispered.

Ojinita raised her head to stare kindly at the soft, dark eyes. The tiny prints of the blue tit ornated their corners. My words will be a meagre comfort for a bird like you if the cold intensifies. Labour, even if Wahangka answers your screams with her embrace, is only the beginning.

Add meat to your broths, Tit-Litanka. You will need strength when Wahangka sends you to me again. Ojinita gently clutched Litanka’s wrist.

The girl beamed and crossed her arms over her belly. Meat for a hunter. Ogimani’s son. Her fingers danced where a bump the shape of a foot had pressed for contact.

Ogimani’s ninth try to get a son. Ojinita remembered briefly the two babies who never saw a second winter. At least it has glided down well. Ojinita tightened her grip and flickered a smile.

A strong boy. Her stare glimpsed at the increasingly low stash of raspberry leaves against the wall before returning to the pregnant girl. And ask the other wives to snuggle closer on the furs in your bed.

Ojinita loosened her hold on the wrist and watched how Litanka, clacking noises of gratitude, minced out of her hut, a beam on her face and a hand nestled in the small of her back. Fighting back a wave of shivers, Ojinita plucked a log from her stockpile and fed it to the flames.

2

In utter silence, the two small cogs were sailing upstream. Though this was a late-summer afternoon, the luminosity had decreased to a faint ray of sun above the canopy. Tristan observed the dense edge of the woods while his hands unrolled the lead line. There was something unpleasant in the quivering of the thickets overhanging the riverbanks. As if a shadow was spying on them, reinforcing the queer feeling that their presence in these woods was unwelcome. Uncharted territory. They were the first.

Eight feet and dropping, his father said at his side. From under the wide brim of his dark hat, he gave him a disgruntled knowing glance. The even lines of his eyebrows plunged towards the red slope of his nose. Pull.

Tristan looped the line around his wrist until the weight slipped, cold and wet, into his palm. Maybe it’s a sandbank.

His father slumped onto the bench, a finger scratching the line of his moustache down his mouth as he peered away. It was spinning.

Rapids? Tristan asked. To ease an itch triggered by his father’s gesture, he rubbed his beard and scoped the shore to the next bend. A doe dashed away from between the branches.

At that depth, we won’t be lucky twice. His father’s sentence broke on a high note heavy with annoyance.

More pickle? The foreman’s voice cracked like a whip across the deck.

His father’s head jerked towards the call. It could be. Osmund Carlyle stood up to convey the sounding to the foreman. Despite a low pitching, his father nearly lost his footing. Tristan wondered if this journey would take him away enough from Lynton or if he should have made the radical decision to board the Esmeralda to the Windy Isles.

Tristan recalled when the boats had cast off from Lynton port to glide on the shimmering Strelm. The leisurely trip across wheat fields, bocages, and apple orchards had had them boast over the poltroons left on the shipbuilding site. The transport of the timber provided by the coastal counties was taking too much time now that the shores had been cleared to expand the cultures. A new generation of trees had been planted, but it was too early to estimate a reliable growth rate. Until it was proven that woodlands could provide the demand and regenerate fully, timber had to be found elsewhere on homeland ground. It was about time an expedition assessed the raw materials one could get from the untouched immensity of the Ebony Forest. The majority of the volunteers would return in two months with a thick purse, in time for the harvest festivities and the year’s wine.

After their purveyance in Embermire, the river had turned fretful, forcing the men on board to bustle about with the rigging. Once the cogs had penetrated the Ebony Forest, the Strelm had shrunk. Currents had lashed at their hull, repelling the intrusion with an unremitting force. The men at the oars and the poles had broken out in a sweat to veer the cogs away from the boulders that had speared out. Relief had come at last, but the merriment had been over. No one had considered to congratulate his peers, and they all gazed at the water with suspicion. Vanquished for the time being, the stream had calmed down and had resumed its anger into a silent revilement.

Forced to row, the men had turned sullen, and the last whistle had died out. The bobbing heads under the folded sail twisted up to glean information from Osmund’s face as he tottered by their posts.

I don’t see much of a slope, Captain, one of the loggers grunted at his father.

Gibbs hadn’t opened his loud mouth for over an hour. It must have tickled him, Tristan thought. The logger’s corpulent chest, squeezed in the seat at the end of the oar, couldn’t swivel to allow Gibbs to face his interlocutor. His head was a cork deeply screwed on a body generous like a demijohn. Sweat dripped over the man’s large pores to stretch out like a spider web between the brown hair of his shaggy stubble.

It’s long before we need to moor the cogs, Gibbs, Osmund answered, unconcerned.

We can’t tack no more. Soon we won’t row, Gibbs insisted, honing his tone. I heard you over there. Eight feet? How d’you want us to moor in that? This is a creek.

Enough, Gibbs, Byrde, the foreman, mumbled, turning his long shape back towards the deck.

Osmund was the cogs’ captain. This part of the expedition depended on him. That none of the loggers was under his authority on land made him tread carefully on eggshells, an exercise that had become harder and harder for his father to accomplish lately.

The Strelm is as large as six of these cogs south of Baybarrow, and we’re not halfway there, his father said. Like Tristan, he was genuinely disconcerted by the changes in the river. They had anticipated hindrances, but not that early.

Then where’s the darn dam, you ol’…

A humming had covered Gibbs’s blare. Tristan turned around towards the oncoming noise. It increased, as inexorable as threatening, considering their lack of room to manoeuvre.

I think our journey is coming to an end, he muttered.

As the cog took the bend, Tristan realised how accurate his words had been. The waterfall billowed in a thick spray, from an unreachable crest blending with the sky down to an inky pool.

Prepare to moor, his father cried out. Tristan.

The boats glided gently into the pool. Tristan had just cast the lead into the water when the thread slackened in his hand. He swung around to his father with panic and prepared to shout when the keel bumped on a sandbar. Tristan was tossed off his seat.

Don’t run aground! his father shouted, his hands grabbing at the gunwale.

With a sharp, deep noise, the cog pitched to the side as the hull scraped on a strand of pebbles. The new angle sent the men tumbling starboard. Tristan’s shoulder hit the opposite bench, and his moans joined the ones of his companions. The cog came to a halt, her sister ship behind her.

Are you all right? Osmund shouted. Everyone’s all right?

His words echoed around both crews. In the absence of cries for help, Tristan climbed out of a shamble of loose bags and barrels to jump into the water. Avoiding the flotsam, he swam in the bracing flow towards the safety of the nearest shore. The men from his cog followed, crawled on the pebbles, and, swinging around, planted their wet butts into the gravel to take a full picture of the extent of the damage. From his position, Tristan couldn’t see a breach in the hull.

We will have it float before night! Gibbs shouted, already rallying a few grunts.

Tristan corked an eyebrow at the overly optimistic comment. They might never have it float again at all. Yet, a quick look at their dark surroundings was enough to grasp the logger’s impulsive sense of emergency.

Maybe we shouldn’t, Osmund, who had climbed up to his feet, muttered to himself.

Hands on his soaked waist, his father stared at the second’s cog’s equipage. They had lowered a dingy and were rowing to meet them. At least Stephen Shawe, the leader of the expedition, his aide, and two sailors were. The rest of the crew, loggers under Byrde’s direct authority, paddled like dogs in waist-high water, their knapsacks over their heads. The dingy hadn’t even berthed that Shawe’s clear glare branded them like a red-hot poker. Someone had to take the blame, and a captain with half a ship wasn’t worth much on dry land.

Any explanation, Carlyle? Shawe’s words jabbed at his father.

It’s uncharted, his father answered and shrugged. His brown eyes didn’t leave Shawe, but they had stopped caring for long. Their placidity was a challenge. The What are you going to do about it? kind. Wisecracks towards him were his father’s daily bread. They still had at least one ship to sail back, and it wouldn’t do without him. Besides, no one would expect a captain to sink with his ship in six feet of water.

Shawe harrumphed, stepped down from the dingy, and strode as fast as his limp allowed him to join Byrde and Osmund in an emergency meeting. Tristan took advantage of the confusion to stand at hearing distance. He was enlisted as one of the loggers, but his bond with the captain gave him somewhat of a legitimacy in the senior levels.

If the hull is intact, we could tow the ship backwards, Byrde said, pinching his lips to the edge of his moustache. But we can’t turn back before the night catches us.

Turn back? Shawe grunted. And where would we sail to? Embermire? No one will depart. We have a mission.

Do you suggest we walk all the way to Baybarrow? Byrde said. We passed by a few sloping sandy banks we could use, but when it comes to logging stream, this is where our journey ends.

Byrde did not only tower over all of them. For he had the loggers under his thumb, a twitch of it in the wrong direction, and a wave of greasy hair would roll back towards the shore.

If we return to Lynton empty-handed, we won’t get paid, Osmund said.

My men won’t carry the boats around that. Byrde cocked his head at the waterfall.

Tristan observed the thick vegetation and couldn’t imagine where to take a first step through the intertwining shadows, let alone with a burden forcing him down into the soil.

Forget Baybarrow. We leave the boats here, Shawe said. Look around. We should find ship timber at reasonable distance from the river. Let’s set up camp on that beach for tonight. We leave at dawn.

Shawe’s practical words were met with the consensus of both the foreman and the captain. There was no need to roam through the whole Ebony Forest to find logs for the new float. Somewhere behind those trees must lie an oak grove waiting to be cut down.

Once their tents were pitched at the edge of the forest, the loggers wolfed down their evening rations, sitting in circles on the pebble beach. They clumped around fires, not only to chase out the first chills, but to get familiar with one another’s faces. Some of them had been working in the docks since Lynton had evolved from a fishermen’s village into one of Trevalden’s most prosperous harbours. Others, like Tristan, had travelled down from the city of Embermire to put their muscles at work after months on the benches and in the fields of the academy. A last batch were individuals from the Isles with personal reasons to disappear up the Strelm. Unlike the ten guys around him, Tristan hadn’t touched his lentils. His eyes wouldn’t leave the inscrutable darkness sprawling under the starry sky. The cold silence ahead contrasted with the humid thunder of the waterfall.

We shouldn’t be here, a logger at his side muttered. His crooked nose projected an oddly shaped shadow over his skinny cheek as he peeked above his shoulder. His body coiled towards the fire, risking that at any time, a spark could set ablaze the coarse woollen blanket wrapped over his knees. With a greasy finger, the logger scraped his bowl and shoved the last drops of thyme sauce into his mouth.

Damn right we shouldn’t, a seasoned man with unruly curls answered. I should be home humping your missus.

Piss off, Chester. The slandered logger brushed away the raucous laughter. That forest ain’t no place for us. No one’s wandered that far north in the woods. Not even during Agroln’s war.

That’s why we’re being paid double, Chester said, whipping out his spoon in the man’s direction. Because we don’t swallow these bullshits of red goats and fairies. Now, the kraken, that’s another kettle of fish. Chester grasped the small assembly’s attention with a scoping, meditative dark stare. When you stand on the deck with that dark shape sliding under you, and deep down, you know there’s nowhere to run… Chester tightened his fist on the spoon’s handle and shook his head slowly. But the day isn’t come when I’ll piss myself over firewood and sturdy ships’ uncut timber. There’s not much more in these bushes than some feet roasters who haven’t met the right farmer yet. That’s all. The logger stretched out his legs and returned his attention to his bowl.

But what if the tales are real? the skittish logger insisted. What if something monstrous comes out of these woods while we sleep?

You’re married, Alcott. Chester smirked. You know that monstrosity takes different shapes.

In Embermire, Tristan had heard about the dangers lurking in the Ebony Forest. Not everyone who strolled into the woods came back. The presence of bandits around Embermire was well-known, despite the efforts of the authorities to eradicate them. But not all of the disappearances were related to one single element. He waited for the next silence in the conversation and spoke.

When I was at the academy, I learned about tribes living in the ancient forests.

Chester’s stirring spoon froze in his bowl, a dramatic effect to gather everyone’s attention. Black eyes lit by the flames glared at him. The logger slowly leant to the side, cleared his throat, and spat.

We’re on Trevaldian ground here. Not in the Frozen Mountains’ backcountry.

Tristan cocked up his head, meeting the glower, but rose to put a term to the discussion. We’ll have enough on our hands with cherry-picking trees between two thorny thickets. Pinching at the brim of his hat, he nodded his good night to the loggers around.

As the chat resumed behind him, Tristan headed towards his father’s tent. The snores welcomed him before he slipped between the flaps. In the darkness, he squatted and groped for the bottle. His hand hit his father’s