Death of the Tree Path

By Timothy S Currey

Their healer has died. Their forest is dying. They refused to leave … even when soldiers came to take their land.

Riekalt has been a grim man since the death of his wife, the village healer. She gave her life to save the village. He can hardly sleep. Is it her he keeps hearing at night?

When soldiers come from Gweidor to take their land, the villagers of Wolfshead Hill begin to know the end has come.

They claim to come in peace, and offer gold. But they come with a trail of corpses in their wake.

There is one desperate hope left to the village. Riekalt's only son Laester begins to show glimmers of the powers that claimed his wife. If he cannot control or suppress the new magic … it might destroy him.

How can Riekalt hope to save his village, if it might mean the life of his son?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Timothy S Currey
• Release date: Nov 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9780648836612

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Wind had ceased on the day she drew her last breath. Now the lifeless air had a terrible weight. It hung on Riekalt's skin, a constant reminder that his Anna was gone, and that the breath of the forest had gone with her.

There, below enormous trees whose roots stood as high as city walls, two hundred villagers seemed a small, huddled group. Sorrow was heavy on them all. Riekalt had stood silent for hours while folk offered him words of comfort, their homes, their company, their food and drink—anything he would need for as long as it was needed. Their words reached him dim and distant, for his whole attention was on the black hollow of a nearby passage. It split the side of a huge root, smooth-edged and low enough for its top to brush his head. Inside was the Root Cairn of his house, a mausoleum filled with clean earth and the bones of his ancestors. Soon Anna would join them. But not yet.

Riekalt’s leaden heart sank and sank, urging him to collapse to the ground where she lay, to join her, but he remained upright. He had their son, Laester, in his arms. The boy was too young to understand the death, crying because the adults were crying, and restless now at the long vigil they had held from dawn through noon and beyond. Riekalt was in a stupor between the waves of despair, his breath coming in shudders and his eyes staring, beholding nothing, and his body feeling as unliving as stone. Soon the next wave would come, with a bitter thought about what she would never again do, things he would never again share with her. Laester twisted to face Riekalt, eyes streaming. The boy had the fortune to take after his mother, and not his hard-faced father with taut cheeks and flat grey eyes. He looked so much like her, pale and fair with clear, green eyes open wide. And there the thought came—that she would never watch their boy grow—and the next wave was on him. A rumbling came to his ears as his face contorted, and he silently let his tears fall, clutching Laester tighter, pressing his rough cheek onto the boy’s soft head.

Anna lay there at Riekalt’s feet, the two of them in the center of the huddled villagers. She was shrouded in fine white cloth on a bed of moss, adorned all around with flowers twisted into braids. The Blue Wind had stilled in the wake of her passing, because she had been the Aurora of the village. They would not again feel the Blue Wind blowing through the trees until another became the Aurora. Thus, her absence was in the heavy, still air that pressed on Riekalt’s skin. The healing powers of the Blue Wind were slow, and must not be rushed lest they overwhelm the Aurora. Many in the village had recently been struck with fevers. They slipped close to death, wheezing and coughing, marked all over with black streaks. Anna had saved them all, never resting for a moment, growing ever more exhausted as the days went on. Then had come the strange trances that took her from her bed at nights. Still, she healed the sick every day, with her eyes growing dimmer and her lips looking more bloodless by the hour. Finally, the exertion left her comatose. She had lain unmoving for days as Riekalt cried out for the Great Forest to save her. He went unanswered, and she slipped into death. His own heart betrayed him, going on beating as it did, making his vow to live with her always a lie.

All he had of Anna now was the amulet he had given her as they were wed, an oval braid twisted from the supple twigs of the high canopy. She had told him she wore it whenever Riekalt was away hunting so that she could feel him close. He had taken it from the woven basket that held her things, and turned it over and over in his hands until he knew every knot, every contour. The basket was to be interred with her in the Root Cairns. What was taken from the Forest must be given back, yet Riekalt found he could not bear to be parted from it. A hand came to his shoulder and gripped it.

Merriah, Anna’s older sister, turned Riekalt to face her. Her face was all sharp edges, cheekbones and chin, and lined from care. Amid all that hardness were her soft brown eyes, and they held his gaze for a moment.

Will ye speak? she murmured.

He nodded. They could not place Anna in her Cairn until someone spoke of her life and death. Laester squirmed in his arms. Merriah moved to take him, but Riekalt held him closer. When she stepped back, her arms still open to receive Laester, Riekalt met her eyes and gave a vacant smile.

He’s hungry. I can take him back to the village if ye want to stay. Do ye want to stay? Merriah asked.

Nay.  I’ll keep him a little longer, he said. His voice was ragged, coming up roughly through his throat that was raw from the day’s tears.

Are ye ready, then? she asked. To speak?

The others were watching him. His bones and stomach felt sore and weak as though he was in the peak of a fever.

I don’t know, he said.

Take yer time. It’s only...folk need to eat, Riekalt. The little ones especially. If ye let me, I’ll take them up, get them fed, and we can come back down. Suppertime’s nearly on us.

Is it?

He looked around. The sky was darkening.

I would speak but... he said, eyes to the canopy above. The words ent coming.

Shall I get everyone fed, then? Do ye want anything?

Aye, get them fed if they’re hungry. I need nothing, I’ll stay.

I’ll bring ye down a crust and a bowl of something, ye don’t want to go faint.

Really, I’m fine. I’ve got no hunger, he said.

She took Laester in her arms, shifting him to rest his weight on her hip. He was growing so fast. Only two years ago Anna had brought him into the world. How was he to grow now, without her? How was Riekalt to guide the boy without her help? Riekalt watched the boy as Merriah moved to tell the others in whispers that they would go and eat. As the villagers trickled away toward the village on the cliff-top not far behind, Merriah passed Laester into another woman’s arms, then returned to Riekalt.

It’s hard, it’s very hard, I know, she said gently. But it’s important I ask. Have ye given everything of Anna’s to the basket for when we...put her away?

I have, he said.

She believed in the Great Forest and our ways of old, Riekalt. ‘What’s taken from the Forest must be given back’ and all that.

I know.

Even small things.

He turned to look her in the eye. She met his gaze steadily. Just let it be, he thought. Leave me this one thing.

The Taylors saw you by the basket earlier. They told me that you stowed something away, she said.

I mean to give it when the rest have gone. Riekalt felt somehow that he had just uttered a lie. I will see her off alone in the Cairn before it closes.

If it closes, he thought. The Root Cairns opened and closed according to their need, which the Forest seemed to know.

Merriah’s shoulders relaxed and she squeezed his arm. That’s all well, then. Forgive me. I was concerned—she believed so in the Forest and its powers and the balance of it all. It’s what she’d have wanted.

Folk whisper. They were watching me by the basket out of fear. They’ve all been watching me. They think I’ll go mad, don’t they? Or that I have already? Riekalt breathed.

Words seemed to catch in Merriah’s throat for a few moments. She swayed on the spot, not meeting his gaze, wringing her hands. "We all took her passing hard, Riekalt. Just leave aside your anger for the Forest. She loved our home—she would not blame it."

Don’t you blame it? The Forest did nothing when she lay wasting, he said.

She did a great thing, Riekalt. There is a price to pay for so much healing, and she knew what she was paying. Think instead of the goodness of her deeds, please.

He turned away from her. Ye’d best go feed the village.

She left his side. The sound of her feet brushing against grass and fallen leaves receded, and then Riekalt was left alone, in silence. He whispered, I’ve not gone mad.

Of course they’d say that I am mad, Riekalt thought. None of the others ever lost a wife so young. They watch me because I screamed and tore my clothes and wandered about the Forest, raving. But who can trust a widower that does not act thus? That does not go a little mad in losing what is precious? I would whisper about a man that took his wife’s passing calmly. What madness causes that?

Brown leaves fell, some of them landing on Anna’s shroud. Very slowly, the grass and the flowers all around her were growing. The grass had been short that morning, and it was now almost as tall as she was where she lay, nearly embracing her. Riekalt knelt by her side and cleared away the leaves that had fallen on her. The air was very still. It was almost dense. When the next leaves fell, they twirled in a swaying dance before making their little brushing sound on the grass. He could see through the shroud as he knelt there. She was so pale. He reached inside his deerskin jerkin and closed a hand on the amulet.

Riekalt.

A ghostly voice came to his ears, and he leapt up. The clearing around him was empty, and there was no sign of movement in the distance. He closed his fingers again, tighter, on the amulet. It was like a chasm had opened within him and he was falling into it. He could not say whether the immense feeling that began to rush in his chest was elation or despair. It had been her voice. His darling Anna had spoken to him once more, and he craved nothing more in that moment than to hear it again, and again. Perhaps he was mad. The voice did not continue, but the amulet was warm, and soon it began to pulse. It matched the pace of his own leaping heart, which swelled until it felt too large for his chest. The amulet’s beat was out of step, always a moment behind his own. Thump, thump, thump, thump, it went, a call and answer. The air was driven from his lungs with a shudder. There was a mad rush in his thoughts, first of all that his sanity must have left him. But minutes passed and still the amulet continued thudding, warm and seeming very real to his touch.

The villagers returned, breaking many twigs underfoot and splitting the quiet apart. Riekalt left the amulet in his jerkin, out of sight. Laester was leading Merriah by the hand, pointing and calling out things on the forest floor that he saw. He appeared proud that he could name them. The lad’ll have no proper memory of this day, Riekalt thought. A man could often envy the mind of a child, not least on days like this one. Laester saw Riekalt, beamed, and trotted into his arms. Riekalt swept him up as Merriah came to his side. His heart still thudded, his mind racing about the amulet, and something of it must have shown on his face. Merriah’s brow was furrowed, and her soft eyes were wide and holding tears.

It’s alright, Riekalt. Ye don’t have to. I’ll speak. She was my sister, after all, Merriah said.

Riekalt made to reply, but his throat was suddenly blocked. He pressed his lips together and nodded. As Merriah stood over Anna and the villagers gathered around in a semi-circle, Riekalt held Laester in the crook of one arm and kept the other hand inside his jerkin, brushing his fingertips on the amulet. It had the warmth of life.

Here lies our Anna, Merriah said. Her voice wavered as she spoke, but as she continued, she did not pause. There has never before been one who has given so much to this village, asking nothing in return. Every family here: Forster, Taylor, Gotherd, and more besides, owe her a debt beyond measure for the lives of loved ones she has saved. The Great Forest provides. The crowd murmured assent. And as it provided us our beloved Anna, so we give her to the Root Cairns, where she will be a part of it again. None here shall forget her, and no heart shall forget the warmth of her love. Farewell, my sister.

Merriah’s face scrunched up, and she let tears fall, her head bowed and her arms at her sides. Riekalt handed Laester to another, then took his place at the head of Anna’s shroud. Others came forward to help him and Merriah gently lift Anna, and Riekalt led them into the Root Cairn. They all stooped to fit in the opening, some of them brushing shoulders against the smooth wood. Inside was a domed place large enough to stand, lined with soft earth, large twisting roots, and small fine roots like hairs. They laid her down in the darkness there and left. Others brought in the basket of Anna’s things and set it by her side.

The hushed villagers, many of them arm in arm or clutching children, left to make the climb up to the village. They took Laester with them, Parak Taylor murmuring to Riekalt that they would let all the children loose to play in the village before night came. They need levity after all this, they said. Riekalt only half-listened. Only Merriah and Riekalt remained there. She was still crying quietly, staring into the Root Cairn as though longing to go in and lie among the roots herself. Riekalt came to stand beside her and watch the Cairn with the same longing. Tears did not come for him. He held the amulet, borne on a torrent of a feeling he could not name. His head swirled as though drunk, his heart pounded, and his gut twisted. He knew well enough that he should not keep the amulet, that he ought to place it in the basket, but he also knew that he would not. Whatever the price of keeping the amulet, let it come. What he could not bear was parting with the chance to hear her voice once more.

Merriah looked at him, shaking her head as though seeing him for the first time. Shall we go back?

Aye.

Have ye put...has she got all her things?

Riekalt’s mouth twitched. Not yet. I’ll put it in there now.

I’ll come with ye. Give me yer arm, will ye?

Riekalt led her into the darkness, where they saw the pale phosphorescence of the shroud, and knelt beside it. Riekalt closed his hand on that amulet while Merriah sniffed. He clenched his jaw, cursing himself for a fool, and left the amulet inside his jerkin. He moved his empty hand in the basket for a moment, then withdrew it.

It’s done, he said.

They left the Cairn and climbed up to the village. The evening had drawn on past twilight, and the uneven sloping ground slowed them as they searched for footholds. The amulet pulsed warm in Riekalt’s hand. As a hunter, he had in the past pricked his ears to the smallest sounds of the forest, the footfalls of both predator and prey. Now he turned that long-honed hearing to the whisper of the amulet, but his keen sense seemed to be no use. Still he held the amulet. If she could only speak to him rarely—if she had truly spoken to him at all—he would not risk missing it.

At last, his heart stopped as Anna’s voice came clearly to him, saying:

Riekalt, please.

He let go of the amulet as though stung. Her voice had come, sounding both urgent and sorrowful. He could scarcely bear to think it, but she had seemed to be asking him something. Perhaps she meant for him to give up the amulet.

But as Merriah made for the center of the village, where the fire was lit and the villagers were singing songs of death, Riekalt went alone to his hut and lay awake in the darkness for many hours, holding the amulet and yearning to hear his Anna one more time.  

Chapter 2

ELEVEN YEARS PASS.

Riekalt was walking the Path high in the trees before dawn when the deer he had just killed began to rot. He had carried the young hart over his shoulders upside-down, its ankles in his hands and the short antlers grazing his thighs while the beast’s head lolled in time with his steps. What had made the hunter pause to look was the antlers hitting his foot as they disconnected from the hart’s skull. Down, down to the forest floor many feet below, both the antlers had spun and clacked against branch after branch, until the undergrowth swallowed them.

He swung the deer forward and set it down at his feet onto a thick plank of timber. Thousands of planks like it were now hammered into the Tree Path of the Great Forest. The twisting network of branches that made the Tree Path had stopped growing in the eleven years since Anna’s passing. The villagers had had to make their own way with nail and timber in the absence of an Aurora and the Blue Wind.

The hart looked long dead. Riekalt squatted beside it and studied it. Bone jutted out from its jaw and its now-empty eye sockets. The flesh of its torso was now almost completely sunken in—nothing more than a ribcage with skin draped over. Riekalt drew a hunting knife of black steel and slit a line along the beast’s belly. The new hole issued a puff of warm, rancid air. Upon lifting a limp flap of the deer’s belly to peer inside, he saw that very little in the way of flesh or organs remained. Even as he watched, the deer continued to dissolve, like a salt block left in rain.

Riekalt recoiled from the creature and wiped his bloodied hands on his breeches. His hard, grey eyes roved over the deer, over the forest around him. As dim as the coming dawn, some twilit corner of his mind thought, So now the end comes. How soon until the trees rot and fall and our village crumbles to the earth?

He covered his face with the crook of his elbow and pressed his eyes until they showed bright patterns. Don’t think like that, he told himself. He had not slept the night before. Indeed, the prospect of lying awake all night had prompted him to hunt through it. His face, hard like his eyes, was traced with a few wrinkles that now deepened when he made a grimace like he was clamping his teeth on something. Folk often said he looked like he was clamping his teeth on a leather thong before getting a rotted limb carved away. His hair, braided as the Tree Path was, had come loose. He could not fix it until his hands were clean, so he swept the loose hairs behind his ears, where the sides of his head were shaved.

The Great Forest provides, he thought. Though on this day, I know not what.

The hunter sprang up from his squat, stepped a few feet away from the deer onto another plank, and laid out a roll of canvas he had slung over his back next to his bow. Careful not to touch it, he rolled the rapidly decaying creature within. The small hart had been an easy carry before, but now weighed little more than the canvas. As he lifted the bundle, he thought grimly that at least the walk back to the village would be no great labor. Little comfort. He carried the thing in front of him and continued along the Tree Path, looking like a demented parody of a mother carrying a swaddled babe. But where to take it? Who to tell?

On the Tree Path one had to duck and squeeze and bend and—at this time of faint pre-dawn—grope for the way through. Riekalt managed it with the same practice of a man navigating the furniture around his own dark home. The forest warmed around him gradually, but the air was stagnant and still.

He came to the Village Oak, a three-hundred-foot-tall titan among one-hundred-foot giants, where there was the platform high above the ground that overlooked the village. The smokes of the day’s first fires curled gently from the chimneys. Dozens of houses sat upon a hill ringed by a semi-circle of sheer cliffs that rose almost as high as the canopy. The cliffs had spurs like ears, and the long sloping climb on the far side had the look of a snout, so it was called Wolfshead Hill. There was a trough on a weighted pulley system, fixed to the enormous trunk of the Oak. Riekalt placed the swaddled carcass in it and, and taking the rope in both hands, rappelled down the trunk to a lower platform using the deer and its trough as a counterweight. He then eased the trough down to the lower level of planking on the Oak, as the iron pulley squeaked and groaned.

As he reached for the canvas bundle, bile rose from his stomach. His hunger had been growing in anticipation of breaking his fast, but now the thought of food was driven from his mind.

He then crossed the fifty-foot-high braided gangway of living oak that thrust into the side of the cliff’s edge. The wood was worn smooth, bare of bark, and treacherous to the careless. If Riekalt thought himself anything, it was not careless. The gangway had been a gift of the Great Forest. The Tree Path was a place of refuge for when dangers came. The story goes, when a wolf pack a hundred strong surrounded all exits from the village, the gangway had grown at the Forest’s bidding to give the villagers a way into the treetops. Riekalt had never believed it. These things were done by Auroras, and without one there had been no more gifts. It seemed also that after eleven years, no new Aurora would ever come. The Forest had no will of its own. But his people had strength. He would help them and protect them, man, woman, and child, no matter the cost to himself.

At the end of the gangway, standing on the limestone of the cliffs, he looked back across the gangway at the Village Oak, and then up, up hundreds of feet to the top. The scale of their Great Forest strained the imagination. To see the ground from the heights, and to look up at the Path from the cliff, was to be humbled. Magic or not, Blue Wind or not, their Great Forest was truly great, if only in size. He made his way up limestone steps and to the outer buildings of the village as dawn’s first rays touched the rooftops. The villagers’ houses, varied in material and design as could be, were adorned with the same braid motif of their Tree Path. The motif was in a knot in the center of a few doors, an edging twisting along the eaves of the houses, and in the trimming of the windows of the long, low house of the Taylors.

Riekalt soon came to a large, straight house of limestone blocks and knocked on the enormous door. A few moments passed, and then a large blue eye peered out of a tiny window that sat seven feet off the ground. The eye disappeared, there was a sound of movement inside, and he was answered by an eight-foot-tall young blonde woman, Friedawin. As a Wittewolder of the far north, her height was typical, though her gentle manner—to Riekalt’s knowledge of their tales and legends—was not. Her hair was in two braids that trailed over her broad shoulders, and she wore a sturdy, earth-colored tunic and a pair of trousers. Her skin was pale and smooth—almost white, except for her brilliantly red lips.

She was one of three leaders of the village, along with Riekalt and Merriah. Her role, one of traditional lore and storytelling, was usually occupied by the village Aurora, but the village was glad to have Friedawin. She had a keen mind that held all the village’s tales, and she told them with unmatched passion.

Riekalt? What time— She peered down at him and around at the lightening village. Her voice was deep and smooth. I have heard the wisdom of early rising, but this...

Come.

She looked harder at Riekalt a moment, and her eyes grew wide. Riekalt supposed his grim thoughts must have shown on his face well enough. He turned and strode along the path with her gentle steps following in his wake.

What is in the bundle? she asked. Riekalt did not answer, instead casting an eye around the gradually stirring village. He beckoned her on. They approached Merriah’s home, a neat house of timber with braided patterns chiseled into every other plank.

Each of the three leaders had their role, at least by tradition: Friedawin to hold the wisdom of the past; Riekalt to keep vigil for present threats; Merriah to plan for the future. To Riekalt it had always seemed, that the three mostly agreed among themselves as they saw fit. On this day, faced with the bizarre problem swaddled in his arms, he was sure no wisdom, vigil, or planning could help them.

Once there, he knocked and waited. Merriah answered, squinting, holding a woven blanket around her shoulders.

What’s wrong? Merriah said, and then her eyes fell on the bundle. Her hands trembled as she reached out to it. Oh! Tell me that’s not...who is it?

Easy, Merriah. None have died. It’s a deer, Riekalt said.

Great Forest provide! she cursed at Riekalt, then stepped aside to let them in. Why’d ye wrap a deer up like that? What are folk supposed to think, eh?

The thought had not occurred to me, Friedawin said softly.

Yer worries race ahead as ever, Merriah. I den’t mean to frighten ye. Now look. This deer, I killed this morning.

Riekalt laid the canvas bundle on the floor as Merriah wrung her hands. My heart is pounding. I felt the shock of death when I saw you both standing there, I thought it was one of the little ones...

Riekalt drew the canvas open and revealed the deer. Neither of the women reacted at first, except for a narrowing of their eyes. Friedawin leaned closer to the creature, hesitantly, as though it might suddenly move. Merriah moved her lips soundlessly.

"You caught that this morning? Friedawin breathed. How can such a thing..."

It looks weeks dead, said Merriah. She met Riekalt’s eyes and read his face. She knew he was not one for lies or jests.

The hart had wilted away to little more than bleached bone and tatters of skin. Even as they watched, the last remnants of flesh and tissue shrank almost to nothing.

This is the first I’ve seen of this...whatever it is, Riekalt murmured.

Do ye suppose it’s a sickness? Merriah asked.

I think not. It must be magical in nature, though there are no tales that tell of such an occurrence, Friedawin said.

Folk have eaten venison all last week, and before, Merriah said. What if they get all— she gestured fretfully at the carcass.

Ent nothing we can do about what’s past, Riekalt said. We’ll have no more of the stored venison, though.

I think we’re all agreed on that, Friedawin said, her cheeks taking on a pale green.

If folk were to rot away thus—Riekalt nodded at the creature—it’d have happened by now.

Perhaps, Merriah said.

It only started rotting once it died. It was sleek and healthy as I stalked it.

Well, Merriah said. That is some reassurance, at least.

Where did you catch it? Friedawin asked.

Far out from the village, well into the Blackwood, Riekalt said.