Quartz-Bound (Part of a Larger Plot | Now Open)

[Korressa]

Stories always seem to start with “deep in the forest” or “once upon a time”, but this tale begins in a much more mundane fashion.

Just down the road, and just the other day, on the shores of the Silver Lake, three children of local birth and rearing were playing together. Their momma is a washerwoman (you may well have paid her tuppence to have your shirts and smallclothes whitened), and their pappa tills a small patch of his own not far from here. And though their parents are good and industrious people, their three youngest children are not yet so gainfully employed.

With summer reaching the end of its swing, there was naught for this young trio to do of a balmy afternoon—their older siblings were busily at work with their parents, and they were left to roam as they pleased.

Being aged six, seven-and-three-quarters, and nine, they have reached the early stages of rebellious adventure, with just enough freedom to satisfy the occasional naughty caprice. Naturally, they have been told many times not to leave the shores of the lake alone, and especially never to venture into the forest without their father or uncles. Though the signs warning against trespassing into the woods have been removed, there are always other dangers to be feared in the trees. All children of Myrkentown and its surrounds know of its hazards:

Poison oak. Hornets with stingers the size of your thumb. Wolves. Bandits! Mad witches! Child-eating, fire-breathing dragons!

And yet, the trees did call to them, with the rustling whisper of swaying boughs, and bade them enter the cool, dappled shade after chasing one another through the lake shallows. The trio crept to the very edge of the treeline with sighs of relief, but the smallest still checked over his shoulder to see that they were unobserved.

“Baby,” his sister (one year and seven months his senior) crooned under her breath, and his head snapped around like she’d yanked on his ear. She had seen well-dressed ladies in open carriages of late, cooling themselves with delicate fans made of ivory and perfumed silk. With the power of make-believe, and an already wilting leaf in hand, she now fancied herself equally fine. She practiced her aristocratic glower as the ‘baby’ came near, staring cross-eyed down her nose in an exaggerated fashion.

“Kaia! I am not!” he snapped back, and marched a defiant three steps farther than where she leaned against a sturdy trunk, fanning herself with a snapped fern frond. But Kaia didn’t budge from the tree, not even when he planted a chubby fist on each hip, and smiled his challenge. She was above such petty, childish, baby games.

The eldest of the three, less condescending, and not to be outdone by their baby brother, leapt almost his full body length farther still into the trees. He had hit a growth spurt recently, and was marvelling at how quickly he could cross distances that had seemed to take ages only weeks before.

“Yer both chicken!” he declared from his new position. “Chickens, chickens ... chick-ens!” In a fantastic display of maturity, he began to turn on the spot, shuffling his feet and waggling his arms as he did his best impersonation of their mother’s laying hens. He clucked and chortled at his own wit, while his siblings stewed and glared.

“Well, if I’m a chicken,” his sister sputtered, “yer a … a … a filthy, fat worm! And I’ll crush you, Fynn!” Discarding her bedraggled fan, Kaia bolted past both of her brothers into a thick pile of shoulder-high ferns. She had not yet hit a growth spurt—the fronds nearly swallowed her tiny frame, and she shoved them aside impatiently.

“Betcher too scared to go pass me!” she taunted. And with that challenge, they all broke the rule that had been repeated from when they were in the very womb: don’t enter the woods alone.

The boys darted and dashed past, and their sister strove to keep up. Her ‘baby’ brother was nearly as tall as she, and more than her match at running, so the boys soon left her scrambling behind. With shrieks of laughter and continued taunts, they ran and leapt for five minutes or more. Then, the eldest stopped short of a sudden, his arms windmilling as he struggled to catch his balance at the edge of a sharp drop. A sapling bowed in his grip, and he pulled himself upright only just in time.

“Dom! Watchout!” he shrieked at his younger brother, still barreling towards him. Unheeding, the youngster charged straight ahead.

“Who’s the chicken now--oooh--OOHHH!” For one moment, Dom hung suspended in the air like a featherless, graceless bird. Then gravity remembered that children are not immune to to its effects, and the boy began his descent. With a series of leafy shudders and twiggy snaps, the young boy went down—and down further still.

Fynn watched from above, sick with horror as the six-year-old vanished into the undergrowth. Only the shivering of brush and saplings between the trees marked his passage as he rolled down the hillside. By the time their sister had reached the sharp drop indicating the start of the gully, the plants had ceased their trembling below.

“Oh,” she said, so out of breath that she couldn’t manage more. The pair strained their eyes to find sign of their brother in the thick growth beneath them.

“Mum’s gonna kill us,” Fynn whispered, his eyes bright and glossy with the start of tears. “Mum’s. Going. To kill us! We killed Dom!” But the eldest’s nattering was cut short by a wail—Dom was definitely not as dead as Fynn presumed. The wail intensified into a wild, sobbed cry of pain and fear, and the still-upright siblings shinnied down the embankment to race towards the sound.

This time it was Kaia who led the way, and Fynn who lagged behind, his guilt at not stopping his brother’s fall dragging like a lead weight on his ankles. Though their sister had started the game, guilt hadn’t yet caught up, and she bullied her way through the undergrowth towards the screaming boy. Plants that didn’t brush aside were snapped out of the way, and a tiny trail of destruction marked her passage.

“Dom!” she shouted, “Dom! Can you stand? We ca’n see you!”

“Dom! Where are you, Dom?” Fynn joined in, the effort lightening his guilt and his feet.

Slowly, a thick bush disgorged a still desperately crying Dom. Covered in scrapes and superficial scratches, he lurched towards his siblings on no longer confident legs—but most of the shaking seemed to come from shock at falling, rather than any serious injury.

“Dom!” Kaia and Fynn shouted nearly as one, and the three were reunited.

“Does it hurt?” the sister asked.

“You dinnit break anything, right?” the brother insisted.

But Dom only wailed louder and clutched both of his siblings tightly. Satisfied that he wasn’t actually hurt, Kaia shrugged out of his grip and crossed her arms with a frown.

“You really are a baby,” she chastised. “You broke your arm when you fell from Uncle Saro’s roof last year, and you dinnit cry nearly as much.”

Fynn glared at his sister, and opened his mouth to defend the crying lad, but she shook her head and stiffened her lips. The words died before they made it to his tongue. He’d seen their father make that face when Dom was having a cry, and watched amazed as the boy began to settle almost immediately under their sister’s frown. His sobs became hiccups, and his wail turned into a sniffle. Once he’d calmed down enough to release Kaia and Fynn’s arms, Dom smeared snot away from his face with both muddy hands.

“There,” said Kaia, looking a bit smug at her accomplishment. “Innit that better?”

“Uhhuh,” Dom grumbled, emotions still tumbling after—fear and pain were replaced by grudging acceptance and embarrassment. He continued to scrub his face with grubby, scraped fists for a few moments, and the elder two waited patiently for him to cease.

“Where are we?” he finally asked, once he’d managed to turn his face into an almost solid cake of blood, mucous, and mud. The other two joined him in slowly turning about, unsure. They had come down the hill, and could go back up, but where was here exactly? They had never come into the wood alone, and though they were not far from the lake, they had never seen this gully, either.

It stretched wide and high, and they could see no easy path in or out. They had made their own, of course, but that would be a difficult trek back out again. Some distance away, the trees began to thin, and light streamed bold and bright in wide, cheerful beams. Fynn pointed towards the break in the forest wall.

“I bet that’s a shortcut out, c’mon!” Fynn leapt ahead of the other two again, waving enthusiastically for them to follow. Bolstered by his confidence, the younger two followed. Dom occasionally wiped his nose on the back of his arm, but his spirits seemed much lifted already. It took but a minute to reach the edge of the trees, but longer for them to figure out what they were looking at.

Directly before the three children, and shrouded by invasive growth from the forest, was a wide, circular pavilion of marble.

They had found a forgotten temple.


(to be continued...)

[Korressa]

The structure in the woods was old, but not ancient. It had been abandoned for perhaps a decade at most, but to the children it was a treasure long lost, older even than their venerable parents. As it is wont to do, the forest had started to reclaim the building as its own within a week of abandonment, but the marble columns and entablatures were still mostly intact. The stone was no longer white and gleaming, but fine craftsmanship cannot be hidden by a layer of grime. Who—and how!—and why this place had been built was not clear immediately.

At its centre, something called to them.

Awestruck and no longer chattering together, the three children slowly entered the temple bounds. Not once did they think, we shouldn’t be here, creeping on tiptoes into the structure. It was quiet in the temple, as if a part of its own world—the sound of forest birdsong became muffled and distant as they passed under the first lintel. Between the columns, mosaic-covered walls rose to chest height, and wisteria clung to lattices that reached from the walls to the entablatures above. Kaia tore away a swath of purple creepers to get a closer look, and a few tiles rattled loose to the ground. The red, black, gold, and white tiles depicted no scenes, but formed sweeping patterns of blooming lilies and spiraling vines.

“What is this place?” she whispered, daring not raise her voice any louder as she sheepishly nudged a fallen tile under a pile of the vines she had ripped down.

“Dunno. D’ya think it belongs to the Old Ways?” Fynn whispered back, but Kaia shook her head immediately.

“Momma said,” she took a deep breath and her cheeks turned pink. She lowered her voice even more, and spoke from the corner of her mouth dramatically. “I heard Momma say they only like oak gropes, and climb the trees nekkid.”

Both parts relieved and scandalised, Fynn and Kaia meandered further into the structure, with Dom trailing behind. He had shoved a filthy thumb in his mouth for the first time in several years, and walked, staring about them. The mosaic-covered wall forced them to walk to the left around the perimeter of the pavilion, and before long they reached a tall, fluted column, decorated with a mask. Its face was filled with ecstatic joy, and the children paused momentarily to examine it up close. They couldn’t tell, but the mask had been painted at some point. Time and weather had worn away all but the stain of red lips, and an oval of red on each eyelid. The expression of the mask was infectious, and the children found themselves smiling with delight.

They continued to walk the structure, going from column to column in the outer ring. As their surprise wore off, they began to chat amiably amongst themselves. Kaia pointed out masses of a dark coloured vine, and called it “purple queen”. Fynn asked her for the name of the black orchids growing on the lintels overhead, and his sister made up an equally fanciful name: “midnight princess”. Dom spoke little, but drank in every sight with wide eyes.

Fynn, Kaia and Dom passed masks of boredom, sorrow, shock, longing, fear, and rage on the columns they passed. All seven, including the gleeful first mask, depicted the same face with its faded red lips and lids. After the seventh mask, they found a rotted gate attached to the wall leading inward. Carelessly, Fynn pulled it down—its hinges were too rusted to swing—and they entered the second circle. Just like the first, it had seven columns and seven masks, and eventually an opening into the third. And the third repeated the pattern, with its seven columns and seven masks, until they reached the centre.

The children had paused upon finding the structure, and paused again at its core. The temple’s innermost workings had been obscured by overgrown vines and half-rotted trellises, and what they found there was almost as startling.

In the dead centre of the temple, in the dead centre of a wide courtyard and raised on a gilt marble plinth, was a woman. All around her, weeds had pushed through the paving stones, and even a few saplings had found purchase to sprout, but she alone was untouched by the encroaching woodland growth. And for a moment, blinded by the summer sun’s return, the children thought she was alive and beckoning.

But that moment passed, and they saw her as she truly was—a statue of quartz.

“She’s beautiful!” Kaia sighed, already moving forward to get a better look. Her brothers followed, just as surprised, just as awestruck—Dom removed his thumb from his mouth.

The statue had been carved from a solid block of white quartz, which shone and shimmered in the sunlight. Identical to the first, joyous mask, the woman looked blissfully happy. She stretched her right hand to the sky as if to shade her face from the sun. Palm out, fingers spread, it cast a striped shadow across her gleeful, elegant face. A circlet with two flat discs balanced on its edge crowned her brow and bound her stone-wrought hair. Down her back the hair flowed, and mingled with her robes until it was one grand train trailing to the edge of the marble platform.

“She does’n look finished,” Fynn said, scratching his chin the way he’d seen their mother do when considering a particularly tricky stain. “She looks like there ought be another somethin’. There.” He pointed to her left hand, which hovered before her hip, palm turned inward. There was a wide gap between her gently curved fingers and her flowing gown, which made it seem as if she should be holding something, or someone.

“You’re right!” Dom said. By now all three of them were standing just at the lady’s feet, with their grimy fingers gripping the gilt plinth’s edge. Contemplatively, he added: “I think she must be lonely.”

“I think,” Kaia said, a cunning edge slipping under the words, “That the eldest should hold her hand to cheer her up.” Fynn started, then glared at his sister.

“I think,” Fynn replied, a hard edge slipping under the words, “That the only girl should hold her ha—”

“I’ll do it,” Dom volunteered, cutting the brewing argument short. The other two agreed heartily, and set to boosting their youngest brother onto the high platform. It was the work of a moment for the lad to climb up with his siblings’ help, but then he hesitated. Up close, she was colder than before. From the ground, she had seemed almost glowing and alive. At her side, he could see the minute faults in the quartz, and the coating of dust that marred her stone skin.

“G’won!” Kaia hissed, and bounced on her heels when Dom didn’t move.

“Y’can come down if yer scared,” Fynn added, knowing that his brother couldn’t stand his courage being questioned. On cue, Dom shoved his hand into the quartz lady’s waiting left palm. The stone was sun-warmed and smooth, but otherwise unremarkable. All three children stood waiting with their breath held, as if they expected her to wake up when Dom touched her …

… but nothing happened. A woodpecker knocked on a tree some distance away, and a hawk circled lazily in the sky above, but within the temple, nothing stirred but the summer’s breeze.

“Guess she was’n lonely after all,” Dom said softly, and stepped back. However, his hand didn’t come with him and he froze. Carefully, tentatively, he tugged his own arm with the other hand, but found that he was stuck fast. It was as if someone had played a prank and applied fast-curing glue to the inside of the lady’s fingers: Dom’s tiny, fat hand wouldn’t come away! “I—I’m stuck!”

“What?” Kaia, who had started to turn away when nothing happened, now spun about and marched back to the plinth. “Do’n tease—what do you mean yer stuck?”

“I’m stuck!” Dom cried again. “She wo’n let go!”

“She has’n moved,” Fynn said patiently. He was about to suggest that Dom’s sleeve was caught, before remembering that they were all in sleeveless tunics for the day’s heat. He frowned and started to climb. “Here, I’ll pull you down.”

“I’ll help!” Not to be left out, Kaia had more trouble scaling the slab, but soon was at her brothers’ side.

“Does’n look like you should be stuck,” Fynn said, examining Dom’s hand from a different angle, and ignoring his little brother’s increasingly panicked attempts to escape. He reached out and gave the boy’s arm a good yank.

“OW! What was that for?!” Dom demanded; his hand didn’t budge.

“Sorry.”

“Make it let go!” At their brother’s desperate cry, which threatened a waterfall of tears was in the making, Kaia and Fynn wrapped their arms about his waist and hips.

“Okay, on three—One, two, three!” At Fynn’s command, all three pulled, but the effort was unnecessary. Suddenly, Dom’s hand found no resistance, and the children toppled from the statue’s resting place to the hard ground below. Briefly, Kaia thought she saw the statue smirk, but the same gleeful expression was in place when she looked again.

“I think we should go,” Fynn said unsteadily when he’d caught his breath and rolled his siblings off his legs. “I do’n think I like it here.” In silent agreement, the children got up and left the temple the way they’d come. It didn’t feel quite so welcoming as they departed, and they hurried through as quickly as they could go without running. When they reached its boundaries, they took to their heels and dashed back through Kaia’s impromptu trail. The climb out of the gully caused them some grief, but the sharp drop was surmounted before long, and then they didn’t stop running until they’d reached home.

⁂

That night, as their mother daubed salve on Dom’s many scratches, the children recounted their story from beginning to end. They left out the dares that took them into the woods to begin with—Kaia claimed they were compelled to enter against their will in a dramatic, hushed tone—but related the other details faithfully.

“You’ve been listening to your da too much,” their mother chastised, and gave Dom a swat as she released him from her care. The other two squirmed uncomfortably, worried that her hardened palm might find their own backsides soon. “You’re to come with me to the river tomorrow, as penance for entering the woods and telling such lies.”

“But mum! It was’n a lie!” Fynn protested, and earned twice the swat he’d dreaded. He took the smack to his rump with a flinch, and shrank when he heard his uncle’s chuckle. They’d not noticed him on the stool in one corner, sorting a pile of fresh laundry into a sack.

“Aye, lad. I’ll wager as much,” the man added to his laughter.

“It was’n, Uncle Saro! It really was’n!” Kaia added her own protest, only to cop a similar slap to her younger brother.

“Off with y’three, and get to bed. I’ll not hear anymore of this nonsense,” their mother chided. Her three smallest children slunk from the hearth to do as she bid, and the woman sighed. “Such imaginations they have. A temple near the lake—pfah!”

“Imagination’r not, I’ll go have a look tomorrow,” he assured her. “If there’s any such building, and any such statue, I’ll smash it apart—or at least tell’m I have when there’s naught.”

With a wink and a thanks for his family’s washing, the woman’s brother-in-law departed for his own hearth and home. He wondered if he would really find a temple and a stone lady in the woods on the morrow.

(to be continued...)

[Korressa]

The next day, Saro rose before the sun and crept from his bed. His wife had just given birth to their fourth child—a wee boy at last!—the week prior, and the squawling newborn had kept her up most of the night with his hungry demands. So he left her to sleep with a kiss for her brow, and a loving caress for the infant’s downy scalp. His eldest daughter had already made her way to the cooking fire, and stoked its flames for the day. At eleven years old, she’d started to take after her mother with her cooking and housekeeping, but hadn’t yet mastered the grooming habits of a grown lass. Saro tousled her sloppy braids into further disarray when she handed over his porridge with one hand, and a cloth bundle with the other.

“Da!” she protested half-heartedly, hands too full to defend herself, but her cheerful father only smiled as he slipped out of the house for the day.

After eating his breakfast and washing up at the well, Saro tucked the empty wooden bowl into the cloth bundle containing his lunch, and tied the lot to the back of his belt. There was work to be done before he set off on his errand, but by the time the summer sun had peeked its sleepy head over the horizon, he was well on his way.

The heat of the day had not yet set its haze over the land by the time he reached the shores of the Silver Lake, and a few solitary scraps of fog remained tethered to the trees over the water. With little effort, Saro found the point where the children claimed to have entered the woods, and struck off in the direction they had described. Just as they’d told their mother, he found the gully less than a quarter of a mile through the trees. Unlike his niece and nephews, however, a grown-up knew what to look for: he stood at the crest of the hill, and squinted down below. The temple’s clearing was readily visible, though the structure itself was not.

They’d told the truth! he thought, and his heart leapt unbidden to his throat.

The drop that had felled Dom, and caused the trio such trouble in returning, was a mere three feet down and easily traversed by adult legs. From there, Saro found Kaia’s amateur trailblazing, and widened the way with his own subtractions. Before long, and only half a mile from the lake in total, he found the children’s lost temple.

Right away, he saw what they had missed—a temple thousands of years old (as they had claimed it to be) would have nary a piece of wood left, if exposed to a forest. It ought to have some felled columns as well, he reckoned, and paced the outside edges of the pavilion. It was whole, but for a few stones, and the wood was brittle with age, but intact.

Though tempted, Saro didn’t head straight through the entryway. Instead, he circled around the building, staying in the trees that pressed its very edges. The outermost columns didn’t have the masks that his niece and nephews had described, but did have two overlapping discs facing outward. Far be it from Saro to call himself an educated man, but the symbol was not one he recognised. It matched the circlet Fynn had described on the stone woman’s brow, and he wondered at that for a moment—perhaps it was her symbol and her temple, but who was she?

At long last, the children’s uncle entered the temple, but as the world fell away, he felt none of the embracing peace and welcome that they had reported. The atmosphere in the temple was heavy, still and dense, just how the air grows before a summer’s storm. It smelled of hot copper, and warm rain. Saro shook off his misgivings when he found the tiles Kaia admitted to knocking loose, and unconsciously tucked one of the gilt fragments into his pocket to examine later.

Little by little, he followed the children’s footprints through a decade’s worth of dust, past mosaics and columns and wisteria-covered walls, over protruding roots and scraggly weeds. Two circuits followed the first, through the gates Fynn had pulled down, until he stood on the threshold of the pavilion courtyard.

There, he could not bring himself to step any closer to the stone statue. Poised on her plinth, her posture had not changed. But she did not gaze at the sun in joy—she glared at it with snarling rage. The face of the statue was carved to match the masks of fury in the temple, and the stormy stillness was weightiest there in the courtyard. Startled, Saro unconsciously stumbled back several steps before he’d noticed. His heart beat furiously, no longer in excitement, but absolute terror of this strange sculpture.

I shouldn’t be here, he thought, and his feet followed the unconscious command to carry him away. Before he stopped to think again, he was already clamboring up the steep entrance to the gully. Shaken, Saro decided to return home. If that storm he had felt was coming, he reasoned, he would need to bring in the animals.

By the time he reached home, Saro noticed how late in the day it had gotten—he hadn’t even remembered to eat his lunch, and his growling belly now reminded him. Had he really spent so long in the woods as that? Had he really been frightened away by a chunk of quartz? He said nothing to his wife or daughters of the temple, but as he stroked the tile in his pocket, he vowed to go back the next day and resolve what had happened.

⁂

On the third day, Saro rose from his bed as the day before. He left his wife and son sleeping without kiss or caress, and his own brow deeply creased with concern. His eldest daughter steeled herself for another morning of his carefree affections, but he took both porridge and lunch parcel without laying a hand on her mop of hair. Her normally chipper father was pensive as he left the house, and skipped the chores that he normally had finished in a trice. She wondered after his worries, but soon was inundated with her own, as her youngest sister—scarcely a toddler—fell from bed and knocked her noggin against the frame. She rolled to with a shrill scream, and their middle sister soon joined in the crying, purely to get her own share of attention.

Unawares of the troubles at home, Saro ventured once more into the woods. The tile in his pocket weighed heavily, and he frequently reached in to caress its smooth surfaces and hard edges. After nearly ten minutes, the man realised he hadn’t found the gully’s edge where it ought to have been. He turned about, retraced his steps, and found where it should have been, but was not. For the rest of the day, with increasing agitation, Saro tramped through the woods. He marked his way on trees with his knife, and broke branches where he had already marked the trunks when he returned. All day he searched, yet the temple and its gully eluded him as surely as if it had never been there in the first place.

When at last he ventured home exhausted, the sun was inching towards the horizon once more. At home, he threw himself into a chair and repeated his fruitless search in his mind. Several times, his wife asked where he’d been, but the question went unnoticed and unanswered. Dinner passed without passing his lips, and finally he roused as the house grew dark.

“There’s something strange happening in the woods again,” he told her at last, and the rest of the tale tumbled from his lips in a steady flow. His wife and eldest two daughters listened, enraptured, while the third slept, a damp cloth on the knot on her brow.

The next day, the tale began to spread—the girls told their friends, and his spouse told the midwife (who had come to check on mother and babe). These friends told their parents, and the midwife told her husband, and the story continued to grow until it had reached nearly every ear in the town.

Within the week, townsfolk and farmfolk and even a few curious patrons from the Dagger began to seek out the temple that could only be found once. Most went for a lark, to picnic at the feet of the lady with the changing face, and none could find it again once they’d left the gully. One wise visitor left ribbons tied to trees, but only those who had never been could find them all; even the woman who had created the bright trail of satin could follow them only to a certain point before they mysteriously ceased to exist. Within days, the narrow path that Kaia had made formed into a proper trail as more people passed through the woods.

And the statue remained the same, and yet always slightly different. Some claimed she had gripped their hands, and near everyone who visited tried to repeat little Dom’s feat. Women squealed when their lovers jolted them with a “boo” on the plinth, and men pretended more bravery than they had while slipping their palms against the sun-kissed stone. Someone, at some point, gave her a name—The Quartz-Bound Lady—and that drove even more people to seek out the pavilion in the woods. The goddess—if she even was a goddess—had a name.

Would you like to visit her temple, too?

[Jirai]

Cat didn't go into the woods, as a rule. Not since the Fiddler and the horror of seeing so many other children vanish into that slavering maw, the terror of nearly being eaten in turn. But rules were made to be broken and curiosity, as they said, killed the Cat.

A mysterious temple in the woods, a strangeness that seemed to appear and disappear, unable to be found again. The tale reached the young rogue's ears quickly, as most tales in Myrken were wont to do. Of course, then nothing would do but that Cat saw this temple. So one afternoon (morning being much too early for the mostly nocturnal urchin), with pockets full of this and that, Cat ventured into the treeline and deeper into the woods.

[Rance]

"Where exactly are you going?"

Cat is not alone in the woods.

Gloria throws herself out of the bushes, a loud and destructive force of motion and weight that crushes ferns and stomps over vines and underbrush. Whether the older girl had been lying in wait, or had merely been taken with her own occupations in the woods, was entirely unclear. But she storms in front of Cat's path, set her heels in the layers and layers of leaves, and leers with playful challenge down at the urchin.

Perhaps unexpectedly, there is a sword in Gloria Wynsee's only hand, its point angled down across her thigh. Its point taps against the leg of her muddy breeks, her usual dress abandoned for the comforts of woolen trousers and a loose, sweat-darkened blouse. She's unable to hide the sword or its ornate, senselss marks and engravings, so she tries to stand purposefully with it: she blocks the child's path, a fat, girlish golem brandishing a sword that's not hers.

The blade, far too large for her sensibilities, once belonged to Aleksei River.

"I'm getting formidable," the seamstress proclaims. "I was practicing, like — like Ailova instructed, and saw you cutting through. But I never see you out here.

"And that means you must be doing something—" you oughtn't be, "—intriguing."

[Jirai]

The woods were... well, they were unnerving. Not that Cat would ever admit to such a thing. Besides, between the Fiddler and the Red Devil and all sorts of other nasties, it wasn't exactly unreasonable to be nervous of the woods. Not scared. Never scared. Not Cat! Which, of course, is why the youth yelped in such an undignified manner and leaped about a foot in the air when Gloria came barreling through the bushes.

"Bloody 'ells, Gloria!" The urchin whined upon realizing that the terrible beast in the bushes was nothing more than a Jerno girl. A Jerno girl with a sword. Well, that was alright. Cat had a dagger. It had appeared in the youth's hand with Gloria's sudden arrival; it disappeared just as quickly.

"I bet y'don' even know 'ow t'use that sword." Cat was a little sulky at being caught by surprise, but at least it had been Gloria and not Cherny or Phor or someone like that. "Where'd y'get a sword, anyways?"

Gloria has questions of her own, though, ones that caused Cat to grin at the older girl. "Welllll..." The youth drawled, "Iffen y'come wi' me, I show y'. Ain' y'eard th' stories? There be a secret temple out in th' woods, real old. But there be some magic or somethin', 'cause sometime it be there and sometimes it be gone!"

[Selestia]

“A temple-a temple in the Woods.”

The snap of twigs and leaves beneath foot was on purpose, to announce her presence before the madwoman made her person known, slipping between trees, through thick brush to come up upon the two. Perhaps in the Dagger, in the Myrken, her attire was woeful and out of place, but in the Woods, her old clothes, threadbare and worn, fit in, helping to blend her into the scenery with mottled camoflauge. Mekarie keeps her distance—eyes flicking down at the sword in the Seamstress’ hands—but holds her own hand up, fingers flicking in their direction. Beckoning them to follow her.

“A temple in the-a temple in the Woods. In the Woods,” she repeats, turning away, still gesturing for them to follow her. “It is wrong. So very-so very wrong. And-and people have-people have found it. Have found it.” Her words trail off to a muttering beneath her breath before she stops, looking upward at the trees, toward the sun-filtered canopy of green, lips still moving. “I cannot-I cannot keep everyone out.” This seems to truly distress her. Stay out of the Woods. Mekarie tries so very hard to keep everyone safe, to keep them out of the Woods and away from the Shepard’s ire, even though She is sleeping a deep, deep slumber.

“If I-if I take you? Tell everyone else to-to stay away. It is not-is not safe.” The stories of awe and beauty and piety were spreading and more people were encroaching upon the Woods day by day. A greater threat to the dangerous, darker Woods than the Shepard or the townsfolks’ fires ever were. “Do not, do not buy into the-into the…we must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits,” she chimes at the end, slipping into an old poem with a lilting cadence that says she was trying to convey information but unable to figure out how. “Who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry and thirsty roots?”

[Rance]

Cat's knife appears as quickly as she shouts; Gloria eases back a few steps, but the youth's reaction does merit a certain bit of satisfaction from the girl: her round face breaks into a genuine smile, one that could have been dashing had her teeth not been so abused.

I bet y'don' even know 'ow t'use that sword.

"A little," she responds, giving its point a weak and aimless flourish. "Ailova's teaching me; I practice where nobody can see because — because people think a crippled woman oughtn't even try. I'll never be an expert, a swordplayer, but there's no harm in learning."

Where'd y'get a sword, anyways?

"I stole it," is all she says.

The urchin's explanation about the stories pull the older girl's face into a curious knot. No, she'd heard no stories, hadn't managed to pry any gossip out of the commons. Her lifting eyebrows reveal a truth she doesn't care to obscure: what Cat states is the first that Gloria's heard of these particularly remarkable — and hardly believable — tales. But the urchin's invitation is received well enough: Gloria walks at Cat's side, occasionally giving a swipe at the air with her sword. Its unforgiving edge occasionally catches a low-hanging vine. Light glints off the archaic lacework etched into the hammered steel.

"You lead the way. I've not heard of — of anything. A temple?"

Right.

She didn't bedgrudge Cat's curiosity. Hers flared, too.

It would be a fine way to spend an afternoon—

And then Mekarie.

Gloria's wary; she's exceedingly, exceptionally wary, given the madwoman's ambling self-announcement, the way she extracts herself from the brush. The seamstress' jaw visibly tightens, and she darts her questioning gaze toward the urchin beside her. Her voice brims with sudden impatience. She notes the frail woman's hesitation upon seeing Aleksei River's blade and lets the flat of it rest casually across her stony, work-hardened shoulders. "You can't keep everyone out. The Red Bitch is gone," the girl says. And then:

"Cat and I can do just fine without your assistance, Mekarie."

[Jirai]

"Y'stole it?" Cat was clearly skeptical. "Stole it from where? Y'ain' no thief." And Cat would know, wouldn't Cat? Besides, Gloria would be an awful thief with only one hand, and less than a whole one remaining on the other arm. But the sword didn't really matter. There were other things to concern the urchin as the pair walked through the woods.

"Gloria..." Cat began, only to be interrupted by the snap of twigs and leaves, Mekarie's arrival no where near as startling as the Jerno's had been. The urchin was unbothered by another addition to the expedition, but Gloria and Mekarie were not on the best of terms, were they? Blue eyes darted back and forth between the two.

"What be wrong 'bout it, Miz Mek?" That bit about goblin men and fruit made no sense, and so Cat simply ignored it.

[Selestia]

The Red Bitch. The Red Bitch. The madwoman seems to mouth the words over and over again, letting them connect in her mind before she shakes her head from side to side, wild hair flying about like a nest of snakes. No, the seamstress and the madwoman were not on the best of terms, but they have an understanding. Maybe. The vagueness of their parley was in the ambiguity of how far it extended.

“She is-she is sleeping. For now. For today and-and tomorrow and maybe-and maybe next year and perhaps-perhaps ten. She is not-she is not gone,” Mekarie says in gentler tones—there is no need to start a fight, to find cause to argue over something like the Shepard when there are other pressing matters at hand.

Her hand comes across her middle to grip the other arm, rubbing her forearm as if she were cold, looking back over her shoulder in the direction whence she came. “It is-it is not right,” she stresses again, voice strained, taunt and tight with the tension to the point of near cracking. “People come to-come to it and they-and they do not-do not come to-come to it again.” She wipes her face, as if batting away a bug, a speck of leave or pollen or wisp of hair, a nervous tick.

“If you-if you would-would please let me-let me show you? You can-you can come to-to see it again.” There was more to it, more to what the madwoman asks than what her words say, the tone pleading, not at all demanding or cajoling. It is Mekarie, being Mekarie, wishing to protect them however she possibly could.

[Rance]

What be wrong 'bout it, Miz Mek?

Cat's inquiry serves purpose and function; Gloria's certainly not oblivious to the urchin's confectionary approach, or the way in which the tools of words are wielded: act curious, act intrigued, draw out knowledge that can be employed on their improvisational trek. The child is clever, manipulative, and opportunistic. And Gloria Wynsee can be those things at times, if with inherent clumsiness — when the execution suits the objective. Here, though, in the midst of the woods, it does not. The girl's features twist into a mask of impatience and frustration.

"No. No."

She swipes the blade — hasn't it gotten lighter, she thinks; hasn't it gotten easier to hold with just these four foolish fingers? — down off her shoulder and drags its engraved point through the brown, brittle leaves scattering the forest's floor. The edge leaves a distinct line in the soil.

"No," she repeats, her brutish shoulders lifting, then easing with a breath. "It's always the same, isn't it, Mekarie. That you've somehow gotten mixed up with — with all the uncanny peculiarities, that you've insight where others don't. You prance about on some Red Devil's tail, flicking proverbial fruits in its mouth, tangle yourself up in everyone else's dreams and nightmares, dictate, dictate—" She doesn't realize that her voice is booming, nearly bursting, until her fist is wrapped so tightly around the handle of her unlikely sword that the dry scabs on her knuckles split and weep.

She sucks in a breath through flaring nostrils. Her voice plummets to a murmur. "You dictate how mothers ought to convene with their children. And now, with talk of temples and secrets, here you are. It's unsurprising that you claim to be somehow involved with — with this, too. Those are bad associations, Mekarie. Bad omens."

The Fiddler. Eleven children. Eleven. And—

"The last time Myrken's offspring followed something into the woods, most of them never came back."

The seamstress whips her stare away from Mekarie and levels it on Cat. Her face, like dough, instantly softens.

"I'm going on ahead. To look," she clarifies. "I won't be far; I'm hard to miss."

She spits, grinds it under her boottheel, and marches forward, her blade's tip batting branches and underbrush aside.

[Jirai]

Clever, manipulative, opportunistic. All things that Cat had to be, to survive this long. Mekarie might be mad - and it's best not to deliberately irritate madwomen - but she was also nice and liked to eat berries.

"Y'gonna dull th' blade, treatin' it like that." Cat told Gloria, as the older girl spoke with the madwoman. Cat didn't know what was between the two (though there were some hints there to be pondered at a later date), but Gloria spoke of the Fiddler, and Cat knew the Fiddler. Knew all too well what had happened the last time children had followed something into the woods. The youth's delicate features hardened as Gloria stalked ahead.

A moment later, Cat shrugged at Mekarie. "Well? Let's go."

[Selestia]

“To-to protect those around, I would-I would do much.” Mekarie’s head shakes quickly, a small shudder almost, as if clearing her head enough to hold her own against the seamstress. Gloria was quick with words in a way that sometimes the madwoman envied. “I don’t-I do not need your-your permission, Gloria.” She says the name, pulling out each syllable in a way that is not mocking, but almost exotic, rolling sounds like they stick to her tongue.

She will not defend herself against the accusations of her association with the Shepard. Not again. It would, indeed, forever be a sort spot, a dismal mark against her that she, a wild, mad thing, would side with other wild things against a town that had a tendency to shun those who were wild and mad. It had been a way to keep others safe, to warn them away from the Woods and away from the waiting maw of the Shepard, and it was her cross to bear, and she bears it stoically. You dictate how mothers ought to convene with their children. That. Now that, Mekarie will feel her fingers curl into small fists, loose but all the same a sign of tension, the slight shake down her arms and into her knuckles that she uses to keep herself in place. To keep from having more than words with the seamstress.

“You would-you would see all of the-the world burn as long as-as long as you get what you wanted if it was to-to dance upon the ashes.” They have an accord, an agreement, which Gloria benefited from perhaps more than Mekarie, unless the question of the Mekarie’s freedom and release from the gaol and its iron cage was brought into the equation. What did it cost the madwoman, to uphold her part of that agreement?

She would never say, and no one would ever ask.

The madwoman watches the seamstress leave, shoulders dipping in a slight slump—in a sort of defeat—only briefly before she looks toward the urchin. Little Cat. She likes Little Cat. “You have-you have a blade, yes? Yes. Good.” Always good, just in case. There were three of them now, and if only one would be able to leave the Woods, it would be Little Cat. Of that, Mekarie would make sure.

“This is-this is not my-my doing,” she says quietly to the urchin, glancing off in the direction Gloria went; she was not attempting to mask her words from the seamstress, but there was no need to shout truths. Quiet voices, loud words. “This is…not-not something of mine. It is…it is beyond.” A pause, and her feet shuffle to turn, to face the way where the seamstress went. “Be-be careful, Little Cat. Be careful, Gloria.”

No one needs to tell a madwoman to be careful. They rarely are.

[Korressa]

The forest is quiet this day—no other temple seekers have come into the woods—and the three have the trail all to themselves.

The closer to the gully they go, the more pronounced the marks of feet on the ground. Slim trails like those left by animals feed into the wider path. Like little tributaries, the flow of bodies has expanded the way to the temple into a riverbed.

By now, the visitors have marked the way well. The ground is trampled hard and flat, and the brush has been cleared away from the edges to make way. Along the trail are trees festooned with ribbons in the desperate hope that they may one day return to the odd sanctuary. Where once there were individual streamers, the first ribbons have inspired more to grow, until branches and trunks shimmer with great bundles of satin in different shades.

A few have strips of paper with wishes tied into them. Requests and prayers for this new, old, unknown idol. Others bind charms and bells that sing with cheerful voices in the breeze.

Surely, the Lady cannot be dangerous with such a festive atmosphere to lead you to her doorstep?

[Rance]

The graveyard of dead leaves becomes a footpath. The world around them throbs with all the hot, green life of the summer. The air crawls with dampness and humidity. Light from the Glass Sun spills through the verdant canopy and sets the woods afire with its lazy glow, turns every tree into a silhouette in a shadowbox. Never before has Gloria Wynsee cared — or rather, dared — to admire natural beauty, but now, tripping along the path winding before them, she cannot keep her eyes from fantasizing their way across the veinlike branches spreading above. And as she trudges along, she thinks—

I have a sword. And if Mekarie's playing loose with the truth, I'll put it to use.

If not for Cat, she'd not have walked this far; she'd have left the madwoman to her own devices.

The various unlikely — and uncannily violent — permutations of the future dance behind her eyes until she realizes the color of the forest has slowly changed. Greens and browns transmute into violets, blues, and whites. Toneless songs ring as tiny bells chatter against the invisible fingers of the wind.

A few hoarse breaths catch in the seamstress' throat. Where's the Red, she wonders. Where's the Gold? And then—

Her stolen sword rests against her hip as a sweeping hand picks several ribbons of parchment from the trees. Like she's picking fruits from an orchard. Tiny seeds of thoughts left by others, the paper undamaged by the fat, healthy rains of summer. Her fingers tremble as she unfolds them and mouths the words and wishes scrawled on each shredded curl of paper.

I should like a new set of ribbons for my hair, for with them I shall fetch a husband!

Another:

Cannot want for more than for her eyes to realize I exist.

Then a child's.

da shut make hammind a new hart she has got a bad hart you know I wish he wood make her a new hart

"Cat," she calls behind her without looking, her voice compressed with awe. "Mekarie. There are so many."