The Darkwood Awakening

“Run,” says Gabrial, “and don’t look back.”

“What?” says Dawydd, “why?”

But Gabrial is already running, dashing along the forest path, light and shade dappling her lithe form. Dawydd runs, not a sprint, but quickly enough to be gaining on Gabrial.

“Gab! Gabrial!” he calls, but she doesn’t answer and she doesn’t stop.

The path is even and level, and the spongy leaf mould floor under foot springs Dawydd forward, almost effortlessly, through the green-lit shadows. Gabrial runs on and on, quick and true and beautiful; clad only in a long, sleeveless tunic, her bare, white, clean-lined limbs flowing in a fast, steady rhythm and her golden braid swinging and dancing to the count of her stride.

The path steepens now, though still clear and even, and the grade wears at Dawydd. His breath comes in shorter, sharper gasps, and the cool air, so pleasant before, now stings and burrs at his throat as he draws in great, ragged lung-fulls. His legs tire and a sharp stitch builds in his side; a tense, tight knot that jars with each stride, his rhythm stutters and he stumbles slightly and curses.

And still Gabrial runs, her back straight and tall and those shining limbs flashing in a steady, metronomic beat as she pad-pad-pads her way, forward up the path.

A mist is rising, from the rills and gullies that cross and border and run alongside the path, at first as a slight haze clinging low to the ground, as thin and faint and uncertain as the memory of a thought, and yet with each moment growing, seeping up onto the path as if seeking to fill the hollows with pools of white and shroud the way. The sun is still high though, enough to cast splashes of light across the path at least, and the path itself stays even and true.

The wind rises at his back, a chill Eastern breeze. It rattles and shuffles the leaves and branches above and behind him, and whips about his hair and face and prickles his skin. It carries the smell of rain and damp soils and all the notes of the forest; the odour of striving for light, the scent of desparate, organic growth, the tangle of vines clawing their way to the sky, up the vast trunks of buttressed forest giants already strewn and clad in stringy mosses and pale lichens. It sings of the fury of plants that scramble and struggle for light, and in that fury, the forest’s hunger, telling Dawydd, clearly, that he’s welcome to stay as an unwelcome guest. He quickens his pace.

He is almost on Gabrial’s heels now, as the path dives off a ridge and sinks downwards into a darkening dell from which the rushing chatter of water portends a stream. It is broad and shallow and cuts across the path in a swathe of white-flecked dancers. Gabrial never pauses and splashes through, the water soaking her ankles and shins, and Dawydd follows and the icy chill of the mountain stream pearces his feet.

As he scrambles up the bank on the far side, he hears a shriek like a hunting eagle, cry out from the other shore. As he whips around to look, he stumbles and crashes to the spongy forest floor, yet he cannot tear his eyes from the far bank. He sees movement, vast shapes, inhumanly large, jutting and irregular; darker shades in the shadowed wood. They lurch and convulse too and fro, none quite venturing into the light along the stream’s margin. He thinks one pauses, and again he hears an eagle shriek.

Then Gabrial is there, lifting by his arm, heaving him back to his feet.

“What are they?” he gasps.

“The Forest.”

“Can they…”

“They can’t cross the stream here. But they can double back and cross up higher. We must run.”

“Where?”

“To Sanctuary.”

She turns and lopes up the path, long pale legs flashing a new rhythm, not as rapid, an easier pace. Dawydd is grateful for it, as the grade of the path steepens, running in switchbacks back and forth across the hillside as it rises from the creekline. At the edge of his hearing comes again that shrill shriek, away behind him and to the left and, as near as he can tell, upstream of the crossing. His legs are burning with fatigue, but the fading shriek drives him on.

The East wind lifts again, now whipping tendrils of fog and mist about his legs and as the light gradually fades, it becomes dream-like, sunken in the cloud mist that washes over him. Shapes and shades loom and leap at him as he hoves along the path. Gabrial is a barely glimpsed, pale shade, wavering and dancing before him.

He gasps her name, a hoarse, breathless croak, imploring her to stop, but his voice yields barely more than a whisper and she can not hear him. Yet she does stop. He stumbles to a halt beside her, chest heaving and blowing. She is paused negligently, a hand on her hip and one leg cocked easily with her foot on a log.

“We’ve reached the cross-roads,” she says.

Looking up, Dawydd sees the pathr they are on plunges down from the ridge, into a lighter dale, where the trees thin out and are taller, and the undergrowth changes from the dark, thorny creeping bramble, to pale fern and bracken. But Gabrial motions to a track that splits off left, clearly continuing up the hill, and it is near smothered in growth. Branches and tendrils and creepers grope over the path at head height, shadowing the track in a musty gloom. The ground looks rutted and strewn with rocks, rotting deadfall and twisted tree roots. A slight, maloderous breeze emenates, a foul taint of rot that clings persistently at the edge of smell.

“Why can’t we go that way?” Dawydd points down the main trail, “we must be coming to the edge of the forest soon.”

Gabrial shakes her head, “We’d not make it in time. Up that way, that leads to sanctuary.”

“I don’t like the look of it, it seems…”

“It’s the only way.”

Gabrial turns and starts up the path. Dawydd hesitates, looking down the much lighter track below him and he pauses, then takes a quick, tentative few steps down. There is a tremendous shriek and the East wind howls and whistles, whipping at his face with a chilling bite.

“Quickly!” cries Gabrial, from the left hand path, “they’re almost on us!”

Dawydd stumbles back, turns, and races after Gabrial up the darker path. Almost immediately he is shrouded in gloom, not the deep purple-blue of midnight or the clean black of darkness, but a clinging grey murk that is somehow more weighted, malevolent. Thorny tendril-like fronds clutch and tug at his clothes and skin, barbed hooks biting and tearing. The dark boles of writhen trees, spotted with leprous lichen, take on the appearance of twisted faces, flashing and leering at him as he scrambles past.

The path steepens further, becoming a washed out gully of a track, littered with muddy puddles and slush pools. Muck and water splash up on Dawydds legs with each weary step. He struggles on, following the pale beacon that is Gabrial’s hair, desparately striving to keep pace lest he be left behind, alone in the crushing gloom.

Another shriek, shrill and loud and terribly close. Dawydd looks back over his shoulder, misses his step, and sprawls to the ground again. Below him, advancing up the track, thrusting branches and creepers aside with ease, come shapes. They somehow emmenate darkness that almost shines through the gloom and they are huge and mis-shapen and move with a dreadful articulation, like spiders taken apart and reconstructed by some great and malevolent mind, with their limbs askew and jerking and twisting, extending and protruding in the angles of a broken bone. They are simply… wrong.

Dawydd cries out, but it comes as no more than a breathless wheeze, then he flinches and jerks in panic as something grabs his arm.

“Get up,” commands Gabrial as she yanks him to his feet, “we’re almost there. Now run!”

She pauses to throw something back down the track. There is the briefest flash of light, and an angry shriek. Then Gabrial is running again, and Dawydd staggers after her, hearing behind him the clicking, cracking advance of the shapes.

With a suddeness that almost causes him to fall again, they burst over the lip of a hill and into a small circular clearing, strewn with mossy boulders, but free of the heavy undergrowth and open to the evening sky. Gabrial has stopped running and I walking a brief circuit of the glade. Dawydd sucks in grateful breaths and leans against one of the boulders.

“So this is sanctuary?”

“It is,” says Gabrial, leaning to drink from a clear trickle of water that springs from the cleft in a boulder. She pulls a small cloth from her pocket and damps it in the stream.

“Oh thank the gods, I thought we were…” he pauses and shrugs.

“Here, lie down,” Gabrial motions Dawydd towards a low bank covered in thick moss. When he lies down on it, tentatively at first, Dawydd finds it deep and soft and, surprisingly, slightly warm. Then Gabrial begins to run the cloth over his many scrapes, starting with his hands and arms and working across his legs, gentle but insistent. She eases his tunic off and works across his chest and shoulders, and Dawydd, despite the fears of the day, finds himself relaxing. Until he feels her hands undoing his brigga.

He makes no effort to stop her as she pulls them off him and leaves him naked on the moss which prickles slightly, not entirely unpleasant, but unusual, and she stands before him and in one smooth movement lifts her tunic off over her head. In the dim light her lithe pale body appears to shine with a holy light and Dawydd drinks in the sight of her.

He goes to rise but she pushes him back onto the moss bed and swiftly straddles him and lowers herself onto him and eases him inside herself and he gasps. She rocks back and forward in a gentle rhythm and his body responds and he strives to match her, but the efforts of the day are too much and he lies back, almost overwhelmed with a deep lassitude. Gradually she quickens her pace, building him higher until, finally, he groans out her name and gives a final convulsion.

Dawydd closes his eyes and relises his body no longer feels so sore, but seems to be sinking into a delicious numbness as Gabrial gets up off him. He goes to speak but only a slurred jumble comes out. He tries to sit up. All he can manage is to lift his head. He focuses on speaking and after an immense effort says,

“What’s happening?”

Gabrial turns to him,

“The moss. It will keep you still.”

“Uh?”

“We are in sanctuary, the sanctuary, the place that is sanctified, sacred. It is sacred to the trees and they are in need.”

The cracking and clicking sound of their disjointed pursuers richochets through the clearing and the vast, black shapes, with their fractured movements, creep into Dawydd’s view. They resemble trees in that they have a trunk and branches and leaves, yet all distorted, with branches twisting and writhing, and deep fissures on the bark all over that snap closed with a sound like breaking bone or yaw wide to show a blood pink substrate. Eyeless they somehow watch and stare with a hunger that he almost feels rolling over him.

He sees Gabrial, still naked and glowing golden and white, reach out and gently stroke the trunk of the nearest and a shiver runs through the branches and leaves.

“He has been given the gift,” she says, “he is ready for sacrifce.”

The vast shapes close in around Dawydd, questing roots seeking him out, and he screams once, briefly, then is silenced. The roots writhe through his body in a twisting mass that convulses his corpse, until every portion is filled and drawn into the trees. By morning, nothing remains.