Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

xXx

Dry and frost tipped brush cracks beneath his feet as Keith works his way deeper into the forest. The night is dark and gloomy, the white moon hiding behind the thick cloud cover that had become a constant near two weeks prior. Every now and then, slush falls from the branches above, disturbed by the wind howling its way through the creaking trees.

Everything is black and brown, grey and white—even his breath. There’s no green and no movement that couldn’t be explained away by the horrid weather.

Everywhere, winter’s chill holds everything at a standstill.

Keith grunts as his foot slips on a wet stone, and he just barely manages to catch himself against the gnarled trunk of a tree. He still lands hard though, shoulder checking against the old wood with a dull thud that reverberates through his bones with a rattle.

He curses Sanda viciously as he straightens and continues onwards.

He wasn’t insane.

Daibazaal was an unwelcoming forest at the best of times, let alone in the dead of night, in winter, with no lantern. The trees were ancient; entwined thick enough that even full sun has trouble penetrating down to the forest floor and the air is often close enough to choke on, heavy with age. Wolves and bear and elk weren’t uncommon sights, poisonous plants grew everywhere in abundance and...

There were other things that roamed amongst the trees. Older, far more dangerous things which would have made a beeline for a lantern-light the moment they saw one.

Which was probably why the villagers usually had him be the one to brave it.

Keith knew that they often regarded him with suspicion—which was fair because that was how he regarded them as well.

He’d come to the village alone and had only spoken to the people there long enough to pay for the unwanted plot of land at the edge of the forest and to buy tools sturdy enough to repair the cottage that had come with it. He was fairly certain that the only reason they’d let him stay was because they’d been in desperate need of a Hedge Witch and Keith was their only option.

So when the Sanda and her men had found themselves on his doorstep that evening, he’d wanted to turn them away, but he hadn’t. His continued existence in the village was dependent on the tentative balance they’d struck and his gut has been telling him recently that if he denies their requests, no matter how unreasonable, then the scales will tip in a direction he’s currently unprepared for.

And so, here he is, traversing a forest at night.

The gloom deepens and deepens the further he walks and the chill was beginning to cut through his heavy cloak and even the ruby red scarf wrapped about his neck and lower face. His hands ache with it where they aren’t protected by his gloves and he flexes them again and again to try and work out the stiffness.

The first drops of water hit his hood like a bad omen. They’re huge and heavy, half ice from the cold air and Keith can't do much by that point other than sigh.

He pauses under the leeward side of a boulder, and raises both hands to press against the thickly spun fabric of his scarf. He takes a breath and closes his eyes. There’s a hum, like the air after a lightning strike, and then the runes woven into the fabric shimmer and heat starts to bleed through the strands.

Steam licks from him in curls as the fabric warms. He stays there for a moment, huddled against the stone as he lets the chill recede from his bones.

He takes a deep breath, and then another before continuing his search.

The hour stretches long, rain falling harder and the wind howling stronger before he eventually finds what he’s looking for.

The sunken clearing they’re growing in is partially obscured by the brittle dead branches of some type of scrub bush and far far west of the place he’d seen them last. They carpet the forest floor, beautiful and enticing, their white petals quivering slightly in the wind and rain, almost luminous against the surrounding dark. Keith crouches at the edge, careful not to walk amongst the waist high flowers and slings his small pack off shoulder.

He hunches forward, rooting around until he pulls out a small vial and then the dark bladed knife from his belt. Carefully he reaches forward, ignoring the petals for the dark, almost black leaves below them. He grabs one, flipping it over so the underside is exposed and carefully scrapes off the almost iridescent power clinging to the underside.

He scrapes it off the blade into the vial and reaches for another, only barely has the chance to snatch his hand back when the leaf moves.

A soft rustling starts up, almost inaudible over the wind and rain as the camouflaged insects clinging to the stems of the flowers begin to shift, searching for the meal that had disturbed them. It takes a while to collect the powder while avoiding the Fleshbane and their ever hungry maws. He barely flinches when he parts the stems of a small cluster to find a semi fresh kill laying half buried amongst the roots.

It might have been a deer once, one unlucky enough to wander through the Blood Lilies and linger long enough for the Fleshbane to get at it.

Keith works his way around the edge of the small field until the small vial is almost full.

The rain is just beginning to lighten when he shoulders his pack again, and slips back into the shifting shadows of the forest and away from the clearing.

He quickly finds himself having to zigzag to all points of the compass to avoid the snares of twisted roots and bare, thorny brush that have seemingly appeared out of thin air to fill the gaps between trees. The air grew colder and colder the further he went and the tangled mess of jagged wooden branches seemed to be funnelling him ever northward and away from his destination.

That was the thing with Daibazaal; it wasn’t dense at all at first, certainly not enough to ward someone off—even hunters still made use of the edges of it. But at some point, between one step and the next it swallowed you whole.

Keith slows to a stop, teeth bared in a silent snarl under the scarf. His internal clock was telling him that it was either nearing two in the morning or sometime just after and he sincerely didn’t want to still be there when it finally hit three.

He fingers the blade at his hip.

Rolling his shoulders, Keith turns to look at the woods around him. In the direction he wants to go there’s a dense wall of thorns and spear-like branches. Behind him, there’s just enough of a gap that in the low light it looks like a path.

Keith doesn’t trust that path.

Around him the trees groan and sigh with the wind. If he let himself, he could almost imagine the villagers inside their homes; safe and warm. It makes something black and bitter roil in his chest.

Even with his scarf, Keith was cold and wet a miserable. The dark and damp press of trees around him was suffocating in its way; far worse than it ever was during the day, even amongst foul weather. His eyes were tired and his limbs were growing stiff the longer he let the chill eat into him.

But there was some part of him—the gnawing biting part of him that the softer villagers flinched from—that was wide awake and finely honed. It was the part of him that had him tensing in his cottage or on the road when there was a small sound or movement beyond the normal; that had him waking from a deep sleep without the slow blink to wakefulness at the presence of something unnatural.

In that moment, that part of him sat up and whispered at him to listen.

There was a long stretch of silence between the howling of the wind and the low moans of the trees. It presses in on him, until it feels like his ribs might creak under its weight.

A crash erupts from somewhere behind him.

It’s the sound of splintering wood, of root and earth being torn apart. Like a ghost, Keith slips into the deeper shadows and hides. From his spot he stares into the woods, eyes straining to spot the faintest bit of movement but aside from the branches shivering in the wind there’s nothing between the trunks and amongst the bracken.

But the sound of the crack still echoes through his ears and, as he listens, he catches the faint sound of a stone ricocheting off tree trunks somewhere in the black.

His pulse kicks up as he feels something shifting just beyond his line of sight.

Pulling his blade from its sheath, Keith moves.

The knife lengthens with a dull flash but the time for subtlety is over. He swings at the branches and the thicket blocking his way home and the wood cleaves easily under the blade. Somewhere far behind him something clamours towards him, shambling and ungainly but intent.

Keith darts between the trees, slashing as he goes. He feels bits of branches and twigs try to pull and snag at his clothes but the cloak is woven too tightly for them to grasp. His feet are sure as he runs, silent and swift as adrenaline sets his heart to racing.

A stray branch swipes and he feels a sharp sting against his cheek, just above the edge of the scarf. He ignores it and runs and runs and runs.

All the while he can hear it, following behind—too close for comfort, far too close—the snaps and pops of saplings and branches breaking as whatever it was kept pace with him. It’s hard going between the slick ground and having to forge his own path. The cold stings at the bits of his skin that aren’t covered by the warmth of his scarf and gloves and the longer he runs the more he can feel the forest try to turn him back.

Keith stumbles to a stop, only just managing to avoid careening into the deadfall in front of him. The fallen tree feels like it’s appeared from nowhere, rising up out of the shadows like a mountain.

“Fuck,” Keith hisses, casting about for somewhere to go but coming up empty. On its side, it stands taller than him and it stretches in both directions like it goes on forever; a dead giant.

Keith takes a step back and then lunges, knife biting into the wood and giving him a leverage point to haul himself higher. His nails dig deep as he scrambles to the top and then throws himself off the other side, and down down down.

He only just manages to bite off a shout when he falls further on the other side than he expected, the ground sloping away at a dramatic incline. He lands hard, his ankle twisting under his weight and his breath punches from his lungs in a gasp of pain.

He barely has time to catch his breath, standing gingerly with his weight on one leg, when he hears it—the wet sound of something big breathing close by.

He throws himself behind a tree, one nearly as wide as the fallen giant, and presses himself tight against the bark. A hand comes up to muffle the breaths that want to shudder out of him—too loud, he needs to be quiet—and he waits.

There’s no breeze. At some point during his run or after his fall, the wind had died back down to nothing. Beyond the almost inaudible sounds of his breath and the faint noise of water dripping from branches, the forest had fallen into an uneasy silence around him. It was the kind of stillness that provoked a reaction, that made the animal thing in Keith’s chest snap; made it want to run or fight.

But he couldn’t run, a quick shift of his ankle told him that. It wasn’t broken but at the very least it was a bad sprain. Casting his eyes about in the dark, Keith searched for a way out.

His problem was that in amongst the trees he wouldn’t see what was hunting him until it was too late. The light from the moon had dropped again; the tangled twists of branches were so thick that they blotted out the light in this part of the woods. The shadows were deep and long, the underbrush thick with thorns and slick roots. If only he could find somewhere with just a bit of space—

His thoughts were interrupted by another crash.

Out there, in the ocean of countless trees and thick darkness, a branch or tree was snapped like kindling, the sound splintering off in all directions so that after a second, Keith could barely remember where it had come from. He shifts sideways, back pressed against unforgiving bark.

There were another series of sounds, small pops and cracks that echo from his far left and Keith moves further, keeping himself out of sight.

There was silence for a moment before he hears it again, this time from his right; that wet animalistic breathing, followed by a coughing call. It’s not a sound he’s ever heard before; a strange mix between something bovine and a dog, one of the desert ones he’d seen as a child—an almost hiccuping cry.

Keith tries to picture it, this creature, but can’t. It’s big, he knows that, and quiet when it wants to be—a predator certainly, but try as he might he can’t put a name to the sounds.

It’s possible (maybe even more than possible the longer he thinks about it) that whatever it is, isn’t from Daibazaal.

The winter they’ve been having has been driving things down from the mountains; strange things—old things—that haven’t walked amongst the trees in millennia. He’s heard talk amongst the villagers when he’s gone into town to see Hunk; whispers from other towns and other settlements about moving shadows. It was a risk they all took, living this close to the forests. Daibazaal might have been the deepest and the darkest but Oriande and the Olkari Woods still held their fair amount of dangers; dangers which have grown since the almost unnatural chill had gripped the land.

There’s another sound, closer this time and coming from his left. He moves again but not before chancing a glance in the direction the noise had come from.

There’s nothing there. Just thick wet walls of foliage, mossy bark and blackened trees.

Keith lets his head thunk back against the wood. It’s late and exhaustion is beginning to drag at his bones, and his face and scarf is tacky with drying blood from the scrape he’d gotten while running. His ankle throbs in time with his heartbeat.

He lets his eyes drift shut, just for a moment, and quietens the part of him that’s beginning to panic.

Keith has never been a thing to be hunted. Not even as a child, filled with soft tender parts; back then he’d spit and clawed when backed into a corner. At twenty one years, he had far sharper teeth, he just needed to be in a position to use them.

Calmed, Keith opens his eyes, blinks and then cocks his head to the side.

It was minuscule the difference, but it was there; beyond the line of trees and brush in front of him, an area where the thick blackness shifted to an ever so lighter grey. He could make out shapes in the distance which was more than he could say for anywhere else and a quiver of something went through him at the sight.

The change in the darkness meant there was light breaking through the canopy—not much, but maybe just enough that he could get some space to work.

His breath fogs out of him as he breathes deep, fumbling a glove off and then clenching a hand tight around the hilt of his blade. He tests his ankle and it stings but not enough that it’ll stop him. He counts down.

Three.

Two.

One.

He darts forward and he feels more than sees something follow.

He cuts through the brush and runs for the clearing he can now see before him, ignoring the pain lancing up his leg. He throws himself forward into a roll and feels the air behind him displace as something swipes at him. He slides smoothly into a couch and, not giving himself time to think, slices his palm open.

Blood drips down his wrist, hot and red and with a whisper, it ignites.

Light flares bright, beating back the gloom and something reaching for him shrieks and reels back. Keith slams his palm against the ground and vicious red spiderwebs its way out from him. The closest scrub surrounding him blackens and greys as it turns to ash and his fire stops just shy of the edge of the small clearing, pulsing in time with his heart beat.

He won’t be able to hold this forever, but hopefully It won't know that.

By the light of his fire he can’t see more than a foot into the trees, everything beyond that point falling into murky darkness. The branches of the closest trees flicker and dance in the light, ghostly and grey.

Quietly, he scans the darkness. He can see vague shapes in the dark, things which quickly redefine themselves the longer he looks. The wind is rising again and his fire flickers and sways where it burns low and contained, with him sitting in the centre like a spider in its web. Tree branches sway with their sparse leaves and the thicket below them moves like something living but the longer he crouches there, the more he can feel it; a dark mass moving through the trees just beyond sight.

It’s circling him.

Keith holds steady, red light burning itself into his vision.

“Where are you,” he mutters.

Try as he might he can’t pinpoint it. Every time he thinks he’s close to spotting it, he feels it drop away.

He doesn’t know how long he stays crouched. His knees ache from holding the same position and he’s beginning to feel cold in a way that has nothing to do with winter's chill. His eyes are heavy and the ache building behind them from the strain threatens to turn sharp.

It takes a second for him to realise that he can’t feel it moving about. There’s a new stillness to the forest and it makes his heart trip in his chest.

Keith turns slowly and looks behind him.

Between two trees is a shape that his mind tells him wasn’t there before. It isn’t moving. It’s still in a way that’s far from natural, like a boulder or the remains of a dead tree. Just a long, dark reaching form standing just beyond the light.

Keith doesn’t want to see it.

Some part of him—a part of him that was wholly human—rebels at the sight. The rest of him, however, narrows in on the nearest part of the shape, something long and thin, resting just inside the bounds of the clearing. It feels like a stalemate, as they both stand frozen.

Then Keith grits his teeth behind his scarf.

“Fuck off,” he snarls and his spider web flickers.

The heat in his veins flares and the fire moves like something living. It darts forward, and between one breath and another, it bites at the spindly black limb. Some part of it scrapes, like bone against stone and then it shrieks. The shape rears back as Keith rises, hand up and moving. The fire flows with it and the thing in the woods skitters and branches crack under its weight as it tears its limb from his grasp.

Keith's fire coils back and around him, and he raises his hands up, his blade in one while the other continues to drip red.

Amongst the trees the Thing stands, rising up and up until it’s brushing against the tallest branches of the surrounding trees. Pale moonlight pierces through the canopy and reflects off something slick, like hide covered in oil.

It shrieks again, loud enough to shake the earth beneath his feet but Keith stands firm even as something cold lances through his chest at the sound; if he tried, he could almost hear words in the noise.

The Thing darts to the side, quick and sinuous in a way that living things aren’t meant to move.

Something whips out from the trees and he only barely manages to dodge it. It’s enough, though, for him to see it better at it steps closer towards him.

His brain tries to make sense of the shape for a second before he carefully locks the sight away, concentrating instead on the hot glow of his own fire. He sees just enough to pinpoint its mass—a thick inky shadow—and he pulls at the line of heat running from his heart to his hand.

The low crackle of his fire rises to a pitch and he hears the Thing snort. Before he second guesses himself, Keith throws and the fire lances itself to hit dead centre.

There’s a sound like the felling of a tree and it stumbles, and then howls. The wind whips into a frenzy and, just as he falls to his knees, hands shaking and cold, it’s gone.

Keith blinks away the afterimage of it sliding back off into the darkness.

“Heh,” he chuckles and then tips onto his back.

xXx

The heat of the smithy is a welcome change to the heavy chill everywhere else. Keith kicks one boot against the entrance and then gently scrapes the other, dislodging the snow and mud. He steps inside the heavy door and then carefully tugs off his coat, working around the carved wooden crutch. He leaves the scarf on.

He can hear banging coming from the other room and heads in that direction after hanging up his coat. The crutch thuds out of time with his footfalls, awkward and ungainly. The air in the other room tastes like metal and sparks and he hears Hunk curse softly when the fire in the forge flares slightly in greeting.

“Oops,” Keith says, watching the blacksmith jump. “Sorry, Hunk.”

The larger man spins, a heavy hammer clutched to his chest in one hand. “Wha—oh, Keith!” He wipes away the sweat beading on his brow with one arm and then blinks at him.

“Man, you look awful,” he says, sounding aghast. “What happened, did you lose a fight with a bear?”

Keith looks at him, nonplussed, before looking down at himself.

“I look that bad, huh,” he asks wryly.

“Uh, I mean, no?” Keith looks up at Hunk and he wilts. “Okay, yes, sort of. What happened?”

Keith lets Hunk usher him to one of the chairs by the forge and slumps into it, sighing happily as the heat begins to sink into him. He reaches out a hand and rests it against the stonework and smiles softly as a tendril of fire licks up to curl about a finger.

He hears a quiet huff and looks up quick enough to catch the soft look on Hunk’s face before it bleeds away under a wave of embarrassment. Coughing, Hunk grabs another chair and plonks it down beside Keith.

“Keith,” he says earnestly, “What’s going on?”

Keith brushes his fingers along the bruising cut on his cheek, hand wrapped tight in bandages.

“Had to go out last night,” he says after a while. “Ran into something.”

It’s amazing how quickly Hunk’s face goes from softly concerned, to livid. His hand tightens on the handle of the heavy hammer and his usually kind eyes go dark.

“You mean they forced you to go out,” he bites, “and you almost got eaten for it.”

Keith shrugs. “More or less,” he admits tiredly.

Probably a little more on the less side, Keith thinks. It’s not like the villagers forced him out of his cottage at knife point—not like they could’ve even if they wanted to. No, he’d stepped out of his home under his own power and he’d walked into the woods the same way.

He tell’s Hunk as such.

Hunk scoffs. “You say that like it means anything,” he grumbles. “They know you can’t really say no to them, so they were forcing you.” The more he thinks about it the more agitated he seems to get. “Just because none of them have the skills to go in there and come back out doesn’t mean they can just—make you do it.”

“Actually it kinda does mean that,” Keith points out gently. He raises his hands when Hunk’s head snaps up to glare at him.

“Just saying,” Keith says awkwardly.

Hunk shakes his head, the worn yellow ends of the fabric about his forehead swinging with it. “No, Keith, it’s not right. It’s not decent. I’ll talk to the Village Head about it, make her see reason—”

“Hunk,” Keith tries but his friend doesn’t seem to hear him. With a huff Keith kicks out a leg, catching him in the shin with his unbandaged foot. “It’s fine,” he says when he finally gets his attention. “Besides I don’t think even you have enough goodwill with Sanda to do that.”

Hunk stares at him for a moment before groaning in defeat. “You’re probably right,” he sighs. “To be honest, I’m not even sure they know the meaning of the term.”

“Probably,” Keith agrees.

The two of them fall back into silence, broken only by the pops and crackles of the fire as it whispers in the forge. Keith’s eyes slide shut and he can feel the ache of exhaustion still gnawing at his bones.

He’d dragged himself back to his cottage the previous night sometimes after three, skulled a drink that was entirely a stimulant and probably would’ve killed him if he was anyone else and made the medicine for the Sanda's son-in-law. He’d finally dragged himself back home just as the weak dawn light was beginning to spill over the valley only to find that the wind had broken the window in the attic.

He was tired and he was sore and he wanted nothing more than to sleep for maybe a year.

He’s just beginning to doze off when a hand brushes his shoulder, the touch light as a feather. Keith opens his eyes, humming a query.

“You should go sleep, Keith,” Hunk says, frowning at him.

“I thought I was,” Keith grumbles around a yawn.

“I meant in an actual bed,” Hunk says. “I’m flattered that you came by to see me, but you look dead on your feet.”

Keith rolls his shoulders in a vain attempt at relaxing the muscles there. “Actually I came by to ask if I can steal some nails from you. I need to board up my attic window.”

“Yeah, sure thing man.” Keith watches as Hunk walks over to one of his heavy work benches. He rummages around, sending nuts and bolts and what looked like a horseshoe rolling. “I told you, you should have let me put in shutters for you ages ago.” He turns, holding out a small bag. “Do you have enough wood to bar it up?”

“Yeah,” Keith says, accepting the bag. He tucks it away in the pouch at his hip, the metal rattling together with the movement. Then he pauses, looking back up at Hunk.

“Okay that’s a serious look,” Hunk says with a nervous laugh. “What now?”

Keith looks behind him at the workbench, gnawing lightly at his lip.

“There was something out there last night,” he says eventually.

Hunk shrugs slowly, a cautious look on his face. “It’s Daibazaal—there’s always something out there.”

Keith shook his head. “No,” he says quietly. “This was something new.”

“Something new?” A look of unease flashes over Hunks face. “Okay, cool. What does that mean?”

Keith shrugs. “I don’t know yet. Hunk, I don't even know what it was. Something from the deep parts of the forest maybe. But…” Keith bites his lip again, thinking. “Do you think I could have that horseshoe? And any iron shavings you have lying around?”

Hunk nods slowly. “Sure.” He grabs it for Keith and hands it over and the weight settles in his palm, reassuring. “What are you going to do with it?” he asks as he pulls out a heavy box and dumps it onto the workbench.

Keith limps over, watching him. “Put it above the door. You should put one up too. Just in case,” he adds when Hunk finally pulls out a small tin.

“Okay,” Hunk says easily, handing over the tin. “And the shavings?”

“I don’t know yet,” Keith says absently as he hefts the tin in his hand. “I’ll think of something. Either way, it’s a good thing to have on hand.”

Hunk hums.

Keith shakes his head and tucks the tin away with the nails. “Anyway, I should be going.”

“Take care Keith,” Hunk says seriously. “Don’t go back out until your leg is better, I’m begging you.”

“I won’t,” Keith promises. “Don’t forget to put the horseshoes up either. One on every door to the house, Hunk.”

Hunk nods.

xXx

The walk back to his cottage is slow and arduous. It’s not that Hunk’s smithy is far from his cottage—in fact it’s probably one of the closest buildings to his home out of all the village—but the ground has turned to ice in spots after the rain and the path to his cottage is lacklustre at best.

In fact calling it a path might be giving it too much credit. There were no cobblestones, no neatly defined edges like the paths that lead through the rest of the village and towards the rest of the houses. Normally he doesn’t mind that; in summer the wildflowers bloom in a riot of colour that isn’t seen in the rest of the village and the bushes grow heavy with sweet berries. Now though, it’s a pain at best.

Despite the fact that its nearing midday, the sky is grey and overcast. The path winds itself up the slope, curving around a smattering of trees that grow twisted and low to the ground, far from the towering giants that grow at even the edges of the woods.

He can see it from the path too. The forest looms nearby, casting long shadows across the small strip of field that separates the path and his house from its doorstep.

Sometimes he thinks it creeps closer, edging ever nearer to the rowan wood fence he’d put up around his cottage and its small garden, but other times it’s back to where it belongs.

Keith breathes a sigh of relief when his garden gate comes into view. He can’t stop himself from picking up the pace, not when home and hearth is so close to being within reach. His hands shake as they make to unlatch the gate. He grabs too hard and the palm of his hand stings under its layer of bandages. He’s swinging it open when he freezes.

The hair dusting the nape of his neck pricks and the breeze dies down to a sullen quiet. Between one breath and the next there’s silence across the field. Slowly he turns, a bizarre parody of the night before.

There’s nothing there.

The field is empty, a blanket of white and grey stretching between him and the forest's edge. There’s no movement anywhere, no fluttering of birds out hunting, no nothing. Shadows play over the snow as the clouds drift and it takes a while for him to realise that the shadows cast by the distant trees are wrong.

They stretch too far and too deep, like they were trying to reach across the divide.

Keith stares into the space between trees and feels something stare back.

There’s a sense of movement, a shape melting away, like a shadow passing under the sun. Keith blinks and draws in a sharp breath and around him the wind comes back and the faint, sparse sound of birdsong with it.

Despite not feeling the presence anymore—or maybe because he doesn’t—Keith hurries inside his garden and locks the gate behind him. He limps up the steps of his porch and over to his door and stumbles inside but doesn’t close it. Instead he grabs the small wooden step ladder sitting propped up against his book shelf and drags it back outside.

Carefully he fixes the horseshoe above his door, the heavy thuds of his hammer echoing across the field. It takes a minute to affix it to his liking but once he has it up he feels better. Safer. Cold Iron above the entrance to his home, handmade by a friend.

Feeling more settled, Keith climbs back down, wincing as he puts weight against his leg. He carries everything back inside and locks the door behind him.

With a heavy sigh, strips of his cloak and his scarf and his boots, wincing as he pulls off the left one to reveal lurid bruising creeping its way past the bandages. He limps over to the heavy table by the kitchen and dumps his pouch there, the tin tumbling out after the opened bag of nails.

He was tired but he also knew that if he sat down now then he wouldn’t get up again and there were things he needs to do before he lets that happen.

He grabs a heavy pitcher and fills it with water before placing it on the ledge of the window. Ideally he’d have the shutters open but today he leaves them shut fast against the outside. He grabs the tin Hunk gave him, opens it and then carefully scrapes a small portion of the iron shavings into the water. He packs the tin away before grabbing the bag of nails and the hammer and makes the slow agonising trip up to the attic.

Luckily for him, he’d had the foresight to bring the wood up there earlier and it takes him about fifteen minutes to get the broken window covered fully. The room is quickly swallowed by darkness until he lights the lantern he’d left on one of the small benches scattered haphazardly about the room. He steps back to look at his work, frowning as he goes over what he’ll need to do to get the glass replaced.

With yawn, he leaves the hammer and nails where they are and makes to leave. The job is done well enough to serve, the books and dried herbs and other odds and ends packed away in the attic will be safe from the wind and rain.

It takes longer going back downstairs than it had going up and by the time he gets to the entrance to his bedroom, both legs are shaking and the hand holding the lantern is drooping under its weight.

Keith puts the lantern on the small bedside table and slowly strips off the rest of his clothing, letting pants and shirt fall to the ground while placing his knife and belt beside the lantern.

He should re-wrap his hand and his ankle, should put something on it to help the swelling and the pain but the thought of standing and staying up long enough to do it sends another wave of exhaustion through him like a flash of lightning. Instead he sways where he sits before crawling under the dark blue blankets.

Though its midday outside the only source of light is the tiny flame in the lantern.

He reaches out to snuff it, already half asleep when his hand stalls.

Swallowing hard, Keith rolls over, moving his leg about until he finds a position more comfortable. Then he pulls the blankets up around his chin and closes his eyes.

xXx

Keith wakes up feeling like death warmed over.

His mouth is dry, his eyes feel like they’re full of grit and there’s a pounding in his head that’s mimicked by one in his chest. He groans, turning to bury his face back into the blankets only to have the lancing pain through his calves and thighs force him to standstill.

At least the palm of his hand was numb.

It was all the equivalent of a hangover, he knew. His last stand in the woods had drained him enough, energy bleeding out with blood, but the stimulants he took afterwards had scraped him raw and now he was dealing with the consequences.

He lets himself drift back into that soft place in-between sleep and wakefulness, content to linger there for a little longer to avoid dealing with the mess his body had become. He thinks he lays like that for an hour, maybe two before the urge to move overrides his desire to avoid pain.

With a groan he hefts himself up into a seating position. His legs feel like they’re filled with pins and needles and his vision fades in and out for a second. He sits there for a minute until the world stops shifting about him and the vague nausea goes away. Moving to the side of the bed is a struggle and getting up is even more so. He forgoes clothes completely and instead drags his blanket over his shoulders, wrapping it around himself like a cape or a robe.

Standing is a challenge.

By some miracle, his ankle hasn’t swollen further during the night but the pain hasn’t lessened. He limps on bare feet to his bathroom and forces himself to go though his morning routine as much as possible.

When Keith finally limps out into his living room, he feels marginally more human than something undead.

It takes a breath and a flick of a finger and then the hearth fire is growing, stoked from the glowing coals and embers where it had been sleeping. Hobbling over he tosses a log in to feed it and then heads into his kitchen.

He’s still too tired to cook but there was bread and honey and the dried venison he had prepared before the winter had hit and he pulls it out and digs into it, sipping slowly at a glass of water.

It takes a while before the hunger gnawing at him is sated and only then does he turn to deal with his leg and his hand.

He grabs a stone bowl and fills it with water and then the solid mortar and pestle Hunk had gifted him after his previous one had broken. Then on aching legs he goes to the shelves lined with row after row of glass bottle and vial. He grabs three—one, a larger jar filled with small blue flowers, a second smaller jar containing a few remaining drops of a white almost opalescent liquid and the last, the same tiny vial of powder he collected the night before—and a tiny circular tin.

He dumps it all onto the table and pulls out three of the dried blue flowers, tossing them into the mortar and proceeds to grind them to a fine powder. He scatters the ground flowers into the water, stirring it with a finger three times before letting the current carry itself. He grabs the jar of liquid next, holding it up to the light and frowning.

It’s nectar from a Silver Bindweed and it was the last he had. He hadn’t seen the flowers in months, not since before the winter had hit and the thought was disconcerting at best.

“Well,” he mutters to himself, “might as well.” And with that he tips the last few drops into the still turning water.

There’s a faint shimmer as the nectar hits the water and then it bleeds from clear into a strange silvery colour.

Fixing his blanket about his shoulders better, Keith unravels the bandage on his hand and dips it into the water. There’s a second where the numbness of the cut flares hot, almost burning and he has to grit his teeth not pull his hand away out of reflex. It passes quickly and he watches as the silver water turns dull. He doesn’t pull his hand out until it resembles tarnished silver, dark and shimmery, almost like oil on water.

When he pulls his hand out, the cut on the palm of his hand is almost gone. The corners of the cut are healed over with a shiny white scar while the centre looks tender and red with fresh skin. He flexes his hand and there’s a faint ache but he knows from experience that on a cut this size, it’ll be gone in a few hours.

With that taken care of Keith sinks down into a chair and pulls a second one closer to prop his foot up. With a grimace, he pokes around the edges of the bruising. It’s a deep plum in places and almost red and green in others and all together he’s glad that Hunk didn’t see it or else he’d be on enforced bed rest for a week at least.

As it is the idea of a week in bed makes his skin crawl. He scoops up the tiny tin and unscrews the lid and the fresh, bright smell of lemongrass fills the air. Keith dips a finger in the tin and scoops out a small amount of the slightly yellow salve. He rubs it into the tender skin of his ankle and he groans as he feels the constant throbbing subside.

He does it three times, working it into the skin, and then slumps back into the chair. He moves his foot gently and hums.

“Better,” he mutters to himself. If he kept off it as much as possible for the rest of the day then it would be well on its way to healed by the time he woke tomorrow. Flexing his toes, he winces.

He screws the lid back on the tin, and grabs the tiny vial. He uncorks it and places the tip of a finger over the opening and shakes, before replacing the stopper.

Leaning forward, he takes the finger tipped in the powder and smears it in a ring around his ankle. A shudder runs up his spine as the feeling of numbness spreads until he can’t feel most of his leg or his finger. Quickly he rinses his finger off and then re-bandages his ankle, taking care to cover the powder and stop it from spreading about. Finally finished he cleans up his kitchen, disposing of the water in the bowl and cleaning the now empty jar.

He’ll need to find more Silver Bindweed or something similar and soon, he thinks while he washes. Spring was on the horizon but the cold wasn’t lifting and his gut was telling him that wasn’t going to change any time soon. The days were only growing colder and darker and things were already beginning to take a turn for the worst amongst the village; more accidents as the weather worsened, tempers fraying and moods going bleak the longer the sun stayed hidden behind the clouds.

His stores of ingredients were dwindling with the rising demand and healing wasn’t something he was capable of with only his hands and his blood.

Keith lays out a cloth and sits the jar on it upside-down to dry.

He’d have to go back out, but not today. Today he rests and tomorrow he prepares. Then he’ll head out at first light and he’ll make sure he’s back before the sunk sinks behind the mountain.

xXx

The third day comes softly.

He wakes with the dawn feeling rested. He stretches in bed, spine cracking and popping as he shifts about under the covers. He flops over onto his back and raises his hand to look at his palm; the redness has faded and when he clenches it there’s no ache to be found.

The faint early morning light spills in through his window and when he sits up and tugs back the sheets he takes a moment to inspect his ankle. The bruising has faded to the faintest hint of yellow and there’s no swelling to be seen. He flexes his toes and there’s no pain and when he gets up, he tentatively shifts his weight and is satisfied when there’s only the faintest twinge.

He gets dressed quickly—thick knee length boots and his shirt with the red stitching around the sleeves and collar, a red so dark it’s almost lost against the black. He tugs on his belt and checks the fastenings on his blade and then pulls on his cloak and scarf though he leaves the hood off for now.

He eats breakfast quickly, tossing another log into the hearth to keep it going while he’s gone.

He goes around the kitchen table and carefully organises his pack—nuts and meat, a canteen filled with water, a few jars and tins and three thick vials filled with some of the water from the pitcher. He shrugs on the pack, adjusting the straps and then tags on his gloves and he’s off.

Outside the world is quiet and still, everything covered in a blanket of white. Luckily it hadn’t snowed the previous night and it was easy going as he left the security of his garden and headed off across the field.

Snow and brittle grass crunches under his feet as he goes, every sound seeming to echo in the wide open space. The forest looms before him, closer and closer as his long strides eat up the distance.

Stepping under their boughs is like stepping into a different world. All at once the light changes, becoming dappled and weak under the canopy. This close to the edge there’s room to walk and just enough light that the atmosphere isn’t suffocating but it feels enclosed nonetheless.

Twigs snap under his feet as he continues onwards. The snow cover is sparse but the ground still feels solid and unyielding beneath his feet, like its frozen solid.

Every once in a while there’s the faintest sound of bird song amongst the trees; it sounds tentative, unsure of its welcome amongst the oppressive feel of the forest. He catches the flitter of movement in the corner of his eyes as he walks along, small birds or other things that watch him as he goes. Whatever they are they don’t come near him, perhaps sensing the fire running through his veins or warded off by the red thread stitched into his clothes or the iron water he carries in his pack.

It’s an easy walk though this part of the forest and he enjoys it while he can. Everything about him still feels old but it doesn’t carry the same malevolence that the deeper parts do—or no, not malevolence—it’s not evil despite what many of the villagers think. But it is most certainly Other. The forest itself, the trees and the plants and even most of the creatures that called it home weren’t malicious but wild.

Of course, he thinks to himself as he slows to a stop, that can’t be said of all the things walking beneath the trees.

The tracks lead off to the east of him.

They’re barely there in the frozen ground but he can make out the size and the general shape by the few indents he can spot—large and canid. Keith crouches down beside the clearest print he can spot and presses a finger around the edge, tracing the impression made pads and the tips of claws.

“A wolf?” he says to himself, questioning.

It certainly looks like one. He’s seen wolves in this forest before, has even tracked them on occasion out of pure curiosity. But these tracks aren’t like any other he’s seen.

Whatever made them was large, far larger than any wolf he knows of making its home in Daibazaal. The shape was ever so slightly off as well, the indents left by the claws deeper and toes just ever so slightly longer than normal.

Keith swallows.

He could follow. There’s no guarantee that he’d even find anything, for all he knows the track ends just over the next ridge, lost to hard ground or any number of things. Curiosity was gnawing lightly at his gut, the urge to see—to know—whispering at the edges of him.

But he was out in the woods for a reason and it was an important one.

Reluctantly, Keith turns away from the tracks and continues onwards.

He follows the gentle rise of the earth, letting his feet guide him as they wish, until the ground beneath him turns to stone. When he looks up, he’s standing almost at the crest of a hill, bare of anything but scrub and weeds that have managed to get a purchase in the cracks between rocks.

He walks to the top and looks around. Trees still mostly block his vision of the surrounding forest but its clearer up here. Light filters down like it so rarely does in Daibazaal, unencumbered by the thick twist of branches that smother it elsewhere.

Sunlight and moonlight.

He goes over the hill carefully, looking in the cracks between rocks and amongst the scrub. He’s never seen Bindweed grow without something to wrap itself around but he’s never seen it grow somewhere moonlight doesn’t touch either.

He finds a patch of Blue Jade moss growing on the leeward side of a boulder and carefully scrapes off a section into a jar. Under a patch of dried scrub he finds a single Ash-wood bulb and he digs it out of the shallow soil with careful fingers—he has an open pot on the porch filled with soil taken from Daibazaal, he can plant it when he gets home.

He goes over every nook and cranny but finds no sign of the Bindweed anywhere which, while not surprising, is still disheartening.

Keith sighs, dusting his hands off and rising to his feet. “Would’ve been too good to be true.”

Keith shoulders his pack again, listening to the soft sounds of glass clinking against glass as the contents shifted. Looking up he tracks the position of the sun as best he can with it hidden behind the clouds and guesses that he’s been out for maybe an hour or two. Midday is still far enough away that he’ll have plenty of time to look further afield and get back if he moves swiftly enough. Rolling his ankle absently, Keith looks down into the dark line of fir trees, waiting solemnly for him in the soft light and is struck dumb by the sight of grey eyes looking back.

He blinks and they’re gone like they were never there at all.

Swallowing, Keith makes his way down the hill.

In his head he can hear Hunk’s voice, scolding him for heading straight towards where…whatever it was had been. But Keith trusts his instincts when amongst the trees and he hadn’t felt the faintest prickling of alarm while working and he’s never that absorbed in a task while out of his home. Whatever it was probably wasn’t malicious and Keith was, more often than was probably recommended, curious about the things in Daibazaal.

Small rocks and pebbles dislodge under his feet and he climbs his way down the other side of the hill. The light dims as he gets closer to the tree line and the air cools noticeably enough that he tugs his scarf up higher and tighter.

He can still hear the faintest strains of birdsong in the trees about him and that more than anything else reassures him.

He lands at the bottom of the hill, roughly where he saw the eyes and looks about for any signs of what it had been.

The prints are fairly easy to spot, almost like they were placed in the perfect position for him to see.

They’re the same as the ones from earlier, the strange not-quite wolf tracks. They come to the hill and then turn away, back amongst the trees, disappearing like a ghost a few feet in.

“Sneaky,” Keith mutters.

A foot beyond where the tracks end there’s a stone sunken into the ground and beyond that, a snapped twig about chest height on Keith. When he gets closer to it, he sees the faintest strands of fur caught in the break.

They drift gently in the breeze, pure white. He reaches out with a hand and grabs them, running them between his fingers.

The fur feels like rough spun silk.

“Huh.” Keith holds them up to his eyes, watches the way they seem to glow in the low light and then lets them drift off with the wind.

When he looks around for more signs of the creature, there’s nothing and he circles right back around to the broken twig.

Sniffing, Keith shrugs eventually. “Fine then, keep your secrets.” Clearly, there was no use trying to find it when it didn’t want to be found. Some of the creatures in there were just like that.

He picks up where he left off, following his feet through the woods. Every now and then he swears he sees something white in the corner of his eye but after the third time he stops trying to spot it.

There were plenty of other things he should be looking out for instead. An hour later he hits the divide within the forest. Like always it seemingly comes from nowhere and between one step and the next, the lighting changes and the air becomes dense, heavy with the scent of age. The scarce birdsong dims until it’s gone and is instead replaced by the sensation of soundless wings and the occasional voiceless whisper at the edge of his hearing.

He keeps his hand on his blade as he walks.

Somewhere above the canopy the sun still shines, though weak and watery. That alone would be enough to offer him some protection against the things that make the darker parts of the woods home but in Daibazaal, it paid to be careful.

As he wanders further in, he realises that he’s lost his silent companion. There’s no flashes of white following him, just the endless shadows that he’s familiar with and he doesn’t know whether he’s disappointed or relieved.

After a while he puts it out of his mind.

The sun moves across the sky above him, bringing him ever closer to midday and the moment he needs to leave. Around him the forest is quiet, though not silent, and sometimes he catches small fingers watching him from behind trees or up amongst the branches. Yellow eyes gleam from within shadows but he keeps his head up and continues walking. Most of the time they left you alone if you didn’t bother them.

He stumbles across the fallen tree just as the sun hits it zenith in the sky.

It’s old and covered in lichen and moss. Snow dusts it and the small clearing its collapse had formed, obscuring part of the ground. Despite the snow, the clearing still smells like wet rotting things, organic and slightly sweet. There’s a tiny sapling somehow still growing from where its sheltered by the bulk of the tree and he brushes a finger across its sickly looking leaves.

He walks around to the other side of the log, careful where he places his feet. The ground is soft and spongy despite the snow, and there’s hunks of rotted wood laying scattered about where it’s sloughed off from the trunk.

On the other side of the tree is a vine.

It grows, adhered to the old bark and around one of the broken off branches jutting from its side. Pale green leaves shiver in the wind, looking frail and delicate and a single wilting, silver flower casts it face towards the sky.

Keith drops his back and pulls out a jar.

The Bindweed looks old and half dead and he wonders if its the soil or the frost or something else thats causing it to wilt. He can spot the places where other flowers had been, the slick brown petals hanging limp on their stems.

He reaches for the trumpet shaped flower and, holding the jar below it, bends it over the opening.

He holds it there for a second and then another and finally a drop of liquid drips into the jar. He stays like that for a few minutes, tapping on the flower gently to encourage any more of the liquid nectar to flow into the jar but eventually he’s forced to give up when it becomes clear that the few drops are all he’s going to get.

He lets the flower spring back into place and screws the lid back on tight.

Instinctually, he knows that's all he’s going to get today. Midday had come and was quickly going and he needed the remaining hours of light to get back through the forest.

He packs up quickly, taking care to wrap the jars in cloth before he sets off back the way he came.

Dead wood snaps under the soles of his boots, frost bitten shrub crackling and popping as he goes. He pushes branches out of his way, dodging them as they snap back with intent. Barely any time has passed but he can already feel the way things are watching him, following him. The light was quickly changing from a thin grey to a thicker grey and he was already being forced to wind through the trees as the forest grew sporadically denser here and there.

Areas he’d walked through an hour earlier were already looking different as things shifted about.

He’s not worried yet. There’s a faint sense of unease but thats normal in this part of the woods, expected even.

Keith slips through a gap in the bracken and around a dense cluster of willow trees and the sight hits him like a punch to the face. The dead thing was sprawled between two trees, facing him, though it takes a few seconds for him to make sense of what he’s seeing.

The skull is cracked and shattered in parts, its antlers laying broken beside it but not attached. He could see the glint of a large ribcage through the mess, rent open like it had been hit by one forceful stroke. There’s a wetness to the elks fur that has nothing to do with blood. Against his better judgement, Keith creeps forward to get a better look. Bits of the fur and bone look stained, like they’d been dipped into ink. The ground around the carcass looks black as well.

Around him, the forest is silent.

Keith backs away slowly and then he’s moving away from the trees and the body far quicker than he approached it, taking care to muffle his steps as much as possible.

There was no smell. No smell and no flies hovering about the kill.

Whatever had killed it, had done it recently and he hadn’t heard a thing.

xXx

He makes it to the forest's edge without incident.

He steps out into the field and looks up at the open sky and closes his eyes, basking for a second in the freely moving wind and the weak sunlight.

Then he thinks better of lingering and hurries off across the open space towards the safety of his home.

He’s halfway across the field when he becomes aware of the sensation of being watched. The hairs on the backs of his neck rise and it spills over him like a wave. He’s turning before its a conscious thought, eyes chasing the feeling but it's gone as swiftly as it had come.

He scans the trees behind him but there’s no strange shadows or shapes. He walks backwards, unwilling to look away just in case—

Well. Just in case something followed him.

He makes it to his gate unharmed though thoroughly unnerved and turns to unlatch it and as he does so, a shape out on the field moves.

He freezes, watching from the corner of his eye as a mass of white picks itself up from the ground and ambles away, back towards the forest.

xXx

The fire inside was still going, crackling merrily in greeting as the breeze blew in with him.

Keith shuts the door behind him with a thud, throwing the locks into place and begins to divest himself of his outerwear and boots. He leaves them, melting slush and all and carries his bag over to the table with his few hard won prizes.

The moss goes onto his shelf and he leaves the jar of nectar in its little nest of cloth scraps. Then he grabs the bulb out of his pack and sets it on the table and sinks down into a chair to stare at it.

He could plant it tomorrow. Should plant it tomorrow.

The pot was already prepared and it wouldn’t take much to grow it out of season if he moves it inside the house where it wouldn’t feel the cold and Ash-wood has always liked him. There were other things he should do as well, small things that needed to be tended about the garden since the winter looks like it wasn’t going to be dying off any time soon.

The aconite and bluebells should be coaxed into a longer sleep so they don’t die from the frost and he needs to renew the heating wards around his vegetable patch.

As he sat there, Keith went through a mental list of chores to be done and very carefully didn’t think about the inevitability of going back into the forest.