Twisted Tales

Despite the fact that the sun hasn’t quite set yet, the forest is so thick that the dark canopy of foliage overhead blocks out almost all light from the fading day. I could hardly see the path under my feet, but Erik didn’t seem to have any trouble following it, so I just focused on keeping him in sight. That wasn’t too hard, since the path was rather overgrown, and he had to slow to a snail’s pace to navigate it on one foot and a crude crutch.

We stumbled in the darkness for god knows how long, unpleasantly aware of every snap of a twig or rustle of a leaf.

Okay, so Jack and I stumbled, Despite his lame foot, Erik seemed perfectly at home in the near blackness of the forest, even as slow as he was, traversing over half-buried roots and avoiding thickets of bramble with a sort of sixth sense, while Jack and I hissed in pain every time we collided with a particularly low hanging tree branch.

I’d thought it couldn’t get much darker in the woods, but it turns out I was wrong. The sun set quickly now, and within half an hour, the darkness was dangerously oppressive.

Erik kept pressing us onwards, but it finally got to a point where I could hardly see his back despite the fact that he was only a few feet away from me and I stopped dead right there on the path.

“We can’t keep going,” I said. “It’s way too dark, one of us is going to trip and break a leg or something.”

“Been there, done that,” Erik grumbled.

“Your ankle isn’t broken,” I reminded him. “And we were more desperate then. We can afford to stop for the night now. Unless the wayhouse is like, five minutes from here, I say we call it a night.”

“I have to agree,” Jack added, “Plus, it’s getting cold, and we should eat.”

Erik muttered something about us being pansies who weren’t cut out for “serious” adventuring, but us pansies carried the vote and he conceded.

We settled down right in the middle of the path, and Erik set about making a small fire while Jack cleared the ground of the worst of debris, so we wouldn’t have to sleep on too many rocks and sticks.

“Is a fire really a good idea?” I asked warily as I pulled out the bread and cheese that our meager supper consisted of. “Won’t that just attract attention? The bad kind of attention?”

“Well,” Erik said as he continued to stoke the tiny smoking flame he had encouraged into existence, “On one hand, a fire could alert intelligent threats to our presence, like robbers or ogres. On the other hand, things like wolves and giant spiders fear fire, so sleeping beside one should encourage them to keep their distance. I could put it out if you want, but you have to decide which seems like a worse way to die: stabbed in the night by bandits, or eaten alive by giant spiders? Oh, plus, you’ll be cold all night before the giant spiders eat you.”

“Uh… I guess… the bandit thing is less… horrible. Slightly,” I admitted.

“My thoughts exactly,” Erik agreed, and with one more handful of dry grass, the fire burst into licking tongues of hungry flames.

The fire was nice and warm, and I huddled close to it while gnawing of my hunk of stale bread. It was almost pleasant, sitting there between Jack and Erik in silence, watching the spitting, crackling campfire and listening to the evening breeze rustle through the trees that surrounded us. As long as I didn’t let my thought drift to bandits or spiders, at least.

Unfortunately, the relative peacefulness of the moment was being slowly ruined by my increasing need to pee.

I squirmed where I sat in the dirt, trying and failing to ignore the mounting pressure in my bladder. I’d been holding it since we first left town earlier that morning, since there had been no cover along the road in the farmland portion of the walk for me to hide behind. It had been a hot day, and I’d drunk a lot of water from the leather waterskins that Erik had brought along.

At first, my plan was to wait until we decided to go to sleep, and then I’d offer to take the first watch. Once the boys were out, I’d walk a little ways down the road to relieve myself without having to leave the safety of the path. One look towards the deep darkness of the forest beyond the path was enough to convince me that I really didn’t want to go wandering out there in search of a private place to pee.

But as the night wore on and neither Jack nor Erik showed any signs of settling down for the night, It was either admit my embarrassing biological weakness—for shame—or risk the boys asking what that wet spot that seemed to be spreading out around me was.

“Um,” I squeaked, my voice a barely audible falsetto. I cleared my throat and tried again, this time making an effort to sound like I wasn’t embarrassed by having to do something all living creatures did multiple times a day. “Um, I have to… use the restroom.”

“What?” Erik and Jack asked at the same time, looking utterly nonplussed.

“Bathroom, I have to go to the-” I started, and then broke off as I realized my error. This was a land of chamber pots and outhouses, polite euphemisms like “use the restroom” were just gibberish here. My face flushed so deeply that I knew it had to be visible even in the washed out, orange-y light of the fire, and I said, “Pee, I have to go pee.”

Both Jack and Erik flushed as well, and Jack gave an awkward cough while Erik quickly pretended to be tending to the fire. They had been relieving themselves on the side of the road all day, not bothered in the slightest as long as my back was turned, but obviously the thought of the same situation in reverse filled them with almost as much embarrassment as it did me. I briefly considered being offended by this inequality in the freedom of public urination, but a sudden pang from my bladder reminded me that I didn’t have time for such things.

“Should I just…” I trailed off, jerking a thumb towards the dark line of trees behind us.

“You shouldn’t leave the path,” Erik warned me.

I raised my eyebrows at him, and realized that I did not give a hoot about the inequalities of public urination—at least not how they applied to me, personally. I just couldn’t take a squat in front of these near strangers, not without at least one tree between us. “I won’t go far,” I said.

Erik looked uncertain, but then he shrugged. “Stay close enough that you can see the light of the fire, or that we can hear you if you get turned around and call out. And don’t be long.”

I jumped up to my feet, leaving my backpack on the ground where I’d been sitting, and dashed off into the woods as fast as I could manage while waddling.

Blissful relief. I felt a million times better by the time I stood up and inspected the hem of my dress, just to be sure that I hadn’t accidentally peed all over it in the darkness. I had gone a little deeper into the woods than I had originally been intending to. I had stopped at first only one or two trees in, the light of the fire still a clear beacon back to the path, but Jack and Erik had taken up a conversation to fill in the awkward silence I’d left them in, and I could still hear there voices. That meant that they’d probably be able to hear the sound of me doing my business, which was not a bonding experience I was particularly eager to have.

I went a little further until the sound of their voices dimmed to almost inaudible, and by then, the glow of the campfire was hidden behind the dense wall of trees. It was fine though, I’d gone pretty much in a straight line to find this secluded spot. I turned about face, and trekked back the way I had come.

After about three minutes of walking, I stopped.

It definitely hadn’t taken me three minutes to walk from the path to my pee spot.

I looked around to see if anything looked familiar, but it was so dark, and all the trees looked pretty much exactly the same.

This was fine. There was nothing to worry about. I’d just backtrack a little, reorient myself, and try again.

I retraced my steps to lead me back to the stump I’d relieved myself on.

I didn’t find it.

I froze, cold and utterly alone in the middle of the forest, and listened hard.

Nothing. No sound of conversation, no voices from either of the boys carried on the cold night air.

My mouth went very dry, and I struggled to swallow the lump that was rising in my throat.

“It’s fine,” I said out loud. “This isn’t a big stretch of forest, remember? It can be passed through in a few hours. You’re not that lost.”

If worst came to worst, as long as I picked a direction and stuck to it, I could find my way out.

Probably.

Except I’d heard stories of hikers who had become lost in the woods, their bodies found days later just half an hour from a town or a road. They’d died after walking in circles for days, exposed to the elements without food or water.

Fear threatened to overwhelm me, but I shoved it down hard. Don’t panic, panicking is how people die, I told myself in the firmest internal voice I could muster. I just had to find the path, that was all. I didn’t even need to find my way back to Erik and Jack, I just needed to find the path again, and then I could get out of here and figure out the rest later.

I slowly began to pick my way through the undergrowth, heading in the direction I thought I had come from.

A half an hour later, I was sitting in a heap on the ground, bawling my eyes out.

It’s one thing to say you’re going to stay calm in when lost in a forest, and another thing entirely to actually do it. There were things all around me, making sounds in the bushes and in the treetops above me, and I swore I kept seeing yellow, luminous eyes following me everywhere I went.

Besides, this wasn’t a regular forest like that kind I was used to, whose biggest dangers were unsteady ground and the occasional mountain lion.

This forest had all the usual dangers: unsteady ground, wolves, probably bears; plus extra. Witches, trolls, ogres, giant spiders, and who knew what else.

If exposure didn’t get me first, something way worse would, I was sure of that.

So I gave up, and I sat down, and I cried.

It wasn’t my proudest moment in my adventuring career, but right then, I didn’t really give a crap. I just wanted to be home, safe in my own bed in my own apartment, where my biggest worry was making sure my bills were paid on time, not that something with a lot of teeth was going to shred me limb from limb.

But my sobs were suddenly broken off mid-gasp for air, as I very distinctly heard a branch crack not far from where I was sitting.

I immediately quieted down as much as I was able to, furiously wiping away the wet tear tracks on my cheeks and the drops clinging to my eyelashes so I could see a little clearer. It didn’t help much, the darkness was pressing, absolute.

Silence reigned. There was one lonely bird, either nocturnal or confused, chirping alone in a nearby tree, but other than that, nothing.

And then it came again; a crack of a single twig snapping under someone—or something’s weight; just a small sound, but resounding in the oppressive quiet of the forest.

I scrambled to my feet, stooping to blindly reach for something, anything, that I could use as a weapon. My hand passed over a few branches, too thin to offer any defense, and finally closed around a rock about the size of my fist. I hefted it in my hand, and waited.

It wasn’t a giant spider, I told myself. I mean, what were the odds that it would be a giant spider? Sure, Erik had said they were out here, but I’d spent hours worrying about them specifically. It’s like talking about being in a plane crash while on a plane. The odds of it actually happening after you’ve talked about
it are minuscule. Right?

Right?

I held my breath, terrified that whatever it was in the woods would be able to hear my short, fearful gasps for air. A bush rustled, and something large suddenly pushed its way through the forest growth, heading straight at me.

It was too dark and the thing moved too fast for me to be able to see it clearly, but I could tell that it was huge and black and had too many hairy legs to count. I screamed, high and shrill, and threw the rock, just pulling my arm back and hurling blindly in the general direction of the creature. I missed, and the stone bounced useless off of a tree trunk as the monster barreled down upon me. I tried to back away, to turn to run, but the forest was too dense and I hit a tree almost immediately. All I could do was fall to the ground, still screaming, and try to shield my head with my arms.

I could actually hear the snapping of it’s pincers and see the glint of moonlight that pierced the forest canopy in shafts in its eight bulging eyes as it loomed over me, its forelegs pawing spastically at the air, when it suddenly gave a strange hissing shriek and shied away to one side.

I shrieked again as well, thinking that the massive spider was about to turn around so it could cocoon me in its web or something, but then it began to retreat, still hissing and shrieking, its attention gone from me now and focused instead on something else that was advancing upon it from the left.

I heard a fwhump as something whizzed by at breakneck speed, hitting the tree just over my neck, and close enough to nearly graze one of the spider’s twitching legs.

There was a shout, and though I was too terrified and addled to make out the words, it was definitely recognizably human.

Then there was another sound of something flying past us, a second cry of angry words, and the spider evidently decided that this meal wasn’t worth the trouble, turned, and fled.

I remained where I was, my heart pounding so loudly in my ears that it drowned out all other sounds, and my breathes coming in quick, shallow gasps.

You’re hyperventilating, an oddly calm voice in my head said, and I struggled to take deeper, slower breathes before I made myself pass out.

And then suddenly, something else was crouching above me, and I gave another cry of fear and lashed out.

The figure ducked, barely avoiding being smacked right in the face by my windmilling fists.

“Wait!” it said. “Don’t be afraid, I’m here to help you!”

I froze, my arms still raised in a pathetic approximation of attack, and tried to blink away the darkness of the night and the tunnel vision that had belatedly set in in my panic.

It was indeed a person, a young man crouching in front of me, using a longbow for balance.

“W-who are you?” I demanded, in a shaky voice. ‘Thank you’ probably would have been more polite, but fear was making me paranoid, and all I could think was that humans could be just as dangerous as wild animals, and that these woods were full of bandits and witches, according to Erik.

“I’m a huntsman traveling through these lands with my men,” the person said, their voice deep and commanding—though there was something slightly usual about it that I couldn’t quite place. “We’re camped not far from here. We woke in the night to find that same giant spider silently wrapping up one of my men to carry him off. We chased it away not five minutes ago. And that was when we heard a scream; your scream, I presume. We must have chased it right into your path.”

“Uh… oh,” I said, still confused and in shock, and not at all what to do or say now. “Are there… are there any more of them around?” I asked.

“It is unlikely,” the huntsman replied. “They are solitary creatures, and fairly territorial. They are opportunistic hunters, who prefer to hunt prey who are entirely unaware, or take victims who travel alone and unarmed. It’s unlikely it will return, but it would be unwise to remain here. Are you alone out here? Lost? You ought to return with me to my camp.”

“To your camp… with you? And your men?” Oh jeeze, was I about to be ambushed by a band of robbers? I looked around the darkness to see if I could spot any unsavory looking characters lurking in the shadows. “How many?”

The huntsman gave a rather lilting laugh. “There are 12 of us, including myself, but you have no need to fear us. No harm will come to you at our hands, I can assure you of that.”

I wasn’t exactly eager to admit to a strange man I’d just met in a forest that I was lost and, at this moment at least, entirely alone and unarmed, but it didn’t look like I really had much other choice. I had to get back to Erik and Jack somehow. “Well, I am lost, but I’m not alone. Actually I am alone at this exact second, but I’m here with…” I paused, looking for the right word. “…Companions. We set up camp on the path, but I got lost, and can’t find my way back. They probably think I’ve been eaten by something by now.”

I wondered if Jack and Erik had come looking for me. Maybe, I suddenly realized for the first time, I should have just stayed put the moment I realized I was lost, instead of wandering around like an idiot, getting myself further and further from the path. Maybe they were out in the woods too, searching for me right now.

Maybe they were lost themselves.

No. I shook that thought from my head. Erik wouldn’t get lost out here, he knew this place too well, knew how to survive too well. I just had to get back to our campsite, and even if they weren’t there because they were out looking for me, they’d have to return eventually.

“Do you think you could help me find the way back to the path?” I asked the huntsman. “I can find my way from there—I think.”

“It would be my pleasure,” the huntsman replied with a smile, and then he put two fingers to his lips and whistled, a long piercing note.

Less than a minute later, the rest of his men joined him: eleven others, leading horses and all dressed in almost identical clothes—long earth-toned tunics, tights with high leather riding boots, and Robinhood-esque caps set at jaunty angles.

Even more surprising than the unusually coordinated outfits was the fact that all eleven of the newcomers looked almost exactly like the first man I had met. It was uncanny; they were all precisely the same height and build, all their hair cut to the same length and a shade of dusty blond, all their features close enough in appearance that they could be siblings.

They weren’t quite identical, and after a few moments of confused blinking I was sure that I wasn’t looking at a set of… dodeca-lets? Whatever twelve twins would be called. Just twelve, presumably unrelated, individuals who happened to look so similar that they could be each other’s stunt doubles. Not weird at all. Maybe it was a club, and they wandered the country side looking for body doubles to join.

Well, it wasn’t any of my business, as long as they didn’t try to drag me into their weirdness. “Hi,” I said, with an awkward wave. Most of the newcomers nodded or waved back, and all eyes turned to the first huntsman, who appeared to be the leader.

“This young lady needs our help in getting back to the path, and finding her companions. Quick, let’s be on our way before the night grow too late.”

I still hesitated a moment, all of my mother’s lessons about not going places with strange men lest you end up a body in a ditch echoing in my head, but is the huntsman had wanted to attack me, he could have done it right after the spider attack without all the polite conversation. Besides, alone and scared and having just been attacked by a gargantuan arachnid, I was willing to put my faith in basic human kindness in order to get the hell out of these wood.

I squared my shoulders, nodded at him, and with that, the leader of the huntsman led the way, me at his heels, and a parade of eleven others trailing after.

The huntsman talked to me as we walked, apparently trying to put me at my ease with friendly conversation. His name was Samuel, as he and his men were on their way to a kingdom called Alberny, which I gathered was some ways from where we currently were. It involved passing through the Dark Forest, across the Black Mountains, and through the Enchanted Forest.

I was not impressed with the imagination of whoever had named these locations, but I was impressed by the amount of traveling Samuel and his men were prepared to undertake.

“Why do you need to go so far?” I asked him.

A sort of far away look came into his eyes, and all he offered in response was a vague, “I want to see an old friend.”

I didn’t pry.

It only took about twenty minutes to stumble onto the forest path. Samuel had a map of the area, and he periodically sent one of his men up into a tree to take a look at the stars to ensure that we were still heading in the right direction. Just like I had suspected, I had probably been wandering in circles for ages. I was stupidly lucky that I ran into the huntsmen when I did.

“Thank you so much!” I said to Samuel and the others. “I never would have been bale to find my way back on my own, you probably saved my life!”

“Do you recognize this place? Can you find your way back to your companions from here?” Samuel asked.

I looked around, trying to spot something familiar about the section of the path we had come out on.

I looked up the path.

I looked down it.

I looked at the trees lining either side of it.

“Um…” I said, and I realized that I had no idea, not even the foggiest idea, whether I’d already been here or not. “I don’t… I don’t know,” I admitted. I felt my stomach sink, and I looked helplessly at Samuel. “Which… which way do you think I should go?” I asked him, even though he surely had even less of an idea than I did.

To his credit, he didn’t just shrug and say “I dunno, your problem now, lady” and take off. He considered my question for almost a full minute, and even quietly asked one of his men their opinion on the subject. Finally he said, “I think continuing forwards if the wisest choice. If we have come out behind the place where you and your companions set up camp for the night, then we will come across it in due time. If you were to double back, you may waste valuable hours covering miles of path to no avail, and then you would have to double back once again just to return to this spot. Hours would be wasted, and you would likely be left too exhausted to continue, and risk not finding your friends again. If we are in front of the camp you are your friends made, then before long we will come to the inn that is halfway through these woods. That will be a long walk, but less so than mistakenly doubling back, and you will find a warm bed and good food at the end of it. Besides, it is almost certain that eventually, if your friends are searching for you, they will almost certainly head to the inn at some point to inquire whether you have been seen there. It would be easier and more comfortable to wait for them there, than to wander up and down this road in the hopes of running into them.”

“You keep saying ‘we’,” I said, a little hesitantly.

Samuel smiled. “We won’t abandon you now,” he said. “Like you and your companions, we had set up camp for the night to avoid having to travel after dark. But now we might as well continue, and enjoy a more comfortable rest in the inn. Besides, there is safety in numbers, and you oughtn’t to be traveling these roads alone at night. Giant spiders are, unfortunately, among the least of the dangers out here.”