Deep Dark Woods

Lysa and Aaron make their way through the mysterious woods.

17.

Deep Dark Woods

 

 

Running was out of the question in the forest, for almost immediately upon entering the woods, most of the moonlight was blocked out.    Lysa and Aaron walked at as brisk of a pace as they dared, following a very narrow animal trail deeper into the wilderness.

They didn’t speak, for the place seemed to be watching them.    They found that their eyes darted from side to side continually, though the only sounds they heard were the lazy chirps of nighttime insects and bullfrogs.

Without consciously thinking to, they held hands, like two scared children in an unknown place.     Aaron’s mind was trying to clear and with extreme slowness; bits and pieces of memories that he knew were true (and not part of the horrible weeks of nightmares) were coming back to him.

He knew who he was now, and that Westmark was his home.   He could recall his parent’s names, but he wasn’t yet sure if they were alive or dead.  

But everything else was jumbled up and foggy.    As they walked through the forest, he sensed that he knew the girl with him, but he wasn’t sure how.   She’d addressed him as ‘lord’, but what was he lord of?     The answer seemed just outside the edge of his conscious memory.   

For a long time they walked, stumbling periodically over roots or fallen branches.     Then Aaron realized that all of the insect and frog noise had stopped.    He halted dead in his tracks, and the girl did too.

“What?”  She whispered, and now her voice was not amplified at all.

“The noises… they’ve all stopped.”  He whispered back.

“Oh… yes, you’re right.    That can’t be good.”

“Do you know anything about this forest?”  

“No, we didn’t have time to learn much.”

Her response triggered a glimmer of a memory, “You… you’re not actually a Hutcaiah woman… are you?”

“Of course not!    You don’t recognize me, do you?”   She asked, standing close so their whispers would not carry far.

“No… my memories are all… confused.    There were endless nightmares… never ending horrible dreams, and… I-I…I don’t know exactly what is real and what isn’t.”

She squeezed his hand in sympathy, “Oh no!   They tortured you that way?    Oh, Lord I am so sorry!    What can you remember?”

He thought for a long moment, “I know my name is Aaron and that I’m from Westmark.   My parents are Alis and Aeric… I think… I think they are knights… or paladins.   But… I don’t know if… if they…”

“They’re dead, my Lord, several months ago, they were poisoned-“

“Redburr!”  Aaron suddenly shouted, then, upon realizing what he had done, he cringed.    “Sorry - Redburr was the man responsible for their deaths, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I remember… a battle, I think… but it’s all confused…”

“I can help you remember, but not here… I don’t think it is safe to speak here, or even to linger here for very long.”

“You called me ‘lord’… you seem vaguely familiar to me, but it doesn’t make sense.     I keep seeing in my mind this Orc girl - she is very pretty--- and it is like she was… my servant or-“

“Squire.” Lysa whispered.

“Yes!   That’s it!   Lysa!    She’s… my squire and… um… she’s my friend.    You… you are…no, that doesn’t make sense…”

“Tell me.”   She told him, smiling slightly.

“It’s crazy… but… somehow… you’re her, aren’t you?   Lysa?”

She squeezed his hands, “Yes, Lord, I’m Lysa.    You should be confused too, for you haven’t seen me in this form.”

“But you are an Orc?”

“Yes and no… it is a long tale that will probably come back to you sooner or later.    But this is my form now.    Permanent, I imagine.    I am physically a Hutcaiah Elf, I have been told.”

“But how?”   He asked, confused.

“We’ll discuss this later, Lord.   For now we need to keep moving before the Hutcaiah search for us.”

“You came to rescue me?”   He asked as they began to walk again.

“Of course I did.    But it wasn’t just me, Lord.     Aedric and Snoe, Carn and Amala, Bruce, Mattleos and Mathlyn came as well."

As soon as he heard their names, memories began to flood his mind, causing him to stagger and sideswipe a tree.

“Are you alright?”   Lysa asked, rushing to him as he lay sprawled out on the ground, holding his head.

“Those names are all familiar to me; the memories overwhelmed me for a moment.”

She knelt next to him, “Did you hit your head, Lord?”

“No, not really… Lysa, you don’t need to call me ‘Lord’.”

“Sure I do, Lord.   You are Duke of Helios Valley.   I could call you “Your Grace”.”

“How about just Aaron?”

“No, sir.   It is too informal.   I am your squire and I need to learn proper etiquette.”

“It makes me uncomfortable, Lysa.   I’m no better than you.”

“It would make me more uncomfortable addressing you by your given name.”

“Can you at least try?”

“Perhaps a compromise.    I’ll speak of you as Lord Aaron.”

“That is not much of an improvement, but my head hurts too badly for me to debate it.”

“Shall we rest, Lord… Aaron?”

“I think I’ve recovered, so let’s keep walking for a while.”

“Alright, sir.”   She stood up and held her hand out to help him stand.    He took it but pushed himself up, for she didn’t seem stout enough to pull him to his feet.  

“Thanks, Lysa.    I thought you looked lovely as an Orc, and you are even lovelier as a Hutcaiah Elf.”

She blushed, but snickered, “After what they did to you, my Lord, I wish I had the form of ANY other race of Elf except them!”

He quietly strained to remember what had led to his imprisonment by the Hutcaiah and in fragments it came back to him.

Aaron took her hand and they began to cautiously resume trudging through the dark forest.

 

They hadn’t walked far before they became aware of a faint sound, like something carried by the wind from far away.    Both of them stopped, straining their ears to hear it, but it did not grow clearer to them.     It seemed to be distant voices, but they did not come from any specific direction.    It was as if they were all around them, yet the sounds were almost whispers.    No words could be made out.

For a long time they just stood there listening, expecting the sounds to grow louder.   They wondered at first if it was a group of Hutcaiah pursuing them.    Yet the sounds didn’t sound right for that to be the source.    There were no clanks of armor or clopping hoof steps.   As thick as the forest had grown, Aaron doubted that a party of them on horseback could have managed the narrow path.

 

“What do you think it is?”  Lysa finally asked him in a low whisper.

“I don’t know.    The voices don’t seem to be getting any louder and they seem to be coming from everywhere.”

“Yet they don’t sound very near, do they?”

He shook his head, “It is a very mysterious place.”

All at once they became aware of little points of white light all around them.    They were the size of fireflies, but their glow stayed constant and they shimmered lazily in the air perhaps thirty feet away from them.

“Who’s there?”   Aaron asked out loud, but his voice seemed to muffle into nothing soon after the words left his mouth.   The points of light stayed the same and the distant whispers continued.

“Who are you?”   He asked, and again his voice wouldn’t project far into the night.

“Who are you?”   A loud whisper from somewhere ahead of them came back to them, sending chills up their spines.

“Aaron and Lysa, we are fleeing the Hutcaiah.”   He answered.

“Aaron and Lysa… flee…flee.”  The voice whispered faintly.

“We mean you no harm; we do not want to trespass here.”

“You… trespass… here.”  The voice softly said.

“We don’t mean to do so.   We want out of here as quickly as we can.”

“Do so… quickly.”  

“Can you show us the quickest way?”   Lysa asked them.

“Quickest… way.”

“Please; we don’t want to be here either.   We don’t know the way out.”

“Know… way… out.”   The voice whispered, but Lysa and Aaron wondered if it was mimicking them, or if instead it was telling them that there was ‘no way out’.

“What do you want us to do, then?”   Aaron asked.

“What do you… do?”

“Please; show us the way out of this forest and we’ll never return.”

“Please… never… return.”

“You’re just mimicking us.    You can’t help us at all, can you?”

“You… help us...can you?”

“Help you?   If it is in our power, we would help you in return for helping us find the way to get through this forest.     I swear by Yesh.   What do you need us to do?”

“You… help… us find the way to…Yesh…”

Aaron looked at Lysa, “They’re ghosts.    Lost souls.”

“Ghosts… lost…”  The voices whispered.

“You want to leave this place and go to Heaven?”

“Leave.. to Heaven.”

Aaron shifted nervously, “Do you know who Yesh is?    You must know Him first.”

“Do… you… know?”

The question sent a chill down Aaron’s back.   Though his memories were still jumbled, he knew clearly what he believed about God.

“Yesh is God.”   He told the ghostly voices, “He saves those who trust in his mercy and seek his forgiveness for their sins.”

“Yesh… mercy… for… sins.”

Lysa squeezed Aaron’s arm, then leaned in to whisper in his ear, “Lord, they are only repeating words that we are saying.   Select words from each sentence.   Have you heard of Will-o-Wisps?   Perhaps we’ve encountered some here.   They are luring us into doing something or following them.”

The voices did not speak, so Aaron and Lysa just stood there waiting for an anxious period of time.   The little lights continued to shine around them and the faint, unclear whispers could barely be heard, but no clear words were uttered.

Then Aaron thought of something.   Raising his hand in the gesture of a blessing, he said, “In the name of Yesh the Merciful, I command you to clearly state what you seek from us, or else be gone!”

The lights flickered once and the ghostly voice said, “Follow… follow… near… near…”

The lights then moved, all at the same moment, toward the west, slowly, almost as if they were waiting for someone to follow.

Lysa looked questioningly at Aaron, who shrugged and began to follow after them, careful to check the ground before he stepped.   Lysa walked behind him slightly, scanning the trees on both sides of them.

For a few nervous minutes they moved along the narrow trail as it turned and then abruptly started up a rather steep hill.  As they neared the top, the density of trees greatly thinned out until they had followed the lights onto a flattened summit.     It was a wide area, more of a plateau than the top of a hill.    For several acres the ground was flat and devoid of all trees except for a large mound in the middle of the plateau.   

The lights moved across until they had covered the mound.    It had a very unnatural appearance and was covered with a multitude of twisted trees that looked to be some type of immature Oak.    They were the size of cherry trees, yet none of them looked healthy.    Their gnarled and bent forms seemed tortured and they only covered the mound as if hiding it from anyone who might venture to come there.    The lights settled in each of the little trees and twinkled there as Aaron and Lysa cautiously approached.

“Here…” The voice beckoned as they stopped at the base of the mound.   

There was a moment of utter silence.   The air felt heavy and a sense of profound sadness and pain entered into Aaron and Lysa’s mind.    Both of them began seeing shapes amid the trees.    The shapes of soldiers, wearing strange armor, injured and dying.     Some were curled up in agony or pain, others were in the posture of someone pleading for their life.    The shapes took on a pale white hue in the moonlight, yet no sound was heard.     The lights that they had followed shined through the eye sockets of the apparitions.

“There was a battle here.” Lysa stated in a dream-like voice, “Something terrible…”

Again Aaron made the sign of a blessing and said, “In the Name of Yesh the Merciful, show us what happened here.”

The lights flickered once and then very vivid images filled Aaron and Lysa’s head in the form of a dark tale.