“Person,” said a voice, whispering. “Person?”
“Child?” asked the—another?—voice, also whispering.
“Child person?” said the first. “Star-eye?”
It would have been impolite not to answer. “I am here,” I said, leaving it at that. Least said, Murzy often told me. Least said, least promised.
All this time, I was looking about for the source of the voice or voices, up and down, peering into the shadows. The starlight was very bright, the shadows very dark. When I saw the face at last, I didn’t believe I was seeing it. Then the lips moved, and I heard the whisper.
“Are you there?”
“Yes,” I breathed, open-mouthed, staring at the face. It was made up of leafy branches against the sky. Each eye had a star reflecting in it. The lips were two twisty branches. It was all there, even a cascade of leafy hair above and to the sides. Each time it spoke, the mouth moved, the eyes blinked. “Can you tell me what you are? If it’s not impolite to ask?” I whispered.
“I ...” whispered the voice.
“We ...” whispered another one. I looked over my shoulder to confront another face, then saw that I was surrounded by them. There were at least a dozen. “It!” asserted a third. “All,” said a fourth. “Forest.”
“This forest?” I asked. “I ...”
“We ...”
“Every ...”
“All forest,” the first repeated. “Broken. All, all forest.” The stars that reflected its eyes glittered in dark, leafy hollows. It was through these eye hollows I saw the shadow come like some great sea creature, all tentacles and flow, reaching out of the dark, covering the stars, covering the light. Suddenly the face was obscured, the stars of its eyes put out. The face vanished. Its component parts were still there, but it was like a cloud face which vanishes when you look away, all the subtle modelings changed, deranged, lost.
“Help ...” I heard a whisper, so softly I could hardly hear it, the forest vanishing in shadow.
“Hellllp ...” A last, faint hiss of the leaves, crying such sorrow that I wanted to weep.
The shadow flowed, coiled, sent its tentacles down searching for something. At which point I lay down, rolled up in my rain cape once more, and pretended to be any tiny, furry thing that came to mind. The small trees picked up my moss bed and slithered it between the giant trunks, up the slope, and into the more ordinary forest. Behind us in the hollow, I could feel the shadow gathering, darker than dark, filling the hollow, looking for something. For me? For whatever had spoken from the forest?
The forest had wanted to talk to me. Something else had prevented it.
Now what would a Wize-ard do about that? The very young Wize-ard, me, did nothing at all until morning. I fretted a bit, but only a bit, because the shadow kept lurking about and it seemed safer not to think at all. Considering water instead of thinking put me to sleep. When morning came, the shadow was gone, but so was any sense of the forest presence that had been there the night before. I ate my boring breakfast and thought very hard.
Something here. Something I’d never heard of. Something vast and ... well, helpless. Helpless. Unable to help itself. Well now.
If I were unable to help myself, needing someone else to do something for me, it would be to do something I could not do myself. Self-evident. Right? Right, I assured myself. Now, what could one young person—child person—do that a forest could not? A forest that could move its own branches and make waves in its own streams. I thought about that, lying there on my back, staring up at the sun dapple. All around me was growth and green. All around me was birdsong and rustle as little things moved here and there. The tree rat sat on my foot to beg crumbs. Seeing this, a gray bird wafted over on silent wings and demanded a share, which the bunwit disputed. He and tree rat owned me. No mistake about that. Crumb sources were not that easy to come by. All about me was bright, growing, green—and sad. Overlaid with a terrible melancholy that was almost more than one could bear.
What could I do?
I could leave. I could move out of the forest and go elsewhere. I could go away, taking the knowledge with me that something here needed help. After lengthy consideration, that was all I could come up with.
I said, moderately loudly, “I’ll do what I can to help, but you have to realize, I’m not sure what’s needed, and it may take a long time.” I waited.
The hush was unbroken. Sighing, I got up, put on my pack, and turned eastward once more.
7
A brown bird gave the warning, erupting from their path before I heard them myself. First a bird scream, then feathers diving past me to make me stop right where I was, hardly breathing, then the sound of voices and something large blundering about in the woods.
“Fine tracker you are,” growled a voice. Porvius Bloster.
“I am not a tracker,” hissed the other. Oh, what a cold hiss. “As you know. No Pursuivant was available.”
“Basilisk, then,” Porvius said unwillingly. “Fine Basilisk you are. Here we are, lost in this wilderness, and you keep saying the girl is here. Where? We’ve been wandering for a day!”
Another voice, this one recognizable. One of the three men who had been with Porvius when he’d captured me. “No trail down that way, Bloster. Want me to try up the stream?”
“Well, Basilisk?” Porvius sneered. “Shall he try up the stream?”
They were separated from me by a screen of trees, close set, their branches tangled together with briar. I stayed frozen in place, not thinking, only listening, letting myself be as silent and invisible as possible. Basilisks have the Talents of Reading, Beguilement,
