“That will do nicely,” he said. “Good eye, boy.”
He saw the boy smile as if pleased at the compliment, but he chose to ignore it, walking toward the cut out. They made it there a few minutes later, and upon closer inspection it turned out to be much smaller than it had first appeared. The boy hesitated, glancing at him, obviously wanting to take the spot first but not wanting to be impolite. Cutter wanted to tell him that there were far worse things than being impolite, freezing to death for one, but there were more important things that had to be done before they slept, so he only nodded his head. “Take it, boy.”
“But…but what about you?”
“What about me?” Cutter growled. “You gotta learn, boy, to look after yourself and no one else. The world doesn’t give a shit about you or anyone. The best you can hope to do is survive.”
The boy clearly wanted the spot, but still he hesitated. “My mother said that an act of kindness comes back to a man as ten down the road.”
“And if he’s dead down the road, by the time the kindness makes its way back? Just take the spot, boy. You’re shakin’ like a leaf already. That’s bad, but when the shakin’ stops, that’ll be a whole lot worse.”
“B-but I can help you to build a fire.”
“A fire? Here, in the heart of Fey power? No, boy. It wouldn’t catch, believe me, and if by some unlucky miracle it did, we wouldn’t get to enjoy it long. There are powers in this wood, lad, many kinds, some very old and some not easily stirred. But lighting a fire here, in this place, would stir them sure enough. Now, here. Lay out your bedroll and get some sleep. We won’t be goin’ anywhere until the storm passes.”
“But what about the men?”
“If they come for us now, in this, they’ll die the same as us if we try to go on any farther. Relax. You’re safe.”
“Safe,” the boy said as if it was a word he had not heard before, one to which he did not know the meaning, then he blinked groggily and began laying out his bedroll. He started to lie down, but Cutter caught his arm.
“Not yet. There’s a few things we need to talk about first.”
“Like what?” the boy asked, his voice sounding slurred.
“There are things here, in these woods,” Cutter said. “Probably you can feel that, have felt it since we came here. True?”
The boy nodded. “Yes. It…my skin itches. And there’s…I feel something, like someone’s looking at me or watching me or…”
“That’s because they are,” Cutter said. “Make no mistake, boy. You might not see them, but they’re there, and they know that we’re here.”
“But…what can we do? What do we do if they come?”
Die probably. But that wasn’t the sort of medicine the boy needed now, so he lied. “They won’t come. You’re safe, boy. Lie down and get your rest while you can. Once the storm passes, we’ll have to head out. We won’t go too deep into the forest; the deeper in you go the more dangerous it gets, the oldest, greatest dangers lying at its center, but we have to go deep enough to lose the men that will be coming. Anyway, what I need you to understand is that you might hear things, during the night. Might see things. Ignore them. Whatever else you do, ignore them. Do you understand?”
“They’re not real, you mean? Just…magic?”
“No, boy,” Cutter said. “They’re real, alright. The Fey may love their illusions and their tricks, but they are real, and if you let them, they’ll show you just how real. Do you understand me?”
The boy nodded, his eyes drowsing as he moved toward his bedroll, but Cutter caught his arm again. “Tell me you understand. If you hear anything, if you see anything, tell me you’ll ignore it.”
“I understand,” the boy said angrily, pulling his arm away. Cutter let him and watched as he lay down to close his eyes.
He had told him. Just as him and his companions had once been told and like those companions, like himself, the boy said he understood. The problem, though, was that some of those men who had said they understood vanished during that first night in the Woods, vanished and never came back again. At least, not all of them. Sometimes, during the days that followed, he or one of the others would stumble on little pieces of them, left like grisly trophies or prizes in their path. A finger, a toe, a tongue, an eye. The Fey were creative bastards, if nothing else.
Those were old memories, ones associated with others which he had spent years trying to forget and, recalling them as he now did, he decided that he would have to stay awake, no matter that he had gotten little sleep over the last three days, and that he was exhausted. He would stay awake as best he could to look out for the boy, to make sure that nothing happened to him. He sat with his back against a nearby tree, determined to stay awake, for it was the only way to make sure that the boy was alright.
He was asleep in less than five minutes.
CHAPTER TEN
What are the Fey, you ask?
That is not a question easily answered, for you see, they are many things.
They are beautiful and ugly, they are kind and cruel, they are
