Adrift Read online

  Adrift

  Linda Jordan

  Metamorphosis Press

  Copyright © 2011 by Linda Jordan

  All rights reserved

  * * *

  Published by Metamorphosis Press

  www.metamorphosispress.com

  Contents

  Adrift

  About the Author

  Adrift

  Arien stood on the hilltop, in the dwindling purple light, her hands raised to the dark clouds above. She chanted in the old tongue, the one now reserved for magic.

  “Hold,” she asked. “Please hold onto the rain.”

  The clouds rumbled in response and raindrops spattered her face.

  She stood in the blustery wind trying to weave energy together and make the rain stop. It didn’t.

  Finally, Arien lowered her hands. Pulling her hood up, she walked down the hill, towards the wagons. The villagers would be unhappy and she wouldn’t get the food she had hoped to trade for.

  Sarai, one of the Elders, squatted by the fire, frowned as she looked up at the clouds, apparently trying to decide whether to add more wood or simply let it go out. She stared at Arien as she plodded past the sputtering fire.

  Arien told the Shishaw woman, “I do not know. The elements will not listen to me and they will not speak either.” She walked to her brightly painted wagon and sat on the step, feeling frustrated and angry.

  Sarai said, “The Black Opal will have her own way.” She poked at the fire to spread out the coals, the heat sizzling with the spattering rain.

  Arien had lived with the Shishaw for four cycles, since she was twelve, but still didn’t understand them completely. They stood half her height with cream colored skin and were completely hairless with two dark eyes like her own people, plus a third one in the center of their foreheads. She had never gotten them to explain exactly what the extra eye was for, but understood it had something to do with seeing the essence of things.

  They could see the spirit of a piece of dragonswood and carve it into the most exquisite sculpture. The Shishaw also had six, long fingers on each hand which instead of making them clumsy, made them extremely dexterous. They were true artists, able to take the raw materials of nature and shape them into pieces of breathtaking beauty.

  Arien travelled with them from town to town. They fixed things for the villagers and bartered for food and raw materials: black pearls, dragonswood, seal tusks and precious stones. Arien had learned weather magic from Tuay, an elderly Shishaw weather-worker, who had died last turn. She brought rain to areas which needed it and stopped it when there was too much. Except for lately. The villagers were trying to get their grape harvest in and the rain wouldn’t help.

  There were no other weather-workers in their group, no one to help her understand what the problem was.

  The rest of the clan pulled up in their wagons, having finished trading with the villagers. Raised voices told her they were moving out. Early.

  Arien wiped rain from her face, picked up the harness and headed over to the herd of grazing horses. “Magnus,” she said, then whistled at the big buckskin draft horse. He shook his head and ambled towards her, licking his lips, the rain repelled by his oily fur.

  He stood patiently while she reached up to put on his halter and harness, fumbling with the slippery, wet buckles, the top of her head only coming up to his back. Dragging the traces, she led the big horse to the wagon and hooked him up. Then she quickly stuffed everything inside, closed the door, folded the step up and secured it.

  She moved around to the front and climbed aboard, drenched to her skin. At least it was a warm rain. Around her the Shishaw scurried about, picking up their belongings and gathering everyone inside their wagons.

  It was most likely her fault. If she’d been able to keep the rain away....

  The villagers were probably scrambling to get their harvest in before the rain ruined the crop. She clucked to Magnus and they followed the line of wagons moving down the road.

  The elders wouldn’t say anything to her. Arien knew she lived outside their rules and would never be one of them. But this was the third time she had failed. The proper thing for her to do was leave. Otherwise she would risk permanent exile.

  She needed to be alone with the elements and work out why she could no longer communicate with them. And until she could, Arien had no place with the clan. She put at risk their tentative relationships with the settled people. Even she understood that much.

  At the crossroads, the Shishaw headed towards the mountains and valleys which would eventually take them to Pearl Bay. Arien continued north on the road towards the Forest of Sorrows. Alone, except for Magnus.

  She had never been alone, not like this. Magnus responded to the tension in her hands on the reins and started to trot. She took a deep breath and tried to relax. It didn’t work.

  Humans had once travelled as the Shishaw still did. Under Queen Nakia’s encouragement, they had settled into towns and villages. People were easier to tax and control if they stayed still. Somehow, Nakia held the Black Opal within her power and the Opal had not challenged Nakia’s actions.

  Arien grimaced with dislike. Queen Nakia was her aunt. But Arien had abandoned her family at twelve, choosing to live among the Shishaw. Her father hadn’t argued. When she was born, Arien had lost both parents. Her mother to death and her father to grief. She still felt anger at her father’s rejection. She knew her two brothers had argued with him about letting her go to the Shishaw. Her father had told them that Arien looked too much like her mother and he couldn’t bear to see her.

  She told herself it didn’t matter, but buried deep inside, sadness bubbled up that she had never met her mother. Arien glanced back inside the wagon at the small painting of her mother which hung above her bed. As a newcomer with the Shishaw, she had followed their traditions and helped build her own wagon. The wagon itself was built quickly, so she could travel in it. Then she had done all the intricate carvings, furnishing and painting herself. It had taken her two turns to complete the wagon, which made her an adult in the eyes of the clan. All the while she trained to be a weather-worker. And now her magic was failing her. She felt pain and disconnection from the Black Opal in her chest, as if someone had untethered her from her source.

  At the end of the day, Arien dove Magnus into a valley and stopped by a stream. She unhitched and brushed him, then turned the buckskin loose. “Stay close,” she said. “We’re all alone here.”

  He immediately rolled, then snatched mouthfuls of grass on his way over to the stream.

  Arien opened the door to her wagon, pulling out the small stool which sat in the doorway. She decided not to build a fire, but to eat cold food. This place didn’t feel safe. Not alone at least. There was no safety anymore. Not where she was going.

  The light dimmed as she sat on her stool, eating dried meat and raw root vegetables until the purple darkness surrounded her. She missed the friendly banter of the Shisaw people. Could she have stayed?

  No. She’d only seen it happen twice. Exile. It had been horrible to watch someone pushed to that. To not even be willing to admit they messed up so badly, so often, that the group forced them to leave, or left them behind in one case. Sadness gnawed at her and Arien wondered if she could set herself right with the world again.

  Morning came sooner than she expected. Once on the road, the landscape changed from treeless hills and valleys to woods. She had entered the Forest of Sorrows, named in ancient times.

  When humans had still traveled, several families had entered there, never to be found alive. Much, much later all forty-six of them were found encased in wood, having been absorbed by the trees. Arien had heard that the locals periodically burned the outskirts of the forest to keep the evil contained.

  The old
forest road, paved with large, flat stones, hadn’t been used since then, so nothing of the sort had ever happened again. No one ever found out why it occurred although there was much speculation. Some said it was a horrible sorcerer, others that the trees were offended because someone had tried to harvest them. There were as many ideas about the trees as there were people.

  She felt sure the people had meant to harm the trees in some way. The trees sensed the threat and reacted. Surely she would be safe.

  Arien’s destination was the fabled Golden Forest which lay deep inside the Forest of Sorrows. There grew the torat trees whose golden bark was priceless because everyone was afraid to enter the Forest of Sorrows anymore.

  She needed to understand why her magic had failed. Maybe she could turn things around. If she brought back some of the bark as a gift, perhaps the Shishaw would give her another chance. She could take bark from dead trees without harming the forest.

  Her other magical gift, the ability to discern when someone was lying, felt intact, but she wasn’t worried about that one. She didn’t anticipate meeting anyone.

  But the failure of her weather-working disturbed her greatly. She had never had such a problem before. It had been clear since childhood that she was a weather-worker. Living with the Shishaw had refined her skills and given her a way to be useful in the world.

  Still, the Black Opal controlled the world and she had a reason for making everything that happened in it.

  Arien just needed to find out what that was and adjust her life accordingly.

  The tall, thick, gnarled trees crowded close to the road. Magnus, steady boy that he was, ignored them and kept on going. She trusted his instincts, if he wasn’t afraid, they were safe. Arien breathed deep and looked into her center. She sensed no danger here, even though the forest looked frightening. Vines dripped down from the trees which stretched over the road. The woods felt gloomy and sad. A scent of earth and dried mold filled the air. Unlike other forests she had been in, this one felt dead, filled with decay.

  Toward the end of the day she came to the place where the people had become trees. The individual trees had all died many turns ago, but the dead wood still stood. Even time had not erased the faces of the people. They looked terrified, their screams frozen in time.

  Smaller menacing trees had grown up, surrounding the dead ones. They made her want to move on and she clucked to Magnus. The farther they went down the road, the more overgrown the woods became. Several times she had to stop and move saplings which had fallen across the road or cut boughs to create a space large enough for the wagon to go through. She apologized to the trees each time she did so.

  They responded by scratching branches against her wagon and making scraping sounds. Other than that the forest sounded eerily silent. She couldn’t hear birds or other animals. Just Magnus’ heavy hoof fall against the ground, which was no longer paved with stones, but had become a dirt road.

  It was dry here, apparently little rain fell in this part of the world. A creek ran on one side of the road, but the high, bare stream banks showed it to be a shadow of its normal self this late in the turn. The leaves were beginning to turn colors and drop. The air felt crisp. Arien needed to be gone before the snows came. Her wagon didn’t do well in the snow.

  She stopped near a meadow, but didn’t move her wagon off the road. No one else would be coming down it.

  She unharnessed Magnus and let him go without brushing him. The creek widened here and Magnus rolled in the shallows and shook, spraying her with frigid water.

  “Thanks,” she said, laughing.

  She dug mallow and burdock roots which grew happily by the stream. After building a fire, she fried the burdock up with the last of her sausage from the village.

  Arien woke in the middle of the night to scratching on the side of her wagon.

  “Who’s out there?”

  No one answered, but the scratching stopped.

  Eventually she went back to sleep.

  In the morning, she awoke and quickly dressed, putting on her cloak and still damp boots while shivering in the cold. Opening her door, she gasped.

  Her wagon was surrounded by trees!

  They had relocated during the night. Arien had never heard of trees moving. They stood far enough apart that she could slip through them, but short of cutting them down, there was no moving her home. The air felt filled with malice.

  Magnus was nowhere to be seen. She whistled for him and he emerged from behind some shrubs, trotted across the meadow and stood outside the ring of trees which encircled her wagon, eyeing them warily and snorting. He couldn’t squeeze between the trunks and she could tell he didn’t really want to.

  Arien sat on her stool by the ashes of last night’s fire. She stared at the trees trying to puzzle things out. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, slowing her heart and clearing her mind.

  She caught the strand of energy which belonged to Black Opal and asked, “Why are the trees doing this? Have I done something to offend them?”

  A subtle message, which she just barely caught, said, “Ask them.”

  She nodded and said, “Thank you.”

  Arien stood, looking at the trees. She’d never spoken to trees before. She was not a plant speaker. How did one do that? Should she talk to all of them, or was there one who spoke for all of them?

  They all looked roughly the same size, their grayish-brown bark deeply ridged and contrasting with the scarlet leaves. She stood between two of them and held her hands out, not quite touching their trunks, not wanting to be disrespectful. She slowed her heart even more and asked “What do you want with me?”

  She could hear leaves rustling and deep voices said, “Stay with us, we need you.”

  “Why?”

  “We need water. We need the music of voices and laughter. We need the color and energy and life of other beings. And we need blood.”

  She felt panic begin, deep within herself and asked, “What happened to the other creatures in this forest?”

  “They have left us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we ate the humans.”

  “Why would you do something like that? Trees need water, light and minerals, not blood.”

  “The people were evil. They killed us, taking our skin and hearts. To burn and to make their things from our bodies. They brought their evil to us.”

  Arien nodded. “I understand. But why are you attacking me? I have taken no living wood. How many others have you attacked?”

  “All that enter here,” said the trees.

  “That is why you hear no voices or laughter and never will,” she said.

  “We have contemplated that, but it is beyond our control. Our ancestors killed the humans. We, their children, have paid the price. We are starving, but are powerless to break that cycle.”

  Arien thought about this. Life needed other life in order to thrive. “Will you agree to take no more lives if I agree to try to persuade people to return here?”

  The trees whispered among themselves, their dry leaves rustling in the breeze. “We must think on this,” they said. “We have little trust for people. They still come during our flowering time and burn us. Why should we believe you will be different?”

  She nodded and asked, “Because I took the time to listen to you. And I might be able to bring the rains back to you. While you’re thinking, will you please move away from my wagon and let me tend to my horse?” Arien didn’t really have any confidence at all that she could bring the rain. That connection felt severed and irretrievable. She didn’t even try.

  They said, “We cannot move that fast.”

  “Fine,” she said. She felt duplicity and rage coming from them. Fury at the humans who tried to destroy the forest.

  Arien got Magnus’ halter, lead rope and brush, then sidled through the trees. He snorted at her as she approached, the whites of his eyes showing.

  “I’ll do what I can to get us out of this, boy,” she whispered t
o him, rubbing his neck under the mane and slipping his halter on and attaching the lead rope. As she began brushing him, he relaxed slightly, but continued to eye the trees warily.

  She needed to get out of the forest. The trees didn’t trust her, but Arien knew she couldn’t rely on them not to hurt her. Their menace hung heavy in the chilled air. She didn’t want to leave her wagon behind. It was her home. She had carved every decoration and painted every brushstroke. In it lay her last connection to the Shishaw, to her human family, to anyone really. She had Magnus, whom she loved, and although some people could hear horses, Arien wasn’t one of them.

  She sighed, leaning her head on Magnus. They would have to leave quickly or they wouldn’t get out at all. She brushed his back and when she got to Magnus’ other side, knotted the end of the lead rope through the halter ring. She’d never ridden the massive horse before and hoped he’d take it well and move out quickly. Arien didn’t believe the trees when they said they couldn’t move fast and she really didn’t want to find out. She felt their rage and fury growing and was afraid they would act soon.

  A large rock was behind her and she circled around Magnus again, still brushing and whispering to him. She pushed him and he slowly side stepped away from her. She pushed him again and he moved his bulk over until he stood next to the rock. He still acted nervous and she knew he understood something was going to happen, but not what. She slipped the brush into her pocket.

  Once he was in position, she stood on the rock and vaulted onto his back. She clucked at him, squeezing her heels in and turned him toward the open meadow. He didn’t move at first. Just stood, confused. She clucked again, jabbed her heels into his sides and got him to turn and finally move out.

  A little more clucking and he began to trot. Arien had grown up riding horses, although not bareback. Trotting on such a big horse was challenging, his huge gait made her bounce up and down like a dead rabbit being carried by a hawk.