Articles
The Cantul Forest, Three Days to the Fold
The leaves walk behind me as I cross the forest.
‘They will sound like footsteps,’ Helduron had told me before I began. ‘Give them no heed. They are not the true danger.’ Fine words, but still I find myself looking over my shoulder and pausing to watch the leaves skitter and scrape over the stones of the road. Even when I am watching them, they sound like footsteps.
The road through the forest was made a long time ago, but regular travellers laugh at the idea of it being the old road. They laugh because everything in this world now seems to belong to the past. The places that meant something, the kingdoms that ruled, the gods and their truths – all have receded into the distance behind. Why distinguish this path of stones as old when everything else is old as well? It is old, though. There are marker stones every five-thousand-and-one strides, and under the moss and lichen you can just make out the signs cut into them. Those marks might be dates, or distances, or the names of kings and queens. They might be warnings for all we know, because no one can read them, and no one has ever heard of anyone that could.
‘Keep walking,’ is the other thing that Helduron said, before we went our separate ways. ‘Keep walking, and even when you stop to rest, keep your eyes on the road ahead. Your thoughts too. Even if your feet aren’t moving, keep moving.’ To the question of what if I needed to sleep, the answer was a dry cough of a laugh. ‘It takes a day to reach the edge of the forest. Start early and be across by the time the sun dips out of sight.’
Helduron is one of those that has to cross the forest many times a season. He rides other routes he travels, letting a horse or pony take the weight of the bags of letters and debt tablets, but when he has to cross the forest he does it on his own feet. He is one of the new-old kind that have found the new age has given them almost more work than they can bear. ‘It’s a silver for a scroll to travel beyond the horizon, two for it to cross mountains, and five for it to cross water.’
Events have broken societies and scattered people across the lands, but the threads of trade and blood stretch but do not break. The road walkers started as messengers sent by those that fled, to see who and what remained of their pasts. Those that returned brought replies or other messages. Some found a calling in that act. They made it their trade, and then time made it seem as though they had always been here, treading the roads, carrying words from soul to soul. They suffer and die for their trade, on snow-choked mountain passes and flooded valleys. They are not prone to exaggeration or spinning stories too far past the edge of truth.
‘All the dangers of the world are mine and more,’ he says, with a smile. We are pausing at the outer marker stone of the forest to drink cold spice tea. The answer is in response to the obvious question: does he think the life he leads dangerous? Yes, but those dangers are known – walk the roads and paths long enough and everything is just another hill or rock. He has passed through the forest I am about to cross twice a year for a dozen years. The strange shapes that perch under branches, and the clatter rustle of leaves on the stones are to be expected. They are just a feature of the land, to be accounted for just as you would a ford over a fast-flowing river or be wary of snow fall before you chanced a mountain pass. You do not ask what they mean – what the grey shadows under trees are, or the rustles that could almost be voices. They are part of the landscape, neither unusual or extraordinary.
Helduron’s warnings then, are not a jest or idle talk. When he says to keep walking on the old road through the forest, he means it.
There are stories of course. Stories that never are wholly consistent, but carry the shape of why it is best to keep walking. There are trees in the forest that you can only see in the distance, but are so tall, that they make the branch tops a mountain range. They do not grow near the road, but one cannot help but look at them when your eyes rise from the step in front of you. Sometimes you think you see something in those distant branches, something that might just be a cluster of dry leaves. There are dry bones in the leaves near the road. Small ones, the bones of mice or dogs. Some are wrapped in cases of fur or feathers, also dry. Those that walk the road never see what left the bones there. Some say that they have been there for as long as the road. But bones break and crumble in time, and some of those that lie in the leaves just beside the road are fresh. Clean and dry, but fresh.
‘People that stop never reach the end,’ is the summation of the danger as Helduron puts it, before he leaves me to make my way, accompanied only by the footsteps of dry leaves on old stones.
Yours in service,
Kalik
Edited by Greg Smith
Written without AI
