…or, The Bear Facts
Once Iason made up his mind to go, he was a zephyr. We had to go to his room so he could get his bow and a quiver of arrows. He had me wait there while he ran to the kitchens to get some food. I didn’t complain, after making sure the door didn’t lock from the outside. He wasn’t gone long. He tossed me half of a hard-crusted yeast roll as he came back into the room, and then handed me a rucksack.
“If all goes well, we can have a late lunch before we turn around,” he said. “If it goes poorly, the sack is not important.”
“Think you packed enough?” I asked, slinging the heavy sack over my shoulder. “I know you want a long ride, but I wasn’t expecting an overnight trip.”
“There are folk in the woods,” he said. “It will be good to have something to share, if we encounter them.”
“Isn’t carrying around a big bag of food like issuing an invitation for that kind of thing?”
“Being overly prepared for the folk may increase the chance of encountering them,” Iason said. “Being unprepared all but guarantees it. You are more than welcome to change your mind, if you no longer desire to go.”
“I’m not worried,” I said. I patted the axe on my belt. “My family’s got a bit of a history with the sidhe.”
“They may be impressed by that,” he said. “But do not get overconfident, and do not allow them to catch you in a lie while you are wearing that axe.”
“I don’t make a habit of lying to strangers for no reason,” I said.
“Well, try not to do it for any reason,” he said. “Let us go, if we’re going.”
We headed outside. I realized what I’d missed on our tour.
“Are there gates?” I asked. “I don’t really feature us going out the way we came in.”
“Why, you don’t want to get wet?” he asked.
“Not without something to change into,” I said.
“It’s a shame,” he said. “Considering that you look absolutely fetching in nothing. Come this way.”
We climbed the spiraling ramp around one of the heartwood trunks, up into the treehouse village. Keeping to the outside, we ended up on a platform that bridged the trees and a wide section of the wooden wall.
“You are not vertiginous, are you?” Iason asked as he stepped onto the wall.
“Never had a problem yet,” I said, stepping up beside him. There was a scaffold with narrow, ladder-like stairs allowing travel between the top of the wall and the ground. Iason led the way. He waited at the bottom of each set of steps and held it in place while I climbed down.
“In times past, we used a knotted rope,” he said. “It was never left down. You could not enter unless somebody was present to let you in. In this age of greater security, we’ve built the tower. The ladders are still removable, however, and the whole thing could be taken down fairly quickly.”
“What about the river entrance?” I asked.
“It’s hard to spot, and easy to defend,” he said. He looked around. I could tell he was weighing the options.
“Which way is campus?” I asked.
“You don’t want to go back that way,” he said. “You asked me to show you the real woods.”
“I’m just curious,” I said.
“It’s that way,” he said, pointing east by southeast. “If you had to go back by yourself, you would want to head that way, erring to the south. That way if you missed the campus, you would hit an imperial road. Alternatively, you could make for the river and follow its course. That would be a longer trip, but it would lead you out of the forest.”
“Good to know,” I said, committing the bearings to my memory. I was decent at finding directions in the woods, but I also knew that some kinds of woods could fuck with you. The river would be safer in that respect at least.
“What happens if something happens to you when I’m transformed?” I asked. “I don’t guess the shapeshifting spell is keyed to your lifeforce.”
“On some of the newer copies, it is,” Iason said. “But then on some of those, the mount is able to transform on their own. Priorities were different, when my ancestor had this made,” he said, putting his hand on the bracelet. “In those days, were I to die while you were a stag, my family would organize a hunt, with the bracelet going to the winner. There is little danger of that happening in the current climate, but remaining in quadrupedal form without a guardian is inviting trouble.”
“So what do I do?”
Iason stood and thought about it. It seemed the idea had never occurred to him before. He planned on outliving me, but if that plan fell through, I’d be the one on the hook.
“I would head for a temple,” he said. “The bracelet is not a cursed artifact, nor is the transformation precisely a curse, but such places are used to dealing with people seeking succor from unwanted enchantments. Were an unusually intelligent and persistent animal to show up at a sanctuary door, I should think the attendant priest would be more likely to explore the circumstances and render aid than the average human or elf.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “I’d guess a subtle artist might be able to act as an intermediary, too.”
“Do you know any subtle artists?”
“Yeah, actually,” I said. “One of my neighbors. She’s nice. Kind of cute, too. The only problem—though it’s not much of one—is that she picks up everything in my room.”
“Another reason to bring you here instead of visiting you there, then,” Iason said.
“What?”
“I can be generous, but some things are so essentially mine that I cannot tolerate the thought of sharing them,” he said. “My thoughts are numbered very high on that list.”
“She doesn’t do it on purpose,” I said.
“That is better?” he said. “If it were within her power to control, I might—might—be able to take her at her word that she would not intrude. But if she is incontinent, that is not even an option.”
“That’s not the word I would use,” I said.
“Incompetent, then?”
“I don’t think she sees it as a bad thing,” I said.
“How very positive of her,” he said. “But enough talk. We shall go north, I think, unless you wish to assume your other form for part of the journey.”
“Why does that make a difference?”
“The river,” he said. “You have expressed a preference for remaining dry, and while I know you think the world of me, Iamie, I can assure you I do not walk on water.”
“Funny,” I said. “North it is. Do we have a particular destination in mind, or are we just walking until we’re exhausted?”
“I thought we would walk first, and then exhaust ourselves,” he said. “There are some interesting ruins, a few hours out.”
“What kind of ruins?”
“I do not know,” he said. “The stories say Athanasian, but the plain truth is that elves will claim anything is elven when there is nobody to contradict them. I think they are not quite that ancient, and were merely built in imitation of that older style.”
“Built by who?” I asked. “There weren’t any men here until a few centuries ago.”
“That is what makes them interesting,” Iason said.
He headed north. There weren’t exactly paths, but there were spaces between the trees that were more suited for walking than others. The bigger trees were widely spaced and had little undergrowth. Our nimbleness came in handy in several places. There were frequent patches of poison ivy and other irritating plants. Iason picked out the easiest routes at first, but when he saw that I could keep up he started making it more challenging, vaulting over fallen trees and swinging on branches over gaps or lines of prickly shrubs.
Actually, only half of that was his showing off. The further north we went, the thicker and wilder the forest grew. I drew up short when we came across a seven foot tall bush with fuzzy, poisonous-looking leaves growing on long green stems that were waving lazily despite the lack of breeze. I’d taken it for a tree at first.
“Be careful, Iamie,” Iason said. He’d simply gone around the plant, but he slipped back around it when he realized I’d stopped. He picked up a stick an held it inches from one of the leaves. The leaf tipped over, angling like the wings of a bird in flight, and the stem looped around the stick. Iason let go, and the stick was pulled in and grabbed by a cluster of leafy limbs before being released. The stick only fell half a foot before being snagged by another stem, and being investigated all over again. “You would not enjoy being in the green man’s grasp. It is no threat to life or limb when another is present to pull you free, but I guarantee you it will ruin your day.”
“What does it do?” I asked. The stick didn’t seem any the worse for wear.
“Imagine being afflicted with a rash from poison ivy, coupled with paralysis,” Iason said. “Being covered with a burning, itching rash and being unable to do anything to relieve it.”
“And what if there isn’t somebody there to free you?” I asked.
“Then you persist in that state, for as long as you’re able,” he said. “You see, the plant feeds on rotting flesh, but it has no way of killing anything as large and strong as a man.”
I shuddered.
“Fortunately, they do not walk very fast,” he said.
“Walk?” I repeated.
“Step back and look,” he said, and I did. From a bit further back, I could see that the trunk or stalk of the thing was split in two, with feet that had root-like toes. I also noticed that it wasn’t just leaning towards us, it was shuffling very slowly forward. The movement was not quite imperceptible.
“Should we kill it?”
“I would not advise it,” he said. “Chopping it or burning it simply releases baleful dust, and it takes considerable damage to immobilize the creature, much less destroy it. It is best to simply avoid them.”
The green man was the first unusual wildlife we encountered, but the woods were far from lifeless. We passed a family of wild turkeys, and saw deer at a distance. We startled a wild sow, too. We saw more green men, too, but at a distance.
The woods thinned out a bit, and we crossed a tributary stream in between a pair of small waterfalls. The ground in the middle of the falls was rocky and uneven, with the water only inches deep in places, with deeper pockets like inland tide pools. Clear water fell like a sheet on our right. We stopped to drink from it, then Iason sat down on a rock and pulled out two more rolls and a wedge of cheese, which he started to cut up with a knife from his boot. I sat down with him and accepted a cheese sandwich.
“Look, a dragonfly,” Iason said, pointing low over one of the pools.
I glanced over, and then did a double-take. Instead of the long-bodied insect with a double set of wings, I saw something more like a wasp, but with a tail that looked more flexible. Its body was covered in shiny green-black chitin, and its fast-beating wings looked leathery. Other than that, it didn’t look very dragony. It didn’t look like anything I wanted to mess with, either. It was less than three inches long, but it was a scary looking fucker.
“That’s a dragonfly?” I asked.
“That’s a real dragonfly,” he said. “Not like the things you people call dragonflies.” He started looking around the ground. “Find me a stick, we’ll see if we can make it breathe.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said.
“It’s perfectly safe,” he said.
“That frog has wings,” I said.
There was a splash and a crunch, and I looked back over at the area where the dragonfly had been flying, and saw the back end of it hanging out of a frog’s mouth, the tail whipping around spasmodically. I could clearly see the hook-like barbed stinger on it now. The frog swallowed it, then turned and hopped away towards the upper fall. On the second bounce, it spread its forelegs out wide and flapped them, gaining a bit more height. On the third, it really took off, and wobbled through the air until it reached the upper shelf.
“Does that frog have wings?” I asked.
“Don’t be silly, Iamie,” Iason said. “That is a toad. Finish your sandwich, and we’ll go on. This stream marks a boundary, of sorts. From here on out, you must expect to see sights you might find unusual. ”
“Like ambulatory shrubbery and flying amphibians,” I said.
“At the very least,” he said. He stood up and brushed the crumbs off his pants. He took out another roll and left it on the rock.
I stuffed the rest of my bread into my mouth and got up. The ground immediately by the stream was stone, as I’d said, but there was a transitional space before the woods where it was mud, and there were numerous tracks there, including deer, rabbits, and what I thought had to be a badger, judging by the claw marks. There was one set that really stood out, though.
“Iason, how common are bears, exactly?” I asked.
“Not uncommon,” he said. “We do not hunt them, though. There are too many intelligent tribes that have been squeezed into the area, as their native forests became domesticated. They do not speak as we do, which naturally complicates the matter of identifying them. Also, many of them have a fondness for their dumb cousins. All in all, it’s easier to leave them alone.”
“What if one attacks you?”
“Then intelligent or not, it’s self-defense,” Iason said. “But it’s safer to leave the body.”
“But if we do run into one, chances are it won’t attack us,” I said. “Since it’ll probably be intelligent.”
“I would not say probably,” Iason said. “But honestly, Iamie, whether or not a bear attacks a person is more often a function of the person’s intelligence than one of the bear’s. I thought you had been out in woodlands before?”
“I have!” I said.
“And did nobody ever think to teach you anything about bears?”
“Well, yeah.”
“What did they teach you?” he asked.
“Not to mess with them,” I said.
“That will do for a beginning,” he said. “Let us be off, Iamie. The fun parts are yet to come.”
