2 Friendship

Two boys of an age to find daring and challenge in defying the rules set before them had made their way from the outer cluster of houses and closer to the line where the forest began. Beneath the noonday sun, the two had stealthily eluded imaginary stalkers until their play brought them to the forest’s rim; and that is where the real game began.

Dwarfed by towering oak and elm, they stepped forward gingerly, suspiciously, but the mystery and rumor that hid within the thickness of shadow and shade drew them.

“Come on. Let’s do it,” Joshua said, even as he was halfway into that shaded expanse.

 “No,” Darin replied, more reticent, not as sure.

 “Scared! Aren’t you?”

“You are too!”

Josh swelled, but his belligerence had little effect. “They won’t find out,” he said, changing tactics.

“They always do.”

“Because you tell! all the time. That’s why we get thumped.”

“You tell too!”

“I don’t care!” he said and stepped forward and was immediately hidden in darkness.

Alarmed, Darin rushed forward, refusing to let his friend face danger alone.

Later, when menfolk, released for a few hours from the day’s toil and woman’s demands, had gathered at the tavern, a woman came seeking, harried and frightened, though the men did not know this at first. All they saw was a woman, stern faced, sharp eyes peering through the haze.

There was red smoke, green smoke, white puff, ring gold, and as many scents of which some stung and some soothed. But that was not the half of it. Sending those multicolored puffs into the air were corncob and cheery wood pipes, intricately carved meerschaums--dragons, hawks, foxes--weathered with age and smoke, and each design that of a family crest's.

Moving through the room, she jarred many an elbow. Her passage through the din begot silence, except for the disapproving glances and the muffled whisper, “No damn place for a woman.”

She ignored the slight, but she knew the voice. There would be redress when this work was done.

The crowd parted, as if a hand or rod diverted a movibg river, and she saw him. The ready smile, heavy beard, the quick choppy motions of hands as he spoke, comforted her, calmed her. He was a passionate but simple man, reticent to voice an opinion but always willing to listen. And even when his own passion and brusque confidence overshadowed good sense, he was even quicker to offer amends if he stepped out of bounds.

He was a lesser son of Able, a steward in the House of Lansaraad. With no hope of patrimony, he had traveled to the New Land instead of taking the cloth. He learned the tilling of the land and the husbandry of the flock. He liked it, came to enjoy it.

He liked to believe that he had plucked her from the comely dames, but he knew full well that he had been scouted, chosen, was the one plucked.  She almost smiled until he looked up from the table and the horror of why she was here came crashing back down upon here, almost causing her to break out in a sob. But she had to be calm, steady.

His breath stuttered mid-breath and heart skipped a beat. He recognized the agony, which some might decry as sternness, that wreathed her eyes. She was plainly harried.

She rushed into arms placed at arms’ length. Looking down at her, he was even more alarmed. She was trembling, though she tried hard not to show it. Apprehension clutched at his heart, dread. Whatever distressed her was to be given full care and consideration.  

“They’re missing."

“How long have they been gone?” he asked, fear constricting his lungs.

“Since early mid day. They finished their chores and went off with one another. I last saw them through the back window where the road runs toward the forest.” Reflexively, his hand tightened causing her to gasp in pain before he loosened his grip.

He turned to meet the silence of the room and the expectant faces. “My son and Darin’s son are missing. We are going to need help searching for them.” Every visage as one turned to worry, and a clamor was quickly taken up before a voice shouted down the din.

“Take me to where they were last seen,” old Nor said, stepping from the press. He was a forester, and the only one who had any real familiarity with the surrounding woods, and knew it was no place to venture in too deep. A good man to have at one’s table, thought Joshua. It was fortune’s smile that he was here at the tavern and not on whatever tasks directed him.

With nerves taught as the strings of a lute, she led him, and the group that gathered behind, to that spot where the boys were alst seen. She knew the rumors. The region was cursed. She did want to believe seeing as her family was part of the first wave of settlers who had made the journey across the mountains. It was too late to have doubts now and there had never been anything out of the ordinary—until recently. But the dread and fear taking hold and spreading more swiftly than weeds were hard to combat.

As the men readied themselves to venture into the forest she went to her home and watched from the window as more men gathered and Nor gave them directions. Felling helpless and unsteady she went over to the table and sat down. Wracked by fear spreading fissures deep within her heart and unable to find comfort in the arms of her husband who would be with the searchers, she no longer had the strength to hold back the tears that pooled into the shallow cup of her hands covering her bowed head.

The setting sun was slowly overtaking the horizon, and the forest was becoming a place of lengthening shadows spreading an impenetrable darkness. With darkness’ advance, they could no longer deny the fear clouding everyone’s thoughts. Nor had found sign of the boys’ passage, along with another, but it was sparse and twisted leading deeper into the thick forest. They all realized it could easily have been one of their sons or daughters to disappear into the accursed forest and were loathe to give up the search. However, the lengthening darkness rebuked hoped.  

“We can’t continue too much longer or we’ll find ourselves lost with no one to save us,” someone finally said, voicing the concern twisting everyone’s thoughts. 

 “A little while longer,” Joshua said, drained but still determined.

 A hand draped his shoulder. He turned to meet the compassion in Darin’s gaze, the reflected heartache and longing in his amber eyes. “I know your pain. They do too, but we need to turn back soon.”

Joshua wanted to refuse the man’s words, to throw off his hand and reproach him, but it would have been a lie. Everyone had done everything they could and there was no more to give. Despair weighted his shoulders more than the other man’s hand.

“We can fire torches and follow the trail from that,” Nor said, offering one last hazard to fading hope.

It was a hope that both men wanted to grab and make true, to help block out weariness and fatigue and look to any thin means to continue the search. It was a fragile hope, but it was still hope enough to make Joshua lift his shoulders and for Darin to reconsider.

“A little while longer, then,” Darin said.

They trudged deeper into the forest and into the night until the searchers began to thin, torches peeling off to make their flickering way from the woods. Neither Joshua nor Darin could fault the others. Those men had families too, and they could not ask them to continue searching in danger and darkness when everyone now believed the cause lost.

“Let’s start heading back,” Joshua said, finally yielding.

The few remaining men turned back and Nor led them from the forest. Pledging to continue the search with the risen sun, they separated in twos or singly to make their own private way home.

Alone, with only the sounds of the night for comfort, Joshua drew closer to his home. He saw light flickering through open windows in the distance and the wind carried wood smoke, baking bread, spiced meat, and the sound of laughter. Surprised and bemused, he quickened his steps curious to find the cause for the cheerfulness.

No stranger sight after the fear and ruin that had lodged in his heart than to step through the door and find his son sitting at the table enjoying a half-finished meal, and a mother who could barely restrain from running fingers along shoulder or brow to reassure herself that here, truly, sat her son and not some phantom.

“Where have you two been?” Joshua barked.

“In the woods,” was the tentative, reluctant reply. Joshua had no response as anger vied with relief for control of his emotions. Relief won out as he went over to take his son and took him up in a hug as tears of relief spilled from his eyes and soaked the shoulder of the boy’s shirt. 

After emotions had cooled and the father collected himself he asked another question: “What happened.”

The boy’s trepidation returned.

“None of that! No sad-eyed sorrows. Just tell me what happened.”

The boy took a deep breath and began his story beginning when they stepped beneath the canopy of trees. Waiting for the thunderclap of doom, nothing happened. Buoyed they had ventured farther when none of their parents’ warnings had proved true. They had run beneath branch and leaf with the crack of branch used as imaginary swords and their laughter the only thing reminding them of the passage of time. Having never been in the forest everything was new and exciting and they had become absorbed in their play. It was Darin who had noticed him peeking from behind a tree trunk. His strangeness—long dark hair nettled with leaves and twigs, strange eyes, naked as the day he was born, and grimy skin—had brought them up short, but before anything could be said, he had disappeared and when after some hesitation they had approached the tree, they had found no sign of him. Nervous they had taken that as a sign to begin turn back toward home. Setting off in the direction they took to be the direction back to the village, they soon realized they were lost, and it didn’t help that the occasional glances of the dark grimy head began appearing with more regularity. Huddled close to ward the unfamiliar noises of the forest that seemed to be growing louder, they brushed against each other with every step. They headed toward the thinning trees in the distance hoping they were headed toward an exit from the forest when they were startled by the boy stepping from behind a huge oak. Darin peed himself he was so frightened. Standing there shivering from freight, tears a heartbeat away an amazing thing happened. The boy smiled, and all their fears and concerns were forgotten.

Exhaustion took everyone and they went to bed on full stomachs and relieved by a tragedy turned to redemption. Even so sleep did not come quickly to the parents. Gazing through unshuttered windows to catch the breeze into the star filled night, they both thanked the fey child for the return of their son.