The Forest Path Part 2

 

She stood in a clearing just off the main path, so perfectly still that at first I thought she might be a statue. A mare the color of fresh snow, with a mane that caught the dancing lights like spun silver. Her tack was leather so supple it looked new, though something about the style suggested age—not wear, but design from an earlier, more elegant era.

And she was waiting for me.

Not grazing, not resting, not doing any of the things horses typically did when left to their own devices. She stood with her head turned toward the path, ears pricked forward, as if she'd been instructed to watch for a specific traveler.

This is Father's doing, I thought with a mixture of relief and trepidation. He arranged for transportation.

But even as the logical explanation formed, I knew it wasn't quite right. Father had been too shaken by his encounter with this place to orchestrate such careful arrangements. And there had been something in his eyes when he'd left me at the forest's edge—not the planning look of someone who'd thought ahead, but the desperate relief of someone unloading a burden too heavy to carry.

I approached the mare slowly, hand extended, speaking in the low, soothing tones I'd learned during childhood riding lessons. "Easy, girl. Easy now."

She didn't shy away or show any of the wariness horses usually displayed around strangers. Instead, she stepped forward and nuzzled my palm with lips as soft as velvet, her dark eyes intelligent in a way that made me briefly wonder if she understood more than animal instinct should allow.

A small card was tied to her saddle with ribbon the same silver as her mane. My name was written on it in elegant script that definitely hadn't come from Father's shaking hand:

Miss Catherine Montgomery. Your transportation awaits. The path ahead is long, but she knows the way.

No signature, no explanation of who had provided this convenience. Just the assumption that I would mount up and trust a strange horse to carry me deeper into a forest that felt more like another world with each passing moment.

I could have continued on foot. Should have, perhaps, maintained what little control I still possessed over my own journey. But my trunk was growing heavier, my feet were beginning to ache in shoes designed for drawing rooms rather than forest paths, and the mare was looking at me with the patient expectation of someone—something—that had been waiting far longer than the few minutes since I'd discovered her.

"Well," I said aloud, my voice sounding strange in the pressing silence, "I suppose if I'm going to be led into captivity, I might as well arrive in comfort."

The mare stood perfectly still as I secured my trunk behind the saddle and hauled myself up. I wasn't the most accomplished rider—our reduced circumstances had precluded regular practice—but she seemed to sense my inexperience and adjusted her movements accordingly.

Without any guidance from me, she turned back toward the main path and began to walk.

The lights seemed brighter now that I was mounted, dancing closer to the horse and rider as if we'd been accepted into their mysterious choreography. Some drifted alongside us like escorts, while others darted ahead and behind in patterns that almost resembled a procession.

Or a parade, I thought with dark humor. The ceremonial delivery of the sacrificial maiden.

The path continued to climb, winding through trees that grew ever more ancient and imposing. Occasionally I caught glimpses of ruins through the undergrowth—crumbling stone walls overgrown with ivy, the remains of what might once have been cottages or shrines. Evidence of human habitation from some earlier age, long since reclaimed by the forest.

How many others had traveled this path before me? How many young women had been led through these woods to pay their fathers' debts or fulfill their families' bargains? The thought was chilling enough that I pushed it away, focusing instead on the immediate discomfort of unaccustomed riding and the growing certainty that this journey was nearing its end.

The mare's pace had shifted subtly, from the steady walk of a beast covering long distance to the more measured gait of one approaching a destination. Her ears were pricked forward with new alertness, and occasionally she'd turn her head as if listening to sounds I couldn't hear.

That was when the trees began to thin.

Not gradually, as one might expect at the edge of a natural clearing, but abruptly—as if someone had drawn a line and declared that beyond this point, the forest would retreat. One moment we were surrounded by the cathedral darkness of ancient oaks, and the next we emerged into late afternoon light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

And there, rising from the earth like something born from dreams and nightmares in equal measure, was the castle.

I'd thought Father's descriptions had prepared me. He'd spoken of grandeur, of impossible architecture, of a place that seemed to exist outside normal reality. But words, I discovered, were pitifully inadequate for the sight that now filled my vision.

The castle was vast in a way that made perspective meaningless. Towers reached toward a sky that seemed perpetually caught between day and night, their peaks lost in mist that might have been cloud or might have been something altogether more supernatural. Walls of dark stone rose in elegant curves that defied engineering while somehow appearing perfectly stable. Windows glowed with warm light that promised comfort even as their positioning suggested eyes watching from impossible angles.

It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was utterly, completely wrong in every way that mattered, and yet looking at it felt like coming home.