Part i
These woods were like a second home to Hank. Or a third, if you counted the first home he’d left more than twenty years ago. But that was a different time, in another life, many kingdoms away.
In some parts of the continent, the trees grew hundreds of feet tall, with lofty green branches that stretched all the way to the heavens. If you climbed to the very top of one, you could see the way the land curved—that was how scholars proved the world was a sphere, or so Hank’s teachers used to say. In others, the woods gave way to towering mountains that dwarfed the tallest trees, or sprawling plains that embraced the horizon in every direction. And beyond that, still, lay the sea, and beyond that, Hank supposed he didn’t know.
Here, the forest floor was thick with underbrush, with stout oak trees and maples that produced the sweetest sap Hank had ever tasted. Here, berries grew in the summer and root vegetables in the fall. Here, people didn’t care so much what shape the world was in, or where the ocean was, let alone what lay beyond it. Here, people were much more concerned with how people treated one another, or where their next meal was coming from, or whether their roof would hold under snowfall in the coming winter.
These days, well, Hank thought that was just fine by him.
Hank knew the woods surrounding his village inside and out. He knew every beaten path, for he himself had been the one tamping down the earth under his boots for all these years. He knew every tree, every flowering bush, every tiny stream that overflowed with heavy rains. Every good hunter had to, Hank figured. You had to know where the best places to hunt were, where the deer and rabbits would roam in search of food. He knew every species of snake, and the call of every bird. To a point, Hank figured he must have seen everything.
Today, he experienced something wholly alien to him. Today, Hank found something in these woods he’d never encountered before in all his years. It was a child.
He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old, all knobby knees and scrawny in the hips like he hadn’t eaten in days. The brush seemed to grow up around him where he sat against an oak tree, as if he were part of the ground itself. His tan skin was mottled with scrapes and cuts, and his dark hair looked like a robin had made a nest in it. The boy’s glassy eyes stared forward sightlessly, gaunt face smeared with dirt and grime. Whatever had happened to him, his left leg had seen the worst of it—it was swollen at the knee, and covered in an unsightly array of bruises.
Hank was well acquainted with necrosis, and he was pretty sure this kid was dead. He knelt down and reached to check for a pulse, and sure enough, found nothing.
“Damn,” he muttered under his breath. “Poor kid.”
Suddenly, the boy flinched away and yelped like an unfortunate rabbit caught in the maw of a hungry fox.
“Shit!” Hank scrambled back. “He’s still alive!”
“Hank? Was that you?” Ann’s voice called from afar.
“Ann! Get over here, quick!” Hank shouted. The kid hadn’t moved again or made another sound, and his eyes still stared lifelessly. No pulse, but still breathing. Hank’s own breath caught in his throat.
“What’s wrong? What is it?”
“It’s a kid.”
Ann crashed through the treeline into the small clearing where Hank knelt before the boy’s motionless taxidermied form. She skidded to a halt behind him, curly hair escaping its braid.
“What?”
“I said it’s a kid,” Hank repeated, scooting aside. “See for yourself. I damn near shot him.”
Ann crouched beside Hank, eyebrows knitted together. “Shit,” she muttered with bewilderment. “Is he alive?”
“As alive as you or I am. Here, take this.” With ease, Hank took off his bow and passed it to Ann, who took it reluctantly. Her eyes drifted to the child still slumped motionless against the oak, and lit up faintly with recognition.
“I see,” she said softly. “Hank, you really think it’s a good idea to move him in this state?”
“He’ll die if we don’t,” Hank said. He hoisted the boy onto his back, ignoring—with great effort—the way he made a valiant effort to scream in terror with whatever strength was left in his tiny body. With Ann by his side, Hank set off toward home, without any meat for the townsfolk—but bearing a prize greater than anything that lay beyond even the most distant sea.
