The trees danced to the calmest of winds and created shadows all around them. It was too silent. There were no songs from the birds, no crickets roaming around. No animals making noises or shuffling the leaves and grass with their footsteps.
She and Jermyn did not speak. Both of them were caught in their own thoughts and plans, and at times, grief. Aurelie tried to think of her aunt and uncle as they were before and trained her mind to go elsewhere as soon as thoughts of their deaths popped into her head. It mostly worked, but when it didn't an iron fist tightened around her gut, and made all her insides ache with their loss.
She felt that same first tighten now. "What do you sell," she asked him, mentally shaking herself out of the dark grief that was about to engulf her.
"Hmmph?"
"You said you have a customer. What do you sell?"
"Ah, that, yes. My sap."
"What do they do with your sap?"
"Not they, she. There's only one, a witch that has a hut on the south side of the Dead Woods."
"That's where I came in. I didn't see any hut." She didn't mean to sound like she did not believe him, but the Dead Woods wasn't very big, and because all the trees were merely snags, it wouldn't be hard to spot something as big as a hut hiding among them.
"No, you came in by the bridge on the south-west side. What kind of a witch would live near a bridge? Not one with all her wits attached, I'll tell ya that!"
She had gotten rather breathless, trying to keep up with his giant steps. "What does she do with it?"
"Sells it as medicine."
"Oh?"
"Yes, it supposedly heals some human ailments. She's doing quite well, I hear. Bought one of them big cauldrons, got herself a donkey and a cart, and is opening a shop in Berillian."
Aurelie stopped for a moment, wondering whether she should risk sounding as ungrateful as she felt. "You have a witch with a donkey and a cart, traveling to Berillian and you're making me walk there?"
Jermyn gave Aurelie one of his long, irritated glares and shook his leafy head. "Do ya think I bloody well feast with the wench? I hardly know her. How am I to know whether she'll take you to Berillian or dump you in front of the King?"
Aurelie sighed. "I'm sorry, you're right. My damn feet might not agree though."
Her heels were hard as bone, and her feet red and swollen, with blisters spread over everything but her ankles. Add that to the pain in her joints and the itchy scabs on her leg . . . Hold on a minute.
"Your sap heals!" she exclaimed. "Your sap heals? Half the skin on my leg is oozing and scabby and you're telling me that your sap heals. This bandage reeks of rot and death . . . and Jermyn's sap heals," she wasn't even talking to him anymore, just trying to come to terms with the information.
"You didn't have anything to trade."
"I didn't have anything to trade . . . Brilliant, bloody brilliant."
"It's good you got injured."
"Is it? Is it good, Jermyn?" Her voice sounded squeaky even to her own ears.
"Yes, pain hardens you, and you sure need some hardening."
"I can't believe you, you stingy bastard!" She had never used that word before. It felt great to say it, to puff the b and roll the r. "What does it take you a month to harvest it or something?"
"Oh no, the stuff oozes right out of me. Huge relief when she comes by."
"Right."
"She tried to build her hut with it once, secure the structure. The stuff hardens and becomes hard as a rock, but the sun is too hot here. It cracked and the whole thing came tumbling. Good thing she won three lives off a necromancer in a game of chess."
"Uhu." She bent down to scratch the scab. Talking about seemed to have made it itch even worse.
The ground behind them caught her attention. The green grass had lost its color exactly along the trail which she and Jermyn followed. Aurelie turned around to find that the wildflowers bent over lifelessly and the leaves of the trees curled.
"What's happening?" she asked.
"All living beings will run from you, as you will drain the life from them if they are close. All plants will die at your side. You will take the beauty out of everything that you come close to. And that is how you will survive. If there is no life around you, you will not live," he said aloud, his eyes distant with memory. "That's what she told me the day she turned me into this." He lowered his head to look at his barky body.
"But the Dead Wood has no . . ." Aurelie started to speak right as the realization hit her. "Oh." Her heart sunk. "You were trying to die."
He did not answer.
His pain was evident, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. He seemed quite calm about it, though, which worried her more.
"Why did the curse not break? Do you think she had extra lives as well? She looked quite dead to me." Her bloody handprint on the white face crossed her mind. She shuddered, burying the image deep into her mind.
"There are some curses that are broken with the death, some with a spell, and, well, some cannot be broken at all. This must be one of them. I feared this to be the case, but I have long accepted my fate," Jermyn said.
Aurelie turned back. The trees were half turned into snags, the grass under their feet a golden yellow, and the flowers a rotten brown. The path they walked was marked by his curse. If anyone was to look for them, they'd just have to follow the dead plants Jermyn left under his feet. Jermyn turned and saw Aurelie examining the damage he had caused.
"We cannot stay together," she whispered. Hollowness filled her stomach and traveled up to her chest. Just when she thought that she had a companion, he was ripped away.
"That was never my plan," he replied, and walked forward once again, draining the life out of the nature around him with every step. The grass and flowers leaned toward him, filtering their life into him.
"Jermyn, I have no one else." She stopped and placed a hand on her chest. The pain was hot and raw. "I can't bear having you leave me too. I'm not made for this. For the road or the squatter. I've never even been beyond our cabin without some sort of escort."
"You'll do just fine."
"The King is already on his way," she said, rubbing her eyes with her fingers. She couldn't dare cry in front of Jermyn.
"Aye, he probably is."
"Maybe I can just follow you. We could meet rebels on the road. They must be scattered all over this place. We can look for them together . . . andâ"
"No."
Aurelie decided to change the subject to keep him talking. She could see that the death of Marianne and the persistence of his curse tugged at him. If she kept the conversation going, he would be bound by courtesy to say longer. A knot had formed in her throat too. If they kept talking about separation, she'd cry within the next sentence or two and Jermyn already proved to be very poorly equipped when dealing with a crying girl.
"When did she curse you?" she asked him.
"Back then, I was the guardian of the Karmijar Forest. I tended to the plants and my queen. I protected them. The only human allowed to walk the grounds of the queen's forest." He recalled warmly, a smile tugging at the side of his lips. The smile darkened then and fell entirely flat. "I had received a letter. A magical note, it flew to me on the wings of a dove, turning into a parchment as it landed on my fingertips. I did not think at the time where my mother could have gotten such magic. The peace and tranquility of the forest had made me stupid. So, I made my way home to lend a hand with my mother's illness." He sighed and sat down with his back against a tree. The leaves leaned down, almost snapping their branches. "The second I stepped outside the forest, the witch grabbed me. She wanted desperately to know the queen's secret, how the eyes of the forest worked, where they patrolled. I never gave anything away. I would never have betrayed her not to the King's minion. I stayed silent through the beatings until I could no longer see with my eyes, hear with my ears or remember anything but pain. I thought I was dead and wished that was the case. I would have been happy to die for the queen of the forest. When my eyes opened next, I saw the bark on my legs. For a second, I thought I'd been taken back to my home in Karmijar. It took me a while to realize that I was in a new home. A prisoner in my own body."
"Why did you never go back to your queen?" Aurelie asked, placing a hand on Jermyn's bark. "It does not affect me. Maybe she would have been free from your curse."
"Ah, but I did. I did head back. The witch had left me alone to figure out that what she said was true. I thought that I was one of them now, the forest creatures, but then I looked around and I saw what I did to the living things around me. They rot and die in my presence. So, I knew that I could never go back to my queen. I stayed in the woods where you found me and I spent my time planning my revenge," he stopped.
Aurelie sat in silence. Her heart bled for Jermyn. "Does she at least know that you are still alive?" she asked.
"No," he said, small pieces of bark falling from his lips. "I doubt she'd care very much, to be honest."
Knowing that Jermyn was once human-made it hard to understand how he could have killed his kind. Aurelie pondered on the memory of the toys and clothing within his cave. "I have to ask, Jermyn. Those things you had, the toys, and the clothing. Did you kill those people?"
He laughed. "No, they were all wanderers. After the war, when the king died they ran into hiding. They tried to escape by coming into the forest, but the king's men found them and killed them, turning my forest into a bloodbath. They just left their bodies where they lay to rot. I saw the war with my own eyes. I should have hidden them, I should have fought. But the King controls fire. I was a coward. I saved a boy, Daerious. I took the things from those people so he could have clothing. His parents were witches, but he was born a human. He had not harmed anyone. Yet, I think the King's men would have ended him just for being part of a family that had followed his father. He must be just a little older than you are now. He used to visit me in these woods, bringing me trinkets. Then, this business with the rebellion made it very hard for him to travel and I was all by myself again."
"So, you tricked me?" she asked, squinting her eyes.
"You tricked yourself. I said nothing about killing anyone." Jermyn smiled.
"How do you think this will end for you?" she said, imitating Jermyn's voice.
"Someone needed to teach you a lesson." He chuckled and shook his head.
Aurelie smiled and put her hand over one of Jermyn's barky fingers. "How did you bear being alone for so long?
"I tried to die. Bare it, you say? No, you never bare such a thing. You sulk until you can't sulk anymore and then you try your damn hardest to repress it, so you feel nothing at all. That's how you survive it."
Aurelie's eyes fell to the floor. She took one of the dead leaves in her hand and broke it apart into little pieces. Her eyes stung, a single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek.
"Listen, dragon, you dare not weep for me, you hear? There will be people looking for you. Bad people. Don't you waste your mind on this, okay?" he said.
She dropped the stem of the leaf and dried her eyes. The sight of two glowing eyes stole her attention. They blinked and quickly disappeared. An awful feeling of familiarity struck her, but she couldn't remember why.
"Did you see that?" she asked, looking around in every direction.
"What?" Jermyn stood up and followed her eyes.
"Eyes in the woods."
"No, but we must move then. Take this seed," he said and put it in her hand. "You can use it once and only once. Just bury the seed in the ground, and I will find you. Use it wisely, child, this will repay my debt to you. Daerious has one of his own, smaller and on a chain around his neck. If he is near you will feel the seeds being drawn to each other."
Before Aurelie could reply Jermyn was halfway gone. His roots sunk into the earth, and he took on the shape of a young tree about to bloom.
"No, wait. Jermyn," she yelled after him. His branched retracted and were now thin twigs.
"Follow the path three hundred steps to the north and you'll find him there," a tiny voice called from the sprout.
"Please!" she shouted, but he was already gone. There wasn't even a hole left behind to see the exact spot he had vanished into.