The Realms Thereunder

2

Daniel reached a clearing where several large stones protruded from the ground. The sky that was visible through the gaps between the leaves and branches of the trees was still light, but it had become very cold in the forest. The cloak was keeping him warm enough for now, but he would need more than that for the night.

He had poems to compose.

In fact, he’d already come up with a couple verses that weren’t completely awful. With a mixture of anticipation and dread, he cleared his throat. Here goes nothing, he thought and spoke in a loud, clear voice:

“Forest great and forest good, May I have some firewood?”

He waited and listened. There were no sounds apart from the breeze rattling the branches and rustling the leaves overhead. He looked around. No pile of firewood had miraculously appeared.

Perhaps he had to search for it. Or maybe it wasn’t a good enough poem. Or maybe Kay was pulling his leg.

He took off his new cloak and laid it on one of the rocks.

Then, careful always to keep a couple of the large rocks in view, he started hunting among the underbrush for twigs and branches.

He didn’t have to go far before he had collected an armload of wood, some of it small and relatively dry, some of it larger- about the width of his arm. He brought it back to the clearing and dumped it by one of the boulders. Then he went back out.

He brought back about a dozen more armfuls, making quite a sizeable pile. He had no idea how much he was going to need.

He didn’t know how much wood he’d need in his own world, let alone this one where the days and nights were twice as long. An armload might only mean about an hour’s burning time. Better have too much than too little, he decided, and kept going back out for more, so long as more was to be had. He had made a couple dozen more trips, never leaving sight of the boulders, until he had gathered a pretty sizeable pile.

Daniel crouched and ran his hand over the ground, which was covered with a small amount of semi-decayed leaves that created a soft, surprisingly dry powdery substance. That was good. He knew from years of hard experience on the streets that lack of insulation against the ground could freeze you as quickly as the wind. Looking around, he figured he could easily scrape up enough of this dry matter to make workable bedding.

But now he had to actually make the fire. He sucked his breath in and let it out in a sigh. He hadn’t felt that the success of the firewood poem had been conclusive. Asking the forest to give him some fire was really going to be the test.

He started fitting rhymes together in his head as he placed the wood into what he figured was a good pattern. Then he stood up and dusted off his hands. Here went nothing. Kay had told him to ask for fire, and this was it. He took another deep breath and recited:

“Thank you, forest, great and good,

For giving me my firewood.

But in order to survive the night,

I need this pile of wood to light.

Please give me what I require,

To make myself a good campfire.”

Daniel held his breath and sucked on his lower lip. What was he going to do if this didn’t work? Start rubbing sticks together, he supposed. He had just started to let his breath out in a sigh of defeat when there was a rustling above as of a bird flying through the branches and a whistle of something descending at speed.

He glanced up just as a stone tore through the leaves above and landed at his feet. It struck another rock and created a massive bouquet of sparks that leapt a foot into the air.

Daniel jumped back in alarm, looking about him at the tree cover. What was this now? Was the forest trying to kill him?

Blinking in surprise, he bent down and examined the object that had fallen. It was a wedge of metal, iron maybe, shaped like an axe head. When it fell, it had struck a fist-sized rock and broken a large chunk of it off. Looking at the rock closer, he found the broken edge glossy and hard-flint.

“You must be joking,” he muttered.

He bent down and gave the metal and the flint a few experimental knocks together, generating more sparks. In a few short minutes he found a way to create a good number at once. He pulled out some dry, brown moss from the woodpile and started striking the rock and the metal above it. It took some time, but the moss started to curl and then smoke. After careful tending, a flame appeared, which he nursed and fed with more moss. He gently pushed it into the centre of the woodpile, then placed the piece of metal and stone into his rucksack.

He kept feeding and nurturing the fire until some of the thicker branches caught and then he sat back and let the fire take its course, watching the flames grow and lick against the larger branches.

He was tired now-incredibly tired. Whatever there was inside of him that had kept him going was almost completely exhausted. He had come a long way since waking up this morning on Magdalen Bridge. He was also hungry. Unbelievably hungry.

He took a sip of water from the skin that Kay had given him and lay back to think of another poem. He looked at the stone that had also been given to him, sniffed it-it smelled of nothing-and slowly stuck it into his mouth.

It tasted faintly bitter-like just about any other rock, he imagined. He hadn’t habitually tasted rocks since he was about four, but this one, even after all that time, failed to impress. It was making his gorge rise. He spat the stone into his palm and looked at it again, now glinting with saliva. Then he tipped his hand and let it fall to the ground. That was enough of that. He turned his attention back to the fire.

As he sat, his ears adjusted to the silence and eventually, over the sound of the hissing wood, he became aware of another noise. With a mighty effort he stood up, his muscles already starting to ache, and went to investigate.

The sound led him to a stream, nearly a river, which was as wide as he was tall. He stood for a moment, puzzled, since he hadn’t seen or heard it when he was gathering firewood, but there was no doubt about it, here it was. The water trickled through a maze of rocks and pools at a fair speed. As he got closer, he noticed something shimmering within the water that flashed with a white, silvery brilliance even in the low light. Stooping over, he saw that it wasn’t just one object, but many similar objects flashing by in the same direction-fish.

There were masses of them swimming past in clumps of dozens. He thought for a moment of going back and finding a stick long and pointed enough to make a spear out of, but the fish were so thickly packed at the spot he was standing, and so close to the surface that he thought he might be able to just reach down and pick them out of the water as easily as plucking apples from a tree-ripe for the taking.

He bent over and stretched his arm out, ready to dart it into the water and pull out a nice, lovely fish but suddenly pulled his arm back. Ripe for the taking. He had almost taken a fish from the stream, a fish he hadn’t asked for from a stream he hadn’t asked the forest to show him.

He drew himself back and sat on his feet. His heart was racing. He was almost gasping at his near miss, but then . . . how near of a miss had it actually been? The only reason he had to believe that there was any danger to him if he took things without asking was Kay’s word; a man-an elf?-that he had never met before a short time ago. It could very easily be he was being lied to, if not ridiculed. That said, the piece of metal from the sky was a bit of a stretch to the notion of coincidence.

Daniel sighed and then thought for a moment. Then:

“Good forest, please, now I wish

That you would give to me a fish.”

Even by his own standards, Daniel knew that it was a pretty lousy poem, but he was tired and hungry and more than a little confused.

There was a splashing sound, and a fish leapt out of the water, flipping end over end, and landed on the bank next to him, where it floundered half-heartedly. It was almost a foot long.

Daniel didn’t know much about fishing, but he knew enough to grab the fish by its tail and smack its head against a rock to kill it. He did so, and sat for a moment holding it. He thought of another rhyme.

“Forest, I don’t wish to be greedy,

But I am hungry, cold, and needy.

I’d like some fish, a couple more,

Delivered to me like before.”

Daniel couldn’t tell if his poetry was good or not. He’d have to try to come up with something better tomorrow for the path.

There was another splash and two more fish flopped out onto the ground beside him. Shaking his head, he killed them and then scooped up all three fish and walked back up to his camp where the fire needed tending. He did this, raking the new coals together, and got it all burning at a steady clip.

He spitted the fish, set them to cook lengthways against the fire, and started scraping up enough dead leaves for bedding. The birds in the branches above him started to twitter as if commentating and arguing about the scene below them.

Daniel’s head swam with ideas and thoughts about the world he now found himself in. He was extremely tired, though, and before he fell asleep, he had been contemplating the serious and disturbing idea that the forest may be trying to deliberately trap him.