He turned his head and found himself staring at a spear tip only inches from his face.
The spear was made of wood, the tip of smooth stone, the point so sharp and perfect it had undoubtedly been created with magic. J'role slowly lowered his gaze down the length of the pole until he saw the hands that held it-gnarled branches lined with thorns. The hands belonged to a long and thin creature. It had legs and arms, a head and chest, but its entire body was made of branches covered with thorns and leaves. Though the creature had the shape of a person, its interior was hollow, like the cages containing beautiful colored birds that J'role had seen travelers carrying through his village. Like cages, the thorn men carried animals inside their bodies, but these animals-small birds, squirrels, rabbits-were all dead, the bodies in various states of decay. Even in the heads of the thorn men, where one expected to find a face, J'role saw only the rotted flesh of a ferret, now hairless and gray-pink, or the small, frail bones of a sparrow.
Dozens of the creatures stood around them. His father smiled at them. "Hello," he said, and then asked, "Am I dreaming' He asked the question intently, obviously expecting an answer.
Something fluttered down before J'role; a leaf, he thought at first. But as it hovered before him, he saw that it was actually a tiny human, floating on wings formed from two coarse brown leaves. The tiny woman's face was framed by straight white hair and thorns grew from her skin.
No, he realized. They grew out through her skin. He saw a drop o f clear liquid ooze out one of the tears in her flesh. It rolled down the short thorn, hung suspended from her body for a moment, and then fell to the ground. She stared at him, cocking her head from one side to the other, then flittered off to look at Bevarden. Although she had tried to hide it, J'role had clearly seen pain on her face.
No one said anything. More of the small winged people flew around the nearby trees; they stared, but none came closer. When J'role looked directly at them, they flew around a tree and out of sight. The tree he had touched spoke again, this time as if asking a question, and J'role heard some of the small people answer, their responses a jumble of chirping noises.
The little white-haired woman came back and floated before J'role's face, her wings beating the air to hold herself in place. She said something to him, but he could not understand the words. A thorn man attempted to encourage an answer with the stone tip of his spear.
"I. .,” said Bevarden, and all the thorn men and winged people moved back.
The woman flew over to him. This time J'role could hear words he understood formed in the small sounds of her tiny voice. With faulty accent and many mistaken words she used the common dwarven language. "Why. .? Tribute. .? Queen." Bevarden gestured toward J'role, tried to form a word, and failed. Then he fell into a coughing fit and collapsed to the ground. Thick droplets of blood came up from his throat and spattered the ground. J'role was astonished to see the ground quickly soak up the blood, like parched earth drinking rain water.
Oblivious to Bevarden's pain, the little woman repeated, "Tribute! Queen!"
"I think we need a-present," said the creature in his thoughts.
J'role knew he had nothing to offer. He spread his arms wide.
"Good, good," the creature said sarcastically. "Confound them with your simple-minded honesty." Then it shouted in J'role's thoughts, "Give them the ring. Maybe they'll know what to do with it!"
He had forgotten about the ring. Its magical touch had become a permanent hum against his perceptions. As soon as he thought about surrendering the ring, he felt like crying. He forced the idea from his head.
The patience of the creatures had run out, and they began to chatter wildly. The thorn man in front of J'role tapped the tip of his spear against J'role, and though it did not pierce his flesh, a hot pain lanced through his chest.
The winged woman circled about them and said, "Come!” The thorn men arranged themselves to escort Bevarden and J'role. J'role helped his father up, and soon they were on their way into the heart of the forest.
13
When J’role had first stopped speaking, his parents said it was only a strange whim and he would grow out of it. The other children of the kaer could not understand such a concept. At first his friends were worried for him, but as the days, and then the weeks, passed, the other boys and girls began to sense that something was strange about J role now. They avoided him for his haunted eyes carried a weight of misery that even the high spirits of children could not shuck off. It was simply not fun to be with him.
After concern turned to avoidance, abuse set in. The children-even his best friend, Samael-began to taunt him, daring him to speak. But J'role never did, remembering his mother's instructions that he must not.
But how he wanted to! He knew something crawled in his thoughts, something so vile and corrupt that even his mother's mind had begun to splinter against the strange sounds he made when she asked him to speak to her. When the children pointed and laughed he wanted to open his mouth and let loose the horror in his thoughts; he wanted the perverse screeches and babblings to fly through the air and crash into their ears and replace their smug mockery with the misery that filled his mind each day.
He never did. His mother had warned him never to speak, and he did not.
So he listened to the laughter of the children echo down the corridors of the kaer, and imagined himself playing with them, which only made the creature in his mind taunt him all the more.
Surrounded by the thorn men, J'role and his father walked through the strange forest. A chatter of talk came from the small winged people who swarmed among the trees. The trees were also filled with more faces, staring down at J'role as he passed, their eyes and mouths formed by blood-soaked knots. The leaves and branches of bushes and other, lower trees seemed to reach out for him, brushing against his flesh, examining him. After J'role and the others had walked for a while, he realized that the ground was more than soft-it was damp. With a shock he saw that the dark moisture oozing up around his bare feet was blood.
At another point J'role was startled by the grotesque sight of a man, at least eight feet tall, staring at them through the trees from a hill thirty feet away. The man's flesh seemed torn in places, flapping like clothes hung out to dry, with wide stains lining the wounds.
But the man was far away, and J’role wondered if perhaps his eyes had tricked him.
The more he walked, the more he felt overwhelmed by the forest. The very ground seemed to shiver, as if something moved underfoot. And everywhere — everywhere -
there was life. Moss grew on the rocks. Leaves formed a neatly impenetrable canopy overhead. Tiny plants grew in the absurdly fertile ground. Insects buzzed up close to his eyes and then flew away again. The never ending trees crowded around, reducing J’role’s range of vision to only a fraction of what he was used to. It was as though the forest were crawling over him, trying to smother him and absorb him into its overabundant life. His gaze kept shifting from one place- one living thing-to the next.
Too much. Too much.
They walked for an hour or more, and J'role wondered if the forest had somehow grown to cover the world the moment they had entered it. Then up ahead, just beyond the thick labyrinth of trees, he saw flashes of a gathering of people. They had been sitting on the ground, but were now standing and staring at the approaching entourage. J'role could just make out that the people were tall and thin, with high foreheads. Some seemed to have green complexions, while others were as white as the full moon. When Bevarden also caught sight of the strange people ahead, he covered his mouth with both hands, eyes opening wide. Then he looked down at the ground, his mouth still covered, like a child trying to pretend he hadn't caught on to a surprise.