The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage: A Sapphic Fantasy Romance by Hiyodori

Author:Hiyodori [Hiyodori]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

When a villager died in the Forest, the very first order of business was to carry their body up to the sacred mountains. Everyone would drop all their tasks and all their plans to make it happen.

There was no hope, of course, if a phage had already killed and absorbed them. For any other cause of death—cardiac arrest, a hunting accident, the frailty of old age—at least twenty-four hours would pass before the deceased became a reanimated phage. In some cases, the metamorphosis could take days and days.

So foresters bore their dead to the nearest of the sacred mountains. To the nearest of the caverns that blazed with a neverending fire.

A cadaver transmuted to bone and powder by those flames would never need to rise again as an insatiable phage.

The fire caves were deep and deadly. Unlike man-made crematories in the city, they offered no way to recover the ashen remains of those they burned.

But foresters knew not to expect anything in return. All they needed was the assurance that their father or mother or sister or daughter had gone where every other forester belonged in the end. That they would be blessed with peace in the sacred mountains, rather than the mindless, homeless hunger of a phage.

If ten-year-old Carnelian had thrown Gren’s body into one of those caves, that meant Gren had already been sent exactly where he was supposed to go.

He’d burned away to nothingness surrounded by remnants of past foresters. He wasn’t lost and alone, abandoned in death while Tiller and every other villager fled to the city.

Beyond the Koya finger-trees awaited a wild growth of stinging nettles. It stood eight feet tall, dense as a formal hedge and as long as a castle wall. No visible breaks.

Carnelian made a face.

“The leaves are delicious if you prepare them right,” Tiller said.

“That’s one Forest food I won’t be jealous of. Do we have to hack a path to the other side?”

“It’ll let us through.”

“How?”

Tiller moved over to a separate cluster of shrubbery with long wild tendrils sticking out every which way. She snapped off a tender young branch.

“What’s that?” Carnelian queried.

“A witch stick.”

“From a witch bush, presumably.”

“You’re starting to catch on.”

Tiller thrust her witch stick at the wall of nettles. They rattled in their eagerness to shrink away.

She gestured for Carnelian to follow close on her heels. As she menaced the nettles with the (thin and harmless-looking) stick, a narrow path opened to the other side of the hedge. Just wide enough that they could avoid getting snagged.

More witch bushes grew on the far side of the nettle barricade. Tiller planted her twig in the dirt nearby.

“Will it grow back?” asked Carnelian.

“It might. Broken sticks take root a lot easier in the Forest.”

Behind them, the nettles stopped bowing out of the way. The tall spiky stems rustled rapidly back into place.

“We never built stone walls,” Tiller said. “We made these nettles sprout high and thick. We cultivated witch bushes on both sides for convenience. Good to see that it all kept growing without us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.