Clayton Emery: Whispering woods

Battered salt-poisoned grass stretched half a mile to a forest of beech and oak, the final barrier to the impossible tidal wave.

Now and then they passed dead barbarians. Their blue berry dye and clothes had been sucked off, so they lay scattered, tanned and tattooed, like children playing a game of statues. But none moved, and flies crawled on faces. Gull wondered if they'd died cursing Towser, the man who'd enslaved them.

Trees had lost leaves in the mad wave, but in some weird exchange, had been festooned with sea wrack. Kelp dangled from oaks. Driftwood had returned to the forest dragging beds of seaweed. A dying starfish clung to a beech tree as if a wharf piling. A codfish gasped in a nest of leaves. Sand glittered everywhere.

From a hollow jutted four pilings like a storm-tossed pier. But these pilings were jointed. Stiggur ran shouting, circled, found the clockwork beast's head half-buried in broken branches. With the energy of youth, he began to dig.

Shifting the mana vault, Greensleeves pointed into the forest. What looked like a white whale in a tree proved to be Liko's rump. Sail smock in shreds, the giant was fetched up in a forked oak twenty feet above the ground. Gull guessed he'd been climbing when the wave caught him. He was just too big to wash away. Too high to reach, Gull peered close, saw a toe large as a bushel basket twitch. They left the giant to wake on his own.

Traveling along the forest's edge, both stopped in shock. Greensleeves's knees gave out, and she sank, mewling like a lost kitten.

At the devastation she had caused.

Towser's entourage was spilled amidst trees like a shattered bird's nest.

For the first time that morning, Gull felt a spark in his breast. Surveying the wreckage, he breathed, "Lily…"

In her yellow clothes, Jonquil lay on the sward as if napping. A frown creased her coarse farm girl's face. She had no pulse, sleeping forever.

Stepping over Jonquil, they counted four wagons. Towser's, the heaviest, lay on its roof against an oak bole, one side splintered, four wheels smashed to pointed stars. The women's wagon had broken its back against a lichened boulder. The astrologer's wagon lay flat upside down, the hoops for the canvas roof crushed. The cook wagon had split, spilling ironware and soggy foodstuffs.

Horses and mules, left in the traces, were equally smashed and broken. Two of the horses, broken-backed, were still alive. Knothead and Flossy, Gull's mules, were dead, tangled in harness, wrapped around a tree. Gull stared a while, pronounced their epitaphs. "Flossy was sweet. Knothead was stubborn and cranky, but a good puller."

Searching, almost idly, for this new disaster was mind-numbing, Gull bumped a wine jug that sloshed invitingly. He hunted up a grill spike and chipped out the cork. He and his sister drank the sweet wine greedily, saved some for Stiggur.

Gull spiked the throats of the wounded horses.

Then counted the dead.

Felda, the fat cook, was wedged under her wagon, pierced by a broken wheel spoke. The bard, Ranon Spiritsinger, was nearby, horribly twisted, one arm rammed through her lyre strings. Rose and Peachblossom were dead inside the women's wagon, where they'd sought refuge. Under the astrologer's wagon, blue-clad legs marked Bluebonnet. There were no traces of the nurse, Haley, or the astrologer, Kakulina. Gull figured they had washed away, could be anywhere from deeper in the forest to deep in the ocean.

He tried to summon sorrow for these folks. He'd known them, eaten with them, talked of small things. But in the end they'd betrayed him, guarding their soft positions in the wizard's employ. They'd hunkered over a cooking fire and ignored a human sacrifice carried out by their master two hundred feet away. Ultimately, their master had failed to protect them.

Gull peered inside Towser's overturned wagon, all ajumble. Tangled blankets had fallen from the ornate bed, books and artifacts had rained from niches in the walls.

No trace of the three bodyguards, who would have stayed near Towser.

And, of course, Gull thought bitterly, no Towser. He might have been killed, but the woodcutter doubted it. A wizard protected himself first and foremost.

And, finally, no Lily.

Then he heard a sigh.

The noise issued from under the collapsed bed.

Praying, pleading, Gull yanked aside salt-sopping blankets and tapestries.

His prayers were answered. It was Lily.

She lay on the upside-down roof, only an arm and her head showing. Face pale as her sundered clothes, she struggled to free herself.

"Lily! I was so worried!" He grabbed her arm to tug, but she shrieked.

"My arm!" Sweaty and cold, her body and voice shivered. "It's broken! I felt the bones grind together!"

Gull mopped his face, squatted to see inside the dark wagon. Up front, amidst smashed luggage and supplies, lay Knoton, the clerk. The woodcutter wondered how, with all these dead, Lily had survived.

Then he remembered. She too was a wizard.

"Don't fret, honey, I'll get you out! Lie still!" Greensleeves set down her mana vault and helped. Gently, tugging and winkling, they slid the dancing girl out, learned one leg was also broken. Lily hissed in agony, yet gasped they should search for green bottles in the red-lacquered case. Greensleeves poked in the wagon while Gull comforted the dancing girl.

"I thought I'd lost you." Gull cradled her head on his lap, smoothed her tousled hair. "I thought I'd lost you. I realized I didn't want to lose you. I want you with me forever. I want you to be my wife. I love you, Lily."

Grimacing, crying, smiling at the same time, the girl pressed a finger on his lips. "Hush, Gull, please. Things aren't the-oh!-same all of a sudden."

"What?" Gull frowned, wiped his eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, exactly… It's just… How shall I explain-ah, it hurts! I-I never liked myself, Gull. I always thought I was unworthy, born of a whore, never knowing my father, a whore myself-"

"I don't care about that-"

"Hush. I know. You're a wonderful man, kind and loving. But things are different. Suddenly I'm a wizard. I don't know what that means."

"You don't have to be a wizard."

She smiled, winced with pain. Behind them, Greensleeves bustled, shifted boxes. "And a bird with wings needn't fly? Gull, when that giant wave hit us, I scrunched down and prayed not to die. And something-some tingling power-enwrapped me like a mother's arms. And I didn't die. Though I-ow ow ow-didn't protect myself that well. Still… oh, I love you so, but I can't marry you just yet. Do you see why?"

"No." He sounded petulant.

She sighed a feminine sigh, and suddenly Gull felt like a boy addressing a woman. "I need time. To think."

"You'll adopt wizardry, then." He was bitter. "And leave us mortals in the dust."

She shook her head, grunted as her arm moved. "No. I'll leave Lily in the dust, and find who I really am."

It was Gull's turn to sigh. "And that's not my wife? Ah, well. I shouldn't have let you dangle all this time. I should have reeled you in when I hooked you."

She chuckled, put a finger to her lips and kissed it, laid it against his lips. He smiled down at her.

Greensleeves crawled backward out of the wagon. Skirts more mud-stained and tattered than ever, she looked like a six-year-old making mud pies. But beholding the two lovers, her gaze became a woman's calculation. She offered an unstoppered beaker. "P-poppy seed e-extract and feverfew, I th-think. 'Twill e-ease the pain."

Lily nodded, drank the whole beaker. Before long, she nodded off and snored gently.

Greensleeves rummaged, found some slats, used scissors to cut a blanket. She handed them all to Gull. "Wh-while she sl-sleeps, you must s-set-s-set-"

"I know," said her brother. Strongest of the family, he'd been the one to set broken bones. "I'll tend her."