Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

A few weeks ago she had pressed Pick so hard about it that he had finally revealed something new.

"It has to do with who you are, Nest!" he snapped, facing her squarely. His brow furrowed, his eyes steadied, and his rigid stance marked his determination to lay the matter to rest for good. "You think about it. I'm a sylvan, so I was born to the magic. For you to have knowledge of the magic and me, you must have been born to it as well. Or, in the alternative, share a close affinity with it. You know the word, don't you? 'Affinity'? I don't have time to be teaching you everything."

"Are you saying I have forest–creature blood?" she exclaimed softly. "Is that what you're saying? That Fm like you?"

"Oh, for cat's sake, pay attention!" Pick had turned purple. "Why do I bother trying to tell you anything?"

"But you said…"

"You're nothing like me! I'm six inches high and a hundred and fifty years old! I'm a sylvan! You're a little girl! Forest creatures and humans are different species!"

"All right, all right, settle down. I'm not like you. Thank goodness, I might add. Crabpuss." When he tried to object, she hurried on. "So there's an affinity we share, a bond of the sort that makes us both so much at home in the park…"

But Pick had waved his hands dismissively and cut her off. "Go ask your grandmother. She's the one who said you could do magic. She's the one who should tell you why."

That was the end of the matter as far as Pick was concerned, and he had refused to say another word about it since. Nest had thought about asking Gran, but Gran never wanted to discuss the origins of her magic, only what the consequences would be if she were careless. If she wanted a straight answer from Gran, she would have to approach the matter in the right way at the right time and place. As of now, Nest didn't know how to do that.

Pick jumped down onto her shoulder from a low–hanging branch as she neared the gap in the hedgerow. It used to frighten her when he appeared unexpectedly like that, like having a large bug land on you, but she had gotten used to it. She glanced down at him and saw the impatience and distress mirrored in his eyes.

"That confounded Indian has disappeared!" he snapped, forgoing any greeting. "Two Bears?" She slowed.

"Keep moving. You can spit and whistle at the same time, can't you?" He straddled her shoulder, kicking at her with his heels as you might a recalcitrant horse. "Disappeared, gone up in a puff of smoke. Not literally, of course, but he might as well have. I've looked for him everywhere. I was sure I'd find him back at that table, looking off into the sunrise with that blank stare of his. But I can't even find his tracks!"

"Did he sleep in the park?" Nest nudged her way through the hedgerow, being careful not to knock Pick from his perch. "Beats me. I scouted the whole of the park from atop Daniel early this morning. Flew end to end. The Indian's gone. There's no sign of him." Pick pulled and tugged mercilessly at his beard. "It's aggravating, but it's the least of our troubles."

She stepped into the park and crossed the service road toward the ball diamonds. "It is?"

"Trust me." He gave her a worried glance. "Take a walk up into the deep woods and I'll show you."

Never one to walk when she could run, Nest broke into a steady jog that carried her across the open expanse of the central park toward the woods east. She passed the ball fields, the playgrounds, and the toboggan run. She rounded the east pavilion and skirted a group of picnickers gathered at one of the tables. Heads turned to look, then turned away again. She could smell hot dogs, potato salad, and sweet pickles. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her breath felt hot and dry in her throat. The sunlight sprinkled her with squiggly lines and irregular spots as she ran beneath the broken canopy of the hardwoods, moving downhill off the high ground toward the bayou and the deep woods beyond. She passed a couple hiking one of the trails, smiled briefly in greeting, and hurried on. Pick whispered in her ear, giving her directions interspersed with unneeded advice about running between trees.

She crossed the wooden bridge at the stream that emptied out of the woods into the bayou and turned uphill again. The woods ahead were thick with shadows and scrub. There were no picnic tables or cooking stations back here, only hiking trails. The trees were silent sentinels all around her, aged dark hulks undisturbed since their inception, witnesses to the passing of generations of life. They towered over everything, a massive and implacable presence. Sunlight was an intruder here, barely able to penetrate the forest canopy, appearing in a scattering of hazy streaks amid the gloom. Feeders skulked at the edges of her peripheral vision, small movements gone as quickly as they were glimpsed.

"Straight ahead," Pick directed as they crested the rise, and she knew at once where they were going.

They plunged deep into the old growth, the trails narrowing and coiling like snakes. Thorny branches of scrub poked in from the undergrowth and sometimes threatened to cut off passage entirely. Itchweed grew in large patches, and mounds of thistles bristled from amid the saw grass. It was silent here, so still you could hear the voices of the picnickers from back across the stream almost a quarter of a mile away. Nest navigated her way forward carefully, choosing her path from experience, no longer relying on Pick to tell her where to go. Sweat coated her skin and left her clothing feeling damp and itchy. Mosquitoes and flies buzzed past her ears and flew at her nose and eyes. She brushed at them futilely, wishing suddenly she had something cold to drink.

She emerged finally in the heart of the deep woods in a clearing dominated by a single, monstrous oak. The other trees seemed to shy away from it, their trunks and limbs twisted and bent, grown so in an effort to reach the nourishing light denied them by the big oak's sprawling canopy. The clearing in which the old tree grew was barren of everything but a few small patches of saw grass and weeds. No birds flitted through the oak's ancient branches. No squirrels built their nests within the crook of its limbs. No movement was visible or sound audible from any part of its gloomy heights. All about, the air was heavy and still with heat and shadows.

Nest stared upward into the old tree, tracing the line of its limbs to the thick umbrella of leaves that shut away the sky. She had not come here for a long time. She did not like being here now. The tree made her feel small and vulnerable. She was chilled by the knowledge of the dark purpose it served and the monstrous evil it contained. For this was the prison of a maentwrog. Pick had told her the maentwrog's story shortly after their first meeting. She remembered the aged tree from her flight into the park atop Daniel. She had seen it in the hazy gloom of the deepening twilight, and she had marked it well. Even at six, she knew when something was dangerous. Pick confirmed her suspicions. Maentwrogs were, to use the sylvan's own words, "half predator, half raver, and all bad." Thousands of years ago they had preyed upon forest creatures and humans alike, de- • vouring members of both species in sudden, cataclysmic, frenzied bursts triggered by a need that only they understood. They would tear the souls out of their victims while they still lived, leaving them hollow and consumed by madness. They fed in the manner of the feeders, but did not rely on dark emotions for their response. They were thinking creatures. They were hunters. This one had been imprisoned in the tree a thousand years ago, locked away by Indian magic when it became so destructive that it could no longer be tolerated. Now and again, it threatened to escape, but the magic of the park's warders, human and sylvan, had always been strong enough to contain it.