Where the Path Leads – Chapter 22

Where we are in the story:
In December’s installment (Chapter 21 –  “Oderic’s Tale”) Emily learned more about the secret lives of gnomes, their migration from their homeland in Saxony and how they continue to live and marry in their new land of Angleterra.

Chapter 22: Losing the Trail

When they set out the next morning, the forest was semi-dark, but at least the trail was clear. Willow basket on his back and walking stick in hand, Oderic was out in front, leading the way with Gabriel not far behind, although the big dog was still recovering and limped slightly. Emily wasn’t a morning person and, after an uncomfortable night trying to sleep on the ground, lagged in the rear, picking twigs and leaves from her clothes and hair. 

             Shafts of light were beginning to filter through the forest canopy and she paused to watch the first autumn leaves begin their lazy descent to the forest floor, like slow-motion rain. She could appreciate the beauty of Blackwood now that she had a knowledgeable guide, but then recalled that she had to be back by All Hallows’ Day and hurried to catch up with Oderic.  He moved purposefully and was already far ahead of her.

            The cattail leaves wrapped around her feet had worked for a while, but the longer she walked, the more they began to split and break. Finally there was nothing left on the bottom and she took them off, regretting again the loss of her calfskin shoes. They connected her to Will and had somehow made her feel confident. Thinking resentfully about the berg folk, she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going. Briar bushes reached out and snagged her.

            Oderic was saying something about making her a pair of birch bark shoes, like his, when she stopped to separate her tunic from the thorns. The coarse homespun fabric already had one rip, from when she had removed the dress from the tree where the berg folk had put it. She didn’t want it to tear any more. She was quickly realizing that a dress wasn’t the most practical thing to wear in the woods. Pants kept Oderic’s legs warmer and he wasn’t as likely to get enmeshed in briars, nor did he have anything to lift when he climbed over obstacles, like tree trunks fallen onto the ground.

            “I’d like some shoes,” she said, “but I’d also like a pair of pants.”

            Oderic looked scandalized.

            “A fine sight you’d make. Not only a young woman alone in the forest, but wearing leggings no less!”

            “This dress makes it hard to get around, Oderic. Besides, if I wore leggings, no one would even know I was a young woman.”

               “True.  Your hair is certainly short enough. Tell me, Emily, aren’t you concerned that if you start dressing like a man, you’ll lose your womanliness?”

            At first she almost laughed, thinking that he was joking, then realized he was in earnest.

            “Oderic,” she finally replied, “ I wear pants, uh, . . . or leggings, or whatever you call them, all the time, uh, back where I come from. How you dress doesn’t change who you are.” 

            Even as she said it, she thought unhappily about the river gown the berg folk had promised and how they told her it would make her as lovely as Rosamond. She had wanted so much to believe that putting on a dress could make her different. She thought about how many girls at her school fantasized about prom dresses and designer outfits, as if the clothes could somehow make them more beautiful and raise them above everyone else. And even in this place where she was now, the ruling folk acted as if their garb made them superior to the villagers or laborers.

            “Some think that your clothes actually make you who you are,” persisted the gnome. “There are laws among mortals, as there are among gnomes, to determine who can wear what. I’m told that among mortals, no laborer or villager may wear the colors crimson, royal blue, or purple, or the fur of ermine or beaver. We gnomes have similar laws, although we’re allowed a little more freedom, as you see from my red hat and blue coat.  But only our King and Queen may wear gold trim or anything with silver thread.  None of us wears the fur of animals, however.”

            He had stopped on the path to give her time to catch up with him.

            “A woman in leggings, unthinkable,” he exclaimed, his long white beard waggling as he shook his head.  “As unthinkable as a gnome without his hat,” he said, patting his, which was tall and cone-shaped.

            His seriousness made her laugh out loud. 

            “Removing this long tunic wouldn’t make me any less of a woman than removing your hat would make you less of a gnome.”

            “Nevertheless,” he insisted, “clothes tell the world who you are.”

            She was dismayed by his stubbornness about convention.

            “Oderic, don’t you think it’s better to judge people by how they act, rather than how they look?”

            He looked up at her inscrutably with his small dark eyes, like two glittering raisins.

            “What you say seems true, Emily, but if you disregard convention, you must be prepared for the consequences.”

            She shrugged. Since she’d been here, clothes seemed to matter less and less to her. It was people that had become more important. Oderic’s insistence on appearances made her question his wisdom. He might know a lot about animals and surviving in the forest–and she did need help getting to the abyss–but he was just a gnome, and they were solitary creatures. He was no expert on clothes. 

            As morning wore into the afternoon, they were increasingly quiet as they walked, listening to crows calling one another, squirrels rustling the leaves, twigs snapping under their feet, and the occasional lonely cry of an eagle high overhead.  About mid-afternoon, they came to a fork in the trail.  Oderic stopped and considered.

            “I think either way will take us north, but perhaps it’s best to follow Gabriel. Dogs usually have a good sense of direction,” he said.

            The black dog, which had found its stride and was now out ahead of even Oderic, had gone right at the fork.

            Maybe it was because Oderic admitted uncertainty about which path to take, or maybe it was because she didn’t want to trust their sense of direction to a dog, but she disagreed.

            “I think the left looks more promising,” she said. Weren’t you always supposed to go left in mazes or labyrinths?  Besides, the left trail just looked easier, more open.

            As Oderic considered the choice, his brown face puckered into so many lines it looked like a condensed road map of New York city.

            “But Gabriel?”  He inquired.

            She had shrugged off her earlier feeling that the dog had been sent to help her.  That was probably just wishful thinking.  Most likely it was coincidental that he had been there to fend off the boar. Boars and dogs were natural enemies anyway, so he might not have been defending her at all.

            “He’ll find us.  You said yourself, dogs have a good sense of direction.”

            Oderic burrowed his toe into the dirt as he thought, then looked up again at the two paths.

            “Let me go find him,” he said. “You wait here and I’ll bring him back.  He can’t be that far ahead. Sure you don’t want to go right?”         

            Trying to appear more confident than she felt, she shook her head, and the gnome set off to get Gabriel. She didn’t mind waiting. They’d begun walking before daybreak and she could use a rest. She sat down along the edge of the trail in a particularly large pile of leaves, some from last year, still brown and crunchy, some from this year, soft and colorful. She leaned back against the smooth bark of a young ash tree and closed her eyes, day dreaming about warm loaves of bread and cups of raspberry mead, until she heard something behind her, a noise, like a low, tuneless whistle. Not like the happy whistle a person might make, but rather like the eerie sound wind might make slipping in through a window left ajar. What was it? She stood up.

            “Oderic?” she called out.  “ODERIC?” 

            No answer came. Feeling more curious than uneasy, she stepped into the forest, leaving the trail behind. She glanced back frequently to remember the way she had come, as Oderic had taught her. She wouldn’t go far, since she didn’t want him to wonder at her absence. But she felt compelled to find out what the noise was, and it was just in front of her. 

            Except, it wasn’t. 

            Then it seemed to be coming from the left. Then ahead of her again.  It was moving. There was no animal that made that sound. Maybe wind was whistling through a hollow tree, but then how could it be moving? Were her ears playing tricks on her? Even though she kept turning around to mark her trail, she was making too many turns, and the trees all looked the same after a while. The forest was all bark and leaves and underbrush. Here a trunk on the ground. There a slight rise in the landscape, or a root sticking out, or an oddly shaped branch. But really, what was the difference? Perhaps she’d wandered far enough. The strange thing, however, and what was a little disconcerting, was that no matter how far she went, the whistling sounded neither closer nor farther away. It sounded just as it had when she had started looking.

            When she looked back at the way she’d come, she half expected to see Gabriel and Oderic there, to have him ask her what she was doing. But then the whistling caught her attention again. Now it sounded like it was coming from behind her, from the trail. Maybe Oderic and Gabriel were tracking it. Suddenly she wanted to get back to them, find out what Oderic thought of it.

            She turned and began to hurry back, then broke into a run. 

            Something in the back of her brain told her it was unwise to run in the forest, that she could not adequately pay attention to where she was going, that it would alert others to her presence, and that only prey animals ran, but she was suddenly anxious to get back to the trail.  Oderic would know what the noise was, and the whistling was really beginning to bother her. She couldn’t escape it, yet neither could she find it. She expected to be back at the trail quickly; she hadn’t really gone that far, had she?  But leaves were rushing by at a furious pace and still she didn’t see the trail ahead. Careening down a small hill her legs got tangled beneath her and she tumbled the rest of the way, rolling over rocks and branches. When she got up and started running again, something warm ran down one knee.  Probably blood.

            Finally, breathless and frustrated, she stopped, having found neither the trail nor the source of the whistling. She covered her ears with her hands.  What did it matter? Whatever and wherever it was, she didn’t care. Only with that thought, it grew louder than ever before, unbearably loud, until it confused all sense of direction and the ground suddenly opened up beneath her.

              Leaves and earth collapsed and she cried out in surprise, sliding, crashing, everything contracting into a great hole in the ground, sending her plummeting downwards, dirt and branches raining in on her.

            For a few long moments she lay stunned, only half aware, but conscious of a sharp throb in her right ankle, twisted awkwardly underneath her. With a groan, she stood up, noticing that her right ankle was red and beginning to swell. She surveyed the deep hole she stood in. If not for all the leaves and branches, it was big enough for her to take several steps in either direction, that is, if she could have walked. But it was the depth that concerned her most. She looked up at a dirt wall that was half again as tall as she was. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble digging down so far and camouflaging this hole.

            The question, of course, was how to get out?

            Oderic and Gabriel must be somewhere nearby, she reasoned, and tried calling for help, but the forest just mocked her with its silence as daylight began to fade, and all she had to show for her efforts was a hoarse voice. The prospect of spending the night in this pit was distinctly unpleasant. In between calling, she tried climbing out, but there were no footholds in its steep walls. She tried stacking some of the branches that had fallen in with her, and twice she succeeded in getting part of the way up, only to slide back down, the second time landing painfully again on her sore ankle. That brought tears to her eyes and she decided she wouldn’t try again until morning when she could see better what she was doing. Huddling in a corner, Emily finally sat and drew her knees up under her chin, occupying herself with digging out dirt from underneath her fingernails. The smell of decaying leaves and damp earth filled her nose, and her demanding stomach rumbled hungrily. 

            Why would someone dig a hole this deep in the first place? Was it intended as a grave? She shuddered. No, who would camouflage a grave? It must be a trap set to catch wild animals? Like boar or deer? But they were hunted, not trapped, as far as she knew, and the forest was off limits to all but the Baron and his favorites. She doubted whether even the forester would resort to such tactics as this.  Would he?  If this hole was his, how often did he check it, she wondered, shivering.  How often did anyone check it? 

            And what about that eerie whistling she had heard? She was almost sure it was no human noise, but . . . what was it? And why had it disappeared when she’d fallen into this pit? 

            She sighed wearily. All this thinking was getting her nowhere; she was mentally going around in circles and becoming foggy, and she finally realized that she couldn’t stop yawning. Although she was shivering, if she could get to  sleep, that would give her some kind of escape. Then she’d try again in the morning to climb out.

            She thought wistfully of Oderic’s chummy little campfire and his stories, wondering if he was out there searching for her. What if he came during the night and she didn’t hear him because she was asleep? Should she stay awake to protect herself?  All her worrying was to no effect because sleep finally got the better of her.

            When she awoke, a bright light dazzled her eyes and she thought the sun had come down to earth, but after a moment of disorientation, she realized it was a torch. She jumped up, calling out to her rescuer and forgetting her injured ankle, then crying out in pain.

            Tittering laughter was her answer, and beyond the torchlight she faintly saw two round, childish faces peering down out of fur-trimmed hoods, their dark eyes twinkling. 

            “Oh thank god you found me. Please, get me out of here!” Warm relief flooded over her. 

            Instead of offering a hand, however, they just stared down with unabashed curiosity, as if seeing some new animal in the zoo.

            She wanted to ask them if they had created this trap, and if so she’d like to give them a piece of her mind, but thought it wiser to wait until she was out.

            “Please, I’m ready to get out of here,” she repeated. “Can you throw something down to help me climb out?”

            They continued to stare unblinkingly for so long that she began to wonder if they were deaf. Or if they spoke another language. But then, her predicament was obvious.

            “Please,” she hated the pleading tone in her voice, “won’t you do something?”

             Finally, the one not holding the torch said in a tremulous voice,

            “I’ve a sash to my tunic.”

            “That might be long enough,” she said hopefully.

            “But if I take it off,” he continued, “my leggings will fall down,” and they went into gales of laughter, finding this idea enormously funny.

            She clenched her fists and took a deep breath, wondering who these people were and why they weren’t helping her.

            She looked from one to the other and tried another approach.  “Someone is waiting for me, you see, at the Baron’s castle. The Seneschal. That’s why I have to get out of here.”  Name dropping was usually effective, and she wasn’t lying.

            The round faced creature holding the torch looked at the other and said, “What is it?”

            “A mortal, of course,” said the other.

            “What do we do with it?”

            They looked at each other, then back at her.

            “It’s supper, I guess,” said the one not holding the torch.

            At the mention of a meal, her mouth watered.

            “Do you have something to eat? I’m really hungry, but I’d prefer to eat up there.”

            “How do they taste?” said the one with the torch.

            His companion shrugged.

            “The King would know.”

            What were they talking about?

            “Was it you that dug this trap?” Emily finally asked in frustration, unable to keep the sharpness out of her voice.

            They nodded innocently.

            “These things are dangerous, you know,” she began, but reined in her anger.  “I mean, why did you do it?”

            “To catch our food, of course,” said one.

            “You’re the biggest catch in a long time.”

            “Though not as big as the knight, two autumns ago,” said the other.

            She felt a sinking in her stomach as she recalled Thea mentioning a knight who had disappeared while hunting in the northern forest, never to be heard from again.

            “But you look much tastier,” said the other.

            “What, um, happened to him?”  These strange, child-like people were suddenly making her nervous.

            “Who, the knight?”said one.

            “Oh, he begged so piteously,” said the other.

            “But he insulted our King,” said the first. “So he wouldn’t have him.”  They stared again at her in their silent, unblinking way.

            What did that mean, ‘he wouldn’t have him’?  If they used this hole to catch their food, then . . . ?   Nervousness grew into fear.

            “There are people in the forest looking for me,” she said, at her wits’ end. “If you help me, they’ll be terribly grateful. If not . . . .”  What would it hurt to threaten a little?

            Neither of them moved, just continuing to stare.  Finally, the one without the torch said, “We have to consult our King.”

            “Yes.  Only he can decide,” said the other.

            “But you can‘t just leave me here!” She said, hysteria creeping into her voice.

            “Piteous,” said one.

            “Like the knight,” said the other, and they turned to leave.

            “No!  Wait!  Wait!” she called after them, and the two heads reappeared. “I’m really cold down here, and hungry. Can’t you help me?  Just some food, a blanket, anything?”

             They whispered to one another for a few moments.

            She still couldn’t believe they weren’t going to help her out.

            Finally, one of them said, “I probably shouldn’t be doing this,” and taking off his green cloak with the fur trimmed hood, tossed it down. 

            “Any water?“ she pressed, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt.       

            “Should we make her beg some more?” said the one holding the torch who still wore his cloak, to his companion.

            Again they started giggling, finding this very amusing.

            What kind of people were they, who would dig pits and then not help people out who had fallen in by accident?

            “Who are you, anyway?” she couldn’t resist asking. 

            As if she had uttered a spell, they instantly disappeared, and the torchlight along with them. No amount of calling brought them back, or brought anyone else for that matter, so she finally sat down and wrapped herself in the warmth of the short cloak.