Where No One Belongs

He hadn’t killed any of them. The animals, fungi, insects, and even the plants did that. He’d misled people. Fought some. He’d secured their supply train and freed the burdened beasts. Animals carried off items that could aid the forest. Every tool he studied. Unlike the forest, he could learn the ways of the people infesting the woods.

::Is my faith in you misplaced, Chosen One?::

Caius often thought of the forest’s voice as a whisper. It wasn’t, really. It was the glint in a rabbit’s eye, the rustle of a fern, the caving of earth and underbrush, the stuffy closeness of it all. Not really a whisper, it was the resentment left when the humans thought their fumes had simply disappeared.

“I did the best I could,” Caius said to the forest. Resentment of his own was an ant hill inside him, but he covered it up. “Look! None of them made it out.”

It was true. Shaped like him, they'd never stand like him again. Raised by the woods, it was hard to tell if he wore bark and animal hide or if he had grown it. At his hip was the Holy Spathe, a sheath-like creation grown from special plants.

::You use their fire.::

Skittering. Groans of dying wood. A fox den’s scent of betrayal.

Guilt was a slippery moss in his hard-to-reach places. “They need their supplies. Hitting them there helps. Besides, I have an idea.”

::Squirrels spread seeds. Fungi and insects help the plants and devour the dead. The trees, the trees, the trees. All is the forest, where no one belongs, only the many. The Holy Spathe is yours. See how it gives our side new teeth.::

Whenever a weapon came at him, he would defend himself with the Spathe. It would swallow the weapon and feed the forest with the essence of human works. Plants were growing with metal barbs. A breed of slug was learning to rust and corrode human tools -- as long as they weren’t iron.

Only Caius could handle iron, and even he found it uncouth.

“There are many of them and one of me.”

::You are not one. You are of the forest. You are many.::

“Yet I am like them. And I’ve noticed,” he said as he looked around his little campsite made of a ruined wagon. The woods loomed and they disapproved of him. They made him feel lonely though he was their hero. Yet he loved them and they were beautiful. “I’ve noticed,” he said to the sylvan air, “that the Denied Way grows greater round. That you keep me farther back. The humans and their village grow. Even for all the harm we do to their hunters, their trades, their…vehicles,” he said with a sneer.

The forest grew.

It went about its business of sunlight, water, and time. Animals still had eyes, but there was no message in their gleam. Plants wove or danced in the ways anyone could see. No whispers stowed away on the wind. The soil was earth and not a mass of hidden legs. Nevertheless, he was sniffed upon, even if there was no obvious nose. Nothing with eyes watched him.

Most of the time, Caius ate plants. But now he enjoyed the roasting meat of one of the animals. After much thanks and many pardons. But the animal died in the battle. Unlike the forest, he sickened if he ate uncooked flesh. Chosen One, but not one of them.

From these raids on the humans, Caius – himself human – gradually collected the clothing he needed to imitate them. He didn’t practice wearing their garbs because he shared the forest’s distaste for them. No one taught him. Because of injuries and so on, no one person who matched his size could provide an entire outfit.

A day came when there were three vehicles. A wagon, heavily loaded, and two sheltered carriages. Caius got well ahead of them. The humans needed their roads and tracks. Imagine choosing to give yourself such a limitation! He shook his head. His villager kit was bundled up and entrusted to the bowl of a tree. Arrayed for battle, Caius combined skulls and animal bones with bark and an assortment of woven vines to cover his features and protect his skin and organs. He coordinated with the animals and even asked the trees for aid. Three in one strike was ambitious.

But then, this whole situation was a little different. Whispers were at the corner of the eye, the back of the mind. Ears were flattened. Squirrels and foxes ran or climbed to and fro. Unremarkable to one of the house-besotted villagers, these things were the voice of the wood to Caius. Trees shuddered, sprinkling out loose leaves or acorns, even though he knew there was nothing in them to make such a ruckus.

::The last time they were so numbered, we suffered fire and the bite of axes. They got more food of us than they had bellies, and fouled it with their salts. We have more subtle answers than your plan.::

Odours from flowers and shifts in colours, as from chameleons, were telling him about traps. Altering the road. Poisons. Insects and irritants. Even using some of the terrible things that bred in the stretches of the wood where the trees kept their hate. Caius only smirked confidently.

The carriages, he knew, put a level of importance on things that didn’t matter. Paints and dyes, for instance, or the silks of creatures far from this forest. People, as far as he could make out, were the primary status of these vehicles. Though why any one deer should be more of a deer than any other deer was unclear to him. Whenever these carriages were captured or destroyed, their hosts were particularly soft of body. Often of mind, as well – at least by any measure Caius knew of the matter.

The only visible person was driving the wagon in the front and centre. The two carriages flanked it, with horses Caius knew to be particularly splendid. Yet they were broken, and so thoroughly enthralled that they didn’t even need a driver. They followed the wagon.

When Caius shot forward and stags rammed the sides of the vehicles, the horses didn’t spook. Vines coincidentally fell from branches and obscurely high, light-dappled canopy. By the strangest of chances, these vines had been attached to growths of bulbous fungi or strange fruits. These were torn or fell from the vines as the trees erupted in birds and raging monkeys. Wolves joined the fray and still no terror from the horses. They snorted, as though annoyed, but didn’t take any harm.

The wheels of the wagon and carriages, however, were gummed up by gunk that spewed from the exploding fruits and fungi. There was thrown soil, including waste, from the animals on all the vehicles. Scratches, thrown rocks, and bite marks abounded. The horses were more thoroughly secured than ever before. While unharmed, they were not freed.

Caius approached the lead wagon. A large box atop its cargo had a partially opened hatch.

::The rolling dens,:: came the whispers of the trees and the surprised animal cries. ::They are hollow. Nothing has lived in them today. Some of us died in there. We do not know the twisted human trickery that made this so.::

The driver, Caius had noticed earlier, had been dressed like most of the obscenely wealthy merchants who came and went. They had large, circular hats over a netted mask, and this driver was of the same order. Fully dressed against insects. He couldn’t have scrambled into the box with all that intact, however, and Caius knew snakes had slipped in during the chaos.

So he doffed most of his combat gear. Now wearing little more than his deerskin tunic, he climbed in. Snake venom didn’t need long to remove the threat, after all.

He fell.

The woods whispered malice in answer to his cry of pain. The box had a false bottom, and he landed upon iron spikes. They were small; to make this trap work, the driver needed to clamber over them in the dark. Raised by the fey magic of the wild wood, Caius felt more sting from iron than a normal human. The whispers suddenly went silent, though he could still hear the clamour of the animals outside.

No words.

Just raw, animal pain.

Acting from the commands of his spinal cord, Caius shot forward in the narrow space, shouting and shrieking from the withdrawal of the biting metal. Suddenly, sky.

Looming animal body weight and scent should have been more comforting than this. But the whispers were separated from him. As the light released his eyes, he got his bearings. The wagon had been set up to appear densely packed with barrels. The entire centre space had been left empty, with access to holes carved into the barrels containing things like ration packs and manacles.

More surprising than any of this was the driver. He sat, still breathing, his back braced against a barrel. A dead snake lay beside him, its head bashed. He was dishevelled, his arms and head exposed, and a bloody bite visible on the arm opposite the snake. At first, he’d been looking at all the animals above them. The monkeys had torn the box shelter off and were peering malevolently at him. But now he stared in horror at Caius.

His face was the same.

Not similar to Caius. Not like a brother.

It was the face Caius knew in the surface of the rivers. His own face. Down to one nostril being a smidge larger than the other. The driver had been heavily perfumed. The barrels reeked of the fruits of the trees the villagers had stolen from this wood. Separated from the whispers by iron fences, they grew their fruits in a panicked abundance, and the humans traded them for coins and strangely exciting papers.

Those overwhelming stinks had been why none of the forest’s forces had noticed the iron trap.

“Why do you look like me?” Caius demanded.

“How do you know my speech? How do you wear my face?” the driver asked.

“It is my face. And the forest whispered me the words of the humans. So that I could learn the speech of the villagers and the road defilers. Did you make this trap for me?”

“My name is Anoki. We know you as the mould-wight.” At the blinking frown of Caius, Anoki added, “Your…armour. Outfit. You look like a mossy rock or mouldy bones, something common enough on the sides of the road. You’ve been denting my profits, but I could have made a fortune…” he glared at the trap behind Caius as though it were a failed employee.

“You are not like the others. No mere trader. You’re their leader, aren’t you?” Caius leaned against a barrel himself. The animals above prowled. They snarled and glared. It seemed they knew he couldn’t hear the whispers. They must be able to smell blood and iron. Caius didn’t realise his posture was just like Anoki’s.

Anoki noticed. “We say it takes a village to raise a child. But I’m the child who raised the village. I thrived, but never quite felt like I fit in.” He looked at the snake. “Venom doesn’t do half-measures. Why am I alive?”

Caius stared at the barrel in front of him and rested his head on the one behind. Iron spikes, covered in his blood, stood on his left. A version of him who’d grown up in the village sat bleeding on his right. “I could have signalled them all to kill you. Even without the whispers. How did you know about iron?”

“I didn’t. Not really. We know it helps against this mad wood. You don’t seem offended that I tried to kill you.” Anoki didn’t bother about any of the threats around him now. Not being killed and not being harmed were different things. The venom meant he could not fight. “You look like my business rival when I acquired the contracts. He must be why none of my help did anything.”

“The carriages are empty. No help.”

“Why am I alive?”

“A snake’s venom won’t kill anything born of the forest.”

“But I’m one of the villagers…”

Caius looked at the life he’d been meant for. “You’re a Changeling, Anoki.”

“Why do you weep?”

“I was the Chosen One.”

Anoki frowned. “What?”

“Changelings are fey of the forest. Not human. But raised to look like them. Like the one they replaced.”

Anoki puzzled at that for some time. “We thought I had allergies. I don’t wear metal. I had to hire someone to set up the trap. The forest doesn’t hedge its bets, does it?”

“What is a bet?”

For some reason, Anoki laughed.

Caius watched his alternate and fingered the Spathe. The sacred weapon. “If you were a Changeling, and I was raised…”

Anoki reached into one of the barrels. The animals hissed or screamed. He ignored them and withdrew poultices, cat gut with needles, and a bottle of liquor. “I will tend your wounds.”

Caius laughed, and he knew why.

But he didn’t stop his double. He was not the double. But that didn’t matter.

As Anoki worked, he said, “I wondered why so many of the villagers resisted when I started making outside connections. Why they cared so much about old traditions. Why they didn’t appreciate the many wonders, conveniences, and new things my monies made possible. They knew.”

“That you’re a Changeling?”

Anoki shook his head. “I thought it was shamanic hokum. Their talk about the woods, how they saw intention. Why I always seemed so different. If I’m one of things fey exchanges you speak of, then I was there for the conflict. Though that couldn’t have destroyed the village by itself. You must have been part of some two-pronged attack. I could think of better strategies. Do these whispers…hm.”

“To be a wolf cub raised by foxes. I know this feeling,” Caius said. “I can’t be the Chosen One if I’m a Changeling trade. I can’t be one of you.”

“Nor can I return. Not as I was. By now, my rival would have made his move. I am likely penniless. Ousted.”

“The forest benefits if all of us in our human shapes are no longer walking under its canopy,” Caius said as he unstrapped the Spathe from himself.

“Does it?” Anoki asked.