Chapter 9: Back to the Woods

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It was near midday, the day after they had fled the city and the Obsidian Order. A bright sun peeked from behind a passing cloud, and the birds in the trees beside the road sang to them. Jepp stopped pushing the cart for a moment to rest. He looked over his shoulder and back down the hill to the now distant city of Marntz. Cara, walking beside him, turned to look, too.

 

“I wonder if we’ll ever see it again,” she said softly as she walked a few more steps and then looked again at the city that had been her home for many years.

 

“I don’t know, Cara, but this surely isn’t the way I saw us spending our twilight years,” Jepp replied as he turned to look at her.

 

Cara just nodded in agreement.

 

April and Cy, who had been walking a short distance ahead of the other two, stopped and waited for the others to catch up.

 

“We should be there long before sundown if we can keep a good pace,” Cy told April.

 

He repeated the comment for Jepp and Cara as they came to stand beside him. A look of relief crossed Jepp’s face, and Cara looked closely at Cy’s face, trying to read the emotions that were displayed there.

 

As shadows from the passing clouds slid across the hillside, Cy stared up at the sky and thought about what their next move would be. He knew the four of them had been lucky so far. There had been no sign of pursuit by the Order, and the cool, clean air of the woodlands had made their efforts seem less strenuous somehow. In the sky above Stell’s Reach, though, he could see dark clouds amassing. If their good fortune held out, they would make it to the relative security of the cabin he had built deep in the woods.

 

“Has it only been two days?”

 

The thought startled him. It seemed to Cy as though much more time had passed when so much had happened in the interim. He hoped to form some kind of plan there, and he knew that to protect his friends he must unlock the mystery that surrounded April. The odd visions he had when she was in her nightly trance disturbed him far more than he wanted to admit.

 

Cy started walking again, and April started walking with him. She noted the distant look in his eyes as she walked beside him.

 

“Cy,” she asked, “What’s on your mind?”

 

He looked at her and tried to smile, but a grimace was all he could manage. “I’ve been thinking about all that has happened since you showed up. It seems to follow an old pattern that I’ve seen before. I’m trying to figure out how it all ties together.”

 

April’s expression was troubled, and it reminded him of how vulnerable she was, of how vulnerable they all were now.

 

“Are you thinking about C’elaine?” she asked.

 

“In a way, yes, but not about her specifically. There’s so much in our current situation that ties the past to the present, so it’s more than just her.” he replied.

 

They walked on for a short while as Cy thought about the past. Something about it nagged at him. He was sure there was a link that tied his parents and this frightened young woman and his beloved C’elaine together. All the signs pointed to his own existence as the point at which all the threads came together, but he didn’t want to admit it. It was an enigma, a puzzle he must solve, if the four of them were going to survive. Just as the human eye has a blind spot that it isn’t able to see, the connection still eluded him.

 

“Do you remember the song you were singing that morning after I found you? It’s an ancient tune, one I haven’t heard in years. C’elaine used to sing that song while she worked.” Cy said to April.

 

Behind them, Jepp and Cara As they walked on Cy told April the story of how he had come to live with the folks he called his parents.

 

“There was another young woman lost in the woods many years ago,” Cy said. “My mother had been in the forest looking for some special herbs when she found the young woman wandering in the woods.”

 

“Apparently the woman died the next day after giving birth to her child, a boy. My parents adopted him and never told anyone else about his origins until they told me, and what they told me stunned me. I half refused to believe it until they showed me the blanket she was found with, one very much like this one.”

 

He pointed to the blanket tucked in beside his pack.

 

“I was that child,” Cy concluded.

 

They walked on in silence for a moment before he looked at April and said, “The young woman my mother found was pregnant, and she had amnesia, too. You were both lost in the woods, alone. I’m inclined to believe your situations must be related somehow because the parallels are just too uncanny.”

 

April stopped and took hold of Cy’s hand. Her eyes glistened with tears as she looked at him, but her voice held a quiet determination when she spoke. “Cy, you have to tell me the truth. What’s happening to me?”

 

She gripped his hand harder as she finished speaking. Cy’s heart leaped at her touch. Something like electricity charged his thoughts with memories of C’elaine. He told April of C’elaine’s last days and the terrible loss she had suffered, how her memories had been stolen from her, and only the love and patience of her family had kept her from losing her mind. Patiently, he related all that had happened to C’elaine all those years ago. It was agony to relive the despair he had felt, and he shuddered at the thought of the pain he had seen C’elaine endure. All the suffering he had seen in her eyes came back to him in a flood of emotion.

 

April listened to Cy’s story in silence as tears welled up in her eyes.

 

“She wouldn’t let me come near her once the visions started happening to her,” Cy explained. “I think that was the worst part of it all. I couldn’t do anything to help her when she needed me most, and that fact haunts me to this day.”

 

“I’m not going to let that happen to you. Whatever it takes, whatever I have to do, I’ll find a way, somehow, to keep you safe and get you back home,” said Cy.

 

April looked down at her feet and whispered softly to herself, “I know you will, Cy. I know you will.”

 

The dark clouds that had been over Stell’s Reach were now spreading across the sky, and they were growing darker and more ominous with each passing minute. A distant rumble of thunder resonated through the forest. As he searched his memories for some clue, something to tell him what to do next, all Cy could think of was C’elaine.

 

“Hey,” Jepp called out, “I think we’ve got trouble coming,” as he pointed down the hill behind them.

 

Far back down in the valley rode a troop of black-clad men on horseback, more than a dozen of them, and they were riding hard. Cy knew that he and his friends were their target.

 

“What have I gotten them into?” Cy thought.

 

The twists and turns of the forest road had hidden the small group until now, but the close proximity of the riders forced Cy to a quick decision.

 

As they made their way around a bend in the road hid the forest hid the four of them from view of the pursuing riders. By some strange coincidence the path to the clearing where he had found April was just ahead. Cy hesitated only a moment before he decided to take that path, hoping to lose the pursuit in the woods.

 

“Looks like we’re about to come full circle,” Cy said to April . He waved to Jepp and Cara and motioned for the two of them to catch up.

 

While they waited April looked up at the clouds brooding over the snow-capped summit of Stell’s Peak. The leading edge of the storm was almost on them. More thunder drummed across the sky, and the first drops of rain began to spatter the ground.

 

“We have to get off the path.” Cy’s said to Jepp and Cara as they came to a stop in front of him.

 

We’re ready for anything you tell us to do, Cy, said Jepp, and Cara nodded her assent.

 

They all headed up the path toward the clearing with Cy helping Jepp push the cart up the sloping trail while Cara and April walked ahead. Before long they were all soaked to the skin as the rain fell harder and harder. Cy tried to get April to take her silver blanket and use it to keep her and Cara from the rain., but she wouldn’t take it.

 

“Besides,” she said with a giggle, “it’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?”

 

Cy and Jepp both just laughed and pushed the cart a little faster, determined to get far away from the main path as quickly as they could. A few minutes later pounding hooves and the jingle of horse tack sounded along the main path, then faded away as the pursuing riders passed by. Luck had brought them to the path and let the riders pass by unaware. Cy knew that luck had been with them once again, but he wasn’t sure how long that good fortune would last.

 

The rain began to ease a bit as they reached the forest clearing. Cy led the group and headed to the center of the clearing with the idea of hiding them and the cart on the far side of the rock. Jepp readily agreed with him. After the long hours he’d just spent pushing the cart, he was ready for a much needed rest. Cy thought of trying to make a fire but decided wet wood and hostile pursuers ruled out that idea. Instead the four huddled close together under April’s blanket and waited for the storm to end.