Prologue: The First Step Of A Thousand
Sometimes we only know the worth of something after we already have lost it, and sometimes we only learn the price of something when we are already paying it.
For Horak, a lumberjack who had never left the village of his birth for any longer then a day or two, this addage always seemed reserved for the tales of minstrels and preachers. It was knight, and kings, and sorcerers who bargained with things weighty enough to warrant such words. After all, he would pay the price for being a flintskin when having his axe sharpened just as a scoundrel turned lord would pay for the enemies he left in his wake, but who would think to ponder about the first instead of the second? For simple men like him, the stakes were likewise simple.
Or at least so he would have said just a single season ago. Now? Now he understood that it took neither crowns nor sorcery to begin a solemn ballad. All it took was a wife who had fallen ill during the harvest, pushing herself to earn some coin despite her growing belly so that the child within would need to fear no hunger in the coming winter.
Already the coin was gone again and then some. Poultices and philters came not cheap in these part. And yet she grew weaker and weaker with each day, her belly growing ever slower while her limbs and mind began to wither. The midwife had long given up to comfort Horak with false hopes. Come the first snow, he would bury his wife and the child that never had seen the light of day. If they would even last that long.
But there were other things that he could do. Others whose aid he could ask for. It would not matter that he had barely enough silver to last them the winter, for it would not be silver that they would ask for.
To find her was both impossible and yet so very easy. There was no path that led to her home, no direction to walk or trail to follow. For his whole life Horak had walked through these forests and neither he no any of the other lumberjacks had ever seen it even in the distance. But now that he was looking for her? Now the path would find him. Trees and shrubs, ridges and trails, they all would twist and turn to carry him to his destination.
She knew that he was coming for her, a squirming bundle in his arm to offer as others had done before him. With each step he took, he wordlessly spoke the offer again. With each step he took, the forest he knew as his home turned strange and alien to his senses. The calls of the birds growing fainter, the edges of trees growing sharper. The damp musk of autumn giving way to a smell that evaded all attempts of his to remember, let alone describe.
Nothing marked the end of his journey or at least nothing Horak could have comprehended. One moment he was walking among trees that seemed to leer at him for trespassing among their number, the next he stood in a small clearing, the ground a sea of leaves that seemed to shift by their own will just at the edge of his vision.
In the center of the clearing though, there was a thing that may once have been a woman. Crouching over the cold ashes of a fire, the figure seemed normal enough at first glance, but then the oddities began to sink. Vines and brambles were not festooned to her gangly form, but grew from pallid flesh as if it was soil. Fingers that did not end in mere nails, but in sharpened claws as black as midnight. A face that could not be glimpsed beneath the flowing, matted hair the moved in a wind that was not. In between those inky tresses, there was only a hint of a mouth that was all sharpened teeth and the baleful glow of eyes that seemed to see much farther then mere flesh.
She of the forest. The woodswitch. Taker of unfaithful wives and unruly children. Tempter of men and devourer of hearts. These and many other, darker epitaphs had been bestowed on her, her true name either not uttered out of fear or lost to the years.
But other titles she bore too. Granter of miracles and calmer of beasts. The warden of the woods who kept things much worse then her at bay.
She who could bargain with death. She who could turn away his gaze. She who some claimed could even breath life back into flesh that had gone still and cold.
With a dull thud the bag landed right between them, the rough hemp slipping from Horaks boneless fingers. Briefly the witch looked to him, then raised herself and approached the offering in a gait that would fit better on a beast then on the body of man. As if feeling her approach, the feeble struggles from within redoubled, but there was no escaping now that dark claws swiftly moved to the cloth.
A shiver of guilt ran through the lumberjack and he averted his eyes upon hearing the weak hisses coming from the bag. The old cat had caught many a rat and snake for him and it was ill reward for her years of companionship, yet needs must, and the witch would not take payment in silver or lumber for the winter.
To his surprise though, the next thing he heard was neither scream nor tearing as he had expected, instead a familiar purr reached his ears. When he looked up again, his cat sat contentedly before the witch, wicked claws running in a even rythm through fur and caressing the animal. For the first time he locked eyes with the nameless thing of the forest and her burning gaze was full of reproach.
"You shouldn't have scared her," she spoke while her thumbs gently ran along a tiny jaw while her burning gaze met that of the old feline. "It is ill omen if she is scarred."
Before Horak could speak a single word in reply, the womans grip tightened for a moment. Flesh and bone came apart without a sound, the animal showing no sign of pain or distress as its neck parted like wet clay. In one hand the witch now held the cats head, her finger still caressing it and their eyes still firmly on each other. With the other she lifted the lifeless body towards her face, her oily hair masking the sight but not the sound of teeth tearing through bone and cartilage.
As if rooted to the spot, all that the lumberjack could do was stand and stare at the gruesome display. The woodswitch paid him no mind, too busy staring at the head in her hand seemed to decay before his very eyes and feasting on the body with the other. Thrice he opened his mouth to speak and thrice his throat refused to make even a single sound. The words kept tumbling through his thoughts, despairing pleas waring with ill-advised demands, yet none of them wished to be the one spoken.
Before he could gape like a fish for the fourth time, the dry rasp of the witches voice took pity on Horak. "For what you came I know already, for what seeress would I be otherwise?" Her head turned to him, her eyes finally leaving the remains of his cat, though neither did they look upon him. Piercing was the sickly white glow, focusing at something that the lumberjack could only guess at while she spoke on. "Do you know what you came here for though? Death does not yield lightly what it already grasped. There is no turning back once you took a step on twisting paths carved by fate and no guarantee there is where to you will walk them."
The spell upon him had been lifted by those words, his thoughts no longer twisting upon themselves from fear and indecision. This was a question he had pondered long before he took the first step into the woods on this day and the answer easily passed his lips. "Is that not what it means to be a spouse and father? To walk a uncertain path for the sake of those dear to you?" Just as quickly as the steel and vigor had flushed through his spine it departed him again when the witch did not respond and just silently kept staring as if her eyes were roaming through his soul, laying bare every secret hidden within.
If it was a moment or an age that passed, he could not say, but finally she spoke again, lifting the desiccated skull of his cat for him to see. "On each fang a drop of blood, taken from the veins of a willing man or woman. When the fangs touch your wives skin while she rests, she will take the strength offered as her own." Slowly she lowered the skull, resting it gently on a flat stone that Horak had not noticed before. "Five nights and she will rise. If she does not, she never will."
Like a starving man before a loaf of bread he tried to rush towards the skull, his steps leaden though as if he had stood all day rooted in that spot. He had come for a miracle and nothing less he was offered, the price of his cats life a small one to pay for that of his wive and the child she bore. Though as he had reached the stone, his hand almost touching the dried flesh stretched over the bones, he froze. Hesitantly he repeated the witches words to himself. No. This was not the full price. He had not bought strength for his wife, but the means to give it to her.
A thousand questions still weighed heavily upon the lumberjacks mind, yet he knew that he no answers would be given to him. When his gaze lifted from the skull now gingerly held in his hand, he was alone on a clearing he knew all too well. He had chosen his path the moment he made the first step and now left for him to do was to walk it towards it's end.
Of all these events, you knew nothing, for your were not present for them. In the end, Horak would tell you tale, even though he would have preferred to keep this secret until the day he would die. Many a strange event over the years would have made so much more sense to you, had you just known the story back then. For while you might have not been present for that fateful meeting in the woods, it was still part of your tale, for you are Jaromir, son of Horak, touched by powers from beyond this world before you had even entered it properly.
What you did know all this time though is that you were different. It was nothing that could be seen on you, no witchmark or spirit-touch marring your features, but it was there all the same. People could feel it by your main presence and those who knew you for any time would quickly learn about it.
What was the thing that marked you?
[ ] To See The Unseen
You have always seen things that others did not. At first they thought you were spinning tales, then that you were imagining things that were not there. With time you learned to keep quiet about these things, the scorn shown you for mentioning these things a constant companion. Few would willingly spend time with you, the strange boy who was not right in the head, but while the village shut you out of their world, you could just peer into another.
[ ] Fickle Fate
Strange events have accompanied you as long as you can remember. Streaks of fortune that left you the envy of others turning into a string of failures and back again without rhyme or reason. To you there seem to be only great luck and grave misfortune with little room in between. Thus some flock to you, hoping you fortune to rub off on them while other shun you out of fear that it might.
[ ] Strange Charm
Even though you never understood why or how, people still love to be in your presence for no reason any of them can name. You are not gifted with great charm or grace, neither being so much nicer or more interesting to be around then others, but still people flock to your presence for reasons they can't name. None the less, you learned to appreciate the attention and the many friends you made, even though some of the older people whisper about what other kinds of attention you might draw.
AN: It is done.
