The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

‘Fey’

(mc, f/f, m/f, nc)

DISCLAIMER:

This material is for adults only; it contains explicit sexual imagery and non-consensual relationships. If you are offended by this type of material or you are under legal age in your area, do NOT continue.

SYNOPSIS:

Ferndew, a forest dryad, discovers an ancient evil in the Forbidden Grove.

* * *

‘Fey’

Part One

* * *

The child had strayed from home.

It was growing dark; the shadows of the trees had crossed the clearing and were already vanishing into the deeper gloom of night. She was unsure which path had led her here—the butterfly had filled her awareness as she raced, laughing, into the grassy meadow.

And after the butterfly had fluttered up into the treetops, there had been other insects, and puff-head flowers to kick, and in the scuffed patch near the sentry tree were pretty rocks to collect and sort by shape and color.

Now, realizing she was hungry, the child looked up, and didn’t know in which direction lay home.

* * *

The wolf was hungry, too.

It had come from high-cold-place down into the warmer forestlands many days ago, but although the game was fatter and more plentiful, so too were the native wolves, and they had seen no reason to welcome their ragged cousin.

Only at the edge of the woods, where the forest blended into human-land, had the wolf found prey—a fat goat, tied and bleating. It had taken the goat where it stood, but as it gorged itself on the spurting flesh humans came from the wood-cave nearby and chased it away with sharppain.

Now, hurt and angry, the wolf skulked through the woods. It needed food, and soon.

Then it smelled the child.

Human-scent held fear, but the wolf’s hunger was greater... and perhaps it scented as well a chance for revenge.

* * *

The child was crying, now—it was dark in the woods, and frightening, and the trunks which had seemed so sturdy and good to climb now twisted in leering shapes, when she could see them at all. The night noises of birds and insects had become a chorus of fear as she stumbled over roots and stones, pleading with whatever spirits might hear her thoughts to just let her get home and she would never run off again.

And please, let home be in the direction she was going.

* * *

The wolf could hear the child, now, thrashing through the woods. It was no adult human, to run it off with stick and with steel. It was a child, lost and alone.

Easy meat.

The wolf loped towards it.

* * *

The child tripped and fell headlong. She was sobbing, unable to keep quiet despite the danger that pressed in all around her. She was lost, badly lost, and knew that further running was useless.

She sat, and rubbed dirty hands into her eyes.

When she looked up, she saw a light.

Blinking to clear the tears, the child looked again. Yes, it was a light! She shot to her feet, and began to run.

Mother! Father! I’m here!

* * *

Surprised, the wolf began to trot after it. Its prey had stopped moving, and the wolf was just circling in to leap upon it from behind when it leapt up and ran away. The wolf hadn’t been close enough for it—a human, weak of nose and ear—to sense it. Why then had it run?

No matter. The wolf would catch it.

* * *

The child ran towards the light. It flickered, dancing, but as the child ran the light drew no nearer. It was as though whoever held the lantern was moving away as fast as she ran towards them.

Desperate, gasping, she redoubled her speed.

* * *

The wolf broke into a run. The human wood-cave was ahead, and it needed to bring its prey down now. Three more bounds, and a pounce-

Something grabbed its leg!

Confused, startled, the wolf fell, fetching up against a tree trunk. It leapt to its feet, teeth bare, ready for battle.

There was nothing there.

* * *

The child never heard it. The light was gone, now, but there was another light beyond where it had been. The light of windows—the light of home!

Sobbing, covered with dirt, she raced out of the woods. The long spear her mother held didn’t even register as the child ran to where she stood on the small porch and leapt into her outstretched arms.

* * *

Gwynna’s heart throbbed as she lifted Arden to her chest. She had been so afraid when Juerm realized that Arden was missing, and the goat dead in the yard. They had driven off the wolf, but with Arden lost in the woods...

Juerm was still out searching, but a Woodsman was well able to take care of himself. He would return soon enough, to find that all was well again.

How did Arden find her way back?

Holding Arden tightly, Gwynna’s eyes turned towards the woods.

There. Behind the birdsuckle bush. A flash of pale skin around pale green eyes. Then it was gone.

Gwynna smiled, and gave thanks.

* * *

Ferndew followed the wolf as it loped back into the woods. She felt sorry for it—it was hurt, and hungry—but it was a mountain wolf and didn’t belong here. Petalcurve had told her that the wolves of the Forest had already met it, and rejected it.

She skipped along the path. The wolf couldn’t sense her—nothing mortal could, if she didn’t want it to—and she followed along until she got bored. It was hunting mice, now, or other small nocturnal creatures, and the Forest had plenty of those.

The Woodsmen were nice, anyway, and although the Elders had told all the dryads to avoid them Ferndew liked to be nice to them. She knew that the other dryads did, too, although of course they never actually went and talked with them or anything. But the Woodsmen kept to their side of the Compact and sometimes left the dryads nice things like combs and ribbons, so Ferndew saw no harm in trying to be nice to them back.

Besides, there were other humans out there who didn’t respect the Compact, and the Woodsmen kept them away. That’s what the Elders said.

Ferndew yawned, and stretched. Time for sleep. Sometimes she stayed up very late—once she had stayed awake until dawn—but tonight was just a normal night like any other. She walked through the forest until she found a nice tall tree, and then walked up it into the crown. There was a nest of sleeping magpies there, but they wouldn’t even know she was there.

Ferndew asked the tree to hold onto her, and went to sleep.

* * *

In the morning the treetop was shrouded with fog. It was Ferndew’s favorite type of weather—that’s how she got her name. She smiled, and watched as the magpies woke up and began to bicker with each other.

She savored the feel of the mist as she stood up, and walked down the tree. After pausing to thank the tree, she headed off in the direction of the Elders, to see if there was anything they wanted her to do today.

Even for a dryad, for whom brambles opened and thorns made way, the walk from the Woodsman edge of the woods to the Elder Glade took hours. But the Forest was never dull, and Ferndew stopped to play with some otters and to watch a spider spin a web. The sun was almost at its zenith as she entered the woods around the Elder Glade.

The trees here were ancient, reaching hundreds of feet into the sky, and no brush grew beneath them. There was always a stillness around the Elder Glade; animals rarely came here.

Ferndew grew solemn as she walked into the Glade. There was a stone in the center, with a sword plunged into it. Moss grew on the pommel. Around it stood the Elders.

The sheer power of their lives awed Ferndew. The great old tree she had slept in was like a candle next to the roaring fires that were the Elders. Gingerly, she dropped to one knee and reached out to them with her mind.

They returned her greeting, and asked about her doings. She told them of the mountain wolf, and the Woodsman child—dryads had no secrets from the Elders. As usual, they neither admonished nor praised her, just listened with interest. In turn, they spoke to her of news that came to them from the Earth, through their roots, and the Air, through their leaves. There were migrations afoot, and changes in the rain—Ferndew was always humbled by the fact that she was only one being in a great Forest, and the Forest only one forest in a great World.

When they had finished, they asked that she take a waterstone from the Glade to a tree near the edge of the Forest. The tree was to become a new Sentinel, not an Elder but able to watch and communicate. A nearby Sentinel was growing old, and would soon die; Petalcurve was on her way to retrieve the waterstone buried at its base.

Ferndew curtseyed gracefully, and fetched the waterstone from where it lay at the foot of the boulder. She could feel the thoughts of the Elders fade as she left the Glade.

She let herself become excited. Petalcurve! Petalcurve was Ferndew’s favorite friend of all the dryads—dryads spent most of their time alone, fulfilling the requests of the Elders, but if Ferndew could find Petalcurve before she wandered very far, the two of them would have time to play.

Waterstone clutched firmly in her left hand—for dryads wore no clothes, owned none other than a small stash of ribbons and beads left them by the Woodsmen—Ferndew set off towards the soon-to-be-Sentinel tree.

* * *

She slept that night in a giant beech, which clung with firm roots to a creek overhang, and let the quiet patter of the

water lull her to sleep. In the morning she continued, faster than usual, forsaking the normal stops for contemplation and play that marked a dryad’s journey.

At midafternoon she reached her destination—from the uppermost tufts of an oak she could see the edge of the Forest, the dark green of the foliage giving way to the golden waves of the plains beyond. On a hilltop at the very edge of the horizon a small castle raised its towers into the sky.

The new Sentinel tree was visible, too—Ferndew had touched minds with the Elders and she could see her destination even with her eyes closed, so picking out its leafy top from among the trees surrounding it was simple. But she scanned the horizon also for the old Sentinel, knowing that Petalcurve would be there, or had been there, or would soon come.

She spied it and clapped her hands with delight. With a light foot, Ferndew set off across the treetops, gliding from bough to bough as she leapt towards her destination. The old Sentinel stood head and shoulders above its neighbors, but many of its upper branches were dead and bare.

Ferndew reached the tree and raced down the trunk. She could feel its power, a gentle energy greater than that of the other trees in the Forest. Gingerly, she reached out with her mind and asked her question.

Petalcurve had already been there. Disappointed, Ferndew thanked the old tree and looked around. Sure enough, there was a fresh hole dug among its roots.

Disappointed, Ferndew made her way towards the new Sentinel. The waterstone was smooth in her hand, and she swung it back and forth as she traipsed through the underbrush.

Then a whole bundle of leaves hit her in the face, and she stopped, surprised.

Petalcurve laughed and threw another.

“So you were waiting for me?”

Petalcurve nodded. “The Elders said that you were going to be bringing the new waterstone, so I raced over here so I could see you.”

Ferndew tingled with delight. ”I hurried over here to see you, too,” she replied. “But I got to the Elders after you. I had been over by the Woodsmen.”

“The Woodsmen? Why?”

“Just felt like it. The Elders had asked me to talk to some beavers out beyond them, and on the way back I saw that mountain wolf. It was hunting one of the human’s children, but I stopped it.”

Petalcurve cooed. “Did the humans see you?”

“Not really,” Ferndew said. “The girlchild was too scared, and I only let the mother see me for a moment.”

Petalcurve hugged her. “You’re so sweet.” She flounced back, and lifted Ferndew’s hand, taking it in her own. “Let’s go bury the waterstone and then we can play.”

Hand in hand, the two skipped through the woods. They reached the new Sentinel tree, and while Ferndew searched for the right spot among its roots to bury the stone, Petalcurve bounced around the area, summoning squirrels. She raced up trees and back down again until she had a dozen or so of the furry rodents behind her.

“Here,” Ferndew said, kneeling and pointing at the ground. “It’s supposed to go here.”

Petalcurve nodded, and the squirrels got to work, digging a small hole. When it was deep enough, Petalcurve thanked them, and they scampered back off into the trees.

Ferndew reached into the hole and released the waterstone, then covered it back up with earth.

Then they ran off to play.

* * *

As the sun set, Ferndew and Petalcurve were lying in the high branches of a russet pine, watching the shadow of the forest reach across the grassy plains towards the distant castle.

“I wonder who lives there?” Petalcurve asked.

“I don’t think anyone does,” Ferndew replied. “One of the Woodsmen said once that it had been empty for a long time.”

Petalcurve looked at her. “You talked to a Woodsman?”

“No, silly. Sometimes, though, I hide beside their houses, and listen.”

“I could never do that. What if they saw you?”

Ferndew laughed. “They can’t see me. But even if they did, I’d just run away. And the Woodsmen are good. They’d never hurt us.”

Petalcurve shook her head. “I know, but still... to be that close to humans. It would scare me.”

Ferndew climbed around to the branch Petalcurve was sitting on. “That’s what makes it fun,” she said, hugging her friend. “But don’t worry. The Woodsmen are good people. The Elders let them come into the Forest. And they keep all the other humans out.”

Petalcurve hugged her back. “You’re so brave,” she said.

They cuddled together for a while, and fell asleep.

* * *

Tomias looked out the window. There had been a noise, he was certain, but what was it? He thrust a torch into the fire, lighting it, and took a spear from the rack.

He looked at Jorgen, asleep in his bunk. Wake him? No. If there were any sort of fracas Jorgen would wake in an instant, anyway.

Opening the door of the little hut, Tomias looked into the darkness. No eyes reflected the light back at him. Cautiously, he stepped outside, and raised the torch out of his field of vision. He waited for his eyes to adjust.

This was a bad part of the woods. Close by here was the forbidden grove, one of the parts of the forest off limits to the Woodsmen. But unlike the other areas that the forest spirits had closed to them, the forbidden grove was a dark place, and from it came evil things—crawling and flying things, whose sting could cost a man his arm or his sanity.

Usually, the forest’s own guardians dealt with them. This guard station was only here as a lookout, and neither Tomias nor his father could remember a time when it had ever been used to send warning, although the Woodsmen still manned it as had been agreed so long ago.

His eyes were growing sharper, and Tomias could now see the trunks of the trees around the clearing. There was nothing there—whatever had made the noise, it seemed to have gone. Should he search for it?

He was still pondering whether his task as a watchman encompassed wandering around the night woods looking for some unidentified noisy thing when there was movement.

One of the shadows shifted—then another. Tomias just had time to bring his spear up and to recognize that they were the shadows of men—men!—when one of them raised a hand and there was a purple flash.

Suddenly, Tomias couldn’t move.

The figures drew closer. They were men, all right, dozens of them. Some in blackened mail armor, most in robes. The one with magic approached Tomias, who could not even shiver. The tall robed figure stopped only an armlength away.

Beneath the black cowl, his mouth twisted into a grin.

“My Master,” whispered one of the other figures. “What should we do with them?”

“Bring them along,” the tall one said. “We can always use sacrifices.”

* * *

They had stopped to swim and chase fish, and then they had stopped to race up and down a grove of birch trees, and then they had stopped to lie in a grassy patch and watch the sunlight dance down through the trees.

Then Ferndew had suggested that they go visit a place she knew, so they went several hours in the opposite direction from the Elder Glade. Petalcurve was supposed to return the old waterstone to the Elders at some point, but there was really very little hurry in the Forest.

Ferndew’s place turned out to be an old human dwelling, so old that a giant oak grew up from the floor in the middle of it. Little was left besides the stumps of columns and the knee-high stubs of walls.

Ferndew led Petalcurve into the building, and scuffed the leaves aside with her feet. They peeled away to reveal a floor made of tiny stones, arranged into pictures. Petalcurve gasped.

It was a horse, with the tail of a fish, and on it rode a woman waving a spear with three points. They brushed aside more leaves—to one side, the floor was broken but to the other a man rode in a chariot pulled by flaming horses.

“They’re pretty,” Petalcurve said.

Ferndew nodded. “They’re very old,” she replied. “There haven’t been humans here for a long time.”

“Yes,” Petalcurve replied. “It’s incredible how well—”

A dart of light shot into the clearing, circled the tree once, and stopped in front of Ferndew’s face, hovering.

The pixie squeaked at her.

She looked like the dryads, like a young human woman, but was only inches tall, and had the crystalline wings of a dragonfly.

Ferndew nodded, and the pixie darted over to whisper in her ear.

Her eyes grew wide.

The pixie zipped back, and hovered in front of them again.

“Yes,” Ferndew said, “I understand.”

With another squeak, the pixie took off.

“What is it?” Petalcurve asked. “What did she want?”

“She had an instruction from the Elders,” Ferndew replied, quiet amazement in her voice. “They want me to deliver a message.”

“A message? To who?”

Ferndew looked at her with wide eyes. “To the humans.”

* * *

The Woodsman cabin was at the edge of the forest, just uphill from a small creek. Clothes on a laundry line blew in the afternoon breeze; a windmill pumped water from a well. Chickens wandered around distractedly.

There was smoke curling from the stone chimney.

“Are you going to go out there?” Petalcurve whispered.

The two dryads knelt in a thicket of climbing vine. A chicken looked up, thinking it heard something, but it could neither see nor smell them, so it went back to pecking at the ground.

“I have to,” Ferndew whispered back. “The Elders gave me a message.”

“You could wait until one of them comes out.”

“Fluora”—that was the pixie’s name—“said it was important.” Ferndew swallowed. “I have to go out there.”

Petalcurve looked at her unhappily. Ferndew gave her an “everything will be fine” smile, then gingerly stepped out of the vines.

She was halfway to the house before she realized that the humans still couldn’t see her; opening their door while invisible might put them off. Slowly, she let down her glamour.

A few chickens looked up, bored, and went back to pecking.

Ferndew swallowed and walked up to the cabin. It was nice, tidy, with actual glass windows and prettily carved wooden shutters beneath a thatched roof. No one seemed to have seen her.

Steeling her nerve, Ferndew stepped onto the porch. The door was closed—should she open it? Thinking back, she remembered seeing humans slap their hands on doors when they wanted them to open.

Ferndew knocked.

“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice. There was a noise behind the door, and Ferndew almost bolted. Then the door pulled open, revealing several humans; a woman, hand on the door, behind her a large, bearded man, and beside her a younger man with a smooth chin.

They stared at her.

Ferndew was paralyzed. She had to say something, but she was here, just standing here in front of these humans, and her lips wouldn’t move at all...

More humans appeared in the doorway, young ones, and Ferndew almost ran. But the way their eyes grew wide and their lips made little circles was somehow reassuring.

“She’s naked,” the little boy said, pointing.

“She’s a faerie,” the little girl replied, and cuffed the boy in the head.

“I, um—”

“Can we help—”

They both stopped, the human woman and Ferndew. They stared at each other, then the human woman laughed.

“She’s as scared as we are,” she said. “Come, dearest, what is it that you want?”

“I, uh, I have a message for the Woodsmen,” Ferndew said. “Um... can you hear it?”

The woman looked at the bearded man behind her. He nodded. She looked back at Ferndew.

“We can, dear. What do you have to tell us?”

Ferndew inhaled deeply. She reached down into her mind, found the message that Fluora had put there.

“Humans have entered the Forbidden Grove,” she heard herself say. “They have come in numbers to awaken that which slumbers there. They have brought one who knows the ways of darkness. You must stop them.”

Ferndew realized she had stopped. She looked at them—the taller man’s mouth was a tight line, and the woman was frowning.

“How many?” the man asked her. “Where are they now?”

Ferndew shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “That was the message.”

The man looked at his wife. “Tomias and Jorgen were on watch there. We should have heard something.”

“You heard her,” the woman replied. “They’ve got a warlock.”

The man nodded curtly. “I shall go to the forestedge homes—Halorn, you- Halorn!” The man cuffed the younger man, who was staring openmouthed at Ferndew. “Pay attention, boy! This is important! I need you to rouse the farmsteads. If the intruders are already in the forbidden grove, every moment counts. Tell them to bring as many fighters as they can, and tell them what the girl here has told us.”

“Yes, father,” the young man said. He looked back at Ferndew, and his eyes kept slipping down her body. “Um... excuse me...”

Ferndew realized she was still standing on the porch, and the men sought to get past her.

“Oh,” she said, turned, and ran into the woods.

* * *

“What’s going on?” Petalcurve whispered.

“There’s something wrong in the Forbidden Grove,” Ferndew replied. “Some humans have gone there to do something bad. There’s something bad there that they want to awaken.”

Petalcurve shivered. “Let’s go away,” she said. “To the other side of the forest.”

Ferndew nodded absently. “I wonder...”

“What?”

“I wonder what’s in the Forbidden Grove that the humans want to wake up.”

“Something bad!” Petalcurve said. “You know that.”

“I know... but what? I mean, most of the bad things that come to the Forest are humans.”

“I don’t want to know,” Petalcurve said. “And I don’t like being so close to the humans. Let’s go away from here.”

Ferndew looked at the cabin again. The two men had already left, jogging off in different directions on their errands. The young one kept shooting glances into the woods, as if he were hoping to see her. The woman had emerged, and was gathering in the laundry.

“Ferndew?”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, and smiled at her friend. “Of course we can go.” She stood up. “We should get back to the Elders with that waterstone anyway.”

* * *

Ferndew forgot what excuse she had used; dryads were generally loners anyway. If you were never going to die, there was no reason to spend time together now if there were something else you wanted to do. You could always see the other person more later.

Usually, it was enough to say that she wanted to go do something else and exchange good-bye embraces. This time, Ferndew had spun a little white lie, claiming interest in some animal or plant that she wanted to check up on.

When in reality she wanted to visit the Forbidden Grove.

‘Forbidden Grove’ was not quite the right name—it was certainly forbidden, but it was much more than a grove. It was a substantial bit of forest, perhaps a half-mile in each direction.

Ferndew had never gone there—the Elders had warned them against doing so. Moreover, she would never go there alone. But since the Woodsmen were going there, she could maybe just follow them, just a little, to see what the Forbidden Grove was like.

It was one of the few places in the entire Forest that she’d never been.

Ferndew breezed through the forest, sometimes on top of the trees, sometimes on the ground. It was getting dark, but she didn’t want to miss the Woodsmen, and they seemed like they were going there as soon as they could.

Of course, she made much better time than they did.

She slowed down as she got near the Forbidden Grove. Sometimes bad things came out of it, usually animals and insects that had been twisted by whatever lived inside. Sometimes the Woodsmen put them down, sometimes the Elders sent a Forest spirit to deal with them.

Every now and then they survived, but only if they managed to get out of the Forest. The Elders would not tolerate them if they remained.

Ferndew had only ever seen one, a bird that had been touched by the Forbidden Grove and brought down by an eagle. The eagle was acting on the orders of the Elders; although a bird-eater, it spurned the black and hissing thing that lay dying on the ground under its claws as though it were poison. The beady red eyes finally went out, and Ferndew had buried it under a rock.

Ferndew looked around nervously. The edges of the grove were indistinct, although she could feel the wrongness of the place in the air. It was too quiet; most of the Forest was alive with the sounds of birds and insects, but near the Forbidden Grove all those noises were muffled and strange.

She didn’t know which direction the Woodsmen would come from, so she crept as close to the stillness of the Grove as she could before ascending a tree to wait.

* * *

Someone was whispering to her—no, not whispering,

just speaking quietly from a distance. Her eyes were closed, but she turned, trying to hear what the soft voice was saying.

She still couldn’t make it out—but it seemed to make sense, whatever it was. She found herself intrigued, despite not really being able to hear what was being said. Some part of her could hear, could understand, but it just wasn’t passing on the information.

The voice got a little louder, though no more distinct. Ferndew was relaxing, giving up her annoyance at not being able to make out the words and just enjoying the voice. It would all make sense soon enough.

Then there was another voice, louder, more insistent. A man’s voice. Ferndew frowned, and rolled over, trying to block out the louder voice, trying to recapture the softer voice, the appealing voice.

She almost rolled out of the tree.

Ferndew snapped awake at the very edge of the limb she had been sleeping on. Below her were torches and glinting steel.

The Woodsmen were here!

The tatters of her dream evanesced. She had almost missed them! Silly girl, falling asleep like that!

Beneath her, the Woodsmen passed in a double column. They were armed with spears and swords, perhaps three dozen strong. They spoke in quiet voices—the torches announced their presence beyond any stealth they might have attempted.

When they had passed, Ferndew slipped lightly out of the tree, and stole away in their wake.

* * *

Halorn knew better than to ask the men next to him if they had heard anything. The night forest was full of noises that were only suspicious if you let them be; he had hunted enough with his father that he knew what big game sounded like. The soft crackling he thought he’d heard was doubtless a mouse or a squirrel. Had it been anything more, the veteran Woodsmen would have noted it.

Pulgar held up a hand, and the men stopped. Leaves were swept aside, and the men snuffed their torches out in the exposed earth. Now they had only four lanterns among them.

“Now then,” Pulgar said, “we don’t know how many of them there are, or where in the Grove they’ve gotten to. But Tomias and Jorgen are surely missing, so we’ll need to stay together and we’ll need to be quiet. Shroud the lamps, and muffle your steps as best you can.

Halorn knew how to muffle his steps. But he could make no change in the loud pounding of his heart.

* * *

The Woodsmen gathered together, put out their torches, and whispered a bit. Then they formed up into a sort of ‘V’ shape, and began to move into the Grove, a few lanterns with cloth over them providing the dimmest of light.

Ferndew, of course, had no trouble seeing in the dark. She crept after them.

* * *

The forbidden grove was quiet, and it felt... colder than the rest of the forest. Without the noise of the night birds and the cicadas, the small phalanx of Woodsmen sounded like a parade of bears crashing through the undergrowth.

At least, it did to Halorn. But Pulgar seemed satisfied. Slowly, they moved forward.

Then Pulgar raised a hand. The men stopped.

They could all hear it now.

Chanting.

* * *

The men stopped, so Ferndew did too. She was following along about fifty paces behind them, far enough that they wouldn’t hear her, close enough that she felt protected from the Grove.

It was frightening, being inside the Forbidden Grove. The trees were silent, and their energy was cool and black, not bright and green. The underbrush did not move aside for her they way it should, and more than once thorns actually grabbed at her skin.

It was not a friendly place.

The men had stopped, and now Ferndew could hear why; some other man, somewhere ahead, was talking in a loud voice.

She didn’t understand his language.

The Woodsmen started moving again.

* * *

Halorn thought his heart had been pounding before.

They crept forward in the dark, their lanterns now entirely covered. The chanting continued as they drew closer, and then they could see light from ahead, the flickering of other men’s torches.

It was a clearing; light from the stars (for it was a new moon this night) barely sufficed to illuminate it. In the center was a tremendous boulder, a strangely curved and warped rock almost a hundred feet around.

Beyond the rock stood a circle of men; perhaps thirty. Some held torches, some spears. The yellow light of their brands glinted off mail.

Pulgar motioned, and the Woodsmen crept closer.

The intruders had posted no pickets; nor did they notice as the Woodsmen split into two groups. One group would fire from here, using their bows; the other would engage from the far side with their spears, taking the ones too-well armored for arrows by surprise.

Halorn was thankful he was not part of the other group as he readied his bow, planting a dozen arrows in the ground, close to hand.

His father, leader of the archers, counted where they could see. Ten hands. Twenty. Thirty. He raised his arm.

They let fly.

As he had been taught, Halorn took careful aim, loosed, and forgot about the first arrow, already aiming with his second. Then his third. Before the men in the clearing had even realized that they were under attack, he had used half his arrows. His second target had only just hit the ground when he fired his last.

There was a pause as the archers, finished with their archery, readied their spears. The men in the clearing were screaming now, shouting, but over their panicked voices the chanting continued.

Then more shouts as Pulgar led his group out of the woods into their backs, spearblades flashing, and as the spears went in the swords and axes came out, and Halorn’s father shouted and then they too were running, through the clearing and past the tremendous rock and into the enemy, only now there were only a few of them left, surrounded by Woodsmen, and very soon after that there were none at all.

Halorn looked around. The intruders were dead, or dying, and the Woodsmen were not. Thomma and Linulolamai were hurt, but not badly enough to wipe the smiles from their faces. It was a cheap victory, and total.

* * *

Ferndew watched from the other side of the clearing as the men killed each other.

It seemed like the Woodsmen were doing most of the killing, but it was hard to be sure—they all looked the same. Only the tall man was different—he glowed with energy, black like the energy of the trees only different, ornate where they were smooth, complicated where they were simple.

Then a spearpoint emerged from his chest and he dropped to the ground.

As the men finished fighting, Ferndew drifted closer. The mighty rock in the center of the clearing was strange, not alive like some of the rocks in the Forest but not dead, either. And the small stream that ran past it was strange, too, possessing some strange smooth black power of its own, but not aware, asleep.

A man stumbled towards her and Ferndew leapt back against the rock-

fightingandPAINandangerandDEFEAT

- and stumbled forward, and fell to her knees.

The clearing was quiet.

Dead men lay everywhere, sprawled on the ground, arrows sprouting from stiffening flesh. Their blood had soaked the ground and run into the small stream.

There were no live men to be seen.

Frightened, Ferndew turned, looked up. It was still night, but the stars had moved. In the Forest, there would be the calls of birds to tell her what time it was, but here there was nothing.

What had happened to her?

She looked at the rock. It wasn’t just a rock, it was a shrine, it was a center of power. Broken and melted by great magics long ago.

Ferndew didn’t know how she knew that.

She swallowed. She had to get out of the Grove. Gingerly, she tiptoed through the corpses, headed in the direction that she had come from.

One of them moved.

Her first thought was to leave; to ignore the dying man and flee through the dark forest.

But... he couldn’t see her. What if it was one of the Woodsmen?

Timidly, Ferndew picked her way to where the man was slowly moving across the grass.

It wasn’t a Woodsman.

It was the tall man.

He looked up at her, and gave a cracked whisper.

“...water...”

Ferndew froze. He could see her. Almost as startling, he had a spear through him—six inches of clotted metal emerged from his chest. No human could survive that, could they?

He smiled faintly. “Please...?”

Ferndew swallowed. He was a bad man, she was pretty sure. But he was barely able to move, and it would be cruel to just walk away and let him die.

He lay there and watched her decide. Finally, she snatched up a helmet, and went to the stream. The water was cold, and seemed pure, at least above where the blood trickled into it. It ran from a dense thicket of black thorns, and as Ferndew filled the helmet, she looked into the thicket.

There was something there.

Frightened, she hurried back over to the dying man, and handed him the helmet. He sipped from it.

“Thank you,” he rasped.

“You can see me?” she asked.

He smiled again. “You brought them, didn’t you? They couldn’t have known I was here, not so fast, unless someone had told them.”

He didn’t sound angry, but Ferndew took a step back. He waved a hand.

“I mean you no harm, fetch. I’m dying; I shall go quietly. You know not what you have done.” He coughed. “And I can think of few things more pleasant as my last vision. It was kind of you to bring me the water.”

“Why... why did you come here? This is a bad place,” Ferndew demanded.

“Bad? Perhaps. But I am a bad man, and She is so beautiful...” he closed his eyes, and relaxed, and let the helmet drop from his hand. Ferndew thought he was dead, but then his eyes opened again.

“She sleeps,” he said in a voice almost too soft to hear. “But in Her dreams She speaks to me.” He grunted, and with effort reached into his tunic. He pulled out a pendant, silver, with a jewel too dark to identify. “Here,” he whispered, “here. I shall not need it to hear Her, now.”

Ferndew hung back.

“Take it,” he whispered, “or don’t. But it is my gift to a vision...” His eyes closed.

Then his hand relaxed, and his last breath shuddered from his throat.

* * *

Ferndew looked at the pendant.

She was safe, outside of the Grove, cradled in the branches of a great oak tree. The Woodsmen were nearby, camping around the cabin they kept here.

They had found the men that were missing, freed them, and retreated from the Grove to celebrate their victory. In the morning, they would return to remove and burn the dead.

Ferndew held the pendant up, and watched the torchlight glimmer in the gem.

It was a smooth sphere—transparent but shadowed, with a tint that might have been green.

She hadn’t the nerve to put it on.

In the morning, she would have to return to the Elders, tell them what she had done. They would be disappointed, surely, but they never grew angry. And now that she had seen the Forbidden Grove, her curiosity was satisfied. It was a frightening place, and unkind. She’d never go back.

Satisfied, she finally slipped into sleep.

* * *

The closer she got to the Elder Glade, the slower Ferndew moved.

She had never done something that the Elders had explicitly warned against before. Would they get angry? There was a first time for everything. Ferndew couldn’t remember any other dryad ever actually being punished, but she didn’t know if any other dryad had ever done something like this before.

She was just thinking that maybe she should not go visit the Elders just yet when Flutterleaf bounced into view.

“Ferndew!” Flutterleaf exclaimed. “Hi!”

“Hi Flutterleaf!” Ferndew ran over to the other dryad and hugged her.

“Did you really go and talk to humans?” Flutterleaf asked, eyes wide. “Petalcurve said that you did.”

Ferndew nodded.

“Wow. That must have been exciting.”

Compared to what she did after that, talking to the Woodsmen hadn’t been exciting at all. But Ferndew just nodded.

“I’m going to go play in the hot springs,” Flutterleaf said. “Want to come?”

“I...” She did, but she really ought to go talk to the Elders. “I have to go talk to the Elders,” Ferndew replied.

“Oh okay! I was just over there. Well, if they don’t have anything for you to do, come play with me!”

Ferndew nodded, and Flutterleaf hugged her and ran off through the trees.

She had made up her mind; it was time to admit what she had done.

* * *

The Elder Glade was quiet, but reassuring where the Forbidden Grove was scary. Ferndew felt her doubts melting away.

She walked up to the sword and the stone, and lowered herself to her knees, and reached out with her mind.

The Elders welcomed her, and thanked her for carrying their message to the humans. The Woodsmen had killed the bad men and everything was fine again.

Ferndew admitted that she already knew, because she had been there.

They were surprised. Why had she gone there? What had she seen? They were full of questions.

Ferndew answered their questions as best she could. She told them about the rock, and the bramble thicket, and how silent and intimidating the whole Grove was. They didn’t seem angry at all.

She forgot to tell them about the pendant.

Finally, when they had finished their questions, there was a pause while they talked between themselves. Ferndew got a little nervous again.

Then she forgot all about it.

She forgot about going to the Grove, about the battle and about the rock and the stream and about the tall man who had died. The Elders opened a little hole in her mind and drained it all out.

Ferndew wondered why she felt nervous, and then she didn’t even wonder any more.

The Elders thanked her for coming, and said that everything was fine just now, and that she should come back in a half moon or so.

Ferndew agreed happily, and curtseyed, and left the Glade.

* * *

She found Flutterleaf in the colored pools that lay at the bottom of a bluff deep in the Forest. Hot water seeped out of the rock, and it created pools of bright robin’s egg blue at the bottom of the rock face. The ones near the cliff were too hot to touch, but a little farther into the Forest they cooled down and were wonderfully warm to play in.

Flutterleaf was playing with some otters who lived in the stream which the water flowed into. After a muddy afternoon, she and Ferndew slept together in a broad laurel tree.

The rock face reminded Ferndew of the mountains, so the next day she hugged Flutterleaf goodbye and wandered off in the direction of the mountains. Several days later, she could see them from the treetops.

She remembered the wolf who had come down from there, so she checked up on the local wolf pack. She learned from them that the wolf was still hanging around the forest edge. It must have been kicked out of its pack in the mountains.

So Ferndew headed instead towards the forest edge where the Woodsmen lived. She wanted to see how the human child she had rescued was doing.

The birdsuckle bush at the edge of the woods opened for her, and she crept into it. The woman was in the yard, reading a yellowed scroll as a large metal pot steamed over a fire.

With a happy shriek, the child ran out of the cabin, ahead of her young father. He was in glittering chainmail, the dignity of which was hampered by his hunched scuttling after his daughter.

“That’s right, Arden, if you’re bad when I’m gone I’m quite sure the warlock will come back and carry you away!” With a whoop, he caught her, and hoisted her to his shoulder.

The woman had put her scroll down, and came over to where they were standing, the man spinning his child in the air above his head.

“The mail suits you well, Juerm.”

Juerm put his daughter down, and took hold of his wife’s shoulders. “It did not do its last inhabitant much good. But every bit counts.”

They kissed. “You will be home Thorsday?” she asked.

“Indeed. Pulgar wants better watches at the grove after what happened—more of those cultists may come, he thinks.”

“What do you think?” she asked, running a hand along his cheek.

He shrugged. “I doubt it. If there were more, they would have come in greater force the first time. No, it will be more sitting around while the boys start at every deerstep.”

She laughed. “The boys. Not so long ago you were a boy yourself.”

He grinned at her, then ran down his daughter again for a farewell kiss.

Ferndew was puzzled. There was something... the grove? The Forbidden Grove? She had told the Woodsmen about it... and the Elders had said that they had taken care of the bad men who had gone there.

But there was something... ?

The human kissed his wife and daughter again, and entered the woods, en route to the Grove.

Ferndew followed him.

* * *

The Grove scared her.

She would never go into it—the Elders had warned her specifically about that. More, she could feel the wrongness of the place, the quiet, the eerie stillness.

But it also intrigued her. She had watched the Woodsman cabin for a while, then followed a pair of the men as they patrolled the edges of the Grove. The whole way around, Ferndew could feel the strangeness of it.

The men didn’t go in, and soon enough they were back at their cabin. Ferndew watched them for a while longer, but soon began to become bored. She decided to ascend a nearby tree for a last look at the Grove, and then she’d go do something else. Maybe try to find Petalcurve.

The high branches of the big oak provided no better a vantage point. Ferndew shrugged. Time to go.

Something glittering caught her eye.

It was a pendant.

* * *

END Part One