Ander - Part 3: Subchapter 40
40
He'd see it occasionally, leaping through the mist, running through the underbrush, weaving its way between the trees. Sometimes it would stop and wait for him before darting on again.
The scratches on its back were completely gone now. They didn't heal over, they were gone, as if they were never there.
Ander leaned his tired, aching body against a tree for a few seconds and struggled to catch his breath. He didn't want to look back. He'd already made that gruesome mistake once. He didn't want to see that trail of blood again, infinite drips on the carpet of leaves, zigzagging from blood-splattered tree to blood-splattered tree.
The stag suddenly came into view again, as if to tell him to hurry up. It snorted and flicked its ears, and...
And the arrow in its leg was gone...
Wait, was that the right side? Ander blinked his eyes, but there was no mistaking it. The arrow was gone. There wasn't even a wound or a scar where it once was.
But it was still crying blood. That wound was still there. Maybe it was the one wound that would never heal.
Ander turned his head and spat into the bushes, disgusted by the way the blood didn't quite mix with his spit, but rather twisted and squirmed inside of it like tiny red worms. He pushed himself away from the tree and continued down the path to a place he didn't know where, his pants clinging to his legs in a sticky maroon mess of dried blood and leather. The mist was so thick now he could barely see where he was going. Trees loomed on either side of the path like the shadows of giants, and then faded away to nothing, consumed by the milky greyness all around until none were left. At first Ander thought that the mist was getting even thicker, but that couldn't be right. He couldn't see the trees anymore because there weren't any. He had somehow stumbled upon a massive clearing in the middle of the woods, deathly quiet, deathly pale, just a solid sheet of swirling white with nothing to break it.
Except for the stag. Ander could just barely make out its shadow deeper in, a smudge in the mist. He lurched forward, dimly aware that the thick carpet of leaves underfoot had been replaced by soft grasses, cool and slippery with dew. It smelled nice. Fresh.
But something strange was happening. As he drew closer, the stag's shadow started to darken, to become clearer (as was expected), but it didn't look much like a stag anymore. What he at first thought was its body just grew taller and taller, until it became far too big for even the biggest of stags, and what he thought were antlers spread out like spiderwebs, but... fuzzy, somehow.
Ander stopped, rubbed his eyes, looked again. This wasn't a stag. This was a tree. A giant tree in the middle of the clearing. Ander moved closer, and with every agonising step he took, the tree grew and grew, looming out of the mist until it dominated the sky. It was...
It was a giant beech tree.
No, impossible, Ander thought, limping along as fast as he dared. It can't be the same one. There's no way it could be the same -
Ander threw up again in mid-lurch, his body's warning to slow down, but he ignored it. He had to get there. He had to see for himself. The pain blurred his vision, made the world sway, and he came dangerously close to falling down, but he just kept going out of sheer determination, not caring if he ripped his own body apart to do so.
He staggered beneath the tree's reaching branches, and it really did feel like he was suddenly in another world. He could feel the weight of decades hanging above his head like a living roof.
It can't be. It's impossible. This can't be the same one. There are hundreds of beech trees in these woods. Maybe thousands. This can't be the same one. It can't be...
Ander practically fell into the trunk, heaving for breath, blood flowing freely from his chest, his mouth, his arms.
Shaking, he pushed himself away and looked at the bark, letting his gaze travel up and down its shadow-cracked surface, until...
"No..."
He saw it. It was right there, level with his eyes. He reached out, carefully, and traced it with his fingers, feeling the rough texture of the bark scrape against his skin. Tears welled up in his eyes and all the strength flowed out of his legs. He sank down to his knees and he cried, he cried until it felt like he would drown.
This is what the stag had wanted to show him. This was the place where so many fates were decided twenty-three years ago.
Carved deep in the wood, darkened by the passing of seasons, was a single word:
enka
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