6. Into the Flooded Forest

6

INTO THE FLOODED FOREST

THE SOIL IN THE FOREST was as soft and spongy as Nadya had assumed it would be, and once the fear of the frog faded, she slowed down and began choosing a more careful path through the trees, trying to hop between the patches of almost-dry ground. The tree roots helped; often, she could balance atop them, placing her feet gingerly in a straight line as she inched her way along.

The rain might come frequently, but it hadn’t come for at least a day; the ground was only this wet because the trees blocked most of whatever sun could filter through the gray, gravid clouds. Without heat, the water didn’t evaporate, just lingered and sank slowly through the saturated ground. Patches of moss grew lush and green, dotted with tiny white flowers, and spiny bushes put forth flowers of their own, branches heavy with round red berries. Mushrooms and toadstools clustered around the bottoms of the trees, their tops white and smooth or red and speckled or purple and glowing.

Nadya looked around with wide eyes as she walked, taking note of everything, touching nothing but the trunks of the trees. The wilderness could hold many dangers, she knew, and she didn’t want to find herself in more trouble than she already was.

This was going to be a hard story to convince Carl and Pansy of when she got home. “I fell into the pond, and then I was somehow on a riverbank, and then a giant frog ate my arm and chased me into a big, wet forest” didn’t sound like a real thing that could have happened to a real person, least of all to her.

Nadya kept walking until her legs began to ache. The forest seemed to go on forever, as wide as the river was long, and she hadn’t been able to see the end of the river in either direction, no matter how hard she squinted. Nothing moved in the trees. The frog was far behind her now, and she was safely alone.

Wrapping her arms around herself, Nadya sank into a crouching position at the base of the nearest tree, shivering and shuddering, trying to ride the fear as it swept over her in a crushing wave. She was alone. She was lost in this strange place, and she was alone. No matter how far she walked, that wasn’t going to change unless she found other people, and to do that, she would have to find her way out of the forest, and what if there was another frog waiting to gobble her down, quick as the first one had swallowed her arm? She was tired and she was cold and her clothes were wet and sticking to her, uncomfortably, and her feet hurt and the stump of her arm hurt and she was hungry and getting hungrier. Soon, she’d be hungry enough for the mushrooms to start looking like food, and she knew enough about the wilderness to know that people who ate wild mushrooms didn’t have long lives ahead of them.

She was going to die here. There was no way around it. She shook and shuddered, trying to sob without making a sound. If there was anything in this wood to attract, she didn’t want to meet it.

“Stop your weeping, human child,” said a voice, close to her ear. It was a thin voice, lacking substance somehow, like the lungs behind it weren’t very strong. Nadya jerked upright, taking her forearm away from her eyes, whipping around to see who had spoken.

The words were in English. Someone had found her, someone must have found her, she wasn’t lost anymore, she—

She was looking at a small fox with tawny reddish-gold fur and a white blaze across its chest and the lower part of its muzzle, sitting on a nearby tree root with its bushy tail wrapped securely around its paws. It tracked the motion of her head with its sharp golden eyes, and it was hard not to feel as if it knew exactly what it was looking at.

“Hello?” called Nadya, looking away from the fox. “Is there someone there?”

“ I’m here, and you were just looking at me, so you’d think you would know that,” said the voice, sounding less than amused. Nadya’s head snapped back around. She stared at the fox. The fox stared back.

Several long seconds passed like this, until the fox yawned enormously, showing a great many sharp white teeth, and hopped off the tree root to the marshy ground. “Fine,” it said, as it went. “If you aren’t interested in civil conversation, I’ll be on my way, and you can go back to watering the mushrooms.”

“No!” blurted Nadya, raising her hand in a beseeching gesture. The fox stopped and looked at her. “Please. Please don’t go. I just… Where I come from, foxes don’t talk.” Not outside of stories, anyway. She’d heard plenty of stories about talking foxes, and stories had to come from somewhere, didn’t they? Stories had to have beginnings, which meant someone had to be where they were beginning, or there was no purpose to them. She was just at the beginning of a story, that was all, and this was perfectly possible.

The fox continued looking at her for a long moment, seeming, in a sharp, vulpine way, to take her measure. Then it trotted back to the tree and hopped back up onto the root where it had been sitting before. “Very well, as long as you hold my interest,” it said. “Do you have a name, human child? And what has become of your arm?”

“My name is Nadezhda,” said Nadya, because here, it still could be; she had the feeling that no one in this vast and flooded forest would care what she called herself, or if that name felt foreign on their tongues. “The frog that came out of the river took my arm and swallowed it.”

“Dreadful things, frogs,” said the fox. “Mostly stomach, with just enough leg attached to fling themselves at the food. And for a frog, ‘food’ means whatever they can fit into their mouths, which are large outside of all reason. No, you were right to run away from a frog large enough to take a human’s arm. I would have run as well. We can’t all be heroes, after all. World’s not looking for one at the moment, so far as I’m aware.”

“What would a hero have done?”

“A hero would have found a way to fight the frog, to be sure it couldn’t take the arms off of anyone else. Can’t have a community without any arms at all. I mean, I have no arms, as you humans measure them, but I need my legs. I can get about just fine with one injured paw. Hurt two of them, and whew.” The fox whistled, long and low. “Two paws down and there’s nothing getting done.”

Nadya frowned. She’d been able to feed the frog a rock, but there hadn’t been anything else for her to fight the frog with, not once it had taken her arm away from her. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was better to be a person who at least tried to be a hero, as opposed to someone who didn’t try at all, and so rather than dwelling on it, she seized on what seemed like the most important part of what the fox had said: “Community? Are there human people around here?”

Because the fox, while clearly a fox, was also quite clearly a person. People could talk and have opinions about things like frogs and heroes and manners. Animals could be nice—her turtles were animals, and she loved them very much—but they didn’t have any of those things. They were just animals. They couldn’t be blamed when they did things like scratch or bite or come out of the river and eat your arm. They weren’t doing it to be bad or mean. They were doing it to be animals.

The fox looked at her thoughtfully before nodding in apparent satisfaction. “There are some, if you’d like me to take you to them. But we’ll have to go the rest of the way through the forest to reach them. It’s safe, as long as the rain doesn’t come before we get there. Still, you might prefer not to.”

Nadya couldn’t think of a single reason why she wouldn’t want to leave the forest and find people, unless… “Is it very far to the edge of the wood?” she asked a little anxiously. “My feet are tired, and I’m getting very hungry.”

“I’m assuming the frog came out of the River Winsome, since it’s the only one around here with frogs as large as you’re describing,” said the fox, and paused, presumably to give her time to confirm or deny the assumption. Nadya shrugged helplessly. If these rivers had names, she didn’t know them. The fox sighed. “If the frog came out of the Winsome, we’re halfway between there and the River Wild.”

Nadya blinked. “Wouldn’t that be the same if the frog came out of the Wild?”

“Yes, but the human people are by the River Wild this time of day, and not the Winsome at all. Plus, I’d rather not go to where there’s a frog large enough to think it can make a meal out of a human. I’d be a delicious little snack for a frog like that. No, thank you. If the frog is by the Wild, I’ll lead you to the Winsome, but that won’t give you people.”

“Oh.” Nadya frowned. “How do I know which river the frog came from?”

“What else did you see?”

“There were trees along the river’s edge, growing in the water, not on the bank, and — Oh! There was another river on the other side, but it was running in the wrong direction. I didn’t think rivers could be that close together and run in different directions.” Nadya frowned. “It didn’t make much sense.”

“That was the Winsome, then, and on her other side, the Wicked. Wild is one of the single rivers, and as she doesn’t have a sister, she runs a little harsher when the rains come down.” The fox hopped off the tree root again. “We’ll have to walk as far as you’ve walked already, and there’s no helping that, but I can tell you which berries are safe for humans to eat.”

“Thank you, fox,” said Nadya, hurrying to straighten up so she could follow the fox. “Um, you asked my name, but I forgot to ask yours. I’m sorry. What would you like me to call you, fox?”

“That’s a good way of asking, since I doubt your funny flat face could speak my name if it tried,” said the fox, not unkindly. “You can call me Artyom, if you would like.”

“Is that your name?”

“Among humans, yes. It means ‘beloved of Artemis,’ and all foxes are beloved of the Huntress, one way or another.”

The fox began to trot deeper into the wood, and Nadya, having no desire to be left alone again, followed.

The ground was no less marshy along the fox’s path, but by following his tracks, Nadya found that she could stay out of the worst of the mud. When they reached a bush covered in fat, heavy berries the color of bananas and the shape of raspberries, Artyom sat, flicking his tail.

“These are safe for human stomachs,” he said. “I don’t care for the taste of them, myself, but hopefully you will, and even if you don’t, they’ll fill you up from toe to top. Come, eat quickly now, we’ve a good way yet to go and night will come soon.”

Nadya had experience with eating things she didn’t care for the taste of. Food was food, and when someone offered it to you, you ate it, because doing otherwise might mean going hungry for longer than you liked. She hastily plucked berries from the bush and conveyed them to her mouth, where she found the flavor to be more pleasant than she’d feared. They were tart and sharp, with a buttery, sugary aftertaste that she generally associated with pancakes or biscuits, not with fruit at all.

Artyom watched with growing impatience, finally rising to wind between her feet as he said, “Most of the humans I’ve known would fill one hand with berries and pick with the other, and then they could bring berries along with them as they walked. The frog did you a great disservice by eating your arm. We’ll have to see if we can get it back again.”

Nadya swallowed her mouthful of berries, trying to figure out how to explain prosthetics and birth defects to a fox. Finally, she said, “I don’t want the arm back after it’s been inside a frog.”

“No, I can’t imagine that would be particularly pleasant.” Artyom sounded displeased. “I suppose there’s nothing to be done, then, unless the rivers see fit to provide you with something else.”

“I would take a gift from a river,” said Nadya.

Artyom gave her what she could only interpret as a pitying look. “Oh, human child. Oh, Nadya. The rivers don’t give gifts. They give obligations, and only the unlucky attract that much of their attention.”

He began trotting deeper into the wood, apparently judging her to have had enough of the berries for now, and as her stomach was no longer snarling and grumbling, Nadya followed. Her legs were still tired, her feet still hurt, but having a goal and a destination in mind made it easier to keep walking. It was like she could tell her weary body that this would all be over soon and it could rest, and because she had never betrayed it before, it was still willing to listen.

She wasn’t sure what would happen if she betrayed it now and tried to make it listen again in the future.

They walked for what felt like at least an hour, until her stomach began to rumble again and she looked to Artyom, silently pleading. The fox huffed, a small sound of annoyance.

“Are human children always this hungry ?” he asked. “I’ve been walking the same time as you have, and I haven’t run off to chase mice through the weeds even once.”

“No,” said Nadya, who had seen his jaws snap a few times as something too small for her to see got close enough to catch. She was sure the forest was short a few toads by that point. “But I was walking a long time before you found me crying, and all I’ve had to eat since the frog were those berries.”

“Fine.” Artyom sighed, a bigger and deeper sound than his body should have been able to contain. He trotted toward the base of a nearby tree, lowering his nose to the ground, where several large blue mushrooms grew, and sniffed deeply. Then, in a smug tone, he said, “These ones. I’ve seen humans eat these ones.”

Nadya hurried to pluck the largest mushroom, which was easily the size of a hamburger bun, fat and fleshy. “Are all the mushrooms around here safe to eat?”

“Not at all.” The fox sat back on his haunches, muzzle hanging open in a silent laugh, as he watched her. “Most of them will kill you just as dead as dead, and then you’ll be a treat to fill the belly of the next beast to come along, whether they be fox or boar or bear. Never pick mushrooms without someone who knows them well to guide you. Someone you trust to have your health in mind.” He cocked his head, watching her closely. “Now is where we find out if you trust me.”

Nadya considered for a moment. Foxes were known to be tricksy creatures, capable of great cunning and deceit. But Artyom had led her clear thus far, and the berries had done her no harm, and she was so hungry.

She brought the mushroom to her mouth and took a large bite of the fleshy cap. It tasted surprisingly like an unbreaded chicken finger, all parts of the bird mashed together, neither dark meat nor white meat, but both of them at once. It was a little bland, but good for all that. She chewed and swallowed before taking another, even bigger bite.

Artyom looked satisfied. “Trust is an important gift, difficult to give and easy to break. But if you trust me, I shall do my best to trust you, and believe you when you speak to me. Come along, Nadezhda. The River Wild is not so far from here.”

If they were almost to their destination, there was no need to have shown her the mushroom. Unless it was a test of sorts, to see whether she was the kind of human who could be trusted. And she had proven that she was! Feeling oddly proud of herself, Nadya continued following Artyom through the woods, munching on her mushroom as the trees began to thin around them, until they were stepping out of the shadows and onto a wide, grassy strip of land between the forest and another river.

Calling the vast expanse of water “another river” felt somehow dismissive, like she was describing it as something much, much smaller than it was, and not a virtually endless sheet of water rushing from one side of the world to the next at a pace she could never have hoped to match. It was so wide that she could barely see the other side at all, and she couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly have mistaken the River Winsome, which was definitely the river she had seen first, for this great sea of tides and currents and rippling rapids.

No frogs were going to come out of this river. Even one as large as the frog before would surely have been swept away. Nadya stopped in her tracks, not noticing when the last of the mushroom tumbled from her hand, and simply stared in disbelief at the broad, watery expanse.

“The River Wild, as promised,” said Artyom with delight. “And no frogs!”

“No people, either,” said Nadya.

“People are mobile things. They’ll be along soon enough,” said Artyom. “Of course, they might not, if the fishing’s done for the day. We shall see, I suppose.” He yawned enormously. “Yes, we shall see.”

The river rushed. Nadya stood. The river rushed on. The sky roiled gray and black with clouds, as ominous as a Monday afternoon with homework yet undone and all the week’s chores looming. Artyom retrieved the remains of Nadya’s mushroom and gnawed at them happily.

Time passed. Nadya tired of standing and sat down on the muddy ground. Artyom finished the mushroom and licked his paws clean, before beginning to dart in and out of the weeds, making short work of the mice that made their homes there. The river ran.

Nadya’s eyelids were getting heavy and the ground was beginning to look like a pleasant place to nap when Artyom barked, a short, sharply triumphant sound.

“There, you see, you see? I led you correctly!” he cried, and Nadya bolted upright, standing and scanning the horizon, just in time to see what she had taken for a log push its way out of the water, becoming a tall pole. It stayed that way for a moment’s time, then continued to emerge from the river, until it was clearly the front of a small boat; the pole was the prow, long and sharp, and the rising pitch behind it was the hull, shaped like a seedpod to cut through the water.

More and more of it emerged, until it seemed the boat must be never-ending, until so much of it was out of the water that she could see a man standing on the deck, a net in his hands, waiting for the moment when gravity would run the right direction. More of the boat emerged. The weight of it was finally more above the river than beneath, and it fell forward, hitting the water with a mighty splash. The man cheered. So did the other four people who had appeared along with the boat.

Nadya blinked.

“Well?” demanded Artyom. “Don’t you want to speak with them? They’re the reason that I brought you here.”

Nadya snapped out of her stillness and ran toward the river, waving her arms above her head.

Artyom laughed and watched her go.