Aldric Wanderfoot's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Aldric Wanderfoot turned his empty food sack inside out and shook it. A single crumb fell into the dirt. He watched an ant carry it away. He was seventy-one years old, four days into the Forsaken Undergrowth, and looking for a grove he had heard about only in a dying man's story. The grove was said to sit deep past the black ferns, quiet enough for a tired body to lie down and stay down. Aldric wanted that quiet. His knees wanted it more. But a man could not walk to rest on nothing. He had rationed hard and rationed wrong. Now his legs shook when he stood. If he pressed on today, he would fall on the trail and the forest would keep him where he dropped. He sat against a mossy trunk and made himself think. He had twine in his pack, a bent green sapling, and the small frame of a net he had woven two nights back by firelight. He finished it now, knotting the last gaps with slow fingers. Small creatures ran the roots along this stretch. He had seen their tracks at dawn. He set the net over a burrow mouth, propped the sapling, tied the trigger line, and crawled back to wait. His stomach turned on itself. He closed his eyes and counted breaths so he would not sleep. Something moved. The sapling snapped up. Aldric lunged and pinned the net down with both hands. Inside, a plump ferret with silky brown fur twisted and hissed. Fat little thing. Well-fed on something he could not see. He held it a long moment. Then he heard whistling. A man came around the bend in a wide straw hat, a basket of blueberries balanced on one hip. His beard was gray and streaked white. He stopped whistling when he saw Aldric on his knees in the dirt with a live animal under a net. "That one's been robbing my patch for a month," the stranger said. He set the basket down. "Name's Silas Thornberry. You planning to eat him or thank him?" "Eat him," Aldric said. His voice came out cracked. Silas looked at Aldric's shaking hands. He looked at the empty sack by the trunk. He picked up his basket and walked over and set it beside Aldric's knee. "Trade you," Silas said. "Ferret for half the berries and a strip of smoked pork from my bag. You look like you'll drop before you skin him." Aldric almost refused. Pride tried. His body did not let it finish. "Done," he said. They traded. Silas tucked the netted ferret under one arm and tipped his hat. "Grove's another two days east, if that's where you're headed. Ground gets soft past the black ferns. Watch your step, old man." He walked on, whistling again. Aldric ate slowly. The shaking eased. He looked east, where the ferns darkened, and understood Silas had known exactly where he was going.