The Tears of Kas̆dael

Erin cracked an eye open as a bird warbled overhead. The sky was blotted out by enormous trees, whose shadows stretched to cover nearly all beneath them, save for a few scattered points where a break in their foliage allowed brilliant beams of light to reach the forest floor. Disoriented, he bolted upright, and his hand clutched his chest as a spasm of pain tore through him. What the hell?

He pulled his hand away carefully, staring down at his chest. A 3-inch jagged hole had been carved into his flesh although there was a strange lack of blood on his palm. He placed a cautious finger against the cut and pulled it away cursing. Damn that hurts. The wound still wasn’t bleeding, though.

Bits and pieces of memory surfaced then. After getting dragged all over the countryside on Jasper’s mission, when he had gotten back to his tent, he’d fallen asleep almost the instant his head hit the cot, despite the bright sun shining through the fabric.

What happened next came in chaotic flashes. A sharp pain in his chest. A black blur above him. Flailing. Shouts. I must have been attacked, but then where the hell am I? Unless…Erin’s heart dropped to his stomach. Unless I died.

Still not fully adjusted to the rapidly growing strength of his body, Erin pinched his arm hard enough to draw blood. “Ow!” Hissing in pain, he shook his arm vigorously. That hurt like hell. I certainly don't feel dead. Of course, there is another option.

The vision he’d experienced with the dryad a few weeks before flitted through his mind, but the forest wasn’t the same as the one he’d found himself in the last time. The chiaroscuro of the columns of light and shadow was far more pronounced, the foliage beneath the distant canopies significantly more lush, and there was a noticeable lack of snow falling upward into the heavens. It couldn’t be the same place, but he guessed it was something similar.

There was nothing special about the small clearing he’d found himself in, and he decided not to stick around. His time as a scout had taught him something, though. Scavenging a sharp rock that was jutting up beneath a root, he scored a small mark in the bark of the tree as he passed. He didn’t think it mattered where he wandered in this dream, but he’d hate to be wrong.

The forest had a primeval beauty unmatched by anything on earth.It wasn’t just the almost unbelievable height of the trees - though the entire forest was composed of old growth that had never known the swing of an axe - but the strange vegetation and the boundless life with which the forest swarmed. Hundreds of birds flitted overhead in the canopy, their warbling songs so loud that there was never a moment of silence.

Of course, a population of that magnitude could only be sustained by an equally robust food source; the sheer mass of bugs in the air, the dirt, and the trees dipped the needle a notch below paradise, but strangely the swarms seemed to ignore him. He was glad, of course, that the many mosquitoes that buzzed his past ear, often two or three times larger than those on Earth, zipped past him without trying to drink his blood, but it also left him a bit paranoid that maybe he really was dead. Please tell me this isn’t some sixth-sense crap.

As he wandered beneath the canopy, the sound of the birds was slowly joined by a distant, steady rumble. Recognizing the sound of water, he charted a course in that direction.

He’d assumed it was a simple stream, but as he got closer, the rumble swiftly grew into a thunder. When he finally reached the water, the sight that met him was one fit to match the overgrown forest. A towering plume of water fell from a cliff thousands of feet above him. The river below was full of rapids, the racing water churning around hundreds of sharp rocks and dead logs buried deep in the muck. He wouldn’t be crossing the river here.

A sudden wave of thirst overtook him, and he bent down the stream and gulped down mouthfuls of the icy water. He hoped he wouldn’t pay for not boiling it with a bout of giardiasis, but he felt such a deep-seated need to drink that all other concerns faded away.

He lost track of time as he drank from the river, not rising until his thirst was sated, and his belly sloshed uncomfortably.

It was then he realized he wasn’t alone. In the middle of the raging river, trapped on a small island of mud that protruded above the rushing waters, was a tall, slender tree with bark as white as snow and leaves the deep red of a Japanese maple. The tree stood out from the rest of it surroundings too prominently for him to miss, and yet Erin was quite certain that the tree had not been there when he started to drink.

He could only reach one conclusion - the tree had moved, and a tree that moved was no tree at all. Call it a dryad, an ent, or something else altogether - the tree must be alive.

He walked up the river’s course, clambering over the rocky banks until he’d drawn parallel to the slender tree, and as he got closer, his suspicions were confirmed. Though the side he’d seen at first looked like a simple trunk, the side facing the waterfall contained the outline of a body, its face and limbs partially protruding through the bark.

“Hello?!” He had to scream to be heard over the roar of the river. “Hello?!”

He’d known the thing was alive, but he still nearly fell on his ass when the form in the bark stepped free of the trunk and swiveled its head to look at him.

There was a bit of unnatural stiffness to her hair, and her arms moved a bit slowly as she raised a hand in greeting, but thanks to her skin being the same color as the pale, white bark of the tree, she looked almost human from a distance.

A flutter of joy thrilled his heart as she waved at him. He still didn’t know why he was here, or where here was even, but at least he wasn’t alone. But there was still a river separating the two of them.

“Can you come over here?” He yelled over the roar of the water.

She shook her head stiffly, instead beckoning for him to come closer.Before his eyes, the rocks peeking out above the river’s churning water shifted positions, moving just close enough to form a passable, if dangerous, path to her little island.

Her intent was obvious, but Erin hesitated, as a seed of doubt germinated in his heart. He didn’t know the legends of dryads well enough to know if they were dangerous or not, but he vaguely recalled stories of nymphs and sirens dragging men beneath their waters to their doom.

But as she beckoned again, he found his feet moving of their own accord. With a reckless grace, he sprang forward onto the first boulder. It rocked violently beneath his feet, nearly casting him into the waters, but he caught his balance. He inched forward on the slippery, moss-covered rock until he reached the edge and leapt again. It was a long jump, longer than he ever would have dared back home, but his feet tip-tapped their way across the surface, coming to a stop in the center of the rock.

He moved forward in a daze, unsure if he or his body was the one propelling him forward. As he got closer, he could see the dryad in more detail. Her body was lithe and willowy and her limbs a tad too long for her proportions, but it was her face that drew his attention. She was noticeably inhuman; her pert nose and wide eyes were accompanied by long hair composed of thin, twisted roots and yet, despite her alien appearance, there was something profoundly familiar about her visage, as if she was a long-lost friend.

He reached the last boulder with a flying leap, his arms flailing wildly as he struggled to catch his balance. Icy cold spray drenched his legs, which shook like jello, as he readied for the final jump. His eyes were focused on the familiar face and on her hand that was stretched out to welcome him. He did not see the gulf that lay between, a jump far larger than any that had come before.

His legs pumped into motion, throwing him into the air, and it was at that moment, that he realized he wouldn’t make it. Erin plummeted toward the raging waters, toward the eddies and broken logs that cluttered the river. His feet dipped into the water, whose force was so great that it physically jerked his body to the side, carrying him down the river.

But before the waters could swallow him up, vines exploded from the dryad’s hand and wrapped themselves around his stretched arm. As he slipped beneath the water’s surface, its freezing temperatures shocked him out of his fugue, and he struggled frantically, but the vines held. He vomited water as the vines pulled him free and dragged him, suspended in mid-air, the last few feet to the tiny island. The dryad reeled him in slowly, her arm not stopping until he hung mere inches from her face.

As Erin stared into those strangely familiar eyes, he didn’t know whether to be terrified or grateful. The dryad’s mouth opened slowly revealing a row of teeth made from thorns, and his heart stopped. She’s going to eat me. He struggled futilely in her grasp, his legs freely kicking in the air. “St-o-op.” The dryad struggled to form the sounds, her mouth full of thorns not meant for the speech of human tongue.

He continued to struggle, but then something changed. A cataclysmic roar echoed behind them, and the two swiveled through heads in time to see a wall of water rushing down the river. Twenty feet above the water’s surface, it swept everything in its path, flinging boulders aside like tiny pebbles. He was torn from their grasp as the water surrounded them. He tried to hold his breath, to kick his way to the distant surface. The raging flood spun him from side to side so much that all sense of direction was lost, and when he slammed into a boulder, what little air he had left was expelled. He breathed in the water in a silent scream and sat bolt upright.

“Erin, what’s wrong?” A pair of strong hands shook his shoulder and Erin, leaning over, vomited mouthfuls of water.

“What the hell?” Jasper’s befuddled voice echoed distantly in his ears. “It’s like he's drowning on dry land. Can you heal him, priest?”

A pair of hands wrapped around his wrists, and he felt a pulse of warm travel up his body. He doubled over again, expelling several more mouthfuls of water before a trickle of blessed air finally began to reach his lungs. A gentle hand was placed on his back, and the warmth spread again.

When he finally caught his breath, he looked up to find Jasper, Ihra, and an unfamiliar man in white robes standing beside him.

“You ok there, buddy?” Jasper asked.

Erin nodded, wiping his lips dry before he spoke. “The dream was...real.”

“Dream? What are you talking about?” Jasper blurted out. Erin didn’t respond immediately, as his mind raced back to the dryad he'd seen beside the river. Was she trying to help or hurt him? He couldn’t tell, nor could he rid himself of the impression that he knew her. There was something about her face that was so familiar.

With a quick word to Jasper, the priest departed and returned a few minutes later with a bowl of water and a clean towel. Erin gratefully splashed warm water on his face and wiped himself dry. Grabbing the bowl, he picked it up and held it out to the priest, but he froze as he caught sight of his reflection. The dryad had resembled him. Not in an ‘identical twin’ sort of a way, but still close enough to be mistaken for a relative. Could she be related to me somehow? Truthfully, Erin didn’t know that much about his family; it had pretty much always just been him, his mom, and his grandma, but he knew there had to be others out there. Maybe she wasn’t trying to hurt me, but then what did she want? For that, he had no answer.