The settled druids were gone from the Haffland. The wisest fled to the Free Lands when the purge began. The defiant had long since been reabsorbed into the soul of the forest. Only their groves remained. Abandoned, untended, unnoticed by the human habitants, they were protected now only by their seclusion.

  Elora’s grove, to which Autumn and Scout were guiding the children, was located in a place that did not appear to be accessible to creatures other than birds or goats. To get to it, they had to travel west until they reached the river bank. From there, they followed the water higher as the channel narrowed, deepened, intensified, and roared down the mountain’s shoulder.

  The route they had chosen was the more difficult of two options. There was a shorter route through the Beard. But since going that way meant travelling up the very road their pursuers would soon be travelling down, the longer route seemed the safest. Although with gnolls now confirmed in the region, safety was a relative term.

  Coyotes, wary of large humanoids, were bold around children and might snatch them if hungry. But the threat of this common diurnal species was nothing compared to that of mountain lions who might hunt at any hour and who always targeted the smallest and most vulnerable in any group.

  Bears, also common in the area, were of less concern to Scout. Confident that the sheer size of their group would warn bears away, Scout donned her back-facing hat and took up a position in the column’s rear.

  “Why does your hat have eyes on the back?” asked the boy named Groomer.

  Scout smiled softly. She recalled asking Hunter the same question when she was a child. She experienced again the squeeze in her guts provoked by his answer—the uneasy feeling of being followed, years of practice, looking over her shoulder, being alert to the unseen dangers lurking behind.

  “Mountain lions attack from the rear,” she explained. “The eyes on the hat confuse them. Make them hesitate. Gives me a better chance of spotting them before they attack.”

  The child’s face paled. “Can’t you just look back and see them yourself?”

  “Honestly?” Scout made firm eye contact with the boy; it was important that he believe what she was about to say. “Probably not.”

  Groomer swallowed and looked nervously past her. Scout knew what he was thinking but—as a slave—dared not ask.

  “Here,” she said, removing her hat and placing it on his head. “We’ll take turns.”

  Groomer nodded, his color returning. “Do I still need to look back?”

  “Always,” she replied. “Keep your eyes scanning, moving from spot to spot. Keep your head moving. Even if you see nothing, what your eyes pass over should feel seen.”

  She knew how frightening her words must be to his young ears. Her own survival lessons were still reasonably fresh. But she trusted the value of applied fear and hoped it would one day save his life.

  They were searching for Elora. Everybody in the Haffland knew stories about the druid doyen, but few knew where to find her. Autumn knew because Autumn had trained with her.

  They were looking for a crossing point, a path over the rushing waters of the Cold River. There were two, Autumn had told her. The first, which required hopping from boulder to boulder upriver for a significant distance, was no longer there when they had arrived at that spot earlier in the day. Elora might have closed that door to keep out the purge, Autumn speculated. Or time may have altered the riverbed.

  The second crossing, a third of a league further on, was also gone. At that point Scout began to wonder if the rumours were true. Maybe Elora was dead. Or maybe she, too, had fled to the Free Lands. Given the brutality of the Company’s genocide, it seemed unlikely to Scout that Elora’s grove would still be occupied. At best, it would be vacant and useful as a temporary hiding place.

  Eventually, as the sun drifted into gaps between the peaks and as the slope between the troop and the glacier turned to treeless, nearly-vertical stone, Autumn found a way. Here, they discovered a monstrous everwood partially toppled by erosion. Its roots clutched the river bank on one side while its forehead rested against a goat-studded slope on the other. Every part of this living giant was wet with spray from the falling water and the churning gorge below it.

  Together, the scout and the druid assessed their discovery and calculated their chances. Crossing here was treacherous for an elf. For a human without tools and ropes, it was impossible. Even the goats had to watch their footing on the slippery slope near the chasm’s edge.

  “Are you sure?” Scout was wary.

  “I know this tree,” Autumn assured her, pointing through the swirling mists hiding its top. “And I know there’s a goat trail up there.”

  “Can you do it?” Scout asked. “With the kids?”

  “I think so,” Autumn assured her. “One at a time.”

  “And if you slip?”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  They both looked into the boiling cauldron of rock and water below.

  “I have some rope,” Scout offered. “Not a lot. About twelve foot, maybe.”

  Autumn looked puzzled.

  “When Hunter trained me to canopy,” Scout explained, “he tied a rope around our waists. He went ahead and showed me where to put my hands and feet. He used the rope for backup.”

  Autumn considered her proposal. “Seems like it might get tangled.”

  “It did . . . sometimes,” Scout affirmed. “But . . . ”

  Autumn scanned the length of the tree. “I see a path. I’m going to check it out. They can eat while they rest,” said the druid, looking at the children.

  The sun was going down but the moon was already up and would be nearly full. Clear skies signalled cold. Scout considered a fire to warm the children, but at this elevation it might be seen from the road below. Darkness would benefit predators, but it would not deter Autumn and it might be best for the children not to see what lay below as they climbed the wet tree to the goat trail.

  After tying a rope around their waists, Autumn led Groomer up first, disappearing behind a screen of everwood needles. Scout listened as the druid provided step-by-step instructions and encouragement. Soon, the sound of falling water swallowed up their voices and the troop was left wondering about their fate.

  *****

  Groomer slipped twice on the slippery wet bark. The first time, the rope went taut but held fast. Autumn pulled him to safety. The second time, a branch caught him. It was darker inside the branches near the trunk than outside under the bright light of the moon, but there was enough dappled light sneaking through to allow Autumn to teach the older children where to hold and where to step. Kitty and the youngest children were small enough to simply carry.

  One by one, Autumn took the children from Scout and carefully crawled them up the mist slicked body of the sleeping colossus. As the sky lightened ahead of the morning sun, the sheep and goats on the mountainside gathered curiously to watch the crossing and then scattered up the slope when the assembled party began to move at daybreak. After waving goodbye to Scout and expressing gratitude to the giant everwood, Autumn led the children along a familiar goat trail as it wound around the mountain’s north face before zigzagging back down to the opposite bank of the river they had just crossed.

  As the crow flies, Elora’s grove was just three leagues from the abandoned barn in Milton and a little more than a league from the River Camp. It was wedged between the east bank of the river and the Beard on the broad shoulder of Skunk Mountain. Looking down on an oxbow, it was screened from the river’s main channel by a point bar stable enough to support seven mature everwoods.

  Sheltered from the wind by a dense mixture of everwoods, oaks, and cedars, the grove featured a cavernous rock shelter—the remains of an ancient undercut riverbank—that offered protection from seasonal rains and periodic snowfall. It was toward this landmark that Autumn led the children as they ascended the slope past a long dormant megalith.

  The fact that Elora was not present in her grove when they arrived was not entirely surprising to Autumn. While the grove had been a hive of druidic activity for decades, the systematic persecution of the druids that followed the war had been effective. Elora, one of the last settled druids in the Haffland, had not been seen for several years.

  As a former student here, Autumn was familiar with the layout and all of Elora’s cardinal rules. So when the troop arrived in midafternoon, it did not take long to get settled. Some children brought coal to two fire pits in the rock shelter—the only place in the grove that fires were permitted. Others distributed the course blankets they had carried with them. Then they all sat down to rest and eat from the rations taken from the coffle wagons.

  As he had done in the old barn in Milton, Autumn crumbled some dried holly into his left palm and then placed two tiny dried everwood twigs on top. He rubbed them all briskly between his palms while reciting a fun little song that sounded like a crackling fire. The children watched with fascination glowing on their faces. As the sound song ended the crumbled leaves and tinder sticks rained down igniting as they fell.

  “Whoa!”

  “How do you do that?” the children wanted to know.

  “It’s nature magic,” Autumn replied.

  “What’s that song you’re singing?”

  “Does the song set the leaves on fire?”

  “Can you teach me how to do that?

  Autumn did his best to answer their questions. The song is a chant. You don’t have to sing a chant, but music helps me memorize the words. Yes I can teach you the song. No, you won’t be able to start a fire with the leaves and the song alone. You also need to have some nature magic. No, I can’t give you magic, but if you are given some I can teach you how to use it. We can talk about this more tomorrow. It’s time to get some rest.

  “We can’t sleep here,” one of the boys objected.

  “Why not?” Autumn asked, looking around for danger of some sort.

  “There are no walls,” the boy explained.

  Autumn looked around the rock shelter. “Yes there are,” he insisted. “There are walls there, there, there,” he said, pointing to various parts of the shelter. “That is the roof,” he said, pointing to the granite overhang. “And this,” he said, turning to face the open space,” . . . this . . . is our doorway,” he said, throwing his arms out wide.

  The children laughed.

  “That’s not a doorway.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Then where is the door?” a wiry acorn-skinned boy asked, through giggles.

  “Hmmm,” said Autumn, pausing to consider this question. “I know,” he said, pulling a variety of ingredients from his pockets and his hair while reciting a singsong chant. A moment later, he drew a short, straight line in the ground with his toe and dribbled the ingredients into the shallow scuff.

  Instantly, as he stepped back, plants with long thorny spikes began growing up from the ground twisting, thickening, and curling back on each other. As soon as they reached a height just over Autumn’s head, the greenery began spreading side to side. In a few sips of tea, the formerly nonexistent wall of the rock shelter became an impassable wall of thorns—enclosing the wide-eyed, slack-jawed children.

  “There,” said Autumn, “now y’all are as snug as a bug in a rug. You go to sleep now, you hear me? We’ll talk more in the morning.”

  “But where are you going to sleep?” the acorn-skinned boy wanted to know.

  “I’m not human, honey,” Autumn reminded him. “I don’t sleep like y'all. Now close your eyes. Tomorrow’s gonna be a busy day.”

  Episode 8 - Scout

  Reading time: 10 mins

  Scout begins organizing Old Mill while John goes with Hunter to find help.

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