In Search of Auria (9 page)

When he finished soothing his arm, he opened
his mouth as if to speak, but instead the little weasel turned
around and sped off! This time he was too fast for me to catch.

“Aw, come on, kid! I’m trying to be nice
here!”

He ran off the path and entered the forest.
I hauled in pursuit. He knew very well the terrain of these woods;
he knew when to jump, when to slide and when to dodge. Eventually,
he ended up stopping in the center of a small circle of trees. I
grabbed him by the shoulder and wagged my finger.

“Ok, kid. No more running. If you had my
dagger, you know who has the rest of my equipment. Now, speak!”

The child showed me a sudden smirk. It was
very suspicious. Realizing where we were, he could have led me into
a trap. Then, I heard a noise coming from above. The sunshine that
peered through the leaves hazed my vision, but I noticed some
movement among the branches. When I looked back to the kid, he
grabbed a rope that fell from atop. It swiftly tensed and he was
pulled up to a small platform suspended from the branches. It was
then that I finally saw the ones up on the trees. They were a
couple dozen of other children standing on the high branches,
pointing at me with mocks and giggles. I had been so focused on the
one below I hadn’t noticed the rest. They were trying to frighten
me with their laughter and wails, but it wasn’t working.

“What is this?” I chuckled, “The
Kindergarten Forest Watch? Come on, kids, get down from there.” I
guess they didn’t like the joke, because they started taking stones
out from their pouches.

“Oh, crap!” I curled into a ball and covered
my head. The children yelled as they threw the projectiles at me. I
grunted each time one of them landed on the center of my back.

“Ah! Damn it, kids, stop it!”

The barrage continued until I was under a
mountain of pebbles. I could hear them celebrating and giving
themselves high fives. I had never felt such humiliation before;
toddlers ganging up and bullying me with no remorse. I raised my
fists and burst out of the pile like an erupting volcano, “You’re
gonna get it now, brats! You’re grounded!”

“No, you are!” An unknown voice said from
behind. I turned and there was an older kid, a juvenile. Most
importantly, he held my shield and wielded my sword.

“Hey, boy,” I said as I stumbled over the
rocks, “What things you hold are mine. Return them to me.”

“No, they’re forever mine. Now leave before
we barrage you again.”

“Kid, all of you are trying my patience,” I
said, holding back my indignation. “I’m in a hurry and I can’t go
on without my weapons. I don’t mean any harm to any of you, so just
give them back. I won’t hold any grudge and all will be forgiven.
What do you say?”

He shook his head, “I need these weapons,
especially the sword.”

I began to get frustrated. This wasn’t
exactly how I expected my day to go. The teenager then raised the
sword. He seemed to know how to use it more or less, but it was too
heavy for him. Seeing him struggle with it gave me an idea.

“Well then, young man, how about this?” I
proposed. “Let’s have a duel, a small bout. I’ll give you three
tries to kill me. If you succeed, you keep the weapons. If not,
they return to me. Deal?”

“Wait, kill?” he responded innocently.

“Yes, boy, Kill! That is the main purpose of
a sword. It’s not for playing, it’s for battle. Now, begin, if you
really want it.”

There was a second in which he hesitated.
The children on the trees cheered him on, “Come on, Rich, you can
do it!” “Take him down!” “He’s just a greasy grown up!”

Their support gave him the confidence he
needed.

“You’re going to wish you had gone away,” he
told me and charged. First, he tried a downward slash. I dodged and
pushed him to the ground.

“That can’t be your best,” I taunted him.
“Come on, try harder!”

He got up and raised the heavy shield to his
front, attempting to ram me over. When he got close, I kicked the
shield dead-center and knocked him back. He hit his head on the rim
and started to bleed.

“Aw, baby got a booboo? Please, promise me
you won’t cry.”

Man, I was being so bitchy! It was not my
nature to be like that, but I wanted to teach the kid a lesson for
stealing my stuff. He rose to his feet and with his last chance
attempted a sloppy horizontal slash.

“Take this!” he yelled. Before the sword hit
me, I closed in and seized his wrist. To end it, I gave him a
prudent fist to his ribs. The punch made him fall to his knees and
release my weapons. I walked around his wheezing body and picked
them up. I strapped the shield on my back and held the sword, since
the scabbard was still on him.

“No, give them back,” the young man pleaded
while holding his ribs.

“What I should give you is a good smack on
the head. You can’t just go stealing other people’s stuff!”

“But I need it.
We
need it.”

I did not understand his urgency. I looked
up to the children as they came down the trees by knotted ropes.
They all seemed worried, looking at each other with panic in their
faces.

“What will we do now, Richard? How will we
defend ourselves?” the kid I first encountered asked the young
man.

“I don’t know, Luc,” he responded while
staring at the ground. “I’m sorry. I’m simply not strong
enough.”

It was obvious they needed help with
something, and seeing their troubled faces made me wonder what the
trouble was. The young man stood once more and threw the scabbard
to the ground. As they all walked away, I asked aloud, “What is it
that torments you?”

“Just leave,” the juvenile shouted, “You’ve
humiliated me enough.”

“Wait, listen. You are right in what you
did; using the sword and shield to protect the children. Weapons
are not only used to kill, but to protect the ones we love, the
ones who are important.”

“You don’t know what’s important. You know
nothing!”

“Well, I know you’re not
afraid of me, but you
are
afraid of something to get all frightful and
emotional. Even though you did all this things to me, I understand
why you did it.”

The young man lowered his eyes. I walked to
him and stretched out my hand in good faith, “I am Erik, Erik
Belrose.”

He wondered whether to shake my hand or not,
but he finally acknowledged my trust and stretched his hand, too,
“I am Richard, Richard Le Sainte. And all of these are of my
brothers and sisters.”

“All of them? You’re a big family,” I
snapped. The kids smiled and shyly bowed. Richard then apologized,
“I am sorry that I stole your belongings, mister. But I was
desperate. You see, we are cursed here, never to leave this
forest.”

The children’s smiles and laughs turned into
a grimace. Their angst and fearful faces clawed into my heart. I
felt the need to aid them in some way. That meant I had to make a
choice; to either continue my quest and leave them with their
worries, or stay to help them and lose almost a day’s worth of
time. I wanted to go after Auria, but if she were here, I knew she
would want me to help these brats.

“Cursed, you say?” I questioned as I rubbed
my chin. “Well, how about you tell me what is the problem, and I’ll
decide whether I’ll help you or not?”

“Fair enough,” Richard replied. “Follow us
to our cottage. I have something to show you there.” The children
cheered and went running deeper into the forest.

“Wait,” I stopped them, “At least tell me
what is this curse.”

Richard took a deep breath and looked
directly into my eyes, “It’s the snake woman.”

Richard said he had something to show me
back at his cottage. I walked along with the children through the
densest part of the woods. Most of the trip, I had to walk with my
forearms protecting my face from the low branches of trees and
pines.

When we arrived, I stood flabbergasted. The
cottage looked like if a stampede had run over it; the front door
was crooked, the blinds were old and torn, and the roof had planks
missing. The porch had weather damage with moss growing on the
sides. It was practically rotting away.

"Instead of stealing a sword and shield,” I
told Richard, “try stealing hammers and nails. This house needs
some fixing. It doesn’t look safe."

Richard shook his head and walked inside.
The rest of the kids joined, but I walked upon the porch with
doubt. Each step I took gave a loud creak. When I finally went
through the crooked door, I stood flabbergasted once again. But
this time, I was shocked in a good way. The living room looked
splendid. On the table was a carved miniature of the country with
the forests and cities. Carvings of knights, monsters, and of the
children themselves rested inside the miniature and on shelves
along the wall. From the ceiling hanged wooden toys; white winged
pegasus, green eyed crows, and fire breathing dragons. Beside the
living room was the kitchen. It was organized and clean; water was
in vases, the nuts in baskets, and fruits and vegetables were in
cloths on the counters. Everything was clean and tidy.

"Wow, kids,” I praised them, “This is really
impressive. Everything is so organized, and the craftsmanship on
these figurines is really good. You made these?"

"When we have time, we carve. It is a good
way to relieve stress," said Richard. I went to the table to check
out the miniature of the cottage, when I noticed a figure hidden
beneath the trees. I reached for it and picked up the carving of a
monster; a half-woman half-snake.

“Is this the snake woman you mentioned?” I
asked Richard as I inspected it.

He sat on a brown cushioned armchair and
exhaled gruffly, "That is the reason my brothers and sisters are
scared. You see, we are all from an orphanage near the outskirts of
Flama, the closest village from here. The old caretaker that
treated us nice died of age, and his replacement treated us the
complete opposite. He used us like if we were his servants in his
own small kingdom. I got fed up with him and planned an escape. One
night I took some leftover food from the kitchen and used it to
distract the guard dogs. I quietly brought out the willing out of
their rooms and escaped to the forest. We spent a few nights
sleeping under the stars, but luckily we found this old house and
made it our home."

"Well, that is more or less a happy story,”
I commented. “I'm glad that you're now free and independent, but it
doesn't explain the long faces."

"I'm getting to that. We believe the house
used to belong to a hunter. When we got here, there were animal
horns and old bows hanging from the walls. The backyard had a
garden with two wooden crosses at their center; I believe it was
the graves of the people who lived here. Right between them I
noticed a small mound of soil. I thought it was the grave of an
infant, but there was no cross at its top. I dug it and found this
sealed inside a wooden chest.”

Richard got up from the chair and lifted its
cushion. He reached inside the chair and pulled out an old, rustic
looking book. He showed me the cover and the title read, “The Book
of Beasts”. He placed the book on the table and opened it eagerly.
As he passed by the pages, he said, "This book has knowledge and
illustrations of monsters all throughout the land. At first, I
thought it was the creation of some artist with too much
imagination, but soon enough I found the knowledge in it to be
true.”

As Richard passed the pages, I saw images of
trolls, gargoyles, exotic birds, and new beasts I had never laid
eyes before. I have encountered creatures that could easily be in
this book. For example, the ogre that I set free on the balorian
outpost, the Devita fairy of the Riverways, the flying Corvus, and
of course, the Daystars.

After a tedious search, Richard finally
reached the page he was looking for. There was an illustration
similar to the miniature carving; a half-woman half-snake called
Lamia. The illustration showed its upper body was human until
beneath the waist. The rest was the body of a snake; wide as a
barrel and as long as the ceiling. When Richard told me it was the
snake woman, I had imagined a scary lady holding a snake or
something, not a monstrous thing like this.

“Kid, are you sure this is what you are
dealing with?”

"You want proof?" he raised his voice. I
raised my shoulders and tilted my head. He twisted his face in
anger and went to the shelf on the wall. He grabbed four figurines
of children, returned and slammed them on the table one by one,
"Bruno, Mathieu, Claire and Sophie! The four of them taken by the
Lamia. The four of them dead!"

"They disappeared?" I asked.

"They didn't disappear; they were taken by
the monster. She takes and devours children, just like the book
says."

"Kid, how can you be so sure it's the--"

"Because I saw it with my own eyes, damn
it!" he revealed his temper. "Its dark scales go from the tip of
the tail to the middle of its human torso. Draping from the
shoulders it wears the torn clothes of its victims. Its face is
hidden under a leather shroud. We have tried to get away, but it
knows where we are all the time. The only moments we are safe is
during the mornings, but when the sun starts to fall, she
comes.

“Inside the house we are out of harm's way,
but I don’t know why. Maybe the hunter that used to live here beat
her in a fight or scared her. When the kids go out to search for
food, I tell them to come back inside before it gets dark. But,
some wander too far to make it back. Last time, I tried to save
Sophie. I could hear her scream, but I couldn’t find her. I ran in
the dark… I couldn’t see her…"

Richard lowered his head, fighting back
tears.