Chapter 11: Worlds Between

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfaKicP_Bbg

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In the 15^th-century Imperial Forest of Nuremberg, a ghostly woman haunted wanderers. She occasionally appeared on forest paths that weren’t marked on maps anymore. Usually, she just observed people passing by on a foggy day from behind the birches. In some cases, however, she led lost souls back to well-trodden trails. Disguised as an owl, she would fly ahead for them to follow without ever receiving gratitude. Despite her benevolence, residents were scared of her. Some tales accused her of taking children. Nothing the like had ever been observed except for one occasion around All Hollow’s Eve where she was seen at the forest edge, releasing into the open a crying child that had wandered off while harvesting rosehips with its mother.

People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe, even if it doesn’t always reflect the truth. Their superstition was the reason why they called Reynke to hunt her down, so they could burn the witch at the stake. As a ranger, he was the only one able to trace her. Furious the huntsman was. He could’ve been at the castle right now, where the Emperor’s Order of the Dragon held their great autumn ceremonies. One did not get to see King Sigismund and his knights that often. It would’ve made for a great minstrel’s song. But no, those hags insisted on him going after the white woman. As if he had ever done what someone else told him to do. Were it the case, he’d not even be here.

Every now and then, he visited the village to sell some meat before it turned. And those cows thought this would instantly mean he’d be in their service. Deeply malcontent, with arms crossed, the huntsman leaned against a birch tree, whose leaves had already taken on autumn’s golden yellow. “Can’t he drink a bit faster?” a question went up into the neighbouring tree, where a huge owl sat like a watchguard. Meticulously, she was looking after a pale boy cowering over a deer Reynke just had shot. The animal was still warm, its heart still beating, and its memories were still fresh, even though not for long.

“Don’t pressure him,” admonishing words came down from the branches. “He shall not feel ashamed of the way he was born.” To the owl, flying came naturally. Her little raven companion, on the other hand, had just learned  how to spread his wings to travel the veil. She had taught him, on the way from the southern borders of King Sigismund’s realm, how their kind mastered the animalis. Gliding through the air exhausted him beyond measure. And his heritage left him only one choice to deal with such exhaustion. Some regular food was appropriate for filling his hungry belly. Quenching his thirst, however, it did not. His mother had assumed this trait of his was exclusively owed to his father’s side of family. But Zana knew better.

“Ye need to stop passing by here,” Reynke declared, fishing for his bow leaned next to him against the tree.

His words caused the owl to give up her high seat. “Oh, you mean like you?” she responded pertly, gliding down to the ground where her silhouette went up in miraculously glittering dust. Out of it stepped a sorceress Reynke came to dislike due to her unrequested lectures. “Shouldn’t you be with the Wild Hunt this time of year, fox blood?” she asked, staring him right into his soul as her blue glowing eyes fell upon him.

She knew way too much about him, yet he still couldn’t figure out who she was. Her appearance suggested her to be a daughter of the willow goddess. Nemesava’s offshoots being able to wander the worlds between did match what Reynke knew about them. Which admittedly wasn’t much. “My affairs are none of yer business, woman,” he ended her survey early on. “You should mind yer own fellowship.” His head nodded into the whelp’s direction. What an odd lad. He had the aura of a raven, but there was something else dwelling within him, too. Something strangely familiar.

“We will be off as soon as he has had some rest.” Zana gazed upon Radu. He had experienced so many things unknown to him the past few days and hadn’t even had the time to properly process it, let alone grieve his loss.

Radu could hear their words, but his mind was entirely occupied otherwise. While drinking from the animal, he took in all its memories. Those memories were the reason why he, against his parents’ instructions, repeatedly preyed upon pets, cattle and other wild creatures near the villages—to experience nature in its purest form. Running through the forest unbound, smelling its scents. Fresh moss overgrowing a salty-tasting stone. The sound of raindrops falling onto dry leaves—an entire orchestra of noises, through which the galloping of horses beat like a drum. A carriage, riding through the woods. In it sat a young couple. Radu stopped drinking. His lips, shimmering red from all the blood, parted in amazement while his eyes wandered off.

Zana noticed his change of behaviour. Cautious, she went over to him and knelt down. “What do you see?” she whispered. Her young companion still had to become accustomed to his powers. All the sensations he perceived could’ve easily led him astray or turned into a fit of rage by a single wrong word.

“A lord and his lady,” Radu told her. “They’re riding to the castle in a carriage.” Overwhelmed, the boy stood up. “Her face looks like… mother’s.”

Reynke got curious and stepped closer to the two, eavesdropping in the background.

Soothing hands found their way onto Radu’s shoulders, keeping his mind from slipping away completely. “You will make for a formidable huntsman,” she praised him. “But now, please, come back.”

Radu snapped out of his vision. For a moment, he thought he would be riding with them to the castle, where the woman’s husband was promoted to a knight of the order. Many had gathered in the castle’s great diet hall; banners of several houses lined their way as the couple took their steps up the stairs, accompanied by cheers of a thousand citizens. His heart was racing at their sight. For some reason, they felt like long-lost ancestors to him. As they vanished before his eyes behind locked doors of the hall gate, he grew frustrated. Lady Zana had disrupted his excursions. Now he would never get to find out, who these two were. Shrugging Zana’s hands off his shoulders, he grabbed for his bow and trudged into the thicket, pouting.

“Oy!” Reynke shouted after him. “Find me a solid rod, will ye!” Unbelievable this youth. Pressing his own bow in front of Zana’s chest, the huntsman went on his knees himself before the deer. It had stopped breathing. Gently, he let his hands run through its fur, closing his eyes as if to speak a last prayer for the animal’s soul. Then he began to cut its belly open with his hunting knife. “What is it with you ‘n orphans?” Whenever he met one of these sorceresses on the veil’s paths, they were carrying a child around.

Zana held his bow, her head turning after Radu. In a bad mood, the boy passed some trees and shrubs, ripping off a branch here and there just to throw it away again. “They always lead me to what I am searching for,” she answered. It wasn’t as if she had chased him. The veil revealed its paths in unpredictable manners—with the purpose of one’s journey as guiding light on the way. Wishes, hopes and prayers guided a soul through this confusing labyrinth of otherworldly passages where neither time nor space did matter.

“And what are ye searching then?” the huntsmen wanted to know. Her words were secretive and unsatisfying. “Who is he anyways?” Cutting through the deer’s abdomen, its intestines oozed out. Reynke would leave them for the wolves. They too had to eat, and their population had started shrinking in recent decades—undoubtedly, thanks to those folk tales accusing the beasts of eating little children. Mortals had opened hunting season on a species that once hunted at their side. Maybe people’s sudden dislike of wolves also was due to the animals stealing a chicken every now and then. But that was nature, wasn’t it? Had mankind distanced itself so much from it that they saw the devil’s shadow behind the most common acts of surviving?

“He is stubborn. Just like his father,” Zana admitted more to herself than to the huntsman. It all made sense to her now. The scenes and times through which the veil guided her, the vision Radu just had, even the fact that she was standing next to Reynke right now. Who didn’t have the breadcrumb of an idea, how iconic his presence appeared to her in this very moment. A legend he was, or better said, he was to become one—on this side and beyond the veil. Just one thing didn’t make any sense in all of it: her. Sadness crept up in Zana’s chest. An entire lineage was unfolding in front of her eyes, without her playing any part in it.

“Don’t tell me he’s mine,” it crossed Reynke’s thoughts. “I don’t have any use for a whelp nor the responsibility that comes with it.” He preferred his freedom over everything. So much so that he escaped from Lord Herne when he demanded him to take a goddess as his spouse.

While his words always offended his lord, upon Zana’s face they cast a subtle grin. “Ah, we all know that story,” she laughed, confusing Reynke, who had just lifted her spirit without knowing.

“We,” he repeated. “Who is we? And what are ye witches of the veil gossiping behind me back!” Nothing but trouble these sorceresses meant to him so far. Granted, he wasn’t always innocent when it came to rumours and bad narrative about his persona. But they all should have cared for their own business instead of spreading word about his.

“You know I can’t tell you about events you didn’t come to experience yourself,” Zana reminded him. Her journeys through the worlds between often let her witness things that hadn’t happened yet. The codex demanded her to keep it all to herself. She was everything but a gossip.

“At least help me with this deer then,” Reynke demanded, discontent with her again very shallow response. Aye, it was hunting season, and he might have shot game sooner or later anyways. Her brat even helped with draining the blood. Nevertheless, the least she could do as a kind gesture for her orphaned boy getting a free meal, was help carry the animal to Reynke’s hideaway. The lad hadn’t shot badly, aimed formidably as well. But a stag  like this still was too big for him.

Another fact that fuelled Radu’s anger while he was exploring the unknown forest. It felt like his vision was borrowed wisdom, because he had not been the one to shoot the deer. A circumstance that hurt his ego as the young hunter he viewed himself. He had to make up for it in order to deserve it.

His feet carried him to a nearby clearing where he would take out his frustration on a tree. Rudely, he fired one arrow after another at a birch’s bark—right between its wooden eyes. Why couldn’t he bring down that stag? His aiming was flawless, yet the deer did not fall. Reynke had to fire a second shot to make it a successful hunt. Radu felt humiliated. Snorting, he stomped towards the birch, ripping out his arrows without any regard for the fractured bark they were stuck into.

“Has this birch done anything to you, my son?” A dark voice asked. It came from close behind his back and dawned like the morning mist nearby. Admonishing, it sounded—just like his father’s voice whenever he behaved unreasonably.

It took Radu about as long as that ominous breeze of wind to dance around his body before he finally pulled out the last arrow stuck in the wood, this time more gently. “No, sir,” he responded, pressing the arrow to his chest before turning around. In front of him, he should find a stranger, dressed like a nobleman, maybe even a king. His long robe was coated with a furred shoulder cape; his head crowned with a chaperon of finest velvet. “Are you the king of this forest?” the boy inquired with curiosity.

Inspecting the young boy, a humming laugh rang through the man’s throat. The stranger twirled the left side of his elegant black moustache. “Oh, no,” he smiled at Radu. “I think I died… some time last winter…” Pondering, the nobleman walked a few steps across the clearing surrounding them. “But my memories sometimes draw me back to this place,” he admitted. “I remember once having gone for a hunt here with King Sigismund.” His Wallachian accent was hard to miss.

The boy froze. “You are…” the words would not escape him. He couldn’t speak it out loud. It would have sounded completely mad. More than a few years had passed since someone last mentioned that name around him.

Sir Noble recognised the boy’s confusion and wandered back to him. Entertainingly bowing down in front of his young fellow huntsman, he lowered his head. Then he looked up to Radu and grinned at him with bare but neatly filed fangs. “I am a voivode,” he declared proudly.

Radu meant to stand upright even a bit more stiff than before, a defiant gaze upon his face. “I knew it,” he stated with all self-confidence he could muster, forcing another grin from the nobleman.

“You’re in good company, my son,” a voivode should reply. “We’re much alike, you and I.” His gaze fell upon the young one’s appearance. “I also remember having a boy your age.” Some friendly strokes were given to Radu’s coal black hair, which had grown a bit longer the past few weeks. “He likes hunting, too. Often runs off to the forest with his brother, causing their mother worries on end!” Quite a fine bow the boy had there, a voivode figured. Only talented young hunters called a piece like this their own in his homeland.

Radu was flabbergasted. But he finally dared to speak the name. “You are Lord Vlad Dracul II, knight of the Dragon Order.” As quickly as those words escaped him, he went mute again and made an effort to stare as far into the distance as he could.

Said Vlad should withdraw his attention from the bow and direct it back at Radu. “I am indeed.” Taking a firm stand, he put his hands behind his back. “And who are you, young man?”

Briefly, Radu eyed the nobleman before looking away again. “My name is Radu.”

His answer should sow astonishment in the lord’s expression. “Ha!” he acknowledged with surprise. “My brother and eldest son carry the same name. It is a good and strong Wallachian name.” Proudly, he patted Radu on the shoulder, who winced upon Vlad’s words.

“My… my father is also a dragon knight,” the boy let the voivode know. “But he’s not from Wallachia.” Suddenly, Radu’s heart became heavier. Discouraged by his own thoughts, he directed his stares into the grass. “He left us, me and mama.”

Lord Vlad laid his head to the side, studying the facial features of the young huntsman, whose mood had darkened all of a sudden. “Ah, we knights of the Dragon Order come from all kinds of foreign lands,” he explained to Radu. “Some even deem us immortals from another world, hahaha!” A deep yet loud cackling rang over the glade. His pun did not fix the boy’s upset expression as well as he intended, so a lord’s strong hand found its way under Radu’s chin to lift it up. “Surely, your father had urgent matters to go after. We always have…” He could not remember ever spending enough time with his sons or wife, which he regretted at this very moment. “I assume he made this bow for you?”  Vlad stretched out his hand to the boy, who would give his weapon to the lord quite naturally. “I don’t recognise its shape as one common to our kingdom.” Had the order expanded its territory during his absence? Or has it always spanned much more than Sigismund’s empire? Those carvings on the wood did not match anything Vlad had ever come across either. “To hunt a stag like the one you were after, it requires great might.” Leading Radu away from the tree, he inspected the bow further. “You have an excellent weapon,” he admitted. “But your torso lacks the draw strength.”

His words hit Radu like a dagger. He hated it when adults deemed him too young to do something. Much time to protest Vlad’s judgement he had not. Promptly, he got turned around to look at the birch again and was given his bow back.

“Aim, but don’t shoot,” Lord Vlad whispered to the boy, taking the wooden aim with the same strict focus as he. “You need to honour your prey and look it in the eye before you claim its life.”

Radu would stand there, aim, but not shoot. For a good ten minutes he would. From his perspective, it probably was even longer. He had great difficulty resting his feet and posture yet remain tense. Balance was nothing that came easily to him. Eventually, his mind slowed down, his heartbeat, too. A calming sensation. His eyes wandered around the pattern in the birch’s eye; it was darker than the rest of the tree’s white bark, almost black. But it held a calmness that captured Radu’s restless perception. There were tales about such ghostly trees, speaking of sprites living within their wood. What if Radu had hurt her? His face became more serious. Was this the reason many archers pinned wooden targets to the trees for training, to not hurt them? Another thought he quickly dismissed as he tried to maintain his posture. At one point, however, he meant to turn around and ask Lord Vlad when he would be allowed to shoot. To his shock Radu should learn that the nobleman had vanished with no trace. The mist cleared around the glade, wandered back behind the treelines and left the boy standing alone in the early morning sun.

Radu returned half an hour later to Lady Zana and Reynke, bringing a sturdy branch with him. A branch of a tree that must’ve been struck by lightning some time ago. He found it on his way back while still trying to make sense of the lord’s unexpected appearance. His face was still puzzled as he took a stand next to the owl witch.

“Where have you been?” Zana asked as she received the rod, laying her palm against his cheek to feel his temperature.

“Just shooting some arrows with a knight,” Radu answered.

Reynke frowned. “What’s a knight doing out here at this time of day?” He had never seen one that far away from town before midday.

“Probably on a journey,” Zana mused and was the second person that morning to give Radu’s coal black hair some gentle strokes. “Now come help us,” she ordered. “You have to respect your prey.” Then she threw him a wink and went back to Reynke with the rod.

Radu swallowed as he followed her. He saw those two with completely different eyes all of a sudden. Did they know the lord he just ran into?

Reynke and Zana fixed the deer to the rod, so they could carry it on their shoulders.

“Here, take my bow, lad,” Reynke would tell Radu before leaving the hunting grounds with him and Lady Zana. Through the lines of birches, the three of them walked into the awakening morning mist where their ways should part soon after reaching Reynke’s little fox den. As a farewell gift, the huntsman renewed Radu’s bow string and gave the two a small portion of game for the way. They would fry it over open fire the following evening before their journey took them even farther back in time and thus farther north the veil, into the lands of eternal winter.

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