Tortus Bay

2.03: Leaves and Lips

Despite everything he now knew, Henry felt no more informed than he did the first time he stepped foot in Tortus Bay. Every answer led to another ten questions, and nobody would speak to him with authority. All he got were rumors, stories, conjecture, and ritual. He would have been mad, but he'd seen the magic work regardless.

He considered that for a moment, and decided that he was still mad. Ugly purple bruises lined his fingers, his shoulder wound looked no better despite days of soothing ointment, and streaks of pain still occasionally seared across his body along the shadows of the welts the wolves left. The pain was a constant dull throbbing. He grumbled it about it all the way across the village that afternoon, and into the heavy canopy of the surrounding trees.

There, he quickly found the huddled mass of the Tortus Bay Hiking and Wilderness Appreciation Society. They were a conspicuous lot, with their festive shirts, cameras, and binoculars. Like a flock of stranded tourists. Already a few of them were looking around nervously, even though they were hardly ten paces into the woods.

Niles peeled himself away from the group and waved at him as he approached. "You're here!"

Henry reminded himself of all the sleuthy and incredibly legitimate reasons he had to be joining the hiking society on their trek that day, despite the ache in his shoulder and hands, but he was saved from having to speak by the abrupt appearance of Lucy Brihte. She was the same whispery, aloof presence as he remembered, speaking more to the horizon of trees than to any of her congregated club-mates. "Is that everyone now?" she asked. "Are we free to move forward?"

"Yes." Niles looked down at his feet.

"Today, our only goal is to explore. The paths through these storied woods have been eroded by time and disuse, and they need our attention. As we walk, try to listen to the earth. The animals. Keep yourself open to it. Take your pictures. Document your birds. Together we will rediscover the heartstrings that our forebears birthed here."

Lucy was more herself in the company of trees. No more cogent, perhaps, but passion and confidence came through in her voice regardless. She led the group forward into the light undergrowth, following the faded grooves of an old wagon path, and Henry filed in at the back of the ranks.

Inevitably, Niles dropped back to walk beside him. He was dressed for the occasion, in a pair of lime green shorts and a v-neck that showed a glimpse of smooth skin with a prominent clavicle. "I'm glad you decided to come on the hike."

Henry kept his head pointed forward. The TBHWAS made slow progress along their chosen path, due to the tendency for half of them to stop and take pictures of moss, and for the other half to then admonish the photographers for scaring away the birds. "I didn't follow along with Lucy," he said. "What are we supposed to be doing out here?"

"Supposedly there are tons of hiking paths around here. There used to be other villages in the vicinity, you know, and folk would walk back and forth between them. But a lot of those paths are gone, all of their signage lost. If there was ever any signage to begin with. So we're trying to determine where our resources are best spent, in terms of resuscitating some of that."

"Oh. Why didn't she just say so?"

"She has her own way of things."

Lucy turned and halted the group as soon as they were out of eyesight of the edge of the woods. Tod, the corpulent man who spoke with Henry at the last meeting about birds, clutched his binoculars to his chest with white-knuckle intensity. "Remember to pay close attention to the heart of the wilderness," she said. "We will follow the path which calls out to us most clearly."
"I think Tod might have a heart attack," Henry whispered. "Haven't you guys done this before?"