Curse of the Stars Book 1

Chapter 8

Chapter VIII

The trees were tickled with silver and the moon danced upon their forked branches as Stygian looked for a place to spend the night. She had tried to fly away but she couldn't risk the scrolls falling off her back, plus her wing had screamed in protest anyway. One thing was for certain; her old territory was out of the question.

"I don't even have a clue what to do anymore." She told Calliopel as the fox trotted up to her side, one ear droopy, his fur dappled in light. The fox paid her no heed however, and began to sniff around in the snow, cocking his head to the side as if sensing little critters beneath the ice.

"...And all you care about is food." Stygian sighed, feeling her wings sag. The scroll rolled out and hit the snow, some loose flakes settling on its ashen skin.

"Right...why am I carrying this around?!" She demanded, growing angry. "Just what am I supposed to do with this thing?! It keeps getting in my way, and I don't even know what it means!"

"Do you want to know what it means?"

Stygian's head ripped up instantly, her head swivelling to and fro on her long neck to see who had spoken.

"C...Calliopel?" Stygian whispered, peering cautiously at the fox. "Was that you? Did you just speak to me?"

The fox looked up at her with a glimmer in his dark pebble eyes.

"Ha! You know not who you talk to?"

Stygian stared harder at the fox, but its mouth hadn't moved once. Was it telepathic?

"Let him talk to you when he's ready."

Definitely not Calliopel. Stygian stiffened at the threat and turned completely around, glaring into the darkness of the forest for the sound of the voice.

"Who are you?" She shouted. "Cotzy, if you followed me—"

"Cotzy? Unacceptable. Call me Mystic if you must, it's the only name I'll accept."

"How about you show yourself?" Stygian sneered. "Or are you scared of another injured dragon?"

Light flowed within the trees and Stygian caught her breath as she reared back in surprise. It was like a moon...a bright moon with a river of light that weaved out of it and into the surrounding branches. But as the creature drew closer, it began to separate itself from the trees, until it was a creature entirely in its own right.

Stygian gawked down at the creature.

"What's wrong?" The stag asked. "Did you expect another beast as tainted as yourself?"

"You...you talk! Prey don't talk!" Stygian's wings flared, and the pain that rippled through the movement was momentarily forgotten.

"You could only dream of eating a creature like me." The stag retorted, light still flowing off of him in ribbons. He was much bigger than a normal prey stag, and light seeped from his eyes like mist. Atop his head branched a pair of bleached bone antlers that curled around each other in jagged ellipses. Silver leaves shivered from their tips, and silver pod-like fruits fattened beneath the leaves of his antlers. More branches sprouted along his back like a porcupine, and disappeared into thin silver strands that flowed in the wind like spiderwebs. Similar silk-like strands flowed out of his fur, gathering in a thick criss-crossing furry web across his chest, and dangling in strands near his hooves. In fact all these stray wisps that were like spider's web attached themselves to the trees all around, almost invisible.

"What are you?!" Stygian shuddered. She had never seen such a creature before. It looked both concrete and abstract, beginning even as it ended, as if the creature was not only an individual but attached to the forest around it.

"An ancient creature—like you—only our kind have roamed the earth before any other creature ever has."

"Tell me..." Stygian whispered. "I have never heard of the likes of you before and my Mother told me many stories as a dragonet. Please...tell me your story."

"We trees do not have a story." Mystic replied curtly. "Our lives roll on like the clouds, never stopping. There is no continuum, we just simply are. We fall into hibernation, then awake again in a new rebirth, and with the changing of the seasons it continues on like that, we are not within the limits of time."

"A tree..." Stygian blinked. "You're a tree?"

"I am the Spirit of the tree." The creature corrected her. "I am the life within the tree. But I am also the life within many trees, and the plants of the field, even the grain the farmers thresh. I am the grass and the leaves, the stalks. If you listen hard at night, we whisper to each other in the wind. Listen to our leaves tinkle in the breeze, taste the fruits of the earth that we have laboured and birthed."

"Amazing..." Stygian gawked. "Extraordinary...h...how have I never seen you before?"

"We are invisible to most. But you have seen a Wishing Dragon, and that changes everything."

"I've been cursed by a Wishing Dragon you mean." Stygian stiffened. "Just look at me!"

"We know. We've seen you traipsing through our forests for a long time. The fact that you see us now and not before shows that the Curse is nearing its completion."

"Its completion?!" Stygian fretted, fear encasing her soul like a wall of ice. "What do you mean?!"

"The world is not what it seems." The stag warned. "There are invisible forces...that cannot be seen by ordinary creatures. But they indeed can be felt."

"Who?"

"The Obscurities. As I am the life within the thicket, so there is a life within you. But it is being devoured...by the Obscurities. In fact all of life is caught within a tangle of them, and all life is being poisoned...but I have also been told that Life will prevail. This knowledge has come to me from the Eternity. I hear that Life will be given to us, and that although you are cursed Young One, you are the true reflection of all of us, and the Curse will be lifted."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Stygian snarled, the spines along her back rising like twisted metal teeth. "Who told you this?!"

The stag lifted his head and his eyes sparkled. "Dear One, it is written into the very earth. And in my world it has already happened, like a new awakening. We trees are not ruled by time...and I have seen it myself. Over and over again."

"What?!"

"Search for the truth my Friend, and you'll find Him soon enough. ...Or He'll find you. Perhaps He already has." The stag turned its back to Stygian, as he glanced back into the trees and his branches creaked as he did so, his silky strings shifting in the wind currents. "But avoid every form of deceit, or someone else will find you."

"Where are you going?!" Stygian demanded as the stag headed back into the trees. He left no hoofprints within the snow, and as he fell deeper into the forest, she watched as his antlers branched out to join in with the branches surrounding him, until the trees had also become his body, and he melded until he was fast fading from view.

"I am going back to my many bodies and my many selves." The voice returned. "Listen carefully." And then he was gone. Or perhaps everywhere at once, Stygian couldn't tell.

But then as she listened she did hear them. She heard tinkling songs, a quiet brushing. She blinked hard and tried to concentrate. Yes, there were more of them now, other stags, though some female with just as mighty antlers, brushing past each other in the moonlight, falling away into the trees. The whole forest was shifting, but she blinked again and all was still. The Curse wasn't fully complete yet.

"Did you see that Calliopel?" She turned to the fox but he too was gone, as if he had never been there. Fear overtook her. "Calliopel?!" Her voice squeaked.

The fox came bounding out of the trees just then, with a smirk on his face, a field mouse caught securely between his jaws.

Stygian sighed in relief. "Is that where you've been all this time? Hunting? You didn't even notice a thing that happened, did you?"

The fox chewed on his prize, ignoring the dragon as if she wasn't even there.

Stygian sighed, a small smile forming across her scales. "You silly fox."