Ch. 13— Mount Wraithwood

Moonthread, by Anthony Lee Phillips

Chapter 13
MOUNT WRAITHWOOD

Day was harsh, and bright. Nala squinted so hard it gave her a headache.

“How do you know where we’re going?” she whispered.

Bakura grinned. “I don’t.”

She gave him a look. “That’s not funny.”

“No?”

“I’m really scared. I can’t be lost, too.”

“Don’t be scared,” said Bakura. “Trust me.”

“I think you’re lost,” Nala said.

Bakura shook his head, and his nostrils flared.

“No need to get angry,” Nala said. I sound like my Mama, she thought.

“I’m not angry,” Bakura lied.

“Then where are we going?”

“Just trust me.”

Hhhh… sighed the wind.

“You’re lost.”

“HEY!” shouted Bakura, turning to face her.

The sound of shrieking crows came through the mist.

Nala flinched, but it was just ghosts. When she looked up, there were no birds above her. The branches moved, but that was just the wind.

HHHHhhhh…

She waited for him to say more. Or to say, “Sorry.”

But “sorry” wasn’t his style, so Bakura said, “We should keep going.

He turned and went on without waiting for her response.

Light baked the trees, and tanned the dust.

Nala followed after him, clutching her trident and tonguing her tusk.

* * * * / * * * *

The trees of the Wraithwood rose up like spikes, and stabbed up through the brittle mist. She felt so small beneath those barren birches.

They climbed the trail in panting, rugged silence.

The grass was tall, and coarse, and sharp as thorns against her shins. Each bush was a barren fist of thorns and edges.

“Not exactly the scenic route,” complained Bakura.

“Yeah,” agreed Nala. “Ugly.”

“But at least… it’s not too steep yet.”

She lagged behind. Nala had wanted to stop for a long time now, but was too shy to say so.

By the time she got up the nerve, Nala couldn’t even conjure proper words. She just slowed down, and slowed down, and gripped her side, stopping.

“You okay?” he said.

She looked up.

He was stopped, and looking down at her from further up the slope.

Barren birches surrounded Bakura.

Mist roiled over the ground, as bumpy roots tumbled over each other, like hungry cobras competing for the dirt.

Her ribs burned, so she gripped her side. Nala expected to see him smug, but…

He was looking at her. His blue slitted eyes were seeing her, watching.

His easy grin was gone. He looked haunted again, and his shape seemed shrouded in the mists of Mount Wraithwood.

“Let’s stop,” Bakura said.

“Sit,” he commanded, stretching his arms up above his head.

Hhhh…hhhh….?

“No, I…” Nala said, leaning over. “We—”

“You rest, I’ll look around a little.”

Bakura wouldn’t say so, but he was grateful for a respite.

“We don’t… Not for long or…”

Hhhh—

“You feel that?” he said.

Hhhh…

“I can’t feel anything,” Nala said. “I… Ugru below, I’m so… So tired, I could—”

“THERE!” he shouted.

Bakura ran past Nala, and bumped her over on accident.

“Ow!”

She fell over, even though she was sitting.

Bakura didn’t care. She heard him, behind her, only faintly, say—

“There you are...”

“Uh, yeah! I’m right here!” Nala said.

As she pushed herself up to her feet, Nala’s whole ribcage cramped.

“Oh, below! Ah…”

Then Nala saw that he wasn’t talking to her at all.

“There you are,” Bakura said. He was holding the bone dagger, and speaking to it, all smiles.

“You found it,” Nala said.

As he turned, he was smiling.

“Damn right I did,” he said. As he looked up, he was beaming. “I found it! We can—”

But then he saw something behind Nala.

Something big.

Bakura’s eyes looked above her, and his mouth went slack.

She turned, and she saw it.

She… It…

All she could think was,

What is that?

The shape was a shadow, with texture and weight. A hulking, huge shadow. All Nala felt was creature fear.

She’d seen it in her vision, back at the Yeller’s District the night before. But…

In person, it was different, because

Bakura was colorblind, and Nala was not.

The shadow seemed to pulse, to writhe, and convulse,

Like a swirling void with its own heartbeat.

It skin swirled every color, but instead

Of joining into one grand shade of white,

The colors seemed to sink into each other,

Endlessly spiraling,

Oil and water

And mud

And abyss.

It was like a galaxy, where every color was painted a different shade of black. Some colors swirled as slow as glaciers melt, but when it changed its shape, the shadow creature’s colors changed as quick as hummingbird’s wings could buzz.

It grew and it shrunk with each breath that it took.

Its eyes

Were like

Two golden

Glowing

Moons.

Nnnngggg, the thing growled above her.

It had too many claws. Its claws became a tentacle, then shuddered into the shape of a wing, only to keep changing, and changing, and changing again.

mmm? hummed the Ring.

“Move,” said Bakura.

“Shapeshifter,” Nala muttered, entranced by the thing.

Mmmm, hummed her root.

Nnnnngggg groaned the beast.

Its teeth were shadows too, and its—

“MOVE!” Bakura screamed.

He dove, and tackled Nala, while also trying to keep her on her feet.

Just in time.

The shape’s hand pounded the ground where Nala had just been standing. It struck with a thump with so much force, the shadow’s limb shattered and splattered apart.

The tendrils dug into the ground, like roots or teeth do, digging into the dead earth.

The creature roared, and swiped at them with its other strange limb.

Again, it was Bakura that saved Nala, putting his body in front of hers.

He held out the dagger to block the limb from slashing at him.

Ridiculous as it looked, it worked.

When the shadow made contact with the little dagger,

Its flesh split apart

And it

Bled.

The thing growled, and its growl was strange and terrible and low. Just like the thing’s skin, the shadow-animal’s voice was in an unceasing state of wild change.

With its still bleeding arm, the monster swung again at Bakura. This time it hit, and it hit the boy so hard his feet came up off the ground, and he flew three strides away.

The creature’s arm was still rooted, but Nala was rooted in fear, and did nothing.

It yanked hard.

“Do something,” Nala told herself.

It yanked again.

“Anything.”

The third time it yanked, the creature’s limb came free. Its still-gripping tendrils pulled the long-dead soil up with it, before finally changing into the shape of a clenching something-else.

Nala screamed, and lifted the harpoon, and stabbed the whatever-that-thing-is.

Because she caught it by surprise, the creature didn’t even try to dodge her. The harpoon’s hooked ends went deep into the thing’s shape.

The thing groaned.

Nnnngggggg!

But it did not bleed from the harpoon.

It looked at her, and it almost looked sad.

Nala tried and tried to yank her harpoon out of it.

Nnnng? it groaned.

The shadow’s shape began to drink the spear into itself. It happened slow enough for Nala to try and yank it out.

“Let go!” cried Bakura, getting to his feet and hiding behind trees to confuse it.

Nala let the harpoon go, and staggered away, backward, to where she thought Bakura was.

“Is it me?” said Bakura, from some tree on her right and behind her, not where she’d expected him to be. “Or did it just grow?”

“N-n-nice kitty,” Nala said.

Kitty?! she thought at herself. She couldn’t say why a kitty came to mind as she gazed upon this eldritch, shapeless creature fashioned after a restless void.

But it did.

“Nice… Nice kitty now…”

The thing’s one limb still bled, and where it had been cut, the shape was unable to change.

Using its other strange hand, the thing reached toward Nala.

A rock whistled from behind her, and hit the thing in its shapeless face.

It flinched, and growled. Its head drunk in the stone, and did indeed grow, just a little bit.

Where the thing should have had a chest, a mouth seemed to grow from the unsettled shape.

“Here!” Bakura was yelling, brandishing the dagger. “Over here! Come get me!”

Its body roared.

NNNGGGGG—!

“No!” she cried.

Then it leapt into the air at Bakura.
As it leapt, the shapeless thing grew
Great big bat wings, which then feathered
To give it speed, before vanishing
To make it land with more force.
It pounded Bakura in the chest so hard,
Nala felt like she was the one that got hit.
The dagger popped out of the boy’s hand.
It slid in the dirt, and skidded
To a stop
At Nala’s feet.

The creature was now pinning the poor boy. Still cradling its hurt arm, the shadow’s good arm had become a big hammer of unflesh, and pressed the boy’s neck into the ground.

“Y—! It—!” he tried to say.

Choking him.

“D—! J… J…!”

It growled and pressed him into true silence.

Something took over.
MMM
and Nala
MMM
let the spirit
MMM
IN.

* * * * / * * * *

On the other side of a blur…

The great thing roared with pain, and turned its gaze backwards It saw Nala, who held the dagger now, and was slicing madly at the shapeless shadow, like a girl possessed, not like a child at all.

She couldn’t possibly see it, but Nala’s whole spine was radiating with a dark energy.

All the ghosts woke up, screaming.

She felt all their fury.
Their fury was hers.
Her fury was theirs.
Its fear was her fury,
And she wept as they suffered.
It seemed to let her, because…
Because…
She didn’t know the because. Maybe
Her darkness was the same
As the creature she attacked.
Again and again, she slashed at its foot.
Again and again and again and again,
Until the thing had had enough,
And fled.

NNNNGGGGGGggggnnnggggg…. nnnng… nnnng…
It went away, whimpering,
And Bakura was okay,
And she was crying. She was crying. She was crying.

“You…?” Bakura said, not knowing what to say.

She was crying.

“You… okay?”

Nala shook her head through sobs.

The darkness in her dissipated, recoiling, returning to its root, to sleep in her Dagmur spine.

She was crying.

Bakura said nothing. But he waited.

* * * * / * * * *

Eventually, her tears ran out.

Bakura got up the courage to make a joke.

“You sure cry a lot,” Bakura said.

Nala said nothing.

“…”

“Thanks,” said Bakura.

“For what?”

Bakura shrugged. “You saved my life.”

Nala said nothing.

“This might seem like a stupid question,” he said, “but… Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you crying. We’re here to kill that thing, and you… I mean, you almost did. It was awesome!”

“No it wasn’t,” said Nala.

“Yes,” said Bakura, emphatically. “It was. I just don’t get why you’re… you know… crying.”

“Cause I hurt it,” Nala said.

Now, this really confused Bakura. He scoffed. Then he gave her a look.

“You know,” he said, “that’s… kind of what we came here to do. You know that, right? That’s the whole goal here. That’s the point. We’re here to kill that thing.”

Nala nodded.

Her face was slick with tears, but her eyes were exhausted.

“I…” Nala said, “saw… it. I looked into its face.”

“If you can call it a face,” said Bakura, like it was a joke.

Nala’s looked quieted him.

“I hurt it,” she said. “I really hurt it. And I don’t like doing that.”

“You think I do?” said Bakura.

Nala thought, How honest should I be?

But he didn’t give her a chance to respond.

“All I’m saying is, it’s either this thing or your Gran.”

Nala tongued her sore tusk. “How do you even know that’s true? What if killing it doesn’t fix her?”

“It will.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You got a better idea?” Bakura snapped.

Nala didn’t.

Nala looked into his eyes. Looked at him a long time.

She held out the dagger.

He just looked at it for a moment.

“Huh,” he said. “Weird blood.”

Hhhh….

“You know,” said Bakura, “I’m not even sure I… want it.”

He scoffed, making light of a dark truth that went over Nala’s head.

HhhHHHHHhhhh…?

A wind hissed through the trees, and Bakura’s whole head seemed to glow in a dull red halo.

Hhhh…?

“…No, you’re right,” he said.

Hhhh…

“Right about what?” Nala asked.

Bakura seemed to remember that she was there.

“Hm? Oh, uh… nothing.”

He took the dagger back.

“Thanks.”

“That thing creeps me out,” Nala confessed.

“What, this?” he said, holding up the dagger.

Nala nodded.

He gave her a smirk. “This thing has saved my life.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Many times.” Bakura’s eyes fogged with not-distant-enough memories. “Many many times… It’s been a long year.”

He tucked the dagger into his sash, but—

“Oh,” he said, remembering the kitchen knife. “Uh, here. Sorry I stole it.”

Bone dagger still in one hand, he used the other to pull out the kitchen knife. He offered it to Nala.

“Since you don’t have a weapon now,” Bakura said. He was smiling.

Nala was not smiling.

“No thank you,” said Nala.

“But you—”

“No weapons,” she said. “I don’t— That…”

“Well, if you change your mind, just l—”

“I won’t.”

Bakura made a face, but he didn’t press it. He tucked the bone dagger into its usual spot, put the kitchen knife on the other side, and started to look around.

“Look,” Bakura said, pointing.

Nala looked, and saw a trail of its void-colored blood carve through undead birches.

“It left us a trail.”

* * * * / * * * *

Next chapter: Deadsong Lullaby

* * * * / * * * *

(ps— When you’re ready, here are 3 ways to help Nala’s story continue to grow.

1) Keep reading!

2) Quote it on tiktok.

3) Join the First Draft Fantasy Club!

^.^

(Art by Jess Tyree.)