As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Eight

Summer still poured over the richer parts of Calis during the daytime, but with the onset of night, the air even here thickened with the chill of autumn. Niccola's breath made clouds as she closed the door softly behind her. Lady Selah and the sisters would not come looking for her. Lady Selah slept like death, and the sisters shared a further superstition that kept them locked in their rooms come nightfall: that Talaks left the forests by moonlight in search of more than prey. The Talaks' only interest was prey.

The thinning moon cast just enough light to show the way as Niccola hugged the shadows to the end of the front path. The sun was long gone, but people were still in the street. Servants rounded up chickens from the downhill districts, workers made their way home for the night, and a member of the City Guard sauntered by on patrol. Niccola slipped out among them. After moons of waiting, there was something freeing about action. No Bel Ilan could stop her as she strode down towards the Lowlands. What she was doing could get her fired if they knew, but they didn't have to know.

The street emptied rapidly as Niccola approached the lowlands. Finding even the night-workers absent, Niccola could not help but wonder what this response would have been like had this situation taken place back home. Varna fearing the Talakova would be like a child fearing their own shadow. Calis was much less tied to the forest for its livelihood, and it showed. Niccola wondered whether the Calisian wayfinders, basketmakers, and foragers felt the same way as the general population. It was hard to imagine any barrower spending time up close and personal with the forest and still coming away afraid, but she had learned plenty enough about Calis since crossing its border to doubt her own assumption on that.

By the time she reached the market square, the emptiness of the streets had become eerie. Niccola retreated to the shadows as the Talakova loomed ahead. It always had a presence, but in the chill darkness under a crescent moon, that presence spread like the night itself was alive. The dirt road began to disintegrate into loam and underbrush. A hundred tiny paths wound through the forest's edge, beaten by generations of Calisian citizens who visited the Talakova on Crow Moons, if not more often.

Niccola paused. Lifting a hand, she turned it over in the moonlight. Silver kissed her dark skin. It reflected back just like it ought to, giving no hint yet of the timeline she was beholden to. Niccola held her fingers up to silhouette them instead, then dropped them. It would do her no good to be seen like this if someone happened to peek out their window up the road. With a final glance at the moon, she stepped into the soft darkness that opened up to welcome her into the Talakova.

Even seven moons after becoming a barrower, it was strange to walk these paths without an entry offering. Niccola freed her hair and shook it out. Some secret part of her hoped the motes of light that twinkled in the shadows would decorate it like they once had her sister's. It was a childish wish, perhaps, but one she had never shaken.

The underbrush of the forest's edge opened up among the trees. The Talakova looked little more than a moon's travel across from the outside, but its depth was unknown. Those who dared probe its reaches said it simply kept going, ever deeper and darker, its trees ever taller, its inhabitants wilder. Those who returned spoke of endless night beyond reach of the sun: of strange lights illuminating a forest floor that crawled with foreign life forms; of diredeer the height of trees, and trees the height of the sky.

Those explorers who returned did so moons, years, and even decades after their departure, haggard and bewildered as they stepped from the forest. Many found that everyone they loved had aged and died. The time distortion of the Talakova was well-known, and intensified the deeper a person went. Yet that knowledge did little to soften stories like those of Jasper of Silver Creek, the explorer who had brought back much of what was known about the deep Talakova today. She had returned to find her granddaughter grown to an elderly woman, the last remaining member of her lineage.