She stood on the ledge, surveying the armies below. At the entrance to the valley, the horde of invaders stood. They wore black armor and the finger bones of their conquests in long ropes around their necks. Silent as death, they waited while their herald rode forward to offer terms of surrender and servitude. Across the narrow plain between the wooded walls of the valley, stood the best the valley could dredge from the taverns and the fields. Farmers and farmwives and their oldest children held scythes and pitchforks and rusted halberds from antiquity in front of them nervously. Hunters and huntresses gripped their bows, long knives hanging from their belts. The shopkeeps and the laborers filled in the gaps, holding whatever modified implements of war they could scavenge.
Slowly she reached her mind out, weaving a web around her through the roots and the dappled sunlight of the wood:
“Give of yourself that we may protect this our home from those who have scorched the earth and made the rivers run red with the blood of innocents.” And with it she sent an image of the army below, and more, images carried on the minds of ravens, images of the bloated and bloody corpses left in the wake of this invading army.
One by one, they joined her, their minds at her command. Not enough, though, not enough power in the wood to fight this army. Carefully, she wove her net around the villages in the valley, around the farmwives to old to fight, the children left in cellars, and the hastily constructed army. They were frightened, these simple folk, but they trusted her, they knew her.
With all the weight of the wood and those below, she sent a message to the invading army:
“You are not welcome here. Go now while you can.” And with it she sent an image, of their own dead and bloated bodies decomposing rapidly and returning to the earth, worms crawling out of their eyes and maggots churning their bowels.
The invaders shifted uneasily, but these were not so easily swayed. The warlord laughed and rallied his men, untouched by her warning.
She shook her head and a tear escaped one eye to trickle slowly down her cheek. So old, she had thought she would be allowed to pass to the Wood of her dreams without having to use this power. She had prayed over and over, ‘please let this burden pass from me’.
Drawing the light and shadow of the wood into herself, she wove her power around the invading army, wrapping them firmly in a power older than their young gods.
The farmers and hunters watched, aghast, as the invaders turned on one another. Their blood-thirsty cries split the heavens, whilst their axes and swords cleaved their fellows’ heads from their shoulders. The carnage took some time, for this was no small army. For most of the day, they hacked and slashed at their comrades, until only a handful remained. When there remained only a few, she released them. They looked around, bewildered. Blood-drenched with the blood of their brothers-in-arms, they cried out. Some fell to their knees, shaking their fists at the heavens. Others broke inside, plunging their swords into their hearts in the hope of atoning for this atrocity. When they had calmed, she sent them a last message:
“Leave. Let it be known that this valley is under my protection and that any who carry a weapon past this border will die.” She searched their minds, and for each survivor, she planted an image of their worst fear and personified it with the darkness of the wood.
They stumbled, fleeing from the awful power that turned their hearts and broke their minds.
***
On the ledge, she collapsed, her breath rattling feebly in her chest. Blood ran in streams from her nose, her eyes bleeding to crimson as capillaries burst. She welcomed the darkness, the darkness that would ease the horrible images of death that continued to flash before her minds’ eye.
She woke, some time later, with the realization that there wasn’t much time. She lay on her side on the ledge, dried blood caked on her face.
All around her, the small creatures of the wood, the field mice, the frogs, the songbirds, lay dead and dying. So little to give, so they had given it all.
She whimpered at the dreadful cost, tears running freely down her cheek onto the sun-warmed stone. She searched through the minds connected to her still, until she found the one she was looking for, her chosen. With the last of her strength, she threw the power and the knowledge into the young mind.
***
Deep in the wood, the young male opened his eyes, startling blue eyes filled with sadness and knowledge beyond his apparent youth. Reluctantly, he reached out his new-found power. In the villages, men and women were warily returning to their homes. In the temple of the Wood at the Town Square, the priests and priestesses were burning incense to the Goddess of the Wood in thanks for her protection, and in the tavern, an old hunter, deep in his cups, was telling tales of his youth.
“I saw her once”, he proclaimed,”She was beautiful, her face serene like the moon, she wore an alabaster gown of the finest material, finer than silk. I was out hunting boar…”
The new God of the wood snorted and shook his antlers in laughter. He had her memories now, and he knew with certainty that she had never worn a dress of any kind in her life. Her parents had called her Bounty, in the way those of the wood named their offspring in thanks for the plenty of the present and in hope for the future. He cast about until he found the mind of an eagle, soaring high above the mountain. With a little coaxing, the eagle circled lower and lower, so that he could see her one last time.
***
On a ledge near the top of the mountain, an old cougar lay, the last rays of the dying sun illuminating her, turning her tawny fur to golden fire.
