In Kuroinu

The sky disappeared within fifty yards.

The canopy closed over us like a lid. Branches so thick and layered that the morning sun became a memory and the light that reached the forest floor was green-grey and diffused, filtered through so many leaves it had no direction left. There were no shadows because there was no direct light to cast them.

Mila pressed closer to me. Her tail was tucked and her ears were flat and she was looking at the roots of the trees, which were raised above the ground like the ribs of something buried.

"It smells," she said.

"Like what?"

"Like everything at once. Living things and dead things and wet earth and-" She paused. Her nose wrinkled. "Flowers I don't have words for."

The air was thick. Warm despite the lack of sun, dense with moisture and magic that pressed on my skin. The trees were enormous, trunks wider than houses, bark grey-green and covered in moss that glowed. I stopped walking and looked at the moss. It was emitting a faint blue-green light, barely visible in the dimness but there, pulsing at the same slow rhythm as a heartbeat.

More of them ahead. Along the roots, up the trunks, clustering at the bases of the oldest trees. Bioluminescent fungi, pale blue and soft green and one cluster of deep violet near a fallen log. The forest floor was spotted with them and in the grey-green dimness they looked like someone had scattered cold stars on the ground.

"Don't touch those," Llusse said. She was walking with her bow in one hand and her other hand kept reaching for her ear and pulling away. Her ears hadn't stopped moving since we'd crossed the treeline. Forward, back, left, right, independent of each other.

"Are they poisonous?" Tianne asked.

"I don't know what they are. Don't touch them."

Llusse's voice was tight. She was scanning the canopy and her jaw was clenched and her body was strung like one of her own bowstrings.

"We're being watched," she said.

Leonora's hand went to her sword. "Where."

"Above. In the canopy." Llusse's ears swiveled up and to the left. "Two of them. Moving when we move. Stopping when we stop."

Everyone looked up. The canopy was a solid mass of leaves and branches and darkness. Nothing visible.

"I don't see anything," Filia said.

"I didn't say you could see them. I said they're there."

The Blessing had absorbed traces of Llusse's senses over the weeks and the upper canopy registered as presence. Warm. Alive. The same way a cat watches a mouse from a high shelf, except without the predatory intent. Interested, not hungry.

"Hostile?" Leonora asked. Her sword was half-drawn.

"No." Llusse was still looking up. "Curious."

"How can you tell."

"Because if they were hostile we'd already have arrows in us. We've been in their sightlines for the last quarter mile and they haven't moved to engage."

Leonora's jaw worked. She slid the sword back but her hand stayed on the hilt.

We kept moving. The path was barely a path, a gap between roots and undergrowth that might have been worn by animals or an old trail overgrown. The fungi got denser as we went deeper, the blue glow brighter, and the air got warmer and the magic was a pressure on my skin, like standing too close to a fire.

Mila stopped at one point to catalogue a smell. She crouched by a root cluster and her nose twitched and her ears rotated and she looked up at me.

"Something sweet," she said. "Like honey but alive."

"Sap, probably," Llusse said, not stopping.

"It's not sap. Sap doesn't smell like this." Mila stood and wiped her hands on her trousers. "It smells like the humming sounds."

The watchers in the canopy followed us. I caught a glimpse once, a shape moving between branches, too fast and too graceful to be an animal. Humanoid. Slender. Long limbs. Gone before I blinked.

Elves.

An hour in, Llusse stopped at a tree and pressed her palm flat against the bark. She stood there with her eyes closed and her ears forward.

"What are you doing?" Filia asked.

"Listening."

"To a tree?"

Llusse opened her eyes. "Look." She pointed at the bark under her hand. Faint lines carved into the surface, shallow and old, weathered until they were almost invisible. Runes. Elven script, the angular kind.

"Territorial markers," Llusse said. Quieter now. "Someone lives here. This is claimed land. These markers are old. Decades, maybe longer."

I arranged my face into surprise.

Alfheim. Nol's territory. And they need exactly what I am.

"An elven settlement," Leonora said. "In an uncharted forest."

"That's what the runes say," Llusse said.

"If there's a settlement, we should announce ourselves. Make our presence known before they interpret us as a threat."

Llusse looked at her. "Elves don't like being announced to."

"It's standard diplomatic protocol-"

"Human protocol. You announce yourself in an elf's forest, you're telling them you think you have the right to be there. Walk through quietly, let them come to you. That's respect."

Leonora's mouth opened. Closed.

"You're an elf," she said.

"Half of one."

"And these markers. Can you read the dialect?"

Llusse looked at the runes again. Her fingers traced the carved lines and her ears went flat and she pulled her hand back.

"It's an old dialect. Forest elf. High formal." She wiped her palm on her leg. "Whoever carved these considers this forest sacred ground."

"Wonderful," Leonora said. "We're trespassing on sacred ground."

"We're walking through it. There's a difference."

Leonora didn't look convinced. She moved her horse forward and scanned the treeline with the systematic sweep of someone who expected an ambush.

We kept going. The canopy was so thick that time was a guess. The temperature stayed warm and the fungi got brighter as the natural light faded and by what felt like late afternoon the forest floor was lit almost entirely by bioluminescence. Blue-green from the moss. Pale violet from clusters on fallen logs. A deep warm gold from growths high on the oldest trunks that pulsed in time with the distant humming.

The humming was louder here. Llusse's ears were pinned forward and she'd stopped talking. Her eyes were wide and her breathing was deeper and she moved through the forest like she was sleepwalking, her feet finding the path without looking down.

We made camp in a small clearing where the roots of four massive trees had created a natural bowl in the ground. The fungi lit the space and the air was warm enough that we didn't need a fire for heat, though Mila built one anyway because cooking on bioluminescent fungus glow wasn't an option.

Leonora checked the perimeter. She came back stiff. "The watchers are still up there. Three now."

"They haven't done anything," I said.

"Yet."

She took first watch.

Mila cooked. Llusse sat cross-legged facing the darkest part of the forest and didn't eat. Filia cleaned her sword and watched Llusse with her mouth set.

I'd caught my arm on a thorn cluster pushing through underbrush earlier. A long shallow scratch from wrist to elbow that had been bleeding on and off and that I'd been ignoring.

Tianne noticed.

"Give me your arm," she said.

"It's a scratch."

"It's bleeding into your sleeve. Give me your arm."

I held it out. She took my wrist and pushed the sleeve up and her fingers were cool on my skin. She held her other hand above the scratch and the golden light came.

She gasped.

The light blazed. Golden light pouring from her hand in a steady stream that was visible through the gaps in her fingers. The scratch closed in seconds. The blood dried and flaked away and the skin underneath was pink and new.

"It's never been this strong," she said. Her voice was small. She was staring at her own hand and the gold was still coming, pulsing brighter with each heartbeat, fed by the ambient energy of the forest.

I cupped her hands in mine.

The gold pooled between our palms. Warm. Her hands trembling inside mine and the light was bright enough to cast sharp shadows and the fungi on the nearest roots pulsed in response, their blue-green brightening to match her gold.

She looked at my face. Lit golden from below. Her eyes were wide and the gold made her irises look liquid and she was looking at me and I was looking at her and the light was warm between our hands and the forest was humming.

"Tianne," I said.

"Mm."

"Your hands are glowing."

"I know."

"Like, a lot."

She looked down at our joined hands. The gold was fading slowly and her fingers curled around mine.

"The forest," she said. "The ambient magical energy. It's amplifying everything." She looked back up at me and the last of the gold caught in her eyes.

"Everything?" I asked.

Fast. Cheeks to ears to neck.

"The healing," she said. Pulled her hands back. Folded them in her lap. "I meant the healing."

"Of course."

"That's what I said."

"That's what you said."

She stood up and walked to the fire and sat next to Mila and didn't look at me for the rest of the evening and the tips of her ears were red for an hour.

Llusse's voice from the darkness: "Smooth."

"Shut up."

"Very smooth."

I lay on my bedroll and the fungi glowed and the humming was everywhere and in the canopy above us the watchers sat and waited and Llusse was still awake, facing the dark, her ears forward, listening.

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