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The Demon in the Forest

What's Next

The Demon in the Forest

by

Laer Carroll

Copyright © 2011 by L. E. Carroll

Summary: How did the immortal shapechangers come to be?  The answer lies in the Demon's Forest, and the encounter of one young woman fleeing for her life with one of the forest's most dreaded dwellers.

It happened 9,000 years before our time....

Credits: The ghost on the cover is a photo of the Antarctica summer cloud cover taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1990. Rights assigned to the public by NASA. The forest photo was taken by author L. E. Carroll in Ballyvaughan, Ireland, on the south coast of Galway Bay.

The Demon in the Forest

This is the story of how the first shapechangers came to be, and one changer in particular. It happened over 9,000 years ago.

Maelgyr choked down fear while she crept through the berry thicket on the edge of the forest outside her village. Despite the width of a small pasture between her and her home she had seen too well what the enemy did to her people, even to children.

She neared the packed-earth road which passed through her village. Bushes and a bend in the road should hide her from the enemy. She crept onto the hard road, looking both ways. She saw no one. Panic sent her fleeing for her life.

But only for an instant. She slowed to a pace that would take her as quickly as possible all the way to the Protector's garrison several miles away.

After long minutes her fear ebbed. Then far behind her she heard voices, a shout, pounding feet. She glanced back, wild-eyed.

There were three of them, wearing boots, a loincloth, armless leather armor, their hair in pony tails, black paint making ovals around their eyes like a mask. Each of them carried a spear in one hand, a long knife in the other.

She gave a little scream and put on a burst of speed. But even for sturdy Mael that speed was soon too much on top of her fear and the distance she had already run. Her ribs ached too much, her breath came too hard. She had to slow down.

The pounding footsteps grew closer, closer still. In despair she veered into the Dark Forest. Slowed as the bordering bushes then the first short trees rushed at her, grew closer together, spread shadow on the forest floor. Slowed still more as she sought to be quiet to keep from being noticed by forest dwellers.

People who went into the Forest sometimes never came out. Those who did might be changed strangely, their faces and bodies melting into inhuman shapes, their eyes turned from warm chocolate to an icy blue color. Or their speech might be gone, or strangely garbled. The lucky few uncursed had escaped from wispy white ghosts who clutched at them and chased them.

Maelgyr's agile slender body danced through the thick shrubbery and bushes beneath the trees. Her pursuers plowed into them, shouted with pain, cursed. The thudding footsteps behind her slowed, receded, the voices quieted.

After a time she glanced back to see no one, even though she heard occasional speech at a distance. If she could not see them, they could not see her. She turned aside to walk stealthily parallel to the road once more, toward the garrison. She moved deeper into the forest. But only a bit, just enough to clear the underbrush under the shorter trees, to walk in the edge of the darker shadow under the bigger interior trees.

At first she moved from tree trunk to tree trunk at a creeping walk, stopping at each tree to listen for long moments before moving on. Then she began to walk faster.

For a quarterday at least she kept this up, slowly relaxing as the forest remained quiet. Then she began to move a bit faster, then faster still, as fear of the enemy waned and fear of the ghosts/demons waxed. She began to look around her more, for the demons were said to be silent, whereas the open-land enemy were noisy with hard boots and harsh speech.

Rounding one tree she ran straight into a wispy white demon standing on the other side. She stifled a scream and turned to run back the way she had come. But it was all around her like a grey fog and she could not see. She stopped to keep from running into a tree.

Frigid air entered her nose, mouth, eyes, ears—everything! She couldn't breathe!

Suddenly the white fog cleared from her vision and the cold inside her vanished. It left her shivering.

Maelgyr stood still and silent, arms clasped around her body, clutching hands warming her upper arms. Then suddenly her fear vanished as if it had never been and she felt warm. Her shivering stopped.

She stood that way for a long time, looking around, listening. Finally she turned back toward her original direction and began creeping through the forest again.

At last the forest ahead grew shorter and brighter and underbrush began to choke her way. She crept through it like a hare wary for hounds until she reached the edge of the forest. She looked all about her, moved a little forward at a crouch, paused to listen for a long time.

The garrison was visible about half a mile away, a sharpened log palisade on a slight rise, square with a sentry tower at each corner. Safety.

Maelgyr crouched for long moments, looking all around. She straightened, paused to get up her courage, then dashed out of the Forest toward the palisade. Before she got far one of the enemy exploded out of a pile of leaves nearby and grabbed her, a hard hand clasping her neck in a choke that cut off any outburst, cut off her air, an arm went around her waist and she was lifted off her feet. Another pile of leaves erupted and her kicking feet were captured. As if carrying a log between them the two enemies ran into the forest.

Out of sight of the garrison they set her on her feet, released her throat just as her sight was going from grey to black and her lungs seemed about to burst from straining for air.

She stood, barely, her legs so wobbly she almost fell, catching her breath with deep racking inhalations, her head forward and her hair hiding her face. Terror filled her and she trembled. But only for an instant. Something inside her washed away the fear and she steadied.

A hard hand stinking of grease lifted her chin. She stared up at a tall strong man shaped somewhat like a bear. He said something to his companion. It sounded approving.

The other reached for the throat of her dress and jerked so hard she almost fell. The cloth ripped and he pulled it away from her. It fell down around her knees. They stood staring at her body. The second man made comments. He sounded approving.

This lit some hope in Maelgyr. If they thought her attractive, perhaps they would want to keep her alive after raping her, take her with them when they went wherever the enemy went next. Surely they needed a woman to gather firewood, cook their meals, clean their clothes.

A voice called to them from behind them, a little hushed, enquiring. They turned toward its source, one of them keeping one of her upper arms in a hard grip.

This man was smaller than the other two but had an assured air about him. He was their leader.

The followers answered him as he came to stand a few feet away. They seemed self-congratulatory. They showed off her body to the leader.

That man removed his loincloth, dropped it, pushed her to fall onto her back, fell to his knees, and began to rape her.

It felt as if she had been stabbed by a red-hot poker. She screamed against a muffling hand. Fear and shame filled her.

Eyt Traveler-Second-Prime-Below-Ten-Trillion had been watching what was happening with proprietary interest from within Eyt's newly adopted daughter. Suddenly Eyt realized these events were not a mating ritual. They were intentional harm. Eyt acted.

Something wrapped her soul in warm concern and soothed her as a mother or father might. Her pain became numbness.

The contorted male face above her nearly vanished, overlain by a vision as if she was looking down from a few feet above the earth. Her body and the man's were translucent, his so much it was almost invisible, hers less so. Her view moved down into herself, focused on the wounds inside her.

She took control of her body and healed the wounds. She also saw a way to gain by this experience.

She replaced the physical numbness with pleasure. Her body began moving against the man. He screamed and fluid spurted from him into her, a great gift welcomed by her body.

Welcome? That was not her thought!

It came from the demon. It was inside her and it saw the man's fluid in a way she could not. An instant later that changed so that she shared its vision. Then the demon's vision and her own overlaid, merged, fused, became one.

In the invading fluid were many copies of two long infinitesimally small chains of jewels. The chains twined about each other in a spiral fashion. The resulting rope twisted and turned on itself, making kinks and knots. The jewels were like the mysterious hatch marks of writing which she knew merchants and priests and lordlings used to keep accounts and make contracts and record happenings in journals.

She blinked and looked up eagerly as a second man took the leader's place, who then was replaced by the third. Then the leader raped her again. Though it was no longer rape.

She welcomed the pleasure, but welcomed more the gifts of fluid. The esoteric writing in the fluid told of possibility and how to bring it into reality. How to make hair that was golden, ebony, cinnamon, or sunset, hair that was kinky or straight or in-between. Muscles that were strong, nerves that ensured fast and accurate reflexes. Minds that were brilliant, hearts that were kind. She reveled in the game the four of them played, saw clearly inside their bodies whenever they touched her, read how to give them pleasure so that she could pay them back for the treasure and give herself pleasure.

Abruptly the men were standing, scrubbing at the fluids on their bodies with their loincloths. The leader showed disgust on his face, those of the two who had captured her relaxation and satisfaction. As Maelgyr lay watching they dressed, arguing, and picked up their weapons. She sat up, reached for her torn dress, thinking how to repair it as she followed them. For surely they would let her live because of what had passed between them.

Rising, dress in hand, Mael noticed something strange. None of the fluids the men wiped off themselves were on her body. There was no stink of the men about her, no sweat and salt generated by her exertions.

Strange? No, of course it was not. Her body had frugally absorbed all that, was even now making good use of it.

Then the leader ended the argument by saying something sharp and the two other men turned toward her. Their faces were sad, almost apologetic. She looked back and forth between them, puzzled. One quickly slashed his knife across her throat. Blood spurted from her neck and her legs failed her. As she staggered the leader stabbed her in the belly with his knife, again and again and again. He was furious, shouting something....

She fell to her knees, then forward. Dimly she felt a spear plunge into her shoulders and back and buttocks. It was the leader, she somehow knew. But there was no pain. She had just time enough to feel indignation. And puzzlement, that was not hers and so must be the demon's puzzlement.

With her new and strange interior vision she saw her heart try to pump her body empty of blood. Almost-words came from the demon, gentling her, telling her not to fear. For it was with her, taking care of her.

Her vision went grey, and though she was lying prone yet she fell fell fell....

...dying, she found, was easy.... She relaxed, fell away into darkness, with no down, only away....

In that infinite comforting sea floated a ghostly cloud, lit within by an invisible moon. Seeing better as her vision adjusted to the dark, she saw fuzzy cloud-shape resolve into delicate misty leaves and evanescent branches leading down to a ghostly trunk.

As the view brightened more she saw that the tree was a construct of darting fireflies. Faery glass threads floated out from the tree, one of them pointing toward her.

Brighter still—and she saw that at the end of every thread was an infinitesimal eye. Her viewpoint was in one of those eyes, turned back toward herself. She was her own mirror.

She wanted another view, and instantly her viewpoint switched to another eye, in another instant its focus switched back toward herself. From this viewpoint the trunk was pointing not away but down. She was above herself—if directions meant anything in this infinite ocean.

Within the tree she saw a darker twin tree perfectly contiguous with its brighter self except for the threads and their eyes. The bright tree had grown from the darker like vines from a trellis.

Another viewpoint shift revealed roots extending from the trunk, branching fractally until merging with dark bodies. Which she realized were physical eyes and ears and all the other organs of sense, or hands and feet and all the other organs of action.

The bright tree, she saw/felt, was coming loose from its dark twin, her ghost self from her physical self. When it completely detached her brighter self would dissolve into nothingness. Or go on to unimaginable other places that she imagined she could almost sense. She yearned toward those places, to adventures beyond the human.

But there were adventures here too....

For a moment that might have been an eternity or an instant she floated among infinite possibilities. Then she chose one....

Maelgyr woke to a quiet forest full of night, slivers of near-full moon barely visible through the leaves above. She was rested but hungry and thirsty.

The hunger and thirst were not painfully strong so she lay content. Nothing hurt even though she remembered the stabbing and slashing she had—experienced? Yes. For she couldn't say suffered, because she had felt no pain as she was killed, or emotional distress.

She felt of her body. Not with her hands, or at least physical hands. She used her esoteric vision, which was made up of the infinitely many infinitesimal eyes that she remembered having in that in-between place between lives. They were also infinitesimal fingers if she chose, which could see/touch her body inside and out.

The wounds were gone, without scars of any kind. Her body was perfect, as if newborn. Yet her age had not changed. She was still just beyond the cusp of childhood, a woman budding. And, yes, a virgin again! Interesting.

Ah? Her heart did not beat, nor her lungs breathe.

Well, couldn't have that. She told them to begin working. Her body began to awaken fully. The hunger and thirst became more urgent. She sat up and rose lithely, uncoiling upward with great and perfectly controlled strength. Standing, she looked around.

Beams of moonlight let through by the chinks in the forest canopy gave the forest an eldritch glow, as if everything was both here and elsewhere. The silver and black scene was beautiful.

Maelgyr grimaced a bit at the black congealed fluid on the forest floor that had been blood inside her.

Well, she would have to find substitutes for it. Perhaps at the garrison?

A moment's thought decided her against that. She would not be welcomed there: a near-naked peasant with—a pang struck her heart like a knife, then was instantly banished—with no family now alive.

Or were they all dead?

Maelgyr turned her face toward her village. She knew exactly where it would be from here.

Her first step was uncomfortable and she halted, her breath leaving her in a little Ohh! The calluses on the soles of her feet were gone, washed away when she was reborn.

She took a cautious second step. It was easier. A third was perfectly comfortable. The soles of her feet had become as hard as boot leather but more flexible.

Well, in that case, she could run.

As she ran the light seemed to slowly brighten to the eye-straining appearance of twilight, a mix of half day vision and half night vision. Yet she knew from her internal time sense, once vague but now very exact, that the night was only a bit over half worn away.

As she ran she made no effort to be quiet, though she was. She had no fear of the white ghosts, the wispy demons, for one rode inside her.

No, it had ridden her before she had died. But now it was one with her, its soul and hers like two fluids merged. She remembered that she/it was an explorer in an infinite esoteric sea, come to this place (planet?) in a celestial sailing ship. It had ridden the million fold whirlpools of structured space to landfall. Then the ship dissolved into the nothingness from which it had been made—or grown?

All her/its companions had long since merged with humans and animals. Leaving Eyt the last demon (ghost?) unmarried to a solid life form. But Eyt was now married (completed by?) Maelgyr. Or what was now Maelgyr. Or had been Maelgyr and was now so much more. Maelgyr'eyt.

Maelgyr'eyt slowed. She was nearing the village. She turned from the inner forest toward the forest's edge, wended her way through the shorter trees with their dense undergrowth. When she came out into the grassy valley she sped up again on the packed-earth road between the village and the garrison.

The full light of the moon and stars was enough so that Maelgyr'eyt could see colors instead of the black and white of normal human night sight. The colors were faded, however, as if the night was an overcast day.

Mael slowed to a walk near the village, advanced even more slowly toward and into it, looking closely at everything. She also listened and smelled with senses heightened beyond those of ordinary humans.

Her body reflexively decreased her nose's sensitivity. The odor of blood and nascent rot and lingering smoke would have made her puke if she were still human. But she was more than human now. She had perfect control over her body, down to those ultimately small living parts of it.

Those tiny parts were such wonders! Mael had to force herself to pull up and out of her sudden esoteric vision of them.

Half the cottages and buildings of her village had burned completely but the fires of others had flickered out. Everyone was dead, some quickly if they had fought back, others more slowly, raped and otherwise tortured. An infant hung draped over a fence. Mael couldn't tell how it had died, nor did she want to know.

Her family was no exception. When she arrived at their cottage it tore Mael's heart to see them, until she washed away the emotion and became completely calm. Her newfound understanding of human biology told her that banishment of her emotions beyond the immediate emergency was dangerous. She put that knowledge aside for the time.

After her first quick exploration Mael crisscrossed the village methodically, filling one and then a second pillowcase with useful items overlooked or rejected by the enemy. This included coins, a lot more than she would have guessed the raiders would leave behind.

Any food that she came across she immediately ate—a crushed heel of a loaf of bread, an apple core, an entire smoked ham unaccountably hanging in plain sight in a pantry, a smashed egg which she crouched down and ate like a dog, ignoring the dirt she also ingested. Her insides were impervious to dirt and channeled it into a second stomach that grew within her belly. Acid stronger than in her human stomach leached minerals from the dirt.

When Mael realized what was automatically happening she paused for a moment in thought. Then a smile slowly formed on her face.

From then on she also saved small pieces of metal, of copper and such and that rare metal iron. One of those pieces, a short rusty sliver of iron, she began sucking on with saliva that quickly became acidic. The dissolved iron and loose flakes went into her extrahuman stomach. Over days and weeks her body would migrate it to her fingernails and toenails.

That thought hatched another. A tiny sliver of flesh began to grow behind each nail. Eventually her flesh there and the nail would form into retracted claws that could be snapped out as short knife blades.

There was no container with water or beer in the village still unbroken and the communal well had feces and urine from the invaders in it. Yet even Mael's extrahuman body needed water, and the closest pure water was a good distance away in a small stream.

She thought for a moment, probing her two stores of biological wisdom. One was that of Eyt. The other store every human owned, though it was unavailable to ordinary human minds.

Then she went looking for empty containers. The biggest she found was a wooden washtub with one slat broken halfway. She drew water from the well with a salvaged bucket and rope to replace the one thrown down into the well. She filled the washtub as full of poisoned well water as it would hold.

Then she went looking for a leafy bush, a scavenged knife with a broken tip in one hand. With it and extrahuman strength she harvested several leafy branches.

Back at the tub she dropped all but one of the branches, closed her eyes, and sent her esoteric sense into the branch. She found what her earlier knowledge search had told her should be there. Just underneath the bark was a pathway that carried liquids containing different kinds of food for the plants. Some liquids went from leaves to branches to roots, some went the other way.

Mael sent her wishes into the branch and thence to the leaves. After a while she began to receive answers from the leaves. Then she opened her eyes and, holding onto the cut end of the branch, slowly swished the leaves through the water. It had to be slow to keep from stirring up the sediment of feces that had settled to the bottom. And to let the leaves, acting upon her esoteric command, absorb poison from the water.

After a while the messages from the leaves said that the leaves had absorbed all they could. Mael carefully lifted the branch from the water and discarded it. She repeated this several times with fresh branches. When she was done the eastern sky was lightening toward twilight.

Now she took up a cracked but still waterproof mug, dipped it into the water, and lifted it near her nose. She sniffed deeply of the scent arising from the water. The water seemed clean enough, at least for her. She took a cautious sip. It did not taste good, so she shut off her taste. But despite the odor the chemical poisons in the water were well below her now-great tolerance.

Another kind of poison floated in the water—biological poisons made up of invisibly small very simple animals. Unlike the chemical poisons they were no danger to her whatsoever, even if they had been several orders of magnitude more numerous.

Maelgyr'eyt swallowed a mouthful of the water. The microscopic animalcules attacked her body through the skin of her tongue, throat, and gullet. And her body devoured them.

When her thirst was well quenched Mael went back to scavenging. By the time the sun was over the horizon she was done. She drank long of the tainted water a second time. As an afterthought she told her body to create within herself a bladder-like water reservoir and drank again, finishing most of the safe water left in the tub and storing it in her extra bladder for any coming need.

The lightening sky reminded Mael that the soldiers from the garrison would likely be here soon, probably sighting the carrion crows that were already gathering in a towering spiral above the village. They would figure out who had raided the village and bury the corpses with the proper ceremonies.

Mael picked up her pillowcases of junk and would-be treasure and bore them into the depths of the forest where no one would bother her. Nor would any animals.

Earlier in the forest, at the thought of danger, her body had grown an organ in the back of her throat which she had owned a few millennia back in another body. It could spit a small glob of a paralyzing spit several body lengths.

SHE was the demon in the forest now. Any animal that attacked her would quickly become food.

The deep forest was beautiful to someone who had no need to fear it. The tall columns of the tree trunks were spaced almost regularly, the result (Eyt's knowledge said) of centuries of ever-so-slow jostling amongst the trees for soil and sunlight. Light fell through the leaves and tinted the air green. It was like a Gods-made cathedral.

Mael found a cluster of mossy stones that made comfortable chair backs when she sat in the cushions of deep leaf cover around them. Near her she spread her possessions and sorted them, using as tables the leaf-covered forest floor and some of the nearer stones. Among the material were clothes which would fit her for when she must go among humans, but for now she was comfortable unclothed.

With her half-broken knife she cut some of the cloth and leather remnants into the parts of a crude pack and sewed them together with leather cords. It had a flap to protect its contents from weather yet was easy to open. To the pack she attached straps that she could put her arms into which would let her wear the pack on her back, leaving her arms and hands free.

Once done Maelgyr packed what she wanted, discarding some possessions she decided she would not need. On top of everything else in the pack she placed the rest of the food she had found, then lay yawning in the bed of leaves. Lumpy and strewn with a few small branches, the bed would have been uncomfortable to her before she'd died. Now her body easily and nearly instantly changed its shape and its skin to protect her.

For a time Maelgyr mourned her family and friends, bringing up memories of them and praying to her gods that they would be happy in the afterlife.

She/it also mourned the centuries-long passing away of Eyt's ghost family/friends. Though mourning was the wrong emotion. More like—saying goodbye.

The life of a demon/ghost was near infinite. Its lost companions could sleep till this round sphere of a world was engulfed by the larger flaming sphere that was its sun, which would some long day away expand or explode into a larger size. Then some of her ghost family would wake to take up a home inside the sun. But most had chosen not to sleep but to merge with shorter-lived creatures. As Eyt had with Maelgyr.

Some centuries or millennia hence Maelgyr'eyt would split into two beings with identical memories. One would be a ghost, one solid. Then there would be two Maelgyr'eyts. They might stay companions for a time, decades or centuries, but eventually would go separate ways.

As had happened hundreds of times before. She was still Maelgyr, but a Maelgyr with a much longer memory. She remembered her earlier lives as she remembered bright yesterday when she had been praised for mastering weaving or faded yesteryear when she had played hopping/counting games. Remembered dancing beneath two moons in a luminous lavender sky. Swimming like a vibrating arrow beneath a crinkled sky of mirror-like water surface above a gently waving bottom of long lime-green seaweed. Lazily soaring on miles-long wings in rarified methane air.

And, oh! The conversations she had had, the knowledge she had gotten over her long life. An instant she contemplated this virtual library before drawing back for a time till she could return to it without getting lost in its riches.

Maelgyr'eyt turned over, not because she was uncomfortable but more as a punctuation for her thoughts.

As she settled again Mael observed with mild interest that all her hair had fallen out and was being replaced with new hair which would insulate or cool the skin beneath it far better than her old hair. She ran a hand over her skull, swept away the remnants of the long hair there, and fingered the short fuzz on her scalp.

Something was different about her skin....

Focusing her esoteric vision on it she saw that her skin was sloughing off like dandruff. Underneath the old was new skin made up of invisibly small hexagons attached edge to edge. This made her skin tougher yet more flexible, something that a knife or arrow would have a hard time piercing.

Such changes had been happening without her attention. Some of them might be undesirable. She made an internal sentinel to warn her of such changes so that she could block or shape them. It would not be convenient for her skin to turn bright red in the middle of a conversation!

Though such change could come in handy. Indeed, she had just thought of a situation where she might use it.

The war band of the enemy who had so horribly destroyed her village was out there somewhere. Perhaps they were retreating to their own village hidden somewhere over the mountains from which they had come. Or they might be resting so they could attack another village.

Mael had no faith that the garrison or her country's army could find them. But Mael could. She could track them better than any bloodhound, her senses superior to those of any animal or ordinary human. As one seeker, not several, she would be better able to avoid notice. And she could be stealthier than any dog or woodslion. No one would have any warning of her coming.

And when she found them? Kill them quickly. Or slowly? Enslave them? Kill some, enslave some, let others go free?

She would have to wait till she found the enemy and knew more about them. Though she knew enough already about one of them: the leader of the triple who'd raped her.

A change in her hands came to her attention. The nails of her hands had lengthened in the last few hours and the edges grown sharp. It would be days or weeks before they became thick and sharp enough to be effective claws but they looked dangerous.

And the muscles and structures to retract and extend her claws, being softer than the claws, had grown quite fast in the last few hours.

Mael withdrew her still-weak claws and extended them, withdrew and extended them, withdrew them one final time. She grew drowsy, pondering.

The forest demon smiled as she thought of meeting the men who had merged with her for a time. She might even nurture the two underlings and their companions in a new way of life. But as for their leader—

Mael's claws flicked out, relaxed slowly back into secrecy.

She sighed and re-settled her body.

On a world with two moons she had been a blue centaur with six limbs and a lithe catlike body, a poet who had loved sunset and moonrise and had a philosopher for a mate. Many millennia had passed since then and many memories of that life had faded. But she had kept one sharp: she and he and their kits in a huddle, watching first one moon then the other rise as they drowsed....

The immortal shapechanger drifted into sleep.

What's Next

Mael's next story is Phoenix's Flight, which tells what happens when she returns to her home island of Nothos to find it in deadly peril.

Available in Spring 2012.