The air by the sluggish river was humid and loud with the drone of unseen insects. Dust motes danced in the faint light filtering through the dense canopy as Leonotis carefully unfurled the brittle parchment, its surface crackling like dry leaves.
He'd found it tucked away in the crumbling, leather-and-canvas remains of a traveler's pack half-buried in the mud near the riverbank. Its edges were frayed, its ink faded to a ghostly brown, but the route it depicted was tantalizingly, dangerously clear: a narrow, almost direct path slicing arrow-straight through the ominous, shadowed expanse labeled in spidery script, "Anansi's Forest."
"Look!" Leonotis exclaimed, his dirty finger tracing the jagged line that promised to shave days, perhaps even a week, off their arduous journey to the Capitol.
The parchment smelled of mildew and old adventures gone wrong.
"This shortcut… it goes right there!" He looked up at Jacqueline and Low, his eyes shining with a mixture of desperate excitement and an almost feverish urgency. "We could be there so much faster! Think of it – every day we save is another day closer to finding Chinakah and Gethii, another day sooner I can find out what happened to my father!"
The image of his father, ensnared and terrified, was a constant spur.
Jacqueline, who had been idly tracing intricate, flowing patterns in the damp earth with a pointed twig, looked up. Her blue eyes, usually so clear, were still clouded with the distant sadness that clung to her from time to time since their meeting.
The mention of a faster route, even one fraught with implied peril, didn't seem to register beyond a fleeting, dutiful flicker of acknowledgment.
"If you believe it is the best way, Leonotis. But I'd rather stay by the water," she said softly, her voice lacking its usual melodic lilt, as if her thoughts were tangled in a sorrow far removed from maps and forests.
She glanced at the dark treeline the map indicated, and a subtle shiver traced her shoulders, a movement so slight Leonotis almost missed it.
Low, however, was instantly alert. She snatched the map from Leonotis's grasp, her expression hardening into a familiar scowl as she squinted at the faded ink.
She leaned closer, her finger, blunt and practical, tracing the ominous name of the forest.
"Anansi's Forest? Are you actually serious, Leonotis?" Her voice was sharp, disbelief warring with accusation.
"Even the whispers and warnings in the Stylwater orphanage spoke of that place. Old Man Fuzo used to say it was cursed ground, where Anansi the Trickster himself spun webs of deceit. Giant spiders with venom that can rot your bones from the inside out, or worse, make you see illusions so real you'd walk off a cliff thinking it was a feather bed. No sane traveler, not even the desperate ones, goes near it."
Her voice was firm, laced with a deep-seated, almost primal unease that made the hairs on Leonotis's arms prickle.
"But it's a shortcut!" Leonotis insisted, his enthusiasm stubbornly undeterred by Low's grim warnings or Jacqueline's quiet withdrawal.
The desperation to act, to do something, clawed at him.
"Think of the time we'll save! My green magic is getting stronger every day. I can feel it! I can make vines to trap them, roots to block their paths. I know I can protect us!"
He gestured emphatically with his root sword, and as if to prove his point, a few errant, thorny vines sprouted enthusiastically from the damp ground near his feet, a testament to his growing, if still wildly erratic, control.
"'Feel it'?" Low scoffed, crossing her arms, her stance unyielding. The newly sprouted vines withered slightly under her disdainful glare.
"Feeling it won't stop a spider the size of a market wagon from spitting poison in your face from fifty paces! And illusions? Venom messes with your head, Leonotis. It twists what you see, what you hear. You can't just 'feel' your way through that, or bash it with a stick!"
Her voice rose with a familiar frustration, one he knew was born of genuine concern. "We've been doing fine on the longer path. It's safer. Slower, yes, but safer. We're a team, remember? We look out for each other."
"But every single day counts!" Leonotis argued, his voice tight with a desperation that bordered on anger.
He couldn't bear the thought of wasting any more precious time, of Gethii and Chinakah facing unknown dangers in the Capital while he ambled through safe but tedious countryside.
Then the image of his father's terrified face, wrapped in Oko Egan's dark, constricting tendrils, flashed in his mind with painful clarity.
Jacqueline's passive near-agreement, her quiet deference, stung slightly, but it was Low's stubborn, sensible resistance that truly fueled his impatience.
He felt the familiar, hot urge to prove himself, to show them he wasn't just a bratty kid but a hero, that his magic made him capable.
"You two can take the slow, safe way if you want," he said, his chin jutting out defiantly, the words tasting like ash in his mouth even as he spoke them. "But I'm going to the Capital. And I'm not waiting."
Without another word, Leonotis folded the brittle map, its creases threatening to tear, and tucked it into his pocket.
He turned, his shoulders set, and headed toward the dark, looming treeline in the distance, the oppressive silence of Anansi's Forest beckoning with the false promise of speed.
He glanced back once, a foolish hope flickering in his chest that he might see Low or Jacqueline following, or at least hesitating.
But they remained by the riverbank, Low's face a mask of worried disapproval and frustrated anger, her hands clenched at her sides. Jacqueline had returned to tracing patterns in the mud, seemingly lost once more in her own silent, sorrowful world.
With a determined, almost painful set to his jaw, Leonotis plunged into the shadows, the forest swallowing him whole.
He was convinced, with the reckless certainty of youth and newfound power, that his burgeoning magic was all the company he needed.
He was wrong.