The people of Calruthia are impoverished in ways that stunned me, the first time I came down the mountain. I wanted to leave right away and go back to the learned cloister of the school. The last time I descended the mountain, I had no choice. Survival was possible amongst them.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  The last house on the road before the forest was no burdei. It sat mostly above ground, a proper wooden structure on clay foundations. The chimney exhaled a steady gray plume into the darkness above. It was his final chance in Mure?el to find help for the child. The next town along the rutted road was a good ten miles off. Maybe more.

  If there was some Unspoken thing out there, so be it. He’d fight it and live or die. Death came for all the living, eventually.

  Dragos exhaled a hard breath, lip curled with irritation, gaze swept the shadows as if challenging them. People were afraid. And he, of all people, should know not to be angry. He knew what existed alongside them.

  He’d seen it, time and again. Earlier that day, even, and something haunted nearby, something big enough to blot out a field of stars. If he believed that praying to the Light would work, he’d have been begging it to protect him right then.

  The baby’s voice had gone ragged, worn thin by crying, but it hadn’t stopped its racket for more than a minute or two at a time. Tiny hands clutched at his cloak. His heart shrank away from the needy grasp of uncoordinated little fingers—and bled because of it—all at once.

  He stepped up to the door, well-framed, with a warding sigil carved into the joined slabs of oak.

  Desperate times demanded deceit.

  Upon reaching the door, he leaned on the frame and rapped hard, rattling the thick wood with the pound of his fist. Without pause, he tipped his chin up and shouted.

  “Help! Please! I apologize for waking you, but we are desperate!”

  He listened as he inhaled breath for his next shout, hating the sound of falsehood in his voice. Something creaked. He imagined the shift of a bedframe as someone lurched from slumber.

  “Please, help us! My child needs help! I slipped while I was carrying her, and she fell in the mud. She’s freezing. We need warm water and milk, for her mother died, and I cannot feed her!”

  The important parts rang true, though the lies tasted misshapen. He’d done a mental coin flip, chosen the grimmer outcome, and decided it was a girl, for the story’s sake. Half-and-half chances, so he thought. He knew little of the Copiii Ceruli besides their nature and tragic fates.

  Instead of listening for more than a blink, this time he made noise. Invested in the role. He smashed a fist into the door and bellowed, “My child will die! Do you not care?”

  He drew in a new breath to bellow over the child’s keening. “Prin harul lumini! If she dies on your doorstep, I will bury her under it and curse you forever!”

  Dragos would have been motivated to help if he had a home and heard that. The sigils on the door told him they knew something of the Unspoken. Of Nerostit?. Enough to protect themselves. Knowing that, he knew they’d never take the child—but they might give what he asked, if nothing else, to stave off the threat of a curse so vile.

  Heavy footsteps approached the door, and through it came the rumbling voice of a man who sounded big enough to be a bear.

  “Are you mad? A curse on a doorstep? Wait in silence, stranger. Say no more of such things. The dead have ears, and they don’t sleep soundly.”

  It was true. Dragos knew it perhaps better than the man behind the door.

  “I will be still, but please hurry,” Dragos said, just loud enough for his voice to carry through the thick wood.

  He turned his back to the wall, the hewn timber knocking against the peddler’s box he carried on his back. Resting against it, he looked down at the shadow of the whimpering baby in his arms. It was too dark to see well, the overcast sky spitefully hid the stars beyond them.

  He tracked the noise in the house. The creak of iron joints, the clank of a kettle, a splash of water. Relief unclenched the tension in his jaw. Dragos watched the unchanging view of the dark peaks of burdei roofs and the black shadows of the mountains beyond while the child wailed.

  “Move back from the door, stranger,” the man said.

  Dragos stepped away, a few paces toward the road, and stopped there.

  The door creaked open. A finely made bucket and a bladder slid around it, pushed by a thick, long arm. The owner of the household was a bear of a man. Dragos was glad he chose deception instead of desperate violence.

  “Let it not be said we let a babe die like a dog in the mud. Trouble us no more, stranger.”

  “I thank you, sir. You are the kindest in the village. Lumina s?-?i fie pa?ii. We leave with our thanks,” Dragos replied, even as the door shut against him. The scrape of a bar placed across it marked its finality.

  A grin quirked on his face, uncomfortable in its rarity. He glanced at the child and whispered, “You’re in luck, little cerel.”

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  Dragos moved to the spot where the bucket and skin were left, finding a tattered old blanket and rags by the door as well. They were kind. The man gave more than was asked.

  He shifted the child to the crook of his arm, and the other things were gathered and stuffed into the leather of his belt. The bladder got tucked under his shirt to warm, then he lifted the bucket. Steam rose from the pool within. Good.

  The forest waited beyond the fields.

  Not what he would have preferred with the memory of the shadow in the sky, but it would do. Forests were thick with brambles, busy with life—and on occasion, that which defied life—the rambling wilds often promised more sanctuary than the homes of men.

  Dragos followed a deer path into the dark, picking his way past thorny bushes yet to burst into fruit. The only thing that bloomed was blood on his hand, from an errant, careless scratch. A glint of the silver moon peeked through boughs enough to guide him. He pressed on, following instinct, looking for terrain other than thicket.

  Something defensible.

  The bramble-thick wood gave way to a hollow beneath a stand of sprawling beech trees, close enough together to starve out the lower vegetation. The ground there no longer sucked at his boots, thick with decayed leaves.

  The ground was soft with years of fallen leaves peacefully decaying around the roots. He found a spot which the earlier rain had left mostly untouched beneath the thick-branched canopy. Silence hung there like heavy drapery. It felt safe. As safe as it could get in the wilds, with the Unspoken thing hopefully left behind in the town.

  If it followed into the woods, then it did.

  Dragos glanced around the deep gloom of the campsite he’d chosen and set the bucket down.

  He shrugged off his cloak and wound the squirming child in it. He dipped a finger in to test the warmth. It would keep for a few minutes while he gathered fallen branches for the fire. Nothing thicker than a finger, nothing wet, to avoid a large blaze or heavy cloud of smoke.

  Not a fire that would speak too loudly in the dark.

  Dragos set the child in a crook of roots and went about building a camp, digging a pit from the lacy leaves with a stick thicker than the ones he had gathered. Feeling his way more than seeing, he sat cross-legged and unfastened the straps of his peddler’s box.

  It thunked on the ground behind him. He dragged it around and flipped the latches, one by one. The box groaned open, as if it had trudged the miles beside him. His hands knew the way. He found the small tinderbox. The flint and steel sparked.

  A tiny flicker awoke within the small nest of twigs.

  He left it long enough to sprinkle iron at the cardinal points. The subvocalized words of a spell to hold back malevolence were a spare series of breaths.

  Once the emberglow spread, he fetched the baby from its place. It had fallen asleep while he’d moved around the area under the biggest beech. As soon as he touched it, it woke. And started crying.

  Grimly, Dragos unwrapped the squirming thing. With the rough cloth provided, he went on to scrub the tiny, flailing, wailing creature with the rag. First, the child’s face. Then it’s hands. By that time, caked mud had flaked off in places, leaving a mottled pattern on the child’s pale skin.

  When he got to the baby’s belly and then below, he sighed. “Ah. As I thought. Girl.”

  The world didn’t shift, but something in his chest did. A little. A touch of sorrow bloomed there.

  He finished washing the child and wrapped her, first in rags to keep her soiling under control, and then her body. Wound tight enough to keep her limbs from flailing about wildly, but not so tight she might turn purple.

  With her settled in the crook of his knee, he tried to feed her.

  The bladder had a small horn opening, stoppered with fresh wax. Dragos used a knife to peel the wax away. The milk could last until morning, but not much more. He touched the horn tip to the baby’s lips. She tried to suckle—and gagged, spurting goat milk on Dragos’ leg. Squinting, he held the bladder at a different angle, slowing the flow of liquid. For a few minutes, that was enough, until she gagged again, milk spilling from the corners of her mouth.

  “Futui,” Dragos muttered, grabbing the last fresh rag to wipe her face. He didn’t bother with his clothes. Travel-worn and mud-ridden, he accepted the fate of also smelling like curdled milk.

  She had no more interest in the bladder after that. He turned to the box, the interior illuminated by the small fire. One side was of drawers stuffed with packets. The other had racks that held smaller boxes and a line of vials held still by leather loops. From a small drawer, he drew forth a stick of wax to reseal the bladder, holding the horn tip sideways to keep the wax from sliding into the milk.

  Her fussing abated. He had remedies for many things, but hunger was impossible to appease without food. That taken care of, he slid back to lean against the tree. Gathering his muddy cloak, he shook it and flipped it to drape over himself and the child.

  A warmth spread over him as he lay there, staring into the dark. An unsettled feeling, though it was hardly malicious. It was the opposite, and he didn’t like it. The child’s milk-breath wafted from where she lay, warm and safe.

  It brought back memories of a lynx cub he and his sister found. Feeding it, playing with it, until it grew up and went on its own way. Simple warmth. Effortless joy. The kind of feeling that never stays still, but he wanted it to, then.

  Dragos shut his eyes and listened to the world beyond that dreaded warmth of contentment. The forest was still, but not silent. The rustle of wings. The snap and crack of something moving in the distance. A soft snort. Deer, most likely.

  His hand fell lightly to the swaddle to pat rhythmically, as he’d seen others do. He murmured low, more to himself than to the child, “How long were you out there? Since the rain, I guess. You must have fallen with it.”

  The sleeping child had no answers for him.

  “Is your mother near? Does she wish to hold you, or has she forgotten you already?” His eyes opened to look at the gaps of muted storm gray between leaves painted black after nightfall. What he knew about the Copiii cerului could fill a thimble.

  Sleep was elusive for him because of his cursed nature, but he drowsed in the tenuous warmth, child on his chest, finally quiet. At the precipice of sleep, something pulled him back. A flicker behind his eyelids. Within his mind’s eye, he saw something…

  His body jerked into wakefulness in the pale hour of pre-dawn.

  It was not a sound that pulled him from that restless place between dream and oblivion. Not a touch. The child had not stirred.

  His eyes snapped open. A presence loomed, resonating in his soul. Something dangerous enough for his survival instincts to twinge and rip him away from rest. His neck was stiff from the cold. Noted. Discarded as he scanned the deep shadows of the thicket beyond the hollow. Nothing moved. Before dawn, birds normally began their twittering chatter, and yet, he heard no sound from the trees.

  Something was near.

  Deer would not have made his blood run cold. A lynx or a bear would have brought a musky, furred scent to the hollow.

  This.

  Was something Nerostit?. Whether good, ill, or indifferent, he wasn’t sure.

  Yet.

  Dragos had a growing sense of dread that told him he would discover the truth soon enough.

  [If this is found anywhere other than Royal Road or my Patreon, it has been scraped/plagiarized]

  Cerel (TSEH-rel) [rolled r]: Infant/young child. Living human form of Copiii ceruli.

  Prin harul lumini! (PREEN HAH-rool loo-MEE-nee) [rolled r]:By the grace of the light!

  Lumina s?-?i fie pa?ii. (loo-MEE-nee-leh suh-tsheef-YEH PAH-shee): May light guide your steps.

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken.

  Futui (Fu-too-ee): A curse word. Guess which one.