Chapter 3 — Hammocks and Mysteries

There are two ways to survive a night in the woods: - Keep your fire hot and sit close to it. Remember to wake up and feed the fire or build a huge fire capable of lasting the night. - Tie a hammock to many of the thinnest branches of a tree, so that a jaguar can`t reach you without breaking a branch and falling. You need to be a good climber to use this one. The second way is more complicated, but was used by many travelers in the past, with usual success. Or, perhaps, we simply never learn of the ones that fail. Merinda Anorier Notes from Classes at the Mountains Academy

The Free People were nomads. Their main food source, besides hunting the many gigantic animals from the grasslands, was cattle. And this showed in their clothes.

The men wore pants and coats of leather, some left the skin bare under an open coat, some used a shirt of light cotton “obtained”, in one way or another, from the cities.

The leather usually came from ox or dranacks, but an exceptional hunter, like Eric`s father, could make it from all kinds of weird animals. Eric was wearing pants made of ox leather, but his, now buttoned, coat was triceratops skin

The women wore rough grey robes of cheap fabric that concealed their bodies and reduced the probability of rape, but under it they often used leather bodices that were cheap, good protection and had also avoided both rapes and, unfortunately, escapades from the bonds of marriage, due to the difficulty to take them off.

There was an easy way to open the crotch area for peeing, but the breasts were fully protected.

Anyway, the leather used by the females covered only the torso and the upper part of the legs.
 
 
As soon as they left camp Bastet had gotten rid of her robes and donned men`s pants, probably looted from a dead body. Anora and Erynia were both using the robes, already torn in many places due to the thorns. So, despite their leather clothes, the two were not ready to travel a narrow path full of thorns. And they had only Bastet`s machete as a means to open space. Eric, like most men in their tribe used bow and arrow plus a lance and the two other girls had only small knifes made of stone.

But Anora had lived by one rule her whole life. If the rules were against you it was time to break the rules.

She started by asking Erynia what she thought that the spirit could do if they stood right where they were. Erynia thought that it could guide every single animal in the woods against them, and a bit of the foliage was quite mobile by itself. Well, the spirit seemed to be asking only for a little payment in blood in exchange of safe passage, but this couldn`t be trusted.

The protection of a god would be useful now, Anora thought, a shame that none of her people`s god`s would approve what they were doing.
- Erynia, please, delay.

And Erynia started a chant in her mind, remembering times past in better woods, near the village were she had grown. Then started to remember parks in the city of Manora, where her father would take her sometimes. Information obtained in books about plants, vines and insects started to come to her mind and this seemed to please the spirit. After all, it was not fully rational, more like a child moved by impulses.

The darkness receded, the thorns in the path became more concealed in the foliage, but Anora was not satisfied.
- Bastet, can you see any other path? The spirit may not be all powefull.

From the ground she couldn ´t but there was a large tree close to the group.

Bastet had some difficulties due to the lack of lower branches, but at the third try, with Eric`s help, she was able to silently launch a rope circulating the lowest branch. And, with Eric holding one side of the rope, she used the other to silently climb while Erynia kept the spirit distracted.
Once, in this lowest branch, she used the rope to climb higher, until she could see some moonlight and look around.

It was difficult to see anything below the foliage of the other trees, but she could see that the ground lowered in the southern direction, the direction of the mountains, leading to a break in the foliage that could only be a river. The path given by the spirit could also be glimpsed because of the extra darkness under the trees. It would lead them close to the river, but not close enough and there was a sense of wrongness coming from it.
But, she also saw something that gave hope.

She climbed down and, silently motioned their companions to follow her trough the dark path opened by the spirit. Erynia, tired from her mental games and with nothing else to show the spirit, was the first to follow. Eric went next, as soon as he finished packing the extensive piece of rope that Bastet had used.

Anora came last, ready for a lot of pain.

And a lot of pain they got.
 
 
As expected, while they walked thorns would appear from nowhere and scratch their skin. Never too deep, but often deep enough to take a few drops of blood and yes, it was painful, many small cuts, each throbbing and hurting and the despair of knowing that more would come and that nothing that they could do would save them.

The spirit was quiet, feeding on their anguish, happy to lead them to its little trap.

But after about one hundred painful steps in the trail, when they were getting close to its end, Bastet took the machete and attacked one of the bushes full of thorns with all the desperation of an entrapped cat.

Erynia helped by remembering all the bad moments of her life and condensing it in a ball of despair that she turned in a curse and launched at that single plant. While Erynia was still fainting due to her spell, Eric got her and, using his leather coat as a shield, went through the now withering plant followed by Bastet and Anora. And they were in a clear area under a huge tree.

Before any of the creatures of the forest could get to them, Bastet took the rope from Eric`s shoulder. While she was trying to get the lowest branch Eric got the machete and started chopping anything that got too close.

The thorn bushes were slowly shuffling in their direction. Eric started a complex dance of stepping close, cutting a branch and stepping back. Anora could only increase the light and use happy memories to create a circle of protection, a spell that helped Eric to ignore his many cuts and Erynia to regain her senses.

While Erynia was still drowsy and terrible sounds could be heard coming from the other side of the huge trunk Bastet finally got the rope trough the branch. She secured one end of the rope to one of the large visible roots of the Embauba tree. A natural powerful tree rumored to be blessed by the goddess of the woods herself.

And she climbed quite fast to the relative safety of the upper branches.

From there she gave directions and soon she was using an improvised pulley system made with the rope and a branch to pull Erynia up. Next came Anora and, while the trap was yet closing, the three worked on pulling Eric up the tree. Right after Eric got in the branch, a huge black panther could be glimpsed on the floor of the forest looking up. The creature disappeared soon, moving back into the shadows. Suddenly the forest grew quiet.

They were expecting pursuit, things climbing the tree or other trees moving to get them but nothing happened. The shuffling noises stopped. Everything got silent.

They used this opportunity to climb higher, expecting to see a panther (or two, or three) climbing the tree at any moment.

Despite their fears they made a net of ropes in the upper branches and started to place their hammocks (not that they expected to sleep, but more comfortable than waiting for death in a branch) with Anora using memories of climbing cliffs with her father a long time ago, when the tribe`s wanderings led them close to the northern mountains to make a spell and reduce their fear of heights (Bastet didn`t need the spell). Bastet, did most of the work, being small and nimble. She also helped the others to climb into their hammocks and there they stood, in darkness, waiting for the panthers to come after them.

But instead, sometime later, they saw a tree falling at the south and heard a huge noise that engulfed the land. This noise was mostly felt in their minds rather than in their ears, it was like two big boulders colliding. Anora latter would compare it with triceratrops fighting for a female, but only if these triceratrops were huge and not completely of this world.

The interesting part is that they got so frightened by the noise that they froze in their places or else one of them certainly would have fallen to their death.

After the horrible noise the sounds of the forest started, the sounds of a normal forest in a moon night.

SHE had claimed her prize.