There were things that grew in the forest other than the lordly trees. Vines, dark and leaking red sap, wrapped around pale trunks and branches, often spreading from tree to tree across an acre or more of woodland. Miniature deer would lap at the sweet sap trails that glowed faintly in the shade and birds fought over clusters of berries. The vines were a parasitic growth, feeding off the stately beachwoods until they covered them completely, blocking out the sunlight and the monsoon rains. The roots could be boiled for beer, the leaves pounded into serviceable paper. The berries caused hallucinations and hysterical paranoia when eaten by humans and were avoided except as bait for traps. Wildlife thrived only because of the vines, even as they made massive, moldering corpses of the trees.
Kids would sometimes create treehouses by laying loose sticks across the lowest branches, anemone paste holding the rough mess together, using the vines as rope bridges from platform to platform. Hidden from the ground by the thick leaves, they hunted small game, dreamed away their days, invented dangerous games. Some would use the sap to paint their tree with secret codes. The beachwoods closest to the Weed People settlements were layered with generations of these made-up languages. With a bit of care, the forest could be navigated by the amount of markings, which was useful and occasionally necessary during sandstorms or when the rainy season came. Few adults bothered to remember what they meant and only Grimmek and Sedtu recorded the sets of forgotten symbols, carefully copying them down, comparing the evolution of their shapes and meanings. Sedtu’s copious memory ensured she was never lost, even in the darkness of tonight’s hunt.
The hunters, carrying a torch for each pair, wouldn’t need any help navigating but Sedtu, confined to skulking from shadow to shade, kept one hand always on the bark, tracing the raised edges of the hardened sap. Anyone else would have followed the hunters, crouching out of view of their wavering firelight. Sedtu played a different game. It took all of her skill to throw the other hunters off, making sure that no one would find Corske before or while she took her vengeance. She tracked him easily by the heavy thud of his footsteps, the ragged whispers of his breathing, taunted him, guided him with a touch on the back of his neck, a brush against his foot. He’d started out a sweating, trembling wreck, had stopped hiding hours before to wait for whichever hunters found him. But something in the way Sedtu moved, Corske knew it was her and throughout the night, dashed further away from the coast. Even leaving the blood in her hair, Grimmek struggled to keep up with his daughter and he cursed to himself.
Hig legs were beginning to hurt when the first hint of light flitered through the forest. At dawn, if Corske had gotten away, his blood status would be restored and anyone stupid enough to kill him would suffer the weakening curse. Grimmek rubbed his bleary, crusted eyes, squinting for a sign of Sedtu. There was a flash across his vision, like the tracings of a firefly, before it bounced away again. The light darted in and out; Corske must have found some strength in desperation and was forcing Sedtu to fight. Grimmek rubbed his calves to banish the pins and needles and took off towards the muffled thumps of their melee.
Corske, his leech-pale skin glowing in the pre-dawn through wet smudges of dust, rivulets and smears of his own blood, had taken a wide stance at the center of the clearing, a chipped stone knife gripped in one massive paw. His mouth hung open with panting and his head swiveled from side to side like a bull’s, one ear dangling uselessly from a thread of sinew, a clump of scalp missing. Sedtu was a dark blur, focused entirely on Corske. The other hunters were far away, cleverly mislead. She slid in across the sand, slicing the tendon in his left heel before moving out of his reach. Corske swiveled on his uninured foot, exposing a horrific mess of cuts. His groin was covered in crusting blood, a scuffed puddle and a small lump in the sand was all that remained of his genitals. The rumor was Evert had been raped and although her body had been too mutilated to tell, Grimmek wouldn’t doubt it. Sedtu had apparently come to the same conclusion; that wound was a few hours old at least.
Sedtu, panting, slick with sweat, came to rest a moment near where Grimmek stood.
“You have to end this soon. The sun is coming up,” he whispered.
Her eyes were curiously blank and he waited as she dashed towards Corske, grabbing the edge of a cut and ripping a long ribbon of skin from his back. It fluttered wetly before sticking to his buttocks, a grotesque banner in the growing light. He collapsed to his knees, pain swallowing the remains of his adrenaline. Sedtu was at Grimmek’s side, almost motionless as she caught her breath.
“He hasn’t suffered enough. He will never suffer enough.”
It was the first intelligible phrase she had spoken since Evert’s death.
“Goodbye, father.”
Her feet exploded off the sand and she landed on Corske’s shoulders. One hand dug into the remains of his hair, with the other she yanked the blade across his throat, the force of it severing his head almost to the spine. The blood was sluggish coming; he had lost too much already. As his body gave way beneath her weight, a subtle glimmer of sunlight illuminated Sedtu’s gore-streaked hands and she leaped away from the corpse, dropping her dagger.
There was a moment of silence as Grimmek waited, but his daughter’s skin stayed flushed and well, her arms long, muscles thick under the skin. Her knees trembled slightly with exhaustion and she turned her face towards the sunrise, disbelieving, still waiting for the curse to come.
She would have stayed there waiting with a dazed expression if Grimmek hadn’t heard the shuffling footsteps. He crouched further in the waning shadow of the beachwood and shook his hands at Sedtu.
“Go! Go! They find you, and that’ll be your body there,” he said.
She nodded slowly and with still-graceful motions, scaled the trunk of the nearest tree and disappeared among the vines. Grimmek watched the heat impression of her fade into the distance. She had headed east. No one would find her.
The hunters, a cluster of three young men, their torch sputtering and nearly gone, sent shouts through the forest when they found Corske’s body. The leader of the hunt confirmed his death and while no one confessed to killing him, no one questioned it either. Sand was kicked over the body – the only thing given resembling a burial, and left to be swallowed by the earth.
Grimmek, weary, broken-hearted, made his careful way back to Kede’s house. It was the last time he saw Sedtu.
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