The Spirits of the Forest

Chapter 6

Sirius

3 years ago

My plan to become a hero was simple. I needed to find the knife, to use the weapon's powers on me, to return to the spirits, to set my new self as commander, and, after that, to attack the capital of the humans.

Of course, there were a few complications. After all, the knife wasn't found before me for a reason. And I couldn't spend my whole day trying to find it, because I needed to pay the good man and his wife for letting me stay in their house. It's not like they asked me for money, but I couldn't just eat their food and sleep in their bed like I was their child. Or maybe I couldn't live for free in their house because of the conversation I overheard on my first day there.

Therefore, my mornings were dedicated to the hills of the lost knife, or better said to the muddy holes the unlucky explorers left behind them. In the evenings, I worked in the inn called "At the lost knife." I chose this local for a reason: it was the best place for getting free information about the invincible knife, because in there, everyone gossiped about it and all you needed to do was listen. But my favourite were the afternoons, which I always spent with the married couple. We ate together, talking and laughing about the latest event. After that, I helped the man to repair household stuff and his wife to wash the dishes.

And when winter came, you could still see me digging like a ghost in the cold ground. But where could the knife hide when all the ground was destroyed for nothing before I even came there? What difference could my cheap shovel and my wounded hands make against the attempts of other men?

Fluffy snowflakes fell around me, clinging themselves to my eyelashes so as to stop the impact with the earth. I shook my body of the snow and tried to optimistically get back to work when I realized I couldn't. A pair of curious eyes were studying me. I did my best to ignore the unwelcome presence, hoping that after a delightful look at my suffering, it would just go and keep it all a secret. All the man's wife needed to know to throw me away from her house was that I, instead of working full-time at the inn, spent my mornings like a lunatic in a quest of finding a lost, legendary weapon. But the eyes continued to fix me with great pleasure, so I eventually had to turn and face the intruder.

"Can I help you?" I asked the black irises that were the only evidence that someone was hiding under the long cloak in front of me.

"Today is all about what I can do to help you," a female voice answered.

"I'm sorry, what?" I said, letting my shovel fall with an annoying sound to the ground.

The mysterious woman indicated with a small gesture at the muddy snow. "You won't find it there."

My feet almost abandoned me by the hearing of my own concerns spoken out loud. "I know," I sighed.

"But that can change," the female voice said in a lively tone. "Come." With a wave of hand, she invited me to follow her.

We walked together on a road that descended the hill and took you out on the side where people's houses had not managed to reach. I never used this road before, and, taking into consideration the wild nature that was suffocating the beaten earth beneath our feet, I wasn't the only one who didn't access it.

"Come, come," the woman repeated, leading me to a huddling of boulders and moss. With a skilled hand, she began removing the stones and the plants from a particular place. I kneed near her, watching as her fingers created a hole growing bigger and bigger. Under my eyes, the hole became an entrance to a tunnel that was widening in the distance to the size of a room.