Swords Of The Forest

Branches tore at his cheeks as he forced through the thorns. His sandals slipped on loose stones. Behind him, the villagers crashed after him, shouting that he would regret it, that he belonged in the woods, that no one would come looking.

The brush opened suddenly.

Naruto pitched down a steep bank and landed on one knee. Pain shot through his leg. Pebbles rolled beneath him and vanished into a ravine choked with ferns. Across the gap, trees rose in twisted columns, their trunks wide enough to hide houses. Vines hung from the branches like ropes. The nearest leaves were bigger than his head.

For one breath, there was no sound but his own breathing.

Then the villagers reached the edge above him.

“See?” the man with the knife called. “No way back.”

Naruto stared up at them. “Why are you doing this?”

The question came out smaller than he wanted.

A woman spat over the edge. “Because every time we see you, we remember.”

“Remember what?”

No one answered.

They never did.

Naruto had heard the whispers all his life. Monster. Curse. Demon. He had asked what he had done, but adults stopped talking when he entered a room. Children copied the adults because children always noticed what frightened people.

The man with the knife pointed down the ravine. “Go on. Find somewhere to hide.”

“You’re not coming after me?”

A laugh answered him.

Naruto’s fingers curled against the dirt. “If I go in there, I’ll die.”

“That’s the idea.”

The words landed more heavily than the stones.

For a moment, Naruto could not move. The ravine seemed to tilt around him. His throat tightened, and he hated that his eyes burned. He hated them for seeing him cry. He hated himself more for caring whether they did.

The man raised his arm.

Naruto turned and ran.

He scrambled down the ravine as stones flew past him. One struck his back. Another caught his calf. He bit down on a cry and kept moving. The slope ended in a narrow stream, black beneath the trees. He splashed across it, slipped, and caught himself on a root slick with moss.

Behind him, the villagers stopped at the top.

They did not follow.

Naruto looked back through the trunks. Their silhouettes stood against the pale afternoon sky. One of them waved the knife.

Then they turned away.

The sound of their footsteps faded.

Naruto remained crouched beside the stream, listening until the forest swallowed every trace of them.

He was alone.

A drop of water fell from a leaf and struck his neck. He flinched.

“Fine,” he whispered.

His voice sounded wrong in the trees.

“Fine. I’ll get out myself.”

He pushed upright. His calf hurt, but it held weight. The forest stretched in every direction, dense and green and full of unfamiliar noises. Something screeched far away. A branch snapped closer.

Naruto swallowed and chose the stream.

Water had to lead somewhere. If he followed it downhill, he might find a road or a familiar part of the village. He crouched to drink, but the water carried a muddy taste, and he stopped after one mouthful.

He moved along the bank.

The ravine twisted between walls of stone. Roots crossed the water like bridges. Naruto climbed over them, ducked beneath hanging vines, and marked his way by breaking small branches. Twice he thought he heard voices behind him. Twice he turned and found nothing.

The forest grew darker.

The sun had not vanished, but the canopy blocked it so completely that the light became green and thin. Naruto’s stomach cramped. He had not eaten since morning. His shoulder throbbed with every step.

A low growl rolled through the ravine.

Naruto froze.

The sound came from behind him.

He turned slowly.

At first he saw only ferns trembling beside the stream. Then a shape moved between the trees.

It was larger than any dog Naruto had seen. Its shoulders rose nearly to his chest, and its fur was dark enough to blend with the shadows. Long claws pressed into the mud. A pale scar crossed its muzzle.

The animal lowered its head.

Naruto backed away.

“Nice dog,” he whispered.

The animal growled again.

Naruto turned and ran.

He had no plan beyond distance. He splashed through the stream, scrambled up the opposite bank, and shoved through a curtain of vines. The predator followed with terrifying ease. Its paws struck the ground behind him, heavy and steady.

Naruto looked for a tree, a hole, anything.

The ravine narrowed ahead. Stone walls rose on both sides, leaving only a strip of muddy ground between them. At the end, a fallen tree blocked the passage.

He skidded to a stop.

The animal emerged from the vines.

Naruto spun, but the stream lay behind him, and the predator stood between him and the only open route. He grabbed a broken branch from the ground. It was little more than a length of wood, soft at one end.

The animal advanced.

“Stay back.”

His hand shook.

The branch felt useless. The animal’s breath came in rough bursts. Saliva stretched between its teeth.

Naruto lifted the branch with both hands.

The predator lunged.

He swung. The branch struck its snout and snapped. The impact jolted his arms. The animal recoiled only long enough to shake its head, then charged again.

Naruto ducked beneath its jaws.

A claw raked across his back. Heat tore through his shirt. He hit the mud, rolled, and kicked blindly. His heel struck the animal’s ribs. It snarled and turned.

Naruto crawled toward the fallen tree. The trunk was too thick to climb, but a gap showed beneath it, dark and narrow. He squeezed through as the animal snapped at his ankle. Its teeth closed on leather and ripped his sandal away.

Naruto kicked free and crawled deeper.

The gap ended at a hollow beneath the roots. Stone pressed against his back. The predator slammed into the trunk above him, shaking dirt loose from the ceiling.

Naruto covered his head.

The animal clawed at the opening. Its paw scraped his shin. He shoved himself farther into the hollow, but there was nowhere else to go.

The forest had become a trap.

He thought of the villagers turning away. He thought of the man saying, That’s the idea.

Naruto’s fingers found something cold beneath the dirt.

He grabbed it.

Metal.

He pulled, and a narrow blade slid free from the earth with a sound like a whisper drawn across glass.

The sword was black - not dull iron, but black as deep water at night. Its hilt was wrapped in faded blue cloth. Strange markings ran along the flat of the blade, thin silver lines that seemed to shift whenever he looked directly at them.

Naruto stared.

The predator tore away a piece of the fallen trunk.

He reached for the second object.

This blade came free more easily. It was longer, bright enough to catch the green light, with a white hilt bound in red cord. Dark markings curved from the guard toward the tip, matching the lines on the first sword.

Neither blade had rust.

Neither blade should have been beneath the roots.

The predator shoved its head into the gap.

Naruto did not think. He seized the black sword in his right hand and the pale sword in his left.

The moment his fingers closed around the hilts, the forest went silent.

The animal stopped.

Something cold traveled up Naruto’s arms. It did not feel like water or wind. It felt like a hand closing around his bones.

The markings flared.

Silver light ran across both blades. The glow reflected in the predator’s eyes. The animal snarled and lunged into the hollow.

Naruto thrust the pale sword forward.

The blade struck the creature beneath the jaw.

There was no resistance.

The sword passed through fur and flesh as though the animal were made of smoke. A burst of white light exploded from the wound. The predator was thrown backward, crashing through the ferns on the other side of the ravine.

Naruto stared at the sword.

The blade remained clean.

The animal rose.

A dark line burned beneath its fur, stretching from its throat to its chest. It shook its head, but the growl had changed. Fear threaded through it now.

Naruto crawled from beneath the tree.

“Go,” he said.

The animal’s gaze fixed on him.

Naruto raised both swords. His arms trembled, but the blades did not.

“Go!”

The markings brightened.

The predator backed away. Its claws dug furrows into the mud. Then it turned and vanished between the trees, moving faster than Naruto had believed possible.

For several seconds, he heard it crashing through the forest.

Then nothing.

Naruto lowered the swords.

His hands were numb. A thin line of blood ran from his palm where the hilt had pressed into his skin. He tried to release the black blade.

His fingers would not open.

The silver markings crawled from the hilt onto his wrist.

Naruto jerked backward. The sword nearly flew from his hand, but his grip remained fixed. The lines burned without heat, forming a pattern like two linked circles around his skin.

“No.”

He pulled harder.

Pain flashed through his arm. The blade answered with a low vibration that he felt in his teeth.

The pale sword’s markings moved next. They slid along the metal and crossed his left wrist, joining the pattern on the other side.

Naruto dropped to his knees.

A sound rolled through the forest.

It was not the predator.

The ground trembled beneath him. Water in the stream rippled outward from a point deeper among the trees. Birds erupted from the canopy in a black cloud, shrieking as they fled.

Naruto looked toward the darkness beyond the ravine.

Something had noticed the swords.

Something far larger than the animal.

The markings flared again, and this time a whisper reached him from beneath the earth.

Not words.

A promise.

The forest had given him weapons.

The forest had also learned his name.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters and about 18,679 words in the full book.