Elsewhere in the forest, that same evening.
In the oldest part of the woods, where the trees grew too wide for six men to circle with their arms, a skeleton in a rusted breastplate stepped into a clearing and bowed.
Kaede did not look up from her tea. "You're late."
The skeleton did not answer. Skeletons never did. But its jaw clicked, the air around it shivered, and a woman's voice came out of the hollow of its chest, dry as old paper and a good deal more tired than anything dead had a right to sound.
"The road was long, Kaede. And your forest is full of mud."
"My forest is full of life, Tsubaki. Mud is what life does when no one is looking."
"Mm." One gauntleted hand extended a letter sealed in black wax. "From me to you. Read it now, or I'll have this one stand there until you do."
Kaede took it, sniffed it, and set it on the stump beside her kettle. "Walpurgis."
"Walpurgis. Yoruka has begun counting lanterns, and she has told me three times that she expects you to attend. Last year you sent a goblin with a casserole."
"It was a good casserole."
"It ate Hibari's hat."
"That was the goblin." Kaede sipped. "Who else is coming?"
"Everyone. Kagari will start a fight. Hyouka will say nothing and be the best-behaved of us. Ibara has promised pastries."
There was a long silence in the clearing.
"I'll bring my own," said Kaede.
"Wise." The skeleton's jaw clicked again, and when the voice returned it was lower, and slower, and did not sound like small talk. "There is something else. This one walks a straight road. Today it turned aside four times, and I did not order it. Twice a root rose across its path. Once it stepped over something it should have crushed. A man, Kaede. Lying in your ferns, in an ugly black coat, holding a doll against his chest as though it might protect him. And you stopped it."
"You were watching."
"Through its eyes. Always. You are not in the habit of mercy."
"I'm in the habit of tidiness. A dead man in my ferns is a mess."
"Kaede."
Kaede set down her cup. For a moment the green light in the clearing seemed to dim, and the leaves overhead went still, as if the whole forest were listening to her.
"He's Level 1," she said. "Was. Level 2 by now, I think. I heard a slime die this morning. He fell out of nowhere, Tsubaki, with a doll and a spool of wire and the look of someone who has never once been hit. I wasn't even watching. Then your bones were a few steps from his head, and I..." She stopped. "He was so small."
"Everyone is small to you."
"Not like that." She looked at her hands. "I pity him."
"Pity." In that dry voice, the word sounded like an accusation. "You made goblins out of pity."
"And they've been very good company."
"They have been a pest. He will be dead within the week. A Level 2 in your woods. You know it as well as I do."
"Probably." Kaede picked up her tea again. "But not today. Tell Yoruka I'll come."
"I'll tell her you said maybe."
"Tell her I said I'll come, and that I'm bringing my own casserole."
The skeleton bowed, turned, and walked back into the trees, its rattle fading until the clearing was quiet. Kaede watched it go. Then, because she could not quite help herself, she turned her gaze through the leaves, miles away, to a small lean-to of sticks beside a creek, where a doll sat on watch and a man slept under a roof of moss.
"Poor thing," she said, and went back to her tea.
I woke the next morning cold, stiff, and hungry in roughly equal parts, and discovered that hunger was the only one I could do anything about.
The doll was exactly where I had left her, propped in the mouth of the lean-to, facing the forest with undimmed serenity. Nothing had eaten her. I took this as a good review of her performance.
"Morning," I told her. "Any events?"
She had none to report.
I crawled out and considered the forest as a store in which every item on the shelves was unlabeled. When I focused on a bush of dark red berries near the lean-to, a pale tag appeared above it.
Redthorn (plant)
That was all. It told me what the thing was called and nothing else, like a coworker who knows everyone's name and has no idea what the project is. I did not eat the berries.
The creek, however, had fish. I had noticed them the evening before: silver, finger-length, hanging in the shallows like loose change. When I knelt and focused, another tag appeared.
Creek Minnow Lv. 1
I have a certain skill with small, fiddly things, and a pair of fine pliers, and a spool of wire. I bent a hook from the wire and filed the barb with one of my carving files. For line, I unraveled a strand from the cuff of my hoodie, which cost the hoodie some of its dignity and gave it a purpose. For bait, I rolled over a rotten log and picked up a pale, wriggling grub, and I will not discuss how I felt about that.
It took forty minutes. At the end of them, a minnow bit, and I flipped it out onto the stones and killed it with the handle of a knife, apologizing as I did.
Deed recorded: First time defeating a creek minnow.
Experience gained: 5 XP (Creek Minnow, Lv. 1)
First-time-defeat bonus (Creek Minnow): +25 XP
No level-up. I had been promoted for killing a slime, and for a fish I had received a smaller envelope. I decided I was being graded on something I did not yet understand, and went back to staring at my breakfast.
I come from a country that eats raw fish. I do not come from a country that eats raw creek minnow, caught in an unknown forest, with a tag that says nothing about parasites. I wanted a fire.
I did not have a lighter. I did not have matches. What I had was a hobbyist's knowledge of how to make a bow out of a stick and a string, and a vague memory of a documentary.
The bow came from a bent branch. The cord was the drawstring of my hoodie, which was now missing a drawstring and half a cuff, and was beginning to look like a victim of something. The spindle was a straight stick, whittled round. The hearth board was a slab of dry wood from a dead tree, notched with the carving knife. For the top bearing, I carved a divot into a smooth river stone, and held the whole thing steady with my knee.
I sawed the bow back and forth. Smoke curled up in the first twenty minutes, and I felt briefly like a god. It stopped. I tried again. The spindle broke. I whittled another.
The better part of three hours later, with two blisters and a sprained wrist, a thin thread of smoke rose from a little black powder in the notch, and did not stop. I tipped the glowing speck into a nest of shredded bark, cupped my hands around it, and blew.
It caught.
I have seen cherry blossoms at Ueno in full bloom. I have seen Mount Fuji at dawn. Neither of them made me tear up over a smudge of orange the size of a bean.
I cooked the minnow on a stick. It was about the length of my finger and I ate it in three bites, bones and all. It was the best thing I have ever eaten.
The doll watched me from the mouth of the lean-to. I felt, absurdly, that she approved.
It was dusk when I noticed the silence.
Not the dead silence of the day before. This was a smaller one, a held breath. I had been watching the fire and thinking about a second fish, and I did not see it until it moved.
It stood at the edge of the firelight, no taller than the doll. Its skin was the dull green of pond scum, its ears were long and ragged like torn leaves, and it wore a loincloth the color of bark. In one hand it held a club of knotted wood. A pale tag floated above its head.
Goblin Lv. 3
Level 3. I was Level 2. I knew exactly what a creature one level above me meant, because a creature of equal level had nearly dissolved my arm.
I did not move. I had the carving knife beside me, and a fire between us, and a doll behind me who, for all her serenity, was not going to be any help. The goblin's yellow eyes went to the fish bones in my hand. Then they went to the doll. it smiled.