Whispers in the Woods

Sharkyshark

Sharkyshark

Just chillin'
Dead Man’s Grove was by all means an ordinary little village. Children played outside during the day, farmers tended to their fields, and grandmothers sat on their porches and knitted. Even the sheep seemed fat and happy, bleating pleasantly as they chewed on the grass. Hardly the sort of place one would expect to find dark horrors and nightmarish happenings, but stranger things had occurred. Strange things, for example, like the sudden appearance of a certain young Therianthope at the bottom of a pond. The portal appeared suddenly, ripping through the fabric of reality just long enough to spit Milo out into the murky water before vanishing once more. The unfortunate lad would suddenly find himself entirely submerged, lying on the slimy bottom of a cold, muddy pond. Of course, the entire pond was only about ten feet deep, but the shock and sudden loss of visibility from the kicked-up silt would make it seem much, much deeper.

Upon making it to the surface, the first thing that Milo would hear would be a cry of terror. A young lad of perhaps 14 dropped his fishing rod into the pond and fled down the road towards the town, screaming about a mud monster suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
 
Life was a funny thing, sometimes.

One minute you were making a delivery down from Crescent Hill to Greenwicke, enjoying the sea breeze and trying to resist the alluring scent of fresh pizza wafting from the bag on the back of your bike. The next, you were at the bottom of a murky pond.

The young boy would've been forgiven for mistaking the sound of a suddenly drowning motorcycle engine for that of some sort of monster, as Milo's pride and joy went from racing smoothly down the tarmac to pumping muck. The momentum carried him and the bike a few feet through the water, kicking up a cloud of silt and muck and tossing him head over heels from his seat. Water flooded his lungs in the few instants of shock before he registered what was happening, and then panic took over. He kicked out, scrabbling and clawing at the water desperately until he broke the surface with a spluttering gasp.

Like nothing so much as a drowned rat, Milo dragged himself towards the shore, gasping and panting, and it wasn't until he had pulled himself onto dry land and coughed up a few mouthfuls of muddy water that his primal fight or flight response faded.

He looked around, staring at the nearby village and the picturesque surroundings with dismay.

"What the fuck?" he spat, as if hoping the universe might offer some sort of explanation for what had just happened to him if he was indignant enough about it.

A moment later, his thoughts caught up a little further and he spun around to face the pond. "Shit! My bike!"

Like a mother fearing for her child, Milo dived straight back into the water after his ride. A few minutes and a lot of grunting and heaving later, and he'd hauled the waterlogged motorcycle out of the pond and onto the shore. "Oh man, you're gonna be so fucked," he muttered over the sorry-looking vehicle. "I can't afford to get you fixed right now! I-" he stopped, looking up again as the marginally more important question returned to his mind.

"Where the fuck even am I?"
 
Milo’s question was an excellent one indeed, as the place he was in wasn’t quite like anything he’d ever seen before. The pond was surrounded by tall white trees, entirely devoid of leaves. It looked almost as though he’d appeared in the middle of a forest of bones, stuck upright in the ground and left to bleach in the sun. A narrow dirt path led out of the forest, and Milo would be able to see a small village off in the distance. A few moments later, the boy returned, leading several large men carrying pitchforks and wooden cudgels.

“Right there!” he cried, pointing a shaking finger at Milo. “There’s the mud monster! It came out of the pond!”

The men advanced, but paused as they realized exactly what they were looking at. One of them clipped the boy around the back of the head, grumbling in annoyance.

“Why, that’s no mud monster,” he said. “It’s just a lad, that’s all. A dirty, muddy, wet lad. With...strange ears. And some sort of...thing. Not a mud monster, and nothing to go crying to your mother for. Grow up, Digsby.”

Digsby sighed, lowering his eyes to the ground in shame. Meanwhile, one of the men approached cautiously and prodded Milo’s bike with a pitchfork.

“Who are you?” he asked, staring at the newcomer. “How did you end up in the pond, and what is this thing? Is it dangerous?”
 
Milo pulled his goggles up as the men arrived, leaving him with a clean patch around his eyes - like an inverted mask - that was comically fitting, considering his ears and the raccoon tail sprouting from his jeans. "Hey, watch ya fork, you scratch that you're paying for it!" he snapped, pushing the pitchfork away from his bike, before giving the man a bewildered look at his questions. "It... it's a bike, mate. An SR400? And it's less fuckin' dangerous when it's not flying through some fuckin' portal into the bottom of a pond. Speaking of, what the fuck gives? I was hoping you could tell me how I ended up in the pond! Where in the fuck am I?"

He flicked his tail around and irritably started wringing water out of it. "Five minutes ago I was cruising down toward Casticor harbour, now I'm here, dragging my poor baby outta your muddy pond, after almost fuckin' drowning!"
 
The gathered posse frowned at the remarkably angry young man with the strange ears and weird, muddy tail, bewilderment clear on their faces. What was going on here? Where was Casticor Harbor? They muttered amongst each other, trying to make sense of the situation for several long moments before the pitchfork man had an idea.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “A sailor. That’s what you are, aren’t you? It all makes sense. Sailors are all angry and they curse a lot. They spend a lot of time on harbors, they dress funny, and they’re always messing around with dangerous metal things. Maybe you just got sucked into a...a whirlpool? The ocean is a strange place. Maybe there’s a whirlpool that leads to an underground tunnel that comes out here.”

“Yeah, right,” said another man, snorting with derision. “As if. You really think our little pond is connected to the ocean? Have you ever seen a shark swimming around in there?”

“I don’t hear any better ideas,” snapped the pitchfork man. “Come on, Sailor Boy. Let’s get you to the village, you’ll catch a cold if you stay out here in these woods all soaking wet.”

The group started heading back to the village, grumbling about mud monsters and sailors and sharks in the pond. The boy who’d first spotted Milo hung back, pulling his fishing rod from the pond and using it to prod cautiously at Milo’s bike.

“Are you really a sailor?” he asked. “I want to leave here and join the navy. Everyone makes fun of me here. It’s hard to join the navy when the nearest ocean is four weeks’ travel away, but I’m gonna do it one of these days!”
 
Milo stared at the villagers in disbelief as one of them started rambling about him being a sailor. Evidently, not only did they have no more idea how he'd gotten here than he did, but they were also morons. It was clear that whatever had happened was some sort of magic, and given the fact that nobody seemed to have any clue what a motorcycle was, he was starting to get a really bad feeling in his gut.

"Fuck me dead this is worse than I thought," he muttered under his breath while the villagers turned to leave. To the boy, he turned and glowered, batting his rod away as well. "Watch it, y' little bastard, don't poke her! Gah. No, I'm not a fuckin' sailor mate, I'm a delivery boy. I don't sail a fuckin' yacht up Central Avenue to deliver a fuckin' pizza, do I?"

Grumbling under his breath, Milo pulled himself to his feet and - with a grunt of effort - tipped his bike onto its wheels. "Where even am I, anyway, kid? This place got a name? And for the love of god please tell me it's still 2020, or I'm gonna have some fuckin' choice words for whatever cunt of a blue witch managed to launch me the fuck back in time."
 
The boy stared at the strange, foul-mouthed newcomer, blinking slowly as he tried to decipher exactly what it is that he’d said. Hardly anything that came out of Milo’s mouth made any sense, but his sudden appearance at the bottom of the pond hadn’t made any sense either. He frowned, hesitating for a moment before speaking.

“Uh...you’re in Dead Man’s Grove,” said the boy, voice shaking as he took a step back. “Well, I mean, kind of. Dead Man’s Grove is over there, so I guess you’re not really in it. But it’s the closest place around. We’re in the land of Witchwood, of course. You do know that, right? And, uh...it’s the thirty-first year of the Southerly Wind. Are you sure you’re ok? You seem kinda...lost.”

He gestured vaguely back towards the town, taking a hesitant half-step before glancing back to see if Milo was following.

“You, uh, should come to the town,” he said. “See if you can get your bearings. Also, there’s a giant furry leech stuck to your rear end.”
 
Witchwood? The thirty-first year of the Southerly Wind?

Nowhere with even half of a civilisation was so backwater it had an entirely different notion of the calendar. Milo stared at the boy with disbelief as he processed the revelation that he might not even be in the same world anymore. This was like one of Shay's stupid YA novels come to life, falling through into another world through some portal. As if Casticor wasn't magical enough.

It was the kid's final comment that jarred him back to reality. "Oi! My tail's not a fuckin' furry leech. I take offense to that." Little bastard. Probably knew exactly what he was doing. "Whatever, guess 'town' is better than some pond. Gonna go out on a limb and guess I've piss all chance of finding a service garage in 'Dead Man's Cove' or whatever it was." He sighed down at his sorry-looking bike. "Can at least get her cleaned up..."

Muttering under his breath, he started to follow the kid, wheeling the bike alongside him. "So just to be clear," he piped up again after a pause. "This isn't Earth?"
 
The boy didn’t respond to Milo’s questions, simply shaking his head and leading him towards the town. Clearly, he thought, the strange person was some sort of madman, making up words and worlds that fit into his own delusions. Either that, or he’d gotten hit between those strange ears of his while at the bottom of that pond. Whatever the matter was, maybe they’d be able to sort him out at the village. If worse came to worse and he really was mad, maybe they could just throw him back in the pond and hope he’d go back to where he came from. The boy chuckled at the thought, imagining one of the men raising the stranger over his head and flinging him off into the murky pool.

As they arrived at the village, it would become very apparent that Milo had either landed himself in the middle of a strange re-enactment group or he was in a very different place and time from whence he’d come. Thin trails of white smoke rose from stone chimneys in simple wood-and-stone houses, stretching up into a clear, unpolluted sky. Turnip-farmers and trinket-sellers pushed small hand-carts down the simple, unpaved road, calling out to passer-by and hawking their wares. One particularly deranged-looking man ran up to Milo with a bundle of plump purple turnips clenched in his bony fist, giving a wide grin that displayed exactly four teeth. His grey hair stuck out at strange angles, as though he’d recently been struck by lightning.

“Hello there, stranger!” he called, turnips swinging as he waved them in Milo’s face. “Can I interest you in the finest turnips in town? They’re juicy, they’re ripe, and they’re grown right here in town behind my house! What do you say, huh? You could make a real nice turnip soup out of these, or roast them over an open fire. You could even eat them fresh, as is! You wanna buy?”

He thrust the bundle of turnips in front of Milo’s face, filling his vision with the swinging purplish-white root vegetables. The boy chuckled, vanishing off into a side street. He’d brought the stranger to town, and now his work here was done.
 
Milo gawped at the village as he rolled Swiftie - his bike - into the square. It was a scene out of a medieval movie, every bit of it. This was either an extremely elaborate prank played by an illusionist, or he'd somehow fallen through time like he suspected. Potentially space, as well, given he didn't recognise anything to do with the dates and names the boy had given him.

By the time he'd realised the kid was gone, someone new had barrelled over to him, and his confused stare was turned onto him instead. "Wha- no, I don't want your turnips, and even if I did, I don't have any... shillings, or whatever ye olde currency is," he grumbled. He sighed, running a hand through his still-damp, muddy hair and grimacing. He needed to start figuring out what was happening. And more importantly, how to get home.

"Listen, turnip guy. D'you guys have a local witch? Shaman? Oracle? Anyone who knows bugger all about magic?" he asked, hopefully. If he could find someone here who knew anything about magic, maybe they would be able to help him get home.

He knew he should've paid attention in his Arcana classes.
 
The turnip-seller froze, his grin stiffening on his face as soon as Milo inquired about witches. The color drained from his face, leaving him more pale than the underside of his turnips. He glanced hurriedly back and forth, checking to see if anyone had heard exactly what this newcomer had said.

“Y-you want to find a witch?” he asked, his previously-gleeful voice now trembling and soft. “Why would you ever want to do that? Are you crazy?”

“Yes,” called the fishing-boy, who’d been eavesdropping from behind a barrel. Chuckling to himself, he ran off, vanishing once more.

“Listen, stranger,” said the turnip man, “witches are dangerous. You hear me? Bad news. They’ll turn your head into a pumpkin, or make you swallow frogs, or, or, or…”

He shook his head, clearly overcome by all the horrible fates that would befall one foolish enough to willingly seek out a witch. The turnips fell from his hand, bouncing and rolling on the dirt road. The man barely noticed, raising his voice and jabbing a finger at Milo’s face to emphasize his points.

“If you know what’s good for you,” he said, “you’ll stay as far away from witches as you can! They’re awful. One of them made my grandfather go bald, another one made my week-old turnip soup go bad, and yet another one made Liana from the tavern think that I’m a crazy turnip-obsessed weirdo! Witches, I tell you! You’d best stay out of their way, there’s no telling what they might do. If you really need someone who knows about magic, I hear there’s a...weird guy who lives in a little shack down the road. He’s...he’s strange, though. Real strange. Almost as strange as a witch, from what I've heard."

He pointed shakily, indicating a vague direction towards the road out of town. Gathering up his fallen turnips, he hurriedly turned tail and ran, clutching the root vegetables to his chest like precious children.
 
"That curse must've been on more than just Liana from the tavern," Milo muttered as the man ran off, shaking his head. Wrinkling his nose at the lingering scent of old man mixed with turnip, he turned to look down the road where the man had pointed. Strange guy in a shack wasn't exactly a promising start, but it was something. And if he kept on doing things, maybe he'd be able to offset the growing sense of blind panic that was coming on from realising he was trapped in another fucking dimension.

He took another deep breath, pacing over to the village's well and pulling up the bucket. Unceremoniously, he dumped the contents over himself, starting to wash away the worst of the mud from the pond. Ignoring the looks he got from the villagers, he did the same a few more times for both himself and his bike, until he was left in a halfway presentable state - albeit sodden.

Muttering irritably under his breath, he wiped his wet hair out of his face and wrung out his tail. At least now he wasn't cold, wet and muddy. He was just cold and wet. Progress was being made!

"Guess you're not getting delivered," he muttered, going around to the back of Swiftie and unzipping the bag strapped there. Thanks to the enchantments on it, it'd escaped being soaked through by water, and the inside was pleasantly warm. Reaching into the box inside, he stuffed a slice of pizza into his mouth, then sealed it back up.

Feeling moderately better now for having eaten pizza, Milo once again took hold of Swiftie's handlebars and started down the road to find the shack.
 
The villagers stared at the strange young man as he gave himself a bath of cold well water, but none approached him. It seemed that they were wary of strangers here, especially ones with fluffy tails and weird mechanical things that they pushed around like a cart. They gave him a wide berth as he headed down the path and out of town, watching through windows and behind carts at his retreating back.

“Crazy,” repeated the fishing boy, once Milo was almost (but not quite) out of earshot.

“You said it,” said the turnip-seller.

Hauling the bike over the rutted, unpaved roads was a hassle and a half, and it took Milo close to an hour before he found the shack. The little wooden building stood by the side of the road, barely bigger than a shed. Sunlight shone through gaps in the poorly-fitted wood, and the chimney seemed to have been made of mud. The roof was covered in rather haphazardly-nailed shingles, and the whole domicile looked to be about one stiff breeze away from falling down. A knock on the door would receive no reply, nor would any amount of subsequent pounding, yelling, or horn-honking. The house had no windows, but peering in through the gaps in the wood would reveal a figure lying on the floor. It was too dark to make out any sort of details, but the silhouette seemed to suggest a tall, thin man wearing a long coat lying on his stomach. He was entirely motionless, and didn’t look to even be breathing.
 
"Fuck you, kid," Milo flipped the bird back over his shoulder as he stalked away, but didn't bother turning around.


"Ah, fuck..." Milo cursed under his breath when he spotted the man on the floor. "Just my fuckin' luck. If you're dead, you bastard, I swear..." Muttering, he moved away from the wall to try the door. If it didn't budge on a first attempt, he forced it open with a barge of his shoulder and stepped inside.

"Oi! You alive, old man?" he called, moving to the man's side and crouching down to take his pulse.
 
The door swung open with a creak at Milo’s touch, hanging loosely off battered, rust-covered hinges. The beam of light from the door illuminated the man’s back, and legs, leaving his head shrouded in shadow. He didn’t so much as twitch as Milo called out to him, lying flat on his stomach in the dark, dusty shack. However, stepping closer, the raccoon-boy would receive quite a shock. When he leaned over, he would find himself looking directly into the man’s staring, open eyes and closed-lipped grin. He was still lying on his stomach, but he wasn’t face-down at all. The man’s face, thin and gaunt with high cheekbones, was on the back of his head.

As soon as Milo touched him, the man sprang to life, rolling over onto his back to sit sharply upright. He swiveled around to turn his back to Milo, facing him.

“Why hello there, young one,” he said, his voice hoarse and dry but still oddly cheery. “What can I do for you today? Is there something I can help you with? They call me Shorn, the Backwards Man. Personally, I think everyone else is backwards, don’t you?”

He let out a strange, hiccuping chuckle, inhaling his laugh rather than exhaling it. The sunlight coming in from the door highlighted the lines in his face and the greyness of his thin hair, but he somehow appeared to have all of his teeth.
 
"Fucking- shit!" Milo fell back on his ass when the man sprung upright, startled. "What the hell is your problem? Were you just lying there, waiting for someone to come so you could fuckin' jump at 'em?" he spluttered angrily. It took him a few moments to register that the man's face seemed to be backwards, but even though that was strange to look at, he was used enough to people looking all manner of different that he only gawped for a moment before just accepting it.

"Uhg, nevermind," he grumbled. "Look, the guy at the village said you know magic or something, that right? 'Cause I need help. I've been fuckin' yeeted into wherever the hell this is from somewhere in some other time or universe or something. One minute I was going about my normal-ass day, the next I'm at the bottom of a fucking pond!"
 
The man chuckled at Milo’s outburst, an odd hiccupping laugh of short inhalations rather than exhalations. It was not a particularly pleasant sound, nor a comforting one. As the man got up to his feet, Milo would realize exactly how tall and lanky he was. He was incredibly thin, with long, stick-like arms and tall, spindly legs. The top of his head would have reached the top of the shack if he hadn’t stooped over, his backward body giving him an oddly flamingo-like appearance as he bent his knees.

“Magic?” he said, looming over Milo like a stork over a crab. “Who ever said that I know anything about that? I suppose some of the things that I do might seem like magic so some people, but I consider them perfectly ordinary. Then again, you forwards folk do some very odd things that I could never imagine. I’m afraid I don’t know much about ponds or universes at all, though. I do apologize.”

He retrieved a long, thin bundle from the corner and removed the brown paper wrapping. Inside was a thin, silver-bladed rapier, which he slid into a scabbard and strapped to his waist. Stepping past Milo, he stepped out of the shack, his odd backwards gait giving the impression of a giant stick insect.

“Tell me, lad,” he called. “What is this thing, exactly? It’s so very strange, and something about it seems...off. What’s it for?”

He was standing beside Milo’s bike, crouched down and inspecting it closely.
 
Milo groaned, running both his hands through his hair and tugging at his ears with frustration. "Great," he murmured under his breath. "Great. Course it's not gonna be that easy. Shit. Fuck!"

If people here didn't even know basic magic, what hope did he have of finding someone that could figure out how to get him home? Surely there must be some magic. Maybe there were Sanctuary cities here too? Or hidden communities, or... something.

He almost didn't notice the man moving out of the house until he spoke, wrapped up in trying not to have a panic attack as the reality of the situation caught up with him.

"What-? It's a bike. It goes fast, and you ride it. Like a- I dunno, like a horse? But not alive. And yeah, something about it's off, it's probably water-damaged. I'm gonna have to try and drain it... not that I'll be able to get bloody far on one tank of gas, with nowhere to refuel."
 
The backwards man straightened, spindly legs clicking and popping as he unfolded himself up to his full height. He contemplated Milo’s description of the bike for a moment, tapping his fingers against one another and frowning as the raccoon-boy complained about the lack of fuel.

“Not alive,” he mused. “Yes, yes. I can see that. It is very clearly not alive. Waterlogged. Meant to be ridden, but it no longer draws breath. Well, lad, perhaps I can help you with that.”

Without waiting for Milo’s permission, he drew the thin sword from his belt, arms twisting unnaturally to hold the sword in front of his back. He plunged the tip of the blade straight into the heart of the bike’s engine, the narrow rapier sinking deep into the machine with a squeal and crunch of tearing metal. The man held it there for a moment before withdrawing it, giving the sword a twirling flourish before re-sheathing it.

“My blade is not like most,” he said, raising a hand to quell any argument. “It brings life, rather than destroying it. A backwards sword for a backwards man. Quite poetic, don’t you agree? Look, look. You’ll see that your ‘bike’ is doing quite well.”

A trickle of black, viscous oil dripped down from the sword hole in the engine, coating the ground in a rainbow sheen. Several seconds passed, and then the bike coughed. It was a sickly and unpleasant noise, a bit like a dying horse, but it was unmistakably the sound of a living being. The bike coughed again, and the oil dripping from the hole turned a bright, distinctive red. The engine revved with a harsh, choking growl, and the wheels began to turn slowly in the sand. The bike’s headlight blinked on, flashing several times.

“You see,” said the backwards man, giving Milo a thin smile. “Alive.”
 
"WHY THE BASTARDING FUCK DID YOU STAB MY BIKE?!" Milo yelled as the blade sank into his precious baby, expression twisting with horror. He was about ready to punch the backwards man in the face when he held up his hand and continued his explanation. Milo bristled on the verge of violence as he listened, ears back, only a combination of the fact the man was holding a sword and the fact he didn't want to alienate his one vague hope of figuring out what the fuck was going on.

When the man told him to look, he looked. And gawped.

"What the everliving fuck've you done?" he whispered, staring as the bike 'revved' itself. "Swiftie?"
 
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