What the Forest Allowed

Korax first heard the rule years ago, when he was young.

Don’t go into the Ghostwood after dark. If a stranger there speaks to you, keep your mouth shut, keep your eyes down, and run the fast way home.

He filed it away with the other border cautions parents used to keep children alive in hard times.

When a rider reached Meadowvale Castle and asked for Sir Korax by name, Korax was already in the courtyard with Apollo’s reins looped over a gloved hand. Frost clung to the rider’s beard. His eyes avoided the carved saints and banners, as if looking might make the problem real.

The rider shoved a sealed letter forward like he wanted it out of his possession.

Korax broke the wax, skimmed, and felt the cold settle in his gut.

A child is mute at the Ghostwood border. Harthdown claims a spirit has taken it. We request your services, Sir Korax.

He did not need the rider’s trembling to understand what mattered. If the Spirit Realm was taking voices, it meant it was spending. Paying with theft.

Korax swung into the saddle. Apollo shifted under him, impatient, as if the horse already smelled the Ghostwood on the wind.

The road narrowed into ruts, then into a scar through frozen grass. The air sharpened. By late afternoon, the light dimmed early, as if the land leaned away from the sun. Apollo’s ears tipped forward and stayed there, fixed on what Korax could not yet see.

Harthdown sat above a river that curved along the Ghostwood’s edge like a bent arm. Smoke rose from chimneys. Lamps flickered behind shutters. The village smelled of wet wool, wood ash, and fear, trying to hide under both.

People watched him with expectation, the kind that turned a man into an answer before he spoke.

The reeve met him outside the hall, flanked by two men gripping axes. His mouth formed dignity; his hands betrayed him.

“Sir,” he said. “I sent for you.”

“I know,” Korax replied. “Take me to the child.”

On the walk, the reeve talked too fast, as if speed could outrun consequences.

“We told them the rule, sir. Every season. Don’t go in after dark. Don’t speak if something speaks to you. The boy’s mother swears he only stepped just past the birches.”

“The boy’s name,” Korax requested.

“Evin.”

Evin’s house sagged like it had been tired for years. Inside, the boy sat on packed dirt with his knees drawn up, mouth slightly open in a habit. His eyes were raw from crying. His throat worked, trying to remember.

His mother knelt close, fingers digging into his cheeks.

“Say it again,” she whispered. “Just once.”

His father stood near the fire, staring as if flame might explain how a rule older than the village could be broken by a child warned since he could walk.

Korax did not announce himself. He waited until the mother finally looked up and saw his cloak, his horse outside, the shape of authority she had begged the world for.

Hope flared across her face so fast it looked like pain.

“You’re a knight,” she said.

Korax inclined his head. “Tell me what happened. Only what you know.”

The father answered without turning. “He chased a bird.”

The mother shook her head hard. “He did not go in. He knows better. He was only near the birches.”

Korax crouched in front of Evin. The boy’s gaze flicked toward him, then away, then back, as if even eye contact felt like a mistake.

“Did you go past the birches?” Korax asked quietly. “Did you speak to something?”

Evin nodded once, then slapped both hands over his mouth as if words might still escape.

“Where?” Korax held his gaze.

The father thrust parchment and lead at the boy. “Draw it. Draw where.”

Evin scratched quickly, frantic. The father’s face pinched as he recognized the shape: marker stones, river, then a line beyond.

“The marker stones. Just past them,” he whispered. “Northeast.”

Just past the stones was far enough.

Korax left the house and went down to the riverbank. Ice lay over black water like dull skin. Across it, the Eastern Ghostwood stood in a dense wall. The trees there were less willing to be looked at.

He brushed snow aside near the bank and found a hard line pressed into the earth.

He followed it with his eyes until it vanished beneath the roots. Then, if he let his focus soften, he could see where it continued upward into the air.

Korax tipped his chin and saw it, faint but present: a seam in the sky, a scar running through dusk as if the world had been mended there.

He swallowed once. Thin places were one thing. Thin places being worked on were another. By the time he returned to the village edge, the rule was no longer a proverb in his memory.

That night, he turned Apollo west and rode for Thalia the Greenwitch.

Thalia’s grove lay where forest trees crowded close, roots knotted like fingers. Smoke rose from a stone chimney.

She opened the door before he knocked.

“You’re late,” she said.

“It’s not late yet.”

“It is for what’s moving,” Thalia replied, stepping aside.

Her home smelled of smoke and crushed leaves and something sweet that made Korax’s tongue itch. Jars lined the shelves, powders, liquids, things that shifted as if they disliked being contained.

Korax did not take off his coat. “Harthdown.”

Thalia nodded as if the name had been in her mouth all day.

“A child spoke to a stranger,” Korax said. “Now he’s mute.”

“This is older than hunger,” Thalia said. “And it’s trying to be useful.”

Korax leaned a hand on the table. “Useful to who.”

Thalia lifted a jar. Mist swirled inside, and when it touched the glass, the glass fogged from within.

“Spirit Realm,” she said. “They’ve been working. A Voice-Taker in particular.”

“Working on what?”

Thalia held it toward the hearthlight. A pale thread floated inside, thin as breath.

“The sky,” she said. “Where it frays. They use voices because that’s what they have.”

Korax felt the answer land, heavy and clean. “So they take voices to stitch seams?”

“They take what they can carry,” Thalia said. “A voice belongs to more than one realm. Breath and story. Perfect thread.”

“And if a village won’t give it?”

“They take it,” Thalia said. “And call it mercy.”

Korax stared at the jar, then at his own hands. Knight-hands. Hands built for steel, not for law, woven into the air.

“I need the boy’s voice back.”

Thalia set a small vial in his palm, wax the color of old honey sealing it. The liquid inside was clear, but shimmered like heat above stone.

“A false voice,” she said. “It sounds like something, but belongs to nothing.”

Korax brought it close and thought he heard a whisper, or maybe only his own blood.

“How long?”

“Moments,” Thalia said. “Measured by attention. Once it tastes it, it will know it’s wrong.”

“And the cost?”

Thalia’s mouth twitched. “If you offer trade, you become tradable. If you promise later, you’re knotted to later. It will remember you.”

Korax pocketed the vial. “I swallow it before we meet the Voice-Taker. I speak with it. It takes what it thinks is mine. In exchange, it releases the boy.”

Thalia’s gaze flicked to his. “And when it realizes?”

“We run,” Korax said.

“It will still rearrange something,” Thalia said.

“Rearrange me,” Korax replied. “Not the child.”

She studied him for a long moment, calculating.

“I will not speak during the exchange,” Thalia said. “If it hears me, it will hook me to its realm.”

Korax nodded.

“And the parents,” Thalia added.

“They will be told to stay quiet,” Korax cut in.

“They will fail,” Thalia said, flat as stone.

Korax hated hearing it said aloud.

They rode back to Harthdown.

At midnight, they went to the marker stones. The village lamps were shuttered. Even the dogs had gone quiet.

Apollo walked stiffly, head low. His breath steamed harsh and fast. Korax felt refusal tremor through the reins, animal truth refusing what human duty demanded.

The birches were pale bones. The stones half-buried in snow, runes worn smooth by generations of hands.

Korax faced Evin’s parents.

“Do not speak,” he told them. “No matter what.”

The mother nodded, lips pressed together until they split. Blood welled. She did not wipe it away.

The father’s hands opened and closed as if he could practice holding on to something that did not slip.

Evin stood between them, shaking, eyes fixed on the dark beyond the stones.

Thalia stayed behind Korax, hood up, still as a shadow.

Korax swallowed the false voice.

It sat behind his teeth like a warm coin. His throat felt full, like someone else waited there, eager to speak.

He stepped forward alone. The air thickened with cold attention and pressure behind his eyes.

He waited.

The woods stayed silent.

Korax drew a slow breath and spoke one word, carefully chosen.

“Witness.”

Applause answered him, slow and measured, like hands clapping in a room with no people in it.

Apollo whinnied, then turned it into a scream that turned Korax’s blood cold. Apollo did not waste sound.

The Voice-Taker stepped from between two birches, like it had been there all along, waiting for permission to be noticed.

Korax’s mind tried to make it a man and failed. It was too tall, too thin, joints bending the wrong way. Its coat never touched snow. Its face was pale and empty. Its mouth stitched shut with thread that glimmered in moonlight.

“Well done,” it said.

Its voice was beautiful in a way that made Korax want to listen longer than he should.

Korax let that response stand. Then he spoke.

The false voice came out of him smooth and weighted, older than his own.

The Voice-Taker’s eyes brightened, tasting.

“You took this child’s voice,” Korax said. “Return it.”

The Voice-Taker’s gaze slid past him to Evin, intimate, proprietary.

Evin made a small breath-sound.

The spirit smiled as if it enjoyed collecting even that.

“You spoke beautifully, child,” it said.

The mother made a sharp, involuntary noise. She slapped her hand over her mouth in horror.

The Voice-Taker’s head tilted, pleased.

The father failed too, a choked gasp he could not swallow in time.

Korax held his stance. Calm was the only armor that worked here.

“A knight’s voice is worth more than a boy’s,” Korax said. “Take mine instead. Give him back what is his.”

The Voice-Taker stepped closer, unhurried, as if the woods were its house and Korax had entered the wrong room.

“I do not collect what is loud,” it said. “I collect what is useful.”

Its gaze traced Korax’s throat, the place where the false voice sat warm and waiting.

“But you,” it said softly, “have been useful before.”

Korax kept breathing slowly. “Trade.”

The Voice-Taker lifted its hand.

The air tightened around Korax’s throat like a rope. He choked.

“A voice is permission,” it said. “A bridge between breath and meaning.”

The rope tightened. Korax gagged.

“The boy spoke first,” the Voice-Taker continued. “He invited me.”

Evin’s eyes widened with terror, understanding too late. Korax saw it hit him like a stone dropping through ice. The rule was not caution. It was the law.

Korax forced the borrowed authority to hold.

“Take what you want,” he rasped. “And give him.”

“What I want,” the Voice-Taker said softly, “is for the Veil to stay out.”

Its gaze drifted toward the seam overhead.

“The sky frays,” it said. “If I do not stitch it, the Veil enters. If I fail, your prayers fall and your names rot in your mouths.”

Then it looked back at Korax, and Korax felt something cold move in his throat, a knot being tied into him.

The Voice-Taker’s stitched mouth quivered, duty sharpening into hunger.

“You think I was born in the woods,” it said, almost gentle.

Korax could not waste breath.

“I was born when the first god stopped speaking,” the Voice-Taker whispered. “When silence learned it had weight.”

It raised its hand a fraction higher. The cord tightened with it, as if the air itself took instruction.

“Give,” the Voice-Taker whispered.

Korax opened his mouth.

And the Voice-Taker drank.

The false voice poured out of Korax without sound, only sensation, warmth pulled through teeth into the spirit’s waiting mouth. Korax felt it go like a stone sliding down ice on a river.

The Voice-Taker shuddered like a man savoring wine.

Then it smiled and dropped Korax to the snow.

In the exact moment, Evin gasped. A thin, shaky sound came out of him. His own.

Relief hit Korax despite the pain.

Thalia’s hand found Evin’s throat at once, fingers pressed into skin, catching a loose end before it slipped away.

Thalia spoke a ward.

The greencloth in her hands flared faintly, symbols writhing as if alive. The air smelled of crushed pine and bitter sap and rain on old leaves.

Evin’s voice steadied.

“Mama,” he whispered.

The mother’s knees buckled. A sob tore loose, small and raw.

The Voice-Taker’s head snapped toward her.

Its smile vanished. It worked its jaw, tasting.

Its eyes contracted.

“Wrong,” it hissed.

Korax scrambled up.

The stitches along the spirit’s mouth crawled.

“You fed me emptiness,” it said to Korax, beauty cracking into something sharp.

It lifted one long finger and drew it sideways through the air.

The stars above the Ghostwood slid out of alignment. The seam in the sky pulsed like a wound reacting to pressure. The river rippled below the ice, as if water remembered fear.

Korax felt his stomach drop. Apollo screamed and reared.

“This,” the Voice-Taker said, voice rising, “is what happens when I am delayed.”

Thalia raised her greencloth.

Korax’s authentic voice came out hoarse and small. “Run.”

The father seized Evin. The mother clutched him and stumbled backward toward the village, eyes wild, mouth clamped shut so hard her jaw trembled.

Apollo stomped, ears pinned, eyes rolling white, then moved to Korax’s side.

The Voice-Taker took one step forward, and the trees leaned with it.

“You cannot take what has no owner,” Thalia said, steady now that she had spoken.

“I can take any sound,” it replied warmly, “as it is permitted.”

Korax hauled himself onto Apollo. “Thalia.”

She was already climbing up behind him.

Thalia flicked herbs into the snow. Green flame burst up, thorned and twisting into a wall between them and the Voice-Taker.

The spirit hissed, delayed again.

They fled.

The Voice-Taker did not chase. Its attention followed them like a pin in their spines.

They reached the square as Evin collapsed into his mother’s arms, whispering, crying, alive with sound again. Villagers surged close.

Korax did not join their relief.

He watched the father try to speak. His mouth shaped words perfectly. Nothing came out.

The mother sobbed, then tried to say Evin’s name. Silence.

Evin looked between his parents, confusion turning to fear.

“No,” he whispered. “Mama? Papa?”

The father clawed at his throat.

The mother pressed her hands to her mouth, as if she could force her voice back in.

Korax’s hand lifted, trying to catch sound in the air. Thalia froze.

The Voice-Taker’s presence filled the corners of the village like a shadow remembering its place. Its voice arrived smooth as river stones.

“They spoke for him,” it said gently. “They used their voices to hold him.”

The parents’ mouths moved in silent horror.

“Now,” it continued, “the child speaks for them.”

“Take me instead,” Korax demanded.

A pause, slow and considering.

Then the Voice-Taker’s voice slid close, inside Korax’s ear like breath.

“Knight,” it said softly. “You already chose.”

Korax felt the cold knot at his throat tighten.

Thalia caught his sleeve, grounding him.

“The Veil presses,” the Voice-Taker said. “If I do not stitch, it enters. If I do not take, it destroys. I am not merciful. I am necessary.”

Korax swallowed.

Then it was gone.

Nothing in the Ghostwood objected.

Korax stayed long enough to see the cost.

Evin spoke for his parents in the market, small and careful, translating their silent anger into words that would not start fights. Korax watched the father’s face contort with rage, and Evin softened it into something polite because a child learned quickly what adults could not afford to say.

At dusk, the mother knelt at the birch line, mouth open, trying to pray. The forest did not answer her. It only watched.

Thalia stood beside Korax, arms folded inside her cloak.

“You knew it might take them,” Korax said.

“I knew it would balance what you unbalanced,” Thalia replied.

Korax’s fingers drifted to his throat. The mark was not visible, but he felt it.

“It said I already chose,” Korax said. “To keep the Veil away?”

Thalia’s eyes cut toward him. “Do you need to ask?”

Korax looked toward the river. The seam still faintly haunted the sky. The air near the Ghostwood was still wrong.

Thalia stepped closer, lowering her voice.

“The Spirit Realm is not good,” she said. “It takes voices because voices work. Because the Veil is hungry, and hunger does not negotiate.”

Korax’s jaw tightened. “If I don’t let it?”

“Then the Veil finds gaps,” Thalia said, “and we learn what quiet really means.”

She reached into her cloak and removed a small jar. Mist swirled restlessly inside.

“You stole a voice?” Korax said.

“It’s preserved,” Thalia replied.

“Whose?”

Thalia did not look at him.

“The next one the forest will ask for,” she said calmly, with a faint smile. “I’m preparing.”

Korax eyed her.

“Perhaps you’ll stop me,” she said. “Perhaps you won’t.”

She turned toward the trees.

“Either way,” she added, “the forest still needs voices.”

Korax looked back at Harthdown.

He had gotten the child’s voice back.

But he had taught the Ghostwood something.

Korax would bargain.

Korax could be marked into duty.

The forest remained quiet.

Satisfied.