Hidmak had been waiting for fifty of her fifty five years for this night. The ones in yellow, those who she hoped to soon call sisters had been avoiding it. They told her that she would go mad from loneliness, but to a girl born in Alara and raised in the forest of sages, loneliness and isolation are nothing new. They had told her, for decades, that she would never live long enough for such a night, but she had lived two lifetimes worth and if she crossed the river tonight, if she did what she had to do, she could live for eleven more.
All of her life Hidmak had wanted to wear yellow. She had served the sages in the depths of the forest since she was old enough to carry a clay ewer. She had brushed their hair and sang to them and watched them at their chanting. Only she had stayed with them long enough to learn even the beginnings of their secrets.
She dipped her toes into the bank of the river. Udd was quiet tonight. Perhaps he knows of my journey. Perhaps he wants me to succeed.
Avya and Kata, her sisters, her mothers, her priestesses, bound her hair into thirteen braids, dipping the end of each in the blood of a snake. They did not speak to her, but through the way that only they could use, Hidmak knew that they were asking of her the one thing that she could not do. Turn back, Hidmak. The forest of demons is no place for you. Stay with us, Hidmak. Much misery awaits you there.
But Hidmak ignored their pleas. She had listened to them for too long to care for her own safety. Not when she could be like them with all of the treasures that she knew they possessed. She ran over what she had to do once again, walking into the Udd far enough that his waters grazed her knees. The ones in yellow had told it to her many times. Cross the Udd, if you can. Then find the tree of with thirteen fingers. Lie under its branches and see what awaits you. If you are told to kill a deer and drink of its blood you must do so. If you are told to slit your wrists you must do so. If you are told to come back and kill us all you must do so. If you are never told anything, you were not meant to know of these things. You must stay there until you die. Perhaps, after three weeks of waiting and doing what you are told to do, you will be told to return to us. Do so and be one of us
Though Hidmak was old and her long hair gray, she knew that she had the power to swim across the river. What she doubted was that she had the power to die.
Without a word or a glance back at her companions, she jumped like a fish, arching her arms toward the water. With a plunge, she sunk into the murky warmth of the Udd. It was hard to tell which direction she wanted to swim towards, the powerful arms of Udd kept pushing her away from where she needed to go. Hidmak felt herself sinking, Udd pulling her down. It was hard to move ones arms when it felt so delightful to let them rest. She looked back toward the left bank, but she saw nothing, not even a haze of yellow. Perhaps her sisters could not bear to see her die. Perhaps she had meant something to them after all. That thought made her smile as she stretched herself out like a piece of floating bark, never caring where she ended up.
With a loud crack, Hidmak found herself entangled in a low lying branch, creeping out from the right bank. She pulled herself in and, using its limbs as a rope, found herself on a dark and mossy outcropping of rocks.
She looked down at her red blood, staining the rocks and decided that there was no need to continue to the tree with thirteen fingers. She had only crossed the Udd through dumb luck. She would be walking to her death. But she was now just outside the forest of demons. The only way out was to follow the river one million paces to the capital. Or she could face Udd again and the look on their faces when they saw her again.
No, she would enter the forest. She had no right to life, not when she had been given two of them.
The tree of thirteen fingers was not hard for her to find. Not when every craggy tree, every hissing noise, every stale wind was pointing her towards it, laughing at her going to her death. It stood alone in the depths of the forest, surrounded by nothing but sharp grass. Hidmak could feel her lifeblood leaving her body as she walked through the thorns and needles.
The tree itself was bent over as with age or a heavy burden but the branch she walked towards seem to be peering back up, smirking at her. This tree, too, knew that she was soon to die. Of course, for it was the author of her destiny.
But as Hidmak staggered toward the sooty trunk, an object appeared before her. A package about the size of a ripened cantaloupe, wrapped in yellow rags. She did not, could not, know what it could be. But as she picked it up to uncover what was inside, it moved, squirmed, wriggled around in her hands and then, as the rags were pushed away, let out a breath-ending shriek.
Hidmak, to her terror, found that she had discovered a child. And not just the body of a child, but the life of one two for this infant moved and cried and smelled. Here, in the forest of demons, where not even the hungriest of wolves could live.
The child appeared to be in good health, though like no child Hidmak had ever seen. She was covered in dirt and refuse and blood. She was scrawny though obviously not malnourished. But what Hidmak could not take her eyes off of was the infant's hair.
For it was not the ashy dark that most people had nor of the softer brown that she had often seen nor even the light blonde that Hidmak had once seen traveling through Alara. Hidmak had never seen this color before in nature or on any human being. It was like nothing she had ever seen before, as if the sky on the night of the full moon had been light up by one thousand bolts of lightning, as if the robin's egg had somehow gone disastrously, wonderfully, wrong. As if the sun had been taken over by some dark and stormy demon.
The child looked into Hidmak's eyes and the older woman realized that she held in her hands the strangest and most precious thing they had ever held.
And she would continue to hold and savor it while both of them died. For as she came to an understanding of what she held she realized that the tree had not spoken to her. She lay down near its roots, protecting the infant from the prickly grasses, but still no words came.
She waited until the sky had turned to the color of a fire pit the day after a ceremony but she heard nothing. If she had been told to leave the infant she would have done so. If she had been told to take her own life she would have done so. If she had been told to kill the infant with her bare hands she would have done it. But, to her relief, she was told nothing.
Hidmak could not control her tears. She was, after all, not meant to wear yellow.
She started. The package, the infant, had been concealed with yellow rags. Only the sages, only the chosen and the elect in all of Hessania could wear yellow. Perhaps this child had some connection to the deities. Perhaps this child was some sort of transformed sage.
Perhaps, and it took her breath away to think on it, the infant and its rags were her message.
So Hidmak covered the infant's hair with her rags and used the rest to tie the girl to her chest. Giving the tree one last chance to write her destiny, she fled the forest of demons.