The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage: A Sapphic Fantasy Romance Read online
Contents
Copyright
Part One - Nui City Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Part Two - Outpost Twenty-Four Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Part Three - The Devouring Forest Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Part Four - A House in the Mountains Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Part Five - The Heart of the Forest Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
A Note from the Author
Copyright © 2023 Hiyodori
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:
Cover art by Tithi Luadthong / Shutterstock.com
Part One
Nui City
CHAPTER ONE
Months passed before Tiller Koya discovered the first draft of her dead grandmother’s will. It was handwritten on a single slip of grid-lined paper. Concealed deep in a drawer packed full of paisley-print pajamas.
The pajamas smelled like Baba Sayo, but they had also gotten musty enough to give Tiller a coughing fit.
She straightened up, paper in hand. She forgot about organizing the rest of the dresser. She forgot about the drawn curtains, the afternoon sunlight that clawed its way in through tiny gaps.
The writing was wavery yet neat, each character carefully slotted in its allotted box. The sheet of paper had been smooth and flat when Tiller first extracted it. Only now, clutched in her fingers, did it turn crumpled and damp.
The final notarized draft of Baba Sayo’s will had instructed Tiller to keep her ashes in a plain ceramic container—one previously used to hold bread flour. No need to set up an extra household shrine, it said.
Her official will requested little else. In the end, it gave all of Baba Sayo’s assets (not that she had many) to Tiller. Her only surviving heir.
The hidden paper from the pajama drawer said something very different.
There Baba Sayo described the sacred mountains deep in the Devouring Forest. The fire caves where Koya villagers would travel to deposit their dead. She pleaded with the Lord of Circles—a god from outside the Forest. A god she’d never had much faith in.
Don’t steal me away for your cycle of hellish rebirth, she wrote. Return me to the Forest. My only wish is to become a thistle growing from the stones of our secret mountain, and then to vanish.
Don’t feed me your cheap promises of a neverending water-wheel of life. I don’t want it. Give me my eternity in the Forest. Give me my forever death together with every forester who came before me.
Before Baba Sayo died, Tiller had attempted to ask her more about her wishes. She always responded gruffly.
“I don’t want anything special,” she’d say. “Hmph! Don’t waste your money on a pretty urn. I won’t care when I’m gone.”
Twenty years ago, they’d all left the Devouring Forest together: Baba Sayo and Tiller and every other Koya villager. They were among the last of the foresters to leave.
With the exception of Tiller, most of the seventy villagers had already been quite elderly. Even back then. Now Tiller was thirty. She’d watched over half of them die.
In the Koya Foundation group home, she’d arranged for a dedicated room with a spectacular nondenominational shrine. The best you could get in any sort of senior housing.
She’d used the Foundation’s money to purchase land for a private cemetery, too. No bodies were buried there. All foresters hoped to be burned as soon as possible after dying. But Tiller wanted to give them markers. And to show city folk that foresters could adequately imitate their traditions.
For twenty years, neither Tiller nor any of the other exiled villagers had set foot anywhere near the Devouring Forest.
Those two decades mattered little now, here in Baba Sayo’s humble apartment.
Tiller looked at the mushroom art hung on the walls: large slabs of dried bracket fungus that Tiller and her twin brother had etched with ambitious designs when they were little.
She thought of the view beyond the curtain-covered window. A six-foot gap, and then the concrete surface of the taller building across the alley.
Baba Sayo used to sit by that window, swollen-knuckled hands motionless on the armrests of her perversely uncomfortable wooden chair. Without moving a finger, she would claim that she was painting.
Tiller always offered to bring her supplies. Baba Sayo would raise her puffy hands as if showing off a hated pair of gloves. “I’m no artist,” she’d say. “Not in real life.”
She would look out the window all day and paint woodland murals on the blank wall across the street with her mind. She was a forester to the end.
They’d been forced to leave for the sake of survival. The Forest had grown much too dangerous for human settlements. But foresters still longed for it, consciously or unconsciously. All of them.
Tiller folded Baba Sayo’s paper and slipped it in her pocket. She eyed the unmarked white jar holding Baba Sayo’s remains.
She wondered what it would take to survive a trip all the way to the sacred mountains in the deepest part of the Forest. To carry that jar of ashes to the fire caves. To grant Baba Sayo the proper death she’d secretly longed for.
An entire division of soldiers from the Outborder Corps?
Cutting-edge combat machina requisitioned from the southern islands?
No, she decided. She was a forester by birth. She didn’t need to bring an army.
Not only that—in her years since leaving the Forest, Tiller had undoubtedly survived more assassination attempts than anyone else in the entire city. Foresters and regular Jacian citizens alike.
She could survive a one-time trek through her homeland. She’d bring her usual tools to defend herself. She wouldn’t ask for much else.
All she needed was a mage.
CHAPTER TWO
Few mages were eager to volunteer for what they viewed as a death march. Not even those affiliated with the Outborder Corps.
Tiller offered the largest cash reward she could muster. But this was a private mission; she couldn’t draw from Koya Foundation funds. Her personal savings weren’t substantial enough to make mages leap up and throw away their lives.
Tiller planned on coming back alive, of course. Both she and her mage guardian, if she ever found one. But she couldn’t blame them for doubting her.
Twenty years ago, the Forest had turned so deadly that even native foresters got forced out.
Now, to make matters worse, the Forest was spreading. It crept south more rapidly every year, consuming farm after farm. The depths of the woods might not be anything like what Tiller remembered from her childhood.
As an adult in Nui City, Tiller had by necessity become skilled at dodging attempts on her life. (Not a common problem for most people.)
She’d also gotten very good at lobbying.
Most of her work stayed behind the scenes. She hired charismatic publicists on behalf of the Koya Foundation. While Tiller negotiated with lawyers and big-time donors, her spokespeople made heartfelt public appeals about the plight of exiled foresters.
This time, she couldn’t hide behind the Foundation. She was doing this for Baba Sayo. Not for the entirety of Koya Village, or for the whole stranded population of for
esters in general.
Baba Sayo had raised her all alone, and in return Tiller had brought her nothing but terror and trouble.
She would give Baba Sayo her forever death in the sacred mountains at the heart of the Forest. She would secure the help of a mage even if she had to lie through her teeth to make it happen.
In the receiving room of an Outborder Corps garrison, Tiller began to worry that her lies might not suffice.
“You think you can make the Forest stop spreading,” said the colonel.
He appeared to be around the same age as her and had a rather delicate build. More of a strategist than a physical combatant. Tiller wished she’d ended up facing a meathead instead.
“I can’t make any promises.” She attempted to strike the appropriate balance of confidence and humility. “But you know what I am.”
She pointed at her hair.
At her black wig, rather.
She always wore a lace-lined wig when going out and about. For the same reason that she always kept the curtains drawn at home when taking it off.
“I do know what you are,” the colonel agreed. “A much rarer breed than other Forest refugees. The last of your kind. How does Jace benefit from sending you back to the Forest to die?”
Tiller gazed at the topographical map on the wall behind the colonel. She took a sip of bitter coffee as she considered how to answer.
Jace, Jace, Jace. Everything had to be about Jace. An archipelagic nation consisting of eight major islands and thousands of smaller ones.
The map showed no hint of other countries or land masses. Just Jace and the surrounding sea.
The familiar islands and their swarm of tiny companions stared back at her.
Technically Tiller, too, had always been Jacian. Tiller, too, was a citizen. Just like Baba Sayo, and every other former Forest dweller. The Forest grew in a remote area of Nui, the northernmost and least populated of the major islands.
But she had never felt particularly Jacian. Either before or after moving to the city. The Forest may as well have been its own empire, its own universe. Even the branch of the military that monitored it was called the Outborder Corps—the same branch that patrolled the edge of Jacian territorial waters.
“I’m not going to the Forest to die,” Tiller said. “And I didn’t come here to waste your time.” She kept her tone friendly. “I heard that mages in your unit volunteered to join me.”
For the first time, the young colonel’s composure flickered. Eyes downcast, he rotated the saucer beneath his coffee cup.
“Only one mage volunteered,” he said. “She isn’t officially in my unit. She isn’t in anyone’s unit.”
“Can you offer me an introduction?” Tiller asked.
Silence.
“I enjoyed corresponding with your commander. She’s been very cooperative. She said you would be, too.”
He adjusted his uniform collar. “You seem like a decent operator. I’m sure you can handle mages well enough.” (Empty, baseless praise.) “But I promise you, you’ve never dealt with a mage like this one.”
Tiller waited a moment before speaking. Just to make sure he was finished raising objections.
“Are there any foresters in the Outborder Corps?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then you’ll just have to trust me,” she said. “I can navigate anywhere in the Forest. I can find a way to make the Forest stop invading occupied land. Let me meet your mage.”
“I’ve been in the Forest far more recently than you have,” the colonel said sharply.
Despite his elegance, he wore the scars to prove it. Shiny white streaks spattered his hands and neck and jaw.
Tiller whipped out her trump card again. “Your commander—”
“Did the commander give you my name?”
“Colonel Istel.”
He sighed.
“This mage you want to meet—she isn’t quite a formal member of the Corps. Besides, she’s extremely good at making herself scarce.”
“She won’t make herself scarce if she volunteered to help me,” Tiller said sensibly.
Colonel Istel didn’t seem reassured. “Several squads will join a Corps event tonight.”
“A party?”
“You could call it that. At any rate, the woman you’re looking for loves parties. I doubt she got an invite. But she’ll find a way to be there.”
“What’s her name?” Tiller asked.
“Carnelian Silva.”
“Quite a name.”
“She lives up to it.”
“How will I know it’s her?”
“I’ll point her out,” said Colonel Istel. “She’ll be the one that everyone stops to glare at.”
CHAPTER THREE
In her daily life, Tiller strove to appear as unobtrusive as possible. She wore relaxed clothing in neutral colors, and dark wigs that matched the hair of most others around her. She walked neither too fast nor too slow. She was an expert at matching the pace of a crowd.
Despite this, she had a lot of practice at dressing up for fancy events. Mostly fundraisers.
The Koya Foundation had received some grants from the government here and there. But the vast majority of the endowment came from private donors. There had been a time when Tiller did nothing but frantically help plan charity dinners, auctions, galas . . . .
It was dark out by the time she arrived at the address the colonel had given her.
The mansion was in the city. But it stood on a generous plot of land, surrounded by an old-fashioned walled garden. The neighboring houses loomed equally large, though they had more modern silhouettes.
A placard by the gate marked the building as a historic site. Owned by the city government or a local society, Tiller guessed, and leased out for events.
Stiff-faced guards let her in. Nearly every other attendee wore military dress uniforms: mages and operators and laypeople alike.
The mages were easy to pick out, with their long multi-layered mantles and gloves and hoods.
Even in plainclothes, they would’ve been recognizable by the radioactive-looking glow of magic they each held deep in their torsos. An area that Tiller thought of as the pit of the stomach. Although in reality, magic cores were positioned closer to the small of the back.
Operators—those, like Tiller and Colonel Istel, with the ability to tame mages’ willful magic—were harder to tell apart at a glance. The insignia on their uniforms depicted a snake. Or perhaps it was meant to be a dragon.
Either way, those who bore neither the light of magic nor the mark of the snake would have to be laypeople. Magically speaking, that is.
Statistically, most Jacians were born as laypeople. Neither mage nor operator. Most lived without the burden of magic. It might ease their lives in subtle ways, but they never felt its weight.
Refined chamber music wafted through rooms full of antique furniture. Glass mosaic tiles carpeted the ceiling, glittering with the unselfconscious gaudiness of ages past.
Vials of sunvine oil hung like teardrop earrings from fussy chandeliers. They tinkled in the way of wind chimes when too many people walked beneath.
Tiller sipped plum wine on the rocks and made light conversation. She let anyone who spoke to her assume that she was a civilian employee in the Outborder Corps. Some kind of administrator, perhaps.
No one here seemed drunk enough to attack her simply for being a forester. But why risk trouble when she could pass as one of them: a Jacian born on normal Jacian soil?
All she had to do was avoid mentioning her last name. Koya would instantly out her as a forester.
Certain family names tended to be very Forest-specific. Thanks to the Foundation’s success, Koya was the most famous of them all.
Still, it was a relief to find Colonel Istel. Of all the attendees, he alone knew her full name and what lay beneath her pitch-black wig.
“Sorry,” he told Tiller. “Nel—Carnelian always arrives late.”
Tiller shrugged. Social tardiness wouldn’t matter much once they were deep in the Forest.
“Mind if I ask a personal question?”
“I might mind,” Tiller said, “but you can trying asking.”
“Are you easily swayed by a pretty face?”