“I’m starting to think you’re as lost as I am,” she grumbled, readjusting her grip.
“Am not.”
“Really?”
“I’ll get back to my camp before you find yours.”
“If you can find your camp you should be able to find this mushroom deposit in at least a much closer amount of time, unless you can throw a stone that will stay in the air for hours at a time,” Bianca lamented, not helping the fact that even clutching onto his clothes she was out of breath from keeping up.
“Is that a riddle?”
Bianca stopped, letting out an irritated huff. She put her hand on her hip as the orc turned around to look at her. Her sense of self preservation, if she ever had one, evaporated when she saw his displeased frown in the light of his torch. “What, was that too many words in a row for you?”
“I don’t like riddles.”
“Tough.”
“Tough?”
“Too bad. Riddles should be answered. It’s rude to leave a girl hanging,” she said as coolly as if she were scolding someone she had at least a chance of successfully tackling.
Tanis scoffed again as he turned around to continue leading the way. “It’s not, because I’m not rude.”
Such sound logic.
“Then answer my riddle.”
Bianca caught a glimpse of Tanis rolling his eyes. “My kind are not the tricky, sly ones. Yours are.”
“My kind,” she repeated, narrowing her gaze at him. Orcs didn’t exactly have a reputation for being charming either, but she chewed her tongue on the retort. There was some benefit to survival in not antagonizing him, surely.
Then again, Bianca didn’t have much in the way of survival skills, as today had already proven.
“You’re so sure of that? Maybeyou’retricky. Maybe this is all a ruse to lure me into a false sense of complacency before you snap me in half and use my bones to pick your teeth.”
That got a laugh out of him.
She opened her mouth again to fashion yet another retort, but it died on her inhale, as she stepped around a large tree and a clearing came into view.
Unlike the rest of the forest, blanketed in a heavy snow, this was like a patch of spring had been forgotten. It was lush and green, lit up by luminescent flowers and fungi that curled up trees and carpeted the ground.
“How is this possible?”
“There’s an underground river that vents to the surface every few miles. My party’s camped by the springs a half mile or so north. We call these Fey Wells.”
Bianca wasn’t really listening. She had never seen so many chanterelle blooms out of season. This part of the WhisperingWoods was oddly and unseasonably warm. Her heavy winter cloak felt hot against her shoulders.
She hurried into the clearing, going up to the biggest yellow floret. It was twice as big as her hand. Her basket wouldn’t be big enough to take as many as she was seeing, but she would stuff it to capacity. She took out her little pocket knife and began harvesting immediately.
There were other mushroom species in bloom as well, some she recognized, others that were strange to her.
After a few minutes of cutting the blooms and stuffing them in her basket, she felt Tanis’ shadow fall over her again, and when she turned to look he was crouched beside her.
The corners of his mouth were downturned, but there was something about his eyes and the way he lifted his brows that made her think he was trying really hard not to smile. Then his eyes returned back to the ground, and a true grimace took place.
He was frowning at the mushrooms, like they were personally offensive, though there weren’t any of the stinkhorn variety present. “How do you know they’re not poisonous?”
“Well, you’re not supposed to do it like this. I have gotten sick from this method, but it hasn’t killed me yet,” Bianca shrugged, ripping a mushroom in half. She held its newly exposed flesh against her tongue, and grimaced. “This one is bad. The taste is like it’s stabbing my tongue.”
