Sharon woke up abruptly, struggling to catch her breath, as if someone had pressed her chest with the weight of the whole world. Everything around her was damp, alien, deformed.
The swamp.
But different from before.
There were no Brito's screams. There was no Lyra's laughter. There were no signs of struggle except for a strange, drying brown spot where the witch had stood a moment ago. The footprint looked like a cracked, dead shell of mud. Like a wound on the ground.
- Brito...? - she called out softly.
Silence.
There was absolutely nothing answering her. Not a voice, not a step, not the slightest jerk of the water. Even the birds fell silent. Even the vermin seemed to have evaporated.
Sharon stood up, wobbling slightly, looking around among the mist. For a moment she deluded herself into thinking she'd spot Brito's familiar snouted silhouette. But instead of her, all she saw were skinny, twisted trees and a grey void.
Loneliness here was like something alive. It enveloped a person, pressed under the skin.
The marshes let her out.
And Brito... Brito probably didn't.
Sharon clenched her teeth. She knew what she had to do.
Get back to the Mudflat.
She had walked for a long time. Or it seemed long to her. Time in the marshes was a conventional thing - stretching and shrinking, playing with the human sense of direction.
But one thing was certain.
It was too quiet.
Too quiet.
Where previously frogs had hissed, mosquitoes had buzzed and shadowy shadows had glided across the water - now there was nothing.
She passed old, leaning totems - wooden figures wedged between the grasses, long since covered in moss and rotting undergrowth. They had always been here - made by the hand of people who feared this place more than hunger. The totems stared with dead eyes. One of them was overturned. By its side a black ooze, sticky and stinking, as if spat out by something that shouldn't exist.
Sharon felt a shudder. Instinctively, she walked in a wide arc.
She wasn't superstitious.
But the marshes taught humility.
The village looked sort of huddled together, lurking in fear. Probably even more so than last time.
The cottages were low, overgrown with grass and mould, the roofs going down almost to the ground, and the windows obscured by whatever they could find - boards, rags, laces of cobwebs.
As Sharon stepped between the first buildings, she felt eyes on her.
Heavy, distrustful ones, innate in the back.
An old woman standing by the fence spat ostentatiously on the ground, looking down at her. Two children, barefoot, dirty, fled around the corner of the shack. Somewhere higher up on the porch, someone was whispering words of prayer or a protective incantation.
She crossed the main 'street' - trampled, muddy, more like a path than a road.
There were several men by the inn - silent, pale, as if the shadow of the swamp itself followed them.
- From the swamp she came... - someone muttered. - Not good. Not good...
She went inside.
The inn was low, dark and smelled of herbs, old beer and fear. Conversations had quietened, gazes fixed on her as if she were an omen.
But before she had time to ask anyone, she heard a snarling voice from over her shoulder.
- Look here... a wolf from the city among the foxes of the swamp.
She turned around.
Matilda Raven.
An old woman with a face scarred with wrinkles like the bark of an old tree. A string of bones around her neck, runes burned into her hands. One eye milky and blind, the other black as night.
Sharon felt that the woman was... seeing her. But not with her eyes.
- What are you looking for, child Fabienne? - Matilda asked quietly. - Phantoms, the damned? There is no lack of them here. But knowledge... knowledge here less so.
Sharon clenched her fists.
- I need help. I need to find a way to get my friends out of the clutches of this swamp evil.
Matilda was silent for a moment, as if listening to something Sharon hadn't heard.
Finally she nodded towards the edge of the village.
- Elijah Wood. Old as the marshes themselves. He still remembers how to speak to that which has no name. How to summon the Spirit of the Forest. He might tell you something... if he wants to. But be careful... Elijah hasn't trusted anyone for a long time now.
- How do I get a hit?
Matilda smiled crookedly.
- Follow the smell of smoke and wood. He's the only one here still lighting a fire after dark.
Sharon walked out of the inn without a word, feeling the stares of the people from the Blotter pull at her like a cobweb.
She didn't trust them.
They didn't trust her.
And everything about this exchange of glances was remarkably honest.
She walked towards the eastern edge of the village, where denser bushes and old trees were beginning to crowd out human homes. Her boots sank into the mud with every step, the dampness seeping in from underneath. The path was narrow, barely visible - more trodden by animals than people.
But Matilda was telling the truth.
There was a smell of smoke in the air.
Not the kind from a campfire or an inn. It didn't smell of food or herbs.
It was smoke heavy, pungent, permeated with old resin and damp wood that barely wanted to burn. A smell completely different from anything here.
He led her like a trail.
The further she walked, the quieter it became around her. Even the marsh frogs and fowl were silent in this part of the wetlands. In places, broken branches, bits of netting and moss-covered animal traps protruded from the ground.
Passing one of these, Sharon noticed that something was trapped in it.
An animal?
No.
A skeleton. A small, bird-like one. Already entwined with spider webs.
The marshes did not give up their victims easily.
Eventually, the path began to climb gently towards a small hill - a rare sight in this area.
And then she saw.
Elijah Drewniak's cottage
It looked like something that shouldn't exist in a village like this. Old, mangled, made of mismatched pieces of wood, roots and stone. The roof overgrown with moss and leaves, as if nature itself was trying to absorb it back.
But the strangest thing was the totem standing in front of the entrance.
Tall, clumsy, representing something between a man and a tree. A face without eyes. Hands like roots. At the feet - strings hung with dried herbs, bird feathers and small bones.
There was a smell of smoke and an old resinous fire in the air.
A faint light could be seen through the ajar door. Yellow, warm, incongruous with the chill of the marshes.
Sharon approached cautiously.
She didn't need to knock.
- 'Come in, since she sent you anyway.' - A hoarse voice spoke up from inside the hut. - 'Don't keep old Wood waiting on the doorstep. The marshes don't like you standing between one world and another.
She hesitated only for a moment.
And then she walked in.
The interior was dark, but not gloomy. It smelled of wood, smoke and something hard to define - something old.
It did not look like the home of someone who lives with people. More so - with a swamp.
Elijah sat by the fire. A man emaciated, stringy, almost shriveled like an old root. His skin was wrinkled, cracked from the sun and wind, and his eyes... dark, penetrating, as if he could see more than he should.
He did not look at her immediately.
He turned the pieces of wood in the fire slowly. Each movement calm. Deliberate.
- Sharon. - He said at last, as if savouring her name.
He didn't ask how she knew.
They knew here.
- I felt the phantom before you even entered the Mudroom. - he muttered. - And you too. You smell of it. Death from the swamp.
Sharon did not reply.
She stood straight, alert but tired. Her eyes pinched from smoke and sleeplessness. She felt her body increasingly demanding rest - but this was no place for weakness.
Elijah raised his eyes.
- 'Tell me, child, why have you come. - There was no hostility in his voice. There was only that older, wild distrust - the kind of distrust that people who have lived alone for too long have.
Sharon took a breath.
- 'I'm looking for a way to free my friends. To lift the curse. To defeat the Phantom.
Elijah smiled... crookedly. Sadly.
- To defeat the Phantom. - He repeated, as if she was talking about something unreal. - As if it were that simple.
Silence again.
Only the fire crackled slowly between them.
- Do you know what she is? - he asked suddenly.
Sharon furrowed her brow.
- A ghost. A curse. A remnant of something that refuses to die.
Elijah spat into the fire.
- A phantom is not a ghost. Ghosts remember life. Ghosts want something. They grieve. They love. They yearn.
He raised a finger.
- And she? She is only hunger. Only hatred. Just... An empty place left by something that died badly.
- They said she used to be a woman," Sharon chuckled.
Elijah shook his head.
- 'Once, a long time ago... Maybe. But now? Now she's just a swamp. The voice of those waters. Their anger. A shadow after something forgotten.
He fell silent.
And then he added more quietly, almost to himself:
- And it feeds on what is darkest in man.
Sharon felt a shiver run down the back of her neck.
It was already beginning to turn grey outside. The first pale streaks of morning light were coming through the cracks in the cottage wall. The hour must have been somewhere between three and four o'clock. Dawn over the marshes was never beautiful. It was wet, dreamy, unpleasantly quiet.
- What should I do? - She asked at last.
Elijah looked at her for a long time.
And then he sighed - heavily, like someone who didn't want to say it at all.
- 'You'll have to go into the forest. - He said slowly. - The old one. The real one. Where neither men nor their gods go.
Sharon waited.
- And there... you will have to summon the Voice of the Forest. - he smiled bitterly. - If he answers you... he might help you.
- And if not? - she asked.
Elijah shrugged his shoulders.
- It means the forest doesn't want you. And then there will be no going back anyway.
A long silence fell.
Only the fire crackled between them.
- How do you summon it? - She asked at last.
Elijah looked her straight in the eye.
- The forest does not listen to words. The forest listens to the heart.
Sharon was silent for a moment, staring into the fire.
She thought about Lyra, about Brito, about Elric. About what she had left behind in the marshes and what still awaited her. There was a hard, uncomfortable knot in her stomach.
- Wait. - chuckled Elijah, as if he surprised himself with this decision.
He stood up heavily from his low stool and disappeared into a dark corner of the hut. He could hear rustling, creaking old boards, the clink of glass and metal. He returned after a long moment, carrying something wrapped in a worn, grey cloth.
He laid it down in front of her.
When Sharon unwrapped the cloth - she saw something strange.
A small amulet. A very old one. Wooden, darkened by time, with an engraved, almost obliterated symbol resembling a sun or an eye - she wasn't sure.
It hung on a thin, tangled string.
- What is this? - She asked cautiously.
- It's ... old. Older than me. Older than the Blotter. - Elijah replied quietly. - A thing from the forest. From this forest.
He pointed with his chin towards the window, where the dark contours of the forest were visible behind the hut.
- The Spirit of the Forest knows this sign. He remembers it. - He added. - If it hears you... if it feels you... maybe it won't recognise you as an enemy right away.
Sharon carefully hung the amulet around her neck.
It was cool to the touch. Heavier than it looked.
- "Remember one thing," Elijah muttered. - 'You'll go into the forest with it, but it won't help you if you lie. If you go there with fear.... or with pride... he will feel it.
He hesitated for another moment.
And then he added, almost in a whisper:
- The forest doesn't like people. But sometimes... sometimes it listens to those who have come not for power - but for truth.
Sharon nodded her head.
- Anything else? - She asked.
Elijah scratched his wrinkled cheek.
- 'Don't stray from the path. - he said finally. - She is there. One. An old one. Crooked like a swampy root.... But it leads to the heart of the forest.
- What if I get lost?
Elijah took a long look at her.
- You don't get lost in the forest. In the forest... you start to belong.
It didn't sound like consolation.
Stepping out of the hut, Sharon felt the chill of dawn. It wasn't crisp or clean. It was heavy, damp, soaked in the smell of the marshes and the old forest.
The marshes were silent.
And at the edge of the horizon.... a line of forest darkened. Dense. Unfriendly. As old as everything here.
And it was there that she was to go.
Alone.
With that old amulet on her chest.
And with Elijah's quiet whisper in her head:
'The forest listens to the heart.'