Read Online Spirit Walker by Michelle Paver - Free Book Online Page A

set before Torak. "These you must keep," she told him severely, "to mark the great wrong you did to the prey. If you were of the True Forest, you would be forced to wear them forever as a penance."
    Torak appealed to the Leader. "I know I did wrong, but I didn't mean it."
"That doesn't matter."
91
He took a deep breath and tried again. "I came here because we need your help. There's a sickness in the Forest--"
"We know of this," cut in the Leader.
"You do? Has it struck here too?"
The Leader raised her chin. "We have no sickness in the True Forest. We guard our borders well. But the trees tell us many things. They tell of the evil that haunts their sisters in the west. They whisper whence it came."
    Torak thought about that. "It's said that one of your Mages has the cure."
"We have no cure," said the Leader.
Torak's jaw dropped. "I know I've angered you," he said carefully, "and I'm sorry. But if your own clan doesn't have the cure, then maybe another--"
"We have no cure!" insisted the Leader. "There is no cure in the Deep Forest! The people of the Otter spoke too hastily! They are always too hasty, just like their clan-creature!"
    "Can you really not help at all?" said Torak in disbelief. "Not you or anyone else in the Deep Forest? People are dying."
"I am grieved," said the Leader, not sounding grieved at all, "but I cannot alter the truth. What you seek is by the Sea."
Torak stared at her.
"The Sea?"
92
"You must head west. This is the message of the trees. Head west till you can go no farther. There you shall find what you seek."
"Why should I believe you?" said Torak. "You're just trying to get rid of me."
The Leader's green face closed. "The trees never lie. If you had more than a splinter of the True Forest in your souls, you would know this. But you do not--or you would not have done the evil you did here!"
    "I didn't want to kill the boar," said Torak, "but I had to. It attacked me. Someone had wounded it and left it to go mad."
The remaining Forest Horses cried out in horror.
"This is a terrible evil!" said the Leader. "Where is your proof? How could we be unaware of this, when not a twig may snap in our Forest that we do not hear?"
Torak stooped and picked up the dart he'd dug from the boar's side. Then he remembered the Forest Horses' reluctance to touch a stranger, and put it back on the ground.
    He was unprepared for their reaction. The Leader snarled, revealing shockingly white teeth between her dark-green lips. "You
dare
accuse us?"
"Of course not!" said Torak. Then he saw what he'd missed before: a clutch of dark wooden darts-- exactly like the one that had wounded the boar-93
dangling from her belt.
"Then whom
do
you accuse?" demanded the Leader. "Some other Deep Forest clan? Speak quickly, or you die!"
"I don't know!" cried Torak. "I mean--I've seen it, but I don't know what it is! I only know that I found this dart in the boar's side!"
To his relief, the Forest Horses lowered their bows.
"I call it the Follower," he said. "It has a face like yours--no, no, I mean--a face tattooed with leaves, but smaller, like a child, and with claws on its hands and feet."
The Leader backed away. Her green lips thinned, and beneath the leaf-tattoos her face went pale. "You must leave at once," she said, breathing hard. "If you take one step into the True Forest, I swear by all the trees who gave me birth that you will not live to take another!"
    Torak met her eyes, and saw the fear in them. "You know what it is, don't you?" he said. "The Follower. You know what it is."
The Leader did not reply. She made another sign to her people, and they turned and melted into the trees.
"No!" shouted Torak, running after them. "Tell me what it is! At least tell me that!"
An arrow whipped past his face.
94
"Tell me what it is!" he yelled.
Just before she vanished, the
Leader turned.
"Tokoroth
..." she whispered.
"What does that mean?" said Torak.
"TokorotA
...."
The green face faded into the leaves.
Long after she had gone, the name hung