The Long Way Home

There are quick ways home and safe ways home. They are rarely the same path.

I left the fern hollow by climbing north, then turned east only after the ground grew stony enough to hide my steps. The direct trail to the Hollow Oak lay well south of me. I had no intention of showing it to anyone who might be watching.

The forest slowly found its voice again. Wrens argued in the brush. A squirrel dropped half a shell onto my hood and fled before I could return the favor. Wind moved through the high branches with the ordinary sound of distant rain.

Only the marks remained wrong.

Three cuts appeared on an alder at the edge of an old path. Another set waited two bends later, almost hidden beneath ivy. They did not form a map, and I could find no distance or direction measured between them.

They were simply present where a careful traveler would notice and an ordinary walker would not.

I began to suspect they were meant to be found.

That possibility annoyed me more than the thought of being followed.

Near midafternoon, the old path passed a great oak split by lightning years ago. Black earth had gathered between its roots. Something copper gleamed there when the light shifted.

I freed it with the point of an arrow.

The coin was old, green at the edges, and stamped on one face with a worn crown. On the other stood the gate of King’s Keep. Pieces like it once traveled every road through Sherwood. I have several jars of them at home, none worth the trouble of carrying upstairs.

This one had a bright scrape along its rim.

Old coin. New mark.

I turned it over twice and put it in the same pouch as the black cord. Not because it was treasure. Because someone had touched it recently, and that made it a question.

Beyond the split oak, the trail bent southeast.

Toward home.

I left it at once. I crossed behind the ridge, descended through a stand of pine, and returned by a narrow route known mostly to deer and to me.

At one point I balanced a dry twig across the trail, circled for half an hour, and came back from the opposite side. The twig remained unbroken.

No one followed close enough to catch.

That did not mean I was alone.

The sun had lowered into amber light when I reached the inner woods. There, beside a mossed root, three small stones marked the boundary of the paths I keep hidden. I always leave the longest stone pointing west.

It pointed east.

I crouched and touched the bare earth beneath it. Still damp. Recently moved.

From the next rise, the upper branches of the Hollow Oak were visible through the forest. No smoke. No open door. Nothing obviously broken.

I took the long way down anyway.