Chapter Nineteen

“Can we just sit down for a bit?” Martha pleaded.

“What is wrong with you?” Ben half shouted, half laughed. “We’ve only been walking for an hour. At this rate we’ll never get out of this forest.”

Gus was already bending down and dropping his pack behind him. Martha quickly followed suit and leaned up against a round boulder on the ground next to her.

“Guys, come on,” Ben said. “We can’t keep doing this.” When they both sat back and closed their eyes with a sigh, ignoring him, he rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, five minutes, and then we’re back up and moving.”

He sat down and pulled his back around in front of him, searching for more of his dried greens to eat while he waited.

“Ben,” Tess whispered, pointing into some low branches not too far from Gus’ head. Perched regally there, fluffing itself up and shaking its head proudly was a great black raven.

Ben smiled, and watched as the Raven positioned itself perfectly to leave a welcoming gift in Gus’ hair. “Watch out, Gus,” Ben said, laughing. Gus grunted, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m serious, Gus,” he said,
though he was laughing even harder now, “a bird is about to take a few liberties with your head there.”


“Yeah,” Gus said, still refusing to care.

“Okay,” Ben said. “It’s your hair.”

Ben looked back up at the raven in time to see it... roll its eyes.

“You wanted him to get up and walk, and I was going to help you, but now it seems so unjust to follow through after you’ve baited him like that.”

Ben gave himself a kink in his neck as he whipped around to look at Tess, whose eyes were now bright with laughter. “Did you hear that?”

“Yes,” she said, bursting into deeper fits of laughter.

“The bird talking? You hear that?” Ben asked again.

“Yes.”

“Gus, did you hear that?” Ben asked.

“Mmm,” Gus responded with questionable amounts of lucidity.

Ben looked back up at the bird. “You spoke?”

It rolled its eyes again. “Yes, I spoke. Did you hear what I said?”

He narrowed his eyes and tried to remember. “You wanted to help me get Gus and Martha to start walking again?”

“Yes,” the bird said. “I’m just trying to be nice, and you’re constantly making it harder. First by thwarting my grand scheme, now with all this fuss over my ability to speak. I don’t know why I try.”

“Got me,” Ben said. “What business do you have talking?” Ben asked.

“That’s rude,” Tess said. “He can talk if he wants to.”

The raven nodded. “I like this girl,” it said. “She’s right. Humans don’t have the monopoly on speech, you know. You’re all so pompous about it, like it’s something hard to achieve. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not like you worked for your words, boy. You were born that way. Just like me.”

“Okay, fair,” Ben conceded. “Why are you talking to me now, then?”

The raven puffed itself up again. It was about twice as large as a regular raven when it did this, but it was hard for Ben to tell how much was just fluffed feathers and how much was legitimate raven. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh? What’s that?” Ben asked.

“It’s for the girl, too,” it said, nodding to Tess. “Why do you always think people are only talking to you?”

“What do you propose?” Tess asked, silencing Ben’s defenses with a smile.

“I’ve been watching you for a while now, both of you, and I want to offer you my guidance,” it said. “Because, let’s face it, you need it pretty badly.”

“What sort of guidance?” Tess asked, again keeping Ben from a retort. “I’m fairly sure we can find our way out of this forest on our own; we’ve seen its edges while standing on the hills in Medias; it’s not too much farther now.”

“Ah yes, but right now, you’re not really as far out of Medias as you think you are,” the raven said. “You’ve left the mushroom’s kingdom behind you, but how much do you know about There and all its many glories and surprises?”
“We’re made of hardy stock,” Ben said, sticking his chin up. “I’m sure we can take whatever that world throws at us.”

The raven looked around the forest casually. “I’m sure you’re right; there’s nothing There that would be able to do you any serious harm. I mean, plenty of Medians leave the forest and have lived to tell the tale, right? Certainly you will do just fine on your own.”

Tess looked at Ben hopefully. “He’s right you know.”

“You mean sarcastic,” Ben corrected.

“But right. We don't know what we’re getting into. We should really consider taking him along.”

Ben looked up at the raven, narrowing his eyes. “Hang on; you say you've been watching us?” he asked distrustfully. “Are you the same raven that’s been waking me up early in the morning and sitting in the trees just off the balcony, watching me for hours?’

“Should I be ashamed?” the raven asked. “I was curious about you, and you weren’t exactly guarding your privacy jealously or anything..”

“Well, I didn’t know at the time that you were going to be using all of your observations against me,” Ben said, putting his fists on his hips. “If you had told me then you were planning to store all of that information in your head and come after me in the forest, I probably would have closed a few more windows.”

“Just what sort of information do you think I gleaned from hours of watching you doing nothing?” the raven said indignantly. “And how am I using any of that ‘information’ against you by offering to help you survive where no one else has?”

After these words, there came a long stare down between Ben and the raven, where Ben used the silence to think back over the recent weeks when he’d often seen this raven lurking around his house. He hadn’t suspected anything — he wasn’t a paranoid person who saw conspiracies and spies around every corner and in every tree — so he hadn’t taken into account the fact that he was being watched. He tried to remember if he had ever said anything allowed that he shouldn’t have, or was ever talking with someone about something he would have rather kept out of that bird’s head.

After a moment of thinking about all this, trying to recollect his thoughts, his mind wandered. It was hard for his imagination to keep still ever, especially at times like these. He thought about Gus, and how he was now deep asleep against the boulder. What was making him and Martha so tired and ornery? Their moods could be explained perhaps by the events of the past day, and the fact that they hadn’t wanted to leave Medias after all, but had, in the end, felt forced to do so by the sudden strangeness of Tess’ behavior.

And Tess. How had she done that to him? He couldn’t think of a person less likely to be able to hurt him than Tess, but she had completely incapacitated him yesterday, and no one could explain it. Suddenly, her thoughts about anger and pain had powers. Where had they come from, and why hadn’t she noticed them before? What hadn’t he felt them before?

She had said something about leaving Medias. About not going home. But why would that suddenly give her powerful abilities she had never had before?

“Should I leave you two alone?” Tess asked, smiling again. Ben blink and shook his head clear, wondering how long he’d been staring at the bird, who now looked half asleep himself.

“What do you say?” the bird asked. “Am I in, or am I out?”

Ben sighed. “I guess it would be senseless to refuse the offer,” he said. “But we reserve the right to catch you and cook you if rations get scarce, so you’d better not outstay your welcome.”

The raven blinked, unfazed. “I have friends in high places...” he threatened.

“Do you have a name?” Tess asked. “Or should we just call you Raven?”

“My name, for all intents and purposes, is Guido. You can use it if you want, but I’m sure I’ll be able to infer from context clues whether or not you’re talking to me.”

The three looked around awkwardly at each other for a moment before Ben said, “Well, okay. That’s that. Gus and Martha, get your sorry bottoms off the forest floor. We’re leaving, and I now have no qualms about leaving you behind; we have our very own forest guide, and you don’t.”

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I edited out the many Shakespearean sonnets I originally used to boost my word count. Thank you for your patience.