As they approached, they could hear the ever-present chirping of frogs. Pool asked Etelka where they were.
“In the trees…on the branches, Pool…Constable.” Familiarity had made things awkward. [?]
The trees did indeed thrub with the constant cacaphony of chirping frog-noises, jarring chords and uneven rhythms.
The edge of the forest, the perimeter of the clearing where they had landed, over which Baba Yaga’s Hut now [grazed] in the wind, was a dense thing. Ancient, really ancient, meter-thick oak trees with wide spanning branches reaching 20 or even 30 meters, umbrella’d an undercarriage of moss covered fallen comrades, the throngs of which slowly decayed into new soil beneath their funeral blanket.
There were no paths, save for what the deer had laid out, and these, winding between the ancient trees, wound around and over the landscape, with little regard for topography.
“Pool,” Etelka said in a whisper, “Is that a footprint?”
They paused over the series of indentations—the one had led them to several more. It looked as if who- or whatever had laid down the prints had walked on previously laid prints, obscuring their plural presence.
While they both crouched under their packs, studying the prints, Pool briefly looked up and scanned what there was of the horizon. Every direction was blocked by trees, so that every space between trunks was filled with more of the same, all black and green. Paranoia brushed past him, like a slight breeze in an otherwise still forest.
He focused on the directions of the coming and going of the tracks and could not for the life of him find the origin of this particular path. It seemed that the tracks started out of nowhere. Even standing over the first in the series, he could not find its predecessors.
Etelka continued to study the ones immediately before her with a small magnifying glass she had pulled from one of her many pouches or pockets.
“It seems as if there are three layers of prints, perhaps three creatures one time or one creature three times. They seem to be a mixture of canine and ape and have claws about two centimeters long. Clearly they walk upright, as well, and seem to weigh more than you, if you were to compare the depth of their prints and the depth of yours.”
“See how they are around 28 centimeters long, but splayed…I would also wager that their big toes are opposing, based on these shapes.” Etelka was talking to Pool, certainly, but mostly talking to herself. She poked at the rise in the print left by the deep arch of the creature’s foot.
They had seen no signs of camps or outposts in the wood from the air, no paths, no other clearings and no smoke from cook-fires.
“We should just walk in a regular direction, affecting as much of as a straight path as the terrain will allow. Doing this we are likely, I believe, to stumble upon the hunting paths of these creatures. They clearly move deftly through the wood, but I would think if they have hunting parties, they will frequent places where their prey would gather.”
Pool agreed with this and asked if she possessed a compass for the path of the sun was largely obscured beneath the canopy.
Etelka’s pale fingers brushed across her belt pouches—she needn’t even look. With a flick she unlatched the pouch and produced a small brass compass.
“Lucky, that,” responded Pool.
Work in progress. Mistakes and misspellings are present. This is a very rough draft. Copyright 2021 Ion Fyr iorfyr.net
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Ion Fyr 