Life finds ways. This is an indisputable fact, proven by everything from moldy bread to my very own existence. What motivates it? What drives it? What creates it from nothing? The union of man and woman, but not all things manifest this way. It is not the spirit rivers, though they have an indisputable effect on it when they spill out of the spirit realm and up into ours. I want to understand.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  A crow’s caw rattled in the canopy. Dragos spotted it as it landed, black wings fluffing into place, and settled in to fix black eyes on him. The way it stared unsettled the wanderer. The bird chattered, but he couldn’t decipher it. The babbling was incomprehensibly excited. Or—perhaps the crow merely teased him, playing its trickster games.

  “I know something,” it cackled.

  The traveller sighed and looked away. He wasn’t interested in puzzles. What he was interested in was finding his own roost before winter came.

  That morning, Dragos walked under the fall leaves, the ancient canopy exploding with red and gold. The dry air was flavored with an earthy, musty scent. The breeze rustled through them, and the papery whisper reminded him of other times. A library of books, the scratch of quills on paper.

  The peaceful life lost what was a year ago. Felt like a lifetime. As ever, his thoughts went to the Spineback, and what he might find.

  He should go.

  That thought always made his throat clench with resistance. The idea of what he might find kept him from suggesting Zgavra just fly him there.

  As if it would. Contrary beast.

  The zmeu drifted along, a black standard flowing beside the hooded albstrig? as a nightmare-shaped shadow. It whispered to pale man as he walked, worn boots crunching on the road, purposefully stepping where he could land on this leaf or that.

  “You look like a man but act like a child,” the zmeu teased. Dragos flicked his head enough to force his hood back. He shot the beast an unamused look.

  “You look like a stain in the air,” Dragos deadpanned.

  The serpentine fog coiled and slid around him, circling him as he walked along. Zgavra enjoyed this game, its voice rich, relishing every word it said. “You look like a white worm that drowned in a puddle.”

  “Well, you look…”

  A roar ricocheted through the forest. It was close, closer than was wise to be to an angry bear. For a bear, it surely was. The two traveling companions stopped and looked at each other. The moment hovered.

  The bear roared again, this time with a note of pain. Dragos pointed and asked, “That way?”

  “Come,” Zgavra said and, without waiting, flowed through the trees at a speed even the spry Dragos couldn’t match. Swift as a wolf, Dragos followed the darkly ephemeral wisp of the beast as it winnowed through the old growth, feet crunching over fallen twigs and leaves, peddler’s box rattling angrily.

  Dragos came upon the scene and wasn’t sure what he was looking at when he staggered to a stop in the hollow. A man of uncommon size lay beneath a massive patch of hulking brown fur that may have been a bear a moment ago. The bear’s teeth clamped in a death lock onto the man’s shoulder.

  Blood as dark as soil slicked the autumn carpet all around the entwined pair. Silence settled in like a frost. Neither being moved.

  After a startled pause, Dragos crashed down the slope into the dip where they’d struggled and fallen. He slowed when he got close, observing the animal first. His fluency in the language of beasts didn’t make him fool enough to assume that he was immune to attack.

  The brown bear was deathly still. Dragos dropped to a crouch by his outstretched arm and lightly touched the space between the radial bone and the tendons that distended on his bloodstained wrist. His heart still beat.

  The man snatched Dragos's hand. The wanderer choked on his surprise, falling on his backside, the man’s giant slab of a hand having clutched onto him so firmly he couldn’t move from the spot.

  “Dominule, you live?” Amazement laced Dragos's words. It wasn’t every day a man survived a bear attack. The more common result is mauling and death, though his demise may not yet be ruled out. If the bear ate carrion, that bite could grant a festering wound and a slow, agonizing end.

  The man’s head shifted, leaves caught in his bushy beard. His dazed eyes opened, and, after a moment, hesitant words left his lips.

  “It seems I do. Who would have thought.”

  “Would you, uh, let go?” Dragos asked, tugging on his arm again. The man blinked a few times, then released the wanderer, who rubbed at the chafe left from that impressive grip.

  As Dragos examined the scene again, he spotted what looked like something in the bear’s head between its temple and its ear. Hunting knife? He glanced around and saw a grouse on a rock—or its parts, anyway. The wings had been pulled off already, and the skin over the breast with the wings. The meat lay in the open.

  Winter lurked. The first snow promised to come at any time, like an unreliable companion. One day it would. It was merely a question of when. Bears entered into a devouring trance at this time of year. The unfortunate fight over what looked like very delicious meat clarified itself.

  “What’s your name?” Dragos asked as the man’s eyelids drooped again.

  “Radu,” he murmured.

  “I think it’s dead,” Dragos murmured, watching the bear.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The presence of a leather-wrapped knife buried to the handle in its skull, along with its lack of obvious breathing, suggested it wasn’t getting up. Slowly, with a respectful caution, Dragos reached out. His hand connected with the animal’s bristly fur. No breath, no motion, no life. A faint frown tugged at his lips as he felt—nothing. His brows drew down as he sensed no lingering of spirit. Strange.

  He had bigger problems. How to get a bear that weighed more than half his own weight off this man. He glanced around for Zgavra—gone.

  His mouth pinched into a line. The first challenge was to get the bear’s teeth out of the man’s shoulder. Dragos grabbed hold of its snout and tugged at the lower jaw. The man yowled as the large canines slid out, scraping against the man’s collarbone. Carefully, Dragos turned its head away from the man’s face.

  “Can you move at all?” The wanderer asked, looking over the man’s torn shirt and his rent flesh. There was plenty of blood, but nothing concerning. No large blood vessels had been nicked.

  The man chuckled, more of a wheeze, and said, “Can barely breathe.”

  Dragos shrugged his peddler’s box off his shoulders and set it on the ground, glancing over the predicament one last time. If he had rope—but he didn’t. He only had himself.

  “Alright. On the count of three, I’ll pull it this way, you try to go that way. One, two, three.” Dragos grabbed the bear around a limb and leaned back, throwing his weight into the effort. Unfortunately, he’d grown lean in his travels. Rare was a good meal or a proper hot one. Gone was the soft scholar he used to be.

  Bracing his foot on the bear’s shoulder blade, he threw himself back, heedless of falling. The hood of his cloak fell to his shoulders with the effort. The bear’s corpse rocked. The man wiggled out from under the corpse with a grunt and a groan. The bloody gashes on the man’s side were worse than the bite on his shoulder. And yet, once he rolled free, he seemed rather mobile.

  He got to his feet, glanced at the wounds he could see, and looked away again, shaking his head. He muttered to himself as Dragos got his feet back under him and let the bear fall back on its own weight. “Something of a mess.”

  “Guess you could say that.” Dragos agreed, brushing his hands off on his legs.

  The man looked at him thoughtfully for an extended moment, then held out his good hand. “Radu Dumitru.”

  “Drago? Buh?scu,” the traveler responded, taking the offered hand. He marveled again at the size of the man. His hood had slipped, and there was nothing for it but to accept what response he got.

  In this case, a hearty handshake. He wouldn’t complain.

  Radu checked himself over, and, as he did, Dragos's gaze drifted back to the bear. It was as empty as a corpse left for weeks. Had something taken up in it, ridden its flesh? It smelled fresh, just recently alive, not undead.

  The man’s groan drew him from his thoughts.

  The wounds looked grievous, an opportunity to mention his trade. “I know some medicine. I sell remedies and can do some doctor’s work if you’d like me to treat your wounds.”

  “If you don’t mind,” Radu groaned, going to sit on the rock beside his catch. The water flask he picked up sloshed, and when he drank it spilled down his beard.

  “For food and shelter, I can look after you until I’m sure your wounds won’t fester,” Dragos suggested, moving to hold out a hand for the man’s water flask.

  “Done,” Radu said, handing him the bottle.

  Dragos inspected the wound on the man’s shoulder after splashing it with some water. He checked the one on the man’s side as well. Having little to bind the man’s wounds, he nodded at the man’s cloak. “May I cut that for bandages until we get you home?”

  Radu flapped a bloody hand in that direction with a nod, seeming not to care. He mumbled, “My wife will be beside herself over this.”

  Dragos quickly prepared some moss and yarrow, then bound it to the wounds with strips cut from the hem of Radu’s cloak. Rain threatened beyond the mountains, but the clouds from the sea rarely made it further than the peaks. A gentle breeze came from the west as the two ponderously turned for Radu’s home, the scent of blood mingling with autumn leaves.

  “Lucky man,” Zgavra’s voice, thin as fog and sharp as a crow’s beak, murmured to Dragos's ear. “Or, not so lucky.”

  The wanderer blinked once but gave no other response. The zmeu floated above them as the thinnest of smoke. Dragos ignored the monster, instead watching his charge, whose steps were anything but steady.

  “Lean on me if you need,” Dragos offered.

  “It’s not far,” Radu promised, his gaze fixed forward. The lines of his face described his discomfort more than his words. “I’ll have my wife run to the neighbors. That bear is a wealth we can’t let rot.”

  Dragos grunted in agreement. The copious fat on a fall bear—along with the meat—would do them well. The rich flavor was stronger and sweeter than venison or mutton. The thought of it alone stung his belly.

  The small farmstead was located only a few miles away. As the forest thinned, the fields came into view, revealing abrupt, shorn wheat stalks bristled like stubble. New furrows had been gouged through half the field already.

  Radu’s breath came in ragged waves, but he staggered on like a man possessed. Dragos let him be, close to soften the man’s fall if needed, but allowing him to progress at his own pace. The traveller turned his hands, pale skin hidden by stains of medicine and blood. Sticky between his fingers, the dark stains felt ominous. His mind wandered back to the crow. What it said.

  The little farmhouse welcomed them from afar, just a small square in the distance that grew by the staggering step. Dragos tugged his hood lower over his brows by habit. Radu noticed the gesture and chuckled in a pained way.

  “You don’t have to worry, young fella. My wife’s no fainting idiot.”

  His strangeness hadn’t been lost on the injured man. Radu saw enough of him, even in his pain-dazed state to recognize his uncommon features.

  The things that made average, simple folk pull back with wariness, at best.

  Dragos met his gaze and nodded with reserve. He’d simply leave if there was a problem. However, as he looked around, he hoped he’d be able to make himself useful, possibly winter there. Traveling as he did, with uncertain destinations and no real plans beyond chasing the next rumor had worn him as thin as the veils between spirit worlds. The wanderer wanted rest. If Radu accepted him, perhaps his wife would, as well.

  Zgavra could leave him there if it wanted. There had never been a binding agreement for it to linger. It simply chose to.

  Even as Dragos let these ideas form, he didn’t hold onto them. Plans and fortune changed on fate’s whim, not his own. The weight of Radu’s hand on his shoulder drew him back out of his thoughts. Radu paused and closed his eyes, mustering for the last leg of his journey home. Dragos stilled, waiting.

  “Not far now,” Dragos murmured.

  Radu nodded and resumed moving, each step surely jarring his brutal wounds, bound tight with strips of the cloak slung in a strap on Dragos's box. They made half the furlong before a door slammed open. A woman came barreling out, her skirts flapping with her bustling run, her generous chest bouncing. Plump and healthy. Radu kept his wife well, or she kept them both well with some excellent cooking.

  Dragos's stomach grumbled eagerly.

  “Radu!” she screamed, her hair flying free of the strip of cloth holding it back.

  As she ran up, her eyes darkened, and from her skirts, she pulled a sturdy, notched knife. She brandished it in Dragos's direction. “What did you do to my husband?”

  Dragos stepped back, away from Radu, glancing between the two. He raised a hand in peace, only to belatedly recognize her husband’s blood on that hand. Her scowl deepened as she took a threatening step his way.

  The blade was poised to gut him as surely as she would have the bear that mangled her husband.

  She’d barely seen Dragos, and he was already to blame.

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  Spineback: An especially jagged mountain in a range near the Um?r, where the spirit rivers converge. ?oloman?? was located within the Spineback, hidden from the rest of the world.

  Dominule (DOM-uh-nyool): Lord or sir.

  Yarrow: Sometimes known as bloodwort. Used for pain relief, fever reducer, and for sleep.