The glorious feeling of charting the uncharted sted thirty whole minutes before Denholm realized just how unprepared he was for this. The tangled thickets and bulging roots managed to trip him constantly. It was nothing like the smooth, divot-free, spongey ground of the gde. Everything wanted to bump into him, knicking and scraping and scratching, leaving his body looking half already like he had a run-in with a bear or wolf. Denholm had known what a prickle bush was, since the Gde had a few near the treeline, but he swore in the Darkwood everything, even ordinary leaves, was sharp in some way; it was just a matter of degree.

  The final event that solidified in his mind that he had to go back was when a stubby piece of deadfall that blended into a low-lying bush–because it was the same stupid color–had tripped him and caused him to spin a half turn, only for the back of his heel to catch on something else, sending him falling ft on his back. He’d picked himself up like every other time, but this time, something terrible had happened, signified by the ck of weight on his back. He whirled around, only to find his makeshift pack torn open, spilling his supply of bread and fruit-jerky all over the ground. He considered trying to pick it all up, but the bread was now tarnished and his pack so ruined it would be good for holding nothing but regrets any longer. All at once, he decided he had made a terrible mistake. He started breathing fast, fidgeting with nothing for no reason. He stood up, looking all around him. He definitely came from that way, didn’t he?

  And so Denholm started walking, and walking, and walking.

  And it must be close by now. He was sure of it. Only a half hour it had taken him to get here, and as much as he dreaded to admit it, he had now been backtracking for longer than that. Yet there was still no sign of the Gde. Denholm was sure he remembered the Gde being back this way. Was sure of it. He was running now, running and running, and he still couldn’t find it. Didn’t even spot the edge of it! Not one bde of grass! Where had it gone?

  “No. No. No,” he muttered.

  It was all wrong.

  It wasn’t supposed to go this way. He wasn’t supposed to get lost this quickly… or at all. He was sure his sense of direction was good. He even pnned it all out so this wouldn't happen. He’d decided that the reason why everyone else who had presumably been as brave–if not as smart–as him had gotten lost was because they must have been trying to explore all over the pce. So Denholm had made absolutely sure–even if it limited the fun of exploring–to walk only in an absolutely perfect straight line. That way, whenever he wanted to go back, all he needed to do was turn around and start walking.

  And yet… he had still gotten lost. Somehow.

  It was only once he noticed that his surroundings were getting darker, and that night was actually going to overtake him before he found that Gde, that he really understood just how much further he could fall into panic. In his rapidly deteriorating state of mind, he began to bargain with the possibilities. The first and most obvious idea was that if he simply went far enough in any direction at all, he must find another town, another Gde or something like it, even if not his own one.

  But that brought up another issue. There was supposed to be other towns out there. Even the folks in the Gde knew they existed, they just weren’t connected to one another anymore. Denholm had heard that before the world fell apart and everyone was sectioned off into their little town-sized areas of safety like the Gde, there had been wondrous creations called roads that connected all the towns from everywhere together with one another. If he could just find one of those… maybe he could…

  He shook his head. There was no use. He knew the teachings of the old masters as well as anyone. Even if he hadn’t sat through all their lectures, Silvi had told him plenty enough to know that the roads were so long abandoned that they were grown over with nature, utterly indistinguishable from the rest of the Darkwood. There was proof enough of this in the fact that Denhold had never been able to figure out where the beginning of the road was that once left the Gde. Nothing. Not even a trace. This had always made Denholm so solemn, and it was one of the main reasons he had wanted to leave the Gde. He dreamed of a day where he could be the one connecting things back together again, so people from other pces could trade things only they had for things only people from the Gde had, like the toads and lilys he collected from the ke.

  There was no trade in or out of the gde these days, not for a very long time, but the old masters talked about a time when there had been. Supposedly, before all the gods came and wrecked everything, turning most of the world into their domain instead of ours. The old masters were still pretty bitter about all that, probably because they were the only ones who had actually lived through it.

  Even though Denholm thought a lot of the things most people think were pretty silly, he certainly agreed with the old masters there. It might all be just stories of a forgotten time to everyone else, but Denholm found it the biggest of shames that he could never talk to anybody besides the same old people that lived in the Gde–and it was certainly not because he just wanted to talk to someone who didn’t already know him as a rascal with a reputation for ziness and stealing, certainly not. But that did help. Or it had helped get him into this disaster, anyway. Whatever his reasons for having the courage to step out of the Gde, now he realized just why there seemed to be no one around left with the kind of ambition and courage as him. As far as he could tell now, courage was no virtue at all.

  It was just a good way to get yourself stuck in the Darkwood forever.

  Even though he knew it was silly to call for them specifically, he found himself calling out for Silvi, or for Mother. Alternating their names as if that made any difference. No one heard him. No one would hear him. If he was close enough to be heard, he would have already been inside the Gde again. The thought made him whimper, but he did not give up calling to them nonetheless.

  He stumbled through the Darkwood, pretending he didn’t notice just how very dark it was getting. He felt as if the forest was only still where he focused his eyes, but at the sides of his vision it was attempting to close in and swallow him. No matter which direction he went, the trees and undergrowth only grew denser than they were where he had walked just before. He felt as if the gnarled trunks were slowly twisting around and above him to form a cage, and the roots deliberately unearthing themselves to trip him, and the brambles lengthening their needles until they became cws and daggers.

  He felt everything more. Felt more feelings in the brief moment between each of his footfalls than he had perhaps ever felt in the totality of his life before this misadventure. Fear most of all, but so many horrible other things he had not known he even could feel until being forced to experience them. It was so painfully obvious now that he was here, firsthand, why everyone was so sure the Darkwood was a pce you should never visit. Denholm had been gifted a life in paradise.

  And he’d up and tossed it away because that wasn’t enough for him.

  As the night fully enveloped the forest around him, his calls out for help became mutters, and then whispers, and then nothing but repeated thoughts in his mind. He colpsed down onto the grimy, pine-needle-covered ground, curled his knees in and wrapped his arms around them, pressed his face on top so he wouldn’t have to look at the sinister tangle around him. He rocked back and forth, cradling himself. No! No! No! No!

  Denholm’s mind swam, his thoughts making no sense, even to him. He couldn’t help but repeat the reasons he had once thought were so important for coming out here to himself, over and over. It was a halfhearted attempt to convince himself this fear was worth it, and that this was still his choice. The reality was that he had given up his choice the moment he lost sight of the Gde. There was no going back. There never had been. Somehow, some part of him knew that.

  He had been so sure about it all, connecting the towns anew, stealing the power of a god, tricking the Trickster to gain the boon he needed to take a god's power in the first pce.

  Wait… that was it. His pn. His whole stupid pn hinged on one step to even begin. He needed to trick a Trickster.

  Despite everything, a realization broke through the fog clearer than anything he had ever thought. He had never even considered how one was supposed to actually find a Trickster…

  The gods were supposed to wander around all over the pce, so he knew finding one would just be a matter of time. Reconnecting the towns would only be as hard as finding the towns themselves. But a Trickster? He had pnned all these schemes, memorized riddles, but… he’d somehow never once tried to figure out how he was supposed to find one.

  Denholm, for the first time in his life, considered the fact that he might be the most profound of fools, even worse than those who still lived in the Gde. No… much worse. None of them would be so stupid as to get stuck out here. None of them were stupid at all, actually. That was just something he liked to believe so he didn’t have to confront the truth. And the truth was that all of them already provided the kind of value in their ordinary lives that Denholm was fruitlessly searching for out here. The baker he had stolen from fed the town with his bread and rolls, and he was really good and making them, Denholm could admit now. The leatherworker he had unsuccessfully tried to steal from made the prettiest belts and bags he had ever seen, something Denholm could only now admit his fingers would never have enough precision to accomplish–he was always fidgeting, always too absent of mind to focus long enough to accomplish goals that took any kind of dedication. Even Silvi, who was two years younger than Denholm, was the old masters’ favorite for how well she listened and remembered.

  There, huddled against himself in the pitch-bckness of night with nothing but scratches and bruises to cim for his own creations, Denholm began to cry for how useless he had been all along.

  Not long after, no longer, in fact, than his third ragged bout of sobbing, Denholm heard a twig snap. It was so clear in the utterly windless Darkwood that, before he even raised his head, he knew exactly the direction it came from.

  There, in the distance, smeared by the tears still in his eyes, was a lone spec of light. After he wiped his eyes, he noticed more detail. The light was not alone, not at all. The light came from a mp, and that mp-light illuminated the edges of a dark figure who held it by a hinged handle that let the mp swing freely as the figure walked. Though, it was not the purposeful walk of someone going somewhere. It was stops and starts, head-tilting pauses, turning to face one way, holding the mp out and then turning away to the opposite direction to do the same. It was the way someone moved when they were looking for something mispced.

  It was then a thought struck Denholm that had never struck before. Were there other people out here? Ones who had been courageous enough to leave their towns who had managed to make a permanent life for themselves in the Darkwood?

  Denholm’s heart fluttered briefly with hope. Maybe this stranger could be just what he needed. Perhaps even a mentor who could teach him how to survive out here. With that thought now firmly lodged above the more dreary ones, he forced himself to speak loudly and clear. “Hello?” he called. The word still barely scratched its way out of the back of his throat.

  The dark figure's only answer was to begin approaching him before the word had even fully left Denholm’s mouth.