“Wait!” I cried. The vines wrapped around my wrists didn’t relent; twining tighter, until my fingers were numb and prickling. My hands - already outstretched as far as they could, as if I were embracing the velvet black and emerald of the forest around me - were being pulled further and further apart. I heard something creak - the vines? My body? I wasn’t sure - and my shoulder twinged. “Wait - please - they didn’t know any better!”
“I fail to see how this is my responsibility,” the deer said, turning its head to regard me impassively with one glossy dark eye.
“I - I know, but - it’s been so - please! Wait!” I gulped in a breath, finding it difficult. The twinge was now a persistent burn. “This is - you said we were the first! The first - ah - the first in centuries - how could we know?”
The owl swept over my shoulder with silent wings; I craned my head to follow it as it landed above me. “You could have asked,” it said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Had my knees sunk deeper into the mud? Cold wetness was seeping up the cloth of my pants. Something coiled around my calf, the same bone-cracking force that held my arms, and I suppressed a whimper. “I - I’m asking now! Please tell me, so I can tell them, and then they’ll know…”
The forest god did not answer for a long moment.
The vines creaked again; the pain set into my shoulder, burrowing deeper. I could imagine all too clearly that it would not take much more pressure, that the strength of the vines was enough to slowly tear and crush and dismantle before any remnants were buried.
“You think to escape me,” the owl said, rotating its head to watch me as I sank, spread-eagled, into the mud. “You will not.”
“No,” I gulped. Both knees were now encircled with pressure. I squeezed my eyes shut. “I don’t - I don’t care about me. Just leave my family.”
“They have taken what is mine,” the deer said. “Without proper permissions. The price must be paid, and it is steep.”
“Let me pay it,” I said, wild, desperate. I grasped after the concepts I’d read, the old magics. “I know - I know I am ignorant, of so many things, but - a willing sacrifice is worth more, isn’t it?”
A sudden silence fell. Both owl, and deer stood still. Was I imagining it, or had the pressure of the vines… stopped increasing?
“It is,” a voice said in my ear. Something tickled the crown of my head, then worked its way around to the side of my cheek; I held my neck and head as stiff as I could, shoulders screaming under the tension.
“Then let me pay,” I begged. “I will pay for all of them. Whatever the price is - if you let them go, anything I have to give is yours! Please!”
The thing on my neck crawled around to my shoulder, to where I could see it perched on my chest. A spider the size of my spread hand.
“I accept,” it said, and the owl and the deer spoke at the same time, a chorus of voices.
I opened my mouth, giddy with relief - to express thanks, or to ask a question, I wasn’t sure what. I didn’t have the chance to decide, because the vines - tightened, changed their grip - something arced up out of the mud to loop over my extended elbows, my shoulders, cold clammy force wrapping around my waist.
The pain increased, a sudden white-hot flare of pain across my whole body that wiped out all else from my mind.
“Do not fear,” the spider said. “You will not die.”
The suffocating pressure of the mud enveloped me, my body no longer a tangible thing, just a tiny nucleus of relief and dread and pain pain pain, as the vines dragged me under.
