As We Go Along - Ch. 6

 I didn't sleep much that night. The whispers were as loud as screams. They sounded desperate and scared, much like I felt.

Carrington had given me his tent and slept with Braydon. Carrington kept yawning, and I imagined he hadn't slept well, either. Braydon was grumpy, but that wasn't very different from how he was all the time, so it was hard to tell how he'd slept. Vesperzo was annoyingly chipper and talked constantly while he made breakfast. Colin was silent, as usual.

The whispers had stopped while I was asleep, and the woods were so silent now I wondered if I really had only imagined them.

Breakfast was dry toast. We started riding as soon as the men had struck camp. I was with Colin again, and he was silent, as usual. The other men talked loudly enough that I wondered if they were trying to scare away whatever lived in these woods, or draw it to us - maybe they wanted something more than dry toast.

After fifteen minutes of this, Colin spoke to me in a voice so low I couldn't tell what he was saying.

"What?" I whispered.

"You're not insane," he said. "I hear them, too."

How considerate of him, but not very comforting. "I know," I said. "What are they saying?"

He shrugged. "I don't speak Dryad."

"Dryad?" Tree-spirits?

"Dryad," he said. "The trees are whispering."

"Could they whisper quieter?" I asked.

"I think they're doing it as quietly as they know how."

I wondered what would happen if they decided to scream at us.

"Why are they whispering?" I asked. Did trees have conversations just like humans? If so, why wasn't it all the time, and why could only Colin and I hear them?

"Because they know we can hear them," he said, without further explanation.

Ah. Made perfect sense. Telepathic trees with no respect for boundaries. Why should I be worried?

"How do they know?"

He shrugged again. 

"Are they mad at us?" I asked.

"Do they sound mad?" Colin asked.

"No. They sound scared," I said. What were the trees afraid of?

"Then there's your answer." He turned away, as if the conversation were over.

"Are they asking for help?" I wouldn't drop this. It wasn't normal for trees to whisper. It wasn't normal that only he and I could hear them.

"Maybe."

That was all I could get out of him. If I wanted more information, I'd have to ask one of the others.