What pissed her off so much that it fuelled her steps with anger for most of the first day wasn’t that the dryad had spirited her off, preventing Emily from asking questions, but that she’d woken up in the middle of absolutely nowhere and now had to walk for ages with no sense of where to find anyone to tell her where she was or where she was supposed to go.
The small compass she pulled from her pack steadily pointed somewhere. Not north. For lack of any other idea where to aim herself or how to actually use a compass, Emily walked in the general direction it pointed, using the sun to check that it held steady—something that proved easier than she expected, which made her worry she was doing it wrong. There was absolutely nothing magical about anything she encountered. Not the tall grass that was unexpectedly matted at the base and kept snagging her feet, or the sweat that pooled beneath her pack. She’d stripped down to a tank top and long pants. It was warm enough for shorts but the grass would have whipped her legs raw.
There was an incredible lack of landmarks and Emily’s battered plastic Casio either sputtered LED runes or gave her a blank screen. Even the wind-up pocket watch she’d brought along “just in case” was useless.
With no real way to guess how long she’d been walking, it took Emily a while to realise that her bag didn’t feel heavy on her shoulders. She’d expected that getting used to carrying a pack of supplies would be one of the more challenging physical aspects of the entire trip. It was a nice backpack, with a chest strap and padding for the shoulders, but no pack was nice enough to make it feel like you weren’t carrying anything. Emily didn’t have much time to think about it before she realised that a slow buzzing sound had been building as she walked. The sound now escalated to a heavy thrumming. She stopped and looked around for the source.
It felt like the sound was building just outside her periphery. Emily slowly knelt, sliding off her pack, cursing herself for stowing the bowie knife and not wearing it on her belt. She rummaged through the main compartment, glancing up every time it sounded like the buzzing moved closer. Finally, she remembered that she’d packed the knife in the front pocket so it would be easy to find. She grabbed it in a mild panic, but before she could unsheathe the blade a grasshopper landed on her arm and Emily, feeling stupid, recognised the noise.
“Your blade won’t do much good.”
Emily blinked slowly and brought her arm up so she could look the grasshopper in the eye. “I suppose not.”
“I could draw your blood with one quick bite, but you’d slice up your own stupid arm trying to get me with that blade, no matter how fast you moved.” The grasshopper cleaned its eyes as it spoke. “Besides, I could call my friends and we’d cover you dead.” Listening to the waves of noise that surrounded her, Emily nodded, carefully.
“True. Listen, I’d like to sling this on my belt, but I need both hands.” The grasshopper jumped to the top of her pack and watched Emily unbuckle her belt and thread it though a loop at the top of the knife case. “Thanks. I should have done that earlier, anyway.”
Emily settled back on her heels and looked at the insect. It was about as long as her thumb and mottled green and brown to match early summer fields. “So.” Emily didn’t know what to say but forged ahead with, “what are you up to?”
The grasshopper jumped back to her arm and Emily obligingly lifted it back up to eye level. “Eating. We’re eating a lot; it’s nice.” Wings striated proudly. “Some fighting. We’re in top form, which is why I wanted to warn you before you did something stupid like try to fight us.”
“That’s nice of you. Thank you.” Emily wrinkled her nose, thinking. “Hey, is there anything I could do for you?”
The surrounding thrum built louder for a moment and she felt like she was being laughed at. The grasshopper cleaned its eyes again, somehow mocking the human movement of rubbing one’s eyes in disbelief. “You? Do something for us? That’s a joke, right? Like, you help us and when you needed some help in a quest we do it while you slept in a pile of tears. Right.” It clicked its mandibles menacingly. “I hope you’re not implying that we need help from someone like you?”
“Oh dude, no. I was just being polite.” Emily kept her face straight and hoped that insects couldn’t pick up when a mammal lied.
“Because I could still call my friends and we could fight you.” The buzz around Emily rose louder again.
“That really is not necessary. At all.” She sighed. “Listen, I am new here and I was trying to be nice, because I don’t know how things work and the last thing I wanted to do is piss a bunch of people off.”
The grasshopper preened. Neither of them said anything while they eyed each other. Emily started to move, then thought better of it. “Hey, I want to get something out of my pack, you can stay on my arm, if you want, just hold on.” The insect skittered up to her elbow and balanced itself while Emily dug out the tobacco pouch and rolled a cigarette. After lighting it, she brought her arm back around, balanced on her knee and looked at the grasshopper from the corner of her eye, blowing her smoke away and up.
“Maybe you could help me.” The grasshopper thrummed its wings but didn’t reply. “I know, okay, I can’t help you at all, so saying ‘I’ll owe you one’ probably doesn’t mean much. But I’m lost and you probably know this area better.”
“We do. It’s our land; we fight for it.”
“Totally, I am sure you fight pretty well for it.”
“Very well for it.”
“Okay. Point being, can you help me?”
The grasshopper swivelled its head to look out in the direction Emily had been walking, still able to her gaze with its compound eyes. “You were walking straight.”
“Yeah, but straight to where?”
“You are the dumbest creature we’ve met.” It jumped back into the grass, kicking Emily’s arm with spiny back legs that left a scratch.
Emily shouldered her pack again and started walking, checking herself against the compass and the sun. Alongside her waves of grasshoppers would crest the top of the stalks, mocking with harsh clicks. She kept her eyes forward and smoked angrily, exhaling through her nose.
Emily eventually stopped for what she decided to call lunch, a homemade energy bar full of nuts and chocolate chips. She drank her water carefully. There really did seem to be no end to this field and she didn’t know when she’d encounter a water source—and even then, if it’d be friendly. Her pack continued to hang light as a feather on her back and she realised that her feet didn’t hurt at all. She was still sweating copiously, plus her legs were tired, so it wasn’t her amazing physical health at work. Emily began to wonder if the backpack and the boots themselves had something to do with it. They’d been gifts for her journey, so did that imbue them with some sort of extra attribute in the Sidhe? What did that mean about the other things stowed in her pack?
Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Emily gave herself a mantra: “don’t think about it, just keep moving forward.” She repeated it in her head as she walked through more and yet more grass and when the grasshoppers finally left her alone, she muttered it aloud. When the sun began to set she made a hollow in the grass and pulled out a sweater. On the horizon, something caught a beam of sunlight, glinting across the top of the grass. Emily stood and squinted at it, wishing she’d thought to pack binoculars. There was no way to judge distance or time, so it was impossible to guess when she’d encounter whatever that was. Emily checked her compass, remembering to account for the setting sun. The thing on the horizon was dead centre to the compass’ needle.
She narrowed her eyes at the compass. It was another gift like the boots and the pack. Trying to actively not think about it, Emily pulled out two more gifts from her pack: the Polaroid camera and the writing desk. She aimed the camera at herself and took a picture. If it had some special faerie quality, Emily couldn’t tell. As the picture developed, she wondered if the film was bad or if she’d held it too close. Her face was a glowing blur, casting a discoloured halo.
With a shrug, she opened up the writing desk and dropped the photograph into one of the empty pigeonholes. In the last of the light, she wrote a short note to her aunt, detailing the grasshoppers and her mantra. As she sealed the envelope, Emily saw a little slot in the side of the desk that she hadn’t noticed before. Out of a perverse curiosity, she slid the letter in. Halfway through, the envelope was sucked from her fingers and she jerked her hand back, startled.
Emily packed everything away, marvelling in the back of her mind how well everything fit in the backpack, as though it could easily hold more. She curled up with the pack —with its possible magical properties she wasn’t questioning— as a pillow, the knife in reach of her hand. With a last squint at the vanishing sun she spoke out loud, clearly: “Don’t think about it.”
This post is part of The Audacity Gambit – Serialised. Learn more about when the book was first published here, see the archive and overall content warnings here, and find more of my writing here. I’m over on both Comradery and Patreon, if you feel like supporting my creative endeavours. If you’d like to subscribe to this story, here’s a handy email box for you: