The Woodcutter and the War-walker: a steampunk fairytale

Part 3

Two years went by, quick in the passing.

The woodcutter's son grew taller and stronger, and somehow he learned to love his father again. It was not that the boy had ever stopped loving him, as such, for the woodcutter was still the same man that he had been ever since he had come to the forest above the village. But now the boy's eyes looked farther and saw deeper. They looked beyond his father's arrival, over the mountains, back to the past that he kept hidden. It took time to understand how the pieces of knowing and not-knowing could fit together. They had been shaped in deliberately different ways, so that they could never join together. But eventually, the boy found a way to hold everything in his heart, and life went on as ever.

The boy never followed his father on his secret errand again, but he did visit the war-walker. The first time was only a few weeks after he had first set eyes upon it. The boy had buried the secret deep within himself, a riddle and a treasure, something that he would take out and wonder at when he lay awake in bed and stared at the knotholes in the ceiling. He kept the knowledge of the war-walker so secret that it did not take long for him to doubt its existence himself. Had he really seen it? Did it really stand there still, among the trunks, under the moon?

So he had gone on his own the following day, as soon as he was certain that his father was at work in another part of the forest. The path he had taken was still known to him, for he had marked it well in his mind's eye, noting the trees that stood along the route, the twist of a branch, the slant of a trunk, remembering the signs as only a woodsman can.

When the boy arrived at his destination, the sight of the war-walker was almost not enough on its own to satisfy him. He longed to climb up the legs as his father had done, and to open the hatch, and to climb inside and see whether he might set it in motion.

But he remembered how his father had first examined the ground and the bushes around the machine itself to reassure himself that his secret remained undiscovered and undisturbed. Skilled as he was in the way of the woods, the woodcutter's son could not be certain that he would leave no trace of his explorations. He knew what was at stake for both his father and himself if the woodcutter discovered that his past was no longer hidden, and so he went to turn away.

As he turned, the sight of the raven caught his eye. The raven watched him with suspicious eyes. It fluttered along behind him, from one bough to another, until finally it seemed to grow tired of waiting, and it flew to the tree directly in his path and sat there, cawing and croaking and flapping its wings.

The boy shooed the raven, and shook his fists at it, but it would not let him pass. Then he remembered what it was that his father had said. In truth, he had never forgotten the words, but now they rattled around in his head as if he needed to let them out. It seemed that they might be the only way of ridding himself of the raven's attention.

"I know what you want from me, but I am done with bloodshed and battle," he said. "Did you not feast well enough on my friends that you also desire my foes? Take this cheese and my thanks."

And the boy broke off some cheese that he had carried with him for his lunch, and threw it to the raven. The raven took the cheese in its beak, and was gone.

A little further along the path, the woodcutter's son saw the shape of a grey shadow that flitted along from trunk to trunk off to one side. At the next turning, there was the old grey wolf, looking less hungry than it had done the last time he had seen it, growling with its head held low.

The boy stood his ground. He had only a stout walking stick with him, and he knew that to run would be his undoing. The wolf made no move to pounce, but merely observed him with its amber eyes. Once more, the boy thought back to what his father had said.