Spirit Walker by David Farland Page A

ripped him with their fingernails and bit him with their teeth, while others clubbed him with sticks, but Tchulpa escaped them all.
    The Dryads’ cries haunted him through the forest, until he reached a band of oaks, and the pine women stopped.
    The Dryads would not leave their beloved forest.
    Tchulpa’s heart was torn, for he remembered his love for his wife and children. Now, he wished only to return.
    For a time, he would not eat, but so great was his sadness that he hoped only to find comfort in the House of Dust with his ancestors. Yet, he knew he could not let himself die without first telling his family what had happened and begging their forgiveness.
    When Tchulpa reached his village, his back and legs were swollen and infected with green pus that ran from him like sap from a tree—the worst kind. For this is what comes from the bite of a Dryad.
    He told the Pwi his story, but everyone imagined that it was only fever talking, for none had ever seen a Dryad in those early days. So they brought him into the house of the healer, lanced his wounds, and washed him gently.
    They thought he must have gone through a terrible ordeal, to be gone these three years. They wondered if slavers had captured him. His wife was elated to have her husband alive again, for she thought he had wandered off a cliff and died, or perhaps had become food for a smilodon.
    That night, as his wife Azha tended him, so happy to have her husband home again, she put him by the fire and fell asleep.
    She woke to the sound of Tchulpa’s cry. A nude woman with skin the color of pine needles stood above Tchulpa, and she ran from the room as quickly and quietly as a dream.
    Tchulpa cried out again. Azha rushed to her husband, and he coughed blood into the air. In his chest was a stake, whittled from a branch of blackened pine.
    Tchulpa raised his head and said, “Remember the kwea of the night we became husband and wife? That kwea is upon me. I feel nothing for that animal anymore.”
    Azha nodded and took her husband’s hand. With his own blood, Tchulpa drew joined circles, the symbol of eternal love, upon her hand before he died.

    Tull listened and smiled. Years ago, he’d realized that humans always seem to tell stories of conquest, of men who bulldog mammoths into the ground and slaughter each other in battle, but the Pwi always seemed to tell stories about reconciliation.
    Pwi often told of brothers or lovers or friends who went to war in their youth, and only a great act of love or sacrifice could heal the evil kwea built up over the years. Such stories seemed odd—as if the Pwi believed that every fence could be mended, all hate and anger washed away.
    Tull only had to look at his relationship with Jenks to see how false this notion was.
    Yet the story of Tchulpa and the Dryad made Tull laugh, for somehow it seemed backward: Tchulpa did not find happiness with the Dryad at all.
    He had to fall out of love, and that seemed important to Tull.
    The silly ending, with Tchulpa drawing the symbol of eternal love on his wife’s hand, seemed more like a fable than something that would really happen.
    Instead, Tull imagined that Tchulpa would have gasped “Oh shit!” as he died.
    After the story, Zhopila went to her room to sleep, and the rest of the family lay on the floor in the living room, on piles of soft bearskins, and talked late into the night.
    Little Chaa, although he was only twelve, talked of his plans to accompany Tull and Ayuvah to Seven Ogre River, until finally he fell deeply asleep, as if lost in pleasant dreams.
    Ayuvah lay on the floor next to his wife and daughter. Fava, Tull’s new sister, lay to Tull’s right. Fava’s five little brothers and sisters slept on the other side of her. With so many people in the house, and with the embers still glowing cherry-red in the hearth, the room was very warm.
    Tull could not sleep, lying so close to Fava. Her legs were long and bare in her summer dress, and he could feel the ribbons