From the Icy Edge to the Lor Marshes, and from the impassable Mariu Mountains to the warm and bountiful Quiet Sea, the human lands stretch wide. Long ago, people arrived here on three dozen creaking, massive ships and stayed for good. What drove those first settlers so far from their original home is a mystery no chronicle or record can unravel. But it’s been over five centuries since then, if Pency’s memory serves her right. Plenty of time. Enough for great cities and small settlements to rise, for roads to be laid, and for people to grow strong and numerous enough to traverse these lands from north to south and east to west. No others have arrived since, so those first ones must have been fleeing something truly terrible. Here, in these new lands, they found refuge and a new home.
The Black Woods stood untouched for a long time: there were enough ordinary groves and forests to sustain life and build homes. And few would willingly venture into the eerie thickets without a damn good reason. But when the first hunters realized what they’d stumbled upon—what oddities and treasures lay in the ruins—hundreds flocked to risk their lives for a chance at riches. A little more time passed, and the Hunters’ Guild was formed. Now, Pency, as a hunter of oddities, tucks a contract for a client’s desired oddity into the inner pocket of her jacket and prepares her gear for the hunt.
The entire forest on Cannibal Pass is Black: a sprawling, gloomy tangle where the tree canopies weave so tightly that it’s pitch dark in there, summer or winter. Only when the snow falls, white and bright, does it make sense to venture inside. That’s why hunters show up in places like this with the cold: they wait until everything is buried under drifts, scout old trails, carve new ones, and get to hunting.
Until the snow softens and the black earth peeks through, descending from the Pass is impossible. The risk of not making it is just too high. In her first years of hunting solo, Pency could never quite budget enough money to last the whole winter here, and she’d spend the final weeks before spring and the reopening of the descent to the valley half-starved. Loans are rare on the Pass, and even rarer for hunters. The work here is dangerous; anything can happen. Pency once saw two members of a friendly crew get dragged under the snow. Their bodies were never found. And who could even count how many incidents like that happen in a single winter?
The forest creeps right up to the settlement, looming over it, sapping the life from the people who live here, swallowing the lights in the windows, and chilling their breath. Pency adjusts her skis—short, wide, and well-waxed—slings her backpack over her shoulder, and fastens the lead of a sled loaded with supplies, a tent, and traps to her belt. Short poles are within reach, as are her firearm and a broad knife.
The first step under the black weave of branches is the scariest. Pency can’t shake the thought that she’s not ready, that she hasn’t thought everything through. But the key is to keep moving and focus on the trail and her surroundings; otherwise, panic will be hard to shake off. With a restless heart, a foggy mind, or in a blind rage, it’s best not to enter the Black Woods. Every hunter knows this, but in practice, hardly anyone cares.
Pency flits like a gray shadow against the coal-black trees and dull white snow. Her clothing is the result of years of trial and error. It’s not easy to pick the right color and material; she also has to ensure ease of movement and warmth. Sure, older relatives are willing to share their experience, but Pency wants to figure it out on her own. A big chunk of her earnings goes into her gear, and it’s worth every penny. In the silence of the forest, every extra sound or scent, every overly obvious movement, can tip off an oddity to a hunter’s presence, betray them, and then it’s just death.
Pency peers closely at the snow, reading tracks, taking her time. For now, she’s in the near Black Woods, well-trodden and familiar. Danger here only threatens clueless rookies or outright suicidal types. She carefully skirts an abandoned kurdarka nest; this oddity can sense an intruder even months later. She weaves a long, winding path, covering her tracks, through the trails of small sagaliks. They’re easy to catch with fish, and their pelts fetch a decent price in the cities of Eastern Mikad. Last year, Pency did just that: tough, monotonous, meticulous hunting paid off in full. But there’s no point targeting the same type of oddity two years in a row. Even now, she can sense it: the sagaliks are gone—either fleeing danger or following some strange instinct of their own.
Inside Pency, a clock ticks. Without it, she’d never have dared take on this contract or test Mr. Layton’s story. In the forest, it’s easy to get lost, stray from the path, or overestimate your strength. But Pency doesn’t need tricks like counting in her head, ancient amulets, chemical clocks, or trendy mechanical ones. As a child, she didn’t even realize others couldn’t keep track of time like she could. It took her a long time to accept her peculiarity, but eventually, its usefulness outweighed the weirdness. Every three hours, a short break. After four breaks, she scouts for a spot and sets up camp for the night.
Pency breathes this life, lives for the hunt; it’s all she knows how to do. The ordinary human world doesn’t come easy to her. Her adoptive family gave her warmth, taught her to survive, and looked after her health. She couldn’t imagine any other path in life besides hunting. But it’s not all as glamorous as the gossip and fairy tales make it out to be. Sure, there are the Lucky Ones—those whose names are known even in the farthest reaches from the Black Woods. They’ve got wealth and respect. But more often, hunters don’t make it to thirty. Of those who do, many end up crippled, washed up like fish on a shore, unable to adapt to a normal life. And among hunters, every other one is illiterate, and of those who can read, one in five struggles with it. Pency had to relearn how to speak and read, and she still writes with uncertainty. Maybe if she’d had books...
Before falling asleep, she lets herself daydream a little. When she has a house, why not make a special room just for books? Lots of books—a drawer or even two. Right now, she can’t carry them on her shoulders, but her own home would safeguard those wise treasures. If she buys one in a peaceful, prosperous town, maybe they’d even let her enroll in a good adult school?
Her parents did their best to give her knowledge, and Pency herself loves chatting and learning new things. But among hunters and random acquaintances, there are plenty of liars and exaggerators. She wants to know more about the world around her: the animals and oddities, the ruins in the Black Woods and the ruin-dwellers, the old roads and statues, ancient artifacts, vast waters and what lies beyond the horizon, human inventions, and the history of this world in general. All she needs is a new home—one that smells of wood and paint, small but hers—and the confidence that she can make it happen.
The second day is eerily similar to the first, and the third is a carbon copy of the ones before. Pency tries not to lose her way. Out of boredom and monotony, many make mistakes—starting to hum in the deafening silence or losing focus and missing the right trail. The Black Woods eagerly swallow up such fools. Everything here is deceptive and dangerous, yet it hides treasures and valuable materials. A skilled hunter can always find something to profit from, if they know how to avoid becoming prey themselves.
Pency knows how to wait for a break. Only when the traps are set and the area is relatively safe does she sink into dreams and fantasies. In these dreams, she doesn’t just have a home, but a family and parents, good friends. Many years ago, hunters pulled her from the ruins of a building, partly burned, partly destroyed by something horrific. There were no bodies to be seen: maybe they burned or were eaten. The simplest assumption is that everyone who knew Pency was wiped out by monsters. So becoming a hunter of monsters—why not a chance for revenge? If Pency had a past, revenge might make sense. But for now, she can only dream.
Sometimes her imagination runs too far. Under the crust of snow in the darkness, she fantasizes about flying or, conversely, plunging into endless, deep waters. Diving into boundless water feels eerily fascinating to her. In her dreams, she eats strange fruits and catches the salty wind on her lips. Sometimes she dreams of winter, but not the cold, black kind—a bright, snowy, elegant, and dazzlingly dreamed-of winter. And very rarely, out of nowhere, a sense of safety and joy emerges. It wraps around her back like a fluffy woolen scarf, curls into a soft lump in her chest, and warms her for a long time. That must be what a mother’s embrace feels like. Maybe that’s what she dreams of? But her internal clock always wakes her at the most interesting part.
The fourth day brings Pency to a fork: the trails shift, intertwine, and split off in different directions. The near forest ends here—now she must choose one danger out of a dozen. Somewhere to the east of where she stands, hunters found her fourteen years ago. She feels that direction, as if tied to the place by a thread. One day, she’ll definitely take a step that way, but not today.
Mr. Layton gave pretty clear instructions. A few points in his story strike Pency as suspicious, but she decides to trust the lodge owner. It’s unlikely he wants to get her killed or tricked; more likely, he’s just not entirely sure of what he knows. But even if the hunt turns out to be a bust, the time won’t have been wasted. On the way back, Pency can easily bag at least three oddities, two of them—hurida eggs and moon mold—without much effort.