Chapter Text
"Slow down, Garth!"
The only things that told Masha his older brother was ahead of him were the snapping of twigs and jeering laughter. Puddles splashed underneath his feet as Masha dashed after him, one hand gripping his spear and the other keeping his straw coat from flying off, as if both were the most important items in the world. The speed at which he was running and the rain turned the trees around him into a verdant blur, and Masha whispered a quick prayer to Washington to protect him from running headlong into one.
A twig smacked him in the face, and he cursed. "Garth, this isn't funny!"
"Oh, yes it is!" Garth's stupid voice called from somewhere ahead of him. "It's really funny!"
Masha just barely managed to dodge a tree. He swears, he's gonna stick his spear into Garth once he catches up to him. That is, if he could.
After more dodging, Masha's heart sunk at the realization that he couldn't hear his brother anymore. Stumbling into a glade, he whipped his head around, frantically looking to see if he could spot the direction Garth ran off in. Nothing. There was only the ever-present rain and towering spruce trees.
"BOO!"
"AH!" Masha nearly jumped out of his tunic as he whirled around to see Garth pop out from behind the thick trunk of a tree. His adrenaline hadn't even started to die down when Garth burst out laughing, his cackling face glistening in the rain.
"Oh, man! I got you good!"
With a look that could kill, Masha ran up and punched Garth in the arm. Which probably wasn't the best idea, as he too was wearing a straw coat, and it kind of hurt hitting it.
"Toadstool!" Masha cried. "What if we actually got separated, huh!?"
"Relax. I was making sure you could keep up with me," Garth assured, his voice as cool as always. Lean yet strong, he had a long face that seemed to have been molded from his near constant casual grin. It was one of his many attributes that made every teenage girl in the village fall in love with him, as well as every adult like him. It was also one of his many attributes that drove Masha insane.
Masha made an exasperated sound, one that he wished didn't sound so high-pitched. Still in the midst of puberty, Masha had so far inherited none of his brother's good looks. Shorter and with a wide face that Auntie Primes said would grow stress lines by the time he was twenty, the only thing that told people he and Garth were related were their hooded eyes (from his mom) and their long, aquiline nose (from his dad). His eyes flittered amongst the trees behind Garth. "Do you even know where we are right now? I don't even know where the deer trail is from here!"
"Yeah. I come here all the time, trust me." Resting his bow against a tree, Garth put his hands on his hips and examined the scenery. "Mhm. Yep. This is definitely a forest."
Garth chuckled again as Masha growled. "Garth, I'm serious!" he yelled, his voice cracking.
"Masha, we'll be fine. We're still really close to the trail, and I can find us a way back." He paused. "As soon as I catch us a deer."
"Garth…," Masha whined.
"I'm serious! We've never gone this far from the trail before. Who knows, by now the deer might be used to seeing hunters there. We'd be catching them off-guard out here."
"The priests say it isn't smart to veer off the trail."
"When was the last time they went on a hunt, huh? They've forgotten what it's like to have to spend hours looking for deer. Once we show them the one I kill - the fattest, juiciest deer anybody in the village has ever seen - then they'll think otherwise," Garth said, a gleam in his eye as he spoke.
Masha could tell he wasn't going to back down, from his little brother's warnings especially. Still, he pressed on. "All your shouting and laughing probably scared away all the deer," he said pointedly.
That got Garth thinking. Yet as soon as he started speaking again, Masha knew he had lost. "You probably scared them off with your girly shrieking from right here. I bet they went further in these hills. If we trek on further, we can find a herd to sneak up on."
"MY girly shriek-?!"
Garth knocked the handle of his bow against Masha's arm. "Keep quiet. C'mon."
He trudged on ahead of Masha. Sighing, Masha followed him. The rain still kept coming down in sheets, nearly drowning out the sounds of Masha and Garth’s careful footsteps. Who knows - maybe whatever deer that were around didn’t hear either of them. Maybe he'll finally kill a deer, and his family will be proud, and maybe Aunt Benneth's daughter Ida will help him skin it, and -
"Masha. Stop."
Masha didn't know how long he had followed Garth for. A lifetime spent navigating the woods had made the task of moving silently among the underbrush appear as if it were second nature. Well, except for when his brother randomly breaks into a full sprint, and he has to try and catch up. Otherwise, he could easily lose himself to his thoughts whenever he crept amongst the trees. It was something his dad had always chastised him for.
Nevertheless, he froze, as per his brother's instruction. Peering around his brother's frame, Masha could see a small herd of deer, a good sixty or so paces ahead of them. A few bucks stood amongst a throng of does, their fawns a few months old and still fairly small. They were busy foraging amongst the underbrush, oblivious to their nearby presence. Masha's mouth watered at the prospect of replenishing the village's stock of deer jerky.
He stepped on a twig. A violent crunch broke through the peaceful murmuration of rain, and Masha cringed. A few deer's heads popped up, and then the rest followed suit, all gawking straight at them. Within seconds, they had fled for the safety of the hills.
Garth spared Masha a second to shoot him a quick glare. Yet everyone always told him how good of a hunter he was, so naturally he didn't waste time giving Masha any grief. He took off in their direction, his younger brother following with a red face.
Weaving around Douglas-firs and western hemlock, dashing through dense mats of ferns and huckleberries, avoiding the occasional moss-covered boulder, they tailed the deer. All the while, rain smacked them in the face and soaked their tunics. The managed to catch a glimpse of the deer every now and then, flashes of brown guiding them through rain and dense vegetation. Still, Masha cursed himself as he ran. Why did he have to mess that up? At this rate, he feared they'll lose the herd for sure. And they would both be hopelessly lost, deep in the woods.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…
Minutes passed. The deer had climbed up and over one of the many hills in the forest. As the brothers scaled it and neared its crest, Garth stuck out his arm as a sign to stop. Masha obeyed, and the two inched closer and closer. Rounding the crest, they were greeted by another ensemble of two-foot-wide trunks concealed amidst the foliage. No deer in sight. Masha's heart sunk at the realization that they did lose them after all.
But then something caught his attention.
It was on the hill adjacent to theirs. Definitely looked like a landslide. They occurred every now and then in the foraging hills to the east of the village, and they evidently happened here, too. Piles of rock, mud, and mangled-up tree trunks sat in a slump at the toe, creating a sharp divide between the forest and the scar. Yet, even amidst the pounding rain, something about the exposed soil just didn't look right. Because it didn't look like soil; it looked like rock. By the heavens, the rock itself didn't even look right. It looked too angular, too loose, like a pile of mud-slathered rocks instead of one unified mass of stone.
What seemed to be a newly-revealed cave served only to further interest Masha.
Garth made an annoyed sound as his eyes scanned the forest, not bothering to notice the new landform. "They probably went down into the valley. Search for tracks, see where -"
"Wait."
Garth glanced at Masha, hoping he saw a sign of deer. "What?"
"Do you see that?" he said, pointing.
Garth followed his finger, and at first he saw nothing but a landslide scar. Nothing worth drawing attention to in that moment, and plenty to give his brother shit about later. The more he stared, however, the more he noticed how it didn't really look like any sort of landslide scar he had ever seen before. It just didn't look… right.
"What is that?" Masha wondered, echoing Garth's thoughts.
A large part of Garth didn't want anything distracting either of them from the hunt. Yet the voice telling him to find the deer was slowly growing quieter in his head as the questions within his mind grew louder and louder. What was that big hole in the middle? What sort of stone was surrounding that? Was it just some massive flint deposit? Garth peeked down at Masha' spear, tipped with the sharp rock.
"Maybe it's a cave," Garth theorized.
"Maybe." Masha shielded his eyes with his hands to get a better look. "It might've just been revealed by that landslide."
Garth examined it for a few moments further, then turning to reexamine the forest. There still wasn't any sign of the deer, and their hoofprints would be washed away from the rain soon. If they didn't follow after them now, they would never find them. He stood up straight, ripping Masha's attention away from the landform as he watched his older brother do so. "We should get going."
Masha would be lying if he said he wasn't a little relieved to hear that. Curious as he was, there was no way he wanted to go near the cave. He might risk destabilizing the already-loose soil, or slip on a wet rock. He might even fall into the cave. And (though he knew they were just stories) the legends of ancient monsters the storytellers told him when he was a little kid echoed in the back of his mind.
Stepping ahead, Garth stooped down and lifted up a fern. "There's some tracks here. Looks like they lead into the valley," he said, pointing down the hill - and towards the direction of the landslide.
Steeling himself, Masha stood up. He couldn't get nervous now. Think of how delicious the jerky will be, he repeated to himself, as if it were one of the prayers the priests say could ward off malevolent spirits.
Garth turned and shot Masha a look. It wasn't one of condemnation or frustration. Rather, there it was: one of his brother's classic shit-eating grins. "Try not to scare away the deer this time, eh Masha?"
Masha's worry was replaced with shame. He tried to match his brother's grin, but the knowledge that he screwed up the hunt nagged at him. It gave him that same icky feeling he felt when he kept missing his dad's target in archery practice, or when he tripped in front of Ida and spilled the jug of river water he had been carrying for the better part of twenty minutes.
But then, something else spurred within him. A growing sense of determination seemed to suddenly ignite. He wasn't going to mess up, not this time. He was going to make his family proud. Mark his words, he was going to come home with a deer that day.
He gave Garth a hard stare. "I won't." With those words stated firmly, Masha stepped forward to rejoin Garth on the hunt.
Then they heard a shriek.