The morning sun filtered weakly through the trees, casting pale gold into the hollow. The air was cool, still damp from morning dew. Camp was almost completely torn down and packed away for the day when Finley and Brooke woke.
“They need to go back to town,” Thatcher insisted, voice low but sharp, “We can’t be responsible for them out here”
Shade didn’t bother turning from cinching his roll to his pack “If we send them back, something gets them by noon. We need to get to Cragjaw”
“I can’t cook for twelve, Thatcher. I’m a cook, not a miracle worker.” Gertie muttered, counting supplies in her pack.
“We’ll make it work. We’ll supplement from the forest.” said Pip
Thatcher scoffed. “The forest is trying to kill us, if you hadn’t noticed.”
Bram stepped towards Thatcher, jaw tight.“Maybe they shouldn’t be here” he said quietly, “But they’re here now, and Sableeye knows it. We’re not sending them to their death. They’re safer with us.”
The pups froze where they sat, wide-eyed, hearing every word. Brooke hugged her knees to her chest; Finley stared at the ground as though it might swallow him.
Thatcher was the first to notice. His shoulders sagged more with annoyance than empathy. “Fine” he said stiffly “You two come with us. You do exactly what Gertie and Lina say. Just stay out of the way.”
Breakfast was little more than jerky and tack, softened with gathered berries. Shade walked ahead, pointing out which plants could be eaten and which could kill. His words terse, but his eyes always watching the forest, waiting for it to bite.
The morning went easily, even Thatcher hummed under his breath, a nervous habit he probably mistook for confidence. Pip dared a breath of laughter when Finley tripped over a root and called the forest “rude,” but the sound died quickly. Nothing in Evergrowth stayed harmless long.
At midday they stopped at a quiet spot. Everyone dropped their packs with heavy thuds. Brooke watched them hit the ground and felt suddenly small. She and Finley didn’t have anything to drop. They didn’t have anything at all. Really, just what they’d grabbed before sneaking after the group. Her stomach twisted at the thought.
Lunch was jerky for Shade and Pip, the kind that looked like it belonged in an emergency kit. Everyone else had real travel rations: bread, dried fish, nuts, things that smelled like actual food. Brooke tried not to stare.
Pip slipped away to gather berries, quick and sure. Brooke couldn’t imagine knowing plants like that. Shade sorted them without even looking properly: this safe, that one poisonous, that one edible only after boiling they didn’t have time for. His eyes kept scanning the forest like something might peel itself out of the shadows.
Thatcher started to grumble about the meal until Shade glanced at him. Then he went quiet.
They’d barely been back on the trail when Brooke smelled it.
Sweet. Thick. Heavy. It made her mouth water instantly. She didn’t think, her paws just moved, pulling her toward the brush. Finley followed, eyes wide and hungry.
Bram grabbed them both by the scruffs and hauled them back. “Slow down there. Where do you think you’re going?”
Brooke’s stomach growled loud enough that her ears burned. “We’re hungry,” she murmured. “It smells so good…”
Shade’s voice cut through the trees. “That smell is what digestion smells like. Yours, if you get too close.”
Brooke froze. Her paws curled tight against her chest.
“Flytraps,” he said. “They smell sweet because they want you to come to them. They don’t chase.”
Finley shuddered. Brooke forced herself back into line, even though her legs trembled.
Thatcher smirked. “And to think you didn’t want Sableeye’s guidance. Seems her warning came right on time.”
Shade didn’t rise to the bait. He just flicked a glance toward Bram, and Brooke couldn’t quite read it, just knew it wasn’t good.
As they moved on, the sweetness faded into the wet, warm breath of the forest. Gertie muttered about wasted ingredients. Zara cursed the gods softly.
Brooke said nothing.
She didn’t trust her voice not to shake.
By late afternoon, they reached the fork in the trail.
“Just as she said,” Thatcher announced, far too pleased with himself. “Left, toward the shimmerberries. We’ll be home and heroic in no time.”
Finley kept Brooke close behind him as the group followed the left path. His paws dragged a little; he was tired of trying to to keep up with the adults; tired of pretending they weren’t slowing anybody down. The others’ packs creaked and shifted as they walked. He felt like a burden they had to carry.
The path opened into a clearing rimmed with low brush and faint mist. There, along the edge, the shimmerberries sparkled.
Finley forgot to breathe.
Clusters of them clung to tangled vines, skins shining like tiny gems caught in morning light. Some pulsed faintly, like tiny stars. They looked so very delicious
Brooke whispered, “They’re beautiful.”
Finley nodded, awestruck. He wanted to agree, but couldn’t let himself look childish in front of Bram
Lina stepped closer, fur lifting along her shoulders. “That glow…” she said softly. “That’s dark matter. Diluted, but it’s there.”
Shade frowned. “I was hoping I was wrong.”
“Should we still collect them?” Bram asked.
“They’re not immediately dangerous,” Lina said. “But they’re… marked.”
Shade’s gaze swept the clearing again. “Everything out here wants something from you. Just don’t give it your blood.”
Finley tucked his paws behind his back. He didn’t want anything in the forest to want anything from him.
“Collect what we can,” Thatcher said, standing up straight and flattening his cloak. “But don’t eat any. These are for Cragjaw.”
Finley watched the adults spread out cautiously, gathering the shimmering fruit. The berries pulsed like they were breathing.
He wasn’t sure if they were supposed to look alive.
And he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
As the others picked carefully, Shade and Pip moved ahead, scouting for a place to make camp. They found an old pond bed, long dry, ringed with brittle reeds. Pip plucked a few, careful not to break them.
“I want to make something for the kids,” she said. Shade only nodded.
A little further up the trail, they found a suitable place to camp and began preparations.
When the others caught up, Gertie immediately started setting up the cookpot. The group moved with practiced ease, tents unfurled, watch assignments divvied, fire pit scraped out and circled with stone.
The berries were stored safely aside. Mostly.
Gertie glanced at them several times while unpacking her herbs, muttering excuses to herself: checking for bruises, sorting by ripeness, making sure they’d travel well. Her paw hesitated. Just one.
Later, as the sun dipped and cast long shadows across the forest floor, Gertie held one shimmerberry between her paws. Just one, she thought. Cragjaw wouldn’t notice. Then bit in.
Sweet. Faintly bitter. Like honey poured over iron. Her eyes fluttered shut. And maybe just a handful, for the stew…
Dinner was rich, more than it had any right to be. Gertie’s cooking was always good, but tonight’s meal brought murmurs of awe. Even Thatcher lowered his pretension long enough to say, “It’s excellent.”
“It’s made with love,” Gertie beamed, licking her paw.
Her stomach rumbled, but not with hunger. She pressed a paw to her belly and said nothing.
They toasted her, water sloshing in wooden cups, soft laughter echoing beneath the trees. For a moment, they felt like something close to safe.
As dusk fell and shadows lengthened, Pip reached into her satchel and pulled out the flutes.
She passed one to Finley, then Brooke. “They’re rough,” she said, “but I made them from pond reeds. They’ll play.”
Finley’s eyes lit up. Brooke turned hers over in her paws like it was treasure.
“Want to learn something simple?” Pip asked.
The two nodded, eager.
She showed them how to hold the flutes, where to place their fingers. The first few notes were shaky… off-key squeaks and stuttering whistles. Brooke burst into giggles. Finley frowned with effort, tongue sticking out.
Pip didn’t mind. She guided gently, correcting their hands, encouraging each note.
Soon, a simple melody emerged, four notes, rising and falling. It was a child’s tune, nothing more, but in the hush of twilight it felt sacred.
The others stopped their murmured conversations. Gertie smiled into the stew pot. Slate paused in his knife sharpening. Even Shade, tending the fire, looked up and listened.
And then Thatcher sang.
He didn’t ask. He simply stood, cloak rustling, and let his voice slip in beside the flutes like silk drawn through smoke.
It was beautiful. Deep, resonant, warm. A voice shaped by years of luxury, yes… but trained, too. Earned. The kind of voice meant to fill great halls and quiet rooms alike.
The lyrics came soft and solemn, a song of rivers and memory, of home long gone and the road ahead. He sang of green banks washed away, of names whispered into wind, of the courage to keep walking even when the map fades.
The children played on, their melody lifting him like a raft.
When the final note fell, silence bloomed. A full, reverent silence… not awkward, but whole.
Even Thatcher didn’t speak. Only the fire cracked.
For the briefest heartbeat, they were more than travelers, more than scouts and soldiers and reluctant heroes. They were a circle, whole and unbroken, bound by song, by firelight, and by the quiet belief, however fragile, that they might still save what mattered.
Then the wind stirred, and the woods remembered themselves. The night closed in again.
That night, they all dreamed.
It began in the clearing where they had found the shimmerberries. But now, the moon was too close, so close it hung just above the treetops, massive and silent, glowing with veins of violet light. The berries pulsed in rhythm with it, soft and wet, like breathing wounds.
The fruit no longer grew on vines, but from mouths, human-sized, slack-jawed, clustered close together like blossoms after rain. Lips pale. Tongues curled inward. Dozens of them, open and silent, sprouting from the soil like flowers.
The scent was sweet and rotting.
Gertie stood in the center, stirring a black cauldron over an invisible fire. Her ladle moved in slow circles. When she looked up, her eyes were glassy and wide, and her voice came in a singsong whisper:
“Don’t let it boil, or the stew will wake.”
Finley walked nearby, a flute in his paws. He played a soft, trembling melody, and as he did, the mouths swayed toward him, echoing the tune without sound.
Brooke held a spark in each palm. Little flames, like candlelight. She cradled them, but they began to spread, licking up her arms, turning her fur black in streaks. She didn’t scream, only stared forward, expression blank, as if waiting to be told what to do.
Lina sat alone at the forest’s edge. A thousand tiny needles grew from the ground around her like teeth. She whispered names, too soft to hear, and each name turned the trees darker. Pip watched Lina, but every time she tried to step closer, her feet sank into the earth. The soil was not soil anymore, but warm and spongy, like flesh.
Thatcher stood atop a fallen log, hands raised like a conductor. His voice rang out again, the same song from the fire: but now the notes came out cold, echoing in reverse. Frost formed on the leaves around him. His breath hung in the air, and his eyes were distant, filled with stars that blinked like dying embers.
Then the forest split.
From the trees beyond the clearing came a slithering sound, wet and slow, like something vast dragging itself through a grave of wet leaves. The mouths in the ground all turned to face it, eyes blooming in their throats.
A shape loomed. Black and long and pulsing with faint purple light. Serathis.
But not just the snake: its presence.
It had no face, only hunger. Its eyes were not eyes but voids, and in its mouth was the world, chewed to ash.
A voice filled their minds, not spoken, but felt:
“You came too close. You tasted what was meant to be hidden. Now you carry it.”
The shimmerberries around them burst open, spilling black honey. It coated their paws. Their mouths. Their eyes.
And then they woke, all at once: gasping, sweating, eyes wide, hearts racing to the gentle crackle of the dying fire.
Their gasps overlapped. Gertie’s eyes locked with Pip’s. Finley clutched his flute like a weapon. Brooke was already holding her brother’s paw. No one spoke.
They didn’t need to. Each knew, beyond doubt, the dream had been shared.
And then Pip’s flute, still in her grip, cracked in half.
A Pact With Fangs is available on Amazon in print / ebook form, as well as on youtube as an audio book.