Slave Girl 2: Chapter 31 (Patreon)

Knowing that I had employment starting in two days really lit a flame under me to attend to what I could around the villa.  Once begun the harvest would entail weeks of sunup to sundown toil as we raced against the approaching cool and damp of autumn.  I would need to speak to Rosa about what she’d be doing while I was in the fields but it gave me heart that Cas was willing to take her on for that period of time.

With some good tools at hand and nothing to slow me down I set to work.  My first task is to get my woodshed in order.  Pulling out the rotted wood and chasing out the mice that had made their home there, one unlucky one getting snatched up and gulped down by a skulking Danae, I find the shack to be in good order overall.  The old wood I add to the burn pile out front then I set off into the woods to the North of the entry path.

As I park our cart near where I wanted to enter I begin to scan about for a trail or break in the verdant wall.  Even using a game trail I quickly discover the forest to be thick with undergrowth.  In it’s heyday slaves would have maintained this woodland and kept this underbrush tamed but it had been left to go wild many long years ago.  My uncle had little interest in the estate beyond the house and garden it seems.  Pushing through the dense greenery it is not long before the growth thins out considerably.  Under the heavy canopy Sol’s muted light simply could not support the type of thicket I’d just walked through.

“Woahhhh.”   I say in a hushed voice as I take in the sight before me.

It was so GREEN!  Ferns and tender shade loving plants filled the spaces between the great trees of the old forest and every stone and trunk was carpeted with a soft veil of moss.  Filtering through the dense border of shrubs and bushes as well as down from the unbroken foliage high over head the very light itself was the shade of ripe lime.  The air was thick with burgeoning vegetal life and natural healthy decay in equal measure.  On some of the dead fall and sprouting among the twisting roots are clusters of fungi from large coppery ear-like growths to twisting spires of purple to round bright red caps which combined to make it appear as if a treasure of coin and jewels had been spilled out across the emerald tapestry.  And topping it all off were the gleaming motes of green light disappearing through the fronds.  By the time I blinked next…they were gone.  Nymphs!  We had forest nymphs!

While not quite as dark and not quite as ancient as that glade we’d passed through where Rosa first performed for the Green King there was a resemblance that could not be missed.  This was no common stand of trees.  I could FEEL in my bones the age of his place and sense the energy of life all around me.  I was simply a visitor here and long after I had passed this place would remain.  The slope and rugged landscape had saved this plot from being cleared for agriculture but it was surely this palpable sense of the divine that had held back the locals from turning the forest into lumber.  Looking back over my shoulder in the direction of my villa I wonder what fool had been so foolish as to build here.  Was this why my land was cursed?

I shake my head.  “No.  This is our life.  Our land.  Our chance at happiness.”  Reaching out to the nearest trunk I feel the rough bark in my palm.  “What is the span of a human life to you old king?  Leave us to live in peace and we shall be gone soon enough.”

A twinge of sadness pricks my heart as I realize that Rosa would never see this wild beauty.  How I wished I could show it to her.  She would live among it her whole life and never once get a glimpse.  The very god responsible for it had stolen her chance to look upon his green splendor.  I sigh.  Shouldering my axe I set off in search of a tree that even Silvanus could not begrudge me for claiming.

After just a few minutes of exploring the area I find a suitable candidate.  A good size tree barely clinging to life, choked from light by its larger neighbors as it was, looked to be just the one.  I rap on it’s trunk to hear the satisfying solidity of wood not too dry nor hollowed out by rot.  Looking up I give the trunk a shake to see what shakes loose and I quickly shield myself as a hail of dry branches and twigs comes raining down on me.  These I collect and begin a pile.  With my axe and knife hooked into my belt I clamber up about twenty feet and begin hewing the larger branches from the main body so that they wouldn’t skewer me later as I felled the tree.

I am just about to get to it when, from my higher vantage point, I notice the twinkling specks of nymphs zipping and dancing within the canopy overhead.  From ground level they were invisible them but from here I could just make them out.  There were so many  Dozens.  Hundreds.  A whole forest nation of the minuscule creatures.  Amazing.  Looking around I see that I was a sort of midway point between ground and ceiling which allowed me to see over the verge.  Behind me I could see the trail that connected my house to the road.  To my right I spot the walls of the villa through the intertwining trunks and branches.  To my right I could not see the road but I could notice a brightening where the forest made way to the open space of the road.  And straight ahead as far as I could see was the forest itself.  I spot two deer grazing on the green foliage completely oblivious to my presence.

As my gaze pans across the forest floor closer to me I spot something.  Or to be more accurate, I spot an absence.  At first I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at.  It was just green moss, stone and earth like everywhere else.  But as I stare at the area it slowly comes into focus.  A square.  A perfect square of green within the green.  The only thing that  gives it away was the complete lack of ferns and larger vegetation.  In an area about thrice my height across there was only moss and low grass.  As I concentrate on just that area it then reveals to me there was four equally sized small boulders at each of the corners.  Another moment later I realize that they were not boulders but the broken and weathered bases of four pillars.  With this clue revealed my eyes dart about and I spot other stones, brighter than the natural local rock, splayed about.  The shattered remnants of the pillars themselves had all fallen directly away from the center of the square.  As with the nymphs I never would have spotted it but for my elevated vantage point.

“What the…?”  I whisper.

Climbing back down I weave through the forest toward the area.  Even knowing that it was there I had to be extra attentive or I might have missed it.  I approach from the Southeast corner and feel ahead with my foot.  The soft earth beneath the spongy moss turns hard in a perfectly straight line.  Taking my axe I bring the handle down and hear the wood pierce through the moss to make contact with stone or cement.

“What are you hiding here old king?”  I mutter.

Stepping onto the area I find it flat and nearly level with the surrounding ground.  I study the base of the pillar but find it barely more than a hard circular mound.  Looking out over the broken pieces of pillar that spread out a dozen feet.  There was not evidence of there ever being walls and I could find no pieces of roof either.  It seemed to have been simply a square platform with a column at each corner.  As I picture what it must have looked like in my mind I come back again and again to the sacrificial altars dedicated to great Neptune and his fearsome pet Kraken dotted along the coast.  Though mostly an abandoned ritual now it was not unheard of for towns to still make human offerings when the fury of the sea became particularly dreadful.  But I’d never even heard of one of these being anywhere except right along sea’s edge.  We were nowhere near the sea here.  What could one of these been doing so far inland?

Kneeling down I use my knife and my hands to start peeling away the moss.  What I find beneath was both surprising and familiar.  Surprising because the floor of the platform was not smooth but etched in a pattern of straight lines which intersected here and there.  As I peel more away the familiarity sinks in.  A maze was carved upon this platform.  While much older in style I could not help but notice the similarity with labyrinth mosaic floor that decorated my entry way.  Standing up I stare down at the design and try to make sense of it.

Walking about the square I tap the base of my axe here and there as I go.  Clonk.  Clonk.  Clonk.  Clang!

I stop at the ring of metal hitting metal.  Tapping about I am able to narrow the metallic area to a round plate located dead center of the platform.  Cutting the moss away I again peel it back to discover a round plate of heavy copper, a thick green patina coating it.  Here the pattern from the stone continued perfectly onto the metal with just a seam the width of a knife blade between them.

I peel it away more until I get to the center.  There I find a stout metal ring affixed to the plate.  The ring seemed designed to be used to lift the plate from it’s place.  Was this a covering for a hole?  An entrance into something beneath the earth?  That would make it the third underground entrance I’d discovered thus far after the one on the garden stairs and the one at beneath the gazebo.  So strange!  As I brush the dirt around it away I find that the ring was looped into a part of the design that was made up of curving lines, distinct from the straight labyrinthine pattern that made up the rest of the surface.  As I scrape the earth with my fingers I see that the ring was affixed…to a nose?  As I wipe upward two glowering rage filled eyes are revealed followed by two long sharp horns stretching out from either side of the wide bovine head.

Emblazoned right in the center of the metal is the face of a bull.

Chapter 32