“Fog’s lifting,” said Karl.

Damien swigged from his water-bottle. 

“About time. More like a horror movie than a backwoods tramp.”

Karl grinned, and adjusted his backpack.

“This is New Zealand. We’re the monsters. Not nature.”

“Nature’s not lacking claws. I swear, I thought I’d stumbled into a John Carpenter movie for a moment.”

“No, just the Ureweras. And John Carpenter’s still better than spending Easter with Sarah. No wonder you run to the hills.”

Damien grunted, and started along the trail. Then he stopped. And bent down.

“A flute.”

“Just lying there?”

“Yep.” Damien picked it up. “Looks like bone.”

“A bone flute, randomly lying on the trail? Dropped by a tourist?”

“By somebody.”

“Pass it here.”

Karl took the instrument. Lighter than the one he’d played in the school orchestra. Fewer holes too – only five, rather than sixteen. Smells like mist and hill. He put it to his lips.

“Don’t,” said Damien suddenly.

“Don’t what? I can play.”

“You don’t know where it’s been. Who it belonged to.”

“You worry too much.”

Karl blew. His fingers danced upon the holes. Tutira Mai Ngā Iwi should work, even on this odd little thing.

“Stop.”

Karl lowered the flute. Damien stared wide-eyed, his face corpse-pale.

“That tune…?”

“Tutira Mai Ngā Iwi. The notes slipped a bit, but it wasn’t that bad. Was it?”

“It sounded… unearthly. Like a song-bird that’s lost its soul. Throw the damned flute away.”

“Damien, I know your new job is stressful, but get a bloody grip. Otherwise, this’ll be the last time I go Easter tramping with you.”

Karl slid the flute into the pocket of his shorts.

***

The trail wound up and down slopes choked with ferns. The ferns’ fronds uncurled, cool and moist. Karl drew a deep and pleasant breath, savouring the earthy scents of the New Zealand forest.

Green and glorious.

Up ahead, Damien had stopped too. He stood beneath a rimu tree, leaning a hand against the red-brown bark.

“Karl, can you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

Damien turned, and looked at him.

“Exactly. We haven’t heard a single birdcall all afternoon. You’d think the tuis would be out and about. But no. There’s no music of the bush.”

Karl paused, and listened. Nothing. Nor had there been for hours.

“Odd. Perhaps my toot on the flute scared them away. I must be rustier than I thought.”

Damien shook his head.

“I’ve never been on a tramp like this.”

***

The sun was dipping below the mountains as they arrived at the hut. Still no birdcalls, but the murmur of a nearby stream at least broke the silence. Karl found himself vaguely grateful for that stream, though he could not understand why.

After a dinner of rehydrated chicken curry, they settled down for some torchlight reading. Karl settled down at the table, and pulled out his dog-eared copy of The Hobbit. The dwarves had left Beorn, and were entering Mirkwood. Damien…

“What are you reading?”

Damien was lying on the lower bunk-bed, atop his sleeping bag.

“Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori, by James Cowan.”

“About the Maori fairies?”

“The patupaiarehe, yes.” 

“Those evil little guys with the pale skin and red hair? Like Sarah?”

“Yes, like Sarah. But there’s stories about them, and not just old Maori legends either. Hunters hear their music far off in the hills. It’s haunting. Hypnotic even. It calls to you.”

“Perhaps that bone flute is one of theirs.”

“I told you to throw it away.”

Karl sighed.

“If it makes you happy, I won’t leave the Ureweras with it. But honestly, you’re taking this stuff too seriously. You heard my tune earlier. Did I sound haunting and hypnotic?”

“You sounded like no human should, I know that much.”

Silence ruled after that, apart from the torchlit turning of the pages.

But Karl couldn’t concentrate. Tolkien’s descriptions of Mirkwood, its trees and strange enchanted rivers, kept drawing his mind back to the Ureweras. The hills of mist and fern, and fairy flute. At last, he shut the book.

“I’m heading outside.”

Damien looked up from the bunk-bed.

“What for?”

“To sit beside the stream and think.”

“Be careful.”

Careful of what?

***

The night was clear; far from the lights of the city, the sky blazed with stars. A half-moon bathed the land in an eerie silver glow, while across the stream the trees loomed, black and ancient. Slivers of mist crept through the undergrowth. 

Karl found a nice flat boulder beside the water. Putting down his torch, he sat and pondered the last couple of days in the forest.

Damien’s skittish, but he is right. It is an odd tramp.

He fished the bone flute from his pocket. Somehow, it seemed at the heart of the strangeness. Karl debated throwing it into the water, or into the trees on the far bank. Then he might walk back to the hut, and give Damien the good news.

Never mind the missing tuis. Damien doesn’t have a musical bone in his body.

Yes. Damien could go on about the haunting, hypnotic power of fairy flutes – as if that were unnatural. Karl knew better. Music was supposed to enchant, and the better the music, the better the spell it cast.

He put the instrument to his lips, and began to play.

Tutira Mai Ngā Iwi.

Karl felt goose-pimples spreading across his skin.

I’m being watched.

Not by Damien. His friend would’ve stopped him already. No, this audience was silent. Polite, like attendees at a playing of the Symphony Orchestra. Karl finished the tune, and slid the flute back into his pocket.

Then he seized the torch, and shone it across the water.

Karl frowned.

Had he seen a gleam of eyes? Heard a rustle of movement among the ferns?

“Hello?”

No answer.

“I know you’re there. Come out and show yourselves.”

Something definitely moved.

Torch in hand, Karl crossed the stream. Shallow, but deep enough to get his feet wet. Cool waters lapped at his calves and shins. Karl did not care. He had spare socks enough back at the hut.

He clambered onto the far bank, and shone the torch into the ferns.

“Show yourselves, you bastards.”

He instinctively swung around.

Eyes shone back amid the darkness of the forest. Then they were gone. But the rustling in the ferns… he heard it.

Cursing, Karl strode forward among the trees. He waved the torchlight before him, like a protective charm. 

Suddenly, he felt his legs ensnared, as if in a net.

I can’t move. What is this?

The more Karl struggled, the more he found himself trapped. His body was wrapped in a web of countless flaxen fibres, each woven into an unbreakable whole.

Panic gripped him.

“Damien!” he shouted. “Help me, Damien!”

The torch slipped from his grasp, and fell to earth. It lay among the ferns, still lighting the night with an amber glow.

“Damien!”

Then he saw them. No longer the gleam of eyes or a rustle in the undergrowth. Pale skinned, red haired. Humanoid, and yet nothing human.

One approached. Its face was sly, its eyes full of ancient cunning.

The fairy chittered, in a language half-birdcall, half-laughter. It slid its fingers into the pocket of Karl’s shorts, and pulled out the bone flute.

More chittering.

The fairy raised the flute to its lips.

The night-time forest rang with notes of liquid enchantment. Not Tutira Mai Ngā Iwi. Nor any music of mortals. 

Damien had called birdsong the music of the bush. How silly. This fairy song, old even when the Maori had first landed their waka upon the shores of Aotearoa… this was the true anthem of the hills and the wilds.

Karl screamed himself hoarse.

***

Damien put his book down. 

Karl’s been a while. Best check on him.

He grabbed his torch. But no sooner had he eased open the hut door than sheer terror gripped his gut.

Someone was shouting. Faint and far-off, but Damien could hear it. Worse… there was music in the forest tonight. A music he had never heard before, and yet which he recognised from Cowan’s book. Sweet, high, and haunting, it called to him. An unearthly melody, a lure and a warning.

The patupaiarehe. They must have got Karl.

“I warned him about that flute. I bloody warned him.”

Damien shook his head. What was he to do? He couldn’t very well huddle here in the hut, while the fairies carried off his friend… and yet, did he dare venture out among them? In their own forest, at night? Any tramper knew that would be rank madness.

Damien steeled himself. He had never considered himself particularly brave… but madness or not, he would try. Yes, he would try.

“I don’t believe in fairies,” he muttered. 

He threw in a curse for good measure. 

***

Torch in hand, Damien hurried down to the moonlit stream. He stood on the bank for a moment, gauging the direction of Karl’s shouts.

Best not shout back. It’ll only draw them to me.

He waded out into the waters, and then clambered up into the misty gloom of the far-bank.

***

Damien’s heart raced, as he crept through the undergrowth. Low-hanging branches grazed his cheek, as if making a grab at him. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. Did the patupaiarehe know another human walked the woods tonight?

Maybe.

No, definitely. If they’ve followed us ever since Karl picked up the flute, they’ll know there’s two of us. 

Worse, that awful music seemed to come from all directions. To his left, to his right, straight-on, and even behind him, back towards the stream.

Damien blocked it out, and followed the shouting.

He passed through the ferns as quietly as he could, one hand on the torch, the other clenched in readiness. 

He felt the eyes upon him. 

***

Damien halted, and wiped the sweat from his brow.

The shouts had died away. With them had gone all sign of Karl. 

And yet the forest was not silent. No, the unearthly piping of flutes still urged him onwards, deeper into the trees. It was even as he had read of those old hunters’ stories: the fairies called to him.

They’ve got Karl. They won’t get me too.

He glanced up, through a gap in the leafy canopy, and offered a silent prayer to the moon.

Then with heavy heart, he turned and retraced his steps.

***

Damien waved the torchlight among the tree-trunks. Had he been here before? He did not know. He cursed himself for blundering into the bush, at night. 

I couldn’t just sit there, and let them cart my friend away.

But he hadn’t found Karl. He hadn’t found anything. If he could just find the stream, he’d be able to regain the hut … but there was no stream. Only ferns, and trees, branches and fronds. The snap and crack of sticks underfoot. The mist in the air.

And the music. Oh, the terrible and beautiful music.

It no longer called to him. Now it laughed at him. The fairies had won, and they revelled in their triumph.

Damien stumbled onwards. 

***

“Help,” Damien murmured to himself. “Please help.”

The eyes stared back from the darkness, gleaming and pitiless.

***

Damien’s eyes flickered open.

Morning.

For a moment, he wondered where he was. Then the horrors of the night flooded back. The loss of Karl, the desperate midnight plunge into the trees, and the mocking flutes of the patupaiarehe. All of it. He sat up, his back and legs aching. His socks were still soaked.

He blinked. This was no forest floor, or soft bed of ferns. He sat on the pinewood floor of the tramping hut, with his torch lying beside him.

A second torch too. Karl’s.

“How the hell did I find the way here?” he muttered, as he inspected the mysterious flashlight. “I don’t remember this at all.”

But better this than passing out in the middle of the bush.

Yawning, he climbed to his feet, and stumbled outside into the sunlit day.

Damien looked down. 

On the ground lay the bone flute.

***

He carried the flute down to the stream.

And flung it far into the trees.

[Daniel Stride has a lifelong love of literature in general and speculative fiction in particular. He writes both short stories and poetry; his first novel, steampunk-flavoured dark fantasy Wise Phuul, was published in November 2016 by small UK press Inspired Quill, and a sequel, Old Phuul is due out in 2025. His short fiction has appeared in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, The Lesbian Historical Motif Podcast, and SpecFicNZ anthology Te Korero Ahi Ka. He has enormous fondness for chocolate, cats, and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and can be found blogging at https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/. Daniel lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.]