The night is silent, too silent, far too silent for a village with two babies and five toddlers and fifty adults who have more important things to do than sleep in the early evening, no matter how long ago the sun may set. Once you’ve torn apart your family’s hut and verified what was obvious from the first glance inside--your family is not there--you extinguish your torch and stumble into the dark. Minya is waiting for you. You lean against her and she slips an arm around your shoulders, her companionship a precious reassurance. “What’s happening?” you ask. “We were only gone for a few hours.”
“Everyone was acting normally when we left,” Minya responds, glancing around. The doors to the other huts have been left open, as though everyone just dropped all they owned and ran into the night. In the light of a still-burning cooking fire in the nearest hut, you can see toys scattered across the ground and a narrow ladder hung with jewelry knocked over. In a burst of desperation, you run to the doorway. There isn’t a living being in sight. You go to the next hut. Still-cold polenta is hung over the dying embers in the fire pit, and a platter of vegetables has shattered on the floor. You run from door to door to door, Minya watching silently from the village center. All empty.
"Panic never helped anyone," she finally reminds you.
The calm in her voice is grounding. Taking a deep breath, you study the surroundings for the first time since you returned from the woods and discovered your village deserted. The moon is low in the sky and red, and while usually you'd say that it's peeking from behind the clouds, tonight you think it's staring, stalking you behind the heavy clouds that will soon cloak it entirely, leave you alone with nothing in this world but your torch, Minya, and a village of ghosts. In the dullest of pink light it casts shadows in the plains before you, the sparse woods to either side and the forest to your back. You pause and turn to stare at the latter.
'Forest' is perhaps the wrong word. Some have suggested that it may actually be a mountain of tremendous proportions, but its size and inhospitality makes any certainty inconceivable. It's known to legends as a place of breathtaking wonder and breathstealing horrors, of caves of solid amethyst, women who conspire with birds against humans, silver lynxes that fall invisible after nightfall. The things in the forest usually remain in the forest, or at least you hope they do, but there’s a reason people never enter the woods alone during the night. That’s why, when you sleepwalked during your nap just a few hours ago, Minya followed you and stayed with you until you woke, to keep you safe and explain your bizarre circumstances when you came to. And walked with you, laughing in the dark, to the shell of your village.
Minya glances at the forest. “What are you thinking?” she asks. The wind ruffles her pale hair, sends the torn hem of her dress whirling in the wind.
You step closer to her and hope she’ll make everything better. “I’m thinking that something terrible happened,” you answer, “and that the offenders came from the forest.”
“That would explain why they all fled,” she concedes, unwrapping her double-strand necklace to let the amethyst beads swing above your eyebrows. You stare at the gems, haunted by a rush of grief--your father had a necklace just like hers--before you process what she said.
“Fled?”
“Well, if they didn’t flee, where are they?”
A glimmer of hope; maybe they’re all still alive somewhere. “We should search the woods. Do you have a torch?”
“What, and burn the forest to the ground?” She inclines her head. “The moon is bright and beautiful. Walk with me.” She holds out her hand. You take it, comforted, and step into the woods.
She’s right; you can see well enough to keep from tripping by the dim red moonlight filtering through the clouds, turning the bare silver branches of the trees to rose quartz. You wander in silence for a while. A raindrop lands on your cheek, then another, and then the silence is replaced by the patter of a steady drizzle. You stop under the slight protection of a dead tree only seven feet tall excluding the branches, which stretch up and away from the village as though they sense the horror that must have taken place there. “I don’t see any sign of them.”
Miyna plucks a large woven cap, black and dirty, from the ground. You recognize the handiwork as that of the village shoemaker; given its size, it must have belonged to her giant of a husband. How Minya noticed it in the dark is beyond you. She tugs it onto your head, rolling it up so you can see. “There’s your sign.”
You trudge onward until your boot hits something and you topple to the ground, scraping your shin. You sit up and pause in confusion. Under your boot is a teensy dead tree, its bark embedded in your ankle. But this baby tree is sideways. It’s trunk--if it could be called a trunk--emerges from the ground and instantly curves, so it lies horizontal on the ground. You lean in for a closer look and notice something beneath the wood. Pulling it to your eye, you gasp; it’s the doll of the potter’s darling baby, the one with the pregnant mother that taught you to make daisy crowns. You don’t want to think about the implications of this discovery; you shove the doll into your pocket and accept Minya’s outstretched hand. Then you turn and nearly walk into yet another dead tree. This one must have been infected when alive; its short trunk is covered in bulges, one large one in the middle and other smaller cysts scattered throughout. You pause. You can’t remember an infection so great in any of the nearby trees. “Minya, do you remember--” you begin, but you realize you can’t remember Minya ever joining you in the foraging expeditions in the woods, and she’s no logger, so she may not be aware of the trees’ states. You let your voice die.
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“We shouldn’t stay here long. You’ll catch a cold,” Minya says.
You two pass more than one unshapely dead tree, but don’t stop until you reach one with a tiny vertical tree growing from its trunk. Some of its branches are outstretched, some are wrapped around the parasite. Like a mother protecting her baby.
And your fear for your loved ones turns to sheer dread.
“We need to return. Now.” You grab Minya’s hand and race to the village. For a moment she’s being pulled behind you but she quickly takes the lead, long legs propelling her past you in her heavy gait, dragging you behind. You’d never appreciated the awkwardness of such long legs before.
You stumble into the village and tug Minya towards the house of your great-aunt, who couldn’t rise from her chair much less run. You had assumed that your uncle would carry her in a moment of crisis, but if your fear was realized and the danger had been so great that mothers had dropped their own babies, then--
You burst into the hut, light the torch on the wall, and freeze. In the flickering light you can barely see her rocker. Surrounding it, consuming it, is a gnarled, dead tree. Her knitting sits at its feet. You extinguish the torch to protect yourself from the sight, stumble into the rain, and scream.
Minya wraps her arms around you, strokes your back, squeezes you to her. “Shhh, it’s okay,” she whispers. Half of you wants to believe her, half feels repulsed by her calmness. She lost family too, right? Right? She must have, though in your state you can’t remember who.
There’s a howl in the woods, forcing you back into the real world. “It’s not okay, it’s not. The village on the other side of the plains. We need to get to the village on the other side of the plains. They’ll help us. Or we can warn them. I don’t know. We just need to get to the village on the other side of the plains.” You burst from her grasp and charge through the burgeoning downpour towards the moon, almost completely shaded by clouds. In the dark you can barely see the grass of the plains that slap your dress, can barely see the plots of farmland you plow through without a moment’s consideration for the squash and potatoes trampled underfoot.
“The village is half a day’s ride away! You’ll just tire yourself!” Minya calls, but you ignore her, running until you aren’t sure you’re running the right direction anymore and don’t care. The ground under your feet squishes every few paces, but whether it’s from rotten berries or gopher’s mounds turned to mud, you can’t tell. In the dark there’s nothing but the storm, the cold, and the desperate need to find a community of peace and warmth.
And then the clouds slide from the moon and dim light floods the plains. Around you stand dead trees.
Only a few, true, but there were never trees in the prairie. Something glimmers on the ground before the nearest tree. You approach, apprehensive, and kneel. In the trampled grass amethyst beads gleam. You gather them one by one, tuck them into your pocket, stand. You don’t face the tree. You can’t.
From the darkness Minya emerges, loping towards you. You feel a twinge of relief for her presence. She stops a meter away and frowns, the edges of her lips brushing her jawline. There’s a cloak growing damp in one hand. “Have you returned to your senses yet?” she asks, voice low.
You show her one of the amethysts. She takes it and you wonder how she’ll react, which memories of your father they’ll shake up. Then again, you don’t think Minya was particularly close to your father, so perhaps she wouldn’t be affected. In fact, you can’t actually remember Minya ever meeting your father. Of course she must have, many times, but you can’t picture any individual interaction between them.
She reaches into your pocket and pulls out the rest of the beads. “These are marvellous,” she whispers. “I didn’t notice these before.”
“It means he’s dead,” you sob. “That’s him. It has to be.” You point to the tree without looking.
She dips her chin, sympathetic. “I know. Sweetheart, I’m afraid I can’t let you have these. You need to learn to let go. He’s gone. Trees don’t have individual minds, you know.”
You want his gems back. You instinctively reach to grab them from her, realize that of course you can’t, she’s still a meter away, what’s wrong with you, and walk to her. You try to grab them back but she holds them two meters above you, pity in her pale eyes. You waver.
She tucks the gems into her pocket. “Let it go, like I said. It will be best for you.” She purses her lips. “Oh, look at you, I hadn’t noticed how wet you were. You must be freezing, poor thing.” Her ragged gray dress is soaked to the skin. She unfurls the cloak and wraps it around your shoulders, pulling it snug, and ties it under your chin. It’s soft and warm despite the dampness, and its weight feels protective. She extends a hand. You take it. Then she silently leads you towards home.
You’re walking about two meters behind her, your hand limp in hers, when lightning crashes and a distant tree bursts into flame. The fire starts quickly despite the rain, so the tree must be dead. Dead. You stifle a sob. Minya looks back and sighs. Pulling you into a hug, she whispers, “it’s okay. She’s dead. She can’t feel a thing anymore.”
Between the warmth of the heavy cloak and the way she lightly pushes your head into her stomach, hiding you from the horror of the outside world, you almost feel safe. You’re grateful that, somehow, the fates aligned to spare you and your…
Friend?
Sister?
Neighbor?
You grow still in Minya’s arms. How do you know her?
You close your eyes for a moment, trying to find a footing in the haze of fear and trauma in your mind. “Do you know you?”
She smiles. “I’ve known you for a while. I love the way you apologize to slugs when you step on them. And how genuinely remorseful you sounded when you apologized to your mother for mistakes only she thought you’d committed.”
You don’t know her. And of course you don’t.
“Now that you’ve calmed down, we can go home,” she says. You force yourself to meet her eyes, the pale silver sclera amid the deep, dark pits of her eyelids and undereyes. She smiles, and the corners of her mouth brush her ears. “I thought you’d be more grateful, but you’ll have time to learn. I still remember being like you. Hurry now, before the sun rises, for my friends are curious to meet you.”
You look back at the silhouette of the sad little tree cast in the moonlight. In the rain it looks almost normal, natural, a pathetic corpse in a pathetic environment. The clouds before the moon are growing thicker once more.
You accept her hand and comply as she leads you forward with her long arms, through the prairie, past the village, and into the forest.