Out of The Woods (6 page)

Unwillingly, she slowed her walk even more. Sweat ran down her forehead into her eyes. She rubbed it away impatiently. The hair on the back of her neck lifted: the sound of someone tracking her was suddenly louder, more obvious. She wheeled around, her hands held high in a martial arts guard, steeling herself to face whatever was there.

The empty motionless forest made a mockery of her stance. No one was there. She felt a collapsing inside. Dropping her hands, she turned around, and walked on. She tried to ignore her quickened breathing and the sweat trickling down the back of her neck.

It took longer than she liked, but she finally found a small off-shoot trail. It was just as she’d expected: overgrown, with small flexible branches that snapped back into place after she’d pushed through. In the ebbing daylight, she moved hastily along the path, and after several minutes, came to the edge of a massive tree. She knew this type of tree: it would shelter her. She stood very still.

If she stayed this frightened for long, alone in the woods, she’d go mad. So she didn’t enter the shelter straight away, telling herself that the delay would prove the woods were safe, that she wasn’t afraid she was being followed. After all, what protection did a tree shelter really provide?

She stood outside the shelter, trying to assuage her fear by telling herself a story about the tree, like a bedtime story one would tell a young child to chase away nightmares.

“Long years ago,” she said aloud, “this tree sprouted roots from some of its high branches. It was on a quest similar to the quest that draws you.”

She stopped; it wouldn’t do for the tale to be told this way, in a hurry, in a voice tensed with fear. With effort, she gentled her voice and slowed her speech, and then she continued. Now her voice reminded her of a river, smooth and flowing.

“This tree – Ballyo, it was called, after an ancient wise man – had grown so tall that it had lost all touch with the earth. With the source. It reached for the ground through its limbs, sending out long aerial roots, aiming to bury them deep in the rich earth. Ballyo had grown very tall; without the extra strength of a more vast foundation, it would topple in the high winds of winter.”

There, that was better.

“Over time, the aerial roots stretched their fingers towards the earth. Some died, alone on their heroic journeys, dwindling away to nothingness. The evidence of their failed attempts hung for all to see, in the shortened hairy strands that hung only halfway to the earth.”

She paused, and thought of herself, thought of her journey. Would she be one that made it, or not? She closed her eyes: the crackles she heard would just be birds nesting down for the nigh
t. I won’t let myself look around.
She forced herself to continue.

“Some, the strongest aerial roots, made it. These touched down, and felt within the earth for crevices and finger-holds. They found them, and they grew, over the course of many lifetimes. Those lifetimes were full of the usual mix of joy and sorrow, life and death.”

She would not allow herself to think of her own life yet, of what it had cost her to live until now. She breathed deeply, and continued the story.

“Eventually the roots found the quality of earth they sought. It was warm and dark and full of nutrients, and it opened the way for them, and they became deep-rooted. They had found their homes and they grew strong and thick, and were then responsible for the strength of the tree entire.”

Halley stopped talking, and assessed her body. It had worked – she had been soothed by her own story, her fear calmed. She was ready to examine the shelter that Ballyo could provide.

Between the main tree and the roots was a sheltering space, roofed by small branches and leaves. She was drawn to the leaves immediately, by the ordinariness of their shape. They were just like leaves should be: no fanciness, the main body just a simple elongated ellipse. The leaf had one central vein from which many lines of veins radiated, each at a thirty-degree angle; this made the little leaf resemble nothing so much as the etching of a tiny Christmas tree, ready to be decorated. She ran her finger along the back of the leaf, letting the central vein slide under her fingernail. She liked the thickness of the vein, the way it filled the space under the nail, the way it stood out from the back of the leaf. The rest of the leaf was soft and smooth, yet nicely thick. Everything about it was re-assuring.

Better still, the space these leaves roofed was almost fully encircled by long, slender roots that were anchored into the earth. She ran her hand along one of them in memory of her story.
Brave root.
Some of the roots had thickened and were now the size of her forearms. They were like small tree trunks themselves. Between neighboring roots, only tiny gaps existed, so the shelter inside was almost fully enclosed.

A small opening remained that acted as an entrance. This was fringed with more hairy roots that were working their way towards the earth below.
Not failures
. She had remembered something else about this tree: the aerial roots absorbed nutrients and water directly from the air. They were of value to the greater tree – it wasn’t just the ones that had touched the earth that were worthy. All were worthy.

She peered inside. The shelter was surprisingly spacious, with room for her to stretch out full length if she curled up just slightly, and still have plenty of space around her. It was carpeted with the ordinary-leaf-shaped leaves, which were brown and old. They would make a soft bed.

Just before she entered the shelter, she looked behind her, back into the darkening forest. Standing half in and half out of the entrance, statue-like and silent, she willed whatever it was that had been following her to show itself. Nothing appeared.

She moved inside and lay down. Her exhaustion dragged her into a deep sleep, where she dreamt of all manner of food and drink. Occasionally though, she grunted and fought, as if in the midst of some nightmare from which she could not awaken.

Something startled her awake. Her eyes snapped open. It was dark. There was an acrid tang in the air. It smelled like a match had been struck, but she couldn’t see or hear anything. For a long moment, all was still.
Just my imagination, playing tricks on me.
Still, she sat up, intent on slowing the rapid-fire thumping of her heart.

A red spark appeared in the air. She watched wide-eyed as a tiny blue flame moved slowly through the air. It touched something, which burst into sudden flame. The heat of it – a torch – leapt out at her, seeming to scorch the very air.

There was a dark figure sitting in front of her! So close, it could have reached out to touch her. The torch blinded her. She shoved herself back hard. But, mistaking the distance between herself and the tree roots, she slammed the back of her head. Sharp pain shot through her; acid pouring into her stomach. Her breath came in quick gasps, too quick to get enough oxygen. Halley was shocked into silence, and, try as she would, she could not speak, could not scream. Frozen in place, her body began to shake uncontrollably.
It could kill m
e. The thought made the blood in her head pound harder, made her dizzy and lightheaded.

Silence filled the space between them. When the dark figure finally spoke, the quiet had lasted far too long to consider it normal.

“Don’t be afraid,” a man’s voice said. “I saw you crying. By the butterflies. I thought you were lost. I wanted to help you, but I lost sight of you.” He looked at her closely. “Please stop trembling like that, like I’m some sort of monster – I won’t hurt you. I want to help you.”

Why then, bring the word “hurt” into it?

Shaking her head, she willed the voice away, trying to block it from her ears. It was too silky, too smooth. She couldn’t see him properly in the darkness with the torch light in her eyes. She was acutely aware of his body invading her personal space, violating her sense of safety.

Did he say he’d seen me crying by the butterflies?

She thought about the waterfall that had reminded her of her parents, about the butterflies hovering. But that was so long ago
! Has he been tracking me all this time?
A shudder moved through her again, and she pulled herself closer, making a smaller bundle of her body.

“I don’t need your help!” She thrust the words out as if they were weapons, willing power behind her voice. “I’m not lost. I know where I am and I know what I’m doing.” Unintentionally, she spoke fast and with a sense of urgency. “Please. Just go away.” Her right hand had wrapped itself tightly around the thickened trunk of a nearby tree root.

He didn’t move or speak.

Her voice had wavered. It held the truth of the night she’d spent unsheltered in the rain, of the long, devastating days she’d spent wandering lost.

He kept quiet, as if letting her think.

In the darkness, an image played before her eyes: the dried-out waterfall; the decapitated flowers. She wasn’t safe. She wasn’t safe at all.

After an overlong pause, so long that Halley grew desperate to shift her position and move her rapidly numbing legs, he cocked his head slightly, like a bird of prey.

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

The words stretched out long, an elastic band that threatened to snap. He considered her. “You’re so small,” he said, with something like kindness that was not kindness in his voice. “You can’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into – you’re a little sparrow, in a large and dangerous wood. I can show you the way out.”

“But what about the baby?” she said. She covered her mouth with her hands, but it was too late.

With a wave of his hand, he dismissed it.

“The baby. Its mother ran out of formula. I showed her a shortcut back to the trailhead. They’re safe now. And, more importantly, that baby is quiet.”

“Oh.”

It was a small word to express the heartbreaking sense of loss she suddenly felt.

He seemed to mistake her expression. “Forgive me, I’ve been terribly impolite. I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Trance. Trance Darkling.”

Halley felt she was hearing him from some great distance. The baby was gone. It had had nothing to do with her. She would not be the one to save it. She looked across at the man before her. He could lead her out of the woods, back to her real life. It had not been a new place to begin after all. “Oh God,” she whispered aloud.

Immediately she regretted it. The man shifted the torch, and she could almost see his face. In the half-light, his eyes had narrowed. Her despair over the baby was quickly replaced by a renewal of her fear of this stranger.
Trance Darkling?
The air left her lungs.
What kind of name is that?

She shook her head again, harder this time; his sing-song voice and his words had dulled her senses. She tried to calm herself. Spots of light swam in front of her eyes. The words this stranger had spoken swirled around her.
He said he won’t hurt you, Halley. He saved the baby. He knows the way out. You need his help. You’re imagining things – it’s only the darkness that’s making him so scary.

Letting go of the tree root, she held one of her hands in the other and felt how cold and small her hands were, felt her pulse thudding fast in her veins.
Oh stop it Halley – just let him help you!
You don’t know what you’re doing and you need help!

She watched as the stranger leaned forward, as if easing himself. The movement narrowed the distance between them. He smiled, and the familiarity of the smile was disconcerting.

Tentatively, she asked, “Can you really show me the way out?”

All her instincts said to run, but she didn’t. If he could help her, she could get out of the woods and never come back. To be free of the darkness, to be in the light again, the thought was lovely. Enticing.

The steel in her voice had melted away. She sounded small and weak, as he had described her. Halley shifted uncomfortably on her thin buttocks. The air in the shelter was heavy and close. She stared hard at the man before her, felt the familiarity in his mannerisms with simultaneous attraction and aversion.

As the torch burned lower, Trance stared back. “Of course I can show you the way out,” he repeated smoothly. “Please, have some of my water – you must be desperately thirsty.”

Invitingly, he held out an old canvas canteen, but though her eyes watched it thirstily she didn’t move to take it.

I am so thirsty.
Her very cells were crying out for water.

She leaned forward and took hold of the canteen, took his offering. Drinking in long, hungry gulps, some of the water spilled out, dripping down her chin and along her neck and even intrusively down, down below her queen t-shirt and onto her breasts. It reminded her of the rain during her long unsheltered night, of her longing for death. She shivered anew.

Even with her vast thirst, the water was not refreshing. It tasted metallic and foul. Hurriedly, she passed the canteen back.

“Look – you’re shaking,” he said. “Please, let me help.” His voice was gentle, his eyes soft. “At least tell me your name.”

“Halley. My name is Halley.” Drawing on some strength deep inside her, she spoke with sudden certainly. “I won’t decide anything until morning. Not until I can see your face more clearly.” In the dark, he was all shadow, only vague hollows where his eyes should have been.

“All right.”

She sat still, watching him closely, speaking no more. But inside her head, she belittled herself.
Get a grip Halley – he’s just trying to help
. The hairs stood out on her forearms though, and she could not “get a grip” at all.

When the torch burned out, the voice in her head spoke more urgently.
Who are you Trance? Why have you come here? Something about you is deadly to me. I can feel that deep in my bones. She shifted her seat uncomfortably. But I don’t know where to go, and I’ve been lost since I fell down the hill into these woods. I’m not strong enough to get back alone.
The blisters on her feet burned and her head throbbed where she’d bashed into the tree roots. She was afraid to put her hand to it, afraid she’d feel the wetness of blood. Her hunger was deepening – she needed food and water, and she didn’t know what she was going to do – she couldn’t last much longer. She longed to silence her voice, but it hummed on.
Sparrow. I wish I knew what it meant to be a sparrow. I want it to mean free and able, quick to maneuver. If only Fernando had been calling me those things when he called me Sparrow…if only this man was…

On a sudden impulse, she felt in the inner pocket of her jacket. She had an irrational urge to touch the crow’s feather, the totem she had carried to remind her of its message at the start of her journey: “You will be all right”.

It wasn’t there.

Swallowing hard, she began to check the rest of her pockets, already knowing she wouldn’t find it.

In time, her exhaustion pulled at her with long boney fingers, dragging her back to sleep. It was the deep sleep of the lost, who dread awakening because they know when they do, they will find they are still powerless.

She slept. He did not. He watched and waited, knowing that when she woke, she would already be tamed. Indeed, she had been tamed the instant she’d allowed him to stay.

Always so easy with you, he thought. Your weakness is my strength. So many times I have nearly finished you. This, this is my time.