The Warped Forest

by Thomas Carpenter

  Her mother usually managed to knit for an hour, sometimes a little longer, but when she couldn’t move her hands, she set the needles and yarn back in the basket and told stories about Alex when she was younger. The patterns her mother knitted looked like spiderwebs that had had rocks thrown at it, but Alex said nothing. When her mother grew tired again, she slept on the couch, which had become her bedroom.

  Alex turned on her gaming computer once in the middle of the night when her mother was snoring, but she couldn't bring herself to click on the start button. The only thing she could picture when she thought about playing a game was the swarm of terrorbees stinging her over and over.

  Even though Alex had no way to get to the store, food wasn't an issue because neighbors and friends from town took turns bringing a casserole, or a bag of groceries every day. They would stay for a short time and chat, usually with Alex, except for the rare occasions when her mother was awake and could mumble responses to their questions.

  As the weather warmed and the flowers bloomed, Alex called every hospital within two hundred miles to see if there was one that would treat her mother's tumor. She tried Golden Willow in Invictus, but they would only take her if she was a student at the Hundred Halls, or had the requisite health insurance. Even then, the doctor she spoke to said that it was unlikely spells alone could fix a tumor that far along.

  One night when Alex's hands grew tired from knitting, she pulled out the notebook she'd filled with the Transference spell notes. She had no use for the magic, since she was no longer a member of the Hundred Halls, but the mathematics behind the spell intrigued her. After a few hours of searching the internet, she learned how what she'd been doing mimicked topographical theories. When transferring the nodes from one thing to another, she was creating transitive structures and using the elasticity of the faez matrix to complete the spell.

  In high school, she'd taken college-level classes, scoring near perfect scores on the standardized tests. There were times back then she'd thought about going to college for mathematics, and with nothing to keep her in Kentucky, maybe it was worth a revisit.

  "Mom," said Alex, sitting across from her mother, who had already set down her knitting needles and was staring at the evening sunlight coming through the kitchen window.

  "Yeah, sweetie," said her mom, followed by a little cough.

  She could barely talk without a chest rumble. The doctors had said the tumor was interfering with the signals going to her lungs. They'd warned her it would get worse before the end. Alex wasn't sure she was going to be able to handle it.

  "What did you want to be when you grew up?"

  Alex wasn't really sure what prompted her to ask this question, except that they'd already been through all the polite conversation and she wanted to have some real discussion with her mom before there wasn't time left.

  "A ballerina," said her mom, wistfully.

  "No, seriously."

  Her mom looked back, eyes ringed and sunken, but a spark still remained deep in them. "I am. I wanted to dance in the New York ballet, or at the Met."

  "But you never danced, or took lessons," said Alex, perplexed.

  "That doesn't mean I didn't want to do it. We didn't have money for that kind of stuff, but it was fun to dream." A secret smile formed on her mother's lips and she lowered her voice as if she were keeping a secret. "When I was eight, I tried to run away so I could go to New York and join the ballet school. I thought it was something like the circus that you could just decide to join. I made it as far as the bus stop before your grandmother found me."

  "You never told me that story before," said Alex.

  Her mom stared at the sunlight. "I haven't thought about it in a long time. I didn't want to think about it, I guess." After a long silence, she said, "What do you want to be? Are you going to be a professional gamer? Is that why you left Gamemakers?"

  Alex shivered, remembering the way the swarm pursued her through the forest relentlessly.

  "No, it didn't work out like I thought it would."

  "Alexandria, dear, it's never been like you to let something beat you. I remember when you were five and you decided you just had to climb up the slide at the park, rather than use the ladder. You must have tried a hundred, maybe two hundred times, before you finally made it."

  "Oh yeah," said Alex, the memory floating into view. "I'd forgotten that. What was I thinking?"

  "I don't rightly know, but you were persistent," said her mother. "It's the reason I didn't tell you about the cancer. I didn't want that to interfere with your opportunity. Which was why I was so surprised when you left."

  "I didn't give up," said Alex, squeezing her lips together. "I ran into a problem I couldn't solve."

  "Alexandria..."

  "Yeah, I know, but whatever, it got me back here. I'd rather spend," she almost said your last days but choked up and had to switch words, "time with you than beat my head against a stupid problem."

  "Sweetie, let's face it," said her mom. "I'm going to be gone soon enough. Please don't let what's happening to me keep you from living. It'd break my heart to think my dying screwed up your life."

  Alex let the knitting drop into her lap. Screwed up your life? As if it wasn't screwed up enough with Dad dying and now you. How much pain can one heart take?

  "It's...it's okay, Mom," she said. "I wasn't learning anything anyway. Gamemakers wasn't what I was expecting. It seemed kinda broken, for a hall."

  Her mother made that little infuriating noise in the back of her throat that usually received a comment from Alex, but with her mother's condition she swallowed her response, and while holding back tears, looked away.

  Speaking quietly so her mother didn't hear, she said, "Nobody from these parts ever did anything. Why should it start now?"

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  As April wore on, so did the smell in the trailer. No matter how many windows Alex opened, she couldn't get the smell of death from the room. When a chunk of hair fell out of her mother's head, Alex knew the end was coming faster than the doctors had said. It almost felt like her mother was rushing her dying so Alex could get back to her life.

  There were also the little comments and jokes her mother made, saying things like "you should just smother me with a pillow and get it over with" or "you gonna carry my old corpse around with you forever."

  One afternoon, things came to a head while Alex was feeding her mother soup with a plastic spoon so she didn't chip her teeth.

  "Mom," she said, hearing the way their roles had reversed in her tone, "you have to open your mouth to eat. You're thin enough as it is."

  Eyes bloodshot and hazy, her mother said, "I don't want to eat anymore. There's no point."

  "Of course there's a point," she said. "You have to eat to stay alive."

  "Alive," said her mother sarcastically, which only made her break into a coughing fit. "I'm a bag of bones with a basketball in my head. I just want to sleep without these pills, they're awful."

  "Mom, please," she said, holding the spoon in front of her mother.

  "No," she said, squeezing her lips together and crossing her arms like an insolent child.

  Alex pushed the spoon against her mother's lips. With surprising vigor, her mother knocked the spoon away, sending a spray of vegetable soup across Alex's face.

  "Mother!"

  "Just let me be," said her mom. "Let me die in peace, not with you hounding me."

  "Hounding? Hounding?"

  Alex slammed the bowl on the TV tray, spilling half the soup on the floor.

  "I'm just trying to keep you alive. You're my mother. My only mother. You only get one. I can't lose you too. I can't be alone in this world. There's no one left in our family but me. You can't die, Mom. You can't. I can't let you. You're all I got."

  The trailer suddenly spun around her. The walls closed in. Alex stumbled through the screen door trying to get air.

  Before she knew where she was going, Alex let out a primal scream and took off ru
nning up the trail to Preacher's Lookout. It was a miracle she didn't stumble or fall on the way up, feet bouncing off roots and rocks like a mountain goat. Every ache, every fear, every pain was poured into that run. She wanted to run forever.

  Then her muscles no longer cooperated, and her lungs burned like a forest fire. Alex stopped three-quarters of the way up the trail, leaning on a tree and looking behind her in bewilderment, because she couldn't recall how she'd gotten that far up. The journey was a blur.

  Alex pulled her glasses off and wiped the sweat from the lenses on her shirt. In the game they never got messy or dislodged, which was a godsend, but back in the real world, they were a constant source of worry.

  When she could catch her breath again, Alex continued up the trail, determined to reach the top, for no reason except that it was better than being in the trailer with her dying mother. She stepped over a ropey, segmented cord of scat, full of hair and bone.

  The size of the animal feces gave her pause, remembering the mountain lion she'd encountered last August on the trail. She thought about going back down, but her legs wouldn't move in that direction when she thought of her mother, which only made it worse because she wanted to have the last days be full of laughter and memories, not arguments and spilled soup.

  Preacher's Lookout was the highest spot along a ridge that dropped away, offering a scenic view of the long valley. At the bottom, a creek meandered through the middle, water sparkling in the afternoon sunlight. Red-tailed hawks rode the air currents along the steep cliff, circling until they spied a mouse or snake, then fell unerringly on their prey.

  Alex leaned against a tree, the rough bark against her side reminding her of the Warped Forest. If she squinted, and imagined the distant trees had multicolor hues, the valley could be a region inside the game.

  A wistful smile passed across her face like a cloud across the sun, returning once more to sullen silence. Alex wondered what she might have done if she were still doing well in the game and she'd heard about her mother's illness. She wanted to think that she would have given it up and rushed home to take care of her.

  But it wouldn't have been easy.

  Had it been a blessing that she'd failed? It didn't feel that way. Her mother was right; when she was gone, Alex would have to get on with her life. Without the opportunity Gamemakers Hall had afforded, what was she going to do?

  But trying to think about that was like staring at a blank wall and expecting a television. She couldn't see anything beyond her mother's illness.

  When the evening winds picked up, Alex turned to head back to the trailer. Maybe she'd find that her mother had gotten hungry and eaten the soup, and they could move past the argument.

  Alex made it a hundred feet from the ridge before she saw the mountain lion stalking her. The months in the Warped Forest had attuned her senses to movement, and the tawny cat stuck out against the verdant foliage. She faced the creature, hoping that showing that she'd seen it might scare it away, but it kept coming, low and to the ground.

  She thought about trying the same trick she'd done back in August, but the mountain lion seemed emaciated as if it hadn't eaten much during the winter. A hungry predator was unlikely to be dissuaded by shouts and raised arms.

  When it was about fifty feet away, the mountain lion broke into a sprint towards her. Alex burst the other direction, dodging through the trees while adrenaline flooded her system. She made it a dozen yards before spinning around to make her last stand.

  The mountain lion's reddish brown eyes were trained on her as it sprinted through the undergrowth in long, graceful strides. It would have been beautiful if it weren't trying to eat her.

  Before she could think about it, Alex's fingers fell into their familiar dance. A jet of gray cloud shot out, crackling with electricity. When the spell hit the mountain lion, it jumped high, landing sideways, looking momentarily bewildered as it rocked.

  "Oh, shit," said Alex, staring at her hands because she hadn't expected the spell to work. She'd had no idea that Cloud Taunt was a real spell and thought it only a tool in the game.

  The mountain lion was recovering from the shock, shaking its head and making weird clacking noises in the back of its throat. Its eyes seemed unfocused when it looked at Alex, making her wonder if there was a "taunt" component like in the game. If there was then she might have made a bigger mistake in using that particular spell.

  "Go away, kitty," she said, picking up fallen tree branches and throwing them at the mountain lion.

  The cat faced her again, letting loose a gut-shaking growl. Before it could leap, she cast Wind Gust. The first attempt at the spell lifted a few leaves and rustled some branches as if a stiff wind had passed.

  Alex cast it again, refocusing her efforts on clear finger diction and pouring as much faez as she could into the spell. The strain felt like a shard of cold air had entered her brain, but when the spell completed, a whirlwind of forest debris whipped into the air, careening towards the mountain lion, which had no choice but to bound away under the assault.

  After the cat was gone, she bent over, squinting. It'd hurt her head to pour that much power into the spell, which made sense since her Merlin scores in school had been so low. It'd probably been the training in the game that had allowed her to even do that much.

  With the sun setting behind the hills, Alex headed back to the trailer. She didn't want the mountain lion to come back in the dark when she couldn't see it.

  The whole way back, she thought about the implications of what had happened. She hadn't expected that the spells she was learning inside the game would work outside of it, but now she understood why each new spell came with an explanation, showing her how to cast it.

  But it didn't change that she'd failed to reach her goal in the game. Ideas soared through her head, but they disappeared the moment she reentered the trailer and the smell of death assaulted her nose.

  Her mother was asleep on the couch and the soup had dried on the rug. Alex grabbed a wet rag and started scrubbing away the stain. While she was working, her mother woke.

  "Alexandria, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

  Squatting on the ground, Alex turned. "It's okay, Mom. I understand. This isn't easy for you."

  "I just want...I just want you to be okay after I'm gone," said her mother.

  Alex squeezed her lips together, holding back tears. She nodded to her mother and then threw herself back into the scrubbing.

  When she was certain her mother had fallen back asleep, she whispered to herself.

  "Me too, Mom. Me too."

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  In the days after the mountain lion attack, time felt elastic. The proof that her time in the game had been worth something awakened her, and she threw herself into experimenting with the spells from Gamemakers Online, but she felt like she was racing against a clock she couldn't see, which made those moments speed up, a blur she struggled to grasp.

  In the times with her mother, they miraculously slowed down. Her mother was trying to give her the only gift she had left, a chance for Alex to return to living, but she wasn't ready to accept that gift, especially after she learned the Transference spell was real.

  But using those spells inside the game and in real life were two completely different things. It was clear the game used the statistics behind her character as well as her steadfast adherence to the finger movements and words to create the effects, because Alex found them orders of magnitude more difficult.

  For one, she was a mage of low faez, which meant her capacity for challenging spells was limited. She could perform the gestures as clean as a concert pianist—her years of gaming had taught her that much—but that only shaved the amount of power required to accomplish the task.

  The simple spells, like the Five Elements, or Cloud Taunt, she could perform regularly and with a consistent effect. As the complexities grew, so did the requirements of the spell.

  In the game, the Transference spell quickly revealed
the nodes available on each item as a ghostly picture superimposed on her subject. In real life, the first part, the seeing, was almost as challenging as the transfer.

  Items and people didn't magically reveal themselves as nodes when the spell was cast. First she had to define her target, shape the area of interest with the spell, which wasn't as simple as drawing a line around an object with a pointer. Instead, she had to slowly sprinkle the faez—the raw stuff of magic—over the affected area, creating an elastic covering that could be stretched and tugged.

  The deliberateness of the task was suited to her low magical ability, because she could slowly dole out faez over time, just not provide a massive spike of it for a fantastical effect.

  Alex found the first part reminded her of knitting. The truth of knitting was that there were only two knots, and the second was a reverse of the first. Those two simple knots, bound into mathematical patterns, could create a multitude of shapes. The first part of the Transference spell was much like knitting, which gave her a head start.

  After three days of analyzing household items for parts that could be syphoned off by the spell—the slickness of a cooking pan, or the softness of wool—Alex started on the second part of the spell: manipulating the nodes.

  Like the first, this part proved more difficult than in game, though the practice was similar. In Gamemakers Online, it seemed like any magical effect or ability could be syphoned off and applied to something else, or someone. But as she studied every item in and around the house, she found this wasn't true for real life.

  As she worked, she learned to see the nodes, which were the anchor points that connected that quality to the item. When she compared two items, there were disparities in the number of nodes and the shape of the object that meant they couldn't be transferred.

  In her mind, she imagined it as a net that was wrapped around one item, but to move it to the second, it had to have a similar shape and anchor points. She couldn't move the strength of an iron crowbar into her arm, because they were too dissimilar—the pulling and stretching of the net was too complicated.