by C. F. Cooper
“No-one passes through the swamp,” said Hannibal. “The stories keep everyone away.”
“What stories? Asked Gary.
“Many enter, and few exit,” said Octavia.
“No soul returns from the swamp of doom undamaged.”
“So, this is called the swamp of doom?”
“Or the forest of lost souls,” said Smallgrass. “Others call it the lake of death.”
“Why didn’t anyone say?”
“We trust you Gary.”
“But I don’t know this land. You shouldn’t agree to everything I suggest.”
“Too late now,” said Hannibal. “Our fate is tied to the swamp of doom.”
“But what about Daisy?”
“She was travelling alone. Perhaps she clung to the edge of the clearing and passed that way. She is swift and silent.”
“Hopefully,” said Smallgrass. “I wouldn’t pass through the swamp on my own.”
A large bubble popped in the swamp in front of them.
“Did you hear that?” said Gary. “It sounded like a word.”
Another bubble popped. The pop was followed by what sounded like a whisper – Die. They stopped in their tracks and listened closely as more bubbles burst exhaling one word at a time.
Die
Doomed
Repent
“Your imagining it,” said Octavia.
“Well I’m imagining the words die and doomed and repent. What are you imagining?”
“That’s what I’m imagining too,” said Smallgrass. The other Smallgrass nodded in agreement.
Turn
Back
Leave
Now
The swamp bubbled.
“They are right Octavia,” said Hannibal.
Octavia knelt down near the water and whispered back, “You repent, you die because we are not turning back no matter what you say. Do you understand?”
Fool
We
Warned
You
The swamp replied.
“No need for all this unpleasantness,” said Smallgrass. “We are just passing through. We’ll be gone before you know it.”
Traitors
Killers
Will
Never
Be
Forgotten
“Okay, let’s keep moving,” said Gary.
Smallgrass suddenly fell to the ground and appeared to be dragged along the narrow path towards the black water. He let out a war cry and pulled his sword from his waistband and hacked at the ground. Gary leapt forward and thrust his fiery torch towards the ground to see what had a hold of Smallgrass. Three or four tentacles of roots were wrapped around his legs and were pulling him towards the swamp. As the torch got closer, one of the tentacles loosened its grip and slithered across the ground like a snake, disappearing back into the water.
“It’s afraid of fire,” shouted Gary. He thrust his torch towards Smallgrass, touching one tentacle which withdrew then another. “Quick, the torches.”
The others dashed forward and began pushing their torches into Smallgrass’s legs, chasing the tentacles away. Gary then grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him back towards the centre of the path. They formed a circle holding the torches outwards against the world as Smallgrass pulled himself to his feet and began dusting down singed fur.
“You didn’t need to set me on fire,” he complained.
“Stay close and keep the torches low,” said Gary. “We need to keep moving.”
Fools
You
Cannot
Escape
The
Swamp
Of
Doom
“Well, at least now we know how it got its name,” said Smallgrass.
“We mean you no harm,” said Gary “But we will bring fire to the swamp if we are attacked.”
There was silence as the swamp ceased bubbling. The companions picked up the pace and walked as fast as they could until they reached a section of solid ground. Lifting his torch Gary looked ahead. There was light coverage of trees for a few hundred feet then thick undergrowth.
“Some easy ground,” he said as he marched ahead. “Let’s keep going.” The ground gave way beneath his feet before he could finish the sentence. He was being sucked downwards.
“Quicksand,” shouted Hannibal.
Gary’s legs were now enveloped up to his knees. He tried to lift one leg up and out to free himself, but this only made the other leg sink further as it took the whole weight of his body. Pushing his leg back down, it simply sunk alongside the other until he was buried up to his thighs.
“Don’t struggle,” said Hannibal.
Gary felt himself sinking quickly as he tried to lift and lower his legs.
“Relax,” said Octavia.
“I can’t relax, I’m about to drown in quicksand.”
“Let’s not exaggerate. It will only make matters worse,” Hannibal walked slowly towards Gary as he spoke. “Give me your hand and I’ll pull you out.”
Gary stretched out desperately, reaching as far as he could. By now he was up to his chest and the quicksand seemed to be pulling him in faster and faster. Hannibal reached out but Gary’s hand pulled back as he sank further. Hannibal turned and faced the others.
“Does anyone have a rope we can throw to him?”
Smallgrass and Smallgrass looked at each other and shrugged. “No, not us.”
Gary was now up to his shoulders. He looked up at his companions who seemed strangely unfazed by their sinking friend.
“Perhaps we could find a branch.”
“It would probably take too long.”
“True.”
Gary couldn’t believe what he was hearing and seeing. It was like a bad dream. The quicksand was now up to his neck and he pushed his head back to keep his mouth uncovered.
“Take a deep breath,” said Hannibal.
He sunk further, his mouth now submerged and his ears filling up. His last sight of his companions was them discussing what to do and pointing at him. Then it was darkness. So, this is how it ends, he thought to himself. Alone in a swamp. Would anyone back home even miss him? He thought of his parents waving him off to university from their front door. He had made his own way to the train station when he left home. They weren’t bad to him, but they were strangely uninterested. Caught up in their own world, an intense obsession with everything to do with aviation. They would visit airports every weekend to watch planes take off and land, they would watch documentaries about crash site investigations on the Discovery Channel. It was a hobby he had never been able to embrace. A hobby that had made him too embarrassed to invite friends to his home and certainly not girls. He was afraid of the reaction to the mountain of books on plane crashes, the model airplanes where everyone else would have ornaments, the stacks of DVDs. As he got older, they left him to his own devices and disappeared for weekend breaks with their plane spotting friends.
Leaving for university Gary had known that he would never go back. Yet he had felt equally lost at university. It was only when he arrived, reluctantly, in the four lands that he had found anything worth caring about. Daisy’s face entered his mind, then Octavia, then Smallgrass and Smallgrass. This was where he belonged, and he didn’t want it to end here, alone in a swamp. Gary moved his arms, pushing through the quicksand in a swimming motion. He could feel the slow but definite forward motion. Then, he felt an arm grip round him and pull him forward and up. Another arm gripped him from the other side and the movement was faster. He breached the surface and exhaled. Wiping his mouth his gulped down some fresh air and looked around. Smallgrass and Smallgrasss were standing at the side of the quicksand, arms outstretched. They grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him free. Falling on his back, Gary looked back to the quicksand and saw Octavia and Hannibal swimming on the surface, then pulling themselves out onto dry land and shaking vigorously throwing thick wads of wet sand in all directions.
“Thank…Thank you,” he gasped.
“It’s nothing,” said Octavia.
“We have health springs like this near our village,” said Hannibal. “Fantastic for the skin, especially if you fully submerge yourself.”
“I needed that,” said Octavia. “I had forgotten how relaxing it is.” Octavia plunged back into the swamp, closely following by Hannibal.
Gary sat up and shook his head, looking at Hannibal and Octavia’s outstretched bodies floating on the surface. Octavia dipped her head back and began to submerge, her legs briefly lifting out into the air as she went headfirst into the quicksand before disappearing completely.
“I guess it can be a little unsettling if you’ve never swam in sand before,” said Hannibal as he pushed himself towards the edge of dry land and pulled himself free.
“Lizards,” said Smallgrass, placing one hand on Gary’s shoulder. “It’s only really Lizards that can do it. Their bodies can take the pressure. If I fell in the air would be squeezed out of my lungs and I’d drown with a mouthful of sand.”
Gary spat the remnant of quicksand from his mouth and nodded. “I almost did.”
Octavia resurfaced and swam back to dry land.
“We need to keep going,” said Smallgrass.
“Maybe we should rest up until dawn. We are making so little progress in the darkness that we would be better to conserve our energy.”
“Agreed,” said Hannibal.
Gary nodded his head. “You’ll get no arguments from me.”
Smallgrass planted the torches in a circle and lay down. Smallgrass joined him.
Hannibal took Octavia’s hand as she emerged from the swamp and pulled her free. He ran his hands over her, removing the mud and sand. Gary looked over at the couple as they slowly transformed before his eyes. Octavia became the blue skinned beauty he had spent the night with, and Hannibal transformed into a bright red skinned hulk with a shredded body and the largest…Wow. Gary looked away both embarrassed but also wondering how he could compete with this warrior that stood before him.
The couple lay down on the ground and embraced. Octavia pulled away briefly and looked over to Gary. “You are welcome to join us if you wish.”
“I…well no, no thanks.”
“Are you sure?” asked Hannibal.
“I’m sure. Anyway, you two haven’t seen each other for a long time. Please carry on.” Gary stood and walked out past the edge of the circle of torches, watching carefully where he placed his feet. He made his way to the side of a tree and sat down, leaning against the trunk and closing his eyes.
“Why do you travel through our land?”
He heard in a low whisper. Looking around he saw nothing. For some reason he decided to whisper back rather than talk. “It is too dangerous to travel over open ground.”
“More dangerous than the forest of doom?”
“Yes. The four lands are at war.”
“With each other?”
“Who are you? Where are you?”
“You are leaning against me.”
Gary turned towards the trunk of the tree and saw the cracks in the bark moving, forming a mouth. “You can speak?”
“The arrogance of walking life. Assuming only they matter, only they speak.”
“I didn’t know”
“Of course you didn’t. But did you care? Do any of you care? You just see us as unfeeling uncaring. We have feelings too you know.”
“Well maybe if you didn’t try and kill everyone that passes the forest that would help.”
“No, then they would come and stay here, and we would have to listen to all that incessant talk and noise. We value our peace here.”
“So, you talk but you don’t want to?”
“Pff, well I suppose that’s one way of putting it. We speak when we have to, when we have something to say, but what is there to say when you’re standing the in the same spot for a couple of hundred years. You try it and see how much you enjoy small talk then.”
“You need to let us pass through. We are trying to save the four lands. The Ice King is destroying everything.”
“We have heard of the Ice King and his plans. He cannot touch us though. When his people pass through our land, they grow weak. Our breath poisons them. They have realised this and now avoid the forest. The war is of no concern to us.”
Gary fell silent for a few seconds. “We do not grow weak as we pass through you.”
“Don’t be so sure, you have not travelled far. Many more challenges await you.”
“Perhaps, but then again, perhaps you will become overwhelmed by those that don’t follow the Ice King. They are already fleeing to the forests in Springrise. If things get much worse, it’s only a matter of time before they come here for safety too.”
The tree shook and its leaves rustled as if suddenly hit by a gust of wind. “No, this cannot happen. We cannot have the frivolities of the walking living destroying the peace of the forest.”
Gary sensed an angle. “The forest will be overrun with the walking living if the Ice King wins.”
The wind seemed to rise and a tree near Gary bent towards him. “We cannot allow that to happen,” it said to the tree Gary was leaning against. “The timeless must be protected at all costs.”
“Agreed,” said the tree Gary was leaning against. “I am exhausted with the presence of this one human. Imagine a swamp full of them.”
“Answer me this,” said Gary. “Why do the doomwalkers avoid spending too much time in the forest.”
“In the forest you are surrounded by life that you cannot hear because you are so noisy. Even when you are not speaking out loud you are speaking in your head. We do not speak so much. So, we hear. We hear the deep quiet thoughts you drown out with your chattering minds.”
The other tree spoke. “You mostly speak to avoid those thoughts. What you avoid, we embrace. The silence nourishes us, but it drives you crazy. Doomwalkers pass through and we have heard their thoughts. We hear all your deep thoughts and we whisper them back at you. You cannot stand it.”
“You think you have succeeded in coming this far, but the real journey is in your own head the further into the forest you go. Only the purest of heart can pass through untouched.”
“So, you know what we are all thinking?”
“What you are really thinking under all the bluster. Your friend Smallgrass worries that he will betray you again. The further into the forest he goes, the more he will believe it. Your other friend Shallowvalley is afraid of losing Smallgrass and won’t leave him for a minute.”
“Wait, who’s Shadowvalley? You mean the other Smallgrass.”
“That is what he calls himself, but only Smallgrass thinks of himself as that. Shadowvalley took the name Smallgrass but constantly worries that he will lose his partner, and if he does, he will be back to being Shadowvalley. So, he still is Shadowvalley deep inside.”
“And Octavia,” said the other tree. “She just wants to be at home. She is miserable every day she is away. Hannibal will follow his partner anywhere, even home, but he has never felt more alive than he has since the Ice King started this conflict. It has given him an excuse to fight and he loves fighting.”
“And me? What about me?” The trees paused without speaking. “What?”
“There is nothing we can tell you that you don’t already know. You are pure of mind. You are the only one that could survive the journey through the forest. It is because you are pure of mind that we talk to you openly. Our whispers would be pointless with you.”
“I’m not pure of mind,” he replied.
“Pure of mind for us means there is no difference between the deep and shallow. You know your fears and desires. Your feeling of not belonging in your own world, your desire to be part of this one. Your love for your new companions and your fear that their way of life is too different.”
Gary nodded slowly. “Okay, I guess you are very good listeners,” he smiled and could swear the rustling sound was sign of smug
satisfaction from the trees.
“And the doomwalkers?” asked Gary. “What about them. It’s not just the just the forest of doom they avoid. They are scared of all forests.”
“What life we possess other forests also have, just not as strong. The river of life flows directly under the swamp and elevates us, but all forests have it. The doomwalkers are controlled by an outside force and their deep thoughts tell them that. They are constantly at war with themselves, full of doubt. In the silence of the forest their doubts intrude through the dream that they are free. Every hour in the forest is more painful for them than the last. Especially here.”
“What do you whisper to them?”
“Many things to remind them of their enslavement and their past freedom.”
“Like what though?”
“Why do you ask human?”
“I want to set them free. Perhaps if I could talk to them like you do, I could help them.”
The trees rustled, “We drive them insane, we don’t help them. We twist their pride back on them and torture them with the knowledge that they can’t be set free.”
“But they can. Smallgrass was turned but came out of it. He recovered in the forest.”
“Interesting. Were you there? Did you help?”
“Kind of,” said Gary.
“Then perhaps you already know the answer to that question. What did you of pure mind whisper to the afflicted?”
Gary fell silent and remembered back to the events in the hollow, playing them back in his mind. Speaking to the old Smallgrass, reminding him of who he really was.
“You see,” whispered the tree. “You already know.”
Gary nodded. “You should help us. You may see the walking living as your enemy but right now, some of them are not. They want to return the old ways to the four lands. The old ways that have left you in peace for thousands of years.”
“There is nothing for us to do, even if we wanted to.”
“That’s where you are wrong. You are the key to victory and to a secure future. Listen to me.”
“Enough talk”
“No talk. Really listen to me.” Gary fell silent and cleared his mind as best he could.
The other trees nearby began to lean in and listen. They rustled their approval as they heard the human whisper to them from the depth of his soul.
