The Forest Beyond the Earth

by Matthew S. Cox

  The thought of losing him set off a flood of tears. Still squatting, she folded her arms over her knees and sobbed. How could she live without him? She’d wanted so much to be big so she could go on hunts with him, yet she remained small enough that the Tree Walkers would take her if they could. Part of her wanted to run home to the cabin, crawl into her Haven and cry until she slipped into the Other Place to be with him and Mother. Another part, the one that wanted to go hunting, fought back, annoyed at the idea she remained a child.

  Mother sent me to find him, said the brave part.

  But, I’m scared, said the child part. And lost. I don’t know where I am.

  Child part wondered if she could find that green wall again, the settlement where she had taken the bird meat. Those people used noisemakers, not hurty-traps, so they might be nice to her. If Dad had been eaten by a monster, maybe she needed to find nice grown-ups.

  I’m not a little girl!

  No, but it’s easier to have someone helping. It’s harder to live all alone.

  You’re scared.

  Wisp wiped her eyes. I know.

  People will hurt you, said Dad in her mind. Even if they look friendly.

  She shivered. “Okay, okay… But, I don’t know where to go. I wish I had Dad’s north box.”

  The little device he carried always pointed out north, so he never got lost. Unfortunately, since he always carried it, the north box had gone missing along with him. It had to be magic, the way the floating needle always wound up aimed the right way.

  “Maybe it’s Mother?”

  Wisp grinned with an idea. She leapt upright and ran around hunting through the understory until she found a nice twig about six inches long. Her prize in hand, she shrugged off the backpack and sat with her legs wrapped around it, rummaging until she found the ball of twine. After cutting off a bit, she tied it around the middle of the twig and sorta-sharpened one end, more to make an arrow than a point she could stab a fish with.

  That done, she put her knife away, wriggled her backpack back on, and slung the rifle once again on her shoulder. Grinning from ear to ear, she held her right arm out, letting the twig-on-twine dangle and spin.

  “Mother will show me the way.”

  It drifted around, back and forth. She stared at the pointing end, whispering, “Mother, show me where to go,” over and over.

  Once the twig seemed to stabilize in a direction, she nodded, wrapped the twine around it, and stuck it in a side pocket of the backpack. Full of new confidence, she marched onward, stopping every hour or so to ask the Mother Twig to show her the way. By late afternoon, the course put the sun at her back. Hope practically glowed from her heart. Mother had guided her eastward, so she must be taking her to find Dad.

  Hours later, she wandered out of the forest onto another strip of smooth black stone that warmed her feet and made her toes tingle. The road curved in a long, gentle turn to the left, heading east. On the right, it continued more or less straight to the south. A constant, gentle breeze rustled the treetops and sent strands of her long hair floating about, tickling her left arm.

  Wisp pulled out the Mother Twig and let it dangle.

  The sharper end went around in a circle, swung back the other way, and wavered for a little while before favoring the left.

  “Mother wants me to follow the road.”

  She put the twig back in the side pocket and headed eastward toward the curve, amusing herself for a little while by trying to keep her feet on the faded yellow line, stepping heel-to-toe with her arms out to the sides for balance.

  Can Tree Walkers cross roads? There’s no dirt here.

  The notion that the paving might protect her from the monsters, since they couldn’t grow through it, offered a mild sense of security. Did they constantly have roots going into the ground or could they detach from the soil and roam around? If so, the road wouldn’t bother them.

  Eyes downcast, she plodded onward, stopping only once to make ngh. Soon after the sun began to weaken, a huge boxy shape came into view on the road up ahead, slumped to the side. Wisp froze in place, staring. It didn’t move at all over the minute or so she remained still, so she pulled the rifle up to check it out with the scope.

  The crosshairs landed on the back end of a machine with shiny red spots on either side and a rectangular plate like Dad’s leg armor in the middle along the bottom. This one also had the word ‘Colorado’ on it, beneath an unpronounceable word in bigger letters. The machine had four deflated tires, bigger than a car’s, but not as large as the ones she’d seen on the Jeep. Between rust patches and under a coating of thick grey dust, the rest of the machine had a deep maroon color. She trained the crosshairs on a group of silver letters near the left corner.

  “Expo… Expa dittion.” Wisp lifted her head away from the scope, eyebrows furrowed. “It’s a car. The ancients were silly. Why did they name machines? You can’t talk to them.”

  She decided to approach the long-abandoned vehicle. Maybe the ancients had magic or something that they could use to call machines by name like the dogs in her books. According to Dad, the occasional wolf they’d seen prowling about didn’t act like the ‘nice dogs’ in the stories, and she should avoid them.

  The machine turned out to be much bigger than she thought from a distance, standing quite a bit taller than her despite the tires all being flat on the bottom. The front right wheel had gone off the road onto the dirt, and the machine’s front end almost touched a tree. Its windows had no cracks, though a thick layer of pale grey muck coated them, as well as most of the sides. She traced her fingers over the surface, thinking it looked a lot like the water after she washed the fireplace. Her fingertips came away with a haze of white.

  “Oh…” She peered up at the sky. “This is ash, mixed with water. The machine was here when the dragons burned everything.”

  Again, she examined the old car, thinking back to her conversation with Dad. A limousine sounded much longer than this one, but it stood so tall it couldn’t be a car.

  “Essyouvee,” said Wisp.

  She grabbed the door handle and pulled, expecting it to be locked, but it swung free. The scrape of old metal echoing in the silent forest startled a gasp out of her. Curious, she set one foot on the single step along the side and lifted herself up enough to peer in.

  The interior stank of dryness with a hint of must. No mold tainted the chairs, and bugs had apparently decided to leave this machine alone. In front of her, a strange device, like a smaller chair, perched on the bench seat.

  Smiling, she crawled up inside and peered around. Nothing appeared dangerous, so she set the rifle on the floor and sat beside the little chair-on-the-chair, wide-eyed at the softness beneath her butt. She squeezed and gripped the padding, scuffing her feet back and forth on the soft floor, awestruck at how comfortable the ancients’ things had been. Though the cloth nearly frayed at her touch, it didn’t seem too brittle.

  She peered into the little seat, which had a set of straps and buckles to hold someone in place. “Wow… the Tree Walkers were taking children before the dragon fire.” Wisp tugged at the dry-rotted straps, picturing them snugging a small child in place so they couldn’t be stolen.

  Her attention migrated to the space in front of her, where a strange circle stuck out on a post like the person in that chair should be holding onto it. She crawled between the gap and moved to the bigger chair on the left, gripping the ring in both hands while staring at a little window over a bunch of round spots with needles like Dad’s north machine. These didn’t say north though, they had boring numbers.

  After a moment of sitting there holding on to the circle, she remembered some of her books’ characters did a thing called ‘driving.’ The stories had spoken of people getting in cars and driving, but she had always pictured it as them disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Now, sitting inside a giant SUV and thinking about wheels, it hit her that ‘driving’ must have involved the whole machine rolling forward. I bet it m
oved faster than people can walk. She tried to turn the ring, but it didn’t want to move. Two pedals, cool to her feet, also didn’t do anything when she stepped on them.

  “Gas. Brake.” She pushed them down one at a time, not sure which name belonged to which pedal.

  The characters always ‘stomped’ on the gas, so she figured maybe she didn’t push it hard enough. Some even ‘hammered’ on the brake, but she hadn’t brought Dad’s hammer with her, so she couldn’t test that. Mashing her foot down on them didn’t work either. She gave up on the pedals and explored the buttons and whatnot in front of her. When she spotted one labeled ‘engine start,’ she pushed it.

  And nothing happened.

  “Oh… it’s broken.”

  She gave up on trying to make it go and daydreamed about what it would’ve been like back when these machines worked. Wisp clutched the circle, which she figured to be ‘the wheel’ the books always mentioned, and gazed out at the road. In her mind, she raced forward, weaving around turns and going way faster than she could run.

  When that got boring, she crawled again to the rear seat, and over it into an empty area in the far back. A spot of bright yellow caught her eye against the rear door. She pounced after it, seizing an unfamiliar, fuzzy spherical fruit. It smelled like everything else inside the machine, dry and dusty, with a hint of burned ash.

  After brushing it off, she bit it, but her teeth couldn’t pierce the rind. It also tasted nasty.

  “Bleh!”

  She threw it away and gagged. The yellow ball struck the door and bounced back to her.

  “What?” Wisp picked it up and threw it at the door a second time. Again, it came right back. She squeezed it, finding it squishy and springy. “Oh… it’s not a food. It’s a… bouncy thing.”

  Amused, she spent a few minutes throwing it at the windows and catching it. Before she knew it, the forest had gone dark outside. She caught the ball, clinging to it like a squirrel with an acorn, and peered out at the night.

  “Uh oh.”

  This machine, especially the back part, somewhat reminded her of the Haven. Maybe I’ll be safe in here to sleep?

  Since she liked the yellow ball, she put it in the backpack for later. She ate the last of the bird meat, gnawing at the bones for quite a while to claim every last scrap. Not wanting to stray too far from the shelter of the dead machine, she lowered herself to the road and crept to the front corner as the ground went downhill in that direction. There, she squatted and let out the bad water on the pavement, keeping one hand on the tire for balance above the word ‘Goodyear.’

  She sighed. “I don’t think it was a good year, if you got burned by the dragons.”

  Wisp rushed the process, forcing all the bad water out as fast as possible so she could return to the safety of the SUV. Being in the open at night seemed as silly as shouting, ‘Tree Walkers, take me!’ as loud as she could.

  As soon as she finished, she leapt back in over the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut with a soft whump, and crawled into the open space in the back. For comfort, she decided to remove her canteen belt and arrange the blanket on the floor like the padding on the bottom of her Haven. She curled up on her side, using her left arm for a pillow, her right hand resting at her chin.

  The security of metal around her, and the familiarity of a small space to sleep in, lulled her off into the realm of dreams.

  TV Dinner

  -16-

  A few hours into her walk down the road, Wisp stopped to check direction with the Mother Twig.

  It wound up pointing off the road into the woods again, not quite east. She looked back and forth from the hanging stick to the sun, confused by the disagreement.

  “It’s not midday yet. This isn’t east, but… maybe I’m getting close to Dad!”

  She followed the twig, walking off the road and scooting down a weedy embankment on the side before wading past a gathering of chest-high foliage. After about thirty feet, the understory settled back to its usual shallow depth. Not long after leaving the road, she spotted a massive green grasshopper clinging to a tree.

  “Ooh!”

  For about ten minutes, she scampered around the area collecting as many grasshoppers as she could find and tossing them in the deeper pot after plucking their heads off. While gently twisting the head and tugging the entrails free of the body, Dad’s voice narrated her thoughts about parasites. Pulling the snotty bits out that stuck to the head protected her from getting sick, since most of the nasty stuff stayed with that part.

  Once she had a respectable collection of dead grasshoppers, she left the rest of the insects in peace and hunted for a good place to make a fire. She rested her weary legs while dry frying her meal, keeping the bugs moving by shuffling the dome-shaped pan around. Dad had also warned her against eating bugs without cooking them unless she had no other choice, since that would also help prevent her from getting sick.

  She missed the flavor of boar grease, but the roasted grasshoppers made for a satisfying meal nonetheless. Not wanting to waste water, she decided against rinsing the pan and simply let it cool before returning it to the backpack and kicking dirt over the fire.

  Another twig check kept her going in more or less the same direction, making minor adjustments every hour or so as the device indicated. Wisp walked ahead with a bold, determined stride, grateful that Mother could help her in such a direct way.

  Late in the afternoon, she emerged from a tree line of old growth to a place where much younger trees had sprouted up around abandoned cabins, joined by a network of small roads. Many of the old structures had collapsed in places, roofs falling in. Young trees and other plants had pushed up through the paving in places, shifting slabs of rock aside as they grew. A few rotten cars remained near some cabins, but nothing in this place beside the plants appeared alive.

  Wisp slid the rifle off her shoulder and gripped it tight, listening to silence for a little while before advancing into the ancient settlement. Most of the cabins’ doors hung wide open, some flapping in the breeze. A couple raccoons in the distance peered at her as she stepped from dirt onto a smaller light-colored path that ran alongside the dark one. The narrower paving strip appeared far too small for a car, so she assumed it a ‘people road.’

  A small box perched on a metal post stood beside the ‘people road’ in front of the nearest cabin. She tugged at the handle of a flap door on the front end, which opened to an explosion of startled chipmunks that had been nesting inside.

  Wisp squealed and jumped away as the tiny brown creatures scattered in different directions. After catching her breath, she nudged the door shut again and whispered, “Sorry.”

  The path curved to the right, taking her past seven huge buildings, some twice as tall as hers, like a pair of cabins stacked on top of each other. Dad had built theirs after finding the metal box he used for a bedroom. He’d told her it took them almost a year to finish, with Mother helping. Wisp’s jaw hung open in awe at the size of the ancients’ homes. The people who used to live in them couldn’t possibly have built such things without magic, or it would’ve taken them most of their life to finish.

  Metal squeaking made her stop and crouch, raising the rifle.

  She listened, but the noise continued at an even back-and-forth tempo, matching the changes in the air. It’s something blowing in the wind. Her rifle still at the ready, she advanced toward the repetitious scraping.

  Past the corner of a huge grey cabin, an open area held a number of odd machines. Three looked a bit like the ‘goat’ creature she’d seen at the settlement, only they didn’t have four legs. Each balanced on a single leg composed of a thick coil of metal coming down from the middle of their bellies. In the center of the area stood a large, round steel table, lower to the ground than even her cooking place, with a number of looped railings. It appeared to be the source of the squeaking, as it rotated back and forth in the breeze. Beyond that, a ladder led up to a platform with a bright red plastic roof and a long metal chut
e leading back to the ground. Frames next to that had chains dangling from an elevated cross bar with no apparent purpose. Rectangular wooden boards sat on the ground beneath them, as wide as the space between chains. She guessed at one point the boards had been hung from the chains, but couldn’t imagine why.

  Wisp approached the statue goats, examining a pair of pegs jutting out the sides of its head that looked like handles. Clearly not a real animal, it appeared to be a strange sort of seat, intended for a child due to its size. She patted the middle, finding it as hard as stone, and scrunched up her face at it. A strong gust sent the wheel thing spinning fast and made the goat-chairs wobble. At that, she pushed on it, and it wobbled harder, side to side, the spring creaking.

  Curious, she threw a leg over and sat, feeling a hair too big for it. As soon as she lifted her toes from the ground, the goat-chair tilted back. Another set of pegs, low on either side, appeared to be steps, so she rested her feet on them. Soon, she figured out if she shifted her weight, the machine would rock faster and faster. Hesitation became wonder, which became giggling. She’d never seen anything like this springy goat-chair before. Bouncing back and forth got her laughing and cheering, until she raised both hands up over her head―at which point the goat-chair threw her to the ground.

  Still laughing, she lay there watching the fake animal wobble slower and slower until it stopped.

  After dusting herself off and collecting the rifle, she approached the large metal table. Figuring out that the goat-thing had been made for fun, she assumed all the machines in this place similar. This one appeared to be a spinning game. She stepped on the platform, pushing at the ground with her other foot until the whole thing whirled about fast enough to be scary. Careening around and around, she clung to the railing until the platform slowed, then jumped back to solid ground.

  Okay, not that… I don’t like that one.

  She went up the ladder and down the slide a few times, until the third step snapped when she tried to climb the ladder again. Oops. These things are old. I could get hurt if they break. Past the slide, she found a weird hut made from two huge metal bowls. The upper one had a clear bubble at the top and a bunch of smaller bubbles of colored plastic, like windows, around the sloped sides. Two-foot tall bars, fatter than her Haven’s, separated the open ends of the two bowls, forming an enclosure. Alas, it had no door, so she couldn’t lock herself in. Still curious, she climbed in. The smooth steel floor had collected years’ worth of windblown sand. Wisp stood in the middle, tall enough that her head wound up neatly within the bubble window. This machine didn’t move or do anything but sit there and have windows, so she crawled out the other side and walked away from the play machines, following the nearest road.