The Forest Beyond the Earth

by Matthew S. Cox

  Wisp startled awake. Sunlight filtered through the fibers of the blanket covering her face. She didn’t remember falling asleep, only staring at darkness, too frightened to move. Exhaustion had eventually pulled her under.

  “Ugh.”

  She started to close her eyes again, drained from a restless night, but changed her mind and sat up. The blanket slid off her face and gathered in her lap amid a rainfall of forest debris. Confident she had made much better time yesterday, she expected to arrive home in only an hour or two. Sleep could wait until she had her Haven around her once again. That hope gave her the energy to shake off the weariness of getting so little rest. She shook the dirt and duff off the blanket, folded it, and packed it before finding a spot to let out the bad water. Her eagerness to get home allowed her to skip breakfast, and she drank from one of the canteens while walking.

  Within an hour, she reached familiar ground. Again, she shivered with joy.

  “Mother!” shouted Wisp. “I’m here!”

  Mother, I’m here, echoed back to her twice from the trees.

  Giddy, she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Mother!” again, as loud as she could, and listened to herself echo back three times.

  Wisp broke into a sprint, covering the last hundred or so yards of dirt road before skidding to a stop at the place where they ended. From here, a bit of her cabin’s roof peeked out of the trees to her left, a hundred yards or so away down a modest hill. She spared a moment of sorrow and anger at the place where the marauders had attacked Dad.

  “Mother!” shouted Wisp, her voice echoing again.

  I’ll bring you home, Dad. I just have to find a way.

  She hurried down the hill, waving her arms for balance and nearly tripping in her haste. An unusual sight met her when she reached the bottom of the hill: a shallow dirt mound about six feet long and three feet wide that hadn’t been there before. Momentarily taken by the oddity of it, she crouched nearby and poked it with a finger.

  “Some kind of giant mole monster made this?” She tilted her head in confusion, tracing her fingers back and forth over the dirt. “Or a marauder?” Dad has a shovel, but why would someone steal our shovel, dig a big hole, and fill it back up?

  She swung the rifle off her shoulder and brought it to bear on the cabin. If someone tried to steal her home, she’d… try not to shoot them. Only if they’re going to hurt me.

  Wisp stalked around the corner of the cabin, aiming, but found no one. Aside from the strange mound, and the front door being wide open, everything else looked the same as she remembered.

  Drat! I forgot the opener for the cabin door. It’s with Dad. She sighed. At least I can still lock it when I’m inside.

  She leaned in the doorway, rifle raised, but found no one in the cabin’s main room. Step by step, she eased her feet down on the floorboards to stay as silent as possible. Still, one or two creaked, making her cringe. Wisp reached out and grasped the handle of Dad’s door, part of the old trailer he and Mother had first found here before they built the rest of the cabin. She pulled the door aside and re-grasped the front of the rifle.

  Still unwilling to disobey Dad about going into his space, she only peeked in enough to check that no one had stolen his bed. Relieved at the room’s emptiness, she closed the door again and padded over to the Mother Shrine. The scent of pinesap wafting from the door filled her with warmth and comfort.

  Worried that someone might be lurking in there, she kept quiet and nudged the door aside. She started raising the rifle to aim in case of an intruder, but emitted a startled squeak at a horrifying sight: the sacred chair was empty―Mother had vanished.

  “Mother!” she shouted, refilled her lungs and belted out, “Mooootheerrrr!”

  No one answered.

  Wisp screamed. Her voice rose to a high note of surprise and fell into anguished sobs.

  She ran to the chair, dropped the rifle on the floor, and collapsed over the seat, resting her head upon her folded arms. The wood still gave off the unpleasant odor that had always pervaded this room, similar to what she’d smelled from Dad, but nowhere near as potent. She bawled like a five-year-old until she couldn’t cry any more. All her hopes, her plan to come back and ask for help, evaporated. How would she ever bring Dad home now? And, even if she did manage to do that, he still wouldn’t be with her.

  Sniffling, she sat back on her heels and wiped her eyes. “Mother? Did you come back from the Other Place to protect me last night? The Tree Walkers almost got me. One even stepped on me.”

  She pictured Mother sensing her peril and the dried-out body springing from the chair, rushing out the door, and falling upon the Tree Walkers in a flurry of power. But… she hadn’t heard anything like that at all last night. No fighting, only bird noises and leaves crunching about.

  So what had happened to Mother?

  “Did you go away because Dad’s with you now in the Other Place?” She sniffled. “What about me? I’m too little to be all on my own. I take it back. I’m not big enough to go on hunting trips. I want you or Dad to watch me. Why did you leave?” The Twig stopped working… how long has Mother been away? Again, she lapsed into sobs, burying her face in her hands.

  I’m truly alone. I don’t want to go back to the desert. Even if Zen was nice. I want to be here.

  Her tears dried up in a little while, and she sprawled on the floor staring blankly at an empty chair stained with dark blotches.

  “I’ve been alone for weeks, and I’m still okay.” She wiped her tears on her arm. “I’ll be okay. Dad taught me enough to live. I have water and food. Maybe I can harvest enough bugs and plants to get by the snow times. And I can still talk to Mother. Dad might be upset with me, but I don’t know how to bring him home.”

  She put a hand on the chair seat.

  “I will still keep your shrine, waiting for you if you come home, Mother.”

  An owl call broke the stillness outside.

  Wisp gasped. No… it’s daylight. That has to be a real owl, not a Tree Walker.

  She leaned over and grasped the rifle from the floor, swung it around into a firing posture, and rose to her feet. I should lock the front door. Clutching the rifle so hard it shook, she crept to the shrine room door all of four feet away from the chair. The cabin seemed so still and quiet, no Dad to talk to, not even the trailer springs creaking from his moving around in his room at night. Even the sense that Mother had been here with them had gone away. The overwhelming emptiness made her feel truly alone.

  It’s like I don’t even know this place anymore. It feels so different.

  She gazed around at the worktable, Dad’s door, the bullet press, the high shelf, the fireplace, and her Haven. It does kinda look like a marauder cage. No! Wisp clenched her jaw. Dad made it with love! The marauders are evil!

  Another owl hoot broke the quiet outside, far too close for comfort.

  Door!

  She spun toward the front door, but before she could take a step closer, it swung open.

  A mound of leaves, vines, and branches hovered at the cabin entrance. Where a face should be, the creature had only a black spot with two huge, round eyes. Behind it, the air had come alive with a standing wall of vegetation blocking off the forest.

  The Tree Walkers had found her.

  Wisp screamed.

  The Tree Walkers

  -34-

  “Go away!” shouted Wisp, pointing her rifle at them.

  The Tree Walker squeezed its mound-shaped body through the door, branches scraping the walls.

  Stupid! Guns don’t hurt them!

  With a high-pitched shriek, she spun on her heel and sprinted for the Haven, tossing the rifle on the floor before scrambling on all fours past the small opening in the side. She twisted around and pulled the door shut with a loud clank, holding it closed with her hands a moment before remembering it had to be locked to make the magic work.

  The Tree Walker approached, gliding straight at her. Four more filed in behind it, o
ne at a time, gazing around at the room. Wisp thrust her hand under the pillow and snagged the key. Gasping for breath, tears streaming from her eyes, she fumbled to reach outside the Haven and get the key in the socket. She had only to lock the door and be safe, but such a small task had become impossible. Her hands outside the bars became vulnerable. Her key kept sliding around the metal face, not finding the keyhole.

  She looked up at the approaching Tree Walker, so close she could almost feel the longing radiating from the creature’s great, round eyes. Oddly, it appeared to be clutching a bow in its vines. Two of the others had spears caught up in their branches.

  The key finally slid in place. She twisted it locked not a full second before the closest walker’s vines reached for the bars.

  She recoiled back against the innermost bars, clutching the key to her chin. “You can’t get me in here! My Haven is magic! Tree Walkers can’t touch it!”

  The nearest Tree Walker stared at her in silence, almost stunned.

  Her Haven surrounded her with the safety of Dad’s love made into steel bars. Once again within her safe place, the sense of solace that came with it broke the fangs of her panic. Nothing could hurt her in there, not even these creatures. She shivered, staring over her knees at the group of Tree Walkers shambling closer. No longer terrified beyond the ability to think, she found herself unable to look away from the manifestation of her greatest fear. Indeed, the sight of Tree Walkers so close fascinated her.

  Each creature appeared to move upon two distinct legs made of leaves, similar in shape to those of a person, hidden somewhere within their leafy mound bodies. She gasped at the sight of boots poking out from beneath the curtain of leaves and branches outside her Haven. A horrible thought formed in her head: this creature had once been a person before the vines grew into their body.

  “D-did you used to be p-people before the trees took you? Is t-that what happens when the Tree Walkers take someone?”

  The closest creature shrank down to about half its height, rustling and crackling, then leaned closer to the Haven. Wisp flinched away from the inhuman black face drifting toward her with its soulless silvery eyes. A pod of vines unwrapped from the bow, which it placed on the floor. Paralyzed, Wisp gazed in horror as the same extension of roots wrapped itself around the barred door. She twisted her feet in, trying to get even one more inch away from the monster.

  Metal rattled as the Tree Walker tested the Haven’s door.

  Wisp shivered, but as she stared at the roots encircling the bars, her brain latched onto the shape of a five-fingered dark grey hand beneath them. It almost appeared made of… fabric.

  The Tree Walker released the bars and reached up toward its black, featureless face.

  “Don’t!” yelled Wisp, raising her arms crossed in front of her. “I don’t wanna be a Tree Walker! Please don’t take me!”

  The creature’s root hand closed around the side and pulled, peeling its face down and away from the rest of its body. Too stunned by watching a creature rip its own skin off, Wisp couldn’t do anything but gawk. The torn-off piece of Tree Walker lowered away from the upper part of the mound, revealing the face of a pale human woman, staring at her with red-ringed eyes of bright blue. Tears streamed down her cheeks; she looked too grief-stricken to speak.

  “Were you a person before the monsters took you?” asked Wisp in a small voice.

  The creature kept staring at her.

  After a moment, it spoke in a halting half-whisper, “Kaya?”

  Mirror

  -35-

  Wisp huddled tighter into herself, trying to hide behind her knees.

  “Kaya,” said the Tree Walker, in a voice eerily close to human.

  “Hello… I’m Wisp. Please don’t take me away.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the woman-thing.

  Wisp clamped her hands together tight around the key, squishing them into her chin. “Dad told me you would take me away forever, but you can’t get me in here. This is the Haven. It stops Tree Walkers with magic.”

  The woman-thing covered her mouth with one hand. Silent tears leaked from her eyes.

  Another somewhat larger creature―one of the spear carriers―advanced up behind the half-woman that had ripped its face off. It also shrank in height, and extended an arm-shaped collection of leaves to grip the first one’s… shoulder.

  “Amazing,” said a muffled, male voice from the spear-carrier.

  Wisp glanced back and forth between the beautiful human face and the blank, black nothing of the second monster. They can talk? Her voice leaked out, barely over a whisper. “Does it hurt?”

  “Does what hurt?” asked the woman-thing.

  Wisp pressed herself against the bars at her back, but couldn’t get any deeper into the Haven. “Being a Tree Walker.”

  “I’m a person. Like you.” The woman-thing grasped the barred door again. “We’re all people. I heard you calling for me, and we came running as fast as we could.”

  One by one, the other Tree Walkers peeled away their black faces with the enormous eyes. The one next to the woman had short black hair and the visage of a human man. Two men, one pale, one with skin as dark as the forest floor, and a woman stood behind them, all with sad expressions. Wisp’s fear gave way to confusion, then curiosity at the sight of the dark skinned man.

  “This is Navas,” said the nearest woman, indicating the man beside her. “The others are Ionna, Lanos, and Marr.”

  At the word ‘Marr,’ the dark man nodded in greeting.

  Wisp shifted her gaze back to the yellow-haired woman.

  “My name is Eden.” She reached up and pulled back a hood covered in leaves, exposing blonde hair. “Kaya, I’m your mother.”

  What! No! The Tree Walkers are trying to trick me. Anger sprang up inside her, devouring fear. She kicked at the bars. “No! Mother’s gone! She was in the shrine, and she’s not there anymore. She watched over us…”

  “The woman who was in that room has been dead for a long time. She was not your mother.” Eden reached in past the bars, offering her hand.

  Wisp screamed; her feet slipped over the bedding in a futile effort to push her away while her back already squished against the bars. “No! Don’t take me! Dad said you can’t get me in the Haven. The magic is supposed to keep Tree Walkers out.”

  “Kaya,” said Eden in a soothing tone. “If the magic can keep Tree Walkers out, and it does not stop my hand, what does that mean to you?”

  Wisp stopped scrambling and sat motionless, staring at the hand reaching toward her.

  “It is a glove, Kaya. A glove with camouflage so we can hide in the forest.” The woman retracted her arm from the Haven. Another vine-covered limb emerged from under the mound of leaves and tugged at the roots on the first projection. Vegetation and fabric slipped away, exposing a pale human hand. She held her palm up, fingers splayed. “See. I’m a person like you, wearing something that helps me hide.”

  “This poor child,” said Ionna. “What she must have been put through.”

  “That man kept her in a cage,” said Marr. “Death magic or not, I say we show him justice.”

  The other two men nodded.

  Wisp stared down at her feet, half hidden in the rumpled folds of her plush red sleep bag. Her voice sounded far away and quiet, as if it came from someone else. “It’s not a cage. It’s a Haven.”

  Navas squeezed Eden’s shoulder. “He’s trained her to feel safe in there. Probably so she wouldn’t run away in the night when he wasn’t watching her, and come home.”

  “She doesn’t know any home but this.” Lanos, a man much younger than Dad, with long, brown hair, sighed. “She was so small when he took her.”

  “Took me?” asked Wisp.

  “Kaya.” Eden reached her arm in again. “Days ago, you took a chicken from a place behind a green wall. Do you remember that?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “Yes.” A second later, her eyes shot open wide. “You were there!”

 
“I was. We tried to find you, but… I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry for not being able to find you and bring you home.”

  “This is my home.” Wisp’s voice faltered. Isn’t it?

  The woman reached into the Haven again. “Kaya, you are my daughter.”

  Her eyebrows knit together. “Why do you keep calling me ‘Kaya?’ My name is Wisp.”

  “Are you sure this is her?” asked Lanos. “It has been nine years. What are the odds she’s still even alive?”

  Eden bowed her head. “I know this is my daughter. I can feel it.”

  “Look at her, man.” Navas gestured at Wisp.

  “I…” Wisp stared into Eden’s deep blue eyes. The woman’s face looked as pale as Eden had been before her trip to the desert. She thought of Falo accusing Dad of not really being her father because he looked so different from her. What did looks have to do with being Dad? Kit’s joyful wail as he leapt into his mother’s arms replayed in her mind, along with the nasty thoughts she’d had about him for still having a living mother. A fat tear dripped from her cheek and ran down her shin. Dare she hope this creature told the truth? Would Mother be angry with her for doubting? “How… do I know you’re not trying to trick me?”

  Seeing Wisp so close to tears got Eden crying. “Please come out of there. I promise we will never hurt you.”

  Wisp stared at the outstretched hand invading her Haven. How happy would it make her if this woman told the truth, if she still had a real mother? But that would mean Dad (and not Tree Walkers) had tricked her. Hope at this chance crashed into guilt at betraying Mother and heartsickness at the idea so much might have been lies. She reached up, but hesitated.

  “Come on, sweetie,” said Navas. “Children don’t belong inside cages.”

  The words of the people she’d freed from the marauders haunted her. Only bad people put other people in cages. Havens were cages. Did she have a mother who wasn’t a dried-out body?

  Wisp’s hand trembled. She had seen this same woman at the settlement, without all the leaves. Could it be that Tree Walkers didn’t really exist? Or maybe these people dressed up like them to be scary. Even if this woman lied, Dad wouldn’t want her to be alone. Not at twelve.