The Forest Beyond the Earth

by Matthew S. Cox

  Eden brushed her hand over Wisp’s forehead. “I know of many children who call people father or mother and have no blood tie to them. Love means more than blood. But here, what that man did to you, was not done out of love. He may have thought so. He may have made you think so, but he stole you. That”―she gestured at the Haven―“horrible thing has nothing to do with love.”

  If what this woman said rang true, Dad would have to be ‘bad,’ yet Mother never spoke.

  “He said that if I was a bad girl, Mother would speak and tell me I did bad. Is that true?”

  Navas whistled.

  “Wow.” Marr sputtered. “That’s about as ‘not right’ as ‘not right’ can get.”

  “Oh, Kaya…” Eden took her hand in both of hers. “I think he wanted to make you feel safe. That dead woman can’t talk. No matter what you did, she would’ve never spoken. He wanted you to believe you were always good. And I’m sure you were.”

  “If my father told me a corpse’d get up and yell at me if I messed up, I’d have stayed my butt in my damn room,” said Marr, shivering. “What a messed up thing to tell a kid.”

  Wisp raised and lowered her toes while blowing air out her nose. Whatever he had been, Dad had gone to the Other Place, leaving her alone. She’d spent so much time daydreaming about what it would be like to have a mother who could talk to her, hold her hand, laugh, smile, and hadn’t… died. Her books sometimes mentioned burying the dead, but Dad had always told her the ancients had strange customs, and they didn’t respect their loved ones, just put them in the ground like poop. These people thought it a head sickness to keep Mother in the house after she’d died.

  Old memories slipped out of the cracks forming in her mind. As a small child, she’d been terrified of Mother. She couldn’t recall the moment she’d gone from frightened of a dried-out body to talking to her like a person she adored.

  Maybe I have head sickness, too.

  “Dad used to make me stay in the Haven a lot. When I got older, he said it was safe for me to be out of it more, but only during the day. He said he was protecting me, but I think you’re right. He wasn’t afraid the Tree Walkers would take me. He didn’t want me to run away.”

  Eden teared up, nodding.

  “Are you really my mother?”

  “Yes, Kaya. I feel it inside my bones.”

  “No doubt about it,” said Navas. “The two of you look so much alike.”

  “No doubt.” Marr clapped. “Not even a little.”

  “Yes.” Wisp picked her gaze up off the floor and smiled at her mother. “I want to stay with you. I don’t want to be alone.”

  Eden let out a joyous cry, and wrapped her in a hug.

  “Mother?”

  “Yes, baby?”

  “Can head sickness get better?”

  Eden leaned back to peer at her. “Why?”

  “I think maybe I have it, too.” She managed a weak smile. “I was talking to a dead person.”

  Navas raised both eyebrows. “Did the dead person ever answer you?”

  Wisp shook her head.

  “Then you’re fine. Not sick.” Navas glanced around the room. “We should pack anything of use.”

  While the grownups proceeded to gather her former life into piles in the middle of the room, Wisp hovered by her mother’s side, staring at the Haven. Something turned over in her gut, making her lean away from the… cage.

  The box of steel bars no longer seemed warm and inviting.

  She found it cold and frightening.

  Wisp shied away from it and buried her face in the leaves of her mother’s poncho.

  Epilogue: A New Haven

  -38-

  It had taken them three days to make the trip back to the settlement with the giant green fence around it. They knew as much or more about the plants as she did, though none could read so much as two words. These people considered the plants and insects she had been eating almost every day of her life to be for emergency survival. Back home, they farmed different ones like corn, potatoes, carrots, beans, and a whole bunch of other vegetables she’d never heard of.

  When they’d arrived at the settlement, going in the main gate, the sheer size of it kept her jaw hanging open and her voice hiding in shock. Huge farm plots and giant cabins stretched out as far as she could see to the wall, alive with people as well as animals. The elders, amazed that Eden had found her missing daughter, welcomed her with open arms. On the day following her arrival, a great crowd gathered to celebrate. More people than she had ever seen in one place approached to tell her how happy they were that she had been found alive and unhurt. She lost track after two hundred, but did count fifty-six other children. With so many grownups all telling her the same thing―that she had been taken away from this place as a tiny child, she abandoned any lingering doubt.

  The town held a great feast beginning early in the afternoon of the third day following her arrival, and continuing until dark. During the festivities, Wisp learned about dancing, as well as a few ‘games’ the other children insisted she play.

  The adults hadn’t taken the rifle or pistol away from her during their walk home, though once they arrived, her mother insisted the weapons stay in a closet―except for when the town elders requested she explain how they worked. She didn’t fire them, since she did not want to waste any bullets, but taught the elders (and her mother) about guns. When she explained that she had a limited supply of ammo, and how few shots she had left, the elders became dismayed at the idea the threat to the whole town had been a lie. An argument began among the old people whether to allow her to keep them or if such powerful relics should belong to the people as a whole.

  Wisp couldn’t decide how she felt about that. After carrying them for weeks, and using them several times to protect herself, she didn’t want to part with them. But on the other hand, they reminded her of the man who claimed to be Dad, and also of shooting people. Because of that, she wouldn’t mind never seeing them again. The old people decided they would vote on it later. She would talk it over with her mother, but wouldn’t really care one way or the other if the elders took the guns or let her keep them.

  Surprisingly, her mother didn’t get too upset with the elders once they realized they had believed a lie that Dad could wipe out the whole settlement. After seeing the sheer number of people here, the fifty or so bullets Dad kept on hand at any one time wouldn’t have been near enough to do that. Once the elders left, and her mother repeated her rule that the guns had to stay in the closet, she told her about how Dad always took them apart and cleaned them with oil. Unfortunately, he had never shown her how to do that, but the knowledge had to be in one of the books he’d kept in his trailer.

  She couldn’t quite figure out how to feel about Dad. What had once been total adoring love melted down into an ever-shifting mixture of anger, sadness, and regret. Leaving him out in the desert didn’t feel like the right thing to do, but she couldn’t bring herself to even ask her real mother to march all the way out there to do something nice for the man who’d made the past nine years of her life so miserable. Perhaps things did happen for a reason, and his not having a proper shrine somehow became his atonement.

  Wisp had her own room in a new cabin many times the size of the one in which she had spent the past nine years. The room contained a real bed, plenty of shelves for her books, a window that peered out over the farm fields behind the house, and even a closet in which she kept new clothes. Several of the villagers had given her gifts of dresses, sandals, and even fur-lined boots for later when it got cold. In this new home, she wouldn’t be kept inside during the winter.

  Despite her big, comfortable bed, she had trouble sleeping. Part of it came from excitement: everything about this settlement was so new, she couldn’t stop thinking about what she wanted to do the next day. Also, the lack of bars around her still made her nervous at night despite her knowing the cage had been evil. The fourth time sleeping in her new bed, a nightmare woke her screaming, only this ti
me, the Tree Walkers had Dad’s face on them, trying to steal her away from her real mother.

  However, something amazing happened. Her mother ran in to check on her (which, Dad had always done as well), but once she had calmed down, she slept the rest of the night in her mother’s bed, free of bad dreams. With each passing day, and her real mother’s help, she gradually stopped worrying that monsters would grab her in the dark.

  Only her mother called her ‘Kaya.’ To everyone else, she continued to introduce herself as Wisp―especially to her new circle of friends. Being around other children had been the single strangest part of this new life. But, after settling in with a group of eight kids all around her age (give or take a year or two), she had a strong feeling her new friends would be one of the best parts.

  The settlement also had something they called ‘school,’ but even the old wise woman who spent a few hours every day teaching the kids about farming, weather, counting, cooking, and so on didn’t know how to read. Word spread from the initial group that had found her about the ‘books,’ and she wound up becoming the village’s ‘reading teacher,’ despite being half the age of most of her students.

  In addition to reading for fun, the elders also wanted her to ‘translate the knowing’ out of the boring books that explained things like how the bullet machine, motors, electricity, and other things worked. Of course, it wouldn’t do them any good since they didn’t have many supplies, only what they had taken from the cabin in the hills.

  Navas turned out to be something of a new Dad. Her mother explained that her father by blood had been the first one killed trying to get her back. Only a few months ago, Eden had become close to Navas, having spent many years too focused on finding her to care about anything else. The two of them loved each other like Wisp imagined Dad had loved Mother―only without the head sickness.

  The village became her home.

  Wisp had a real, live mother, friends around her age, and a much bigger Haven.

  But her new Haven didn’t have any bars. It didn’t have to defend her from the Tree Walkers.

  The Tree Walkers now protected her.

  fin

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you for reading The Forest Beyond the Earth! Reviews are the lifeblood of independent and small press authors. To all who take the time to leave an honest review, you have my utmost thanks and gratitude.

  Additional thanks to:

  Merethe Najjar for proofreading.

  Amalia Chitulescu for the beautiful cover.

  Ricky Gunawan for the interior artwork. http://ricky-gunawan.daportfolio.com/

  About the Author

  Originally from South Amboy NJ, Matthew has been creating science fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Since 1996, he has developed the “Divergent Fates” world, in which Division Zero, Virtual Immortality, The Awakened Series, The Harmony Paradox, and the Daughter of Mars series take place. Along with being an editor at Curiosity Quills press, he has worked in IT and technical support.

  Matthew is an avid gamer, a recovered WoW addict, Gamemaster for two custom RPG systems, and a fan of anime, British humour, and intellectual science fiction that questions the nature of reality, life, and what happens after it.

  He is also fond of cats.

  Links

  Please visit me on the web at: http://www.matthewcoxbooks.com/wordpress/

  Also, for news, updates, and exclusives, join my readers group on Facebook: Division Zero

  Reader Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/137705036768984/

  Find me on Twitter: @mscox_fiction

  For contact or inquiries regarding this novel, please email at: mcox2112@gmail.com

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  Middle Grade

  § Tales of Widowswood series (fantasy)

  § Citadel: The Concordant Sequence (post-apocalyptic)

  § The Cursed Codex (LitRPG – Fantasy/contemporary)

  § The Menagerie of Jenkins Bailey (contemporary fantasy – with J.R. Rain)

  Young Adult

  § Caller 107 (contemporary paranormal – Note: strong language)

  § The Summer the World Ended (nuclear apocalyptic/family drama/contemporary)

  § Nine Candles of Deepest Black (witchcraft horror)

  § The Eldritch Heart (fantasy / LGBT)

  § The Forest Beyond the Earth

  Adult

  · Division Zero series

  · The Awakened series

  · Daughter of Mars series

  · Virtual Immortality

  · The Harmony Paradox

  · Divergent Fates Anthology

  · The Roadhouse Chronicles Series (post nuclear apoc/zombie)

  · Faded Skies series (post-ww3 / sci fi)

  · Chiaroscuro: The Mouse and the Candle (vampire [not a romance])

  · Temporal Armistice Series (urban fantasy)

  · Wayfarer: AV494 (sci fi horror)

  · Operation: Chimera (sci fi – with Tony Healey)

  · The Dysfunctional Conspiracy (nonfiction memoir – with Christopher Veltmann)

  · Winter Solstice series (urban fantasy – with J.R. Rain)

  · Alexis Silver series (urban fantasy – with J.R. Rain)

  · Samantha Moon Origins series (urban fantasy – with J.R. Rain)

  · Maddy Wimsey series (detective / witchcraft – with J.R. Rain)

  · The Far Side of Promise (anthology)

  · Axillon99 (LitRPG – with J.R. Rain)