Akilina: Out of the Woods

by Patricia A Bowmer

  “It looks nice on you,” Eden said. “You should keep it.”

  They walked on.

  Halley fingered the bracelet now and then, liking the sensation of its weight on her wrist. It gave her a sense of melting into, becoming one with, the land. The feeling was linked to the bracelet, but it was more than that. It was due to the sharing of the truth about herself with Eden. Talking so openly had brought the two of them closer, instead of leaving Halley feeling judged and alone. That amazed her. All her life, she had hidden the things about herself that she considered ugly or unattractive. She’d tried to present herself as positive, controlled, together. She’d lied. The lies had left her alone, isolated in a great empty cavern she had unwittingly carved. I was always afraid to talk to people, afraid they wouldn’t like me if I told the truth.

  But today, she had told the truth. Eden hadn’t turned away in disgust, hadn’t rolled her eyes and told her how stupid she was. She had simply listened and accepted what was. How glorious this felt, this small thing, this being heard. As if she were a tiny, premature, featherless bird shivering in the cold, and Eden had picked her up and held her in warm palms to her heart.

  I was so afraid I’d bring people down if I told them how bad I felt. She listened to Eden skipping behind her, humming a tune. It doesn’t seem to have brought Eden down any. Maybe sharing the truth, the painful bits, is really a gift. Maybe it makes the one I share it with feel strong and wise and helpful.

  “You okay?” Eden asked.

  “Just fine,” Halley replied.

  A tree with a large upraised scar in its center caught Halley’s eye. The thick tissue of the scar was lighter in color than the rest of the trunk. It looked like the tree had been stabbed with a knife, and the knife dragged down for several inches. Awful; but it had survived. It’s stronger at the scar than any other place.

  Thinking of her own scars, her own wounds, she wondered why she had labeled them “secrets” and “private” and “ugly”, why she had sought to erase them from her mind. They were the most instructive things in her life. They were the strong places.

  Halley was becoming ready to see the truth, ready to look at the moments of her past she was uncovering. She could think of the blue butterflies and the purple wildflowers, and even the memories that Trance had re-stirred, and not try to blank them out.

  A sudden chill ran threw her. She narrowed her eyes. There was more, wasn’t there? There was something else she wasn’t remembering. In her mind, she could sense its vague outline. Her awareness heightened, she became conscious of an unusual sound. She became painfully alert.

  Above her, a cold wind rattled the trees, causing a thousand leaves to rub against their neighbors. The trees were too full, their leaves scraping and shoving each other in a battle for space. The air was overflowing with their whispering, and the sound for which she was listening so intently was masked by the leaf noise cramming the air. The small hairs on Halley’s forearms stood to attention. Willing the trees to Still! and Be quiet!, she listened hard. The other noise was still there, underlying the scraping of the leaves. She couldn’t make it out. It was urgent to understand it! It was advancing relentlessly toward her.

  “Can you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “That sound…I’m sure I hear something. Listen…”

  “The leaves? Do you mean the leaves, moving in the wind?”

  “No. It’s not that…”

  A small ridge formed between Halley’s eyebrows. Her breathing quickened. She glanced behind her. Back the way they’d come.

  “Oh no…”

  Stretching back in the distance was the long, straight, open path, with its unfurling tree ferns and dinosaur leaves and banana trees. It was midday, and the clouds had gone. The sky was a brilliant, startling blue. The sun, directly overhead, erased the patterns of light and dark. All was illuminated and all was revealed and the sun was painful to behold in its brightness.

  For the sun revealed the truth: the path behind them was no longer empty.

  Trance! It was Trance moving towards them.

  He came at them fast.

  She stared at his ice-blue eyes, his fine white teeth. She couldn’t move.

  He called to her. “Thank God you’re okay. I was afraid you’d drowned.”

  Her pulse throbbed. It was as if he’d arisen from the grave.

  “I kept searching for you,” he was saying. “Then I saw your blood on the rocks. I followed the trail of your blood…”

  My blood. My life, draining away…

  Trance was closer now.

  Eden grabbed her cold hand, pulling at her urgently. “Come on!” she shouted.

  But Halley was mesmerized. He was death, and she was drawn to him.

  His sing-song voice droned on. “I see you’ve met Eden…”

  “Let’s go!” Eden shouted again.

  Eden! She had to protect Eden! She awoke from her reverie, and they began to run.

  He pursued.

  “Don’t look back!” Eden shouted as they tried to outdistance him. “Don’t listen. It’s his voice paralyzing you!”

  “Don’t run,” Trance called after them. “You know I won’t hurt you. I’m the only one who can get you out of these woods. Please, stop.”

  When they didn’t, he quickened his pace, his long stride lengthening into a loping run.

  Halley ran, and didn’t look back. His footsteps thundered behind her. He had to take only one stride to their three.

  “Quick! Down here!” Eden shouted, with a desperate burst of speed. A small, rocky trail led off the wide, smooth path.

  They ran recklessly, leaping from rock to rock, their urgent need to escape making them take dangerous risks. When the path became suddenly flat and easy, they ran stretched out long and strong. Then tree roots suddenly strangled the way and they had to pull back quickly or fall over, they had to waste time jumping their feet carefully through the roots at a pace not-fast-enough-to-get-away. They fled as if they were soft-skinned animals pursued by a hungry predator; they fled as if their lives were at stake. Halley’s forehead throbbed – the wail of the baby echoed in her head. It was a terrifying sound. The baby was at the edge of death.

  The path narrowed. With dismay, Halley saw that it led along the high contour line of a steep hill. On one side, the hill fell away sharply, a drop of several hundred feet. On the other was a high rock wall. There was no way off the path with Trance behind them. No way to go but forward. They ran a hundred feet more. It grew narrower.

  No safety net, no railings. Nothing to stop us flying off the edge if we take a wrong step.

  Her eyes were focused on the drop. She wasn’t watching her footing. Landing wrong on an unseen rock, her ankle gave way with a sharp twist. She lost her balance, and her flailing arms beat at the air. For a moment, a stretched out moment where she could feel every cell in her body, she was sure she would fall, would crash to earth hundreds of feet below. Then she threw her weight sideways towards the rock wall and crumpled down onto one knee. She was breathing fast.

  It took a second for the terror of the near disaster to settle into the base of her spine. When it did she held herself completely still. A moment later, she looked back – Trance hadn’t caught up. Not yet. Cautiously, she gripped the rock wall, pulling herself to her feet while cursing at the slipping of her sweaty fingertips. She took weight onto the ankle gingerly.

  “Are you okay?” Eden said.

  “I think so…”

  Halley let go of the security of the rock wall. “Listen, we’ve got to slow down – this path is too dangerous.” Her voice sounded thin to her ears, like a high cloud.

  “No – he’s too close,” Eden said urgently. “We’ve got to move!”

  Halley hesitated.

  “We’ve got to run!” Eden shouted, looking behind her.

  Halley looked where Eden was looking and saw Trance. His voice began echoing in her head, drowning out Eden’s words.

  “Y
ou’re right, Halley…slow down…you’ll get yourself hurt. Wait for me. Let me talk to you.” He sounded as if he were soothing a headstrong child. “You’re not strong enough for this. It’s too dangerous.”

  Halley watched him move, as if he were flying over the terrain; she found herself admiring his footwork and his competence. She saw his lips rise in a smile; it looked alluring. Maybe he was right. Maybe she should just wait.

  “No! You’ve run harder trails than this. Trust yourself, you can do this!”

  Halley wasn’t sure whether she or Eden had said the words. She wasn’t even sure she’d heard them spoken aloud. But she began to run.

  Lengthening their strides, gasping, Halley and Eden turned a sharp corner, and Halley saw with a surge of joy that there was finally a small break in the rock face, where a thin track climbed up the hill to the right. “Come on – he’ll think we’ve gone straight!”

  Grabbing onto the trunk of a thin tree, she pulled herself up onto the barely visible dirt track. She extended a hand to Eden, but Eden ignored it and simply leapt up, as light on her feet as a well-toned cat.

  They moved quickly up the thin, steep track, into dense woods. Tree branches caught on their clothes and snagged their hair. Low shrubs scratched their shins. They made hard, noisy progress. A few hundred meters up the trail, Halley held up her hand to signal Eden to stop. She raised a finger to her lips. Softly at first, and then more loudly, they heard Trance pounding down the high contour trail they had just left. As he got closer, she could hear him talking.

  “Halley…remember that time you ran away on the beach, how you got lost? You were all alone. You were only five years old. Doesn’t this feel the same?” His footsteps were getting closer. “You need someone to find you, Halley. You need someone to help you. Let me help you. I want to help you…” The words were enticing, the tone of his voice gentle and warm.

  The memory from her childhood, her lost on the beach, became vivid in Halley’s mind. She recalled being held protectively in the arms of a strong lifeguard, and how good it felt to be made safe by someone else.

  Eden gripped Halley’s arm tightly. “No,” she whispered. “You don’t need him. Remember? You found your own way back that day. Believe in yourself.”

  Eden’s words reminded Halley of the mantra she used to repeat to herself when she was young and scared: believe in yourself believe in yourself believe in yourself.

  She focused her mind, repeating the words in her head; they had a humming, warming quality to them, and allowed Halley to block out what Trance was saying. With a thin edge of her mind, she listened to him moving away. Although the distance between them grew, the volume of his voice remained the same.

  “You’ll only get killed out here,” he said. “The animals will attack you in the night, without me to protect you.” He paused, as if relishing the thought. “Even if you do find your way out of the woods, you’ll never get by the woman on the plains.”

  His words became muffled, and then died away completely.

  Silently, stepping like natives, they worked their way up the thin dirt track. It was narrow and muddy, and the footing was treacherous. The trail must have just been cut back; sharp-edged branches poked out at odd angles, threatening serious injury if they were incautious. Halley’s breathing became rough with the exertion. In places it was too steep to climb with legs alone; here, she grabbed onto the trunks of trees and hoisted herself up, her feet scrabbling along behind her. Eden followed closely, using the same trees for purchase.

  The trees dwarfed them. Halley couldn’t see over, and so tightly were the trees bound by vines and shrubs that she couldn’t see between them either. The world narrowed to the slim, steep track, to the slipping and catching of her feet in the dry gravelly earth. The birds were silent, as if they were afraid to give away Halley and Eden’s position with their song. There were turn-offs and side-trails; Halley ignored them and stuck to the main track. By some implicit agreement, Halley and Eden didn’t speak, moving quickly and carefully up the steep hillside.

  So Trance is still alive. Funny. He doesn’t seem handsome anymore. Just deadly. She carefully worked herself around the sharp tip of a tree branch. His voice surrounds me with death. Her biceps burned as she pulled herself up a steep section. And he’s still with me, even though I’ve left him behind. I can still hear his voice. It’s like he’s inside me. Her right foot slipped backwards and she grabbed hold of a thick tree trunk to arrest the slide. I can’t listen to his voice. I’ve got to choose not to listen.

  The climb continued. As they rose, wild camellias appeared, their white flowers thickly punctuated by many pin-headed yellow stamens. The flowers were pretty to look at, but the fallen ones were slick when stepped on. Halley and Eden soon learned to avoid them. Vines caught their ankles, tightening and grasping and pulling. Worst of all, the green spiky plants that had plagued Halley on the river gully re-appeared, hooking on clothing and not letting go, tearing at tender skin. Still, Halley and Eden pushed their way through, higher and higher, leaving the lower forest behind.

  Finally, the track began to level. They were reaching the apex of the hill. With the leveling, the shrubbery thinned and the going became easier. Sunlight warmed the skin on the tips of Halley’s shoulders, and the world became one shade lighter. As the way began to open, Halley could see that the track was coming to an end. She stopped suddenly.

  It wasn’t just the track that was coming to an end. It was the entire forest.

  For the first time, Halley could see far into the distance: grey granite; mountains tipped with ice; blue, blue sky.

  “Wow,” Eden said.

  “Yeah. Let’s stop a minute.”

  She sat down quietly under the tall trees. Cross-legged on the damp earth, she slipped the sweat-darkened straps of the bamboo backpack off her shoulders, and set it at her feet.

  This moment of transition was important, this being present atop the mountain they had climbed. It was a time of synthesis; a time of reaping. Halley’s chest was high and lifted, her spine straight. A camellia flower fell to the ground next to her, and she watched it fall, and was contented to see it fall, contented by the way that nature knew when it was time to let go, time to move on.

  Eden sat down next to Halley, settling as gently as the falling flower.

  I feel just like I did when I closed the door of Dad’s house for the last time. She had lingered there too, holding the cool brass doorknob in her hand, knowing it to be the last time she’d close that door. The woods are like that. Once I’ve closed this door, I can’t come back. She looked out at the blue sky and the mountains. Even if I do come back, I won’t come back as the Halley I am right now. I’m not even who I was a few days ago, when I first came into the woods with Fernando, when I left him to go looking for the baby. The moment tasted bittersweet. I wonder if a cicada feels this way when it leaves its old shell hanging on a tree. I don’t like leaving behind bits of me, even when they’re bits I was truly done with.

  Halley breathed deeply into her belly, feeling it expand against her clothing, feeling her ribcage rise. She tried to breathe in her new self, to let the change simply be. The pungent smell of the earth and the sweetness of camellia pollen filled her senses. Into her awareness swooped bird song, swelling around her. The ground felt solid and sure under her sit bones. She glanced at Eden, and saw that the girl’s eyes were fixed on the high mountain peaks in the distance. She wondered if Eden was scared, or if she was looking forward to the next challenge. She looked lost in thought.

  “I’m hungry,” Eden said suddenly. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  Halley laughed. “Yeah, I am. I’m famished!”

  Could it possibly be the same day she had sat by the river eating bananas with the lion-monkeys, the same day she had climbed the river gully? It seemed so long ago – no wonder she was so hungry. Reaching into the bamboo backpack, she removed the bananas she’d picked earlier in the day. It was lucky they’d been unripe when she’d stowed th
em, or they’d have been a mess by now. As it was, the day’s heat had ripened them nicely. Their scent made her mouth water. “Look what I’ve got!”

  Eden clapped her hands excitedly.

  The bananas disappeared fast; they looked at each other.

  Eden said, “Wait for me…I’ll be right back!”

  Halley watched as Eden ran back down the path. What’s she up to? It didn’t take long to find out. A few minutes later Eden returned carrying six small coconuts, struggling not to drop any of them.

  “Of course!” Halley said. “I noticed them when we were walking.”

  “We can eat them, and we can drink them too,” Eden said. “Our picnic wouldn’t be complete without something to drink.” Giggling, she added, “It was such fun climbing the coconut trees.”

  Halley smiled. “I should’ve gone with you. I love to climb trees.”

  Her eyes fixed on the coconuts, and she thought of the long thin trunk of the coconut tree. “How much do you weigh?” she said, as she got her pocketknife out.

  “Why?” Eden said.

  Halley pried drinking holes in the tough fibrous shells of the coconuts, digging all the way down through the coconut meat to the liquid center. “I was wondering how you got up the coconut tree. I’ve never been able to climb one myself.”

  “It is pretty hard, if you don’t know how. I read a book about it – you do it like a frog. I’ll show you sometime.”

  Halley nodded and they began on the coconuts.

  Through the small holes – they had to purse their lips to stop liquid dribbling down their cheeks and into their ears – they drank the sweet, grainy coconut water.

  “It’s like kissing a coconut,” Eden giggled.

  “What do you know about kissing?”

  “I know enough. From TV.”

  When the liquid was gone, Halley sawed a larger circular hole in the coconut hulls, and then reached her hand inside to slice out the thick, moist, white flesh. She laid the bits of coconut on a flat leaf, and when the work of cutting it out was finished, they ate it all. The simple meal was abundantly nourishing.