Out of The Woods (5 page)

The path had become misty, as if suddenly peopled by strange spirits. It had been straight earlier in the day, but now it appeared winding and rooted. Her pulse lifted. Even the friendly cathedral trees looked threatening, standing tall and emaciated. She shook her head and took her eyes from the tall trees, looking down to the ground.
Got to calm down
.

Her breath caught in her throat – on the forest floor, the tree roots looked like snakes. A bolt of fear shot through her, making her step back fast, breathing out hard, opening her eyes so wide that it hurt and staring hard at the spot where she was certain she’d just seen movement. She waited several moments. It had been an illusion. It was just a tree root.

“It wasn’t a snake,” she said, experimenting with her voice – it was reassuring to hear a voice, even if it were just her own. She continued to talk aloud, choosing her words carefully. “You’re going to be okay. Don’t worry. You can do this. You’ll find shelter. Stay calm…”

She fought the urge to run, to panic – that would be the worst thing she could do. It would waste valuable time, and only scare her more. And there
would
be snakes out at this time of night. She forced herself to take deeper breaths. It was smarter to move slowly, to give them time to feel the vibrations of her footsteps. They were shy creatures, and would just crawl away. If they heard her coming.

She began to walk again, stepping carefully. The forest became thick with night, and, though she moved slowly, she kept stumbling over tree roots and rocks. The shock of it made her heart thud painfully.

“See, Fernando was right,” she said sharply. “You’re so stupid! You wasted all that time with your running, and now you don’t have anywhere to sleep. You don’t know how to do this alone. So smug, feeling so free. And now you’ve failed on your first night, not even finding shelter.”

She hated the disgust, the bite of the words, but found it impossible to silence herself. Even when she stopped speaking aloud, the voice continued in her head.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
…

In frustration, she growled aloud, trying to drown out the interior dialog. The growl was frightening. Uncontrolled. She glanced around her quickly, scared at being alone but suddenly even more frightened that she might not be alone.

She stopped moving. It was safer to stay right where she was, to curl into a small, hard ball. She closed her eyes and thought of the roly-polys she and her brother used to play with. By touching one of their feathery legs very gently – with care, so they didn’t hurt them – they could make a roly-poly form itself into a round, armored ball that sheltered its soft bits. She remembered the feel of their rough skin as she rolled them around the palm of her hand. When put back on the ground, the roly-poly would wait a moment, then open up again and scurry away. It would be good to be that sort of creature, to carry one’s own armor. Laying herself down on the hard earth, she hugged her knees into her chest.

The ground was cruel. She had no sleeping bag or blanket. Her backpack, which might have served as a pillow, she’d thrown away.
Stupid.
Quickly, she ate two of her energy bars and half of the pack of dried nuts. She drank some water from the canteen, but it disappeared too quickly, leaving her thirst far from quenched. She forced herself to save some for morning.

Darkness quickly engulfed her. With the coming of night, the woods grew louder. Creatures accustomed to the night shadows began to wake and move about. Their calls were like none she had heard before. They might be insects, birds, or large tree-dwelling animals. Their chorus built in intensity, until she had to cover her ears with her hands. This gesture shut out the ache of the noise, but still the cries crept into her head between tiny gaps in her fingers. It made her picture all manner of awfulness in the coming night.

It became, suddenly, ominously, still. She turned her head and stared up: a slice of sky was just visible between the trees. It had been overcast. Now the sky had turned a heavy black, and as she watched, a yellow hue appeared at the edges. The temperature dropped fast. She knew the warning signs, and her body tightened instinctively just before the first blinding flash of light. It was soon followed by the inevitable boom of thunder.

The first drops of rain tested her gently, as if for resistance. Then they quickened, thudding hard into her, coldly, and without compassion. The forceful rain stripped away the last remaining pleasure of her day. It ran boldly down her face, washing away her slim confidence. The frequent lightning lit the forest with a blinding white glare, its after-image making white ghost trees dance before her eyes. She shut them tightly. She was in terrible danger of being struck by lightning. If it were going to happen anyway, she didn’t want to watch.
I’ve been out in lots of thunder-storms – I’ve never been struck before
. The thought seemed worse than senseless, and was soon followed by its logical conclusion
. There’s always a first time
. She shut her eyes tighter; there was nothing she could do about it. The thunder boomed. She felt the ground rumble under her.

The rain became a deluge of hungry sheets of water plunging across the forest, falling as if too heavy for themselves, as if they were over-full and their thin skins were bursting. The water could not get back to earth fast enough, and it fell with an unexpected and fearsome urgency. It was relentless. It didn’t seem possible that it could rain so hard for so long, that thunder could be so loud.

The rain bore down on her, birthing mud, sweeping away the leaves with its rivulets. She didn’t move. She knew she was crying but couldn’t feel the tears flow down her cheeks; they merged with the rain and washed into the earth. The rain needled arrows of cold into her flesh. It ran into her ears and down her neck, inside her thin shirt. It embraced her with icy fingers, intimate and terrifying. She prayed for someone to appear, to help her, to tell her what to do.

Her violent shivering continued for some time, but eventually, it stopped. This was a bad sign; even her body’s will to live was abandoning her. She stared blankly at the space where the canteen lay – she didn’t move to open it and let it fill with rain-water.

In the dimmest, coldest, darkest hours of that long night, the rain became alive with murderous intent. Waking in the small hours of the night – the hours that smelt of death – could make even the strongest spirit long to leave this earthly test, to pass onto a calmer, easier place. And she had never felt strong at all. She longed for the freedom the rain offered, longed for it to become a drowning river that would release her from herself.

It was not the rain that made her long for death, not the night alone. It was facing all the moments that had come before. It was facing her past that she could never erase, the shame of the choices she had made. It was facing herself in darkness.

She watched herself from some distance, and knew that, for the woman who lay curled on the cold, wet earth, there seemed not a single point of light in the universe, that the point of it all had become impossibly elusive. She was sure that the baby had perished. How could she save it, when she couldn’t even save herself?

When all was black, her exhaustion led her into a troubled sleep. She dreamt of being swept away by unforeseen tidal waves.

Through that long, dark night, the man watched as her confidence ebbed away.

You are right to lose hope. You don’t have the power to save yourself. Soon…soon I will come for you.

The sun’s warmth on her face woke her, and she immediately longed for the sweet unconsciousness of sleep. She was still here. It hadn’t been a bad dream.

She was completely water-logged. Her clothes were flattened against her skin, saturated by the rain. Her vibrant orange windbreaker was covered in mud, and her combat trousers had fared no better. She stood up and removed the two outer layers, shaking the windbreaker to remove some of the mud, and wringing out the long-sleeved t-shirt, watching the muddy water drip onto the earth. She tied them around her waist, and shivered in the one layer remaining, the damp red sleeveless t-shirt with the sequined-on queen’s crown.

Hunger growled through her, followed closely and urgently by thirst. She felt in the pocket of her trousers for the last of the energy bars and the nut mix. It was lucky they’d been in plastic bags. She ate them quickly, without tasting them. The canteen water disappeared almost as fast.
That’s breakfast over. And lunch and dinner too. That’s all of it, gone.

She folded up the zip-lock bags that had held her scant food supply and tucked them neatly into her pocket. The movement was purely mechanical; it seemed pointless to be saving plastic bags in her hopeless situation.

She stared blankly at the ground, thinking of the confidence she’d felt the day before when she was running, as if searching for it amongst the wet leaves. It was gone. It had been like trying to fill an empty reservoir with one heavy rain. The deluge had only dampened the mud.

She had a sudden uncomfortable sensation of being watched. Glancing around her for the source of the feeling, she was met by a burst of loud chattering in a nearby tree. It wasn’t, as she’d expected, a bird. It was a tiny pair of lion-like monkeys.

Their small faces were black, be-maned by a darker orange of rough fur. In sharp contrast to the black of their faces their fur was a deep gold, the color of the sun in a child’s drawing of the seaside. They sat motionless on the tree branch. Their long tails hung down, thin and nearly hairless at the base and down their length, but towards the end, thickened with short, course, darker fur.

Just like the tail of a lion, she thought. Lion-monkeys, that’s what I’ll call them.

As if they’d heard her, the tiny smiling lion faces looked towards her, then back at each other, and then towards her again. They chattered back and forth, taking turns. “Ch-ch-ch-ch ch.” “Ch-ch-ch-ch ch-CH.” Their voices were loud and resonating. She felt suddenly self-conscious, as if they were discussing how messy she looked. They moved their arms about, as if punctuating particular points with special emphasis. They shook their manes. Then, as if they had come to a concordance, for a moment they were silent. They stared at Halley, long and hard. One of them yawned suddenly, and she imagined a tiny roar. Together they broke into a pleasingly fluid motion, swinging away through the trees, arm by arm, using tails as well. They looked like they were on a mission.

Watching the monkeys move away, Halley’s loneliness hit her hard. Even monkeys had friends. The longing she felt for another was so powerful, she felt nauseous. She moved to shoulder her black backpack, and then remembered she’d thrown it away. She moved off; she couldn’t bear to be still any longer.

The forest floor was wet and muddy, the leaves soggy underfoot. There was an air of decay, as the leaves crumbled into dirt, providing food for the mature trees.
It’s a form of cannibalism,
she thought with a shudder.

Walking was difficult. Where she least expected it the ground deepened with mud, sucking at the edges of her shoes. Water dripped from the trees. When she glanced up, it fell with astounding aim into her eyes, making her blink rapidly. After a short while, she lost the trail, and while she attempted to make progress, she felt she might well be traveling in circles. She had no map and no compass, and even if she had, it wouldn’t help. She had no destination. Her only aim was to find the baby she had heard cry.

She felt an urgent need to leave the woods, to see the edge of the horizon again. But first she had to find the baby, she reminded herself. In her head, she could still hear its wail.
As if I could even help it! Why did I ever come here? I should have just stayed with Fernando. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, to stay with him. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so dark.

Doubt nibbled at her, a school of small, hungry fish, doubt for her competence, for her ability to make decisions, for her ability to protect herself. The doubt grew sharper teeth with each misstep, with each lost moment.

As Halley traveled, the undergrowth grew drier.
The storm couldn’t have been as big here, for it to dry out so fast.
As dry earth reappeared, the topmost layer of leaves began to crisp. The birds cawed and trilled, as if celebrating the sunshine. Her guess at some of their calls was confirmed – a group of Black-faced Laughing-thrushes noisily announced their presence – their black face guards made them look like masked robbers. She liked the song of the Jungle Crow the best. It was always louder than the others, and she liked to imagine its cries as the words “Don’t Quit; Don’t Quit; Don’t Quit”.

She needed the encouragement. Her hunger gnawed relentlessly, and her mouth was parched. The vibrant red berries on the bushes mocked her, red demon eyes winking. They looked alluring, but she couldn’t be sure they were safe to eat. Reluctantly, she left them. The situation was getting desperate: she’d had a full day with very little food, and just two canteens of water.

Come on Halley, we’ve been this way already! Get your act together! Think!

The self-criticism reminded her of the way she’d talked to herself the night before. She knew why she didn’t like to be alone. Her voice was cruel. She tried to break the pattern by speaking aloud. “When did I start to speak to myself this way?” she said. “I remember a time when I used to believe I could do anything, could be anything.” She had no answer. The endless day stretched on and on, and the blisters on her feet burned and then burst.

Hours later, she came upon a dried-out waterfall, its rocky, desiccated riverbed spread long and empty before her. She stopped short. Her hand moved to cover her mouth.

She knew this waterfall. This river.

The surprise of this realization immobilized her completely.

It can’t be.

This was where she and her father had planted wildflower seeds. In the fertile land near the river, the seeds had sent a multitude of shoots skywards. It had been a long-lasting delight of different colors, sizes, shapes, and textures. She would sit and run her fingers along the various leaves, feeling their softness or their roughness, observing how their veins ran along their backs, even tasting the flowers as they bloomed each season.

The summer she turned twelve, the scarlet ibises had come, as if by magic, to sit upon the grey rocks of the waterfall, their red plumage glowing in the sun. That summer, she began to come to the waterfall alone for the first time. She told herself it was to watch them, but it was more than this. It was carving out her first private space. The birds gave her a focus, each tiny move they made, as they dipped their curved black beaks in the water, as they showed off, just a little, with their brilliant color, their self-assurance. The hours she’d spent watching them spread their wings wide to splash in the water were some of her most treasured memories. During that summer with them, she’d transformed slowly and peacefully from girl to woman. The wildflower garden by the waterfall had been her soul-place.

Her head was pounding, and a light sweat broke out on her forehead.

This can’t be the same place. I’ve never been here before. There’s been nothing else familiar about this forest…we drove hours to get here… I didn’t know the trail head…

The truth stirred and grew large, too large to leave any room for doubt.

She was trembling. Her own words came back to her, the words she’d spoken to Fernando before entering this strange forest:
A new place to begin.

What had she done!

Somehow, she had unraveled time and space from its usual continuum.
I didn’t mean it. I don’t want to begin again
. She was breathing fast, her heart pounding hard. A sense of vertigo threatened to overpower her. The world was moving in a way in which it should not. This waterfall belonged in a different country. In a different time.

She stared at the place where the water no longer flowed, and felt herself dry up. Sinking down, she trailed her hand on the dry earth at the edge of the empty river, rubbing marks in the dust. It was as drained of moisture as a thin cotton sheet hung too long in the summer sun. Between her fingers, Halley crushed a small bit of loose dirt, and watched it filter through her fingers.

Her eyes traveled upwards to the trees.
That was our swinging tree.
On long summer afternoons, she and her brother had swung from a rope tied to the largest tree, leaping off in full flight like young gibbons, trying to plumb the depths of the pool at the waterfall’s base. The remnants of the rope were still there.

And there…that was my garden,
she thought. All that remained were dead, wilted heads of wildflower blossoms. An un-seemly smell of rot was in the air. She tried to remember the flowers alive, to see the garden.

The river was empty, the life gone. As if it had been dammed and blocked and would not flow again. She hung her head. She didn’t want to look anymore.
It’s been so many years. But I never imagined this place could dry out, that the wild flowers could die.
The loss was vast, a desecration.

She sat down on the ground to compose herself, legs crossed, hands on her knees, staring blankly. Abruptly, she collapsed forward, as if she could no longer hold herself upright, and she rested her head in her hands, her face covered.
No. I don’t want it to be gone like this, don’t let it be. Did I do this? Did my words change things from how they were?

She closed her eyes tightly, forcing them to remain closed, willing it to be untrue, and willing that when she re-opened her eyes it would be as it was. Her brow was furrowed, a deep tense line.

When she did open her eyes, nothing had changed. It was worse looking again on the devastation, when she had recreated how it used to be behind her closed eyelids.

She picked up one of the flowers and examined it, looking for answers, trying to understand what had happened. Her heart began to pound faster. The stem had been cut straight through. Still holding the flower, she lifted her eyes to the mass of dead flowers; they all had been cut. “Someone’s done this on purpose,” she said, very quietly. The words, spoken aloud, made the reality sink in.

Halley scrambled up, and moved away fast from the dry riverbed and dead flowers. She was suddenly quite frightened.
Who cut the wildflowers?
If the flowers had been cut purposely, the waterfall might have been blocked intentionally too. Someone had destroyed her soul-place, and they had done it on purpose. It was crazy to think it had been done to destroy her, but that’s just what she thought.

The daylight was beginning to fade. The ground, littered with dry leaves, crackled and crunched with each footstep. As she moved further into the woods, away from the dry waterfall, the noise made her uneasy. It gave away her position, making her too easy to track.

At a fork in the trail, she stopped to decide which direction to take. The leaves continued crunching for a moment after she had stopped, and then were suddenly silent. She was being followed! Her eyes widened as she swallowed a scream.

“There aren’t any large animals in these woods,” she said, measuring the depth of her fear by the tone of her voice. Even in the gathering dusk, her soft voice was moderately calm; its sound reassured her. She thought for a moment. “But I didn’t know about the snakes…” Randomly, she chose a trail, and rushed forward, trying to outdistance her fear.

The path she chose was difficult. Exposed roots of trees got in the way and slowed her down. At first she tried to step high and move between them in a fast jog. She was quickly exhausted from the effort. Looking back over her shoulder, fear pounding in her, she tripped and landed shockingly hard, scraping the skin off her palms on a rough tree root. The tears that blurred her vision were out of proportion to the pain of scraped palms. She blinked them away, and got to her feet fast, heart racing with imagined terrors. Another loud crackle somewhere behind her made her whole body tighten.
I’ve got to hurry, got to find somewhere safe. I can’t spend tonight outside.

In the past, Fernando had found their shelters, following thin trails, seeking out hidden caves with his sharp eyes. But he wasn’t here to help. Her eyes sought small tracks off the main trail, visible only by a slight discoloration in ground cover. She’d have to be moving slowly to spot them, as they were often unused for weeks or months. The call of an early owl made her heart leap painfully.
I’ve got to find a place to hide
.