Fruits of Insanity

The Wood's Breath

We sit around the fire with the dark flowing through the trees. Rob and I have our arms around each other and he is shivering, but I have no warmth to give him. I just stare at the fire, the flames dancing hypnotically with shadows.

There are four of us, but Charlie and Amber are in the tent. I can hear them snoring. We will hike tomorrow, through ice and fog and snow into the heart of the wood. We will bring the town’s offering—our families’ prayers that spring will come again. One of us will stay, a sacrifice to the wood. As I watch sparks floating in and out of smoke, reaching for the sky, fading, I wonder. Will it be me?

In the light of morning the wood breathes magic through the air, a strangeness that can’t be burned away, the ice-clarity of winter turning each branch to a dagger. We walk. Amber is clinging to Charlie’s hand in front of us. Rob is at my side but we don’t touch. To cling would be to admit the unthinkable—it could be one of us. We sat together through the night, sleepless, speechless. We didn’t say goodbye.

A year ago, my brother returned from the wood after a year away. When I saw him, he looked through me. Six months ago, we heard his voice again—he forgot how to speak in the stillness of the wood. Last month I finally heard his laugh again. The wood changes people. He know things, now. His gestures bring life.

Today, we will return with Rob’s sister, or what’s left of her after a year away. I find myself hoping he will return with her.

We have never been taught where to go, but our feet are guided and we reach the wood heart when the sun is at his highest. There we stop. Charlie fades back to stand beside me, and Amber is on the other side of Rob. We lay our bags before us on the snow and kneel. The wood is silent, and I can feel it watching us. We are in the shadow of the trees.

Charlie takes a stick and digs a circle of snow down to the earth beneath. Then he breaks up the forest floor. From his bag he pours good topsoil from his family garden. “Earth,” he says.

I pour water from my family well into his soil and mix it with the stick he hands me. “Water.” My voice isn’t as strong as I would like it to be.

Rob gently removes a sapling from his bag and plants it as deep as he can. “Life,” he whispers. It was a volunteer on his family’s farm.

Amber circles the new tree with a ring of ash taken from her family fire. “Warmth.”

We wait. The wood waits. I feel as though we have been caught in a vice, and with every passing moment, it is cranking tighter. Another minute and my heart will burst.

Then, light. Through the trees, the sun shines down on the little tree. It glows. I stare at it, but the wood is breathing and its breath has stirred up the snow in front of us so that it shines—a white cloud, impossible to see through. I close my eye.

When I can open them again, the wind and cloud is gone, the light has faded. Where the tree was, I see a girl that I recognize as Rob’s sister, Marie. She is pale and her eyes are far away as though she is used to seeing beyond the world. She doesn’t shiver—her cold is beyond movement. Rob wraps her in a cloak. Amber puts her arm around Marie with a wistfulness about her. I wonder if Amber wanted it to be her.

Charlie is not here. His absence is an ache.

As we head home, Rob holds my hand.

Prompt 3
the week of August 16


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