The ocean of trees surrounds our island. It starts at the shore, little sproutlings like wooden grass. Further in you are further down, and they're bushes, brushing your knees. Then saplings, and the deeper you go, the taller they grow, until they're as tall as you, and that's about the furthest point from which you can still see the shore. The magic starts to take you then, lapping at your cheeks.
Further in and further down, and the trees soon reach far above your head, and the shore is long gone behind you, and the magic has seeped behind your eyes and into your head, stealing from your mind to craft phantasms from your undreamt nightmares.
I have heard that beyond this ocean, there are other islands.
That's what I think about when I get the news about Elia. I think about it when the healer says she's going to die. When she's shaking scared in my arms. After she's fallen asleep in our bed. When I go out to the shore of the forest, and I stare across those endless treetops.
Somewhere out beyond the horizon, there's another island, and maybe there, they know how to cure her.
Elia doesn't hear about my plans through me. The guilt of not telling her drags through my body as she confronts me. Fear for her grabs me close when she says she wants to come, too. She reasons it out with me, for all that I want to keep her home and bring her safety. It makes sense, of course. Even if I get all the way to another island, there's no telling if I can make it back. And her illness hasn't reached its true havoc yet. If I can make it, she can.
We'll go together.
Lost. Definitely lost. I say it out loud, squeezing the clammy fingers Elia has interwoven through my own as she follows behind me. The moon is shining through the treetops, but, with the fog, it feels like it comes from a distant world. Opaque waters splash around our ankles as we step. With each move forward, I hesitate. Any moment now, I'll step into a hole. Or my foot will meet a river serpent, or some worse creature I wouldn't even recognize. On the edge of my vision, I catch little white flickers of the strange, rodent-like mammals that live here. They glow in the moonlight, but, nothing seems to eat them. Elia thinks they're cute. I think there's a reason they have no camouflage. Maybe they're the poison dart frogs of these depths. I keep her close and tell her not to touch any.
I feel her fingers shift in my hand, and I turn to check on her. A small child is following me, fingers in mine. She has Elia's soft curls and too-direct black eyes. I shut my own eyes and will my mind to order.
"Maybe you should lead the way," I say. It strains my parched throat to say it, but it strains my will more. It's hard to let go of the semblance of control in this place, to let anyone else lead, to not think less of Elia. But, in this place, thinking less is making less. Elia knows that. Maybe if I listened to her and believed the moonlight-white mammals were harmless, they would be. But it's hard enough just to remind myself of this: that Elia is not a little girl.
I open my eyes, and my wife is her own age again, and taller than me like she usually is. She untangles her fingers from my grip and squeezes my hand.
"We can make it through this, Di," she says. She changes our direction towards the distant glow of the moon.
She's going the wrong way. No. There is no right or wrong way--we're lost. My direction wasn't right, so who's to say hers is wrong? I let her drag me along, trying carefully to place my feet only where she's stepped.
One of the moonlight creatures skips across our path. From close up, it looks more like a cat or a rabbit. Elia halts us both, letting it pass without touching it, the way I'd asked. At no point in following her do I turn into a little girl, or anything other than me, as far as I can tell. Shame worms through me at that. She trusts me better than I do her, I guess.
The water we're wading through descends from our ankles to only cover our feet, then to only squelch the soles of our boots, then departs to leave us walking on dry land. The earth beneath us is moist and pilled. It reminds me of fresh grave dirt, for all that my family's graveyard is a dry and dusty clay. In answer to my thought, I catch from the corner of my eye the sight of bleached bones jutting from the dirt. Elia drags me past it, not turning her head, but I catch full sight of half a ribcage, a reaching hand, a skull. It looks like a human, if humans had strange horned ridges on the sides of their skulls.
"We aren't going to die, love," Elia says to me. "We aren't that deep in the woods anymore. There's not much left."
"How do you know?"
"Because."
I want to challenge it, but I don't. If thoughts twist the shape of these woods, then, she needs to believe we're almost out, right? I just need to not doubt too much.
I try to make myself believe it. The ground is rising, right? That's why we're out of the water, isn't it? So, if the ground is rising, we have to at least be heading the right way, whether we're almost out or not. But, then I look at the treetops, towering so high above us. We're still in deep, for almost being out. The trees are shorter at the edges, everyone knows that. And I still don't recognize the wildlife, or the plants, and I knew all the ones near the edge. Well, near our edge, at least.
The wind blows through the trees, and the sound shudders through the whole forest in a wave, shaa, shaa. Even when the wind stops, the shaking sound continues, reminding me now of a rattler. I look in the direction the sound comes from to see a--a something, wrapped around a tree.
"I'm sorry," Elia says. I realize it must be a product of her imagination, or at least summoned by her stray thoughts. It's black--no, a dark green, says the barest sheen of moonlight. It unwraps itself from the tree to reveal a yellow belly with many, many legs, like a centipede the size of a python. Between those legs are a countless row of teeth, going straight down the line of its body. Still holding a loop of itself to the tree, it unwraps further, hanging out into the air, reaching for us. It's close, too close. I can smell a putrid stench from the dark fluid dribbling from those endless fangs.
Elia and I both pull back, or try. There's another tree behind us with a suspicious black shape wrapped around it. Another to our left. And another, and another...
She whimpers, but I'm the one who starts to think out loud. "They. They have camouflage, b-but the one didn't w-wait until w-we were in range to att-attack. It, um. It's making a threat display. And maybe it's poisonous but, um. N-nothing. Nothing has that many spikes without being." I swallow. "Afraid of something else."
I think about those moonlight-white cat-rabbit-rodent creatures. The color of something that fears nothing, if it's going to be running around the woods at night. I make an effort to think about them, to hope-wish-believe things about them. I believe in what is going to happen. And I grip Elia's hand, tensing my muscles, preparing.
"Run when I do," I say.
We cling to each other, watching those grey fangs ooze something blackish-red and foul to smell. I hear a rustling in the woods. A flash of white, from the corner of my eye.
I run, Elia alongside me. I can smell explosions of bitter odor, hear alarm chitters echo through the woods. I take us on a zig-zag route through the trees. On some of the turns, I can see growing flickers of moonlight white, and flecks of bug-gut yellow.
We find the upward slope, and we charge it hard.
We'll make it to the shore.
I'm certain.
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