Nothing here speaks of welcome. A sharp wind rakes the mist across the trunks of paper birch that stretch and writhe like ash-pale arms reaching out to an inattentive god. At intervals, on the whims of that breeze, the scent in the air switches between petrichor and rot.
The path through this Wood is no more than a smear of black mud, but it carries a washed-out smattering of signs of life. The trail of tiny arrows marks the passing of a grouse. The deeper punch of a hoof suggests the spooked bounding of a doe. There’s the tread of a heavy boot. There’s the print of a bare foot.
The wool of her cloak is heavy, soaked through by the mist. The soles of her feet are bleeding, torn by the trek and terrain. Her stride shows no regard for the pain, but her teeth grind so loudly that she worries the man might hear.
He never lifts his eyes to her. There’s a trembling in his hand and hesitation in his gait. He whistles a slow, slanted tune in a stilted rhythm, while she wonders if he hides his thoughts for her sake or his own.
He doesn’t speak as they walk, and she’s grateful for it. There’s nothing left to be said between them. There are no new words to be put to his trepidation, or her resolve, or their hurt at the things lost to this Wood.
It won’t be long before they reach the end of this path, and it will be done. He will leave. She will not. Each knows their part.
To call their endpoint a clearing would be generous. When the trail terminates, they stand in the centre of an almost perfect circle, no more than ten metres across, where, either out of deference or caution, the trees have backed away from the Altar. Stepping into this space, she expects to find at least a trace of light and warmth from the sun. What meets her there is only a thickening of the grey.
It could be beautiful here, she thinks, if the colours were allowed to come through.
He eyes the stone as he walks a wide loop around it, as if at any moment it might wake, uncoil, and strike. She can almost feel the racing of his heart. The trembling of his hand spreads now, into hers. She forces a tepid step, and she runs her hand over the surface of the Altar. The moss is soft under her fingertips. The limestone is warm to the touch. She imagines that she feels the rise and fall of a breath.
She kneels in front of the stone, and her head goes light from the sigh brought on by the unburdening of her feet. He drops his canvas satchel as he takes his place across from her. The formality is broken only briefly when he speaks.
“This is what you want?”
The plea in his eye is chased away when hers lock onto him. They’ve had this conversation, and the time for it has passed.
“This is what I’ve chosen.”
His shoulders sink under the weight of resignation.
He empties the satchel, care apparent in every movement. Two stone bowls nestle into grooves worn into the Altar by countless repetitions. Next to each, a glass jar sits as its contents settle. The knife rattles against the flint as he holds them in his hand.
First, he pours the honey, filling the bowl on her right until it rolls over the brim. He lets the jar drip a thin trail down the side of the stone to the grass. Next, the tobacco. He sprinkles it into the bowl on her left, and the sweet, warm smell of it flashes home across her mind. He drags the spine of the knife across the flint. The sparks land, and they take. Her eyes burn and water as the smoke begins to billow. He turns the knife in his hand to hold it by the blade, hesitating hardly at all before he offers the handle to her.
She’s the one who fails now to keep her eyes on him.
He doesn’t make a sound as she slides its edge along his palm. The blood flows freely and pools on the stone where it falls.
One last time, he looks at her before he turns away, and she wonders if it’s really her face that he sees. His mouth opens, and he takes a breath, but he lets it close again.
The man fades into the mist, he no longer a father, and she no longer his child.
Everything is silent then. Still. No birds sing. Even the wind stops for a breath before picking up again.
Sunset doesn’t add any colour to the sky. The grey deepens to charcoal as the air goes frigid, and she huddles under her cloak in her place beside the Altar. The damp wool does little to warm her, but it rounds the edges of the wind.
She hadn’t expected to sleep that night, but, owing to the hike and to the weight of the day, sleep does find her. She dreams sporadically of home, the way it had been once. She dreams of a warm hearth and its pale orange glow. She dreams of her father laughing. She dreams of a gentle hand and a soft whisper in a voice she only half-remembers. She wants so badly to understand its words.
She wakes to a huff and a hoofbeat, and the timid creep of morning. She feels eyes on her before she opens her own. The Stag stands in the clearing, a stride in from the treeline, offering no indication that he intends to flinch or flee. The points of his antlers spread and sprawl like the canopy overhead. A cloud roils from his muzzle with each heave of his broad chest.
In that moment, she is very much aware of her trespass on his land. She knows that he’s waiting. He’s waiting for her to move, or to speak. He’s waiting to see what she will do, and to decide on his response.
She will let him wait.
The pool of blood on the stone has not dried. She can see the outline of her reflection in its surface. The tobacco still smoulders, even in the damp and after all of these hours. The honey is inviting. Her hand hovers over the bowl as instinct screams for a taste. It’s been so long since she’s eaten. But she knows better than to take what has been given to this Wood.
The Stag traces the edge of the clearing, circling behind her, close enough now that she can feel the ground pulsing under his hooves. Each huff, each snort, each breath warms the air around her. Each wisp of condensate swirls into the blue tobacco smoke. She doesn’t turn to see him. It could be minutes, or it could be hours that pass as he stands behind her. Over her.
She hears the scraping of bone against wool before she feels the snagging of her cloak on the points of his horns. She would tremble if her body would let her, but every muscle and joint she has is locked into place.
It’s a test, she tells herself.
If she turns and stands, the Stag will see to it that she doesn’t stand for long. There would be no fight. If she moves away from the Altar, if she scrambles, if she runs, he will run her down.
She strains to remember what she’s here for. To remember why she came. What she’s lost. What she hopes to find. She reaches for the memory of that soft whisper from her dream. She reaches for the face of the owner of that voice.
A nudge from the muzzle takes away her balance and her breath. She is startled by the sound of her own gasping to get them back.
Test. She can only find one word, and she clings to it.
The second push of the muzzle doesn’t stop at a nudge. The weight of the beast slams into her, and somewhere inside of her there’s a crack like a rifle shot. She topples, and she hears the thud of her skull against the stone. The air fills with a ringing. There are colours, but no shape. It all seems so far away. The trees, the stone, the Stag. The world tilts, and she tilts with it.
The world falls away from her.
When her eyes open, she is on her back. The sky is dark. Her face is wet, and her skull is screaming. She doesn’t see or hear or feel the Stag, but she has no intention of moving and taking the risk of being wrong. She still sees flashes of colour without shape, but through those flashes of colour, she sees a thousand points of light.
She smiles, then, for a moment. She had all but forgotten the clouds could part. She had forgotten there were stars behind them.
Her eyes fall closed again.
In the dark, a soft whisper in a voice she half-remembers.
“Sleep now. Stay with me.”
When her head clears, it’s morning, but she has no way of knowing how many mornings have come and gone. She is kneeling next to the stone, not entirely certain how she came to that position. Black ants march on the trail of honey along the stone. So many that the colony moves and flows as one. The tobacco bowl is empty. The blood on the stone is dry. She wonders how much of that blood is hers.
She tries to raise her hand to her face, to assess the damage done, but the moss has spread over her arms and fastens them to the stone. She strains to pull free, but whether from the loss of consciousness or the loss of blood, she cannot find the strength. Something sharp inside of her grinds against something soft. Her head is light, and to keep it from spinning, she rests it against the stone. The moss is soft under her skin, and the limestone is warm to the touch, and she imagines she feels the rise and fall of a breath.
There is no pounding of hooves when she sees the movement among the trees. This leaves her struggling to choose between relief and concern. The movement flows from every direction beyond the treeline, gathering together at the edge of the clearing.
She lifts her eyes and blinks hard to clear them as the Shape drips out of the grey. The mist clings to the hem of a robe and is parted by a veil of wicker. From where she kneels, the Shape seems to tower, as tall, as slender, as straight as the trunks of the paper birch. The form of the thing is hidden by heavy robes of wool and moss. The mask of woven branches hides any features of a face. There’s a sway in each step that it takes as it makes its approach to the Altar. There’s a curiosity in the tilt of its head as the Shape stands over her.
The Stag follows, a step behind the Shape. She jerks back at his approach, but he doesn’t huff or stomp now. His head hangs in deference, and when the Shape halts, the Stag stays at heel.
The words come in a whisper, in a voice she half-remembers.
“Why have you come?”
Her heart races at the sound of that voice. She’s come so far, and she’s waited so long to hear it. The face of the owner of that voice blazes into her mind. Her own voice wavers as she answers.
“To find you.”
“And now that you have?”
The pounding in her chest spreads into her throat, and into her temples.
“I will bring you home.”
The posture of the Shape straightens and stiffens. The tilt of the wicker veil deepens as the answer comes.
“That is not the bargain you’ve made.”
Those words land across her like deadfall. A heat rises into her face. She strains against her restraints, and against her exhaustion, desperate to stand, or to fall at the feet of the Shape. Desperate to see the face that she knows the wicker hides.
The Stag huffs once, and a twitch ripples through his shoulders. He looks up at the Shape, but he doesn’t advance.
The Shape bends, bowing deeply, the wicker nearly close enough to brush against her face.
There is no voice behind the next words that come from the Shape. There is no warmth. There is no life. There is nothing half-remembered. The breath that carries these words is as sharp and as cold as the wind that scrapes the birch. As it speaks, the air goes thick with the scent of petrichor and rot.
“I am not what you think I am.”
Those words leave her reeling. She clenches her eyes as tightly as she can, and the tears well up inside them. She can find no words of her own to put to the scream that builds in her. It comes out as a howl, as wild as the Wood around her. When her throat and lungs begin to burn, that howl dissolves into a sob. Her eyes blur when she opens them, but she sees no Shape now. She sees no Stag.
Night falls. She doesn’t notice. Morning comes. She pays it no mind. There is nothing left to wait for. No reason to track the time. She will be left here to die. She will be feed at the root of a birch tree, another voice coming from the Shape. There is no straining now, against the moss. There is no more fight in her.
This was the bargain, she reminds herself. She knew that when she made it. She had thought, or she had hoped, that she might change the terms. But she gave herself to this Wood, freely, for the chance to speak to the Shape. There will be no changing the terms. There will be no leaving this Wood.
Grey turns to charcoal, charcoal to grey. She doesn’t count the transitions.
When sound comes again, it comes in the night. It comes in a bustle, without the purpose of the Stag or the grace of the Shape. It comes stumbling. It comes on heavy boots.
No.
The word fills the emptiness in her until it bursts out into the night.
No.
He charges from the treeline, each step falling crooked. She’s hit with the smell of whisky when he crouches next to the stone. She worries that he might topple.
“You can’t be here.”
Her voice is sharp, and it shakes as she shouts at the man. He mumbles a reply in words she can’t quite hear. He doesn’t look away from the work his hands have started.
“Go.” A hiss. A growl. “You have to go.”
He shakes his head wildly as he paws at the Altar.
“I won’t.”
He saws at the moss that holds her there, but the knife refuses to cut. He hacks. He digs. He pulls at the moss until his fingers bleed. She pleads, but he doesn’t oblige. Panting, slurring, he looks up at her then.
“Not again.” It comes out of him half plea, half sob. “Not you.”
“Go. Please. Just go.”
The eyes of the man go wide, and his hands go still. The line of his sight rises above her. She doesn’t have to turn to look when she feels a hand rest on her shoulder.
“She stays.”
The voice is calm, and she sees in his stare that he knows that voice better than she does.
“Please,” she says again. “Please go.”
She watches the man reach for words his mouth refuses to form.
She screams at him then. She doesn’t choose the words, and she’s not sure which words come out. All sound is pulled under the rumble as hooves thunder out of the Wood.
No.
The Stag rears, and when the hooves come down, the man’s jaw is left hanging obscenely. A sound pours out of him like the bleating of a sheep.
She doesn’t want to see, but there’s no time to look away.
When the hooves come down again, the bleating stops. The surface of the Altar goes wet and black. There’s nothing left of her father in the crumpled mass that slumps over the stone.
She doesn’t scream then. She doesn’t sob. She doesn’t look away. She doesn’t question the Shape. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t breathe.
The voice of the Shape comes again. She’s not sure if the Shape speaks now to the Stag, or to the corpse, or to her.
“She stays.”
It’s the calm in the voice that pulls her out of catatonia and into rage. Damn the bargain. Damn the Shape. Damn the Stag. She pulls, and she claws. She tears with her teeth until she wheezes, choking on dirt and moss.
“None will take from this Wood.”
The sounds of the Shape come all at once now. The scraping, sharpened rasp swirls into that voice. Inside and behind their harmony, distant, discordant, a man is wailing.
“And you belong to this Wood.”
The sweat runs cold from her brow and stings in her eyes. Her teeth grind, clenching so tightly they might shatter.
The Stag paces, waiting for a word or a signal from the Shape. Its sides are heaving. Its hooves scrape the dirt, coated in something viscous, the colour of pine tar.
Through the biting, through the clawing, through the slick that coats the surface, one last pull with everything that’s left in her frees her arm from the stone. Her hands are on the wicker before the Stag can close the gap.
All of the voices of the Shape scream now, and they multiply. Thousands, claimed over thousands of years, rise to swallow the world around her.
Still, her nails dig into and under the wicker, and she pulls with all of her weight. She answers the cacophony with a scream to rival those thousands. Her fingers dig into carrion and humus behind the mask, until it comes away, and she searches for a face.
But there is no face behind the veil.
There is nothing under the robes.
She stares into the black.
Rot runs to the ground.
The screaming stops.
The robes fall into a heap of heavy wool and moss. There’s no movement from the Stag. His head hangs towards the ground.
She drops to her knees, and her shoulders heave. Her tears and her breath are free now to come as they please.
After her breathing slows and smooths, when she can bring herself to stand, she gathers up the robes and lays them over the stone. Over her father’s broken form. She places a hand on the moss as she speaks.
“Sleep now. Stay with me.”
Stay. The word hangs in the air.
She runs her fingers over the wicker as she holds the mask in her hand. The Stag comes to heel as she raises it to her face.
This place will be beautiful, she thinks, when the colours are allowed to come through.
