The Edge of the Forest

The forest is a clever adversary, a worthy lover, a lifelong friend, a duplicitous companion. You have to watch your every step, you watch every angle of the light, every shade of colour, every shape of a petal, or bend of a stem. Because if you don’t…

But the rewards… You see, that is why I find myself wandering about so many days, so often, when I should know better. Because I know the line, I know how delicate it is. But I also know that I can reach into the other forest, pluck a flower, pick up a stone, an acorn, a fern front. I take these home, I hold them up against the firelight, I see what magic dwells inside. And maybe I string these feathers around my neck, or these ferns are shredded and go into my soup.

They call me witch. Oh, I know they do. Down in the village, where they gossip around the well, and till their fields from one light to the other. They speculate about my powers, about the wicked things I must do to earn them. They wonder at how many years I must have seen.

Three hundred. Give or take.

The forest can be a generous benefactor.

Or a cruel disciplinarian.

#

He taught me well. A bud of a girl, not a tenth, barely a twentieth of the age I am today. A shy thing, standing with her apron all up in her fist, feet pointed inwards, eyes down on the ground. And a stranger looked that girl up and down, a man ten years older than she was, while that girl’s father looked on.

He asked me questions. Sometimes odd: “Do you hear the sound the wind makes sometimes, the very edge of the difference that its tone takes.”

And I did, though nobody took me at all seriously, and my father would never have wanted me to answer in the affirmative, so I quietly shook my head.

“And do you yearn for marriage, and children of your own to guide and manage?”

The polite answer, the right answer, was to say ‘very much, yes’, so although I was empty of any such yearning, I managed a tiny crescent of a nod.

“Do you ever find that the night keeps you awake until dawn, that nothing will give you sleep while your spine tingles with waiting, but you’ve no idea what for?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And your eyes sometimes follow a bee, only for it to wink out of existence, and when it comes back, you know it is not the same bee you saw leave?”

“Sometimes.”

The girl’s father was impatient. The man’s strangeness annoyed him.

But the man nodded, he said, “she’ll do nicely.”

My father was relieved. A mouth in no further need of feeding. He set the date for as soon as would not start a flare of gossip.

#

As I said, he taught me well.

He didn’t ask me for the family I had no yearning for. Instead, he took me out in the forest, and told me: “there is more than one forest here, but the one is hidden inside the other. And at a glance it looks the same, there is nothing about the leaves or flowers, or the bark on the trees that would tell the two apart. That’s the way you can walk from one into the other and not even know it until it’s too late.”

“But why would it be too late?”

“Because all the walking back the way you came in this world will never get you home again.”

Newly married, a little bitter, a little bit defiant, this bud of a girl, said: “would that be such a bad thing?”

He scrubbed his beard with his knuckles. “Some would say no. Some would say all the wonders of the world are waiting there. But others would counter that so are all the shadows, and all the shades of dark. The world as you know it, distilled, purified, enhanced. Lovely. Ugly. The good and the bad enriched to their perfect essence. And which is stronger?” - he spoke this way, like a book-wizard, like the telling of a story, even over breakfast, even when he asked me to pour him milk, or told me he was going outside to get a little more wood for the fire – “Which drowns the other? Or do they exist in a knife-edge balance, struggling against each other for eternity?”

I nodded, thinking this the answer that made the most sense.

“Ah, but how would anybody know? Since those who enter – by intent or otherwise – never come back to tell us about it?”

“Then why come here?” Here, was the border, the edge along which I was learning to walk. And I could see it was an edge, I could sense the forest shifting, I could feel it lapping against that edge, the border moving when it chose to, so softly, hardly noticed.

“Because,” he told me, “the wonders of the forest are visible from here. Reachable. A man could reach across the line here, and pick a flower that might bring him luck. Pick up a stone and find that it makes him strong, or his skin like armour. Ask me my age?”

“Twenty-five,” I guessed.

“Two hundred and twenty-five.”

“But you lie.”

“But I don’t. And I’ll show you how to reach for the charms and trinkets that will let you live just as long.”

#

Ah, well it’s different for a man. He should have known. He was watched with caution, maybe with suspicion, but he was respected in a way, and left in peace. It is not the same for me. I am called ‘witch’ and they call at my doorstep, asking for little potions, and quick-spoken spells. Thinking I can give them beautiful children, or turn a lover’s head, or make them wealthy. So many of them think I can make them wealthy. I. Here. In this little cottage with the broken door, and the crawling jasmine, and fire-stained walls. Well, since, I have magicked myself a fine castle and untold chests of gold, why should I not do the same for you, my dear?

So many fools.

He was not a fool.

For all the good it did for him.

I remember. As we stood on the cusp, between this world and that, one forest and another. I remember how easily he reached across to pick that flower, how he didn’t see the shift along the edge, the ripple and flow. I only saw it at the last minute, and I tried to call a warning, but already the other forest flowed over him like a king tide. And just like that: vanished. As if he had not just that minute stood in front of me?

We had near ten years of marriage in us by then. But did I race across after him, flinging myself into the chaos?

No. I did not.

I felt that urge – and not just for something a little like love; but I held it inside. I breathed. I looked. I felt. And I walked along the new border, hold my hands out, calling his name, offering that lifeline. Was he close? Could he reach out and take my hand and find his way home? Did he want to?

Well, either he didn’t or couldn’t. And the word was that I was a widow. And that my late husband had been a fool and a dreamer. And if only I knew better, I held my tongue. My tongue had little use, these days, I didn’t want to exercise it amongst the cruel and ignorant. I wanted the forest, its silence, its richness, its promise of secrets, longevity, magic, power, light and darkness. Seduced? Aye. Seduced. But I never forget, I never let my love make me blind, I see the roses, but I never stop searching out the thorns.

#

And these two. The ones who came to me in the fading light, hand in hand, recommending themselves as husband and wife – they were no such thing – and asking after the forest. It’s secrets.

Is there a way? Is there a path?

How can a man go into the depth and come back?

“He can’t,” is what I told them, but it was words wasted. These two were set on a path. The girl explained that she had a brother, lost, vanished in the forest.

“He is gone then.”

“No,” the man responded, “what about me? I was with him. We lost track of each other, but I found my way back.”

Oh? The hairs singed along the back of my neck. But I gave nothing away, I held his eyes. I told him, “It’s a fool’s errand, but I see you are a fool. So, I will only tell you to search for lines, to search for the point at which they converge. Look for colours that are other than you might expect – seek a green rose, a pink acorn, a gilded snail. Walk deep. The forest will be ready to find you.”

#

Should I have warned the girl?

The man’s eyes haunt me. Not because of what I saw in them, but because I saw nothing. No twinkle, not circlet of gold, no waves of darkness, no fire-like flicker. As if those eyes could be human. But how could that be?

No. He is not what he seems. And she’ll find out in good time. When it’s too late, maybe.

Should I have warned the girl? She’d not have listened.

I feel the night encroach. It is a night such as those: when the darkness keeps me awake with prickles of warning, with the grazing fingers of almost-visions. A night for wakefulness. And a storm approaches; I can feel it in the wind.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work