Older Memories

This would be the place then.

Jadda squinted against the heavy hand of the sun. Up on the hillock there were a couple of great stones, man-high stones – these infilled with earth and bracken, taking the shape of something like a house. She thought she saw gardens behind it, and the shape of what might be animals.

Somebody. Living here.

The first human face they’d see since stepping into the forest. The first, at least, that had not been consumed by a dark, dangerous tree.

“Be careful,” Kinsom was saying, “we don’t know how friendly…” but his voice trailed off as they cleared the hill and saw the man who sat there, heels planted in the earth, forearms rested on his knees, eyes fixed on the horizon.

Jadda didn’t understand at first. The man looked more-or-less human, except that his skin seemed thicker, almost scaly, his hair ragged, matted – yes, perhaps mossy – darker, with his face distorted, bones growing beneath his skin. It took a few moments for the ensemble to come together in her mind, for her to understand.

Kinsom.

He was aged, different, disfigured. But this man was still his spitting likeness, albeit some thirty or so years older. The same man.

Kinsom, having seen it sooner, jolted by the realization, stood staring at the man in front of him.

The man stared back.

Neither of them could speak. That was why Jadda was finally the one to do so. She could only think to say: “How?”

Old-Kinsom looked at his younger self. “You don’t remember?”

“I don’t know…”

“I’ll remind you. We were walking through the forest, all one flesh, until the forest became like a sea of mirrors. The trees doubled and tripled. They started reaching out for us. We looked down at our shadow, it was peeling in half, melting. The trees were just falling on us. A wooden avalanche. Do you remember now?”

“We ran.”

“We?”

“Me and Dreok.”

“I was calling our name.”

“I don’t…”

“Yes you do.”

“We were under attack, we ran until the attack stopped. We barely got out, I think.”

“We. We didn’t. We were calling our name.”

They eyed each other. Like adversaries. But also, with awe, with a brightness in their eyes that they could be seeing what they were seeing.

The older one said, “You left me behind.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You heard me calling.”

“I thought that was the forest. And then… I forgot. I forgot a lot.”

The older one looked him up and down. “You look like my memories. How many years has it been?”

“Two. A bit more than two. You look…”

“What do I look?”

“Different. It’s been… longer?”

“Time is different. I lose count.”

“Decades. They’ve changed you.”

“Us.”

“Not us,” and Kinsom took a small step back. “Not anymore. I don’t know how we split apart, but we’re different now.”

“What’s your name?”

“Kinsom.”

“Funny, so is mine. Who was your mother?”

“Liznette.”

“Mine too.”

“And my father is Sathmon. But I’m not you. Not now.”

Jadda stood at the side, absorbing it all. Not a future Kinsom, but a copy – or a part of him – aged where Kinsom wasn’t, having lived what Kinsom hadn’t. But he had been…

She moved forward so that she stood almost between them. She could feel the fire building up between the two men – the two parts of the man. She took a breath. “You remember Dreok?”

Both turned to her.

The older one said, “I remember him.”

“I’m his sister.”

He focused on her. He’d largely ignored her until now. But he took her in slowly, and there was pain in his eyes as he did so. “Yes. Yes. You do, you do look a bit like him.”

“Did he get out?”

“Yes and no. You shouldn’t have lit a fire.”

“Sorry. We didn’t know.”

“You’re lucky not to have died. Are you in much pain?”

“It’s all right.”

He sighed. “You’re suffering. I’m sorry. And I don’t have a lot I can do to help you. But you’re Dreok’s sister. You came looking for him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You shouldn’t have done so. Look where you are. You poor stupid girl.” He shook his head. “Poor thing. I wish you hadn’t come.”

He’s more than a little bit mad.

Kinsom said sharply, “We both came to look for Dreok.”

“Yes. I see. It changes… nothing, everything. There are things we should talk about. I’ll feed you. Let the girl rest.”

He stood up and walked across the hillside, over to where there were beasts grazing. They were tethered and looked a bit like sheep. But there was something different, something more muscular about them. And they snarled like predators when Old-Kinsom approached. When he grabbed one around the neck it lashed out at him, showing needle-teeth and its eyes bulging white-and-yellow out of its head. Old-Kinsom held it, grunting, choking it or breaking its neck until it slumped in his arms. He turned back to them. “Here. We’ll eat now.”

#

The sheep cooked up into what seemed like more-or-less legitimate mutton.

Jadda flinched when Old-Kinsom made to light a fire.

“It’s all right,” he said, “the trick is to keep your eyes on it at all times. It only takes on a living form when you’re not watching it but it’s watching you. Keep your eyes on it and you’ll be all right.”

Kinsom moved closer to her. “I’ve got you.”

His older self – older-half – looked through narrowed eyes at him. “Have you? You lost Dreok. And you lost me. You probably think you’re going to take her back out of here and to safety. But you’re not. I’ll tell you that much now. There’s a lot I should tell you. But first, we should eat. Then talk.”

It was good food. Jadda was suspicious of it. She imagined that inside her stomach it would come back to life and start eating her from within. It was weird that this should taste like a mutton dinner, that it should taste so normal, so worldly.

Old-Kinsom doused the fire once they’d done with it for cooking. Only then he leaned back against the wall of his knobbly little house. “Fair enough. I owe you both a story. I suppose we go back to the moment when it all began.”

Kinsom looked uncomfortable, wary. “I suppose we do.”

“Like he said. We were walking through the forest when the forest came at us. I remember what he remembers, seeing his shadow suddenly peel in half. But that’s where it differs. What I remember next is lying on the forest floor, in a chaos of undergrowth, my own body standing over me, glancing all around. Me and Dreok, trying to escape. But I couldn’t. I was tied to the ground. It was like… I was sticky… molten… I couldn’t pour myself up to my full height. I couldn’t run. But I was calling out to the rest of myself, begging for help.” He directed his eyes at Kinsom for a moment, “I know you couldn’t help me. You didn’t know what had just happened. I was the same desperate boy, or I had been only seconds ago. Then, seconds later, the forest floor was sucking me under, it dissolved into me while I dissolved into it, that’s all I know how to describe it. There was a lot of pain. I could hear Dreok’s screams. And then, I could just hear a sound like a huge heartbeat, and I could feel heat, and see nothing but darkness.

“I don’t even know how long it was that I felt that for, that I lay in that grave and didn’t die. Maybe it was minutes, hours or days. I couldn’t measure it. But at the end of that time the forest let me go. I felt different, but I didn’t know what kind of different. I got up and started walking. I could hardly remember my name, who I was. The memories started coming back, but they felt different, distant. I’d changed.

“You know, there are people living in this forest. Have you encountered any other than me?”

Jadda shook her head, “though we saw an abandoned village.”

“And faces,” added Kinsom, “consumed by trees. They looked real.”

“Oh, they were. Us humans, we know no limits when it comes to the task of survival. There are villages out there where people still live. Children are born who’ve never known the outside world and probably never will, who probably simply can’t. I could have found a place amongst them, maybe, but I’d rather be alone. Still, they filled me in. They helped me understand that I’d been split apart. You’re the lucky one of us, Kinsom. The old folks at Three Finger Creek told me that the world had no room for both of us. Only one of us would be able to leave. You were the one.”

Kinsom weighed that up, eyes narrowed and wary. “You hate me for it.”

“I might have done once. But a lot longer has passed here for me than for you.”

“I wouldn’t have left you if I’d known.”

“Wouldn’t you?” And there it was again, that feral madness. “Over these years, I’ve come to know the forest, I’ve come to see where the boundaries are. I know now where we stepped in, and I know the places a man could put his feet to step out. It’s a dangerous boundary, but men have crossed and crossed back again. It helps if the forest has its eye on the other half of your shadow.

“Now, imagine you hadn’t left me, and we’d reached the boundary, studied it, learnt it. But only one of us could step outside, the other one was chained to the forest. Can you really tell me you would have stayed here, lived with your tainted twin, spent a life in this place?”

“We would have talked about it. I would have tried to get help, to come back for you.”

“As you have for Dreok?”

“Yes. Like I have for Dreok.”

This was their time, Jadda understood that. But her impatience couldn’t stretch any more. She pushed her bowl to the side, “you said, when the ground swallowed you up, that you heard Dreok’s screams. What happened? Did he run with Kinsom?”

“Yes. I saw them, scurrying away. Running for their lives. But I heard him too, maybe only a few feet away from me. He was split like I was, a shadow, and he was swallowed like I was.

“I found him. It was probably weeks after I’d been released, myself. He was changed too. Even more than I was. I found him in the forest, just kneeling there, staring at the ground. He had a stick in his hands, and he’d beat the ground with it sometimes. He didn’t talk, he just grunted, he just grunted and gurgled, and lunged at me sometimes. He was like an animal.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have soft manners anymore. I don’t have the right ways to say things. Forgive me. He’s dead, you see. I have to tell you that. I can’t keep hiding from those words.”

Jadda’s stomach felt like stone. She couldn’t quite take it in. “He died…  But when?”

“By my count – or my guess, really – years ago. Come.” He reached for her hand, hauling her up to her feet. “Let me show you. While there’s still light.”

The tethered sheep growled and snarled at the three of them as they walked across the hill and into a shadow-sheltered lee. There were huge stones embedded in the ground, forming the contours of a steep downward slope. Amongst them was a stone that had been embellished all over in carvings, with dyes infilling the cacophony of patterns. It swirled and reared into life at every turn.

“It’s beautiful,” Jadda said.

“It’s his grave.”

She reached to touch the stone, wondering if she would feel Dreok beneath it. She tried to reconcile the memories of a brash youth with the description Old-Kinsom had just given her. “What happened to him?”

Old-Kinsom turned away.

“It was terrible?”

“Of course. And it’ll take all the kindness in your soul to forgive me. I was the one who killed him. It was my doing. You many as well know.”

“Why?” There was nothing else to be said.

“He wasn’t whole. He was damaged. Too wild. I don’t what it was that got into him, something of the forest, some demon or night horror or something. But it got into him good. He was given to bursts of violence, real, nasty, debased savagery. One of those times, he attacked me. I was fighting for my life. I crushed his skull with a stone, but I had no choice in the matter. He would have killed me if he’d been given the chance.”

Dreok. Her brother. None of her memories had room for these images.

“He was changed,” Old-Kinsom told her, “he was very different. So much of what made him human was gone. I tried to talk to him, I tried to find him in there, but there was just so much empty space, so many dark parts. It was impossible.”

“He was my friend too,” Kinsom had been quiet all this time, but he was suddenly marching up to stand eye to eye with his distorted mirror. “You killed him.”

“He was abandoned. Just like I was. While the two of you bought your freedom at our expense.” His expression darkened into something like real hatred. “You have no idea what you left us to. I’ve thought about you for so many years. Living my life. It could have been a good life,” he glanced at Jadda, “it can still be a good life. Only one of us has to stay here. It could be either one of us.”

“What?” Kinsom melted back from his other self.

“You heard me well enough. Either one of us can stay. Either one of us can leave. And I think it’s my turn.”

“What makes you think it’s up to you?”

“It’s up to whichever one amongst us is strongest.” It could have been just by chance that the ugly hunk of wood lay just behind a mossed-over rock, or it could have been that Old-Kinsom had had this moment planned. But now, he reached for that heavy, ruined log. And he was strong, he lifted what surely Kinsom couldn’t.

Jadda protested at once: “This isn’t a fair fight!”

He barely seemed aware of her. His eyes were focused on his own young face. It was all he saw. “Consider this. I can find the way out. I’ve been on this side of the boundary long enough, survived long enough to see straight. You haven’t. I can take this girl, I can save her from the fate you walked her into. I can re-unite her with her brother. You can’t do any of those things. Consider that, before you fight back.”

“You could help us leave.”

A sour laugh erupted out of Old-Kinsom’s mouth. “Help you? Keep me imprisoned? Help you steal my life? Don’t you think I’ve served here long enough? It’s my time now. You can defend yourself or not. It’s up to you.”

No! Jadda thought she’d cried that out loud, but it only screamed in her mind. Her mouth was numb and silent. She felt her body intending to rush at Old-Kinsom, to stop him, but she’d barely started to step before the hunk of wood in his hands came arcing down over Kinsom, hitting him hard about the side of his head and sending him sprawling.

He was stunned, laid out on his back, the side of his face covered in blood.

Jadda tried to get between the two of them, but this other Kinsom was strong, even stronger than he looked. He tossed her aside with hardly a thought, and advanced on his other self. Kinsom was blinking his way to some degree of consciousness, he wasn’t ready when the log came down again, striking him this time in the centre of his forehead. He sagged, bloodied on the ground.

Jadda had been thrown to the ground as well. She rolled to her knees, and surged up to her feet. From the way Kinsom was lying she already feared the worst. She didn’t think she could save him either – even if she tried to shield him, the other Kinsom could just drag her aside and finish what he’d started. She ran all the same. But the forest was quicker, the forest was everywhere. Roots and leaves writhed up out of the ground, they slid themselves around Kinsom. Jadda saw him flinch, she heard the sounds of pain and shock and confusion that he tried to make from a wet, wounded mouth. But in the next second the ground was caving beneath him, curling over him like waves. It swallowed him whole.

“He’ll live,” Old-Kinsom was saying, his voice gruff, but not at all laced with regret. “The forest will heal him. In its own way.”

And she was left standing there, on this hillside, between her brother’s grave, and the ripple in the ground where Kinsom had been, beside the man who’d put them both in the ground. She couldn’t imagine the moment beyond this one.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work