Death or Understanding
Do not go into the Red-Spotted Forest.
1 – The Dead Girls
We taste the fear-sweat through the wriggling soil as she walks among our graves, with their long and lonely trunks, their rustling red and pink leaves, their sweet blooms like puckered wounds on soldiers' bodies as they die for nothing in a war for no one.
We hear her whisper – to herself, to the part waiting for her: "I'll find you, Mil."
We see nothing. We know everything.
She will be with us soon.
2 – The Village
Our men tell their boys this: “Do not go into the Red-Spotted Forest. There's no good reason for it. The trees are brittle, like old bone, and no good for building or for carving. The fruits and flowers bring illness, not life. It has no paths to speak of. When you're inside, you'll not see the sun or moon, you'll not find your way out. And there's nothing to hunt. You want to know why? The deer and hare, the fowl, even the boar – they were eaten by Teeth-That-Lumber."
Our women tell their girls this: "You must be careful of the Red-Spotted Forest. There’s bounties there, if you know where to find them. But if you spend too long there, you will come back strange, as if some of your insides are plucked out and put back in backwards. You may come back hungry and thirsty, which no bread and wine can satisfy. Men and boys may come back hollow-eyed, red-faced – grandfather knows why. Girls and women may not come back at all – they become brides of the Wailing Man."
Once (when the white ribbons rippled in the breeze) they told their boys and girls everything.
The Red-Spotted Forest lies across a river with a rotted bridge, a flickering cloud of crimson and white. These colours are rich and full, vivid like paintings, pure in a way that we cannot offer with our muted shades of brown-yellow-green, our layered paint that now flakes and fades. Our children admire this purity from our windows, some hunger for it, and some seek it out – like Mila, two days ago, and now Romana, in pursuit.
Mila, who read out loud until the candlelight faded, nestled warm inside of us, knowing more than her father and mother and grandmother together, holding more dreams inside of her than we could hope to hold children safe within us.
Romana, thick-armed, loud-laughing in shadow or sun, who made us new doors broken by enraged men, who fit us with new windows shattered by careless children.
If only we had tongues to form the words, mouths to shriek like our mothers when their children move too close to the back of a horse, like our fathers as they weep where no one watches, remembering failures and slaughters and pain.
If only we could say:
We hate the Red-Spotted Forest.
We hate what lives there.
We hate the choice.
We hate that we cannot keep you safe.
3 – Mother's Lantern
I have led Romana for hours now, since she took me from my perch beside the door of the great dark barn. Her pace is quick, far from the tentative, trembling steps she took as a child, encased in Vile Dark, about that barn, where together we filled feed bags and checked ears for frostbite. Her mother was with her then, urging her speed with the story of the Wailing Man, who seeks his brides in the foolish young, whose great hands take and take and take until there is nothing left.
We are a world together, her and I.
Her pace is the same as when she went to the warm house on the north side of the village, where the teacher and her daughter lived. There, I listened to Romana and the sapling-thin Mila, offered them the light to play puppets with shadows, telling stories of ice-hearted dragons and lands where gods spoke in steel.
It is my light that helped them build their hunger for each other, first in their eyes and then in their flesh and then deeper still. And it is my light that led them along the banks of the river, gazing at the forest in its silence, building that other hunger in the girl who told Romana quietly, so quietly that nobody but I could hear, that she would not die in this village that did not speak.
Mila was gone the next day, into the forest. We found the scrawl together, on a page from one of Mila's books (her most precious resource).
Romana wept like a child – only I know this. And only I have answered the call. The village is silent, ever silent, even as it talks and chatters and screams.
Romana does not weep now. She stops to check her bearing, holding me close to the ground. Footprints are few and far between in this place, and Mila's are freshest among them. She finds the soft imprint beside a pale white tree with red blossoms. She continues.
It will not be long before I fade. My warm breath is cooling, my heart flickering fast, a sputtering jewel that keeps back the clinging hands and great jaws of Vile Dark. Jaws that will take hold of Romana, whom I have loved since I was born, who will rightfully leave me to rust when my heart dies.
Guilt is not why I lead her now, but I will die guilty, nonetheless.
I must not do so before we find her – the girl who lit Romana as I did now.
Find her before eyes, before hands.
4 – Father's Blade
I am never far from her hand as we continue the search for her princess. I yearn to be drawn, to cut through the wild brush as Romana walks deeper, deeper, deeper.
She has never used me, but I have seen her watching me from across the room – furtive stares as the family sits in quiet contemplation. Father is at the head of the table, beside him mother, Romana and her brother Tor, whose eyes died in the womb, on each side. They say silence is golden, but in fact it is steel, edged and sharp.
The silence here in the forest is tainted and red, as I hopefully will be soon. I will be used by Romana to kill the great hulking thing that Father and Tor and all the rest whisper about – Teeth-that-Lumbers, the starving god that brings eternal silence to the forest, that makes it so the men must walk for leagues to hunt in other forests, to pay tithes to distant lords.
They say He can catch the fastest man, for he runs on four legs. They say He can best the strongest warrior, for he fights with claw and tooth alike. "He is the bane of this world", I have heard them whisper together, their eyes flickering between each other, never settling.
The bravest have taken my brothers into the Red-Spotted Forest to dispatch this lumbering god. The ones that have not returned are heroes who have died for noble purposes.
The ones that have returned – cowards.
My hilt is ill-fitted for Romana's hand, which though hard and rough is smaller than Father's. He has never used me, but he keeps me close, for he understands the truth that few are willing to speak: that a village is strangers in collective, that community is the cloth used to cover individual hunger. I was bought from the village blacksmith, who forged me and my brothers in honour of this truth.
At a clearing, I am drawn quickly, where I cut a cross in the tree – the seventh that night – to help Romana find her way back. This is what I will do until we find the great beast, where I will avenge Romana and all my brothers who have been lost in this great and dire place.
Though her hand trembles as she sheathes me again, we continue deeper, deeper, ever deeper.
With purpose, I am almost satisfied.
5 – The Snow-White Blooms Deep in the Forest
Tonight, we have entertainment with our meal.
She steps into the Old Glade where we bloom in radiance, preening as she gazes upon us in our glory. She is the second to come so close, to reach us in our fullness and to see us as we are meant to be seen. For a moment, we are her world, which is the greatest pleasure one can know.
She is young, as they all are – the ones who seek us out in the Red-Spotted Forest. Sometimes, we glimpse the old ones as they clean themselves by the river or wash their stinking garments or sit and drink cheap liquor and stare into the trees. Sometimes, they catch sight of us and marvel at our pale purity, though they only see the dullest of us. They hunger for it, but they are too afraid to take it.
The young ones – they cannot resist.
The young ones swagger and joke or, if they are alone, they are silent, hesitant as they reach the crossing. There are few of us there; our petals shimmer only in the dark, cringing as the sun rises. Those of us touched by the sun are wilted and ugly, whose petals will give grey when ground into dye. Most young ones will take these and return to their cajoling groups satisfied, proven.
But some will go deeper, seeking out the stories they have heard of us who grow deep in the Red, in our colonies in the dead and yawning trees, where we shimmer whether the sun or moon stands tall. We smell sweetest there, our petals untouched by wind and rain, strong with life and proud to bloom for those whose eyes know our worth.
We remember the sapling girl, two days ago, how she shunned us by the forest's edge. Hers were the eyes of knowledge, eyes that saw a path and what lay upon it, and what lay at its end, no envy or longing or fear (young ones forget fear until they are in its hands – long-fingered, thick – close around their necks).
Hers were the eyes of the old dye-makers, who, long ago, travelled deep in packs of twelve to find our purist petals. These petals make a white so pure that it burns out everything – memory and history, age and time, hatred and love, revealing what has been lost and buried.
The strong-armed girl breaks her gaze away from us and inspects the ground. The footprints end here, we know.
The wise girl, the hungry girl, the desperate girl, the dead girl – she never left this glade.
We know where she lies, but we will not tell where.
We will feed instead, grow strong on her youth, and wait for the next one.
6 – Mila's Glasses
We see everything. Romana stands, hand on the hilt of her Father's little blade. She sets down her mother's lantern.
We see everything. They come, as they always come when the people in the village cross into this place to die: The pale man with his big hands, naked and shuddering (“Do you know why he cries? Because he doesn’t see why the world hates him.) and wanting to be loved, and the great shaggy thing, teeth and hunger and nothing else. They both ask a question, which every one of the dead girls answers.
We see everything. High above, where we rest against our dear girl's cold and silent face, the bright and curious blooms against her chest.
We see everything that Mila saw when she came into this old glade. The ribbons as they dance in the wind in an imagined time, an imagined place. Pale white and pure, cleaned of hundreds of years of filth and fury. Children dance with them, smiling, free and knowing. They hang from the pole that is used to usher in summer, they hang from houses and streamers. There is no silence in that village, only clear and willing union, only love.
"There's bounties here, if you know where to find them".
We see everything. The Two Who Ask step into the glade as one. Romana sees them and frees the blade (this will not work; you cannot harm what they are with a blade).
Still, Romana's eyes roam. She sees them but, wisely, does not.
She looks for our dear girl – and so, she looks up. She meets our gaze.
If we could weep, we would. Our dear girl's eyes are dry now, forever.
7 – Romana
I climb until my hand finds hers. I pull her close. The branch that she has ensconced herself on holds our weight together easily; the tree she has found is old and strong, and she chose it for this purpose.
Mila was never quick, never strong in the way most valued, but she saw everything – things I never hoped to see without her. She hated the village, and she loved it. She hated the shape it had taken, tied down by the steel of routine and tradition, of old hatred and older love. She loved what lay inside every single one of us, unspoken and unseen.
She wanted everyone to see.
The blooms Mila chose are the brightest; they shine in the dark like silver in water. I take them from her and place them in the small bag she has brought with her. She kept them out of the bag, knowing I would come for her, because she wanted me to see most of all.
The Wailing Man approaches, sniffing and trying to catch my gaze with his hollow eyes. Teeth-That-Lumbers grunts and snuffles, hungry. Neither of them matters.
I kiss Mila one last time and I feel her so very close to me, a part of me, inside of me and then I am leaping from the tree.
I cross the glade. I drop my father's blade – it will only weigh me down. I kick over my mother's lantern, which shatters and spills its white-hot heart, lighting up the glade in brilliant flame.
I run, holding the bag close, the choice abandoned behind me. There is only one path ahead, cut in crosses in the forest and in pure white festival ribbons.
Mila comes with me – and together, we laugh, as if for the first time.
Author’s biography
Jason Maurer writes both fact and fiction. On the near shore, they write about mental health, social media platforms, and stigma. On the far shore, they write dark fantasy suffused with a love for the monstrous.
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