Chapter 3
Amara
The silence returns the moment he leaves. Not ordinary silence—my silence.
The kind that belongs to Hoia Baciu after the last heartbeat has crossed its borders and the forest no longer has to decide whether to welcome someone or bury them alive.
I close my eyes. The forest obeys almost immediately.
The branches fall still, the mist drifts back between the trunks to swallow the trail his motorcycle carved through the mud, and beneath my feet the roots begin weaving the earth back together, patiently undoing the damage he’d caused without ever intending to.
Three days.
For three days, the forest had bent itself around one impossibly stubborn man.
Three days spent moving trails that didn’t exist, weaving nightmares together, and listening to someone argue with hallucinations as though he’d mistaken them for old friends.
I have lived through plagues.
Kings.
Wars.
I have watched entire villages disappear without disturbing my afternoon nearly as much as one insufferable human on a motorcycle.
“You indulged him.” I say to the forest as I open my eyes.
The leaves answer with the faintest stir, exactly as I’d expected, before the branches settle into silence once more, the discussion already over.
I continue walking as the path forms beneath my feet, only to disappear behind me again beneath moss and fallen leaves until nothing remains to suggest anyone has ever passed this way.
That is how the forest prefers it. That is how I prefer it.
A broken branch catches my attention. I stop beside it, resting two fingers against the splintered wood. It mends slowly, bark knitting itself together until the crack disappears completely.
“You allowed this,” I say quietly.
The forest offers no answer. It never has. Explanations have never interested either of us.
I continue deeper into the forest.
A fox darts across the path ahead of me before disappearing into the undergrowth. Somewhere above, a raven lands on a tree and watches me with the same expression it has worn for the better part of twenty years.
Judgment.
It is becoming tiresome.
“You concern yourself with matters beneath you.”
The raven neither moves nor looks away.
Wise.
By the time the cottage appears between the trees, three ravens have taken to following me from branch to branch. None dare come closer.
From the outside, the house looks exactly as it should. Old. Forgotten. Half swallowed by the forest.
The roof sags beneath thick moss, ivy climbs the stone walls and one shutter hangs crooked enough to discourage curious visitors.
Nobody comes here. Nobody ever finds it.
I climb the steps, unlock the door, and step inside. Warmth wraps around me, carrying the familiar scent of drying herbs, old books, and cedar smoke.
Behind me, the illusion slips away. Sunlight floods the windows, the crooked walls straighten into place, and the fire murmurs beneath an iron kettle that has been forgotten since yesterday.
Me.
I forgot. Again.
I remove my cloak, hang it beside the door, and glance toward the staircase before deciding against it.
Tea first. Everything else can wait.
The kettle is still half full, so I feed another log to the fire before reaching for the dried blossoms hanging from the rafters. I crumble a handful into a clay teapot and pour the steaming water over them before covering it with the lid, leaving the herbs to work their quiet magic.
As they steep, the scent of cedar slowly gives way to warm honey and wildflowers, chasing the damp smell of the forest from the room.
Only then do I pour the golden infusion into a cup and carry it into the sitting room.
I settle into the chair beside the window overlooking the forest.
Outside, Hoia Baciu has already erased every trace of him.
The trail his motorcycle carved through the undergrowth has vanished beneath fresh moss, the broken branches stand as though they had never bent at all, and the mist drifts lazily between the trees with the quiet satisfaction of a job well done.
Much better. The forest has finally remembered how to behave.
I lift the warm cup to my lips, letting the delicate sweetness settle across my tongue as silence fills the room once more. It is the familiar kind, ancient and undisturbed, the kind that belonged to these woods long before kingdoms rose and crumbled into dust.
Exactly as it should be. And yet, despite several centuries of accumulated wisdom insisting otherwise, I find my gaze drifting toward the place where the impossible human disappeared.
I frown into my drink.
Ridiculous.
The leaves outside rustle with unmistakable amusement.
“Ohh… shut up.”
Silence settles over the cottage once more, though it is no longer quite as peaceful as it had been when I first sat down.
For centuries, neither the forest nor I have ever questioned what needed to be done.
Someone enters our borders, we decide what they are, and the forest answers accordingly.
The innocent leave with nothing more than a strange story no one will believe.
Those who come seeking my death rarely leave at all.
It has always been enough.
The forest shifts the paths. I weave the illusions. Together, we have frightened kings, broken hunters, and buried men who believed themselves invincible beneath roots that have long since forgotten their names.
Yet for three days, neither of us managed to understand one impossibly stubborn mortal.
Every nightmare I placed before him became another joke. Every warning the forest whispered became another invitation to wander deeper. Even after realizing the woods themselves were conspiring against him, he had smiled as though the whole experience was somehow worth repeating.
I dislike mysteries.
After several centuries, I have grown rather accustomed to knowing exactly how every story ends.
He should have been terrified.
He should have run.
Instead, he smiled his way through three days of nightmares as though the forest had invited him for entertainment.
What a strange little man.