10
Are any of us truly alive, or merely borrowing breath from the universe until it’s time to return it to the trees. Are we designed to be more than a cycle of food for the earth, destined to return as ash or meat for the bugs, or are we sincerely here for a purpose?
Are my parents’ teachings sincere in their assurances of an afterlife, that there’s somewhere better for our souls to spend eternity? Is my father there right now? Is Francesca?
Part of me wishes it so, hopes for more, for gilded gates and sins bathed clean.
But there’s a part of me that lingers on the idea that whatever happens as our heart beats, is forgotten by generations passed.
That the choices I make, here in this small community, can’t be anything more than anecdotes for the children to use as warning.
That each of my mistakes weaves a tapestry of warning for those preceding me, a story of everything that can go wrong if you don’t abide by their teachings. If you don’t obey.
The forest is filled with ghosts, according to my mother.
The spirits of women who tarried too far from the rocky path, and found their demise among the thicket.
She told us that the branches would reach out and claw us, grip us, drag us to a horribly slow death if we so much as touched a toe off the walkway.
For a time, we believed it so. We would watch for the streak of white between the trunks, the billowing gossamer of the spirits dresses as they would stalk us from the shadows.
Sometimes, the sun would break through the treetops just right, and we would gasp at the white light, believing it to be one of the lost women. Yet, they never showed, truly.
The spirits in the forest are fables passed from mother to child in warning.
Their ghosts bound to the earth rather than heaven for having made sinful choices in the trees.
Even though it was a story designed to keep Isa and I from straying beyond our confines, now having claimed my closest friend, something has knotted inside me and their whispers have begun to scrape through my bones.
It’s as though they call for me, their siren song beckoning me from the roots of the eucalypts, calling me home to them. Francesca, calling me to her.
Sometimes, I wonder whether our parents were too much like us, already knowing what possibilities lay beneath the branches having experienced it for themselves. Why else would their warnings heed so heavy?
The wind carries whispers that I can almost catch if I tilted my head just so.
A rustling of leaves, the lullaby of magnetic voices?
I can’t quite tell. The stories mother told as I walk the earthen path replays like a siren in my mind, each branch a skeletal finger, each shadow a lurking ghost.
And yet, even as the chill of fear crawls over my skin, I want to follow them, to see if the lost women of the forest had anything to tell me; anything about what had happened to Francesca.
The woods whisper to me now, as I stand beneath its swaying leaves.
You belong here. It says, kissing my cheek with a gentle breeze.
Half a year has passed since I last stood among these trunks, since the last time I dared to face the place that swallowed Francesca whole. For weeks I avoided even looking toward the tree line, as if the forest itself might reach out and drag me in.
The quiet between the trunks is spine-chilling. The wind stirs the high branches, leaves whispering softly above, yet down here nothing moves. No insects. No birds. Only a heavy silence that settles across the ground like ominous fog.
I step through the leaf litter, waiting for the familiar crunch beneath my boots, but the forest floor seems to swallow the sound. Each footstep disappears before it can exist. I move slowly, cautiously, my breath loud in my ears as I approach what used to be our hideout.
Time hasn’t been kind to it – the walls barely stand now, the old panels of corrugated iron we dragged here as children scattered across the ground like shed skin. Rust stains the dirt beneath them. The doorway sags inward where the timber frame has rotted.
And yet, when I duck through the narrow entry, something inside me loosens – it still feels like home.
A strange peace settles over me easing the relentless cold that’s followed me since Francesca vanished. As though being here is the key to unlocking everything I’ve lost.
Perhaps Francesca left something behind.
A message. A sign. Some small clue hidden in the bones of this collapsing fortress that might finally make sense of the memories that refuse to fit together.
Dust coats the floor in a thin layer, disturbed only by scattered leaves that must have blown in through the broken walls. Mushrooms grow along the seams where the panels meet the earth, pale stems bending toward the dim light as though reaching for sustenance.
It’s harrowing in its emptiness – a tomb left for nature to claim.
A flicker of darkness slips between the branches beyond the broken window frame, causing a hitch in my breath. Cold anticipation creeps up my spine, my stomach twisting with raw nerves as I step from the doorway, trees swallowing all sounds.
The old folktales that were whispered between children at church begin to trickle to the forefront of my mind, those stories my mother threaded into me from as early as childhood.
Those fables about spirits who wandered the forest paths – women who died too suddenly to leave the world behind.
Women trapped by the weight of their sorrow, their binds tethered to the land as they waiting for release.
And as I see those dark strands of hair vanish behind the trunks, a certainty grips me so fiercely it hollows out my chest.
“Francesca!” I shout, already running, feet stumbling in my haste.
Branches tear at my skin as I push through the scrub, weeds and twigs scraping at my ankles.
“Francesca, wait!”
But she runs. She moves through the woods with desperate speed, slipping between the trunks like smoke. Within seconds she’s gone, swallowed by the forest before I can reach her, before I can even see her face.
But a razor-sharp certainty clings to me, an undeniable truth that sinks in my stomach like a stone through a still river – Francesca is here.
Her spirit tangled in these woods, wandering the place that took her life.
Frozen, lost in mourning, waiting for a truth that is yet to be brought to the light.
Waiting for someone to unearth the answers of why she is gone.
With mere days until Christmas eve last year, preparations were wearing Isabel and I thin.
I remember the exhaustion. The scorching heat as we stood beneath the church veranda, watching mother pass out gifts to congregation members with a waxen smile on her face.
Knitted wash cloths and handmade soap, fragrant mists and tallow candles tied with red ribbon.
We dragged our feet as we returned home, our arms laden with goods in return.
Dried fruits and breads weighing our tired muscles down.
Mother remained behind, swept up in the gossip and sending us on our way to begin chores without her.
We approached the homestead reluctantly as night grew across the treetops, a sense of disappointment settling between us.
Home wasn’t our sanctuary, the forest was. And leaving the embrace of its shadows made our stomachs knot. Though on this night, instead of twisting into dread, my stomach flurried as my boots kicked dust at our front door.
Upon the lintel rested a large gift wrapped in brown paper, a delicate golden ribbon tied around it with a small tag woven into the bow. Beneath it, a posy of wild hellebore sat in the dirt, hand tied in twine, burgundy petals catching the afternoon sun.
As Isabel reached for the gift, I found myself hopeful – that it were for me, that someone had thought to offer me a gift, offer me appreciation. But as the smile scrunched Isa’s cheeks, I knew. Her name adorned the tag.
“Who is that from?” I had asked her, clinging to disinterest as though it were armor.
“Nobody, I don’t know,” Isa said, cheeks flushing as she turned from my questioning gaze.
“Well, go on. Open it!” I urged, curiosity burning my tongue.
She tore into the paper, the sound sharp as my heart pounded in my chest. She drew a steady breath as she stepped back, her mouth slack and eyes glistening with awe.
“Is that a bow and arrow?” I whispered, finding myself taken aback by the gift. Surprised. Confused.
“Yes?” Isa responded quietly, more a question than answer.