The Reborn Forest

by Renee Bradshaw

  She was unexpectedly exhausted, though there was still damn near two hours before the power would dim.

  She mentioned my mother by name. A name she never thought she would hear again, spoken in that tone of love from a stranger’s mouth. Such a different tone than when Mara’s father said, “your mother.”

  A member of their cause? Was that why Mara always had the urge to read the comics? Why she was too curious? Had her mother set curiosity alive in her as a child when she was busy setting in manners, dance lessons, and study skills?

  “Just read the damn paper,” Mara muttered, swinging her feet over the side of the bed. She crept across the room, frightened, even with her demanding statement that she pull herself together. Read it then… then what? Flush it down the toilet? Mara saw no other option. The note would not change her life, but it would satisfy her curiosity.

  Her fingers fought against the decision her mind made, and she reached three times before she touched the paper. She waited for an invisible strike, then yanked out the sheet and small piece of wood.

  She trembled from fear, frightened that the message might self-destruct. Tiny corner by tiny corner, she unraveled the page. The object inside tumbled onto Mara’s bedspread; small, slender, and made of real wood. She recognized the object from the comics. A whistle. Communication.

  Trumpets and lights.

  “All in,” Mara breathed.

  Four sentences handwritten, she read them over and over until she memorized them. Then she walked into the bathroom, shredded the paper into a dozen pieces and flushed the toilet.

  “Time to return our decisions,” Mara said timidly, as the last piece swirled and disappeared from sight. She could not believe what she had just agreed to. Sworn to the cause.

  But, how bound could she be when no one had heard her agree? If she continued to live her life in silence, no one would ever be the wiser.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Wake up, child.”

  Mara’s eyes sprang open. Ghostly skin, long white hair, sunken green eyes, and a partially toothless smile, the old woman who had spoken peered at Mara, inches from her face. She kissed Mara firmly on the forehead, and she smelled the earth left behind on her skin. The woman leaned back, winked, and then raised a whistle to her mouth. Mara braced herself, but no sound came.

  “Yours is broken, too,” Mara croaked, voice full of sleep. Strength and awareness edged their way back into her bones, bit by waking bit.

  The woman laughed, a charming sound. “Not broken. Exactly how it should be. See?”

  The woman lifted her arm and slid a primitive beaded bracelet off her wrist and over Mara’s hand. The offending wrist. Mara waited for the old woman to notice the scar. But if she did, she said nothing.

  Again, the old woman lifted the whistle to her lips. Again, she blew. Again, no sound. But this time Mara sat straight up in alarm as the beads around her wrist vibrated. She stared, mouth agape at the bracelet as each bead turned a different shade of green.

  “The colors show us where to go,” the old woman said.

  “But how?” Mara turned the thin band of beads around in her hand, searching for coils, tiny screws, the metallicness of it. “Tech?”

  The old woman shook her head and pointed up. “The ancestors.”

  Mara looked skyward, then pulled herself to sitting, forgetting the bracelet for a moment as she took in her surroundings. She had assumed they were outside because of the dirt floor, but she saw the ceiling for the first time. Designed with no levelness to it, no structure. Crudely chiseled rock. Dirt and weeds made appearances from time to time within the cracks.

  “Is this… is this a cave?” she asked, another wonder from stories she read as a child. Books that had not survived to her adulthood, but drawings and descriptions etched on her memory. Owls and caves. What’s next? Pirates and elves?

  Mara spied movement at the corner of the room and thought she might see an elf. Instead, a small rodent with a long bushy tail scurried over a collection of clay pots.

  “A cave,” the old woman said, patting Mara on the head. She walked over to a bucket and raised a ladle of water. Mara accepted and drank greedily.

  “Is it manmade?” Mara asked after she drained the ladle, then nodded as the old woman offered it to her full once more.

  “Partially,” a man answered, passing through the oval shaped entrance. Mara startled and looked to the kind old woman to see if he was a threat. The toothless grin had returned to her face.

  The man was tall, brown, and delicate, with a voice like melted butter, smooth and creamy when he spoke again. “In all the leaves, they said you looked like her…”

  His voice cracked, and he squatted to come face to face with Mara. Something familiar looked back at her from his eyes. He raised his hands to her cheeks, hovering for a moment, before touching her face. She retracted her earlier thought about his delicacy as soon as he made contact. His hands were rougher than any hands she had felt in her life. Strong hands built for real work.

  “Who? Who said I look like who?” Mara asked, the echo of the owl sounding in the back of her mind.

  “My sister,” he said. Mara’s mother stared back at her through his eyes. “Dia. You look just like Dia.”

  “Sister? My mother was an only child.” Her father would have said something if Mara had an uncle.

  Surely he would have, at least once. In all these years.

  “Then the rumors are true. Always interesting when that happens,” a woman said, stepping into the room and leaning against the wall behind the clay pots. Mara pulled away from the man to get a better look at the newcomer with tiny black braids in a bun. “The daughter has returned.”

  “Mara?” The man’s eyes turned from inspection to joy. “Are you home? Are you here to stay? You can if you want to.”

  “What?” Mara shook her head to clear the confusion. She ignored his questions. “What happened earlier? Why did I pass out? Where am I? Who are you people? Why are we in a cave?”

  If she kept throwing questions at them, they might forget their own. And so Mara continued to ask questions she had held in for ages, questions she never knew she had, and questions that confused even her.

  “Slow down, Mara.” The man stood and took her hand, pulling her to her feet. Her hands were dirty and dusty, like when she filed century-old paperwork. Worse. She brushed them against her thighs before she remembered that her entire body was a mess.

  “All of your questions will be answered in good time,” the new woman said.

  “At least tell me your names,” Mara said.

  “I am Cyrus,” the man said, and then held his hand out towards the younger woman. “This is Story, and this is the Crone.”

  The old woman smiled at her, black shining through her missing teeth as though she held a black flame in the back of her throat. “Crone. No ‘the’.”

  “Come on.” Story pushed off the wall and then stepped through the carved doorway.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They walked through a long tunnel lined with rectangular tables carved into the stone wall. Large stumps and logs were placed at uneven intervals, some occupied like stools.

  “Ancestors for seats?” Mara asked, distaste in her mouth. The others kept walking, and she trotted after them. “Have they been properly sorted for levels of usefulness?”

  Story snorted.

  They walked for a few more minutes in silence, Mara noting the doorways as they passed. Most were dark. Occasionally she would catch glimpses of rooms that looked like the one she had woken in.

  When they reached the end of the tunnel, they entered a large cave. Flowing through the cave like streams of water, people moved fluidly along.

  A line of children scampered by, joyful, smiling, laughing, and it broke Mara’s heart to see them. How could the Questioners keep children within their walls? Stone or not, it was not a safe place for them. She grabbed her wrist and squeezed until the blood slowed to her hand, then let go.

>   Sunlight sprinkled in through holes in the stone, casting odd designs and shapes of light around the room. Reflecting off small mirrors and crystals attached across the high walls and ceiling, intricate prisms danced, creating illusions of electric lighting. Unlit torches were affixed into the stone, much lower than the crystals.

  “Are we under the ground?” Mara asked.

  Story shrugged. “Mostly.”

  “Mostly how?” Mara came to a halt as Cyrus stopped to let a line of children run across their path. The innocence on their faces was like a vice around her heart.

  “They can’t see us outside, but we’re not under their feet,” Story said, as though that should be a good enough answer. Mara was quickly learning, every answer in the forest promised to be cryptic.

  “Are we still in the forest?” Mara asked. A tiny blonde looked up at Mara and giggled as she ran by. Her tattered yellow skirt flapped behind her.

  “We’re close enough. Don’t worry; we’ll have you back in time for the foreman,” Story said.

  Cyrus continued his walk up the carved ramp, Mara and Story following behind. A man ran up to them, and slowed Story, showing her a tablet.

  “What kind of name is Story?” Mara asked, placing a tired hand on Cyrus’s arm and hoping he would slow. The day had taken more of a physical toll on her than she had expected. No one else appeared out of breath on the ramps but her.

  “We are all a story bundled together as a person. Some are just wilder stories than others, and named in honor of such,” Cyrus said without slowing his step.

  “How could her parents know she would live up to such a name?” But she went unanswered.

  The stone ramp changed to crude stairs, and they started a long climb. Mara’s breath hastened, and her head felt as though it compressed more with each step. She paused and leaned on the cool stone wall.

  “Stop for a second,” Mara said. Cyrus stopped and leaned against the wall next to her hand. “What happened earlier? Out in the forest. When I… fainted? Or fell asleep? What happened?”

  “They injected you with a sleeping medicine.” Cyrus touched her neck where the spot had burned earlier. “We couldn’t be sure you weren’t dangerous. That you wouldn’t share our location with the foreman. Or anyone else.”

  “Oh.” Her hand on the wall. A faint scar. They were right not to trust her. “Did you carry me here?”

  Cyrus shook his head. “The Crone and two forest men found you.”

  “What are forest men?” Mara asked.

  “Just as the name says, forest men.” Story pushed her way by them, precariously close to the edge. If Story fell, she would break more than just a few bones.

  “Men who live in the forest and blend in with the environment,” Cyrus said, and then continued after Story. Not many steps left until they reached a landing with a doorway. “They knew you weren’t dangerous, they didn’t find any weapons on you. But, they still couldn’t let you remember the way here, so they carried you here while you slept.”

  “What if I had attacked the Crone when I woke up?” Mara asked. There were ways to be dangerous without weapons.

  “You would not,” Story said from the landing above. “Well, you may have tried, but the Crone is stronger than she looks.”

  Mara and Cyrus reached the landing, and stepped through the small doorway into yet another cave. This cave the epitome of a modernized surveillance room. Tech infused and terrifying.

  A surveillance room built into carved stone.

  Twelve screens aligned a wall, each with its own brown clad man plugged into headphones, keypads, and smart glasses. Strings of code flew by, each row quicker than the last.

  A long wood carved table sat through the center of the room, covered with tablets and physical paper. Real honest to Oxylus photographs were taped along the walls. Each with a different face and symbol scrawled across.

  At either end of the table, two men about Mara’s father’s age sat. One was stout, clay faced, and gray haired. The other man was not gray or wrinkled, but his age was betrayed by an air about him that only a man in his late fifties could give with a look alone. And from the look they gave the threesome as they entered the room, they were the ones running everything.

  Or at least running the meeting.

  Neither stood. Neither smiled. Neither spoke. Simply stared at her - the main attraction. The feast. After a moment, Story left her side and retreated to the doorway, crossing her arms.

  “Here she is,” Story said, as though someone had said Mara was not there.

  “Mara,” the gray one said, “I’m Cooper; this here is Douglas. We run this sector of the change. Assuming since you’re here, you’re cooperating with the mission? Here to fulfill your birthright, so to say.”

  “Wh-what?” Mara asked.

  “Finish what your mother started?” Cooper said.

  “I don’t know anything. I… I’m just here because the note said to come for answers. So, obviously… I don’t know anything.” Missing answers her entire life, now she realized she was missing more of them than she ever dreamed. Maybe that was why she connected to her e-reader more than her screen tablet, more to the comics than church services. Why she did not run immediately for the front office when Tayla crawled out from under the bed. And why did everyone keep mentioning Dia? “What does everything have to do with my mother?”

  “Did you bring the chip?” Cooper asked her.

  “I did.”

  “Where is it?”

  She knew she should demand answers before giving them what they wanted, but her hands shook with fear again, and she only wanted to leave. Pretend like she had never been there.

  Mara tapped her cheek, and Cooper pulled a tool from his breast pocket. Thin, metal, angry looking, the claw-like tip began to spin after he flipped a switch. He walked to Mara and indicated for her to open her mouth. She looked at him with unsure eyes, while her unsure heart beat to escape.

  Cooper noticed her trepidation. “I promise, this won’t hurt. The chip caps are made to extract without pain.”

  Mara nodded, squeezed her eyes, and opened her mouth. No pain, as promised, only a gentle vibration against her tooth. The sensation lasted only seconds before he pulled the tool out. Mara opened her eyes and saw the white false tooth cap embedded with wiry tech. Cooper dropped it into the outstretched hand of another man, who closed his fist and ran to a screen with the tiny piece of tech.

  Mara expected to see revulsion, but everyone seemed nonplussed. As if tooth extractions at the banquet table were an everyday occurrence. She slid her tongue over the ridges of her de-capped tooth. Normal Mara once again.

  Not all the way. No, she did not imagine she would be all the way normal again. At least not for some time. Physically or… she stopped herself. She did not want to start questioning her mentality. Especially not around strangers.

  “It looks to be intact,” the man said after plugging the tooth into the wall, and there was a quick cheer around the room.

  “They don’t always make it without tampering,” Cyrus whispered, close to her ear.

  The man with Mara’s tooth jumped up, knocking the stump over he had been sitting on. “Sir, it’s a message from Dia Strongholder.”

  Mara stared at the graph appearing on the screen. Mom?

  Cooper nodded at the man and turned back to Mara. “You’ve shown you might be a trusted ally. We’ll be in touch for future transfers.”

  “No, what? Wait, my mother. That’s a message from my mother?” Mara pointed at the screen that had just come to light with data, different and angrier than the last screen. Her wrist burned, and the more she thought about her mother, the more she wanted to cut her hand off. She dug into her wrist with her fingernails, undoubtedly too late, but desperate. “My mother is dead.”

  “She’s not. In fact, she is still one of our most effective scientists,” Cyrus said.

  “No. She’s dead. I saw her body. She was caught in crossfire when I was eight.” Mara’s hea
d felt like it was swimming away from the rest of her body.

  “A decoy. She had to throw them off her trail,” Cooper said, walking to the screen on the wall. He touched the quickly changing numbers. Everyone had gathered at the screen by then, even the silent Douglas. Story whispered in Cyrus’s ear, and he nodded.

  “She wouldn’t leave me behind; I was- I was her little maple tree.” The childhood nickname her mother had given her tasted like acid in her mouth. Her eyes stung, and she swallowed the lump forming in the back of her throat. Her mother would not have left her alone. She loved Mara. She loved her husband. Dia Strongholder would not have abandoned them.

  “You’re lying,” Mara cried out. The age-old dam holding back the sadness gave way and tears flowed through the cracks. Something swelled inside her she had not felt since that day her mother’s body had been wheeled out of the building. The sirens screamed in the background of her memory.

  “Sir!” A man called out. “It’s the Beiwe Virus; the government releases another dose this week.”

  “Damnit,” Cooper said, sounding as tired as Mara felt.

  What does that have to do with my mother? Information overflowed in the room. All the words rolled together, turning into waves that crashed over Mara. She grasped Cyrus’s wrist, a buoy holding her above the water if only for a minute. “I don’t understand.”

  “Population control,” Cyrus said. He wiped at the tears on her face, and his expression changed from hurried to sympathetic.

  “Control?” Story pushed them away from the crowd. The rest of the room had become a mess of running feet, codes on screens, papers pushed around, orders yelled. The three of them motionless on the side of chaos. “It’s not control. It’s genocide. Against those who know the truth.”

  “What truth?” Mara asked.

  “I don’t condone it; control is their purpose.” Cyrus sighed. “The church created it years ago, and the city releases it in doses whenever the population becomes restless. Whenever rumors start of uprisings.”