The Whispering Trees

by J. A. White

  Kara looked down. Using the sharpened end of her stick, she had scrawled something in the earth:

  REMEMBER WHAT IT EATS.

  As usual, she did not remember writing the sentence, but she recalled, with shocking clarity, its other appearances in her life. Whispered in her ear upon waking. Clapped out by ocean waves. Pattered by raindrops on the roof.

  It’s important. I don’t know why, but these words might be the most important thing in my life.

  “Remember what it eats,” Grace said, considering. “The thing I found in the Fringe—I think it might have something to do with that. If you’re interested, that is. I wouldn’t want to distract you from your chores.”

  “Show me,” said Kara.

  Grace had to use her walking stick to maneuver across the unsteady ground of the Fringe, but despite her weak leg she kept a steady pace. Kara followed her along the outskirts of the border, refusing to enter the Fringe itself.

  What am I doing? she thought. I’m following the craziest girl in the village. Why? The instincts that had served Kara so well the past few years were complicated when it came to Grace. For some unfathomable reason she trusted what the girl was saying, but she did not trust the girl herself. Not one bit.

  “Here,” Grace said.

  Using her walking stick, she pointed to something on the ground. At first, Kara didn’t even see it, camouflaged as it was against the other weeds. But gradually she was able to make out six green petals splayed across the ground, as though a flower had decided to spread out its arms and take a nap.

  “Do you know what this does?” Grace asked.

  Kara shook her head. It did seem vaguely familiar, though. Perhaps her mother had taught her about it at some point and she had forgotten? She tugged at a cloud of memory but it slipped away.

  “Watch,” Grace said.

  She picked up a beetle from an overhanging tangle of purple vines and placed it next to the splayed leaves. The beetle hesitated a moment, its instincts telling it not to proceed, until Grace poked it with a stick and forced it onto the first petal.

  The petals clamped together into a bell-shaped dome as large as Kara’s head, then rose into the air on a single shoot and slowly began to spin.

  “It’s a trap,” said Grace. “The beetle thinks it’s still just going about its life and . . .”

  Like a flash of lightning in Kara’s brain: lost things hanging from the branches.

  “. . . doesn’t realize the truth . . .”

  More flashes. One after the other.

  People.

  Mouths agape.

  Something wrong with their heads.

  “. . . until it’s too late.”

  Slithering.

  Screams.

  Taff.

  “My brother,” Kara said. “He’s in trouble. I have to go home.”

  “Do you?” asked Grace.

  “Yes!” But another voice, a voice that was her own but different, stronger, said, “No. The boy at home isn’t Taff at all.”

  Remember what it eats.

  “Lost,” Kara murmured. “It eats things that are lost.”

  The farm is not your home.

  Remember what it eats.

  “What’s happening to me?” asked Kara. “I feel like my head is being torn apart.”

  Grace noticed something past Kara’s shoulder. “You have visitors,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.” She paused and added, “See you soon!” before vanishing into the Fringe.

  Kara turned. Her family stood behind her.

  “Come home, Kara,” said Father. “We need you.”

  “It’s time to prepare dinner,” said Mother.

  “I got it to work!” Taff exclaimed, beaming. “My threshing machine! Don’t you want to see?”

  Mother reached out her hands and Kara took a step forward, longing to fold herself in those lilac-scented arms and forget about this whole thing, but then . . .

  The farm is not your home remember what it eats.

  . . . she saw a younger version of her mother hanging from a tree, jerking as stone after stone struck her.

  “You’re not you,” Kara said with grim certainty. “You’re dead.”

  Mother straightened her back and sighed deeply.

  “I don’t have to be,” she said. “Stay with us, and we can live like this forever.”

  Remember . . .

  (Mary. That’s Mary’s voice!)

  . . . what it eats. The things you’ve lost.

  “Stay with us, Moonbeam,” said Father.

  Imogen. She has me right now.

  “Don’t go, sister!” exclaimed Taff.

  She’s in my mind.

  “Stop it,” Kara said. “None of this is real!”

  Mother shrugged. “Real is what we make it. Come back to the farm, Kara. Forget all this foolishness.”

  “My brother needs me,” Kara said. She looked at the boy wearing Taff’s face. “My real brother.”

  The Taff-thing winced as though Kara had struck him, and a seam of nothingness zigzagged across his cheek, revealing the trees behind him.

  “Mother,” the Taff-thing said, jamming his fingers into the crack in his face. “Look what she did!”

  “Is this what you want?” Mother asked Kara. “To hurt your brother?”

  “I want to save him!”

  Mother’s arm vanished up to the elbow. A sizable piece of Father’s torso disappeared as well.

  “I’m very disappointed in you,” said the Mother-thing. “You could have had me back again.”

  “You’re wrong,” Kara said. “My mother is gone forever.”

  Her family vanished.

  Where a path leading back to the village should have been, a swirling nothingness expanded like a spreading stain across the horizon. Kara watched it approach, and in a few moments it took her.

  Kara opened her eyes.

  She felt the hunger first, gnawing and implacable. How long have I been here? And where is here, exactly? Kara opened her eyes wider but her surroundings remained hazy and unclear.

  They’ve been closed too long. I have to give them time before they work again.

  She heard vague sounds, dim and muffled. At first Kara thought her ears, like her eyes, needed time to recover, but this was not the case; there was something stuffed inside them. Kara raised a hand, even this small motion difficult in her weakened state, and took hold of a fleshy, tentacle-like form protruding from her left ear. She yanked it away, feeling suddenly nauseous as the tentacle, much longer than she thought it would be, slid out of her ear with a popping sound and released a stream of warm fluid. Before she lost her nerve Kara repeated this action with the right ear, and immediately fell to the ground. Pain shot though her left knee.

  Kara didn’t mind. Pain was good. Pain meant she was alive.

  She lay there for a few minutes until her vision began to work again and the foggy shapes of her surroundings came into focus.

  She was in a small pit. Luminescent moss, pulsing with red light, covered the walls. The opening of the pit, while not far up, was well out of jumping range, and the moss, warm to the touch, provided no handholds. Kara glimpsed her reflection in a puddle of water: She was dirty and bedraggled, but definitely no older than twelve.

  Four years of my life. All a lie.

  Her memory—her true memory—had begun to return to her in random images. A rabbit on a bicycle. An old woman with a sack. Keys and dolls in the treetops. These images were more confusing than helpful, but it didn’t matter. She remembered the most important thing just fine: Taff was here, and he needed her help.

  Kara heard movement behind her. The two tentacles she had torn from her ears were slowly rising through the air, returning to something—or someone—on the surface.

  No time to think. Might not get this chance later.

  Leaping into the air, Kara caught one of the tentacles with two hands. It sank beneath her weight, and for a moment she feared it would collapse altogether, bu
t then it righted itself and began to lift Kara toward the opening above them. She waited until she was being pulled across the earth before relinquishing her grasp. The tentacles continued onward toward some unknown source.

  Unsteadily, Kara rose to her feet.

  In every direction her surroundings were obscured by swirling fog—not gray and cloudy, but dark red like the flesh of a dragonfruit. The air smelled of far too many things at once. Closing her eyes, Kara used her wexari training to pull the confusing medley of scents apart and pinpoint particulars: cinnamon-laced pumpkin pie, sandalwood soap, the mustiness of a seldom-opened trunk. Taken apart, the smells were common, even comforting—but their combined presence disturbed her.

  A name rose from the murk of her memory.

  Imogen. She’s the one who has Taff.

  Barely able to see beyond her outstretched hand, Kara took two steps forward and nearly fell into the second pit.

  She teetered on the edge for a moment, and only by throwing her weight backward did she escape a nasty fall. The hole was the same size and shape as the one that had held Kara. Two tentacles crept into the darkness.

  “Taff!” Kara called, leaning over the edge.

  The tentacles suspended a small shape in the air like a marionette. It wasn’t Taff. Kara couldn’t even tell if it had once been male or female; the skin of its hairless head had long ago shrunk and tightened around a sunken skull. Despite this, the tentacles were still moving, still pulsing, like a greedy child using its finger to wipe the last bit of jam from the bottom of a jar.

  That’s what would have happened to me if I didn’t escape. That’s what will happen to Taff if I don’t find him.

  If she tried walking in this fog, however, Kara risked falling into another pit and breaking her leg. She would be no help to her brother then.

  I need light.

  She reached out with her thoughts and made a mind-bridge. An insect with three pairs of glowing blue wings landed on the edge of her index finger. It cast a round circle of illumination, the fog itself seeming to part at its arrival.

  “A boy,” Kara said. “Brought here the same time as me. Do you know where he is?”

  Yes. Heard boy fight. Use wooden stick.

  Kara smiled, her parched lips cracking. That was definitely Taff.

  “Can you take me to him?”

  Many-Arms have boy. Boy dreaming forever dream.

  Kara reached deeper into the insect’s mind and saw that by “Many-Arms,” it meant the monster with all the tentacles.

  Imogen.

  You free boy? the glow-wings asked.

  “Yes.”

  Bad. No free. Hurt boy.

  “I’m his sister. I would never hurt him.”

  Disturb boy. During forever dream. Kill boy.

  “Oh,” Kara said, finally understanding. If she detached the tentacles from Taff while he was trapped in whatever world Imogen had created, it might kill him.

  “There must be another way,” Kara said.

  Yes. Kill Many-Arms. End forever dreams. Save us.

  Kara heard the eagerness in its thoughts. The glow-wings had no love for Imogen, and was eager for Kara to fight on its behalf.

  “So if I kill this monster, Taff will be safe?”

  Follow me.

  The glowing insect led her safely past dozens of holes, a pair of tentacles exiting each one. Kara saw dim shapes at the bottom of each pit but tried not to look too closely. If it was Taff, she didn’t want to get distracted. If it wasn’t Taff, she didn’t want to see.

  As she walked, Kara tried to shake off the memory of the past four years, false events that had played only in her mind. It was hard. Even now she felt the urge to return home and finish her nighttime chores, after which she could talk to Mother about a design for her Shadow Festival gown. None of it was real, Kara kept repeating to herself. It was just a prison in my head. And yet she could not stop remembering the cadence of Mother’s laugh, the warmth of her embrace. Wounds that had finally scabbed over were ripped open anew, as though her mother had died a second time. Kara had known darkness and violence and evil—but she had never known such cruelty.

  I have to stop this creature so no one else suffers like that.

  But how?

  Before Kara could even begin to ponder this question, the fog cleared and Imogen was before her.

  The wexari was more withered than a body had any right to be, as though the witch had skipped dying altogether but never stopped aging. A ridged black spine protruded from her back, and from this issued a single tentacle that branched into hundreds more, holding her aloft like some sort of malignant octopus. Kara turned and saw these tentacles disappear into the fog, feeding tubes between the monster and those trapped in the pits.

  Imogen opened her eyes, revealing blind white cataracts.

  “Kara Westfall,” she said. “You escaped the world I created for you. Whatever for?”

  “I’m here for my brother.”

  “Ah,” Imogen said. “Little Taff. I had thought he might like to meet his mother, but this was not the lost thing in his heart of hearts, so I’ve given him his father back. His real father. They are currently fishing together—your brother’s first ship ride.”

  “Let him go.”

  “Why? He’s happy. He thinks he’s having a lovely day with Daddy.”

  “But he’s not.”

  “No,” said Imogen, and her upper lip curled back in a feral smile. “He’s not.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because he misses his father so much—and that makes it taste so good.”

  Kara recoiled in horror.

  “You’re eating his feelings?” she asked.

  Imogen crossed her arms in a disturbingly childlike pout.

  “So quick to judge, are we? Do you not eat dead flesh? Do you not eat horrible green things that spring forth from the dirt? Clearly anything can be devoured, Kara Westfall. I myself have feasted on dreams and memories, and while these are certainly nourishing, nothing provides more sustenance than what might have been. Life is loss. The path not taken. The song unsung. The bittersweet nectar of true love left behind. Years ago a woman came to me whose only child had wandered off in the forest and never returned. She begged me to bring the child back to her.” Imogen closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “That was a banquet beyond compare.”

  Kara had learned to accept many things in the Thickety, and a creature that fed on emotions was no stranger than notsuns or Forest Demons. But there was something that didn’t make sense. “Once you’ve fed,” Kara asked, “why not just kill your victims? Why keep them trapped here in dream worlds?”

  Imogen placed two hands over her stomach. Kara thought she heard a low, liquid rumble.

  “This would all be easier if I hungered for the simple emotions,” she said. “Joy, jealousy, anger—such surface feelings can be consumed with a single kiss. But true loss anchors deep. You humans always seem so surprised by your little tragedies; you have such a difficult time accepting that what’s gone is gone. That makes loss hard to get at, like a fleshy nut inside an impenetrable shell. Peeling away all the other emotions doesn’t work; it just kills the host and the flavor. But if I use the dreams to convince people that their lives have been made whole again, they slowly let go of that delectable feeling of loss, which rises to the top, where I can get at it.” Imogen moved a black-crusted tongue across her lips. “Like cream.”

  “You’re a monster! You imprison people and drain them dry.”

  “I grant wishes. I give people what they want most.”

  “It’s not real,” Kara said.

  “Isn’t it? Did you know any differently, while you were experiencing my gift to you? Don’t you wish you could return there right now?”

  “My mother is dead.”

  “But it’s not your mother you want, Kara. She’s part of it, to be sure, but there’s so much more you lost. And I gave it to you! I restored your whole childhood! I allowed you to be
a girl again, free from magic, free from responsibility. How is this cruelty?”

  “Your kindness would have killed me.”

  “In time. But you will die in this world as well, no doubt sooner. Why not return to a kinder place? If you’d like, you can start from birth. Experience things fresh. I can even have your brother join you—your real brother, this time. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Kara remembered sitting around the fireplace with her family, the warmth of neighbors who did not believe she was a witch. She understood why some people might seek out such sweet oblivion. But she had not come this far to live a lie.

  Kara stepped forward.

  “You are going to return Taff to me and release all the people in these pits. Now.”

  A gurgling sound came from Imogen’s throat. At first Kara thought it was laughter, but it wasn’t—she was coughing something up, like a cat with a fur ball.

  A shiny key fell from her lips and dropped to a small pile of objects beneath her feet: coins and rings and lockets, like some sort of bizarre dragon’s hoard from a storybook.

  “My apologies,” Imogen said. “Occasionally some minor lost object, some bauble, gets passed along. Rather like a bone in one of those disgusting meals you people favor.” She dabbed daintily at her lips. “This conversation was mildly diverting, and I do thank you for that, but I believe it’s time for you to return to your pit. There is so much loss in you, Kara Westfall. My stomach growls just thinking about it.”

  A tentacle brushed against Kara’s leg—not grabbing her, not yet. There was no reason to hurry; Imogen had all the time in the world. Kara reached out with her mind, searching for a nearby creature that could help her. . . .

  A dark consciousness shoved her back.

  Kara staggered backward in surprise, nearly losing her footing. What was that? It was so close that at first she thought it was Imogen, but if so, the wexari seemed completely oblivious to their encounter.

  No. Something else is here.

  Brushing away the second tentacle creeping up her leg, Kara built a mind-bridge from memories of loneliness and hunger. She offered it to the darkness and it shoved her again, harder this time. It will never cross, not of its own accord, Kara thought, so she used more memories (I’m in my bed, waiting for Mother to read me a story, but then I remember that Mother will never read me a story again) to seal the top of the mind-bridge and set it on its end. She reached out again, and when the dark consciousness tried to shove her this time it slipped into her mind instead, falling down the tunnel she had constructed like rain through a well.