The Forest Beyond the Earth

by Matthew S. Cox

  A similar metal barrier abutted the other side, though the forest floor was even with the surface there, so she didn’t have a hill to climb. She placed her foot atop the barrier and vaulted over with ease. Following Mother’s directions, she marched onward. Hours passed with little distraction other than distant birds tweeting or the occasional cry of a hawk. Eventually, the rifle became too heavy to carry, so she shouldered it and let her arms dangle limp at her sides. How Dad could hold it all day, she had no idea. When they’d gone to the Jeep place, he’d had it in his hands for the entire walk, putting it down only by the stream while they ate.

  She stopped once to let out bad water, and lucked into another cluster of raspberries an hour or so past midday. She ate so many she expected her ngh would be splattery, but she didn’t care. Any food she didn’t have to cook helped. Building a fire took time away from finding Dad. The occasional peek up at the sun plus a large helping of Mother’s pull kept her going in the direction she thought those tracks went.

  Late in the afternoon, bubbling on the left tempted her off course in hopes of finding water. The delicate churning sound led her to a shallow stream full of smooth rocks only a few minutes away. She sat on a big stone at the edge, letting her feet dangle in the icy water to wash away the bear ngh. Careful to put the canteens in upstream from her feet, she refilled them and drank until her head hurt from the cold. Once she couldn’t bear another sip, she spent a little while rubbing the nasty off the bottom of her foot. Despite no longer seeing any muck there, she still scrubbed as if to erase the memory of it.

  Her brief rest over, she got up and headed back into the woods. After almost three days of constant walking, being stuck inside her Haven while Dad went off to hunt no longer sounded like a bad idea, even if she didn’t have the opener. Though confinement frustrated her, it took a whole lot less work to sit around reading.

  She trudged on, shifting the rifle back and forth from wearing it on her shoulder to carrying it as her arms tolerated. With the quiet sameness of trees going by came the realization that she’d spent the past night sprawled out in the open, so exhausted she’d passed out without a single thought about the Tree Walkers. That they hadn’t taken her last night despite her being so defenseless had only one explanation.

  Mother protected her.

  At a growl in her stomach, she began looking around for edibles, but the stretch of forest she’d wandered into bloomed with all plants she regarded as either not-food or dangerous. Mushrooms gave her hope, but she leapt away from them when she noticed a broken veil around the stem.

  “White death… or white angels or something.” She grumbled at herself for not remembering. “Whatever it’s called, I’m not eating it.”

  Dad’s description of feeling like she’d swallowed a whole colony of live ants who’d eat her from the inside out before she slid into the Other Place had left a mark. Any mushroom with a broken membrane around the stem she avoided as if it would fly up out of the ground and try to bite her. She scurried away near a jog until she could no longer see any mushrooms.

  The day ground onward, with little sign of anything to eat. Hunting for food distracted her from listening to Mother’s pull, and she wound up veering back and forth. Around early evening, a terrifying sight emerged from the forest in the distance: a standing wall of vegetation.

  Wisp stifled a yelp and jumped behind a tree, shaking and whimpering, begging Mother to watch over her. Once she realized no great roar of cracking twigs and snapping vines came charging forward, her trembling lessened. Perhaps a minute later, she’d stopped shaking entirely, and risked peering around the tree with one eye. Bark dappled with white lichen blurred as she shifted her focus from the tree in front of her face to the distance.

  A wall of greens and browns blocked off the forest. It looked like the rolling wave of vegetation from her nightmare, only it didn’t move at all… and had a suspiciously flat top. Clinging to her tree, she observed the bizarre thing for a few minutes, but it neither moved, nor roared, nor extended any vines in her direction.

  Hoping it might not be a sleeping mass of Tree Walkers, she risked emerging from her hiding place enough to raise the rifle against her shoulder. In the scope’s magnification, it became obvious she’d found a crisscross of metal wires suspended between posts, with strips of cloth tied all over it to create the illusion of leaves and shrubs. It reminded her of the Jeep place, the fake plants Dad referred to as camouflage.

  Metal posts with wires between them did not look like something that would’ve grown there, so people had to have made it. Her jaw opened at the wonder of humans who had the kind of magic necessary to shape metal, but maybe it had come from the ancient ones, before the dragons.

  Nervous and excited in equal measure, Wisp stood out from behind the tree and advanced, holding the rifle sideways again while stepping around roots and rocks. A few paces away from her hiding spot, she noticed a thin wire a few inches off the ground. Curious, she squatted in front of it and looked left and right along the length.

  On the left, it had been tied around a tree trunk. On the right, it passed through a tiny metal loop stuck into another tree and went up into the branches where a cluster of old coffee cans hung. She rested her fingers on the wire by the ground, picking at it. The cans reacted with a wobble. She looked back and forth from the wire to the cans a few times before it clicked.

  This is a noisemaker!

  She stood and stepped over the wire, creeping onward, twice as alert for where she placed her feet. While crossing the woods between the first noisemaker and the fence, she avoided four more wires, all connected to jumbles of cans. Dad taught her about ‘traps’ like snares or covered pits. Once, he’d even made a wire like this, but it pulled a stick away from another stick when triggered, causing a giant log to come falling out of a tree. These cans wouldn’t hurt anyone, so she entertained the idea that whoever lived on the other side of that fence might not be mean.

  Still, she couldn’t risk contact. Best to avoid a fight if possible.

  Wisp scurried over to the wall and peered past the metal mesh into a big open field that held several rows of strange, tall plants. A good distance past them stood a cabin at least three times the size of hers. Beyond that, more cabins of different shapes and sizes gathered around an open space. People appeared to be moving around there, but the distance made them too tiny to recognize any details.

  Wow… this is a city!

  She clung to the metal grid wall, face close enough for the cloth strips to tickle her cheeks. The barrier continued in both directions before curving inward, evidently going around the whole city. A trill of random notes came from the right. She dropped into a crouch and huddled against the strange wall, frozen in place.

  A man approached along the inside of the barrier. He whistled to himself while walking at a relaxed pace, like he had nowhere really to go. His boots resembled Dad’s, but his pants couldn’t decide what color to be. Blobs of green, black, and brown mottled the baggy garment. A white cloth shirt with thin straps exposed his shoulders, which had taken on a reddish hue while the rest of his arms had a tan a few shades lighter than Dad. The front of his neck and insides of his arms were almost as pale as her skin. He also wore an enormous knife on his belt in a sheath, the point only inches off the ground. The man didn’t have any guns or even a bow.

  Wisp stayed motionless as he went right on past her, not noticing her behind all the hanging strips on the barrier. When the whistling faded to the point she could barely hear it, she twisted around to look. The man continued marching along the barrier, like he intended to walk completely around the city.

  That’s strange. Where is he going? This place is weird.

  She stood and headed to the right, away from him, intending to ignore the city and continue going east as soon as she reached the end of the wall in her way. Within a few minutes, the wind carried a new smell across her face. Before she could identify it, a strand of drool ran down her chin. It would be dar
k fairly soon, and she hadn’t eaten much more than a couple handfuls of raspberries after an incomplete dinner the previous night. The fragrance in the air had to be meat cooking, but no kind of meat she’d ever encountered before.

  The wonderful aroma drew her to a stop soon after. Wisp leaned up to the barrier and peered in again at another cabin, also much larger than hers. This one had a small covered area behind it, which confused her as to why someone would build a roof over dirt. The door sat at the middle of the wall at the back of the roofed area, between a pair of metal chairs.

  A short distance closer to her, away from the cabin, smoke wafted up from a round stack of bricks. Though no flames peeked up over the top of the tiny chimney, it had to contain fire. A brownish lump on a stick hung over it, right in the smoke’s path. The meat had the same coloration as a nicely roasted grub, but whatever creature it had been was much bigger than a grub.

  Wisp bit her lip, pondering her next move. She could get up and over the barrier pretty easily, given the holes in the lattice made for excellent footholds. That left a swath of maybe eighty yards of open dirt filled with even rows of short green plants, another type she didn’t recognize. Also, strange animals roamed in the open. Some had four legs and almost resembled half-sized deer, only they had horns rather than antlers. On the left, a group of weird, fat birds waddled around. Most were white, though a handful had a brownish coloration. All had the heads and beaks of birds, however, their bodies looked in no way capable of flying. Not to mention, she’d never imagined birds could get that big. A few of them had to be larger than Dad’s head. They clucked, wandered about, and pecked at the ground.

  Her stomach growled at the scent of the cooking meat. Hunger won her over, and she decided the food would be hers.

  I am a raccoon.

  She backed away into the woods far enough to find a hiding place. There, she stashed the rifle and backpack, her two heaviest items. Her plan involved climbing the camouflage wall, running over to grab the meat, and going straight back out before anyone saw her.

  Confident, Wisp approached the wall again and watched.

  A cluster of men walked by in front of the cabin, far enough away not to be a concern. They too carried huge knives, but no guns. Even if they saw her, they couldn’t hurt her without getting close―and if they meant to hurt her, the handgun wouldn’t let them.

  She grabbed on to the wall, raised her leg, and stuck her foot in one of the gaps. It hurt a little, but not enough to change her mind. The whole barrier rattled when she pulled her weight onto it, so she jumped down.

  That’s a noisemaker, too.

  Wisp glared hungrily at the roasting meat. Going over the barrier would make so much clattering, even those people far away would probably hear her. Desperate with hunger, she roamed along the wall, hunting for a way in.

  Salvation showed itself thirty feet later, where a small section of the barrier had broken apart from one of the metal poles, creating a gap big enough for her to squeeze past. Even better, it didn’t look like a grownup would be able to fit. She got down on her chest and dragged herself into a nice little hiding place behind a long wooden object close to the wall. She shifted onto her knees and peered up over the top, clutching the edge. Much to her surprise, what she thought to be a short fence contained water.

  Wisp peered down at a pale, delicate face with clouds gliding by in the background. Dirt smudged the girl’s cheek and chin, and her eyes, huge and blue, gave off sorrow. She felt bad for the water spirit, wondering what had made her so sad. Wisp started to look to the left, and the other girl mimicked her. She grinned, and the other girl did as well. Amused, Wisp played the game, trying to move in an unexpected way that the other girl would mess up. Nothing she did, from wagging her head to sticking out her tongue, worked. Every move she made, the water spirit copied perfectly. She wanted to giggle at her strange, new friend, but did not want to be caught by the men who lived here. Wisp tried to touch the other girl, but her finger sent ripples over the water, breaking up the image. At that moment, she realized she’d been staring at her own reflection in the largest pool of still water she’d ever seen. Over the years, she’d caught glimpses of herself in drinking cups or spoons, but never before had she gotten such a perfect view. A big box of water like this must work like the mirrors she had read about. The sadness in the girl before her had been hers.

  I have to find Dad. Wisp stared at herself until sorrow became determination.

  A loud snort sprayed water on her from the right, and broke the reflection apart. She lifted her gaze off the water and came nose-to-nose with the largest creature she’d ever seen. Ears flapped at her on a head bigger than her chest. This creature, too, somewhat resembled a deer, but many times bigger with a shorter neck and broad head, no horns, and big eyes. Blotchy black spots dotted its otherwise white fur.

  Wisp swallowed, and backed away before the creature got angry.

  The animal dipped its nose in the water to drink.

  She leapt to her feet and ran to the left, heading toward the prize. When she reached the rows of evenly spaced plants, one of the smaller four-legged horned critters came barreling out of the greenery at her. Wisp squealed in alarm and ran faster away from the pursuing creature, but it galloped after, seemingly intent on crashing headfirst into her. It chased her straight into the cluster of large birds, which erupted into a panicky spray of feathers as they scrambled to run in all directions. They squawked and clucked, flapping their useless wings while zipping around in circles, making far, far too much noise.

  The mini-deer caught up and rammed its head into her butt, throwing her off her feet. She flew into a patch of strong-scented plants, landing flat on her chest.

  “Oof,” she muttered. “Ow.”

  With a snort of victory, the black-furred creature that had head-butted her trotted off into the field. Wisp pushed herself up with one arm and reached back to rub her rear end.

  Stupid animal. Is it trying to stop me from taking that meat?

  “What’s all the fuss?” called an unusual high-pitched voice. Not as high as hers, but way higher than Dad’s

  The door at the back of the roofed area opened, and a strange-looking man stepped out. Long, blonde hair framed a narrow, rounded face, and hung past his belt. Most odd, he seemed to have stuffed something down the front of his shirt that created a pair of lumps in the blue fabric. He didn’t look anywhere near as strong as Dad, with much rounder shoulders and narrow, almost delicate, arms. Like Wisp, this strange man didn’t wear any shoes, but had the same green-brown-black blotchy pants as the man she’d seen walking by the outer wall.

  Wisp flattened herself out on the ground, hands against the dirt on either side of her chin. She held her body stock still, staring at the unusual man with the high voice and towels stuffed down his front.

  “Oh, you ladies.” The man folded his arms beneath the odd pillowy masses in his shirt and shook his head at the birds. “What’s got you all running about?”

  A pair of the plump birds wandered over to Wisp and stuck their heads into the plants to get a closer look at her. She flicked her fingers to shoo them, but they ignored her.

  The animal responsible for launching Wisp into the shrubbery shook its head and emitted a scream startlingly close to that of a frightened human. The shrill noise set the birds into another frenzy of running around.

  “Are the goats bothering you again?” The strange man approached the small chimney and spent a few minutes rotating and poking at the meat before walking back inside the cabin.

  Eager to get out of this city before anyone spotted her, Wisp crawled out of the bushes, some of which smelled quite a bit like the taste powders. Crouched low, she scurried across a patch of bare dirt littered with big seeds and huge pieces of bird ngh. The flightless things continued to cluck and scurry, mostly avoiding her.

  She stopped and took a knee by the tiny brick chimney, which indeed contained fire. Once she got close to the meat, she realized it had prob
ably been one of those strange birds before the city person killed and plucked it. The fragrance overpowered her. She couldn’t help but rip off one of the legs and chomp down. Despite it being hot, she savaged it, moaning in delight at the flavor while gasping at the heat between bites.

  The goat screamed again.

  “Kaya?” yelled the strange man.

  Wisp snapped her head up, locking stares with the city-person who had one foot out the door.

  “Kaya?” repeated the strange, small man, eyes wide.

  Eep!

  Wisp grabbed the wooden rod impaling the bird and jumped into a sprint for the wall.

  “Kaya! Wait!” yelled the strange man.

  She ran straight to the wall, the odd high-voiced city-person repeating that nonsense word over and over behind her. Wisp leapt onto the barrier, too intent on escape to care if it rattled. She’d already been seen, so no sense being quiet. Climbing with one hand and both feet, she hauled herself up to the top. The strange man’s fingers grazed at her ankle, but she jumped fast enough avoid the grabbing hand, fell ten feet back to the ground, and tumbled on landing. Fortunately, she managed not to get too much dirt on the cooked bird.

  Deeper voices rose up in shouts behind the wall, but Wisp didn’t slow down or look back until she reached the place in the woods where she’d stashed her things. Even there, she paused only long enough to get the backpack on and sling the rifle before running into the woods, as directly away from the wall as possible. Dad’s warnings replayed in her mind about how people would try to hurt her.

  She hit one of the noisemakers, which nearly tripped her, but the cacophony of clattering cans only made her run faster, clutching the bird-stick tight. Once the fire in her legs and chest made it impossible to continue running, she slowed to a jog, not caring where she went as long she kept going away from those people. Their distant shouts had grown quieter. No longer able to resist the wonderful smell, she bit a piece off the bird. Jogging gave way to walking soon after as her protesting legs threatened to quit entirely and dump her on the ground. Wisp forced herself to walk onward, taking another bite every few paces.