The Forest

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  And now Tricia and Alex know that neither the sheriff nor the madwoman speak of the water that bisects the forest. They speak of the stronger and, in the forest, much more erratic stream of time.)

  Julie sped up suddenly. Alex and Tricia, forgetting once more, wondered why Julie had put on the sudden burst of speed.

  “Why… so…” panted Alex.

  “… fast?” finished Tricia.

  Julie shook her head. “Because you have to see it. But I don’t want to.”

  Before Alex or Tricia could ask what Julie meant by that, they saw a tree they knew well.

  “This was where…” began Tricia.

  “… we saw the man in the tree,” said Alex.

  Julie said nothing. But the fog spoke, in its way. The mist curled around the tree, and Alex and Tricia saw shadows at the base of the tree. Two shapes in the mist. One began climbing.

  (The shadow – Tricia, when she was a child, watched by the older Tricia, the Tricia who is becoming – climbs carefully but quickly, worried she will fall but knowing this is her and Alex’s best chance to find a way out of here.)

  The shadow-Tricia climbed, the shadow-Alex watched from below. And the now-Tricia, now-Alex understood that just as they saw the children as shadows, so the children would see them as the same terrifying wraith-creatures.

  The now-selves realized as one: The ghosts we saw were – are, will be – us. Every word we heard the whisperers speak as children, we said as adults when we returned to the forest. Every word we heard as adults is something we said as children.

  We haunted ourselves.

  We were the whisperers.

  Now-Alex, now-Tricia watched as the shadow climbed, higher and higher. Then the shadow disappeared. The tree disappeared. In its place – the same place in space, though later in time – a watchtower appeared. The now-selves watched as a madman climbed up. A moment later, a body came plummeting down.

  Julie.

  She fell into the fog, and the time-stream swept her away, even as she continued to fall. The tree that had been grew to meet her as she fell down through space, and fell back through time.

  Julie fell, and died in the tree. A boy and a girl saw a man in a tree – but how could they know it was not a man at all, but a woman wearing a thick jacket that seemed to add to her bulk, her axe-split head hidden by the mangled skull and face shredded by the branches of the tree.

  Alex and Tricia looked at Julie. She was hunched over.

  (Their eyes open further.

  They see Julie’s close-cut hair in the town, the night they meet her. It is brown, beginning to gray, just as it is now, as they follow her through the forest. Their sight flickers, and now they both remember her under the watchtower, even though Alex was not there when it happened. “Sorry,” she says to Tricia. “I forgot about the lock.” She laughs and says, “Can’t seem to think why.” She lets go of the ladder and pushes back her hat, revealing her short gray hair.

  Not graying. Just gray.)

  Alex and Tricia stared, now in shock. “You know when you die,” said Alex.

  “You’ve seen it,” said Tricia.

  Julie nodded.

  “Why would you go in there?” said Alex. “Why would you –”

  “Because it has to be done,” said Julie. “Because some things matter more than what we want. Some things have to happen.”

  “Why?” asked both Alex and Tricia as one.

  Julie’s only answer was to begin running again.

  Tricia and Alex ran after her.

  They ran, and saw shadows running toward them, they saw themselves young, running from the wraiths that were them grown older. They saw themselves only hours before, running from the shadows that seemed to hunt and track them. Both times, as teens and as adults, Alex and Tricia had followed similar paths, so at each time, the shadows seemed to dog their steps.

  Some of the shadows that now-Tricia and now-Alex saw came closer than the others. They resolved into faces that were familiar, though it took them a moment to recognize them: the man who had watched from the window of the business that offered to do taxes, “Se habla español”; and the old woman from the place that sold “TOOLS.” She was wearing the same straw hat she had worn then.

  The sheriff hailed them. “You found them,” said the tax man.

  “Have they –” began the TOOLS woman.

  “No, not yet,” said Julie, looking at Alex and Tricia. “What time is it?”

  The old man looked at his watch. “A bit after one in the morning. You?”

  Julie looked at a watch on her own wrist. Alex and Tricia realized that both were exactly the same, with a strange, octagonal design they had never seen before. “It’s almost three for me,” said the sheriff.

  “Do you want us to keep looking for Alex and Tricia until you find them?” said the TOOLS woman.

  Julie shook her head. “No, you already know me and my group will find Alex and Trish, so you can head on back to Sundown. But if you run into my group, don’t tell us – me especially – you found me later in the forest, or what time we’re going to find Alex and Tricia.”

  “Of course not,” scowled the old woman. “You think we don’t know the rules?”

  The tax man peered at Julie. “Are you okay, my dear?” he asked.

  Julie smiled tightly. “I just saw…”

  “Your fall,” said the old man. “I’m sorry. I know that’s always hard on you.” He looked like he would have said more, but instead he drew back. “Come on, Heather,” he said to the TOOLS woman.

  They walked away and disappeared into the trees. It wasn’t that they walked far enough away for Alex and Tricia to lose sight of them, but rather the fog reached out and took them away to another, earlier when.

  Alex and Tricia felt conflicting emotions. They reeled under all that was happening. They felt relief at finally –

  (Becoming.)

  – understanding what had happened to them as children.

  And yet, as it turned out, they understood very little. They made the mistake of thinking they were smart, and were about to find out how very stupid they were, and how painful it could be to have the comfort of ignorance torn away.

  44

  (When Alex and Tricia Begin to Become)

  Julie kept running, but not so fast. She glanced at her strange watch, and slowed still further. A few minutes later, Alex and Tricia heard the burbling bubble of water. The sheriff led them toward it, and soon they saw the small stream that had been one of their only reference points – not that it did much good.

  The sheriff jumped over it. Alex and Tricia moved to follow, but something made them stop. A wisp of fog curled along the stream, following its course, then reversing and going back.

  Julie nodded. “It should be safe now.”

  Alex and Tricia jumped the stream. “Why is this place different?” asked Tricia.

  “Who says it is?” said Julie, almost chuckling. “This is where the center of the gate is. The center, the beginning, the end – those are the points with the most crossover.”

  (Memory waxes strong. Understanding flows.

  Alex and Tricia see the stream as it appears to be, and more importantly as it is. A raging body of water one moment, a near-silent trickle the next. Flowing one way, then the other. Changes that would take eons take, in this place, the time between the opening and closing of an eye. Rapids come, rapids go. Rocks that have stood there for millennia remain, others are there and then gone in an eyeblink.

  The river shifts. The things inside it shift. And things that come from outside it can be caught up in the changes. They can feel the shifting currents, they can be caught in the rapids. In the worst cases, they can be twisted to pieces like a twig.

  Alex and Tricia see their shadow-selves, confused in that time at what they have seen. Their now-selves also see something else. A flickering, glowing thing, another shadow, this time of what will be crafted here, that is so massive it defies description. Neither Alex
nor Tricia can make it out fully. It is just a hint, a trace. Not even a shadow, but a shadow of a shadow.

  Understanding wanes, though less than before. The becoming is anchoring to them. The understanding remains stronger each time…)

  “A gate,” said Alex.

  “Through time,” said Tricia.

  “Yes,” said Julie. “Three points where it’s strongest. The point of entry will be –”

  “At the spot where the watchtower now is, where the tree once was,” said Tricia. It wasn’t a guess.

  Julie nodded. “And the exit will be –”

  “Where the cabin stands,” said Alex.

  (There are two places where time has been more than shadow. Where things have not just hinted to each other, but torn each other apart. One is the watchtower, where Julie had fallen/now falls/will fall and been torn by a tree that overlapped in space but not in time. The other is the cabin, which was a patchwork of cabins that overlapped so tightly that they had compressed and melded together.)

  “But why us?” said Alex.

  “What do we have to do with this?” asked Tricia.

  “Everything,” said Julie. “Everything, and everyone.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Alex.

  Julie smiled tightly. She stopped jogging. “It will.” She looked around. “We’re here. We’re then.”

  They had reached the road that stretched between Sunrise and Sundown.

  The fog began to thicken.

  “Get ready,” said Julie.

  45

  (When Alex and Tricia Begin to Become)

  As teens and then as adults, Alex and Tricia had spent hours walking through the forest. They had walked countless miles to find the stream, and more to find the cabin. But that was when they walked alone, and walked not only through space but through time. They had fallen “into the stream,” and now walked with a guide who led them around the fogs and mists of time, and that made all the difference.

  The fog thickened, and shadows flitted into and out of sight. Tricia and Alex could see themselves at different times in the forest when they focused on the mist.

  “Listen up,” said Julie. “Because what I’m about to tell you is the most important thing you’ll ever hear, and maybe the most important thing anyone will ever hear.”

  Alex and Tricia reached for each other. They squeezed their hands tightly together, drawing strength from the person they loved.

  Julie saw it. Her eyes grew sad.

  “A few years from now, you two are going to be part of a team that discovers time travel. You’ll determine that going back is dangerous – too many paradoxes, too much chance of wiping yourselves out, or changing history in some way that makes what you’ve just done impossible.”

  “We don’t even do that kind of thing –” began Alex.

  “You will,” said Julie. “Trust me.” She looked at the road, appearing to listen for a moment. She looked at her watch. “You and your team, the four of you, will make a jump. Five minutes forward on the first try. You anticipate no problems going a few minutes forward like that – you figure you’ll just disappear from the space-time stream for a few moments, and reappear five minutes later. So you program the machine, you go in the entrance.”

  Something came to Tricia. “The circles. On the trees.”

  Julie nodded. “They’re the logo of the company you and your team own. Fractal Circles.”

  “Who was the man who tried to hurt Tricia?” said Alex. “Back in –”

  “Later,” said Julie, her voice suddenly harsh. She took a deep breath, and checked her watch again. “You go through the gate, the four of you. When you come out, you discover something’s very wrong. Your teammates come out just when they should – five minutes later. But you two,” said Julie, gesturing first at Tricia, then at Alex, “don’t come out at all.”

  “We die?” said Alex. He squeezed Tricia’s hand. She squeezed his back.

  “No,” said Julie. “You’re alive, the other two manage to confirm that. But they can’t narrow down when you ended up.”

  “What do they do?” asked Tricia. Her voice was hushed, almost reverent.

  “They do the stupidest thing possible,” said Julie. She sighed and closed her eyes. “They try to fix it.”

  “How can that –” began Alex, then his eyes widened.

  Tricia realized what the problem was at the same time. “They go back to before they traveled the first time. They try to stop it from happening – to save me and Alex before we’re lost.”

  Julie nodded. “And the trouble begins. It doesn’t work. You two still end up going. You still get lost.” She shrugged. “Some things can be changed. Some can’t.”

  (Again, that sense of understanding. Memories of the past, leading to understanding of the future. A madwoman, whispering in a cabin in the forest, “Some things change in the forest. But other things stay the same…”

  And the man who attacks Tricia in Sundown, then tries to stab Alex in the same shoulder that the killer will gash with his axe, the same shoulder that Trisha wounded so many years before, the lunatic screaming, “It’s going to happen. Now or later, it’ll happen. Some things don’t but other things do. Things stay the same, even when things don’t stay the same.”)

  Alex touched his shoulder. Shouldn’t he have bled more? His fingers probed beneath the tatters of his shirt and found, instead of blood and a gaping wound, an old scar long-healed.

  Julie nodded. “The forest does some strange things. Especially to you and Tricia and… your team. You’re like temporal lightning rods.”

  (And they remember the times that events have stretched, or compressed, or seemed to do both at once. The forever-times that they walked to school together, the mile to school seeming much shorter and much longer. They thought about the minutes in classes that ticked on far too long. They thought of all the love and the closeness they had developed over the course of only a few days with a new friend.

  But a few days could be one thing for someone normal, and quite another thing for someone who had ventured/does venture/will someday venture into the forest.)

  “Why?” said Tricia. “Why are we lightning rods?”

  Julie looked at the road again. The fog was thickening still further. It flashed. Tricia’s and Alex’s hearts quickened. They could almost hear each other’s thoughts:

  We are becoming, and something is coming.

  “The other two on your team keep trying. They keep going back, then going back again. There are dozens of them, hundreds. They overlap, they go backward and forward. Sometimes they come through the gate different. Little changes sometimes – blue eyes become brown, curly hair becomes straight. Sometimes the changes are bigger. The other members of your team are a man and a woman, but –”

  “You keep talking about this team,” said Alex. “But who –”

  “But sometimes,” said Julie, ignoring him, “they come out of the gate as two men. Sometimes two women. Still them, essentially. But also changed. They remember always being the way they are when they come out. A man comes out a woman, but the woman knows she has always been a woman.”

  “How is that possible?” asked Tricia, dumbfounded.

  Julie shrugged. “We think that some of it is just an effect of folding space-time. You fold up a piece of paper, you unfold it, you fold it up again, you unfold it. The paper can start to get torn, the integrity weakened. If you’ve written something on it – a history of your life, for instance – the ink might smudge.”

  “That’s some of it?” said Alex. “And the rest?”

  Again, Julie hesitated. “We think sometimes… sometimes we think it’s something some of the iterations your team members do on purpose.”

  Alex’s jaw dropped open. “Why would they do that?”

  Julie’s look grew exquisitely mournful. “For love, at least at first. They don’t find you, and don’t find you, and don’t find you. So the other two members of your team, the iterations of
them that are obsessed with finding you two, think, ‘Maybe it’s not Alex and Tricia that are lost so much as me that can’t find them.’ Then the answer is obvious: if it’s me that’s the problem, if it’s me that’s not smart enough, or the right me to find Alex and Tricia, then I’ll change me.”

  “People can’t change their own gender,” said Tricia. “I mean, they can, but not eye color or hair or –”

  “It can be done in utero,” said Julie.

  “But that’s imposs –” said Alex.

  “People can’t travel through time, either,” said Julie. “But a great many things once thought by the knowledgeable to be impossible have always existed, and are being discovered anew every day.” She laughed. “It’s pretty easy, actually, if you know how to do it. Just a powder stirred into a drink, and an X-chromosome becomes a Y, simple as that. You can even give it to someone without them noticing, if you want to change the pregnancy and they don’t.”

  The fog had reached its thickest.

  Alex and Tricia started hearing a rasping hum. They could tell Julie heard it, too, because she cocked her head.

  The hum grew, and with it Alex’s and Tricia’s understanding grew also. “The other members of the team,” said Alex. “Who are they?”

  “One is Mandy,” said Julie.

  “And the other?” whispered Tricia.

  The fog flashed.

  The hum grew, surged. A shadow raced down the road.

  Julie stepped into the road, right in front of it, just as the shadow solidified and turned into a car that Alex and Tricia knew well.

  The car turned to avoid the woman that had appeared in front of them. It skidded, and flipped over once, twice, three times, before ending up on its roof.