The Redwoods

by Ross Turner

  There was, however, no mention of it, and Vivian didn’t bother to ask if the Redwoods had said anything of it to Clover. She would not have told her if they had, and the look in her eyes when they had returned had told the young girl everything she needed to know regardless.

  Whatever it was, it must have been very important.

  Vivian didn’t really see how it could have been so significant. It had just been chance after all. And so, not really thinking much more of it, she got her fire roaring, collecting more firewood as it was needed, and soon had her dinner cooked through. Although nightfall came quickly that evening, and she was still eating long into darkness by the light of the flames, it took nothing away from the satisfaction of food for the first time in over a week.

  Food was growing so scarce now that Vivian did not waste a single morsel, picking every bone completely clean of meat. If she could have eaten the bones she would have done, but instead she gave them to Red and Clover, and their powerful jaws made decidedly short work of them.

  Following dinner, as they had done so many times before, the three of them sat together, enjoying each other’s warmth and the crackling, popping, dancing heat of the flames, revelling in the peace and the silence all around, for the forest had certainly, as Vivian had already noticed, grown much quieter of late.

  On this particular night, though they had enjoyed it so many times before, the silence was eerie and unnerving, but Vivian said nothing of it. She sensed that something was wrong, very wrong in fact. She could feel it running through her body. There was no other word for the feeling other than another hunch, and this one she could feel right through to her very bones.

  “What is it Viv?” Red asked then. Though his voice, as was only natural, was deep and rough and heavy, it was tinged with care and understanding in a way that only a dear friend who had experienced the same troubles could speak.

  Vivian shook her head slightly and stared into the flickering firelight in silence for a few moments longer before replying. She really had no idea how to phrase what she wanted to say.

  “I don’t know…” She began with a deep sigh.

  She was not unhappy, regardless of the fact that times were hard. That didn’t matter, for she still had Red, and she still had Clover. There was something else, something much more deeply rooted that was bothering her.

  “I feel like something’s wrong…” She tried again.

  “Times are very hard…” Clover agreed, nodding her massive head slowly and wearily, for the difficult months, even years, of late, had certainly taken their toll on her.

  But Vivian shook her head.

  “No, it’s not that.” She replied almost immediately, thinking hard, not wanting to be misunderstood, but still unsure exactly what she was trying to say. “I feel like something’s out of place, like things are out of balance…”

  Clover and Red exchanged a brief glance, both concerned and intrigued by what Vivian was saying, or attempting to say.

  “Go on Viv…” Red urged her. “What else?”

  “Is there something wrong with the forest?” Vivian asked then. “I know there are men overhunting, but I feel like there’s something else…”

  “What else?” Clover asked, pushing her young cub deliberately to keep searching for what she was trying to say.

  “It’s the trees…” Vivian began to explain then. “They don’t sound the same, or look the same. They don’t even feel the same.”

  “They don’t feel the same?” Clover asked, a smile touching her great snout. “What do you mean?”

  “They feel tense.” Vivian replied without thinking. “They’re worried about something, but they can’t change it.”

  “How do you know?” The mother bear asked, seeing Vivian’s eyes suddenly widen.

  “I…I don’t know…” Vivian managed, and Clover and Red looked on at her with a glow in their eyes, matching almost even her own luminous pupils, expectancy in their expressions.

  “This has never happened before.” Clover said quietly then, and very seriously, moving a few feet closer to Vivian and to the crackling fire.

  “What hasn’t?” Her young cub questioned.

  “A human has never been able to sense the Redwoods before.” She explained, quite calmly and clearly. “It’s unheard of.”

  “But…I can’t sense them…” Vivian replied immediately, though even as she spoke the words, doubt clouded her mind. Clover and Red were looking at her in a way that she’d never seen before, and it unsettled her slightly.

  “You can.” Red told her then. “I know.”

  “How do you know?” Vivian asked.

  “Because they’ve told me the same thing.” He replied, his tone understanding, as it always was.

  “What have they told you?” Vivian asked, questions flooding her inquisitive mind, as they had always done, though now finally it seemed some of them might be answered.

  “That there’s a plague coming.” Red said then, his voice dropping low and dripping with foreboding menace. “That it’s spreading from the north, and that there’s nothing they can do to stop it.”

  “Then I can’t hear them. They haven’t told me that.” Vivian concluded.

  “You haven’t learned to listen.” Clover said then, her voice somehow soothing Vivian’s raging concern in an instant.

  None of them spoke for a few minutes then, as Vivian slowly digested what she was being told. Clover and Red patiently watched her do so. They could almost even see the cogs in her mind working, churning over, processing the impossible truth.

  “How do I learn to listen?” Vivian finally asked, her voice quiet, dropping so low that it was barely even a whisper.

  “You can’t block everything out and just listen for them…” Clover began to explain. “It doesn’t work like that.” Vivian looked up at her curiously. “Their sound is everywhere here. Their voice is everything. You’re not listening for one thing in particular. You have to listen to it all…” Her mother continued.

  Vivian nodded but didn’t reply. Strangely, though her explanation might have seemed a little vague, Vivian somehow knew exactly what Clover meant. There were so many sounds and noises and voices within the forest that it would have been near impossible to listen to only one at a time.

  Though, the woodlands had been growing very quiet of late, and Vivian glanced around at the trees all about them. They were dark and lonely, with shadows of the three of them around the fire dancing across the endless fields of cold bark surrounding them. And there was still no noise. It was as silent as when they had sat eating, however many hours ago now.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  Vivian tried to do as Clover had said. She closed her eyes and attempted to listen to the sounds all around her. But hard as she tried, as much as she quieted her mind, the woodlands were even quieter.

  Before long the silence overwhelmed Vivian, and she was forced to open her eyes again, relaxing her concentration with a deep sigh. As she looked up her gaze settled immediately on Red and Clover, their expressions fixed and serious.

  They both nodded gravely, and after a few moments Clover spoke again.

  “This is the problem…” She said gently. “The Redwoods are growing quieter by the day. It’s almost like they’re getting further and further away.”

  “How can they be getting further away?” Vivian asked, confused. “They’re all around us…”

  “I know.” Vivian replied, glancing around at her woodland home, now seemingly so empty. “Whatever’s happening, whatever terrible monster’s stealing away our Redwood’s voice, it definitely can’t be good.”

  10

  Over the next few weeks food was scarce as ever, but Red and Vivian were meagrely successful, for Vivian’s hunches grew evermore common, and evermore accurate. Whilst that in of itself gave the young girl more than enough to think about, as they traipsed through the eerily quiet woodlands, now that she was aware of her ability to sense the Redwoods, she was also a
ll too aware of the silence that hung about her home. It penetrated and infected the forest as a disease would, and was indeed turning into something much more sinister than simple quiet. It was becoming a plague, and that plague was growing in strength, day by day, expanding and settling more and more with each sunrise and sunset.

  Late one afternoon, as the great, orange sun was setting in the sky, dipping down over the canopy, but not quite touching the horizon in the distance, young Vivian and Red were returning to their den, and to their mother. They were wearied from endless months of searching and tracking and hunting, the scarcity of prey forcing them into perpetual movement, never able to rest.

  That day, Vivian’s hunch had taken them south, as was often the case, further and further from civilisation, for that seemed to be the only place where life remained now. They knew that soon they would have to move that way once again. They had already moved once since Vivian had discovered her ability to sense the Redwoods, and now it looked as though they would have little choice but to do so again.

  Their hunting for the day had yielded but three scrawny rabbits, which would be barely enough even for Vivian, and they both knew it. They trudged gradually back north, sluggish and weary. It was another few leagues or so before they would reach home, but they both felt that something was amiss. They stopped in a slight clearing between the trees and exchanged a brief, worried glance: a look that spoke entire volumes without the need for words.

  “What is it Red?” Vivian eventually whispered through the fading light. Already, beneath the canopy above them, as the sun dipped lower and lower in the sky, it seemed as if night was falling, and a blackness was creeping over the woodlands.

  “I don’t know…” He replied at first, his voice quiet, but his eyes and ears were strained forwards in deep concentration. Vivian didn’t want to distract him, especially not if what he could hear in the distance was even the faintest possibility of a meal.

  But then, looking ahead, Vivian thought she could see something too. The trees and plants and ferns to their north, already drooping and half dead, as they had looked for some time now, seemed to almost be changing colour. Their red tint was darkening and fading, replaced by a blackness that crept along their trunks and leaves and vines menacingly.

  The blackness moved like veins, etching its way across the forest, encompassing the woodland as it moved, tantalisingly slowly, but nonetheless it drew ever closer. The long, thin tendrils stretched out across leaves and branches, reaching always to infect the next living thing they could find.

  “Red…” Vivian managed, her voice quiet and shaking. But her dear friend had no better idea of what it was than she did, and they both took a wary and fearful step back. They knew instantly that this was the plague they had all sensed, for with the blackness also came the sound of the silence, and it moved and devoured without even the slightest whisper.

  But then, as the jet black stems crept forward and stretched out to reach Red and Vivian, edging slowly forwards along the forest floor and along the shrubs and trees, the silence was broken, quite literally, by the sounds of great crashing and roaring, like a stampede charging towards them through the dense and dying woodlands.

  The great black bear that exploded into the clearing before them then was wild and enraged, roaring madly and clawing at its own fur in desperation, raking its great claws along its sides, drawing fresh blood and flesh with each move, oozing thick and viscous and black.

  It whirled madly, tearing great chunks of earth and bark from the soft, damp ground and from nearby trees. Red shielded Vivian with his own body and drove her several steps backward, moving her out of the beast’s destructive and frightful path.

  He was fully prepared to put the monster down, if it came to that.

  Finally, when the great black bear had eventually subdued its rage long enough to notice Red and Vivian, both standing defensively, prepared to defend from an attack, its angry eyes softened, and its ceaseless raking ceased. It turned to face them fully, though now clearly exhausted, the hulking beast barely even able to stand.

  As they studied the bear, examining it more closely, they saw that the monster looked weak. Its body was thin, badly emaciated, and its fur was thick with blood and matted terribly.

  “Clover?” Vivian said suddenly, breaking from her defensive position and approaching the great bear, slowly and cautiously, concern rising in her chest.

  “Mother?” Red said then, approaching too, recognising her not by sight, but instead by scent, for she looked barely even a resemblance of the great red bear they had departed from, only that morning.

  “Red…Vivian…” The great black bear said softly, her legs trembling as she spoke. “You have to go…”

  “What happened!?” Red asked, naturally, as he charged forward and supported his weakening mother with his powerful, broad shoulder, just as she collapsed to the floor.

  “The blackness…” She said first. “It crept over me while I was asleep. And when I woke up, I felt as if my very life had been drained from me…”

  “Are you ok?” Vivian asked, though the answer to her question was, sadly, all too obvious.

  “I don’t know.” Clover replied weakly. “Things have gotten out of control…I…I just don’t know…”

  A few hours later, and five leagues further south towards the mountains, Clover eventually collapsed to the floor once again, unable to move another step. Even with her son’s support, she simply could not hold her own weight any longer. Her great hulk crumpled to the ground with a dull thud, and as Vivian looked on helplessly as Red desperately tried to help Clover, somehow she looked even thinner and weaker and older now than she had done only an hour ago.

  “Clover?” Vivian said, trembling. Watching her only mother suffer for the second time tore at the young girl’s heart, and the look on Red’s face as he glanced over to Vivian told her that he felt her pain in equal measure.

  “That plague is killing the Redwoods.” Clover managed to gasp, though her voice was weak and her words were heavy. “When I woke up, everything around me was dead.”

  Vivian and Red looked on gravely as their mother spoke, hearing the painful truth in her words.

  “Did you see it?” She asked then. “When you found me? It’s moving through the forest.”

  They both nodded, but neither of them spoke.

  “I don’t know where it’s coming from…” Clover continued, her voice weakening. “But if we can’t find a way to stop it, it’s going to kill the whole forest.”

  Vivian moved closer to her mother then, laying her hand gently on her neck. Even through her thick black fur, infected by the plague that had dawned upon them so suddenly, she could feel that Clover was cold as ice. She knew the great red bear was in terrible danger.

  Vivian ran her fingers through her mother’s matted black pelt affectionately, and somehow she could sense her heartbeat fading, and her every breath growing weaker. Vivian could literally feel the infection seeping its way through Clover’s body, through her very veins, and into her heart and her lungs.

  The great mother bear gasped abruptly in pain, her body tensing rigidly.

  “What is it?” Red asked immediately, but Vivian did not move.

  “The plague has reached her heart.” Vivian told Red then, her voice cold, almost even emotionless as her senses scanned Clover’s body. “And her lungs.” She concluded. It’s moving in her blood.”

  “How do you…” Red started, but another agonising gasp from Clover silenced him, and he turned his attention back to his mother.

  “You have to leave.” Clover said then, speaking to both her children seriously. “It won’t stop. You have to go, or you’ll die too.”

  “We’re not going to leave you.” Red replied immediately, his deep voice defiant, and Vivian nodded in silent agreement, though her thoughts were still elsewhere. She could feel the infection taking over Clover’s body. It wouldn’t be long now. But she could sense it creeping through the woodlands t
owards them too. It was getting closer by the second, skulking now through the darkness, its attack on all life relentless.

  They hadn’t much time.

  Vivian looked back to Clover. Her glowing blue eyes, so bright amidst the blackness, suddenly hardened and focused. The young girl, slowly beginning to feel the heavy weight of responsibility that she had once been warned of, so many years ago now, made up her mind, and set her jaw resolutely.

  “Clover.” She said calmly, but with the most serious of intents. “I’m going to try something.” She said slowly, though what she was going to do she couldn’t explain, for she didn’t entirely know herself. “You must tell me if I hurt you.”

  The great red mother bear, her life stained black and fading fast now, looked at her softly, understanding gratefully what Vivian was going to attempt, knowing that her young girl must be very afraid.

  This was never the way she had wanted Vivian to embrace her family’s heirloom, but at that moment, Clover hadn’t the strength to argue, and the determination in Vivian’s bright, young eyes was unmistakeable.

  “I will.” Was all she eventually managed to say, and Vivian nodded gravely.

  Red looked as if he was going to interject for a moment, but then he stepped back and said nothing. Clearly, in that brief moment, the understanding that his mother had gleaned, he had done so too.

  Vivian took a deep breath, calming and composing herself.

  And then she began.

  11

  Vivian followed the feeling, which was now so strong that she felt like she could almost even see it. It was like she was using another sense that no other creature possessed, and though she had never before fully explored it, it came to her so naturally that she felt as though she’d known it for years.

  Whatever it was, she liked it. It gave her a feeling of things that otherwise she simply just would not be able to perceive, let alone understand.