Of the Trees

by E. M. Fitch

  “Hike sounds good,” Cassie answered, smiling. She didn’t know how long she could last in a movie theater. She felt restless, almost to the point of agitation. It wasn’t just her fight with Laney, though she was still annoyed about that. She had been feeling this way all day, even yesterday. She wanted to move. Part of her envied Jon, being yelled at as he mindlessly ran around a soccer field sounded better than sitting at home, thinking and overthinking.

  “Run by my house though first?” Cassie asked after a moment. “I want to get my stuff.”

  “It won’t be a long hike,” he said, “I’ve got my pack, and we don’t need yours.”

  “I do so need it,” Cassie argued, smiling.

  “Afraid you might run out of lip gloss?” Ryan teased.

  “Ha, ha!” she said, shooting him a mock annoyed glance. He smirked over at her. This summer, they had driven as far as three hours from their homes to try and hit every piece of the Appalachian Trail that was within driving range. Ryan was preparing for a long trek, wanting to complete the entire trail in one thru-hike. “Even if I could do without my lip gloss, I’d need to change my shoes.”

  Ryan nodded, stealing a glance over at her feet. It may have been her imagination, but it seemed as though his gaze lingered longer than was necessary as it traveled back up her legs.

  Ryan’s path took them past the Gray Lady Cemetery. It drew Cassie’s eye, as it always did. The spot was bare, nothing much to see or look at, but something drew her in, pulled her closer. Some unidentifiable something screamed through the wind. Look at me! Look at me! And Cassie did, though she never could see the source of the calling.

  What she did see was a green backpack, propped up against the headstone. She wasn’t surprised to see Laney’s bag already there and part of her cut with sadness. It looked so lonely, leaning there against the one, solitary headstone, its owner already immersed in her own world among the ghosts. Ryan noticed, too.

  “Should we see if Laney wants to come?” he asked, hesitantly. Cassie frowned but then shook her head.

  “What happened between you guys this week?” he asked, driving past the cemetery. Cassie shrugged. It hadn’t been the first time they had a blowout fight, it hadn’t even been the worse one to date, but she didn’t feel like repeating the details. It always seemed so stupid in the retelling, and even if it wasn’t, it would blow over soon enough. The carnies were gone. They’d get over it, apologize, and life would go on.

  “Just another epic brawl?” Ryan asked. Cassie grinned, looking over at him. He smiled back. “You know, one of these days you two should involve some Jell-O, a pool, and sell tickets. I’d bet you’d make a lot of money.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you how funny you were?” Cassie asked dryly.

  “So, what’s our goal today, Hike Master?” Cassie asked, adjusting the laces on her boots. Ryan bent over his trail map. It was creased and worn, a coffee spill darkening one side of it from an afternoon when Cassie had tipped over their canteen, and it had soaked through the seat of Ryan’s jeans. He folded it up and grinned at her.

  “A modest four miles,” he answered. “Mom’s ready to pick up when I call.”

  “Just four?” Cassie teased, hoisting her pack and following Ryan as he made his way onto the trail. Ryan highlighted the trail, section by section, along his used map, like connecting the dots. It took most people who attempted the whole thing, a distance of precisely two thousand, one hundred and sixty miles, at least five months. Part of Cassie thought he was crazy, and part of her really wanted to join him.

  “Well, it’ll be dark early,” Ryan said, holding back a piece of hanging brush for Cassie to duck under.

  “And this is another really hilly section, isn’t it?” she asked. He tried to hide his grin and couldn’t. “All right, lead on.”

  It wasn’t long before Cassie felt the familiar burn that always warmed her when they hiked. Laney and Jon had come on occasion and mostly complained the entire time. This had become Ryan and Cassie’s thing. It was his passion, his goal to complete, but she liked to be a part of it, liked seeing the map that he highlighted and knowing her footsteps followed that same path, that it was both of them who had accomplished so much so far.

  The trail here was well worn, the footpaths easy to find even as the sun sunk lower toward the horizon. The colors shifted around them, moving from the washed out light of early fall into amber brilliance, the trees catching the dying rays of sunlight and splashing orange and gold over the forest. The birds sang their last song for the day, making way for the skittering creatures of dusk.

  They didn’t speak much. Partly because the trail here really was steep in places and Cassie needed her breath, but also because when they were hiking, they usually didn’t speak much. They had in the beginning, awkward and sometimes gasping conversations that left them both out of breath, especially when Jon or Laney were with them. They made terrible time then, all of them laughing and joking and talking about things that didn’t really matter at all. Over the course of the summer, however, when it was just Cassie and Ryan alone, they became increasingly quiet together.

  It wasn’t a bad kind of quiet, it was good, easy. They found a stride together and surprised themselves, covering more ground each time in a comfortable rhythm.

  He had mentioned it once. They had collapsed on the muddy ground together, sipping warm water slowly. It had been midsummer, and they had hiked the entire day together, getting fourteen miles from their car. The weather had been terrible, raining on and off before ending in a downpour. Cassie had been soaked through, despite the rain gear she had on. Her boots were squishy with mud and water, and she had been exhausted. Still, it had been her favorite day of hiking so far. They had hit their stride that day. Despite rain, mud, and the hot, muggy intervals between downpours, something had shifted. Ryan felt it, too. Cassie knew it as soon as she sat beside him, leaning back against a fallen tree. He grinned at her, the rain sluicing his features, his hair plastered to his skull, and she had never seen him happier.

  “This was good, wasn’t it?” he had asked, his words loud over the pounding rain.

  “Yeah, it was definitely good,” Cassie had answered. She remembered laughing, looking, she was sure, just like a drowned rat. But he didn’t seem to notice, his eyes glowed when he looked at her, and he smiled with such tenderness that Cassie wondered, to this day, if he hadn’t been about to kiss her. But then his mom had shown up, her headlights a cut of glittering, diamond light through the raindrops and against the trees, and he had stood, offering her his hand.

  They had invited Jon and Laney less and less after that day, enjoying the time together, each matching the other’s pace and knowing intrinsically when the other needed to slow down.

  “Guess we’re really gonna have to get used to hiking at sunset, huh?” Cassie asked after a swallow of water. They had paused at the top of a steep bit of trail, able to see a small valley of forest below them. Ryan smiled.

  “You don’t mind?” he asked. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to keep at it, since school and everything.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” she answered, shoving her water bottle in her backpack and pulling it into place. She shifted her shoulders, adjusting the pack, and fell back into step with Ryan, treading carefully down a washed-out section of the trail.

  Ryan hadn’t spent the night on the trail yet. It surprised Cassie, actually. Their packs already held a sleeping bag and enough food for two days. His was better equipped than hers, especially now that he had swapped his lighter summer sleeping bag for his new heavy-duty winter one. Ryan had insisted. He wanted to get used to the weight, adjust his contents now while he still had a car to pick him up each night. And he’d need all those things—the camp roll and sleeping bag, the mini burner for cooking food, and the food to cook on it—once he started his five-month trek. So it was better to have them now, get used to hefting the weight around and using the items when they could. Still, he ha
dn’t spent the night on the trail.

  Cassie knew, logically, that Ryan’s mother wouldn’t want him camping all night alone. He could ask Jon. He hadn’t asked her, hadn’t even brought it up. She wondered at that. Not that she thought her parents would allow it; as much as they liked Ryan, they would definitely draw the line with Cassie wanting to camp out overnight with him. Was that why he had never brought it up? Or was he not interested in spending the night on the trail with her?

  She dismissed the thought, not wanting to dwell on that possibility, and instead let her mind wander through the lost pathways of the forest around her. It was soothing here in the woods. No people to worry about, no nightmares following her about. There were still some leaves left on the trees, though not at the tops. Those barren branches, unprotected, had been stripped by the wind already. The tops stretched menacingly toward the sky, like the tips of skeleton fingers whose meaty palms were still covered by the flesh of living tissue. Soon, all the pulp and life would be stripped from the branches, brought cascading down to the forest floor by gusts of northeastern wind. Already, the trail was coated in patches of yellow, red, and orange. They crunched under her boots, not yet worn down enough by water and decay to cushion her footsteps. The trees surrounding them were ashy and gray now compared to the healthy browns of the summer when moisture and heat would saturate the bark. The trail markers snagged her attention, bursts of color unnatural to this place, as was the bright blue of her jacket. The duller orange of Ryan’s jacket matched, however, another reminder that this really was his place.

  Something else caught her eye, her focus pulled from the trail and onto the bark of a smooth ash tree.

  A carving, life-like in its intensity. Eyes, carved exquisitely among the fine lines of the tree bark, peered at her, seeming to watch her as she moved along the trail. They looked familiar. She had seen these before. Somewhere. With the same intensity of the Gray Lady Cemetery, they seemed to scream out: Look at me!

  Look at me!

  LOOK AT ME!

  Cassie fell, pitching into the back of Ryan. He stumbled, turning around and grabbing at her forearms, helping her to right herself.

  “Sorry!” she cried out, her cheeks flaming with heat. He chuckled.

  “Catch a root?” Ryan asked, looking down. It was in fact what tripped her, an old root jutting into the path. “I should have warned you about that one.”

  Cassie shook her head. “I got distracted, my fault.” She moved away from him, his hands sliding from her arms as she did, and turned to look at the ash tree. The eyes seemed less sinister now. They were well done, finely carved and out of place on the trail. Still, only a carved set of watchful eyes.

  “Not cool,” Ryan said, frowning at the tree carving.

  “They’re strange,” Cassie agreed, her gaze tracing the deep groves of the eyelids, mapping the contour that formed the knot of an eyeball.

  “They’re bad etiquette. There’s a Leave No Trace practice. You’re supposed to leave the trail as you find it: no campfire, no trash, no tree carvings.”

  Cassie found her gaze lingering on the eyes. She wasn’t sure what she found so fascinating about them, except that maybe they were so out of place. She had never come across graffiti on the trail before. Ryan was right, people generally left the trails as they found them. It could be what was so unsettling, but she didn’t think it was that exactly. It was the intricacy, the detail. These took time, attention, and skill.

  Why would anyone do that, out here, isolated on the trails? Why would anyone put so much work into something that would never be admired, only scorned because of its location? Cassie didn’t know, but she did find it hard to turn her back on those eyes. The skill with which they had been carved, the way they seemed to watch her, it brought the very tree to life and left a tingling chill racing up her backbone as she turned away.

  Ahead of them, backlit by the last rays of the dying sun, was a three-sided shelter. Cassie and Ryan had hiked past many of them over the course of the summer. They ranged anywhere from five to fifteen miles apart, so along their various routes they had come across several. None of them were much to look at—wooden floors and walls, completely empty—but they would keep someone dry in the rain or sheltered overnight. Ryan paused in front of it, letting his pack fall to the ground. He stooped and yanked on the zipper, pulling his mini stovetop out.

  “Dinner?” Cassie asked. She sat in the entrance to the shelter, wrapping her arms around her knees. It was quiet under the trees, the sounds of nature soft around them, the sounds of civilization non-existent. She liked the feeling, liked that there was only her and Ryan and no one else. Unbidden, the hewed set of eyes flashed in her mind, pulled her gaze down the path and toward the tree they were carved on. She blinked and looked back to Ryan, not willing to allow the whittling to intrude between them.

  Ryan nodded, lighting the stove. “Nothing fancy,” he said, pulling some foil pouches from the pack. “I’ve got spaghetti and meat sauce or chicken fajitas. Which one do you want to try?”

  “Didn’t we have the fajitas already?” Cassie asked.

  “No, you’re thinking of the chicken teriyaki. We had that last month.”

  “I liked that one,” Cassie said, remembering one of the many dinners she and Ryan had shared since they started hiking. He started buying them midsummer, trying out the different brands and meals. “Let’s try the fajitas.”

  Ryan crouched by his mini burner and poured some of his water into a small pan, setting it to boil. He rocked back on his heels, his gaze toward the trees. The light was leaching from the sky, the trees darkening to black pillars against a violet backdrop. It blurred his features, softening them. Cassie unzipped her own pack, bringing her water bottle out. She sipped, leaning back on her elbows. The shelter was cool, the depths of it shadowed and musky. She flipped her phone on, using the light to sweep through the empty corners.

  “Is this where you’ll sleep?” she asked, looking from the cold, wood floor to Ryan.

  “If it’s raining,” he answered, watching the steam start to swirl from the heating water. “I think I’d like to be out in the open better, under the stars.”

  Cassie hummed in appreciation, her gaze darting up to the bare trees branches, weaving in the wind. “When will you start, this summer?”

  He nodded, looking thoughtful. She ached at the acknowledgment, which surprised her. She knew he’d be going, that it was what he was preparing for. What she didn’t expect was how left out that would make her feel.

  “I can’t do the whole thing this summer, school gets out too late,” he said. “But if I start next May—”

  “What about college?” Cassie asked, watching as he took the water off the burner, pouring it straight into the foil pouch. He propped the pouch against a rock, turning back to his pack and pulling out a clear bag filled with tortillas. He ripped it open, handing her two of the soft, flat shells.

  “I’ll go for the first semester, and take a leave of absence for the second,” Ryan answered finally, gesturing her forward. She held her hand out, and he scooped a portion of the cooked fajita mix into her tortilla. It warmed her palm as she closed the wrap.

  “It’ll take you longer,” she said, pausing to bite into her dinner. It wasn’t the best wrap she ever had, but it was warm and filling, and after an afternoon of hiking, there wasn’t anything else she needed. “To graduate, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” he answered, chewing slowly. “But I don’t want to wait another four years, get out of shape or chicken out. It’s something I want to do, so I’m gonna do it.”

  “And this summer? What are your plans then?”

  “I was thinking Maine to Pennsylvania,” he answered. “West Virginia maybe, if I’m making good time.”

  Cassie sat in thoughtful silence, thinking over the logistics. Maine was a hard starting point. Ryan had told her that the trails there were steep and the going rough. But he was fit, and he would be prepared.
She wondered, briefly, if she could do it. Could she cut herself off from everyone—her parents, Laney—and hike, day in and day out, through cold nights and sweaty days, just her and Ryan and the stars and trees?

  The picture that formed in her mind was heady. It was a challenge, but it was more than that: it was the excitement, the independence, the thrill of being on her own, answering to no one, setting pace with only their matched stride to move forward.

  “Do you want to come with me?” he asked quietly. Cassie stiffened, glancing up at him. He avoided her gaze, scooping more fajita mix into his last tortilla. She took another bite, finishing her first wrap before she went to answer. She was swallowing when he spoke again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, offering her a shaky smile. “I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Cassie said quickly, awkwardly holding her other wrap out. Ryan scooped the last of the food into her waiting palm. “It’s just—”

  “It’s a lot,” he interrupted, nodding. “I get it.”

  “It’s not that,” she argued, shaking her head. “If I’m being honest, I’ve thought about it.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded, looking up and through the trees. The sky beyond was dusky purple now, the moon shining like a silver thumbnail above the branches. She could only make out Ryan’s outline now, but the eagerness of his tone left her in no doubt to the expression that lit his face.

  “It would be incredible,” Ryan rushed to say, pouncing now that he saw she held some interest. “No distractions, no phones, just the woods, the things we would see, the people we would meet. You and me.”

  “Together,” Cassie whispered. Even in the dark, Cassie could see he was shining with hope, excitement. A thrill coursed through her, and he shared it, she knew.

  “We’re good together,” he said, pinning her with his words. “We fit.”

  Cassie’s breath caught and held, sure that this would be the moment he finally said it, told her how he felt. She nodded.