There’s music in the land. You can feel it trembling beneath your feet as you walk through the hills on your own. For a long while it’s barely anything, just a little itch at the edge of your senses, but your feet pull you along, following the tremor towards its source.
You pass by a few boulders carelessly strewn along the path. The vibrations are stronger here, they almost sound like a song, but it’s mocking, taunting. From the corner of your eye you see a flash of red. You hear a strange voice chuckle. Ignore it, move on.
The woods rise in the distance like a dark, looming fortress. The fields get rougher, grass turns greener, the flowers grow lush, strange, and wild. You stop and look back, down the trail you made through the tall rustling grass. Something’s holding its breath. You are holding your breath. Keep walking.
Dark voices come from the woods, alluring, enchanting, indifferent. You barely hear them with your mortal ears, but you feel them in your veins, your bones. The decision is easily made. You don’t really have a choice.
These untamed woods are tall and green and dense. It would be easy to lose yourself, to drown in the green deep. The voices are louder here, their shapes forming in your mind. You stand on a path. It’s narrow, only a deer track, but if deer think it’s safe, it must be so.
As you follow the track a single voice comes closer. Just a little way off the path a tall, long-legged stranger hops from log to stone to log, nimbly, absentmindedly, softly singing a drinking song you recognize. You wouldn’t want to cross his path, but from the shadows you watch him go, his graceful, long-limbed silhouette disappearing into the green, his voice trailing behind him, beautiful, tempting. Resist, turn the other way.
The path leads you deeper into the woods, where the trees are thick and covered in moss, in lichen, in age. The undergrowth is strong and thorny, tries to grab the hems of your clothes, tries to latch onto your skin, but you have enough nimbleness of your own to pass unscathed.
There’s something ahead of you, coming to meet you. A beautiful voice, dangerous and delicate as gossamer threads. The path is no longer safe. You quietly disappear into the growth on your right, deeper into the thicket, into the wild green.
When you’re far enough away from the path, you look back. A procession passes by, creatures made of the purest golden light, shining brightly but falsely to your keen eyes. They sing of warm lands and the promise of riches, of happiness. They move slowly, not looking at you yet looking at you. But you’re good at keeping still. They pass.
It’s time to leave. You make your way towards what you think is the edge of the woods as best as you can without a path. But the trees only get taller, wider, older. It’s harder to walk here, the undergrowth not allowing space for you to place your mortal feet. Then, all too sudden, you come out of the thicket and find a stream.
The water is clear, the rocks on the bottom colorful. You should not cross this stream, not touch the water, you know you shouldn’t. For a long while you walk alongside it, the trees falling away on this side of the water, opening up to the wrong fields, the wrong lands. It only leads you farther away.
A voice. Upstream, understream, you cannot tell. The water shimmers, vibrates, sings. Something’s approaching. There’s no cover on this side, so you leap over the stream, the heel of your boot just barely touching the surface.
Deep silence.
You scramble up the bank, crawl deep into the undergrowth, mud in your mouth, thorns in your hair. Hold your breath.
You can feel its glance, its search, its call, but you’re nothing but a bush of thorns, nothing but lichen and moss. You were always good at hiding.
It gives up. It passes by. You can breathe again.
For a long time you wait, then crawl out of the thorns, covered in mud and blood. Don’t be seen. Don’t be heard. Disappear as you walk away, become the wood itself.
Walking is easier like this, you can place your feet where before there was no room. There’s a tall, tall shadow moving between the treetops, but it doesn’t take any more notice of you as it would of a fox. You know the laws of this wild place now, as if you have never known any others. It’s so easy to forget, so easy to take on the colors of the undergrowth.
Time slips through your fingers like clear water. You notice more creatures, dancing in the groves, doing secret things in the shadows. You can hear the music clearly, coming from everywhere around you, the ground, the trees, the air. A song bubbles up from inside you, but then you stop.
You remember your mortal bones, your mortal eyes, a mortal way of being visible. The mortal danger that comes with these woods.
Quickly you turn towards where you think you should go. Your feet stumble through the unforgiving undergrowth. The back of your neck prickles, as something’s awareness of you settles onto your shoulders. You walk a little faster. But you’ve passed that tree before. And this stone. And this patch of moss. The path should be here, but it isn’t.
Something’s tricking you.
A mortal trick in turn might save you, so you turn you coat inside out, turn your hat backwards. Behind you, there’s laughter, some mocking words, then, suddenly, there is the path. There are the younger trees. There is the wood’s edge. There is the open sky and the tall grass up to your knees. It rustles as you walk through it, as you make your way home, without looking back at the dark woods.
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Lotte van der Krol likes to walk in the woods and swim in rivers, and then write about those things. Mostly she writes speculative short fiction, but she’s tried her hand at poetry and non-fiction. Right now, she’s slowly but surely working on several (short) novels at the same time, because why not. Her work has appeared in Corvid Queen, Capsule Stories, and The Cabinet of Heed, among others. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky @lottevanderkrol and read more of her work on lottevanderkrol.wordpress.com. |
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