To The Forest - Part Fourteen
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
There eventually comes a place in the trees where we suddenly step out into an odd clearing.
It spreads out like a long path that runs perpendicular to the one we’ve been walking. Coming out of the pine trees and stepping into it is like walking out onto a narrow, sun-drenched lane, free of trees, blanketed completely with shrubs and sedges.
They brush against my shins and snag gently on my jeans as I wade out into them. I drop to a crouch and let my eyes rove over them, picking out the plants I recognize. Just like before, I’m seeing mostly fire-resistant plants, species that produce water-like sap or hold plenty of water in their supple leaves and needles. They burn very slowly, drop very little dead wood, and they don’t make good fuel for a fire.
Beyond the long, road-like clearing full of these plants, the forest begins again. But it looks different.
“Okay,” I call over my shoulder to Aiden and Kasey, who are picking their way down the overgrown slope towards me. “Here’s what I think. What we just walked through was definitely a firebreak, and what we’re standing in right now is the outermost edge of it. The - last line of defense, I guess.”
“Maybe it was planted by the Indigenous people who lived near the forest?” Kasey stops by my side and gazes around, tucking a stray black lock behind her ear. “They were exceptionally knowledgeable and accomplished caretakers of the land before it was stolen from them.”
“That’s definitely a possibility. Even the firebreak is seriously old. Basically a forest in its own right, by now, but - that, right there-” I straighten up and point across the last stretch of the firebreak to the tree line on the far side. “That’s the old forest.”
Aiden and Kasey hadn’t really taken a good look at it yet - the terrain has gotten tougher already, so we’ve all automatically been keeping our eyes on our feet. But now they lift their gazes to it, and their eyes widen.
The three of us stand still for a long moment, gazing up at the forest before us.
If the forest we just left behind was young and sweet and sunny, this one is its quiet, wisened, ancient father. It’s several hundreds of years older, and here the plants grow much, much bigger. Even on the edges, the peaks and crowns of the trees reach so staggeringly high that we all have to tilt our heads all the way back to take in their awe-striking proportions. Even Aiden is minuscule, tiny by comparison.
The crowns of the trees are close enough to each other that they almost merge, casting deep shadows, sweeping entire areas into mysterious semi-darkness. In other places, shafts of sunlight fall, little bodies of pollen and spores illuminated as they slowly float through. Skittering along on the same breeze that sways the needles and leaves, stirring them softly. Making them whisper.
As we stare up at the forest, I have the inexplicable feeling that some ancient, mythic king is regarding us in return. Waiting to see what we’ll do. Aiden and Kasey must feel something similar, based on the awestruck silence we’re all sharing.
Aiden takes a deep, determined breath, slips his hand into mine, and sets off for the tree line. Kasey falls into step beside us, her head still thrown back to take it in.
She finally breaks the unintended, reverential silence we all just lapsed into.
“This does look like a place with restless spirits,” she says softly.
“Let’s hope they understand that we’re here to help,” Aiden murmurs back.
~~~~
From the first step into the old-growth forest, everything around us changes.
The light falls by about half, sharply cutting our visibility down. This is a massive forest, overflowing with profusions of plants in their full summer spread. The sunlight falls in slender shafts through multiple layers of branches. It seems to illuminate indirectly, so that while the forest has become darker, all the trees and boulders and logs around us are haloed in a rich, golden glow.
No matter which way I turn my head, there’s something to see. A shaded stream that splashes down its own small waterfalls, the water clear and achingly cold. Networks of mushrooms with delicate caps, sparkling with the dewfall, carrying nutrients into the forest all the way from the sea through their subterranean networks. Rich green blankets of moss and lichen fur everything, hanging in heavy curtains, housing countless hidden little creatures.
Every now and then showers of birdsong fall from somewhere high overhead. Musical waterfalls, accompanied by the fluttering of distant wings. At one point a golden-crowned kinglet flits past us, leaving behind a trail of its chattering song.
The air is wet, misty, heavy. The green, green perfume of the forest sweeps in on every breath, carried into the air by a sea-born fog that leaves the earth soft and damp. Droplets sprinkle down from the lichen on the trees, glittering like spinning diamonds. Possibly this morning’s rain, still making its way down from the canopy.
But the real star of the show is, of course, the trees.
On all sides, they soar to heights that took centuries to reach. They form walls around us and a soft, tiered ceiling of many layers above us, enclosing us in their realm.
This place is spellbinding, to the point that Team Ghost Office once again falls silent without meaning to. There’s a deep hush over the forest, made deeper by the winding mist. But it’s not that, I don’t think. It’s just that we’re taking it in, and it’s a lot to take in.
It’s also intimidating, especially with the thought of the illusions prowling around.
But the longer we go, the more comfortable everyone gets. Kasey’s amazement slowly turns to fascination, then to a stream of historical tidbits about this area. Aiden lets out the long breath I only hear him exhale when he’s far away from the bustle of towns and people, out in the forgiving quiet of the wilderness.
For my part, I slowly come to remember that this is - a forest. It may seem like we’ve walked through some unseen mirror into another world, but at the end of the day this is a forest, and the kind I know pretty well. Hemlock, spruce, western redcedar, fir, bigleaf maple - all of these are old friends. It all begins to look familiar to me again, after a while. Before long I’m identifying the closest ones out loud, and answering follow-up questions from Aiden and Kasey.
Eventually we’re all chattering away again like we normally would be. Well, Kasey and I are chattering while Aiden listens in mostly-silent amusement, so - yeah, like normal.
I’m starting to feel much more at ease. There’s been no sign of the illusions, and I’m with two of my favorite people. We fall into a line of three as we hike, occasionally stopping to turn around and lapse into a laughing argument with each other.
The Sitka spruces sway around us, branches whispering in the wind.
Our plan for today is to mostly follow the coastline that the forest grows up against. This is our first time in this forest, and several different people have warned us about how easy it is to get turned around out here, so we figured having a huge landmark to follow would be a good way to start. So long as we can always see the ocean to one side, we’re fine, and we have a feeling we won’t find the Tree right on the edge of the cliffs, anyways. This way we can easily confirm that theory, and eliminate a section of the forest from our search.
“That might be where to find the Sea Creature, too,” Kasey helpfully points out. “Close to the sea, where it could pull us right in.”
We have a long way to hike, which means we have plenty of time to debate these kinds of theories.
“I’m having a hard time believing that anything made of Guardian magic would actively hurt us,” I answer, around sips of cool water from the bottle Aiden just handed me. “At least not intentionally, right? That just seems - against the nature of it? Guardians are supposed to stop people from getting hurt.”
Kasey gives me a dubious look. “The Demon chased that Stasi agent right off of a cliff, Jamie. Remember?”
I choke on my sip of water, having somehow completely forgotten to factor that in until now.
“Kasey, why would you remind him?” Aiden groans, uselessly swatting a hand at her ghostly form. “Look, Jamie - Jahn stumbled off of that cliff all on his own. The Demon was just trying to scare him, like it’s supposed to do. It wasn’t trying to kill him.”
I stare up at Aiden with wide eyes, dragging the sleeve of my flannel over my mouth. “The man still fell off a fucking cliff, though!”
“Then pay attention, so you don’t do the same,” Aiden says firmly, knuckling my jaw until I’m facing forward again. “We need to watch our footing if we’re sticking close to the coastline all day.”
“Speaking of which…” Kasey slows to a stop, her smile falling. “Aw, no.”
A thick wall of some pale-wooded, leafy plant rises up before us. It grows all the way out to the farthest edges of the cliff, blocking our path. It must be blanketing a huge formation of boulders, or something, because it looks impenetrable. Vast, tangled, way too tall to walk through. Even if we could, it’s spiky everywhere with long, sharp, violet-colored thorns.
It’s never a straightforward walk in the old-growth. Aiden and I have already had to crawl over logs, slide down steep hills, and traverse streams during this hike, but - I don’t see any way we can forge ahead here.
“Looks like it’s all thorns for a while back there,” Aiden observes. “Spreads pretty wide, too. We’ll have to go around. I know you could go through, Kasey, but we agreed not to split up under any circumstances, so I think-”
“No, agreed. I’m sticking with you.” Kasey runs her narrowed, wary eyes over the plant. “Don’t get anywhere near it, mortals! That thing gives off vibes both poisonous and perilous. And those thorns look like they take no quarter.”
Aiden obviously agrees, because he stays well back from it, and swiftly takes a handful of my flannel when he catches my curious eyes roving over the finer details of the plant. He gently drags me away, and Kasey hurries over to join us. We leave the plant behind, retreating away from the coastline.
Aiden leads the way around a rising hill in the landscape. “What kind of plant was that, Jamie? I’ve never seen one of those before.”
“It…” I glance over my shoulder as we head deeper into the forest, but the plant is already lost to my sight. “I… I’m not sure what that was.”
Kasey’s eyebrows shoot up, and Aiden lets out a low whistle.
“Holy shit, the forest stumped Jamie!”
“I don’t know every plant by sight, Kase-face! Nobody does, especially not in an old-growth forest!”
I look to Aiden for some backup, but he’s staring over his shoulder, suddenly not listening to us. His eyebrows are dropped low, and he’s chewing the inside of his cheek.
He comes to an abrupt stop, fidgeting with the straps of his backpack.
“Did - do either of you guys feel weird?” he asks uncertainly. And then, when he sees the puzzled expressions on our faces - “You didn’t just get some strange feeling, like…?”
Kasey and I exchange a baffled glance, then turn back to Aiden. He takes the brim of his snapback and absent-mindedly shifts it up and down over his hair, looking distracted. There are goosebumps on his forearms.
“Something magic?” I ask, dropping my voice to a whisper.
“I don’t know… maybe I’m making it up. It’s - it’s gone, now.” Aiden hesitates, then gives himself a shake. “Let’s just get back to the coastline, yeah? I want to keep us on track. No wandering around, that’s how we get lost.”
We set off navigating through the woods again, this time more quietly. We have to go the long way around another big rock formation, this one too slippery with wet moss to climb. We can only hope the path we’ve taken will let us out back near the coastline, but when it slopes to an end -
“What…?” Aiden stares in dismay at the dense wall of trees before us, growing so close together that they’re completely blocking our way. “Shit. We’re definitely on the wrong path now. I think we should go back to where we lost the coastline.”
“Is going back going to help if our path is blocked there, too?” Kasey points out.
Aiden tilts his head back in frustration, sighs deeply, then slips his backpack off of his shoulders and takes out his compass.
“Okay, we’ll have to go further away from the coastline and just try to find a way around somewhere. If we just pay attention to where we’re going, we should be okay.”
I am trying to pay better attention, so I take a better look at the trees growing around us while Aiden figures out the direction we need to go.
Kasey sits down to relax back on her palms, watching me affectionately. “Are you trying to identify every tree that we pass, Jamie?”
“Not all of them, but some, yeah.” I kneel down to sink my fingers deep into the lush moss and rich soil of the forest floor, feeling it gently. “Helps me get a guess at what the soil here is like. Different kinds of trees want a different pH level from the soil, so they’re a good indicator. Like - lindens can handle levels of acidity that other plants couldn’t.”
“Shit, don’t I know it.” Aiden lifts his eyes from the compass to cast me a guilty look. “I saw this Linden take a whole lot of that in high school.”
I smile affectionately at him, then blow him a little it’s-okay kiss.
But a puzzled frown takes over my face as I turn away. My thoughts are back on that plant that I couldn’t identify. It roughly resembled a huge woody vine, but then all those rich leaves, the tangle it was in, and those huge thorns…? Have I seen anything else like it in this forest, or - any forest? I don’t think so… And it doesn’t share characteristics with any of the other plants choosing to grow here, in this kind of soil, at this altitude.
I contemplate all of that for a moment, then decide to put it out of my mind. There’s a very easy, simple explanation: many species exist that only live in the old-growth, plenty of them completely unknown. Even if it is cataloged somewhere, I just haven’t come across it before.
A new friend, I think to myself brightly. That’s always nice, even when they’re a little thorny.
Aiden resettles his backpack onto his shoulders and his snapback over his hair. “Alright. Let’s roll.”
“We’re going off-plan already,” Kasey groans, dragging herself to her feet in dismay. “That should be the slogan for the Ghost Office. Off-plan already. Put it on a t-shirt.”
Aiden lets out a huff of laughter. “And on the back: But at least we know the pH of the soil.”
“Stop it!” I groan-laugh, shoving Aiden’s arm. “You can tell a lot about your surroundings if you know it, alright? I’m trying to keep a sense of where we are, because this place…”
I trail off with a vague gesture at the massive evergreens surrounding us, spreading out into the vast forest. There’s no point in saying it, because Aiden and Kasey already know what I mean.
Despite our best efforts, the forest has already turned us around once.
~~~~
We still haven’t found our way back to the ocean cliffs by the time the sun is sinking down low in the sky, and nobody is feeling great about that fact.
We’ve tried so many different paths, and it’s made no difference. No matter what we do, there’s some obstacle in our way, and we end up forced to hike back the way we came. I don’t think we’re any deeper into the forest than we were hours ago.
Aiden keeps getting shivers and goosebumps, and at one point his eyes began to glow all on their own. While we’re now very sure that he’s sensing something magical, we have no idea what it is. It happens totally at random, no matter where we are in the forest, no matter what we were around or what we were doing. It happens, and then it stops.
We’ve thoroughly exhausted all of our theories on that one, and come no closer to anything like an answer. In every way possible, we just keep hitting dead ends.
There’s only gloomy silence as we walk along looking for a place to set up camp.
“Guess it’s not like we expected to dispel all of the illusions and track down the Tree on the first day,” Kasey sighs, lifting her arms over her head in a long, slow stretch. The copper-colored sunlight falls right through her, twinkling on her translucent edges. “Jamie, I see you’re still kinda hanging on to your good mood. Care to share the secret of your deranged optimism with us?”
“Well, first of all, you look very pretty right now.”
Kasey breaks into a bright smile. “Aw!”
“And secondly…” I shrug my shoulders, admiring the way the rich light filters down through the canopy. “Hey, all things come with patience. Honestly, I’m okay with us having a day to get oriented first. Especially because, you know. We’re not oriented at all.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” growls Aiden, who was in charge of navigation for today.
“I - don’t think it’s your fault, Aiden,” Kasey murmurs.
“I don’t think so, either,” I add quietly.
We all walk along in silence for a moment, and then I just blurt it out.
“It’s the fucking plant!”
“Yeah, okay, what is the deal with that plant?” Aiden instantly answers, sounding immensely relieved that someone said it out loud. “It’s all over this whole goddamn forest! We can’t get anywhere without running right fucking into it!”
“I’m worried that it’s something invasive,” I tell Aiden, tiredly dragging my sleeve over my eyes. “I think I should break off a piece of it to bring back with us, so we can have someone look at it.”
“Do not touch it, dude. Promise me. It’s covered in gnarly thorns, and we don’t know if it’s poisonous. There’s a reason we’ve been giving it a wide berth. You can take a picture of it to show someone when we get back, if you want to.”
“I did take a picture, but a sample would be better-”
“No, Linden. Put it out of your mind.”
“But I’m seriously worried, Aiden!” I protest, anxiously twisting my fingers together. “Some unknown plant taking over random chunks of the forest? That can’t be good, that sounds like an outbreak! The old trees here are precious, they can’t be replaced-”
“Keane, I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna let you poison yourself regardless of how you try to talk me into it. And I don’t know about you, but the forest looks healthy to me.”
“Yes, but - sometimes things aren’t what they seem on the surface, okay? And that plant is everywhere, it’s put us on the wrong path over and over again all day today!”
Kasey looks over at me sharply, her dark eyes narrowing. She comes to a sudden stop behind me and Aiden, then lowers her unseeing gaze to the forest floor. We turn to glance at her with inquiring eyes as she stands there in silent contemplation, one finger pressed to her lips.
“Did Rose say that all of the illusions are creatures?” she asks, after a long moment.
“No,” Aiden says distractedly. He’s peering off into the distance, trying to make something out from the deepening shadows. “We actually know that one of them isn’t. The Sorcerer.”
“Okay… so is it possible that one of the illusions is - a plant?”
Aiden and I stare blankly at Kasey for a second, then draw back in disbelief.
“No, but it’s - it’s been everywhere,” I answer, my eyes very wide. “All over the whole forest, it-”
“Or,” Kasey interrupts slowly, “Has it been the same one, following us around all day?”
There’s a brief silence.
“Oh, fuck,” Aiden groans, dropping his head and covering his eyes with one hand. “That’s why I’ve been sensing something all day. Because it’s been following us around!”
“And why it’s growing all over the place, regardless of altitude or soil type or moisture level - and why nobody’s mentioned anything about it growing all over the forest! I bet most people give up and go home once they get turned around the first one or two times, but we’ve been trying to get deeper into the forest all day long, so it’s had to stop us over and over again!”
I stop to let out a dazed breath, then quickly wrench my backpack off of my shoulders and open it up. “Hang on, let’s have another look at it.”
I take out my phone, open up my photos, and scroll through the ones I’ve taken today.
Kasey, Aiden, and I all gasp softly. The pictures I took of the thorny plant are just landscape shots of open forest. Nothing blocking the way. No thorny plant of any kind, anywhere in sight.
“I just took the pictures, I didn’t look at them after,” I whisper. “I didn’t notice…”
Team Ghost Office stares at each other with wide eyes.
I silently reach into my backpack and pull out the three pieces of magic that we haven’t yet identified. I know exactly which one I’m looking for. I find it and hold it out to show the others.
This piece of magic is formed mostly from vivid green threads, but upon closer inspection, there’s a tiny, delicate trail of violet sewn in. The same color as the violet thorns.
Aiden takes the piece of magic from me and stares down at it, then looks up sharply in the direction where he’d been staring. Goosebumps are rolling up his arms again.
He wordlessly sets off, so Kasey and I fall into step after him. I rush to get my backpack onto my shoulders as we go, anxiously watching Aiden.
He stops before the thing he’d spotted in the distance: the woody, vine-like plant with the green leaves and the menacing violet thorns. This time it’s draped between two high-up, rocky outcroppings, falling like a curtain. Once again blocking our way.
The sun is sinking closer to the horizon. The forest is growing dark beneath the shelter of the canopy, making things hard to see. I’m about to go for my flashlight, but Aiden lifts one hand and spreads his fingers, releasing a flowing wave of golden fireflies. He blows on them softly, and they drift up towards the plant, illuminating it.
And - shining gently right through it.
Kasey and I stop by Aiden’s side, just in time to see the same realization dawn in his glowing, ice-blue eyes.
I would feel stupid for not figuring any of this out way before now, but - the plant looks so real. Even now, watching the Heliomancer light glimmer through it, I would scream if anyone gave me a hard shove towards those brutal thorns.
It sways in the breeze in perfect synchronicity with all the other plants. I didn’t question for one second that it was real, that it truly grew here, that it was an actual plant of this forest.
But it’s not. This spread of thorny, leafy wilderness is something else entirely.
Team Ghost Office stares with wide eyes at the first of Rose’s illusions. The Plant.
“A plant?” I whisper, shifting closer to Aiden. “Oh, my god. The first illusion we meet, and it’s one of the ones we weren’t prepared for at all. Of course!”
“Yeah, but at least it’s not that scary,” Kasey says, although she’s shifting uneasily from foot to foot. “I actually thought the illusions would be way scarier than this.”
Aiden takes a few hesitant steps towards the Plant, his blue eyes searching the leaves and thorns. He’s cautiously drawing closer and closer, as if now that he’s in this kind of proximity, something is pulling him to it. His eyes are still glowing with white-blue light.
“Well,” he rumbles slowly, turning it over in his mind, “Rose said the illusions were supposed to confuse people or scare them off. Maybe this illusion was - single-purpose? Only designed to confuse? Not to scare?”
“We haven’t seen what happens once it knows we’re not confused anymore,” I whisper, kind of afraid to say it out loud. “Aiden, just be careful-”
I break off as Aiden takes another step closer to the Plant - closer than any of us have gotten to it before - and the air itself begins to tremble around us.
We all freeze to the spot as the trees of the old forest begin rocking and swaying, moved by some unnatural wind. I don’t even need magical senses to feel the energy sparkling and snapping and swirling around us. It’s shaking the actual trees.
I let out a terrified gasp, then rush forward to seize Aiden’s hand. I start to drag him away from the Plant, and - the entire thorny, leafy mass drops down from where it was clinging to the rocky overhang.
It falls to hang suspended in midair, but it doesn’t go motionless again. It’s folding in on itself, shuddering and twisting into a new shape, letting out a wail of wood groaning and the crushing noise of leaves and twigs snapping against each other. Pieces are snapping off and rearranging themselves right before our eyes.
“What the fuck is happening, Aiden?” Kasey shouts over the thunderous noise, flinching as leaves and twigs are thrown right through her on the force of the magical wind.
“I don’t know!” he shouts back, without breaking his stunned eyes away from the twisting mass of thorns. “Fuck my theory about it not being designed to scare, that’s what’s happening!”
“Obviously, but what - what-?”
Aiden shakes his head helplessly. “Rose said something about them having powers! Maybe the Plant can - I don’t fucking know, how am I supposed to know?”
“Should we get the hell out of here?” I shout to Kasey, shrinking down behind Aiden.
“No!” she yells back, over the snap of the thorns. “We’ve got to dispel these things! It’s just an illusion, and we’re Team Ghost Office, okay? We are brave, we are valiant, we never run from-”
She cuts herself off with a gasp as a violet light begins to spill out from the center of the thorns, which have twisted themselves into a figure, suspended just above us in the air. A figure shaped almost like a human, made of pale wood and leaves and thorns, but - definitely not a human. Something about the shape is wrong, and it’s too big, and two huge, sharp horns sprout from its temples. Writhing darkness gathers around it, making even the vaguest details impossible to make out, but as we watch, the violet light within it illuminates -
A pair of enormous, hollow eyes, staring right at us.
Aiden, Kasey, and I stare back for a split second. Then, as one, we scream. Kasey and I both throw ourselves behind Aiden, who flings his arms out wide to protect us even as he starts staggering backwards.
“Oh, fuck this!” Kasey shrieks.
And so the brave, valiant Team Ghost Office - still screaming like a bunch of small children - collectively whips around, turns tail, and runs.
Want to leave a comment? I would love it if you did, and you can do so on the Tapas episode!