Art by Bekka Bjorke
She stood on a featureless, grassy plain in the shadow of a wood that swallowed the horizon and drank in sunlight with hollow-bellied greed. The trees that crowded the border hunched over one another, protecting leafy secrets in a silence undisturbed by wind or sound, but she was not afraid.
An intriguing splash of color drew her to the edge of the wood to peer into the darkness. Flowers? She ducked beneath grasping branches to find not flowers or mushrooms or even butterflies, but crayons; broken crayons in a thousand different colors and sizes scattered upon the ground. The shards of childhood peeped out from beneath their mossy blanket, as shy as any violet.
A solemn little girl in a blue cotton dress stepped out of the shadows. She folded her hands and said, “Hello, Dreamer.”
“Is that who I am?”
“That’s who all of you are when you visit the Thieving Wood.”
“I didn’t know this place had a name. I don’t even know how I got here.”
“That’s okay. Everyone gets here a different way. You’re not allowed to stay for long, though. Do you want to look around?”
The Dreamer nodded, and the little girl led her into the forest. Brambles parted reluctantly before them, and the crayons gave way to unmatched socks lying in piles like hoarded treasure. Stuffed animals with threadbare patches and popped seams were held aloft by bushes, and plastic trinkets lay nestled in the protection of moldering leaves on the forest floor. Under the outstretched arms of the trees, the Dreamer saw a broken cookie jar in a circle of spotted mushrooms, a wilted crown of daisies in the crotch of a sapling, a single half of a friendship necklace displayed by a leafless twig, and a painted porcelain baby doll cradled between two large roots.
A breeze twisted through the wood, and something pale flapped against a tree trunk in the distance, barely visible through the restless foliage. Like the tattered remnants of a dream long forgotten, the white cotton dress hung from a low branch on a wire hanger. The Dreamer reached out to run a finger along the lace-lined sleeve, and the dress fell away from her sight when she touched it, replaced by an uninvited vision.
A heedless girl of sixteen, with roses in her cheeks and smiling lips, is running from a boy. Her grass-stained feet fly, but he catches her and she is laughing, kissing him and twining her fingers through his. She pulls him toward a shed, and they crush small white flowers beneath their feet as they walk, peeking over their shoulders to be sure no one is watching as she closes the door behind them.
The Dreamer jerked her hand away from the dress, and the forest returned to loom over her. She turned to the little girl and asked, “What happened?”
“This is the Thieving Wood,” the little girl said, waving her hand at the discarded treasures that littered the forest, “all the lost things come here.”
“Am I here because I’m a lost thing?”
“Maybe for now, but probably not forever. Look over there.”
Dreamer walked toward a pink bike that leaned abjectly against a stump. The white basket was torn and the silvery tassels hanging from the handlebars were dull. When she touched the lollipop painted on the cracked leather seat, another vision stole into her mind, this one of a thin girl with hungry eyes sneaking through a backyard gate left ajar.
Dreamer strayed deeper into the wood, touching. She touched tin soldiers and saw boys with tears in their eyes being scolded by their fathers. She touched car tires with missing hubcaps and saw young men arguing with teary-eyed women in the back seats of cars. She touched faded photographs and saw husbands sitting on living room carpets in tears as their suitcase-holding wives pulled open front doors. She pressed deeper and deeper, touching broken lamps, wedding rings, baby bottles and car keys, and watching the visions the Wood gave to her. Nothing mattered but the next vision.
Though the wood grew less welcoming, the Dreamer forced herself through the scratching limbs and stinging nettles, looking for the next piece of neglected history.
“Wait!” the little girl called.
The Dreamer looked up from her search but she couldn’t see the girl. Darkness swooped down and gobbled up everything, and the air lay on them, thick with menace and the sour tang of sweat.
“Where are we?” the Dreamer whispered.
“This is where lost tempers go,” the little girl said, “I don’t like to walk this way. Follow the sound of my voice, and I will take you away.”
The Dreamer stumbled through the darkness, feeling invisible hands on her shoulders and hot breath on her neck as she searched for the little girl.
“I can’t find you,” the Dreamer whimpered.
“But I’m here right here.”
A twisted root caught the toe of her shoe, and the Dreamer tripped over it into the dim jade light of the Wood beneath the canopy. She lay on the layers of dead and decaying life, moss and crackling leaves pressed against her cheek. A snake slithered over the fingers of her right hand and stopped to look at her with one bead-black eye before it disappeared into the undergrowth.
The Dreamer stood, brushed the bits of bracken from her clothes, and turned to the little girl. “I’m ready, now.”
The little girl led her beneath the canopy of slender trees with delicate branches and pale-yellow leaves that twisted lazily, casting a shimmering light on the mossy floor. Here there were books and letters, paintings with wild, rich brushstrokes, a red violin with gleaming varnish, and a leather journal worn with the leafing of many fingers. The leather was invitingly smooth, so the Dreamer reached out to touch it. It was warm beneath her fingertips. The Wood gave her another vision.
An old man is lying in bed, looking up at his family as they gather around him with tears on their cheeks. His skin is as translucent as wet paper. His face is gaunt and weary, but peaceful. There is a smile on his lips as he closes his eyes.
The Dreamer tried to hold on to the vision and sobbed as the Wood pulled it away.
“We have to hurry,” the little girl said, “there isn’t much time left.”
“Hurry where? I don’t know where to go.”
“That’s okay,” the girl said, “take my hand.”
As soon as she touched the little girl’s hand, the Wood gave her another vision, and this one fell upon her like a starving animal.
Fear fills her and wraps cold arms around her chest as she peeks through a crack in the bedroom door to see her father, red-faced and sweating, yelling at her mother, who is crying and wrapping her arms around herself. The coffee table is broken, and shards of the glass top lay scattered on the floor at her father’s feet, reflecting the scene from a hundred unnatural angles in bits and angry pieces. She is small, and everything is so big it looms over her. But her sister is crying, and she is the only one who can tell her things will be okay.
The Dreamer stumbled back and sat hard on the ground. “How did you know about that?”
The little girl’s eyes were sad. “This is the Thieving Wood. All the lost things come here.”
The Dreamer stood and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Do things come here because they’re lost, or because the Wood takes them?”
The air began to grow brighter, painfully bright, as shafts of sunlight expanded and joined like raindrops on a table, swallowing up the wood a bit at a time in a blaze of incandescence.
“You have to go, now,” the little girl said, “The Wood is sending you away.”
“Wait,” the Dreamer cried, “do things come here because they’re lost, or because the Wood takes them?”
Light touched the little girl, and as it enveloped her she kindled into a radiant fire and blew away in a shower of embers, but her voice echoed back, “What difference does it make to you?”