Friends of the Forest

Friends of the Forest

Beyond Okie's house stood a beckoning woods of some depth, and within it were trees of many an age, some burled and shedding their ancient skins, others winnowed, young and smooth. Spindled pines there were hither and thither, so littered with a soft layer of needles were many places upon the ground. And though the wood was well dense to blot out the horizon in any direction, it was by no means a crowded place, and devoid of low, treacherous branches or spiny thickets. It was for the most part high of bough with a soft, floating canopy that kept, altogether as it moved, to a low, lush whisper. During the day the leaves rollicked and threw about flecks of sun upon the ferns and mossy stones beneath. When rain did make its fall, as oft' was the case in the wilds of the Northwest, the heaviest of drops were softened by the dense vaults of leaf above. And when the stillness of evening came, and when the mists crept in to bed against the leaves upon the ground, the silence was temperate and patient, and the air as it moved upon skin was benign and gentling. 

 

So it was with little reservation that the children, Noli and Myka both, went off and into the trees, though for the first few of days they kept sight of the quirky old house, kept an ear to their mother when she called for them. Nearest to the familiar, and in the foyer of the wood, where it seemed perhaps the occupants of the house had at one time or other kept an unruly sort of garden, there stood a number of figures, some of stone, others of clay and also some of wood. And, much alike to the drawings and sculptures all about within the whimsical house, these woodland versions were of human form with the heads of birds, insects, or lizards. While some were squat or crouching, and easily hid away in the taller of grasses, others stood upright and were of a considerable size. The details and textures of each was quite remarkable, though the elements had indeed had their way with them on all accounts. A dappling of lichen, creepers and leaves had come to know each of them, and a grime of dirt had gotten deep into the whittled crooks of their sleeves, or into the wrinkles of smile about their mouths. But, despite the wear of their forms, to look any one of them in the face was to feel as though a doubtless presence peered unabashedly, and yet kindly, back.

Each of the figures appeared to be positioned with some regard for the house behind them, as if keeping it at an over-the-shoulder glance. But each and every one of their sculpted and carved heads were poised at a slight arc, as if passing a wistful gaze off and into the forest. The largest among them, made perhaps from a single piece of hulking oak, seemed twin to the attic figure whom had at first given poor Myka such a start. And in this figure's carved wooden eyes, particularly, there seemed a knowing and a presence. 

Finding the old woman hunched and weeding at the feet of a stout lizard carved of stone, Noli was apt to inquire, "Who are they?"

"Friends of the forest," Okie had said when glancing up, with a both gleam and a mist in her eye at once. Her cheeks were smudged with soil, and her hair, as usual, swept up, yet askew.

Noli frowned a little, absorbing the facial expressions of the carvings around her. "They seem... Sad."

Okie pursed her lips, brushing dirt from her gloves. "What makes you say that, love?"

"Well..." Noli said, feeling strangely vulnerable. "It's - like they're all looking at the woods - but standing outside it."

Okie's eyes sparked subtly. "An interesting observation." Feigning an indifference, Okie went back to weeding.

Noli hesitated. "Did you make them?"

Okie looked contemplative for a moment. Still on her haunches, she nodded. "Some of them, yes."

Noli regarded the figures nearest to her, walked slowly in a circle about them and then stood back, cocking her head oddly and absorbing the stare of the sculpted creatures. "It's - like they're real."

"Oh but they are - " Okie halted herself abruptly, and flushed at the cheeks. "At least...well, at least to me they are."

Noli could see that the old woman felt transparent, but counted it off as another of her numerous eccentricities. Surely most people found her odd, and to a pain perhaps she knew she was. But Noli had begun to warm to her, and dared ask another question. "Did you make the bird man in the attic?"

Okie smiled in spite of herself, her brow wrinkling in impish delight, and her cheeks aglow. "I did, yes."

"Why?"

Okie thought for a moment before answering, regarding a small moth who had lit temporarily on the cheek of the lizard figure standing beside her. "When I watch an ant carrying a heavy load," she said. "When I see the robin chattering away high upon a bough..." She knelt now, and took up a handful of black earth in both hands, breaking it apart and revealing a world of tiny lives, beetles, grubs and earthworms, seeds and roots within it. "When I turn over the earth and find a worm scuttling away into the dark again, I see myself." She returned the clod of dirt to the ground, and patted it down, gently. "They all want to live, to enjoy life and pursue a purpose, just as I do." She stood, brushing off dirt from her thighs. "I have to remind myself that only through my protection, and by my respect, will they endure. So," she said, looking at the large oak figure still standing sentry nearby, "perhaps the bird man is the bridge between me and the all the creatures I mean to revere."

Noli absorbed this for a moment, and felt a question stirring its wings in her. "You - don't mind that we go in the attic, do you?"

"No no, not at all," responded Okie. She caught the gaze of the young girl for a moment, seeming to radiate a brighter light from within now. "This house is yours."

When Noli's lashes dropped, and when she shrunk away from the boundary that had too soon been breached, Okie was anxious to mend the wrong. "They do have names, all of them," she said, pulling off her garden gloves. She tucked them away in a tattered apron, which was spattered with an age of paint, dye and grime.

Noli hesitated, but couldn't help herself. She was too drawn to the figures, and too curious about them to scurry away. "That one there - the tallest one." Noli pointed to the wooden figure, whose long and slender beak seemed compassed to the a break in the looming woods behind. "What's her name?"

"His name," Okie smiled, arranging wildflowers now in a basket at her side, "is Zwindar."

Noli brightened by a degree or so. "Oh - Just like the crow, the one who comes to the porch."

"The very same, love."

Still regarding the old woman with a bitten lip of curiosity, Noli then asked. "Did you know someone named Zwindar?"
Auntie Okie eyed the child for a moment, but her expression spoke not of annoyance, nor did it have a darkness about it. At last, with a faintness of smile, she answered, "I did."

* * *

It was Myka whose curiosity drove him past the first rooms of the woods and into the province of trees beyond, and then it was, perhaps out of a similar inquiry but as well for concern of her brother, that Noli went along at a pace or two behind. But it was unknown to either of the children that Okie, from the wilds of her overgrown garden, put an eye to their disappearance. It was also Okie who witnessed, going on a awkwardness of feet after Myka and Noli, the little neighbor girl named Zakor.

A good depth into the coppice, it was Myka who first came upon more carved figures not dissimilar from those behind Okie's home, though these were far more of an age, and more brokenly overgrown or cloven in two. Still, their faces seemed kin to friendship, if not bent to a slight of sadness. To each of these Myka crept up and around, or put a hand upon them, and the soft of growths upon their ancient forms was to him an odd solace. But when anything at a crawl showed itself among the leaves, however, he was quick to make mince of them with a fierce swat or a shoe. And when, in grim satisfaction, the boy felt he had done away with the offending spider, ant, or beetle, Myka then cast an eye up at the figures at watch around him, and felt a pang neighboring to guilt about what he had done. Then, unresolved and tangling upon the confusions and angst of himself, he picked up and threw rocks at the figures as well, until he spied something in the distance which gave him pause.

Capering over an outcropping of brash rocks and young saplings, an acclivity of large boulders rose up sudden and crusted thick with moss and clinging fern. And upon these hulking stones there stood what appeared to be the ruins of a small stone cottage or mill, its roof long fallen away, and the rough stones of its teetering walls soft with a roaming carpet of lichen and moss. Beneath it, in the sunken bosom of a leaf-strewn creek bed, there stood a small vault, with three narrow lintels of stone set about an even narrower door. Peering into it, and obtusely destroying a perfectly beautiful web strung across the upper height of the opening, Myka squeezing himself resolutely through it, and had disappeared completely to shadow by the time Noli came in search for him from behind.