Day... I don't know. Two? Three?
I've lost track of the days. The river has been my constant companion, a restless voice hurrying alongside me. Water slaps at my legs with every step, dragging against me as if it would rather pull me under than let me cross. My calves burn, my boots squelch with every movement, and the pack on my back might as well be filled with stones.
The sun blazes overhead, hot and pitiless. Midday, I tell myself. Keep moving. Once you're across, you'll warm up. But even saying it aloud does little to convince me. My breath fogs in spite of the sun, and a chill seems to rise from the river itself.
"Just get across," I mutter, the words small and brittle against the sound of the water.
I've been asking myself the same question over and over: why am I doing this?
The answer always circles back to the same object.
The compass.
Her compass.
The last thing she gave me. I can still picture her hands – thin, almost translucent with sickness – closing around mine, pressing the weight of it into my palm. It felt impossibly heavy then, far heavier than a little brass trinket had any right to be.
Follow it north, she had whispered. It will take you exactly where you need to be.
At the time I thought it was nothing more than pretty words, the kind of words people reach for when they know there's no time left. But years later, when I found the compass buried in a box of old quilts and forgotten keepsakes in the attic, I couldn't ignore it. When I held it, the memory came back so sharply it felt like her voice was still in the room.
So I came back. Back to the cabin she died. Back to the place I swore I'd never see again. And from there, I set out, determined to humor her last wish. The compass has no markings, no cardinal points, only a single gold notch. I decided that must be north, and I began to follow it.
Two days, maybe three. Now I have no idea where I am.
And now the forest feels wrong. Too still, as though the world itself is holding its breath. The river water is colder than it should be this time of year, numbing my legs even through the leather of my boots. Sometimes, when I glance away, I swear the compass needle has shifted ever so slightly.
I sigh and keep moving, though every step drags. I can't shake the sense that something is waiting for me. Not ahead, not behind – just waiting, as though it has been a long time.
Once I leave the river behind, the land begins to rise. The soil grows drier under my boots. A narrow path threads between tall pines, their dark spines hemming me in. Their needles stir and whisper as if busted by a wind, yet the air against my skin remains still. The compass points steadily forward, its notch aligned with the needle, promising me I'm headed north. But the sun's position tells me otherwise, and that contradiction gnaws at me.
The path yields odd remnants, as though someone – or something – has left them for me. A rusted tin cup, lying half-buried in the grass. A signpost, rotted to splinters, its paint so worn that not a single letter can be read. And then, snagged high in a branch, a tattered scarf sways faintly in the still air.
It looks exactly like hers.
My throat tightens. I don't think I ever saw her without her scarf. She wore it in the cold, in the heat, in her final days when her voice grew thin and her skin more fragile than paper. It had become as much part of her as her hands or her smile. Seeing it now, weathered and frayed, feels like seeing a ghost.
The woods grow quieter with each of these discoveries. At first it's subtle – the birdsong fading, the rustle of some unseen animal. Then, with each step, the silence deepens until the only sound left is my own breathing, too loud, too uneven. The compass needle does not guide me past these objects so much as it steers me to them, each one waiting at the edge of the path.
The trees close in as the hours drag by, their branches brushing my shoulders, clawing faint lines in my coat. Yet despite the density of the woods, the light remains eerily consistent – bright, but flat, drained of depth and color. Shadows cling only faintly,as though they are being pressed out of existence.
I pass a birch tree with bark peeling away in strips, curling like yellowed parchment. A fallen log smothered in moss stretches across the ground like a corpse abandoned in the dirt. Both feel strangely familiar, though I can't say why. My watch insists only an hour has passed, but my body protests as though I've walked all day.
Then the light changes.
It's not the gradual dimming of afternoon. It's abrupt, as though a veil has been drawn over the sun. The sky glimpsed through the canopy still grows clear and blue, but the forest around me falls into an unnatural hush, dim and muted.
Behind me, faint as a sigh, I hear something – whispering. A breeze? A voice? When I turn, the woods stand motionless, silent.
The compass needle twitches, sharp enough to draw my eyes forward.
Through a screen of tangled branches, I glimpse a seam of light. Brighter. Different. My pulse quickens as I push toward it, forcing my way through the undergrowth until the forest spills me into a clearing.
It is a barren place. The grass grows thin and patchy, unable to take root in the soil. At its center stands an oak of impossible size, its trunk so wide that the three people linked arms could not encircle it. A wound splits it from root to crown, a jagged hollow like a mouth open in silent grief.
And inside that wound hangs something pale.
At first, it looks like cloth caught on the jagged bark, sagging and shifting with the faintest movement of air. But the smell changes as I step closer – dust, rot, something old. And then the pines at the edge of the clearing begin to whisper again, though no wind stirs their branches.
My mind resists what my eyes are telling me, but the pieces fall together all the same. Dirt-stained fabric. Torn lace at the hem. A ribbon at the waist, frayed and unraveling.
Her dress.
The very one she wore on the day she died.
For an instant, I think I see her scarf too, wrapped tight around the neckline as though still clinging to her. As though the memory of her body lingers there, suspended in the hollow of the oak.
The compass hums faintly in my hand. The needle spins slowly, deliberately, like an animal stretching after a long sleep. Not searching anymore – simply counting.
I don't move.
And in the silence that presses down on me, I hear the faintest breath.
It is not mine.