I heard him before I saw him.A breath, too quick. Too human.Crackling leaves.The animals here breathe differently.They've learned not to wake the forest. It remembers for a long time.
He came downhill, through firs that ate the light and spat out only shadow.I lay against the rock, belly in moss, back cold as a wet blade.Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. Quiet.Father taught me that, before Graypoint burned and the world grew quieter.
My hand found the mask on my face. Cold, but familiar.A shield against what's outside, and what sits inside.
The boy stumbled into the first mark.A chain of cans, barely touched. Hardly a sound.But the forest keeps even quiet mistakes.Ravens slid a little to the left, as if to get a better view.I waited until his shadow crossed the trunk with the carved notch.Then I stood.
He didn't see me. Not yet. He saw the trap.Deliberately shallow, two fingers too little soil, one leaf too clean.An invitation.
He stopped. The backpack was larger than his back.His hands red - not with blood, but with earth, fresh and cold.I smelled oil. Metal. Canned grease.And something that used to be meat.
"Don't," he murmured.He didn't know to whom.
I said nothing. I let him choose.He stepped forward. Half a step. One back. Forward again.That's how hunger moves.Then he set his foot down.
The iron snapped shut.It wasn't his voice that broke, it was the leg.The scream was bright, slicing through the trunks.Ravens burst upward as if someone had shaken the night.
I climbed down from the rock. Not hurried. No need.The boy pressed his lips so tight the skin turned white.Sweat on his neck, too cold for the air.He saw me. Then he was silent.Not because I said anything.Because he understood.
"Why here?" I asked.He breathed like a fish realizing too late that water is memory, not air.
"There… in the middle," he gasped. "The old man said…"He swallowed the ending.Young voices do that when they're not sure what to believe.
Nothing more came.I waited to see if the forest would finish the sentence.It didn't.The boy stared at me as if I were the answer.I'm only the question.
I knelt. Checked the joint.The bone felt like a wet branch, ready to snap.I loosened the iron, freed him. No scream left, he'd already spent it.I lifted him by the shoulders. Light.Hunger has no weight.The pack slid, clattered. Inside: metal, oil, a rusted map that smelled of hands that never washed.
I carried him to the root altar.
The altar never looked the same.Today it was stone, old and cracked, grown into bark,as if someone had broken off a rib from the forest and forgotten to put it back.Some call that a shrine.I believe in silence.Silence is the only one that answers reliably.
I laid the boy down. He was quiet. Not brave but empty.The roots came like tentacles in mud.First searching, then certain.They slid under the skin, into the throat, through the eye that no longer knew where to look.
I watched. Those who look away lie.I felt the cold, slow hum of the forest start beneath my feet and rise through me.That was the price.
I held the totem in my hand.Wood that was no longer wood. Threads not made of rope.The old man gave it to me when laughter still had teeth."Keep it close," he said. "But never against yourself."I laughed then. Not later.
When the forest took him, I heard it in my teeth, a cold humming from below.My back stopped aching.The air smelled less of iron, more of rain that falls too soon.In the whisper between needles was a tone I knew:children's voices, memories. Mine. His. Ours.A laugh too short to have ever existed.
Something tugged in my chest.Small, like finding an old splinter again.
I stepped back. "More," I said,maybe aloud, maybe only against my own teeth.
The forest didn't answer.It breathed deeper.That's how it nods.
I took the boy's pack. Inside: a map, torn, edges gray with dirt.Someone had drawn a circle, not quite in the center, but meaning to.Beside it, numbers that didn't add up.And a pocket radio, half-broken.
I turned the dial. Static.A crackle, as brief as a blink.Then:"…Unit Delta, sighting negative. Missing report updated. Open Graypoint protocol…"The voice spoke as if through a mouthful of water.
Something in me twitched. Reflex. Then silence.I crushed the radio and fed it to the tree.Metal and roots understand each other better than people think.They agree on one thing: both prefer soft flesh.
I sat.The day leaned sideways.Fog hung in tatters between the firs, pretending to be forgotten songs caught between things.I heard footsteps far off, too heavy for the boy, too steady for scavengers.A compass that believes. Maps that lie.The forest sharpened its roots. So did I.
"They'll come at night," I said to the ground.The ground replied with a creak I've known since Graypoint, wood that knows it will burn, just not when.
I took the backpack. In the side pocket, a photo.Damp. Cold. A girl with a missing tooth.Someone had written a name on the back in childish hand.
I stared longer than I meant to.Not for her. For what was missing.Then I put it back.
I set new traps.The forest likes order. And rules.
Rule One: Those who leave make noise. Those who stay make time.So I place the snares so you see them if you hurry,and miss them if you hesitate.
I tied the first wire between two roots whose bark looked like old veins.Half a step too high, half too low, both would give me away.At ankle height, the forest pulls fastest.
Rule Three: Names are snares.I carve no names into trees.I mark them with notches, with stones, with ashes that aren't mine.Whoever speaks my old name loosens the mask.Thinking it is enough.That's why a dull blade hangs by the hut's beam, to remind me not to cut what still grows.
Graypoint wasn't far from here.You don't measure that in miles.You measure it in days that no longer walk straight.
Father and I once stood on a hill beneath power lines that still hummed as if alive.It was hot.Flies sat on our lips because there was still salt there.Men with helmets raised towers."Only temporary," they said.The temporary lasts the longest.
I returned to the hut.One wall was bark, another fence planks no one guards anymore.The door was only an idea.
Beneath the floor lay something that remembered being alive.When the boards creaked, sometimes a voice answered, sounding like mine, only younger.I didn't name it.Names are snares.
I set the totem by the stove.It liked the air and sometimes hummed when the forest spoke to it.
When dusk reached the ground, I heard them, heavy steps, not many; too even for scavengers, too blunt for hunters who know this place.I smelled rubber.Diesel, old.Metal that had stood in the rain too long for its own good.
"Here," one whispered. The word cut, knife tip, not voice."Marking. You see it?""Copy," said the younger. Swallowed the end. Nervous. Trained."I see it."
I didn't show myself.I showed them the notch in the trunk,the half-visible line, the neatly scattered leaves.Some traps are meant to be found.They tell of all the others you don't see.
"Samuel," said the older one.A scar split open in my head.Tongue to palate. Taste of metal.The forest curled around the name as if to keep it.
I breathed. Once. Twice.Let the word fall like an old coin no one takes anymore.
The forest made a sound between bark and bone.It doesn't like when old words breathe again.
The man who said "Samuel" stepped into the circle, not the false one.The right one.The one you don't know unless you live here.
He inhaled.Too long. Too late.
I stepped from the shadow.One step. Enough for him to see my face beneath the mask.Enough for the forest to start telling the rest.
"You," he said. Not a question."No," I said. "I'm what was left."
The root trap snapped.Vines wrapped around his legs, not brutal, just final.He didn't shoot.He thought of a name that didn't fit.Then he let it go.
I spared him.Not out of mercy. Out of order.Sometimes the forest needs a story, not just blood.Someone must go back and speak,so the others know where to die.
The younger reached for a weapon, found only the map."Sir… should we...""Not today," I said.He nodded, trained, not convinced.
They withdrew, not in panic, but faster than they meant to.I heard their voices over the radio, muffled,as if speaking through wet wool:"Delta to outpost...contact… not confirmed… markings… Graypoint protocol, level two…"The word lighttowers hadn't fallen yet.Some things are named last, as if words could delay the work.
I waited until only insects held the air.Then I took the path to the altar, sat at the edge, and recounted my breaths.If you count long enough, you forget when you began.That's the point.
The stone sweated cold.A trace of the boy clung to my fingertips without being wet.I took it with me, on my skin, not in my hand.
On the way back, I heard the hut breathing.Not wood, what lived beneath.A board gave slightly, and the voice below—not mine—spoke my old word without sound.I stepped on the spot. "Sleep," I said.The whisper cut off, as if someone had found the thread.
I laid the masks aside.The totem stayed outside and hummed softly.
Before morning came, I saw the boy the forest had taken.He stood at the edge of the clearing.No roots in him now. No blood.He held a backpack larger than himself.He didn't wave.He just looked at me.I raised my hand.He dissolved, quiet as dust.
The forest didn't move.You don't have to thank it for everything.But you should.
When I stood, the day was narrow and gray.The fog tasted of metal again.Maybe the lighttowers.Maybe just people believing they can carry light in boxes.
I pulled on the mask, strapped the knife, took the totem.I am not Samuel.I am what he carried into the forest.I am what the forest keeps.
They always come at night.Today, they'll come by day.
The forest has no names for light.Only for the price.