The Werewood

Cinder engines burn behind me. Ashes falling out across stars. I lean against the wall, feeling that steady, bronchial hum of machinery. Distant suns spin complete orbits and I rest. It is a long way to the Werewood.

Air is a temperamental travelling companion. Two fully mature trees can keep a family of four comfortable. An individual needs about four hundred plants. It’s facts like these that hold the mind together. My mind. I am a lumberman and I a m f i n d i n g i t h a r d t o b r e a t h e.

I dream I’m working with my hands. I feel the rippled arboreal bark hold firm under my palm. There is no breeze to move the boughs and make the leaves dance, but I imagine they move of their own accord. Constricting themselves into tight woven bundles and then unfurling like a pair of praying hands, opening in supplication. Even before I know it’s a dream, I know it’s a lie. I killed my small shipbound garden with my greed not long ago. Cheap soil from some off world merchant trying to make a living in an ugly, oil slick spaceport. Full of parasites and bacteria. Rotting away my livelihood. My life.

How many years had I spent, an axe pulsing with lighting in my hand, bringing that energy ridden blade to the trunk of an alien sprout a thousand years old? Making a killing. I suppose now it is their turn. Fair’s fair.

The warning lights flare a vicious shade of red. A distant voice, familiar and shrill claims life support is failing. The computer continues to screech and hum like an out of tune violin string. I push myself up and my eyes pass over shades and shadows. It is the old knowledge of a childhood spent onboard that lets me see. A dark blur is a door, a grey smudge a window. The ship rattles once, a playful nudge and I stumble forward. Each step a trial, each heartbeat a labour. I almost fade away twice before I reach the cockpit. There are a number of flashing lights. Screens with electric grins. Strange maps of foreign stars flicker to and fro. No planets. No ships. There are worse ways to go.

*

I wake with a crisp white sheet bound tight around my body and my first thought is to wonder if this is real linen. I look around the room and see the austere furnishings. A brass bowl, half full of mirror smooth water. A small fireplace, empty and cold. A squat bookcase just as bare. I pull at the sheet and it takes a moment for my weak arms to untuck myself. I swing my naked feet over and touch the rough-hewn stone floor, warm to the touch like grass under the setting sun. Across from me, a wide arch of twisted wood opens out into flat fields, golden wheat swaying like lavender under the violet sky.

I see several other domed houses like the one I was just in, dotted around like beetles, chitinous hides iridescent. It tickles my hands as I brush along the crop and my feet sink slowly into the earth. I look down and see my footprints, wide and hollow, as though I walk upon clay.

“Good evening, traveller.” I hear, called from above. I look up and see a young girl lounging on a high branch of a short tree. Her red hair knotted around sticks and stones, so she clicks and clackers as she turns her head from side to side to look at me.

“Good evening yourself.” I reply as she tilts back, her legs hooking onto the bough as she hangs upside down to stare at me. “Could you tell me where I am?”

“That’s no way to begin an introduction.” She says, a wry grin playing on her cracked lips. “Have you forgotten your manners?”

“I’m sorry.” I found myself saying.

“No matter. I’m not even interested in finding out your name anymore.” She swung herself back up and stretched out, languishing precariously.

“Well why don’t you tell me your name?” I asked.

“Shan’t,” She said grinning, “and now that you won’t know who I am, I could be anything. I could be a fruit, ripe for the picking, or a rare bird curled up in my nest. Maybe I’m a leaf, shivering in the cold, ready to fall.”

“I suppose you won’t want to tell me where we are either then?” I said walking away.

She pouted, sticking her tongue out at me.

“You’re no fun.”

I smiled, stopped, and turned.

“Go on then.”

She spread wide to catch the whole of everything in her embrace. “This is Threshold.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Then how did you find it?”

“Did I crash here?”

“Crash?”

“In my ship.”

“You don’t have a ship.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do not.”

“Do too. It’s called Hestia. I transport timber and I had several thousand logs in my hold before-”

“Before what?” She said, shimming down the trunk till she faced me.

“What is this place? Really.”

“I told you, it’s Threshold.”

“There’s no colony with that name.”

“Then, where are you?”

“A planet owned by a contrary little girl I reckon.” I said. She only laughed in response.

“Well, I don’t have time to tell you where you’re not.”

“Yeah, why’s that?”

“It’s a full moon tonight. And it’s a long way to the Werewood.”

As we walked, I saw others emerge from their settlements. Some waved cheerfully while others sullenly scowled at my approach, but many more sat lazily on low stone walls, trying to catch wisps of smoke from the pipes in their teeth. They laughed with each other, trading smiles and I could smell the dark weight of ale in the mugs they toasted with.

“I’ve never heard of the Werewood.” I lied.

“Sure you have. You’ve heard it all Spaceman. Old sailor stories and superstitions. Ever heard of Hungry Engines?”

“Everyone has. Engines gaining a mind of their own, eating the crew of Captains who mistreat their ships. Ends up flying itself, powered on the souls of the damned. What has that got to do with anything?”

“Ever been a bad captain?”

“I was young once.”

“And the engines?”

“Not even a bite.”

“So now you know it’s only a story, right?”

“Right.”

She laughed again. Familiar and shrill.

“Good for you.”

“Who are all these people?”

“Travellers. Pilgrims. Lumbermen. Colonists after a fashion.”

“Did they get here like me?”

“How did you get here?” She asked, turning to look at me, her hair a cacophony of smacking stones.

“You tell me.”

“I can’t tell you where you’ve been, silly.”

“Only where I’m going.”

“The Werewood.”

“The Werewood.”

There was an endless expanse to the east. Like a desert, arid and perpetual. Dust’s lonely home. We waited there, on the border of Threshold and nowhere, and waited. Perhaps time on this planet was like a dream, or maybe the axis spun strangely to my earthbound eyes, but the moon rose in an instant and we saw it.

Pale, shimmering branches. The moonlight passing through the boughs like a cat’s ear in the sun. It glowed white like cartilage. Sprouting from thousands upon thousands of lunar patient seeds, a forest grew. The leaves clear like glass and gauze, the bark smooth like the curve of a moon. I saw it all burst into life and I wept as I remembered the words.

‘Take care under eaves that moonlight sent,

Walk over places never crossed

Be wary of sunlight’s ascent

Least you be forever lost’

A child’s rhyme told on the edge of a hospital bed. My promises of all the woodlands yet to explore. The laser-sharp axe I would have gifted you, a hand-me-down legacy of felling forests. I would have taught you to make the very roots sing under your hands, my daughter. Only if you had stayed with me a little longer, I would have taken you to the Werewood.

We walked together, under the shadowless canopy. Somewhere, deeper still in the forest, our hands found each other. Her fingers intertwined with mine, making knots like the gnarled trees around us. Miles across in every direction, the curve of their trunks disappearing far into the distance.

“Tell me your name.” I said.

She broke away from me and danced over the roots that laid close together, conspiratorially, as if to trade gossip.

“Maybe I am the furrows under the earth. The blades of grass that stand to attention with the morning dew. The sound of the wind as it breaks against a forest.”

I felt it then. Impossibly light, like a lover’s caress, the feeling of a breeze on my lips and my lungs greedily straining for more.

“Those aren’t names.” I mumbled as I placed a hand on my chest, felt the imperceptible and defiant beat of my heart.

“Why don’t you name me yourself.” She said, the first reproachful signs of anger in her voice.

“Your name is hypoxia. Your name is gasping and wheezing and then nothing at all. You’re the coffin of a lonely captain who was once a father.” Every word a labour, every step a trial.

“You’re rude.” She finally said. “I don’t like you anymore.”

“That’s okay,” I mumbled, falling to my knees. “I don’t like myself sometimes.”

She stood with her back to me, arms crossed, and I saw her shoulder blades like bird’s wings rise and fall.

“I thought you’d be different.” She said. “No one wants to come here with me anymore. They’d rather stay behind. Build houses and plant crops and drink and smoke and eat and sleep and all the other things colonists do. But you? You didn’t even need convincing.”

“I’m a lumberman. I made a living in places like this.”

“You won’t be doing much of that anymore.” She replied.

I sat down, my head heavy and drooping like a wilting flower.

“I suppose you’ll want me to take you back to the colony now.” She said, eyes to the distance where something gold stirred. I imagined the lavender wheat burnished with sunshine. As it should be.

“No.” I finally managed to say.

She looked at me, her pale face a picture of surprise.

“You’ll stay then? There’s so much of the wood left to explore. So much to see.”

“No.” I said again.

“Then what? I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Maybe I could meet you again,” I said, “a long time from now. Maybe I could tell more stories. How to quiet a hungry engine. How to speak with the stars. Where to go if you want to find the Werewood.”

She scrunched her nose, thoughtful for a moment.

“And you promise you’ll come back?”

“I p r o m i s e.”

“And you’ll come into the wood with me again?”

“A l l t h e w a y t o t h e h e a r t o f i t.”

“You promise?”

“I p r o m i s e.”

The sun rose and the trees shone brighter and brighter still until even my own shadow was gone, and the rest of the strange world with it.

I woke to the sounds of a mewling ship, it’s digital chorus laden with trepidation. Screens with electric grins. Strange maps of foreign stars flickering to and fro. No planets. No ships. I opened my hand and saw her gift. Tiny, almond shaped pieces of glass. A dozen or so. No, not glass. Seeds. I stood on shaky legs and stumbled to the garden. Bad soil. Cheap and deadly. I place each one in a shallow mound, reverently cupping both hands over the soil and wishing beyond wishing that it would be a long time until I saw my daughter again.

“Computer,” I said, still wheezing “Set a course for the nearest moon.”