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Delicately, he took her into his arms. She fell into him, even as the wind whipped painfully at them both, and for a moment they were the one still point in the storm.
“When there’s nothing you can do,” he said into her ear, “you can still fight.”
Pulling out of her embrace, he took up his axe, its blade glinting in the eye of an owl high above. If he couldn’t protect the ones he loved, he decided, he could at least make his best attempt.
Realizing what he meant to do, Shallah called after him in mad haste, though she knew her words would be blotted out by the gale. “No, Petyr!” she cried. “Don’t attack them. The oaks will trick you. Drop your axe, now!” Knowing the swiftness of the delusion, she switched her tact, hoping against hope he might still hear her. “Don’t believe your eyes,” she wailed. “Close them now. Only blindness will save you. Close your eyes to them. Close your eyes!”
But she was too late. Even as she spoke Petyr’s eyes were widening in shock as he saw his daughter prance out of the trees and wave at him.
“Emelota!” he shouted, as the child skipped off into the forest. “Emie, come back!”
Dropping his axe in the brush, he chased after her without a backward glance. Within moments was lost in the deeper shade of the wood.
As Raulf continued to weep beside her, Shallah beat her fists against her own head in a violent fury. If only she’d told him a moment earlier, he’d have fought it back! She’d no one else to turn to now, no one else would come.
She was alone.
She stood heaving for a moment. Something was welling within her, she felt it climbing up through her feeble body, clinging to her ribcage, her lungs, her heart. It swelled inside her, gorging itself on every desperate feeling she’d felt that day, on her helplessness, on her despair. It lashed through her throat, its brimming, burning being nearly choking her.
She was at the crossroads again, only this time she’d no uncertainty about which road she would take.
“
I hate you!
” she shrieked at the oaks, her teeth barred. “You wicked, vile creatures; you filth; you abominations. You who thrive on the suffering of others; you who slaughter without remorse. You sicken me to depths of my very soul!” Furious tears fell down her cheeks as she faced the wall of her enemy, her chin raised. “You’ll never win. You’ll never have me. My blind eyes will show me the truth. I will stay to witness your massacre. I will stay to witness your
evil
. You might have led them all astray, but I’m still here. Do you hear me? I’m still here!”
The wolves began to whimper. They broke their ring abruptly, backing away from the oaks. Shallah felt a sudden warmth against her cheeks. The line of trees was burning red and the moaning became more frantic, more like chanting. The sound brought her back to a time she’d blocked out, for it had been too painful to think about. Images from her past rose before her.
It was days after she’d lost her sight as a child. Shallah awoke to a cold hearth, the bandages tied across her eyes. At first she couldn’t place what had awoken her so early. Then, from across the room, she heard a sound that brought a chill to her heart. She crossed the floor on tiptoe, a blanket about her shoulders.
Her father was crying. He’d been crying a great deal since her injury, but this cry was different. This cry was so despairing it made her knees weak. She approached the bench where her father sat with his back to her. She reached forward but couldn’t find him in her new darkened world. He continued to weep.
“Father,” she whispered, “don’t!”
His breath catching in his throat, Shallah’s father turned about to find her standing not a foot away from him. As he rose and took her back to her pallet, he tried to behave normally, but Shallah couldn’t be fooled. For as he’d turned to her, she’d heard the slight tap of the knife blade against the tabletop, and as he held her hand she felt the sweat on his palm.
They’d never spoken of it, but all her life she remembered the cry that had pulled her out of sleep. She recognized it now.
It was the cry of a self-inflicted death.
The boy will be the weapon that destroys us all
.
I had it wrong all along, she realized. They never meant to kill us.
The wolves cowered as the oaks burned so brightly they became translucent. The chanting lowered to a murmur. At the center of each melded trunk, a dark beating mass could be seen, thumping wildly. The cage that held Liam burned as well, and from its core emanated a brilliant white light, its rays sprouting through the woven branches. The wind pounded against the wall of oaks, spinning loose bracken and twigs through the air, whirling with greater and greater speed.
“They mean to kill themselves,” Shallah said.
The prophecy would now be fulfilled.
Blindness is a strange thing. At that moment, Shallah’s blindness withheld from her a sight she would otherwise have remembered all her life. Petyr stepped out of the trees as Liam’s cocoon began to glow, mesmerized by the spectacle before him. Raulf looked up from his grief, so stunning was the sight. But Shallah was bereft. She saw nothing of this final encounter. She alone was able to focus her mind elsewhere, to break through the noise, through the storm, through her blindness, to sense a little boy sitting high up in a tree taking a deep breath and readying to cry out.
“Liam, don’t!” she yelled.
Too late. Even if he’d tried, the boy wouldn’t have been able to stop his own scream. It came pouring out of his mouth, piercing as a knife, as the drumming in his chest reached a fever pitch.
There was no resisting it.
In his eyes, all this had already come to pass.
This time, the frost rose along the trunks much more quickly. It covered the branches of the oak holding Liam in seconds and continued into the branches of the trunks on either side. In
this way, the frost passed down the line until every one of the trees was covered. Then the cracking began, loud as thunder.
Shallah bowed her head.
“It’s over,” she said.
The world as they’d known it was no more.
The Ferukai were an ancient breed. Long ago, when the wood was lush and the pleasures of natural life were many, they pledged to act in the best interest of their fellow trees, come what may. Hard as they later became, these sentinels of the wood held true to their ancestral promise. When the time came they did what they thought was best for their kinsmen. For, in the eyes of the Ferukai, the forest’s approaching demise was a tragedy that could not be borne. Here was their home, their brother trees still sleeping, here was their land withering to dust. They wouldn’t be left to stand sentinel over a barren land. They chose to end themselves while the lands were still green, the trees still standing, knowing full well that were they to perish, every trunk under their dominion would fall with them.
This was their last and only wish: to die at a time of their own choosing.
This was their last stand.
The explosion was heard for miles around.
Far out to sea, the sheer volume of the noise brought a whale careening to the surface, the destructive power of the blow reflected for a moment in its gigantic eye before it sank once more under the waves.
In the vast plains to the west, far beyond the reaches of the wood, cattle started and birds took flight, their dark wings contrasting the white of the sky.
To the north the sound echoed against the mountains, and in the south the ground shuddered violently, sending more than one doddling child running for home in a fright.
The race of the Ferukai was no more in an instant, only a layer of white powder remaining to tell of their fate. But it was the death of the forest that would live on in legend, the demise of the wood overtaking the sacrifice of its leaders until none could remember how the disaster came about, only that it had happened and the forest was no more.
The trunks toppled one on top of the other. Those closest to the blast fell first, their boughs hitting the ground with all the force of their surprise, their roots wrenching from the earth with a sound like the breaking of bones. The trees behind went next, then those behind them, and on and on, the destruction spreading like spilled water, until a booming could be heard from all directions. A thousand trunks fell at once, their bark cracking, their branches whipping through the air.
Deep in the heart of the forest, a maple trunk fell through the roof of an isolated home, crushing the byre nearby. Not far away, a redwood tree fell across a field of green grass, breaking a wooden trestle table in two. Moments later, a well, dry as a bone, fell to pieces under the weight of a multitude of branches that had once made up a canopy.
It was an eternity before quiet returned.
But return it did.
She looked like a ghost. Her hair, full of powder, hung over her shoulders in heavy lumps. Her cloak and skirts draped over her limbs in such a way that her body seemed to disappear under the blanket of white. Her skin was pale as death. Only her eyes held their colour. With them, she gazed over the scene before her, looking without seeing, holding her knees.
There was no movement anywhere. There were no voices, no screams, no calls for help. There was no sound at all. It was as though the world had been broken and their piece had gone spinning off on its own, away from all life, away from all they had known.
There was nothing out there, she was almost sure of it now. There was nothing left.
She heard a groan.
Petyr sat up with effort, the powder slipping from his skin as he massaged the back of his head. The cedars standing around him were thickly powdered themselves, their branches heavy as after a snowfall. He looked about blearily as he got to his feet, leaning back against a trunk, his expression changing from mild interest to confusion to utter disbelief as he beheld the sight in front of him.
The small clump of trees among which he stood were the only ones in sight left standing. On the incline before him every tree had fallen, their trunks amassed on the ground at his feet in an overwhelming heap. It was as though the hill had been washed clean. Petyr had never before seen such a stretch of open space, though soon enough he would see another. He hadn’t yet turned around.
“Shallah,” he gasped, reaching for her shoulder without taking his eyes from the bare hill. He got a hold of the sleeve of her cloak and pulled her to her feet. She gave no resistance.
“Shallah,” he repeated, his mouth dry, “what happened here?”
Shallah said nothing.
“Won’t you tell me?” he asked, darting looks at her for moments at a time, taking in her drawn countenance, her white oval face.
“Why do you ask me?” she said.
He’d never seen her so expressionless. He turned from the carnage before him and took her by the shoulders. “Didn’t you stay until the end?” he asked her seriously. “What
happened
?” She was limp in his hands.
“They died,” she replied, her eyes glazed. “We died.”
Releasing her from his grasp, Petyr gazed up at the hillside. He could see nothing of the forest beyond, for the hill rose too high. As he raised his head, he did notice that the trees lining the horizon above were no more.
“Did you find them, Petyr?” Shallah asked. “Did you find Trallee?”
He gave no answer. He took a few steps forward, emerging from the cluster of cedars, regarding the mass of haphazard boughs blocking his path. Just one of those trunks could pound a man flat.
“My children,” he whispered.
He heard a shout.
What can be known of a dying wood after it has died? What can be known of its will? Was it the forest that fostered the light Trallee followed? Was it the wood that led them into a clearing? Did it keep them there as their world fell apart around them? Did it keep them safe?
What can be known of a miracle?
Trallee awoke in a clearing.
They’d reached the spot late the night before, children heavy as rocks in their mother’s arms, fathers dragging their feet as they led their animals and guided their wagons. Collapsing to the ground, they stopped for a well-deserved rest, many falling so swiftly to sleep where they fell that they didn’t see what came next.
Joscelin Guerin was seated on his stool thinking of his son Raulf when the light went out. It happened so softly, so abruptly, that nobody still awake to see it knew how to react. Someone gave out a little “oh!” of surprise, but that was all. Jos wondered briefly where his daughters were before sliding to the ground, overcome with an irresistible sleepiness that took him through the night and well into the next day.
Jos was one of the lucky few who didn’t awaken when the moaning of the black oaks began. The old man slept blissfully on as his fellow villagers fell about him like flies, succumbing to the terrible cry with the ease of babes, for they’d never heard it before and couldn’t resist. Gemma Goss, her belly enormous, managed to stagger towards her husband, and fell into his lap, little Moira and the Fleete girls at his feet. Botulf Quigg collapsed with his legs and arms splayed seconds before his wife Maude clasped her head and fell directly on top of him. Toly and Mirabel Carberry, hand in hand, went down amid a mess of Blighton boys and girls in one of the wagons, Old Brice lying flat out amongst them. Rab Hale fell to his knees and landed flat on his face.
Jos slept through it all.
When he awoke, it was to a cloud of dust and a terrible racket that kept up for what seemed like forever. The villagers huddled together, coughing into their cloaks, as the air filled with dirt. They didn’t know what was happening.
It felt like the end of the world.
But the world came back.
When the dust began to settle, the villagers got shakily to their feet. Sabeline, Alys and Ilara rushed to Joscelin’s side and fussed over him like mother hens. Finding him perfectly well, Ilara stomped on his foot in anger, then began to cry.
Together, the family looked out upon the devastation at all sides.
The trees had come down around them, the sky was immense above their heads, and as far as the eye could see there was nothing but destruction. The forest was no more.