Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest (3 page)

Almon wrote in his notebook that without any living creatures, even the clearest summer nights sometimes seemed overlaid with a murky fog, a fog that descended on everything and almost buried the village, the heart, and the forest under it. Summer-night-haze, Almon the Fisherman wrote in his notebook, not spongy and soft like winter-frost-vapor, but dusty, dirty, and depressing.

Since that night when Nehi the Demon took away all the creatures, pulling them along behind him to a hiding place on the mountain, the villagers lived and cultivated their orchards in silence and fear. Without a single pet, without a single farm animal. Alone. Only the river still passed through the village, rolling pebbles, broken branches, clumps of mud, in the foam of its flow. Day and night, winter and summer, that river never rested.

Sometimes brave woodcutters and also Danir the Roofer and his young friends would venture out to the edge of the forest, but even they didn't dare to go into the forest alone, only in groups of three or four, and always in daylight.

Never, never ever under any circumstance, parents told their children, never ever ever go out of the house after nightfall. If a child asked why, his parents would glower and say, Because the night is very dangerous. Darkness is a cruel enemy.

But every child knew.

Sometimes, at dawn, the woodcutters could see broken branches and trampled grass, and they would look at each other and shake their heads without saying a word. They knew that after nightfall, Nehi the Mountain Demon comes down from his high mountain castle and wanders in the forests that surround the village, and at midnight his shadow glides along the river, and he touches orchard fences with his fingers, passes soundlessly among the shuttered houses, through the dark yards, sails among the abandoned stables and deserted cow barns. The grass he steps on and the leaves he brushes against tremble with the whoosh of his black cloak, and only near dawn is he swallowed up in the depths of the forest, slipping away into the tangle of trees in the dark, gliding silently among the valleys, caves, and clefts, returning to his castle of horrors somewhere in the high mountains no man has ever dared to approach.

Look, the woodcutters would whisper to each other early in the morning. Look, he was right here just last night. Only five or six hours ago he passed through here without a sound, right here, where we're standing. The thought made chills run down their spines.

One, night Matti decided to keep the promise he'd made to Maya. But he didn't have the courage to get dressed, sneak outside, and walk to the small grove near the ruins. Instead, Matti waited patiently until his parents and sisters were asleep, got out of bed, and slipped barefoot to the kitchen window that looked diagonally out on to the grove, and stood there, awake and sharp-eyed, till morning. He was able to count the silhouettes of nine trees at the foot of the ruined house. There were nine trees all night, and when the sun began to rise, there were still nine, so Matti decided that Maya must have been so frightened or jumpy that she had made a mistake. Or maybe she just fell asleep and had a dream.

But in class the next day, when he told her in a whisper, Maya said, Come on, Matti, let's go after school and count how many trees are really there. And they went to the slope where the ruins were and counted carefully, touching each and every tree and saying its number out loud, and there were only eight, not nine.

In class, on either side of the blackboard, between the windows, and over the bookcase, Emanuella the Teacher had hung warning signs in black and red:
THE FOREST IS DANGEROUS. BEWARE OF THE MOUNTAINS. EVERY BUSH COULD BE PLOTTING TO TRAP YOU. EVERY ROCK MIGHT BE HIDING SOMETHING THAT IS NOT A ROCK BEHIND IT. A CHILD WHO WANDERS DOWN TO THE VALLEYS ALONE MIGHT NEVER COME BACK, OR HE MIGHT HAVE WHOOPITIS IF HE DOES. THE DARKNESS HATES US. THE OUTDOORS IS FILLED WITH DANGERS.

From the depth of the woods, from the heart of the thick pine forests that completely surrounded the village, a hushed wind of darkness blew from morning till night. Even in the summer months, a dark wind shadow seeped into the village from the forests. And the river, frothing, bubbling, wound through the yards and rushed into the valley, white foam on its banks, as if racing as fast as it could to get far away, yet lingering there for a moment to curse the whole village.

Maya and Matti were the only children in the village to feel the pull of the dark woods. It was actually because of all the warnings and silence and fear that they were so drawn to the forest, and imagination tempted them to try to find out what was hidden in its depths. Matti also had an unfinished plan he told Maya about because he knew that Maya was braver than he. But it wasn't only the plan and the desire to go into the forest that they shared; they also had a deep dark secret they told no one, not their parents, not Emanuella the Teacher, not Matti's older sisters, not Almon or Danir the Roofer, not their friends at school. Only when there were no other ears around to hear did Maya and Matti whisper together and nurture their secret, the secret that belonged only to them. Often, Matti and Maya would meet on the sly in the afternoon in an abandoned, dilapidated old stable in Matti's backyard, out of earshot of his parents and sisters, and whisper their secret.

The village children, including Matti's older sisters, noticed those two whispering to each other, and immediately decided that Maya and Matti must be in love, perhaps even "a couple." And if they were "a couple," then it was surely fair, even expected, to gossip about them a little, even to make fun of them and tease them a bit. After all, everywhere, a boy and a girl who want to be alone together from time to time, instead of always being with their friends, are always considered a couple. And couples always stir up envy. And envy hurts and swells and begins to secrete ridicule, almost the way a dirty sore leaks pus.

That wasn't how Matti and Maya saw themselves: they didn't consider themselves a couple at all, just the only ones who shared the secret. They never held hands or looked deeply into each other's eyes or exchanged private smiles, and they certainly never kissed, though both had tried to imagine, two or three times, how a kiss would feel and maybe how to make it happen.

But they never spoke about those imaginings. Not a single word. What joined Maya and Matti wasn't love, but a secret only they could ever know.

It was their secret and the way they were teased that made Maya and Matti feel so close and alone, because if others found out their secret, they would laugh at them a lot more and taunt and tease them twice as much. After all, anyone who refuses to be like the rest of us must have whoopitis or hootosis or whatever, and he shouldn't dare get close to us; he should keep his distance, please, so as not to infect us too. Some also ridiculed Almon the Fisherman for his thought notebook, for his habit of standing at the far end of the yard every morning and evening, whistling to a dog that had most likely died years before, and for the completely unnecessary scarecrow he'd put up in the vegetable beds in his garden. They especially liked to make fun, behind his back, of the long arguments he sometimes had with himself or his scarecrow. Often, the former fisherman would argue even with the river, the moon, the passing clouds in the sky. In the village, they had a good laugh at the emotional reconciliations that took place after every argument between Almon and the scarecrow or Almon and the wall and the bench.

The villagers also took great pleasure in mocking Lilia the Widowed Baker, Maya's mother, and they even made a circular motion with their finger near their forehead in her honor—come look see, here she is again, that peculiar woman who crumbles the loaves of bread she hasn't managed to sell during the day and throws the crumbs into the river or scatters them among the trees. Maybe by a miracle, a stray fish might suddenly pass through our village or a lost bird might accidentally be swept into our sky.

True, some of those who were used to making fun of Lilia's crumbs would sometimes linger for a moment or two at the foot of the trees or the bank of the river, stand there, and wait: Maybe just once? Despite everything? Why not? But a moment later they would rouse themselves as if someone had suddenly clapped near their ear. And they would shrug and walk away, slightly embarrassed.

But the whole village had no qualms about ridiculing, openly and with ugly laughter, poor penniless Solina the Seamstress and her invalid husband, Ginome, whose memory was gone and body so shrunken that he had become a baby as small as a pillow, who bleated in a thin voice like a lost lamb. Every evening, Solina, his wife, wrapped him in diapers, covered him with two wool blankets, and took him in a pram for a long walk through the streets of the village all the way to the banks of the river, whose angry roar made Ginome bleat in a sharp, despairing voice, as if all were already lost.

And this was the secret: Once, Matti and Maya were walking barefoot along the river to collect round, polished pebbles that Matti's mother used to make the small pieces of jewelry she sold. In one of the bends of the river, in a hidden place, some water had drained into a cranny, creating a sort of shaded pool concealed in a block of gray rock, a very small pool, almost as small as the space between the legs of a chair. A tangle of water plants hid the bottom of the pool. Those water plants scattered the sun reflected there, as if it were shattered into slivers in the water: a host of shimmering, bright gold sparkles were ignited in the pool.

And suddenly, between the water plants and the sides of the rock, it can't be, darting, dazzling, flickering, glistening, wriggling, but how could it be, glittering like a knife in the water, shimmering live-silver scales dancing, was a fish, look, a fish, but how could it be a fish? It can't be a fish, are you really really sure, Maya, that you saw a fish here too? Really? Because, I, listen, I am absolutely, positively sure that, even though it's completely impossible, it's a fish. A fish, Maya, a fish, a live fish, you and I, we both just saw a fish here, and we didn't just think we saw it, we could see clearly that it was definitely a fish.

A fish and not just a leaf, a fish and not a sliver of metal, a fish, I'm telling you, Matti, a real live fish, a fish without a shadow of a doubt, a fish, I saw it, and so did you, it was a fish, a whole fish, and nothing but a fish.

It was a small fish, a tiny fish, half a finger long, and it had silver scales and delicate, lacy fins and pulsating, transparent gills. Its round, wide-open fish eyes had looked at them both for a moment, as if it were saying to Maya and Matti that all of us, all the living creatures on this planet, people and animals, birds, insects, reptiles and fish, we're all actually very much alike, despite the many differences between us: Almost all of us have eyes with which to see shapes and movement and colors, or at least feel the shifting light and darkness through our skin, and almost all of us hear sounds and echoes of sounds. And we all constantly absorb and classify smells, tastes, and sensations.

And more: All of us, without exception, are sometimes frightened, even terrified, and we're all sometimes tired or hungry, and each of us is attracted to certain things and repelled by other things we think are disgusting. And all of us, without exception, are very vulnerable. All of us, people-insects-birds-fish, all of us go to sleep and wake up, go to sleep again and wake up again, all of us try hard to be comfortable, not too hot and not too cold, all of us, without exception, try most of the time to take good care of ourselves and keep away from things that cut or bite or prick. And all of us, bird and worm, cat and child and wolf, every one of us tries most of the time to avoid pain and danger as best we can, and yet we put ourselves in danger every time we go out to seek food or fun, even adventures, thrills, power, or pleasure.

So much so, Maya said after turning this thought around in her mind a bit, so much so that we can actually say that all of us, without exception, are in the same boat: Not only all the children, not only the whole village, not only all people, but all living things. All of us. But I'm still not sure what the right answer is to this question: are plants in some way our distant relatives?

So anyone who mocks or hurts another passenger, Matti said, is actually being stupid and hurting the whole boat. After all, no one here has another boat.

A moment later, or perhaps in less than a moment, the small fish twisted its body, spread the fan of its slender fins widely, and plunged into the dark water, down to the river plants.

That was the only animal Maya and Matti had ever seen in their lives. Except for some drawings of cows-horses-dogs-birds on the pages of books or on the walls of Emanuella the Teacher's classroom, and the small carvings Almon the Fisherman made and gave to the village children.

Maya and Matti knew it was a fish because they had seen fish in picture books. And they knew without a doubt that it was a live fish and not a drawing because no creature drawn in those picture books could move its muscles, twist and turn, and slip away from them so quickly, dive so suddenly to a deep, invisible place among the shadows of the water plants.

That was the first living creature seen in the village for many years, since that horrible night when Nehi the Mountain Demon gathered a long procession of animals, from horse to dove, from mouse to sheep to bull, and led them out of the village forever. Some of the parents, without any warning, would suddenly be flooded by a wave of longing or sorrow and begin to imitate animal sounds for their children: the chirping of a bird and the lowing of a cow, the howling of a wolf in the forest, the cooing of a dove and buzzing of a bee and the flapping of a river goose's wings and the croaking of a frog and the whoop of an owl. But a moment later, those parents denied that they were sad, pretended that, in fact, they only meant to entertain their children a bit, nothing more, and insisted that none of those sounds were part of the real world but existed only in fairy tales and legends.

The twists and turns of the villagers' memories were strange: The things they tried very hard to remember sometimes eluded them and hid deep under the blanket of forgetfulness. And the things they decided they'd be much better off forgetting were the ones that would rise out of the forgetfulness as if to deliberately upset them. There were times when they remembered the smallest detail of what had almost never been. Or they remembered what had been and no longer existed, remembered it with pain and longing, but their shame or sorrow was so great that they would decide firmly that it had all been a dream. And they would say to their children: It's just a fairy tale.