Path (Notevember 2023, #3)

My mother tells me you dwell only in dark, lost places. There are few of them left, now, with so much of the world explored. Lost is not enough – or else the ghost towns of dead industries and bombed-out villages abandoned in haste would make suitable abodes for you. Nor is darkness, on its own, an adequate quality. If it were, I would know countless hearts for you to cozy up in.

I stop to look around, and Dante’s famous opening lines are brought to mind. This is far enough, I think. Yes, this should do. But I am too familiar with these woods, so it will not work. I close my eyes and turn around, and start to walk backwards into the shadows under the trees.

I hit a tree trunk. I walk around it and keep going.

I stumble over a rock and fall into a shrub. I stand up, wipe myself off, and shuffle on.

Finally, my heels bump against something… I don’t know how to describe it. Soft, but without giving way. Liquid-like, but not wet.

My curiosity gets the better of me. As I turn around, I open my eyes for the first time since leaving the path.

I am here, and there you are. Neither of us speaks. I might have blurted out “I’ve found you!” like some child playing hide-and-seek. But I know the opposite to be true: it is you who have found me.

The quiet lingers. Your eyes – or what I take to be eyes – are not so much circles of light, as they appear to be holes in the dark. I resolve not to look away until you do. But this is not a staring contest. We are assessing one another. For my part, I am trying to figure out where you end and the forest begins. I doubt, however, that you are looking over my physical form. Instead, I feel your gaze inside me, somehow. It is unpleasant, but not invasive, strangely enough.

The stories say that hours, or even days, can pass like this, without the person realizing it. Some people fall asleep, exhausted, and find themselves back on the path, having gained nothing but a story and nightmares for life. Other starve on the spot, unable to draw themselves away. In certain versions, they simply fade, becoming a hollow nothing, drifting away on the forest breeze.

Not so for me. Time does not stretch, and the ticking of my wristwatch is clearly audible in the full silence. Two minutes, and no more, and then you give a brief sigh. It sounds oddly human, eerily similar to my own voice.

You sink a little closer to the ground, although how I know that, I cannot say. I do not see it, as such, but there is a definite perception of you becoming flatter, squatting contentedly. Your eyes drop an inch or two – but without breaking contact with mine.

This is the moment. I am not such a fool as to ask for a kindness. Imagine the shame I would bring my mother, grandmother, and ancestors all if – this one time when it matters the most – I would not heed the clearest of fairytale warnings. You are a creature of balance, so balance there must be.

I ask you to take the sickness away… and give it to someone else.

Then you are gone. There is no sudden flash of light, or cold wind gusting through the underbrush. There is only me, and the woods, and the same old path I have walked a thousand times before. So I step onto the flat stones, and I follow them down the mountain.

When I arrive back home, I start to cough, and I do not stop.