Female Reader / Billy Butcher
Billy, from a family cursed by an ancient forest, has been preparing since childhood for a deadly hunt for a mythical doe with golden horns in order to remove the curse from his family. Entering the thicket, he encounters not just a monster, but the living soul of the forest, which makes him doubt everything his fathers taught him.
Warnings: Cruelty and violence, Hunting scenes, killing of a living being, Psychological pressure, Atmosphere of paranoia, obsessive repetition of fear, loss of identity and memory, feeling of hopelessness, Bodily changes, Death and loss, curse, lack of a happy ending.
English is not my first language
His first gun weighed more than he did. Billy was seven years old when his father put him on his knees in the snow and said:
«The forest is evil. It breathes. It waits. It wants you to forget the way home. Your job is not to let it win.»
His father said this every morning. His grandfather said this every night. His great-grandfather, whose portrait hung above the fireplace, looked at Billy with glassy eyes and also silently said this. In their family, there were no men who died in their beds. They all went into the forest. They all returned to the earth, but not to the human one – to the one that smelled of moss and decay.
Billy learned to shoot before he learned to read. His fingers remembered the cold of steel better than the warmth of his mother's hand. He knew: when his turn came, he would have to enter the forest. Not to survive. But to bring back a trophy – the golden horn of the doe that had cursed his family many centuries ago. Only then would the curse be lifted. Only then could his son live not in the shadow of the forest, but in the sun. That was how he got the scar on his forehead and yet another lecture about gun safety.
"The forest is evil," his father repeated, adjusting the sight on Billy's rifle when he turned ten. "It beckons. It whispers. It promises you what you don't have. But if you enter, it won't give it back. It will only take."
«What does it take?» Billy asked once, when they were sitting by the fire, and the flame traced long, flickering shadows across his father's face.
«Memory,» his father answered. «First you forget your children's names. Then you forget your own name. And then you forget that you are human at all.»
And he showed Billy his palm. On it, right at the cuticle, a thin bark was already beginning to show. Dry, hard, unyielding. His father laughed then – dryly, like the crackling of branches.
«I can already feel the wind blowing through me,» he said. «You have to finish this, son. Finish it for all of us.»
His entire childhood was preparation for one shot.
The forest greeted him with a silence that was louder than any scream.
Billy crossed the border at dawn, where the last trees of the village parted, giving way to the first trunks covered in silvery moss. His father said: «Never go in without an iron rim on your gun. The forest does not like iron, but it fears it.» Billy carried a double-barreled shotgun.
On the fifth, he turned around, but the village was already gone. In its place stood a wall of fog – dense, milky, smelling of rotten bark and something sweet, like overripe berries. The skin on the back of his neck tightened, as if the forest had touched him with invisible fingers. For the first few hours, he walked along animal trails. The trunks were too straight, too smooth, as if someone's hands had rubbed them. The bark on them gleamed like old skin, and in the crevices Billy noticed eye sockets – empty, but aimed at him. His father had walked the same path twenty years ago. And his grandfather. And his great-grandfather, whose name no one remembered anymore, because the curse ate not only bodies but also memory. Billy carried three bullets on his belt – and only one for himself. The barrel of the gun felt hot even in that icy air. But hotter still was the aching emptiness under his ribs – the place where fear used to live. He thought only of the golden horn, which, once broken, would make the curse disappear forever.
He kept his finger on the trigger.
In the second hour, he heard footsteps. Not animal ones – human ones. Soft, with a hint of moisture.
He stopped. The footsteps stopped.
«Who is there?» he asked, and the gun trembled in his hands.
There was no answer. Only the wind stirred the leaves, and a drop fell from an upper branch. It landed on his shoulder. It was warm, like blood.
In the third hour, he noticed that the trees were changing shape. Their branches reached for him not like branches, but like arms – too long fingers, bent at the elbows. Beneath the bark, faces were emerging. Not clear ones, but blurred – like fingerprints on wet clay. Billy could hear them breathing. The forest breathed deeply, slowly, like a sleeping beast.
"The forest consumes everyone who enters it," they said in the village. The old men crossed themselves when Billy walked past. The old women hid their eyes. He was already dead to them. And he almost believed it himself.
Billy looked ahead. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the faces slowly open its mouth – silently, wide, like a fish thrown onto the shore.
Gold flashed between the grey trunks, like a sunbeam in a broken mirror. Billy fired without thinking – pure muscle memory, honed over years to automatism. The bullet embedded itself in the bark of an old oak, a couple of inches from where the doe's head had just been. The fur flared up and vanished. He rushed after it, tearing his face on branches, scratching his hands on bark, feeling the forest move around him. The trees changed places. The trails closed up with moss behind him. But he ran. Because whoever stops in this forest ceases to be human. On the third night, he came across an old hut. Inside it smelled of dry herbs and decay. On the walls hung guns – old, rusted, with names he had memorized as a child. They had all made it to this hut. They had all sat here and waited. And none of them had come out.
Billy lit a fire, staring at the red embers. He saw his fingers beginning to grow a thin bark at the very cuticle, where the nails meet the skin. Wood. The first sign. He scraped it off with his nail, and under the bark was fresh pink skin, but it was moist, like a plant's. The forest was beginning to dissolve him. The forest was digesting him alive.
He lay on his back, looking up at the canopy, feeling his lungs fill with something viscous, like resin. And then, suddenly, gold. She stood right in front of the hut, at shooting distance. Her antlers – thin, delicate, like lace – shimmered as if molten metal burned inside them.
«You came to kill me,» she said, and her voice sounded not in his ears, but in his chest. Like a second heart. Like an echo in an empty well.
Billy laughed hoarsely. The laugh came out dry, like an autumn leaf.
She stepped closer. And he noticed that her legs, graceful as branches, left not tracks on the moss, but flowers. Small, white, with cold centres. They bloomed behind her and died within a minute, leaving a faint scent of bitterness.
«You are not the first,» she said, kneeling beside him. He looked at her, and for the first time in many years, he did not see prey. He saw something that wanted to die. That longed for it the way a traveller longs for water. She wanted him to kill her. Not because she hated life – but because she was tired of being the only one.
«The forest is eating you,» she said, touching his temple. «In two days, you will stop remembering your name. You will become an oak. In three days, the wind. And in four, you will be gone altogether. Only roots. Only rustling.»
She stood up and stepped back. Her antlers gleamed in the morning light, and he noticed that one of them was chipped at the tip. As if someone had already tried to saw it off. As if someone had almost succeeded.
«You want to save your village. And your people. So I will tell you the truth. The golden horn does not belong to me. I am merely the keeper. The horn is the forest. Break it – the forest dies. And everyone inside dies too. I die too. But if you kill me – not the horn, but me – then the curse will be lifted. Only that way. Your bullet must not hit the horn. It must hit the heart.»
Billy looked at her, and his hand gripped the gun. She smiled. Her smile was warm, alive – too alive for a creature that was supposed to be a myth. Time in the forest flowed differently – it did not pass, it crept, like resin down bark. She told him about the forest. About how the trees remember every step, every word, every tear. About how she became the soul of this place not by her own will, but because someone had cursed her many centuries ago. And now she could not die. Could not leave. Only wait until the true hunter came.
She spoke, and Billy looked at her hands, with fingers that ended in a faint golden glow. She touched his shoulder, and where her fingers met his skin, the pain receded. The bark on his hands became softer. His breathing deepened.
«We could be together. Here. In the forest. You would not become a tree. You would be… mine. And I would be yours. The forest would stop eating you, if I asked.»
Billy was silent. In his chest beat one heart – duty to his father. She looked at him with such hope that he wanted to close his eyes. She was beautiful with that special beauty that does not appear in people's dreams, but comes to them just before death. Her eyes were like lakes, deep, reflecting all the stars that had never been lit above this forest. He gripped the gun tighter, and the cold steel burned his palm, pulling him back to reality.
«The forest is evil,» he heard his father's voice. Clear, hard, like a gunstock. «It beckons. It whispers. It promises you what you don't have. But if you enter, it won't give it back. It will only take.»
She is the forest. She promises him love. She promises him life. But his father warned him. His grandfather warned him. His great-grandfather was silent, but his glassy eyes in the portrait also warned him.
«You are lying,» said Billy, and his voice wavered. The forest cannot love. The forest only takes.
She recoiled. The pain in her eyes was real – too real to be an act.
«You said I had to kill you,» he said, raising the gun. «You said the bullet had to hit the heart. You are deceiving me. You want me to stay. You want me to forget who I am. But I remember. I remember everything.»
«I am not deceiving you. If I leave, the forest will remain alive. It will breathe. It will wait for the next one. Only the horn… if you break the horn, everything will end.»
Billy looked at her antlers. Golden. Warm. Radiating light. And in them swirled the same longing as in her eyes. He believed her. He believed every cell of her, every breath. But his father's voice was louder.
She fell asleep at his shoulder at dawn. Exhaustion had broken her – she had waited too long, been alone too long. Her breathing became steady, the golden light on her antlers dimmed, becoming like ordinary gold – dead, cold, lifeless.
Billy looked at her. At her face, relaxed in sleep. At her hands, which had touched him so tenderly. At her lips, which had whispered his name.
He raised the gun. And lowered it. He raised his hand to her head, running it through her shining hair to the patterned antlers, thinner than his little finger, and so beautiful. She opened her eyes the moment his fingers touched the gold. Her gaze held not pain, not terror – only quiet, infinite sadness. She did not cry out. She did not try to stop him.
Crack. The golden horn split like a dry branch. Light burst from it – blinding, white, searing – and died. At that same moment, the ground beneath Billy's feet shuddered. The forest groaned. The trees began to die. Not fall – simply wither. Leaves curled into tubes, blackened, fell off. Bark cracked, revealing dry, dead wood. Moss turned grey, turning to dust. Grass wilted, breaking like old bones.
And she – the doe, the soul of the forest – was melting before his eyes. Gold flowed out of her like water from a broken jug. Her body became transparent, like morning mist. Her eyes were still open, and there was no reproach in them. «They killed me seven times,» she smiled weakly. «Each time I was born again. But now… I will not return.»
She touched his cheek. Her fingers were almost weightless now.
«You won, hunter,» she whispered. «You destroyed the evil. I hope it was worth it.»
She vanished. Simply dissolved into the air, leaving behind only the smell of wet leaves and the broken golden horn in Billy's hands.
The forest died hard – with a wheeze, with a crack, with the smell of rot and ash.
Billy looked at the horn in his hands. It was broken. The curse was lifted. He was free.
But freedom smelled of death.
He walked back for three days. The forest no longer moved, no longer whispered, no longer beckoned. It was dead. Dry trunks stood like burnt matches. The silence was so deep that his ears rang. No birds, no animals, no wind.
On the fourth day, he reached the border. Where the wall of fog had once stood, there was now emptiness. Dead land stretched to the horizon, and in the centre of that emptiness stood a lone willow.
Billy walked closer and saw that at the very base, among the roots, something golden was hidden. A small, broken horn. Just like the one he carried in his hand.
He knelt and touched the ground. It was dry as ash. No moisture. No life. The willow stood, and in its branches Billy heard a whisper – not in any language he knew, but something natural, something that flew in and scattered the morning dew with the dawn. Billy raised his eyes to the sky. It was grey, empty, without sun. Butcher looked at his hands. The bark on them was gone. He was human again.
His name was carved on a stone in the centre of the square. They gave him land, built him a house, found him a bride – quiet, rosy-cheeked, smelling of bread. He married. A son was born to him. Everything was as it should be.
But every night he dreamed of gold. He dreamed of her – the doe with human eyes. She stood in the centre of the dead forest, by that willow, and looked at him without pain, without reproach. Only with sadness.
The forest beyond the village border no longer gave berries. At first, the old women wondered why the raspberries did not ripen and the blueberries fell off green. The mushrooms, which used to sprout from the ground like soldiers after rain, no longer appeared. Then they fell silent. Hunters returned empty-handed – no hare, no boar, no bird. Game had vanished, as if it had never been there. Traps stood empty for weeks, and rust appeared on them faster than usual, as if the earth itself was turning away from metal.
Now there was emptiness there. A grey, dead field that stretched to the very edge of the sky, and in the centre of that field stood a lone willow, like the last candle in a dark church. It had not died. It was the only living thing in all that emptiness, and its green seemed so bright, so wrong against the grey, lifeless earth. Its trunk was thick, twisted, covered in cracks, but from those cracks no resin flowed – from them came a faint golden light. It pulsed, like a slow heartbeat. The wind stirred the willow's branches, and its leaves rustled thinly, high, almost painfully. They were golden. Not yellow – real golden, shimmering like molten metal, like scales, like fire.
He reached out and touched one of them. The leaf was soft, almost velvety, but when his fingers squeezed it, it did not break. It simply grew warm, like a coin held too long in a fist.
They left the next day. Billy loaded a cart – dry bread, a sack of flour, warm clothes, a cradle for his son.
A month later, they reached a new place – a town by the river, where the earth still remembered moisture.
Billy did not return. He no longer slept peacefully. He knew: the willow was waiting. It would wait forever, because gold does not die. It simply waits for someone to touch it again.
And one day, when his son grows up and asks:
«Father, what is a forest?»
«The forest is evil. It breathes. It waits. It wants you to forget the way home.»
