In the Mythic Wood
The forest had surrounded us at last, the birdsong ceased when night crept down from the evergreens on its secret paws. The breadcrumbs went before we had even noticed, and then there was nothing to eat, just the quiet of trees rustling ever closer. The forest had surrounded us at last, its fearsome roots thrusting gnarled and grasping through the earth, fat firkins falling down, peppering the ways where there had once been a path. We felt the gall of oaks at our trespass, the harsh whisper of birches gossiping on our trail. The forest had surrounded us at last, preventing passages to nearby candy cottages and unused dwarf mines, pressing further in, creeping close in its need to pinch our elbows and knees with its own dark-spindled fingers. The forest had surrounded us, swallowed all our future days, the bright boats of the sun, the sails of the moon. Nothing left but to muddle forever in our cloaks on a hummock or an old stump, until we too rooted and groaned in the relentless drizzle, spreading toes bursting through shoes into the earth; hair, nails growing green and greener, burrowing like fierce badgers through the loam, becoming, leafing into the unknown, terrible (beloved) wood. —Sandra Kasturi. Abyss & Apex, a magazine of Speculative Fiction. 30 June 2012.
