You awake to the call of birds.
Dawn, still yet to rise beyond the distant hills, holds the forest in a state of darkness as the din of frantic movement appears to become alive outside the walls of your shelter. Bows of ancient oak thrash at the sides of your home and you feel the tree below tilt leeward, the rustle of uncountable leaves shivering with concern that they may soon fall.
A bluster fills the air, wordlessly voicing an urge for you to move, calling for you to run.
You rise, gazing out from the overlook and across the swaying canopy. There is a strangled glow to the south. A muddy red light, fading into ochre. It stains the horizon as the drawing wind rushes lowly past, skittering across the canopy with fire burning at its tail.
Climbing down from the shelter, you feel the warmth spring up from the forest floor. Summer’s radiance clings to earth from the day before. In the tumult, you glance upward towards the moonless dark and can only see smoke casted as if it were cloud.
The foundation of your shelter seems so fragile in the swaying branches, a bedrock less certain than you recall. A darkness nips at its edges, a doubt that anything more than rubble would await your return when the sun finally passes over this ragged day.
Reaching up, you remove the bar of iron that you had so often used as a foothold to reach upward towards the branches of your home. Many days have gone that you would leave the iron in place, an innocuous piece of dull metal so blended into charcoal black of the scared tree. But today feels troubled. Something has disturbed the peace of the forest and you take the peg, its weathered surface feeling solid in your hand. The reliability of something used so frequently fills you with a moment of hope. A familiarity.
The forest is filled with new life, flickering shadows confuse the once familiar pathways as heavy clouds hide the sky so totally that even the brightest stars of winter can barely be seen through the burgeoning storm. A flash within a distant thunderhead illuminates the leaf covered forest floor as dead limbs one by one are heard to be thrown to the earth.
A movement, stark light catches upon the edges of your vision, and you fall to your side, driving your shoulder hard into the ground as you roll. Pain, a crash that follows; splintered wood explodes from the earth as you scramble up from the stricken ground, an ache already blooming from your shoulder. You tense into a crouch and breath a relived sigh. The branch had landed heavily; bark and fragments of old wood lay scattered through brush and you stare for a moment at the discarded branch, letting the adrenaline urging you still to run settle into some more focused.
Ash-grown embers now begin to patter about the clearing as if they were dying fireflies.
The dust needed little time to settle before it was stirred again, and you lift your uninjured arm to protect your eyes from the burning air.
A heat, hotter than the passing of a mayfire washes across the clearing. You see the dead ash, resurrected and beginning to smoulder.
Run, you cry to yourself, willing for the shock to wash away and for movement to once again to return to your feet.
Light grows, glowing fire and smoke fills the forest now, the sun still having yet to rise betrays how bright the world has suddenly become. You stumble at first and then steadily run, the pain in your shoulder turning into a dull ache as the determination to live becomes singular in purpose. Without warning a second branch drops from above but you see it falling, darting to the left, you find another path between the twisting canopy and search for a younger copse sheltered from the storm.
The wind, constant in its panic, tears roughshod through the forest, looking for escape, blind with fury and clawing at anything in effort to escape the flames.
You reach the falling river and see the gully as a shamble of fallen rubble and ash coloured water. This was once such a tranquil place, a place of safety when the storms were at their worst. You scrabble down the bank, dying moss forming good foothold as the gradual decent requires little thought with the urgency of your moment. Reaching the bank, a stirring in the water tumbles and rolls in frantic distress, the river king overcome by rage, attacks each wisp as if it were an intrusion. Ancient scales dulled by the ash-stricken water, the crocodile sees movement and lashes out from the river towards you, its wild eyes certain that you are responsible for the ruination of its kingdom.
Manically, the crocodile drives towards you, snapping its jaws in hope to catch leg or arm. You jump, thankfully finding purchase on the wet river stones and sprawl upward onto the other bank. The river king turns, chasing demons and thrashing at the cinders that now fall so presently and new. Knowing of the king’s fury you take flight once again, running up the opposite bank without regard for the uneven ground or the burning ash that stings against your skin as you run.
The opposite path is in view now, a knot of tangled roots and rocks that had so often been your route into the northern glades. The river seems lesser as you begin your ascent. The languid stream seems almost incapable of pushing the slit that rests on its surface as its crystal waters are now fowled into an opaque and fowl grey.
Regaining its sight, the river king desperately charges and never have you seen it move with such serpentine anger. Ancient muscles, unbreaking and powerful, push the primeval creature towards you. Jaws that seek only death, snarl and snap, a ticking roar bellows from the depths of its maddened fury.
Driving the iron spike into the ground as you climb, each movement sends a blaze of agony across your side as your shoulder reaches near the point of its exhaustion.
Mercifully, the incline lessens, and you force the spike into the base of a way stone that had once marked your path towards the river’s edge. The ground shifts easily as you drive the iron in once again, jumping down on the bar and forcing your bodyweight against the stone.
It moves, with a slow lurch, balancing upon the edge of the flat earth and hanging for a moment freely over the incline. Once more, you shove against the stone and agony wreaks havoc across you shoulder, coolness then rippling down into the bases of your fingertips as a feeling of deadness follows after.
The stone falls, tearing down the slope with impartiality. The river king charges, you turn, not wanting to watch on as a creature so old becomes undone by its madness.
The flames feel nearer now, spot fires sprout as if conjured by spirit and the forest feels to be lit as if by the noon’s brightest sun.
You run, stealing a glance at the approaching flames behind you; orange and yellow silk flowing easily like water through the trees, quickly consuming life into cinder as they move. knowing that nothing of nature could contain such fury, you feel your breath beginning to lessen as heavy gasps no longer fill your lungs as freely as they would in times of safety.
The world turns within the inferno. A vortex of flame and light, consuming life, consuming the ancient forest that you knew so plainly as your home.
With a burst, you find yourself clear of the tree line, open glades stretch outward beneath the grey, lightless sky. The air is clearer here and with failing strength you stumble over the uneven earth, clutching at your limp shoulder and coughing a dark bile onto the mud as you move.
The road sweeps west and you meet the dry dirt with exhaustion, sprawling onto the ground only now aware of the small circular burns that cover your arms and face.
You turn to the forest and watch on as it disappears beneath the flames, such malice scooping its greedy hand into the soil and removing the life within.
Embers will fall and so it will be that this fire will die too.
To take so thoughtlessly from the forest leaves no fuel for the coals that the inferno so needs to walk upon.
You close your eyes, only sound remains.
J. McCray
2023
Sunday Short Stories 