Where were they? I had been gone merely a minute to relieve myself behind a bush when I had lost track of my family.
“Are you lost?”
The voice was small and high-pitched, like a child. I looked around but there was no one to be seen. Crash! Something — no someone — hit the ground with a thud. A four foot mass of tangled chestnut fur lay mangled on the forest floor.
“Are you alright?” I dropped to my knees, touching at the creatures arm.
“Just fine.” The head lifted and I saw the face of a girl. She must be no older than twelve, with bright eyes and a demure smile that suggested she was in no pain at all. I took a step back as she got to her feet, brushing leaves and debris from her maroon smock before finger combing her hair.
“Have you…” I hesitated a moment, wondering if it was appropriate to change the subject so quickly when I had just seen her fall from ten feet above. Surely there was no harm in trying. “…seen a family?”
“A family? Yes many.” She pulls an acorn and a few dark round balls from her hair and examines them. “Juniper berry?”
“No thank you.”
Many? How odd. She was the first person outwith my own family I had encountered in our four hour foray into the forest. I watched her as she delicately placed a berry between her lips, then poked it into her mouth with the tip of her finger.
“Where did you see them?”
“See who?”
“The families.”
“All around us,” she said, “it’ll be hard to find yours.”
I ignored her and began to make my way through the trees. I wasn't going to find them if I just stood around talking to strange girls. Leaves crunched underfoot as she skipped along beside me, still snacking on the juniper berries.
“Where will you look?”
“Between the trees.” Not that there was anything other than trees, small streams, and natural fauna in the middle of a forest.
“Maybe you should look inside the trees,” she said, “they could be there.”
“My family don’t climb trees.” I snickered as I imagined my portly little brother trying to climb a tree. Even if a wolf were chasing him he would not be able to summon the courage to climb one. He was around the age of the girl, maybe a year or two older, but easily had fifty pounds on her skeletal frame.
“No, not up in the trees - inside the trees!”
I glared at her. Her nonsense was starting to grate on me. She tossed the remaining berries over her shoulder and walked over to a tree.
“Look here, see.” She wedged her fingers in a small nook of the tree and began to peel back the bark. A two-foot oval section of bark sprang back, as if on a hinge. I peeked inside, expecting to see something exciting - like a portal to a different dimension. But inside the tree was hollow.
“That’s weird.”
“All of the trees here are exactly the same.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
I moved over to the next tree, knocking on it’s bark as if rapping a door. It didn’t sound hollow to the touch. I looked for a nook and found one much like the one the girl had shown me. It was stiff and wouldn’t budge.
“I think this one is just an ordinary tree.”
“Sometimes sap will seal them shut. You better not try to open it. Why don’t you try the next one instead?”
I suspected she was playing a prank on me by this point. I humoured her anyway and did as she asked. This time, when I slid my fingers into the nook, it pulled back - much like the first tree had done. Again, it was completely hollow inside.
“Remarkable.” I tried another and it opened too. “I wonder who carved out all these trees.”
“They weren’t carved.” She skipped off ahead of me by a few paces. “They grew this way.”
“How come?”
“Because they needed to.”
“Why?”
She pursed her lips, for a moment in thought. “I have a secret to tell you.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a very sad secret.”
I was curious now. “What is it?”
“I’m dead,” said the girl, “and so are you.”
“You’re barmy.”
“Everyone around us here is dead too.”
What was she talking about? I looked around us, just to confirm that we were still very much alone.
“There is no one else here.”
“Yes, there are.” She lowered her voice. “They’re at rest inside the trees.”
