The Trees are Talking

It wasn’t like it was before. Something was different.

Off.

It was like the tuning pegs in his brain were all turned to the highest pitch- making everything sound loud and shrieky. But for some reason, it didn’t seem to bother him. It was like his skin was made of the same frequency, his bones humming with a melody that wasn’t there.

He didn’t remember the woods being so bright. Glowing blue and yellow lights covered the lining of the trees in a soft haze. The moonlight shone through the branches, illuminating it even further in a dim white. It was almost like a fairytale- but it wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right.

He spun in a slow circle, looking for evidence in a case he couldn’t remember. And then he saw it. A figure standing beneath a set of low hanging branches, barely visible in the pocket of darkness it chose to hover in. Watching him. Or at least, he thought it was watching him. He couldn’t see its eyes, couldn’t see its face at all. Just a figure- alone in the dark.

Then it started sprinting straight for him and flung its arms around his neck in a tight squeeze.

“Milo, Milo,” the soft voice mumbled against his neck. “Milo, you’re here.”

Milo. His name was Milo. That was odd. He hadn’t thought he’d forgotten his own name.

When the figure pulled away to look Milo in the eyes, he saw that it was a young boy, his eyes a burning green so bright it startled Milo. His sad smile a glow against the dark, his hair a tangled mess of sandy brown atop his head. Milo had to resist the strange urge to slide his thumb across his olive-skinned cheek.

“Ali,” he whispered, and he wasn’t sure what conjured it. This boy was Ali. He knew him. He might’ve loved him, once. But everything was coming to him in strange fractures. A name, a sunset casting pink and purple against the forest floor, Ali dipping his head back in a laugh so musical one might’ve guessed him an angel.

“Milo, I thought…” Ali swallowed, his eyes tracing up and down Milo, making sure he was really there. His hands were gripping Milo’s arms so tight that Milo almost flinched. But he didn’t see why he would. There was no pain. An instinct, he thought, from an old memory.

“Ali,” was all he could seem to say.

“I’m sorry,” Ali was crying now, tears staining his sun-kissed cheeks. Milo wanted to wipe them away, but he was fairly certain he wasn’t supposed to. Why? “I’m sorry I left you there. I- I didn’t… I didn’t know.” His words were coming in between choked sobs. Relief? Pain. He was in pain.

Milo gently peeled Ali’s hands off his arms, letting their fingers stay loosely intertwined.

“I’m ok,” Milo reassured. “I’m ok, Ali. It’s ok.” What was ok? Milo couldn’t recall. All he felt was an overwhelming compulsion to make sure this sad boy in front of him stopped crying.

Ali nodded, slowly, his tears staring to dry as their fingers danced together at their waists. Ali was only a couple inches shorter than Milo, but he still had to tip his head back slightly to see into Milo’s eyes.

A fracture burned behind Milo’s eyes.

A cliff at the edge of the woods, Ali grinning devilishly as he balanced precariously on one of the boulders. Milo reached out to grab him, and Ali fell forward on top of him, and then they were tumbling together among the leaves, Ali’s laughter filling the air.

“Ali?” Milo said, slowly pulling his fingers out of Ali’s. “What happened? Why are you sorry?”

A dark expression crossed Ali’s face. He took a step back, his eyes glowing with a pained confusion. “You don’t remember?” he breathed.

Milo shook his head.

“You-“ Ali cut off as a branch snapped behind them. They both turned their heads. The blue and yellow glow seemed to have coalesced in one spot- in the small clearing just a few steps away from them. It was morphing itself into something- a person, Milo guessed. The figure of a woman, golden hair tumbling down her back, reaching a hand out towards them. She had no face, and her edges seemed to be pulsing with the eerie light.

“What is that?” Milo mumbled.

“You see it, too?” Ali said. They took a step back. The woman took a step forward.

A hiss pierced the air, flooding Milo’s ears with words he could barely make out.

Follow. You belong here, now. Follow.

Milo stumbled back, his heart pounding in his ears. Except… he placed a hand over his chest. His heart wasn’t pounding. It wasn’t beating at all.

Milo fell to his knees, trying to catch a breath that wouldn’t seem to come. The air in his lungs had vanished. He looked down at his hands to see them painted with the same wash of blue light that was shrouding the woman.

“Milo,” he heard Ali say. “Milo, we have to go. Get up, Milo. Get up!”

He felt Ali tugging on his arms, trying to pull him off the ground, but the hiss kept getting louder, demanding that he join them. That he follow.

“Ali,” he squeaked helplessly, his hands clinging to the soft earth. “Ali, what happened?”

The world fell silent. Everything froze. The voice stopped, the lights died. The only sound was Ali’s frantic breathing above him. They were covered in darkness. Milo couldn’t see his hands anymore. The glow had died. But he still couldn’t breathe, still couldn’t feel his heartbeat.

“Ali,” he whispered, so quietly he thought he might not have said it.

“I’m sorry,” Ali was crouched in front of him now, their foreheads almost touching. Milo could feel Ali’s breath on his face, could hear the hurt cracking his words. “I’m sorry, Milo. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to…” and he was sobbing. His body shifting away from Milo, taking all the warmth with him.

And the fracture came back.

They had been dancing. It was clumsy, childish, but they were both laughing as they skipped across the forest floor, stumbling over each other’s feet in their drunken joy to just be this close to each other. To be touching without having to justify it. It had been sunset, then, the pink hues bathing them in it’s warmth. By the time they had collapsed on the ground in breathless laughter, the moon had started to pierce through the trees. They were never scared of the dark. These woods were theirs. They’d been traipsing these forest floors and climbing these trees since they were kids. Nothing bad ever happened in the forest.

It was their safe space. It was where they could go when the world around them was falling apart. When Milo couldn’t think through a panic attack, or when Ali’s dad got just a little too drunk. A little too violent. They could be themselves here. Desperate. Hopeful. Close.

Neither of them could’ve known. They couldn’t have known…

“Ali,” Milo crawled himself over to Ali’s crouched form, his knees pulled up to his chest, face buried in his elbows as hiccupped sobs shook his whole body. “Ali, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault.”

He tried to nudge Ali’s elbow with his forehead, the playful way he always did when he wanted Ali’s attention. He felt the warmth of Ali’s skin against his as Ali leaned himself towards him. And then Milo was wrapping Ali in his arms, pulling his body into his lap and trying to whisper words of comfort to him.

“Ali, Ali, Ali,” he breathed, soft, gentle. “It’s ok. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

He waited until Ali’s shaking had slowed, his sobs turning to soft sniffles against Milo’s chest.

“You’re here,” Ali said into Milo’s shirt. “You’re here, I can feel you. I can touch you.”

Milo swallowed, the heart that no longer beat twisting inside his stomach. He couldn’t explain it, either. He was just waiting for the woman to come back. He kept glancing to the clearing, expecting to see her there, beckoning him forward.

“I don’t think I can leave,” Milo said suddenly. Ali yanked back, the panic evident on his face.

“Of course you can leave,” he said desperately. “You can’t make me go back alone.” The tears were streaming their way down his cheeks again and this time Milo lifted his thumb to wipe them away. Ali didn’t flinch away. He’d always wondered if he would. Now he knew.

Milo dipped his head to touch their foreheads together and closed his eyes. “Ali, I think I have to stay here. Forever.”

Ali choked, his hand flying to his mouth. He was shaking his head violently. “You can’t leave me.”

The figure had returned, but it was no longer a woman. It was an old man, hunched over, the wisp of a cane in his hand. And then the woman was there, too, standing beside him. And a child- a little boy with his hand reaching up to hold onto a parent that was no longer there. There were dozens of them. Women, men, children. All of them sliding through the forest towards him, calling him. Beckoning him.

He pulled Ali up and threw himself in front of him, shielding him from the onslaught of apparitions coming for them. They didn’t feel dangerous. Milo didn’t think they’d attack- or even if they could. But the threat of their presence was enough for him not to risk Ali.

Their whispers flooded the space around them, getting louder and louder with every ghostly step they took. The trees seemed to be in on it, too- their leaves rustling with the uttered words that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“Milo,” Ali said from behind him. “We need to get out of here.”

Milo knew Ali was right. But he was still fairly certain that Ali would have to leave alone. He closed his eyes against the voices, all humming in unison now, reminding him of his new home, here among the trees. But the trees had always been his home. This was nothing new. There was no reason to be afraid. The more he listened to the words, the more compelled he felt to heed to them.

He took a tentative step forward and felt Ali clutch at his wrist.

“Milo,” he said. “Don’t. Don’t listen to them.”

“You can hear it?” Milo turned to face him in surprise. He wasn’t sure why he’d assumed Ali couldn’t hear it. Ali could obviously see the apparitions. For some reason, it had felt like the words were just for him, though.

Something sparked in Milo, then. If Ali could hear it, too, then maybe that meant…

“We can stay here,” Milo said, taking Ali’s hands in his. They were caked in dirt and… blood? He dropped his hands and stumbled back. “Ali, why is there blood on your hands?”

Ali’s eyes were wide, a feverish desperation to explain himself tangled in his delicate features. He opened his mouth, closed it. Opened it again.

The glow from the figures seemed to be all around them, now- circling them like vultures that were never going to pounce.  

Milo could hear someone screaming in the distance, and it took him a minute to realize that it was him. Another fracture was tearing through him, and he closed his eyes at the painful memory.

He had been sitting on the dirt, his legs tangled with Ali’s, their shoulder brushing, their faces too close to be called friendly. But neither of them pulled away. Neither of them moved an inch- afraid of being pulled apart- afraid that if they weren’t entangled, they might become separated forever.

And then the woods had swayed under a wind that felt too cold, too harsh. The ground had started shaking, the leaves falling off branches in heaps. The boys jumped to their feet, startled by what they assumed was an earthquake.

Until the screaming started. Blood-curdling wails stabbing into the night and forcing them to cover their ears, doubling over with the piercing of it all. They looked at each other, an unfamiliar fear streaking across Ali’s face. Ali was never afraid.

Milo tumbled back into himself, those words ringing in his ears.

Ali was never afraid.

“I just wanted you to have peace,” Ali said quietly, the ghosts still closing in around them. “I tried to bury you,” he confessed. “I thought you would… want that. Here. In our forest.”

Tears stung Milo’s eyes, but he knew none would come. He was no longer real. Tears were for people who were real.

“Oh, Ali,” Milo took a step forward, reached out, and his hand passed clean through Ali’s fingers. He was losing time. Soon, he’d be lost to the woods forever. He’d never feel Ali’s skin against his again. He’d never hear his laugh or get to taste the way his lips felt. He so badly wanted to know what his lips tasted like.

“I can’t leave,” Milo choked. “I’m fading.” He looked down at his hands, the blue light enveloping them. He could no longer feel the cold sting of the autumn air. He could no longer feel anything at all.

“Don’t leave me,” Ali pleaded. He tried to reach out again, to grab a hold of Milo- any part of him. Nothing was solid, anymore. He was just a vapor, hovering on the edge of the world, and all he could do was watch as the boy he loved crumbled into a thousand pieces in front of him. “Don’t leave me.”

It was an accident, Milo knew that. The woods had always loved these boys, and they had always loved them back. Maybe too much. It was like an addiction. Climbing these trees, dancing on the soft earth. They were infinite here. They always had been.

The trees were closing in, but maybe Milo was imagining it. Their branches extending out and down, trying to scoop the boys up and fuse them to their oak trunks. Trying to keep them there. Forever.

“Stay with me,” Milo said, his transparent hand still extended towards Ali, as if by sheer willpower he could force them to touch. “Stay here with me, in our forest. Where we belong.” The words didn’t feel like his, and yet they did. He was part of this now, sewn into the fabric of these trees with the blood that had been shed by his own body.

Trees didn’t bend that way. They didn’t grow claws from their branches and twist a person up in them. They didn’t pull you down into the dirt as their vines snaked around every inch of you until you couldn’t see, couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. But they had. Milo had remembered screaming, vaguely. He had felt Ali tugging on his arms, trying to yank him free. But then Ali was gone, and there was nothing but an empty body, with a soul floating through the air, looking for its other half. Where was the other boy?

There. Holding the remains of a broken body in his lap, his tears washing the blood off the body. Begging, pleading with the gods to give him back, to take him instead. The soul wasn’t sure how long he watched the boy cry- days maybe. Years. But eventually, the boy had to get up, dig a hole in the dirt with nothing but his bare hands, and roll the body into it with sobs that could shake the whole earth.

This wasn’t right, the soul thought. The boy shouldn’t be alone. He was supposed to be out here, with the soul. And so the soul came back down and reformed itself into the figure of the boy it used to be.

And now here they stood, their eyes locked on each other as Milo was fading away into the dew-dropped leaves. He knew then, the truth. It wasn’t an accident. It had never been an accident. The forest was claiming them. It was making them apart of it, so they could never leave it again. He knew it wanted Ali, too. The branches clawed their way towards the tear-stained boy, twigs and vines wrapping around his ankles, his legs, his wrists. Alis didn’t struggle. He didn’t try to run.

He simply looked at Milo with something new in his eyes- hope. As Milo started flickering away into oblivion, he heard Ali say one last thing to him, “I’ll be there soon, Milo. We’ll be together soon.”