The mist came down from the hills. It settled coolly amongst the flowers wetting their petals and stems with dew. A shallow lake of fog crept over the garden. Kaya watched silently from the tree line as a lone deer dipped its head beneath the surface of the mist and came up chewing a great mouthful of carnations. So bright and wet and red were the flowers that from a distance it looked like the creature had turned carnivore and was now feasting on some bloody kill obscure beneath the fog.
Kaya set her eye down the birch wood shaft. Touching her fingers to the string, she pulled it taut against her cheek and let fly. The arrow hissed through the humid air and plunged with a thud in the side of the deer. The animal didn’t move, but merely glanced briefly in her direction before dipping its head back beneath the surface of the mist. A moment later, the deer rose again with another mouthful of carnations. The creature turned its eyes in the direction of the poacher, chomping calmly on the bright red flowers. Kaya reloaded her bow, convinced that she had somehow missed her quarry. A second arrow hissed through the air. This time, there was no doubt the point struck flesh—the shaft hung visible from the animal’s chest, lodged deep between the two upper ribs. And yet still, the creature didn’t flinch or fall but merely kept grazing as if wholly immune to pain.
Kaya nearly pulled a third arrow from her quiver, but awe overcame adrenaline, and the hunter stepped into the garden. Soft of foot, the girl cut through the fog towards the deer, which seemed to possess no fear of people. As she moved nearer, she could make out both arrows stuck in the animal’s side. A few steps closer and she could reach out and touch it. The creature seemed almost tame. It raised its head, and when Kaya held out her hand, the deer bent forward to lick it as if expecting some treat of salt or cabbage. Amazed, the girl looked about the garden, fearful the owner of the creature would suddenly step out of the mist to scold her.
Kaya wasn’t exactly sure where she was. She knew the trail had snaked far up the streamline, and she knew when she saw the orange-bellied trout swimming softly in the eddy pools that she had climbed into the Valley of the Upper Kings. Only the very rich could stock their streams with such expensive and delicate fish. Though it was true that no actual king still dwelt in the valley, there lived more than one fabulously wealthy noble who could perhaps afford something as lavish and spectacular as an invincible deer. Kaya didn’t know what to do. She considered the matter carefully, hesitated, and finally worked up the courage to reclaim her arrows: the only visible evidence of her crime.
The girl reached out and gripped the shaft that drooped from the animal’s flank. The deer watched her tug at the birch wood, no pain in its coal black eyes, just a kind of distant animal judgment as it watched her yank the point clean. Her older brother had once taught her how to barb the end of the shaft so that the quarry couldn’t wrench the strike free with its mouth, but that seemed too unfair—the girl already felt the use of a bow somehow cheapened the hunt as if the tool allowed her a cheat unworthy of the forest. Had she herself invented the weapon, then perhaps she would have felt more justified in its employment, but as it was, she never once plucked an arrow from a kill without feeling a certain pang of guilt. Maybe, she thought, as the arrow slid cleanly from between the deer’s ribs, the refusal to barb her arrows had saved a life: not that of the deer, which seemed completely invulnerable to the weapons of the world, but her own, for as she yanked clean the second arrow, she erased all physical evidence of her crime—no mark or scar remained on the majestic creature, and so her sin persisted only in memory. Considering what had just transpired, the animal didn’t seem all that outraged. It briefly licked its non-existent wounds and skipped off lightly towards the edge of the garden, disappearing through the tree line.
Kaya stood alone in the carnation bed, knee deep in a river of mist. If the yard had a fence, she hadn’t climbed over it. In the distance on a hill she could faintly make out the shape of a building, perhaps an old church or a manor in which the keeper of the garden dwelled. The poacher turned to sling her bow back over her shoulder, but conscience bade her stop. Whatever otherworldly magic had sheltered the deer from the sting of her arrows might also protect the other creatures dwelling in the valley. Besides, as soon as she had let fly that first shot, she knew she had made a mistake. Shroud of mystical protection or no, to poach in the Valley of the Upper Kings was an offense you paid for with a hand. Even to be caught with the tools of the hunt was a punishable infraction. Kaya unbuckled her quiver and set her bow and arrows on the ground. So thick was the fog that swallowed up the weapon that she couldn’t have hidden it more thoroughly anyplace else in the world. She regretted the act immediately. Why toss away a perfectly good weapon? Better to just avoid the law. The girl reached down to reclaim her bow, but she couldn’t find it. Her hands moved blindly amongst the wet carnations but the weapon had disappeared; at least for the moment, the ghostly mist had claimed it for its own.
Kaya didn’t know what to do. She had no business in that forest playground of the highborn. Only the purest nobles could hunt and fish in the valley, and a tiller’s daughter had no right to hike through the enchanted glades. Without her bow, she suddenly felt vulnerable and anxious, despite the fact that she was probably safer without it. Yet still, what if she encountered one of the highway guard? With or without her bow, how would she explain her presence in that place? Nervous and sore for having lost her gear, the girl turned back towards the stream she had tracked through the dark hours of the morning into the valley. It would take her at least another day and a half to hike back down to her village.
Though the trees had grown somewhat brighter as the morning progressed, the mist showed no sign of loosening its grip on the forest. Kaya passed through the gladed trees. The wood was immaculately kept, far more like a park or a yard than the wild. All the lower branches had been shorn from the trunks so that a person could easily walk without tangling a cloak in the brush. The canopy above had been recently shaken of all dead boughs, and the gently dewed leaves glistened fresh and tender. Her dread swiftly vanished in the vernal scene.
When Kaya reached the brook, she no longer felt like a hunter, but more like a fine lady traipsing through a storybook wood. Her older sister owned three dog-eared books of romance poetry, and everyone spoke of forests such as these—rich glades of verdure and mist and mystery. Even the water in this place ran crystal clear, rippling gently over the stones and gathering in quiet little pools where the trout drifted in the current like orange-spotted ghosts. Kaya watched the slim little fish and thought of the marvelous deer that she had failed to harm with her arrows. She slid her hands into the water. The fish barely stirred. Softly, she cupped her fingers around the belly of one of the trout. Raising the fish from the water, her hand was suddenly seized by a morbid fascination. Was it possible that all the creatures in this place were just as invulnerable as the deer? In a flash of brutal curiosity, Kaya knocked the fish’s head against a stone to see if she could hurt it. The trout’s delicate skull promptly shattered on the rock and its brains leapt into the brook. What remained of the frightened school darted up the stream, and Kaya was left holding the limp body of the bludgeoned trout.
A small voice gasped from the other side of the brook. Kaya looked up to see a child standing on the opposite bank, a little boy perhaps no more than five years of age regarded her with a look of pure horror. When she opened her mouth to explain her crime, the child slumped down to his knees and began to weep.
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” said Kaya to the boy.
“No it’s not,” cried the child, anxiously rubbing his palms on the front of his smock as if he sought to wipe the fish’s blood from his own hands.
“It was just a fish,” said Kaya still holding the slimy corpse of her victim.
“No,” cried the little boy, “it was a trout with orange dots.”
“Well, yes,” said Kaya, “it was that… More specifically.”
“Why did you kill it?” shouted the child, his tiny voice growing hot with anger.
“I wanted to see if it would die,” replied Kaya in total honesty.
“Well it did!” screamed the boy, welling eyes fixed on the freshly brained fish.
“I didn’t want to hurt it,” Kaya replied, feeling doubly horrible for not only killing the trout, but also for so upsetting the horrified little witness.
“But you just said…” sobbed the child clearly grasping the inconsistency of the girl’s defense, but unable to fully articulate her hypocrisy.
“I know what I just said,” shouted Kaya, growing frustrated with her little accuser. “But I didn’t mean to kill it.”
“But you smashed its head!” cried the little boy. “Smashed its head on the rock and made it all bloody!”
Again the child rubbed his hands on his smock as if trying to wipe the crime from his person.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Kaya, unexpected tears of guilt now filling her own eyes. Never before in all her years of hunting had she cried at the death of an animal.
The little boy didn’t respond, but just slumped farther to the ground, curling up on the bank into a fetal ball of whimpering grief.
Kaya slid the dead trout into her pocket. Though ashamed of what she had done, she knew that her journey back to the village was far, and that she would need something to eat along the way. The girl stepped across the stream to where the little boy lay weeping. When she bent down to take him up, the child pushed her away.
“Don’t touch me with your dead fish hands,” he sobbed, his voice no longer fiery and righteous, but completely defeated and pathetic. “I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to…”
“It’s alright,” said Kaya leaning over the child, “I don’t have it anymore.”
“Where did it go?”
“I put it back in the water.”
“Did it swim away?”
“Yes,” lied Kaya, not sure if the child misunderstood the concept of death or was simply misemploying the word swim.
“That’s good,” said the little boy more calmly now than before, raising himself up on his belly, his hands pressing deep in the mud as he peered into the brook.
“It is,” said Kaya, “fish are real tricky like that.”
The little boy didn’t respond, but just blinked his red eyes as he examined the current of the stream.
“Is it coming back?” asked the little boy.
“No,” said Kaya gently, “probably not today.”
“That’s good,” said the boy. “I don’t want it to come back.”
Kaya helped the child to his feet, and he wiped the mud on his hands across the front of his smock. The basic outfit he soiled was finer than anything Kaya owned or would ever own in her entire life.
“What’s your name?” asked the little boy.
“Kaya. What’s yours?”
“Jiri.”
“Well, Jiri, are you lost?”
“No,” said Jiri quite confidently, “I know exactly where I am, I’m at the stream.”
Kaya laughed. “That’s true, and where are your parents?”
“Shhh,” said the little boy holding a finger to his lips. “Don’t talk about them.”
“Why not?”
“My parents are like the fish,” he whispered.
Kaya shuddered but didn’t press the question further.
“Well, then, who takes care of you?”
“My sister Aza and my nurse Nabilene.”
“And where are they right now?”
“In bed sleeping,” said the little boy, “you have to be very quiet with the door, it’s a squeaky one.”
“Oh, so you’re a sneaker?”
The little boy nodded, his eyes, still puffy but otherwise looking much happier than before.
“It’s probably best if you go back home now.”
“I don’t want to,” said the child turning his head reluctantly towards the woods that Kaya had just traversed.
“Are you afraid to get lost?”
“No, I know the way very good. I never get lost.”
“Then why don’t you want to go home?”
“I don’t like the trees,” said the little boy.
“But the trees are so beautiful,” replied Kaya, thinking about the pleasant stroll she had just taken through the glade.
“I don’t like what lives in the trees,” said the boy, glancing furtively towards the green canopy above.
“You mean the birds?” asked Kaya.
“There are no birds.”
Only then did Kaya realize that she hadn’t heard birdsong since entering the valley. “Hmm, that’s strange, I wonder where they all went?”
“I know where they went,” said Jiri.
“Where?”
“They went where the fish went.”
Another shiver ran down Kaya’s spine. Though she had felt anxious after losing her bow, for the first time that day, she felt sincerely afraid. The girl stared at the alien branches, so picturesque just moments before.
“What lives in the trees?” she asked.
“You know,” said the little boy, an unexpected grin creeping on his face.
“What lives in the trees?” Kaya repeated more forcefully.
“You know.”
“No, I really don’t.”
The child stared up at her, studying her face to see if she was joking or serious. “You really don’t know?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Oh,” said the little boy with a delighted smile, glad as if to suddenly seize the upper hand in the conversation the way children often are when they realize they possess a secret.
“What lives in the trees?” Kaya repeated once more.
Jiri began to slowly rub his hands on his smock.
“I don’t know what they’re called. They won’t tell me their names.”
“Well then, what do they look like?”
The little boy stopped rubbing his hands on his smock and looked up at the girl with a blank face. Kaya was just about to repeat the question, when the child suddenly crossed his eyes and opened his mouth in a demented tooth-baring grin. Kaya stumbled back in terror.
“Ha ha!” laughed the little boy, returning his face to normal. “That’s what they look like. Sometimes they are very funny, sometimes they are very mean.”
Kaya gathered her breath and composed herself, not at all amused by the joke.
“And you talk to these creatures… I mean the ones who live in the trees?”
“Yes,” replied the little boy, “everyone talks to them, even if they don’t know it.”
“I don’t talk to them,” said Kaya.
“Yes, you do,” said the child. “You were talking to them when you hit the fish on the rock.”
“Is that why you were so afraid?”
“I don’t know, maybe… It was so bloody.” The child’s brow furrowed with distress and his lip began to tremble.
“Don’t think about it anymore.”
“But I can still smell it. All bloody. Bloody, slimy fish. It makes my stomach gross.”
“Come,” said Kaya grabbing the little boy’s hand. “I’m taking you home.”
The pair moved through the woods. The trees—so lovely just moments before, took on a sinister aspect in the girl’s imagination. They were almost too green, somehow uncanny. She thought of the deer she had failed to kill. What had seemed like a curious miracle now felt once more like a crime. She watched the upper branches dripping in the mist. She thought of the deranged way the child had crossed his eyes and bore his teeth, and fear rode between her shoulder blades.
The boy led her through the woods until they found themselves at the edge of the very same garden where Kaya had stalked the deer. The girl stepped forward to walk across the yard, but the little boy stopped her, frantically yanking her back to the tree line.
“You can’t walk on there,” said the little boy.
“Why not,” said Kaya, suddenly remembering her bow and once more desiring to search the carnation bed to see if she could find it. The weapon would provide her at least a small measure of comfort as she traversed the woods home.
“That’s where my parents are,” whispered the little boy.
“Your parents?”
“Yes,” said the child, “that’s where we go to feed them.”
Kaya froze.
“Feed them what?”
“Cake.”
“Cake?”
“Yes, cake and grapes and sweet bread. On the memory day.”
“Oh,” said Kaya. “On Remembrance Day you take food and flowers to their graves.”
“Not their graves,” corrected the little boy, “to their headstones.”
“And you light candles too?”
“Aye, we light candles that want to smell like flowers.”
“That’s nice,” said Kaya.
The girl felt a great sense of relief. Not only was she glad to be out of the forest, but also glad to better understand the cryptic little boy. Undoubtedly, the shock of losing his parents so early in life must have stoked in him a kind of morbidity unusual for children his age. His terror at the brook suddenly made far more sense. The girl sighed inwardly at her own childishness, embarrassed to have allowed herself to get so caught up in the overworked imagination of a little boy. The dread that had trembled in her limbs all the way back from the brook suddenly fell away, and she decided with resolve to reclaim her bow. She stepped into the garden and crossed to where the red carnations grew.
“No,” shouted the little boy, “you can’t walk on there!”
“I’m just going to get something, I’ll be back in just a second.”
“No, no,” said the little boy rubbing his hands nervously on his smock, “if you walk on the flowers, they’ll come back. I don’t want them to come back.”
“No one is coming back,” assured Kaya as she walked across the lawn towards the flowerbed.
She felt a soft tap against her leg. The girl jumped and looked about but saw nothing. Another tap thudded near her thigh, and she slid her hands towards her lap, terrified that a snake or some other creature might have crawled its way into her clothing. The girl remembered the trout and shoved her hand into her pocket. The fish twitched and leapt from her palm, tumbling into the carnations where it proceeded to flip wildly amongst the mist-blanketed flowers.
The little boy screamed. “It came back! It came back! You said it wouldn’t but it did!”
Kaya watched the trout jumping in the carnations, the fish seemed possessed of some tremendous energy it hadn’t exhibited in the stream.
“They always make them come back,” sobbed the little boy at the edge of the lawn. “I can smell it and it makes my stomach gross.”
A voice came wavering down the hill. Kaya could just make out the shape of the speaker in the mist. Her heart leapt into her throat as she scrambled towards the tree line. The little boy had broken into a full sob while the fish flipped wildly amongst the carnations. From the cover of the gladed trees, Kaya watched as a figure stepped down into the garden.
“Jiri,” shouted an alarmed female voice. “Where are you?”
But the boy was too distraught to answer. He had crumpled up at the edge of the yard just as he had at the bank of the stream.
“It came back. It came back,” he whined.
The woman who stepped from the mist was young, no older than Kaya herself. She rushed towards the crying boy.
“Are you hurt?” she shouted.
Jiri rocked back and forth on the ground, hands covering his head.
“It came back, it came back!”
“What came back, Jiri?” said the woman.
“The fish. She said it wouldn’t, but it did.” The little boy pointed to the carnation bed.
The woman turned and looked across the garden to where the fish continued to flop spastically amongst the flowers.
“Oh Jiri,” said the young lady, taking up the boy in her arms. “Did you escape all the way down to the brook?”
“It came back.” Whispered the little boy as if uttering some secret he hadn’t already yet revealed half a dozen times.
“I know, I know,” said the woman looking at the fish with a scowl. “It’s awful. Sometimes it takes fish a very long time to die outside of water.”
“She hit it on a rock,” said the little boy.
“Who?”
“Her.” Said Jiri accusingly pointing to the patch of brambles where Kaya crouched hiding.
“Oh,” said the woman, “one of your tricky friends from the woods.”
“She hit it on a rock.”
“Now that was a very mean thing to do now wasn’t it? No one should ever do that again.”
Jiri glowered at the brambles, but didn’t speak.
“No one should ever do that again,” repeated the woman. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” said Jiri. “Never again.”
The woman lifted the boy from the ground and turned to carry him back towards the estate. As the two cut across the grass, the child peeped over the nurse’s shoulder and pointed mutely towards the trees above. The fog enveloped the pair as they marched up the hill. Alone, the poacher gazed into the branches of that silent green canopy. No birds would sing above her as she retreated through the mist.