So. Megan already knows this, but after I read/watched Hotarubi no Mori e, I was kind of a little bit inspired. And I really wanted to write a short story at least partially based off the manga/anime. And I was pretty sure that it wasn't going to happen any time soon, given that I am constantly writing, and I didn't want to add anything else to my writer's palette.
Then I had a day where I was just kind of stressed, and I was going to the writer's meeting that I go to, and I decided that I just needed to write something.
At 5:00 pm, I sat down at my computer. At around eight, while sitting in the middle of the meeting, I finished this.
I realize that it's not terribly clear, and it's not terribly well explained, and there are a couple moments that are taken STRAIGHT out of Hotarubi no Mori e, but it's all pretty intentional. I paid no attention to prepositions or gerunds or anything of that sort, because this was seriously just supposed to be me writing, and I haven't edited it very intensely, because I kind of don't want to.
So. While not the best thing I've ever written, and while it's not my favorite thing I've ever written, I do quite like it. And considering that I wrote this in three hours, and finished it in the midst of a five-way conversation (I even took some notes on the conversation), I think it's pretty good. :)
Oh. And it doesn't have a title. Yet. Because I haven't decided on a title that fits, yet. If you have any brilliant suggestions, feel free to let me know. Also, if you see any glaring grammatical errors, feel free to point them out.
I'm going to stop talking, now. ^_^
The first time Tom met Alice was the
summer she was seven and still young enough to believe in fairy tales. She fell
out of a tree and he caught her, because that was the sort of thing he did. She
screamed at first, because of the pattern of tree bark on his face and arms,
and because of the leaves that meld with his skin. Then she was fascinated by
the ridges on his cheeks and forehead and small knots on his knuckles. Then she
laughed, because when the leaves brushed against her, it tickled. But she didn’t
notice me.
Tom
led her out of the forest that day, and I watched from the edges of the trees.
When he came back and saw me, he said, “Children are strange.”
I
smiled, because it’s true. But part of me was heartbroken, and Tom saw that.
“Hey,
Emma,” he said, and tapped a finger against the painted mask on my face. “I see you.”
“I
know,” I told him.
“Promise
me that you won’t forget that?” he asked me, and I shook my head.
“No,
I won’t promise. But I won’t forget.”
I
never did forget. Sometimes, though, he did.
Alice
came back to the forest every day that summer. Something about Tom fascinated
her, and he welcomed her curiosity. He didn’t mind when she followed him
through the forest or asked nosy questions or played with his hands because
they were interesting. He stopped her when she tried to comb the leaves out of
his hair, but otherwise, she could do anything she wanted.
Sometimes
other forest people would come to watch them with me. The small girl who lives
in the pool would play in the water with Alice, and the huge bear-people came
to listen to Tom’s stories. The tiny sprites would dance around Alice when Tom
brought her to their home, and Alice would laugh in delight.
She
saw all of them. But even though I was there more often than any of the other
forest people, Alice never saw me. And when he was busy with Alice, Tom often
didn’t see me, either.
Alice
left at the end of summer, and Tom was sad and quiet and stayed in his
tree. He was like that until November,
when snow came to blanket the whole world. Even the forest, thick and magical
and full of things no one understands was turned white. Tom came back alive
then, shedding his leaves and not bothering to return to his tree for days or
even weeks. We were always free and crazy in the winter months. We would skate
on the water-girl’s frozen pool with her, run with the wolf-people and huddle
with the bear-people when we got cold.
One
day when we were building a snow dragon, Tom said, “Hey, Emma?”
I
looked up from the snow I was packing into a claw, and my mask slid down on my
face. I pushed it back up and said, “Yes?”
He
pressed snow into the dragon’s side and asked, “Do you think Alice will come
back next summer?”
Part
of me wanted to say that I hoped so, for his sake. The rest of me wanted to say
that I hoped not, for his sake. So I just said, “I don’t know.”
Alice
did come back. The next summer and the next summer and the summer after that.
The summer she turned twelve, the forest people began to worry.
That
summer was the summer Alice noticed me. Or, rather, the lack of me. She found
it strange that Tom would carry on conversations with me when I didn’t appear
to be there, and she was unnerved when he would pass a book or a flower or a
stick to me and it would disappear when I took it.
“Who
else is here?” she finally asked one day when we were all sitting on the grass
and I said something that made Tom laugh.
“My
friend,” Tom replied. “Emma.”
Alice
frowned and looked hard at me without seeing me. Tentatively, she asked, “Is
Emma real?”
Tom
laughed again. “As real as any of us that are part of the forest. It’s just
that she wears a mask that makes it impossible for humans to touch her or see
her or hear her.”
“Why?”
Tom
leaned over and tapped my mask. “Because if a human touches her, she’ll die.”
Alice’s
eyes went wide, and she looked so horrified that I felt bad for her and not
myself.
“Hey,”
I said to Tom. “Tell her that I say hello. And that it’s not that bad, because
the forest-people can see me.”
So
he told her, and after a conversation where she spoke to the air and I spoke
through Tom, I convinced her that she shouldn’t be too sad for me. But when she
left, Tom turned to me and hugged me and said, “I’m sorry. I know how much you
want to be seen by the humans.”
“It’s
okay,” I said, even though it really wasn’t. “It’s not like I’m the only one
who can’t get what they want.”
His
eyes became sad when I said that, and he touched his arms and shivered before
he left and went back to his tree near the center of the forest.
In
the winter both of us were somber and sad, and it seemed like our mood infected
the whole forest. The girl in the pool would sit on the water and cry, the wind
spirits wailed at night, the boys with raven feathers would sit in the branches
and stare at nothing, and the lost woman stopped calling to be found.
All
of us were human, once. Normal. Then we got sick, or we died, or we stumbled
upon something that should not have been found, and we found ourselves here in
this forest, changed and trapped. Those who had been there forever, like the
rock child who lives in the mountains, have given up trying to become human
again. Some, like me, want to be human desperately, but have no idea how to go
about it. And some, like Tom, still try as hard as they can.
The
summer Alice turned fourteen I was walking through the forest by myself. I had
my mask hanging around my neck because I was deep in the forest and it would be
hard for any humans to find the way there. I had left Tom and Alice sitting by
a stream, and I was trying to figure out whether or not I was jealous of Alice.
Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t notice the wind spirit who shaped a massive hand
out of dust and dew until it grabbed me.
I
was surprised, but I wasn’t frightened until the deep, heavy voice of the wind
spirit said, “Tom just asked Alice a question. Tom just asked Alice to promise.
Tom just asked Alice to promise to never forget him. And she did.”
My
hands flew to my mouth and I tried to run, but the massive hand held me tight.
“We
all knew,” the wind spirit said. “We all knew that he would ask her. He asks
all of them. He asks all of them to promise to never forget him.”
“I
know,” I said, and then I just stood there.
Sadness
from one of the forest people will draw the others, and soon a bear-woman and a
fox-girl and an old tree-man, almost like Tom, came to stand around me. The
bear-woman carefully pushed my mask back up over my face with her huge paws so
that I could hide my tears, and the tree-man and the fox-girl only watched me.
They knew that I needed to be seen.
“Thank
you for telling me,” I told the wind spirit, and the hand held me tight in some
strange approximation of a hug before dissolving into a breeze.
That
evening, I found Tom at the very edge of the forest, arms folded tight and a
thoughtful look on his face.
“Why
do you do that?” I asked him, and looked at his arms with his sleeves pushed up
to his elbows.
He
looked at me and smiled a smile that made his face of bark and leaves look sad
and not happy. Unconsciously, his fingers traced the scars on his arms.
“If
you had a chance to be seen and become human again,” he asked, “Wouldn’t you
try and take it? Wouldn’t you want yourself to be happy?”
I
didn’t say anything, and the two of us stood there until the sun set and the moon
rose. Before he left, Tom asked me, “Will you promise me that you won’t try and
stop me?”
“I
won’t promise,” I told him. “But I won’t stop you.”
Alice
came back when she was fifteen and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen. And it
was hard, because all of us liked her. She would always say hello to me, even
though she couldn’t see me, and sometimes she brought me books and pictures and
glass jars full of colored sand. She would play with the water-girl who could
never leave her pool, and tell stories to the raven boys who could never lose
all of their feathers. She would dance with the wind spirits who would never
have full bodies, and she would sing to the lost woman who would never be
found. Alice was kind and she was pretty and she made Tom happy. And if she
only kept her promise, then Tom could be human again.
She
didn’t come back the summer she was nineteen. Tom refused to go back into his
tree just in case he missed her when she came, and because of it, he got sick
and near the end of the summer, I had to carry him back to his tree. Throughout
the autumn and the winter and the spring, he kept on looking at his arms,
watching, but nothing changed.
The
summer Alice turned twenty, she came back. But this time, she brought a young
man into the forest. Maybe he was too old to believe, or maybe he had never
believed, because he couldn’t see any of us. He endured a few days in the
forest with her, but when Alice came back a few weeks later by herself, none of
us were sad that he hadn’t come.
I
watched Tom carefully that summer, but it seemed like he would be alright.
Alice
came the summer after that, but only for a few weeks, and then not at all the
next summer. The summer she turned twenty-three, she came back with a ring on
her finger. Still, it seemed like Tom would be fine, because she still
remembered him.
When
Alice had her first child, she brought the little boy into the forest and
showed him to all of us with delight. All the forest people loved him. But Tom
began to look tired, and we all began to worry.
In
the spring before Alice turned twenty-six, I asked Tom the question no one
wanted to voice.
“What
happens if she breaks her promise?”
We
were lying on our backs near the pool, and the water girl gasped and ducked
under the surface of the pool when she heard my question. Tom just turned his
head to look at me and raised and arm. He pulled his sleeve down and said,
“This.”
I
looked at his arm, at the names of the girls who had broken their promises that
were carved into his skin. But I had seen all that before, and I had never seen
such a look of despair on his face.
“No,”
I said. “What happens to you?”
Tom
looked up at the sky and said, “I guess I give up.”
She
didn’t come that summer. Or the next summer. Or the next four summers.
In
the middle of summer the year Alice turned thirty-four, Tom let out a scream
that ripped through the forest and the hearts of all of us. When I ran to find
him, he was doubled over his right arm, sobbing. He didn’t know that I was
there even when I grabbed his arm to look at it.
He
was bleeding, a mix of sap and normal, human blood. And in the center of all
the blood, I could clearly read the name “Alice.”
Tom
didn’t come out of his tree for two years. So I walked with the lost woman and
talked with the girl in the pool and tried to laugh with the tree-man who,
despite being probably hundreds of years older than Tom, seemed far more alive.
When
Tom finally did come out of his tree, he wouldn’t talk. The wind spirits tried
to hug him with their awkward hands. The fox-girl tried to get him to play. The
wolf-people invited him to sing to the moon with them. And I was too scared to
try.
Years
passed as years do in the forest, and without Alice to judge, I don’t know how
long it was. But I know that there were many quiet winters and sad summers and
lonely autumns and springs without joy. Tom and I no longer seemed to know each
other, and I felt as lost as the woman who will never be found.
A
summer came when Tom met another young girl. Her name was Maddy. He didn’t talk
to her. When she fell down he didn’t help her up. When she tried to play with
him he walked away.
That
summer I realized that something needed to change. But try as I might, I
couldn’t figure out what.
For
another summer, and another, I watched at Tom sank deeper and deeper into
himself, becoming distressingly like the tree in which he lived. And in that
summer and the next, I sank deeper and deeper into myself, no longer even
wishing to be seen. All I could do was hope that someone would save him. And it
would have been nice if they could save me, too.
Sometimes
I forget that the other forest people care. So when I was walking by myself who
knows how many years after Alice, I was surprised when a massive wind spirit
hand reached down to grab me.
The
wind spirit said only one thing: “You don’t have to be human to be happy.”
That
night I went to find Tom. I sat down by his tree and waited until he came out.
He looked almost confused when he saw me, but I just grabbed his hand and
pulled him down to sit by me.
“Hey,
Tom,” I said.
It
took him a moment to respond, but finally he said, “Hey, Emma.”
For
a while, we just sat there. I didn’t let go of his hand, because I didn’t want
to, and for the first time, I felt no need to.
We
watched the sunset together, and though Tom still seemed confused, he seemed
better than he had. So when the sun had fully disappeared, I squeezed his hand
and said, “Tom?”
He
looked at me, a mix of blank and curious. “Yes?”
“Do
you think,” I asked, “That it would be hard for us to just try and be happy
together?”
Tom
didn’t say anything. So I didn’t press him.
“Do
you think,” I asked a few minutes later, “That we could be happy even though we
aren’t human anymore?”
Tom
didn’t say anything.
“Do
you think,” I asked even later, and I took off my mask and put it on the
ground, “That if I didn’t forget you and you always saw me, things would work
out?”
Tom
looked up at me and said, “Can you promise that you won’t forget me?”
In
that moment, it felt like the entire forest was holding its breath.
I
thought about his question for a long time. And because I hadn’t pushed him, he
didn’t push me, and he waited there with me until sunlight began to creep over
the horizon.
When
the birds started singing, I finally gave my answer.
“I
don’t think I’ll ever be able to promise you that,” I told Tom, and he looked
at me without expression. “But I won’t forget you.”
And
Tom smiled.
When
we walked away from his tree, I left my mask behind.
The
next day, we started walking in the forest together. Since it had been so long,
it seemed like we were discovering the forest people all over again, and it was
strange to me how amazing they were. They welcomed both of us back with
laughter and hugs and tears and everything I had missed.
It
was the first day in a long, long time that I was happy. And from the way Tom
refused to let go of my hand, and the way he smiled, and the way he seemed to
shed years, I think he was happy, too.
Tom
has fifty-seven names carved into his skin. They’re all from girls who broke
their promise to never forget him. Sometimes those scars still hurt, and
sometimes he looks at them and he can’t be happy. But then he’ll look at me,
and then he’ll smile, because he knows that I won’t forget him. And then I’ll
smile back, because I know he sees me.
It’s
funny how easy it is to be happy, sometimes.
