The Lost Children (Tas Owake), Part Three: Never Broken (Yaiy Tyinohayon)

(Read part one here, or read part two here)

I was very young when I first stepped into my tree, too young. Otwan, being older, had already begun that, and I wanted to catch up with her. So, one day, I slipped away to play by myself, to find my way to my tree and be in it for the first time, if I could.

Qetawiwoy, as I explain to you, is the word for those of us born with trees and with separate bodies from trees. Qeta, tree. Wiwoy, those woy who look human, as you understand it. We do not enter our trees until both bodies are strong enough to be together and separate at the same time.

Kay-tuh, you say. It is close enough for now.

I entered the tree easily, slipped in as though between sheets of rain. Deceptively easily. Inside, I was caught in the ebb and flow of life inside the bark. The pull downwards of sunlight to roots. The rush up of water to leaves. And the vast web of forest around me, the chatter of the other trees, the touch of their roots next to mine. It was so… big. I had spoken with so many other tree woy before in our silent way, could pass days with Otwan without saying a word aloud if we didn’t have to remember those around us. But here, inside. Here was the whole world and I was so small in it.

So small.

Almost nothing.

Enough to be nothing.

To be lost inside.

To be nothing but tree.

STOP THAT. The words jolted me back to myself. Who are you?

I shivered, there inside, only barely holding to the thread of myself that kept me separate.

Who are you?

Weyai, I said, and the saying of it gave me back my own skin.

Weyai, good.

What are you? I asked, politely: Kayehuwawohut? Whoever was speaking to me hadn’t been polite, but that could have been oversight. Or perhaps they could tell I was still young. Either way, they didn’t answer.

What else, Weyai? What’s the rest of your name?

The rest of my name?

For a panicked moment, I didn’t know, and couldn’t say.

Weyai! Weyai!

I don’t remember!

What do you remember?

I thought hard.

I remember Otwan.

Otwan?

My sister. Otwan Hiqwayaqiqatiy. The name came to me easily. Oh! I’m Weyai Hiqwayaqiqatiy. I settled, in my tree, myself only, the vast forest still accessible, but outside of me.

There was a pause, and I was blessedly at peace again.

Nice to meet you, Weyai Hiqwayaqiqatiy. Now, can you get out of your tree?

I don’t know how.

There was a chuckle. One of Hiqwayaq’s daughters going into her tree unsupervised. Well, Weyai, press up against your tree from the inside. Can you do that?

I think so. I made myself as big as possible within the bark and came to the edge of me. It tickles.

Good, now. Step out.

Step out? But how could I—I saw the place where my tree and the air met, and I remembered that I had a body that wasn’t a tree and if I had slipped in like that, then…

***

Otwan begged me not to go.

I hear it too, Mother had said. Follow it. And I would have followed without her being Hiqwayaq. I would have followed it only for the heavy sadness in her words, for the echo of a chainsaw. For the reason I touched my tree with affection, and where my heart ached for the touch to be felt.

***

“I don’t understand,” says the woman I sit with on the back porch of a house surrounded by trees. To human eyes, we both appeared as such—as two women sitting together while the breeze wove around us and cooled our skin. Speaking human words.

“Qetatyawoy,” I respond.

She shakes her head.

“Qeta, tree.”

“I remember that part.”

“Tyawoy—a woy who is… in between. Whose form isn’t set.”

“A tree being without set form.” She frowns, staring at the forest.

I nod.

“But I have a form. And a tree.”

“Kayehuwekeq?” I say softly, and the woman draws back. You called to me. A world full of trees and you called to me.

***

We could be like sisters, too, I said. We had spoken often after that first time, when she had taught me to leave my tree, and we had taught each other so many things since.

Wouldn’t Otwan get jealous?

I don’t th—

Her cry of pain shot through me.

What’s wrong?

She didn’t respond, and so I ran on child-legs and stepped through bark to reach from within my tree to where she was. To where the buzz of the chainsaw was the roar of a beast in my ears, where the savaging of her bark, her body, left an empty space as though not even air could fill it.

Step out! I cried.

I can’t! I’m not like you; I can’t!

Step out! I begged. Step out, step out, step out!

But the pain overtook her and her voice stopped. The tree cracked, fell to the ground, and it was empty.

***

You stare at me now.

“You thought I was dead,” you say.

“For years.”

“I thought I was alone.”

In the telling of our stories, you had told me yours. How your tree had fallen to reveal a girl, and you were taken in by the people who had killed your home without knowing, were given a new name.

“Why didn’t I remember you?” you ask.

“You didn’t call me until after your tree regrew,” I say. “Maybe it was less painful to forget.” But I don’t know. A qetatyawoy with a body like mine. A qesutlhowoy with legs. I reach for your hand, and my heart is warm when you take it.

You stop, turn your eyes to our entwined fingers. “Weyai. I knew that name when I heard it. There was a… like lightning in my chest.” I feel you shaking through your hand in mine.

“Minerva,” I say, carefully. Inawa, my mouth wanted to say when you first said it, to bring you to us that way, but you corrected me, and now I say your name to you.

You grab me into a hug, arms tight around my body.

“I can’t believe I never told you my name then.”

Holding you as tight as possible, I shake my head and hold my breath, waiting.

“I am owake no more,” you say, and draw your own breath. “Kayiyi Minerva Thiessen.” My heart swells until I’m sure my body can no longer contain it.

Minerva.

My friend.

Never broken.

(Read Minerva's story before this one in The Tree Remembers)

The Lost Children (Tas Owake), Part Two: I Hear it, Too

(Read part one here)

Otwan takes in every detail of this Ewulin. Despite her clear voice, a wrinkled brow and one hand held behind her back as she rubbed her thumb. Replaying the young woman’s entrance in her mind, she detects an unusual gait.

It’s as though she’s still learning to walk, she tells her sister. And expects the ground to be liquid. I believe her that she’s qesutlhowoy.

She speaks as though she’s a human learning speech, Weyai replies. And with a name like that… I haven’t heard any like it.

Owake, then?

“Daughters!” Their mother laughs. Beside her, Ewulin shifts, bites her lip. Hiqwayaq pats her hand and addresses her. “I take it you haven’t met any tree woy?”

“I haven’t.”

Hiqwayaq gives Otwan and Weyai a smile. “Keep your comments aloud, daughters. Or perhaps listen to what I’ve called you to hear.”

Some days ago, a crow came to Otwan and bowed its head before croaking a message from her mother: “Bring Weyai and join the lhai and lhaiqi as we meet to discuss what to do about the owake.” As woy, neither gods or spirits, as humans would term it, Otwan and her sister weren’t to be in such a meeting, but when the highest lhai and your mother tells you to come, you come. And all the rest obey.

Hearing the invitation, Otwan had thought her mother needed Weyai to provide account of the voice she’d been hearing, spoken as a tree woy would, but with human words. To what end, Otwan didn’t ask. The owake were lost; lost were the owake. Live too near the places where this world and the human world touched, and crossover happened. But once someone from this world forgot they weren’t human, well. How do you find them?

Hiqwayaq brought up the topic from time to time, as far as Otwan heard from Yehan and other local lhaiqi, but nothing changed. Not that talking appeared to have made this change possible.

“What I remember first,” Ewulin says, “is being alone in a deep pool in a forest a little like this one.”

Alone?

Weyai takes Otwan’s hand, echoing Otwan’s horror at the thought.

“I lived there for—I’m not sure how long. My earliest memories are few and far between. I lost our speech. I learned human speech from the ones who would visit the pool, and I thought I was the only one of me there was.

“One day, a human fell into the pool and drowned. She looked like me. I swam out of the water and had legs; I don’t know how. And pretended to be her for a time, until I learned about the ocean again. Until I came home.”

A qesutlhowoy without the ocean… Otwan didn’t know what she would do without the trees. And a being of their world without any of their kind, with only humans, knowing they weren’t one of them? She squeezed her sister’s hand.

But this Ewulin, this supposed owake-who-was, couldn’t have endured that kind of pain.

“I don’t believe you,” Otwan says.

Otwan…

Hiqwayaq, calming the angry eruption that burst from the rest of the listeners following Otwan’s comment, says to her daughter: “Why not?”

“How could anyone survive being away like that, knowing they weren’t human? Knowing…” she trembles, glad for her sister’s touch. “Why not try to return sooner?”

Quietly, Ewulin only said, “I didn’t know there was anything to return to.”

***

I believe her, I say to my mother, but Hiqwayaq doesn’t respond. Not being a tree being, my mother didn’t communicate often like that, and usually didn’t say anything back. But I think she always hears. I’ve never fully understood how, if she’s not like Otwan or me, but she can.

Still, bolstered by knowing what I’ll say, I speak aloud.

“I believe her.”

“What?” Otwan nearly pulls away from me.

My mother nods and addresses everyone. “The qesutlhowoy that Ewulin returned to have checked everything thoroughly and I am convinced. An owake has returned. And it could be that there are still owake who think they are human but, for the sake of those who are alone—” I feel Otwan’s shiver at the word through my hand— “and who know they are such, we cannot leave them there without some effort to bring them home.”

“Oh, like we’ve always done?” says Iyhan, lhaiqi of a small pool-glade some way from here, near a thin place between ours and the human world. “We’re so good at leaving the human world alone.” She was still just young enough that disgruntled worked for her.

“You might have been owake yourself,” Hiqwayaq reminded her gently. “If things had occurred differently.”

Iyhan closes her mouth, her expression softening. “How do we find them if we don’t know how to identify them?”

Who are you?

I should tell Mother about the voice. And, as I look to her, I find her eyes meeting mine.

I hear it, too.

(Read the conclusion here.)

The Mountain is Falling, part two

“What is truth?” asks my Father. (Read part one.)

“You.” I pause. “The forest?”

“And why did it die?”

“It wasn’t the whole truth.”

“A partial truth will never sustain a forest.”

“And there were rocks underneath.”

“Were there?”

I think. “No? Yes? I couldn’t tell. The roots might have got to them. They were buried.”

“A buried truth will keep the water from sinking in.”

At this, I squint at him. “But there wasn’t any water.”

“You didn’t get far enough for anything to change. What was the petrified wood?”

“What do you mean, I didn’t get far enough?”

“What was the petrified wood?”

I sit up, affronted. “No, what is this about not getting far enough? What do you mean?”

Gentle: “What was the petrified wood?”

I squint again, but it’s clear he won’t say anything about that until after I’ve answered his question so, with a sigh: “It was the forest.”

“And what is it now?”

“The mountain.”

“Do you see the cycle?”

The cycle?

Pain.

Fear and confusion.

Stepping back.

Partial truth.

Death?

“What’s the petrified wood?” I ask.

“Death,” he says.

Death.

Pain.

“What breaks that cycle?” I ask.

“Forgiveness.”

“I knew that.”

“If you already knew that, then why did you ask the question?” he says this not as a reprimand. He really wants to know the answer.

“That feels like the forest.”

“The mountain is falling,” my Father says, “and it falls to pieces. Those pieces grow a forest, but the forest dies and its bones are bleached by the sun-”

“They were bleached by the wind,” I remind him.

“Its bones are bleached by the sun,” he continues, “and I bring those bones to life.”

“Is that the only part of the cycle where things can change?”

“I haven’t finished the cycle.”

Eyebrow raised, I say nothing, but I listen. He has caught my attention.

“I bring those bones to life and they form a mountain. The mountain falls and, by my life, the forest grows, bigger than before. It is a process, you see.”

“But I feel like I’m missing something!” I cry. “This can’t be all there is! How do I know the forest will grow into a whole truth? How do I know the mountain won’t fall?”

“Why does the mountain grow?”

“The wind.”

“No.”

“Fear.”

“It comes together to protect itself. And then it gets hurt. What do you think it’s trying to protect itself from?”

“The sun,” I say nonsensically. I don’t know where it comes from.

“Who is the sun?”

“You,” I say, just as nonsensically.

“And who are you?”

“The moon.”

“Where are you?”

“In your arms.”

“Is the cycle still going?”

“It’s on pause.”

“Do you want it to stop?”

“Yes.”

“Then hold me, and let me turn your mountains into forests that will never die.”

“Will it take a long time?”

“It doesn’t have to. But that depends on you.”

“What do I do with the mountain?”

“Give it to me, and I will face it for you.”

“It can’t be that easy,” I tell him. “That feels like the forest, too.”

“A full truth partially received becomes a partial truth in the heart of the receiver. What was missing in the forest this time?”

I bury my face in him. “Animals.”

“So let me sing animals to you.”

And he does, a melody sweetly filling the emptiness that once was a world, the emptiness that is paused time, for to pull out of time for a moment is as if the world no longer exists. Softly spreading tendrils of white, yellow, gold, turning to scarlet, the notes twine the air around us. Notes of green and blue follow, the vanguard of a rainbow profusion as vines bloom and tender leaves open to brush against my cheeks. The buzz of insects chase after the ever-unfolding fragrance, bringing the blossoms nearer to fruiting. Butterflies thread through the space, purple wings vivid as though made of light, but it is the Father who is the sun.

I close my eyes and breathe in the music.

But how do I stop the mountain from falling?

“No,” says my Father gently. “That is the wrong question. How does a tree live?”

It takes in the sunlight. It takes in water through its roots, nutrients from the ground. It is made strong by the wind that presses against it.

“What does the tree do to make sunlight come to it?”

Nothing.

“The water?”

Nothing.

“Nutrients? Wind?”

Nothing. “It draws near to them?”

“Where do you find life?”

“In you.”

“How close am I to you?”

My arms tighten around him in answer.

“And how does the tree draw nearer to the sun, when the sun has already reached close enough to enter its veins?”

I open my hand to see a tree sprout from my palm. Light pours down on it; it opens its leaves to drink and, in so doing, raises arms to reach back.

“If you try to stop the mountain from falling because you yourself are not connected to life, the ground will not become ripe for a forest. If you tend a forest of partial love, that forest will die. And its death will grow into a mountain until it falls. But none of this is the path. Does a tree walk?”

“No.” I resist the urge to tell him the forest was about truth, not love. His hand in mine was knitting together something in my heart and the distinction became less important. Where else is truth found, if not love? If not him?

“So where does it go?”

Up.

“Come to me.”

But we’re together.

“Come to me.”

As the tree and the sun are together, yet they each continue to reach.

“Come to me.”

The mountain rises before me, a gnarled mess of ancient wood-become-stone. As it falls to dust and the forest grows up around me, I find myself surrounded by butterflies.

I stand in my forest, holding hands with my Father. As I lean against his shoulder, we begin to sing.

The Mountain is Falling, part one

The mountain is falling and the pebbles made from its crushing weight race to me and pile around my toes.

The mountain is breaking and the stones that couldn’t be made any smaller roll over the pebbles onto my feet, digging their jagged edges into my skin.

The mountain is crumbling and rocks form hills around me so I won’t be able to move forward when I come to my senses and regain the use of my muscles.

The mountain is split in two and the boulders race towards me, some stuck in the field of their weaker brethren, others flying past me, a few set to collide and I raise my arms but they bounce and land somewhere behind me, some stopping, others continuing on their incessant way.

The mountain is falling and now its bulk towers over me as it loses its balance and I am trapped against this wall of rock that came to rest against my body and in my mouth and in my nostrils and in my eyes and in my ears and I can’t go that direction but the mountain is falling and the mountain is falling and the mountain is falling…

I am the rock in the avalanche and as I grope behind myself, I realize I parted the waters and the air behind me is clear of disaster.

I step back.

The mountain crashes before me, its great bulk pulverizing all that came from it until lesser parts are dust and least parts are less than dust.

I face the mountain, trembling.

“The way is clear, the way is clear,” booms a voice around me.

“The way is gone,” I say, “The mountain has fallen.”

“The way is clear, the way is clear,” the voice says again as if I’d said nothing. “The mountain is gone.”

The mountain sinks into the ground and the grass grows over it, the trees sprout and reach into tall, spindling birch only to fall and die and decompose as new trees grow, over and over until the dirt covers the stone and there is nothing left of the mountain.

“The way is clear, the way is clear,” says the voice.

“The way is not clear,” I say. “The forest has obliterated it.”

“The way is clear, the way is clear.” I wonder where the voice gets its information. “The forest is ready.”

The forest dies without animals, carbon dioxide used up and nutrients leached from the soil, and the wind bleaches the fallen trunks, petrifies them.

“The way is clear, the way is clear,” says the voice.

“There is no way,” I say. “There’s nothing.”

“The way is clear, the way is clear. The mountain is building.”

The petrified logs shift with the changing seasons as the ground shifts, shift with the winds that dance through, shift with the earth as it moves, restless, beneath them.

The petrified logs clump together and entwine their branches until there is no beginning or end, they hold together, huddled against the cold and the rain.

They form the mountain.

“There is no way,” I say. “The mountain must fall.”

The mountain is falling.

I stamp on the ground, done with this game, and grow until I am a giant, taller than the mountain could ever be, taller than the sun is high and the world is a speck beneath me.

“Where do I go,” I cry, “When I don’t know the way I’m going?”

I lift my face to gaze into the eyes of my Father. He reaches for me and I let him take me into his arms to hold his adult daughter close to his chest.

He takes the world-speck between his thumb and forefinger and quietly smashes it to nothing between them.

“You had a whole world to learn in,” he says. “What did you find?”

“Nothing goes the way I want it to,” I say into his shoulder.

“That’s not true.” His voice is gentle and he holds me out to bend down and look into my eyes. I choose to meet his, though mine are downcast. “What did you learn?”

“There’s no way out,” I say. “There’s the mountain and the rockslide, the forest and death, and none of them are right. None of them are real.”

“What is real?” he asks, casually. “Someone once asked me that of truth. What is the mountain?”

“Pain,” I say, and close my eyes to hold him tight again and nestle my face into his shoulder.

“What is the rock field?”

“Fear and confusion.”

“Why did you step back?”

I pause. “I didn’t want to be buried.”

“Good. What is the forest?”

“Life.”

“But it died.”

I sigh. He sits, and I rest on his lap as I think.

“It’s me.”

“You think you’re missing something?”

“Maybe? I know I’m not, but what if I think I am? What if I’m operating out of this assumption that I have nothing but plants and all this oxygen but no one to breathe it?”

He doesn’t answer, but gently asks again, “What is the forest?”

“Nothing. It’s a lie.”

“What kind of lie?”

“But isn’t it some sort of truth, though? Because it did live, for a little.”

“What is truth?” But he says this seriously.

“You.” I pull out my head to look at him again, speaking with the earnestness of a child concerned that her parent doesn’t know something terribly important.

“What is truth?”


Read part two.

The Peace of the Gods

Under the maelstrom sky, a pond. Beneath that pond, a wellspring. Around that pond, the forest. The heads of the trees nodded over the small liquid hollow, needles a lattice as though the spring had reached into the air to form a shield against the violence of the atmosphere.

Into the peace it created, saint Gih arrived.

This was before his power; this was before his fame. Saint Gih came to the wood of Belameh while the goddess fought the first battles of the uprising, when doom lay on all their foreheads. A poacher, he entered the wood, seeking the white deer the hunters spoke of in reverent whispers, the white stag whose antlers shone like the moon. The antlers which, when ground to a powder, would keep a man from death.

Saint Gih arrived at the pool.

The spring lay beneath, unnoted, unseen. From it poured all the water of the air. Saint Gih had entered the clearing to escape the storm; Saint Gih had arrived to find the source of its chaos. Though he had found no deer in the wood, the lightning across the sky remained atop the water. The pool held it, branching to one side, branching to another.

And in the image held there, saint Gih found what he sought, though he did not know it.

A deer stood at the edge of the pond, a doe white as the moon. Saint Gih raised his bow. If he should not cheat death this night, at least he should eat. The arrow flew, shot truly, bent awry in the air that rose above the water. The doe fled into the darkening wood.

Though he did not know it, saint Gih’s death left him.

Before him, an arrow. Beneath it, a wellspring. The power that shielded the storm held half a weapon at eye level, and saint Gih stood transfixed. He turned to the sky, the dome above him, grown out of nature as though shaped by hands. He turned to the trees, arced when they should be straight. He turned downward, and saw the lightning in the water.

Saint Gih saw the storm in the water.

The words of those who were not yet saints came to him out of the spring. The words of those who fought the gods entered his mind and churned therein. He could not deny what he had once doubted, and though they saw only defeat, under the sky he saw their victory.

Under the sky he saw their peace.

Leaving the arrow, he entered. Leaving his bow, he drowned. Leaving himself, he submerged. And the wellspring rose to meet him. The wellspring poured through him to the clouds. The wellspring put the lightning into him. Saint Gih, who had hid from battle for fear, though that fear ate him until his shrinking heart sought the secret the trees hid, broke the surface converted to their cause.

He arose saint Gih, firstborn of the entombers of gods.

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This story, first published on my Patreon, comes from my work in progress Hunter and Prey, which will be the third book in the White Changeling series. It may have differences in the final book, as this is taken from the first draft, but I anticipate it will remain mostly the same.

The other books in the series so far are Hidden in Sealskin and Like Mist Over the Eyes.