Chapter Text
Dark Pines Under Water
Gwendolyn MacEwan
This land like a mirror turns you inward
And you become a forest in a furtive lake;
The dark pines of your mind reach downward,
You dream in the green of your time,
Your memory is a row of sinking pines.
Explorer, you tell yourself, this is not what you came for
Although it is good here, and green;
You had meant to move with a kind of largeness
You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream.
But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper
And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper
In an elementary world;
There is something down there and you want it told.
CHAPTER 1
There are two empty boys lost in a hungry forest.
One is cursed and one is blessed.
Chanyeol can't see their faces, but they feel familiar, and he follows them. He can help. He knows these loud trees with the certainty of a dream.
When the boys enter a colorful meadow, they reach for each other. Shoulder-to-shoulder and hand-in-hand. Chanyeol stretches to touch the smaller one’s shoulder, but suddenly the boys disappear in flash of light.
Chanyeol wakes with no memory of the dream.
But somewhere, sometime, there are two boys lost in a hungry forest...
"So how much is your zipline package?"
Baekhyun taps a pen against his notebook. His calculated budget is written at the top of the page: Absolutely fucking nothing. He drains a mug of black coffee and sets it on the table with a loud thunk.
"More than you can afford." Jongdae sighs over the phone. "Why?"
"How much for the friend of an employee?"
"I'm a park ranger, not the CEO." There's a rustling sound and a loud caw caw before Jongdae adds, "Same price. Oh, hell. The red-tailed just shit again."
Baekhyun chews his bottom lip and starts stacking dishes. The house is falling into serious disrepair now that he’s teaching full-time, and the least he can do is stay on top of the washing, but he's distracted enough by financial woes that he almost drops half a bowl of rice on his way to the sink. Charming.
He sighs. "So there are no discounts at all? I thought national parks were supposed to be inclusive and accessible."
"That's a government farce. You haven’t been back to the park since high school, why do you wanna come now?"
"I don't," he admits, turning on the faucet. With one hand he pours soap into the shape of a smiley face over a sponge and starts rubbing. "But Chanyeol loves going, and it's almost my birthday, so I figured I'd take him."
"For your birthday. Okay."
Baekhyun forgets that he's alone and shrugs. The faucet is turned off. He shakes dry the bowl and mug. They go in a neat line beside the sink, on a threadbare towel in a patch of sun from the open window, where a singular spring spider is casting shadows of a beautiful web.
"I don't care about celebrating."
There's a pause and another ruffling sound. Jongdae returns with a whisper. "Okay, manager's coming, gotta go. No promises but I'll double-check our packages, okay?"
"Okay! Thanks."
"Bye."
Baekhyun tosses his phone on the counter and inspects the somber state of his kitchen. Half a loaf of bread and some uneasy oranges are leftover for lunch. He’s partly disgusted; he took better care of himself in middle school, honestly, because at least then he had someone else to watch out for. Now he lives alone and, aside from his beloved high school friends, has no social life to speak of.
Niamh's Hollow Nature Reserve was his last-ditch idea for a grand romantic gesture for Chanyeol. He’s planning to confess his feelings for his best friend—and by feelings he means the hopeless, all-inclusive, close-up pining which has made him the butt of every joke since Jongdae learned to speak.
Hopefully he can brainstorm a cheaper date before May. Otherwise Baekhyun will spend his whole life mute and cowardly, doomed to yearn for his best friend forever.
If only Niamh's Hollow had something interesting to do. Their only claim to fame is a nature reserve park and a once-haunted forest, Niamh's Wood, where kids went missing in the 80's. It made national news, so grandmothers on porches still talk like those were the endtimes. He's seen the black and white missing posters, frayed at the edges and half-eaten by goats, blowing onto Main Street even years after they were printed.
Needless to say, everyone avoids Niamh's Wood. Baekhyun usually takes it a step further and avoids the nature reserve beside it. And the river beyond his house. And the mountain trails. Anywhere he feels marginally threatened, actually, because Baekhyun lives a risk-adverse lifestyle. He's proud of it.
His phone lights up with a text.
To: Baekhyun
From: Chanyeol
[Att: 1 Image]
do you want lunch later? I caught a salmon this morning!!!
[Att: 1 Image]
had to fight off this bear tho
hahahha jk but look she was pretty close to me!
Unfortunately, his best friend is a thrill-seeker. That's okay, because Chanyeol is the only risk Baekhyun will ever take.
To: Chanyeollie
From: Baekhyun
yeah sure see you at noon
I'll bring berries ^.^
Everyone knows better than to go into the woods.
Baekhyun's heard the stories. Niamh's Hollow is a small town with lots of secrets. The people are steeped in tradition, and after generations and generations of passing down the same knowledge from grandmother to grandson, everyone is fearful of the trees. Kids step off the path and never come home. To enter the woods is to die.
His mother used to lecture him about it every week.
"That's why you shouldn't play on the basketball court behind the laundromat," Byun Jaein said, sitting up in bed and accepting a bowl of beef stew. Her eyes were bright that day, Baekhyun remembers. "You and the Park boy go there all the time. Don't deny it. I'm your mom, I know."
"But it’s still technically safe," fifteen-year-old Baekhyun complained. He sat on the edge of the bed and poured a cup of water for his mother to drink later. "You can see the street and everything. It's fine."
She looked down at the soup, stirring but not eating, as usual. She managed a rare, wrinkled smile for her son. That's why Baekhyun remembers the conversation, years out of teenhood. It was one of the last smiles he got.
She said, "Don't forget the geasa ."
"Never."
"Don't lose your name."
"I won't." Baekhyun rolled his eyes and slid off the bed. He took away the soup and passed over the cup of water. "I know better, I promise."
"You see what happened to me. I broke my geasa too soon, and I will pay the price." Byun Jaein drank a little, then sat back and closed her eyes. Afternoon sunlight threw a halo over her silhouette, dark hair spread underneath like swirling tentacles, sticky with cold sweat. Even dying, she was beautiful.
"Mom," Baekhyun said feebly. "It's not your fault..."
"I just worry about you. And I'm sorry that you have to worry about me, too."
At the time, Baekhyun didn't know what to say. He was young and terrified of his mother's withering body, not the woods at the edge of town, nor the spiritual limitation placed on his soul at birth. Don't lose your name, Byun Baekhyun . His geasa . It was ridiculous; he'd never lose his name, and the trees had never hurt him.
His mother's eyebrows, twisted in pain... that hurt every morning until she died, quietly, unremarkably, in her bed while Baekhyun was in biology class.
But before that, when his childhood was still rosy and full of chiming bells, Baekhyun grew up in a tiny house at the base of a hill in Niamh's Hollow, where his sickly mother and long-dead grandmother and great-grandfather and great-great-someone were all born. The house was old and wooden. It creaked in the mornings and whistled with the winds. There were more spots of mold along the ceiling than he could count and a stubborn queen wasp in the shed.
And yet, he loved it.
The ravens who nested in the eaves every autumn were his friends. When it rained, the kitchen smelled like jars of sweet spices and jam stuffed in the cupboard, gifts from pitying neighbors and handouts from the local food bank, which always had his favorites. He played in the weeds below the porch, chasing beetles and singing along to the busted radio that only knew the trot station.
His childhood was sad and short, but the house was always a safe haven.
Even now, nine years after his mother’s death, Baekhyun slaves over the house repairs. He spends his free time weeding, vacuuming, dusting, tossing crumbs to the ravens, and when all that’s finished, he binges dance covers in YouTube. Sometimes he attempts to learn the choreography. Sometimes he succeeds.
After his unsuccessful call with Jongdae earlier in the morning, Baekhyun locks the door and heads out. He blows a kiss to the low stone wall protecting his house from wind, where a rosemary bush is stretching toward the sun.
"Bye mom," he calls to the bush.
He still can't shake the habit of greeting her hello and goodbye.
It's a rare, beautiful day with blue skies in every direction. Baekhyun tilts his head up as he walks down the the dirt road, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, enjoying the weak warmth. Spring has always been his favorite season, but especially spring days like this. Especially spring days like this when he's on his way to see Chanyeol.
He whistles as he walks. Houses pass, shudders drawn despite the gorgeous weather. This street is as familiar to Baekhyun as his own body. A pair of sparrows dart past his head, chasing each other in circles through the budding trees.
Baekhyun's feeling so relaxed that he almost doesn't notice the car.
A green sedan careens around the corner, ricochets off the curb at his feet, and squeals away. Baekhyun startles backward, hand flying to his chest. Fucking shit. The sidewalk is narrow here, he easily could've been clipped. His heart hammers, a post-adrenaline wobbliness taking over his joints so that Baekhyun has to stop at the corner and breathe for a second.
The car was headed north, toward the nature reserve and the highway south. Good riddance. Hopefully the driver isn't a local. He never wants to see a green sedan again. Shaken, Baekhyun ducks his head and turns at the corner with the willow tree.
Missed Call: Sehun
Joy bubbles in Baekhyun when he approaches the apartment. It's on the bottom floor of a small complex bordered by oak trees. Chanyeol and Sehun have a tiny porch-patio with a wicker rocking chair that Baekhyun's spent many an evening in, eating and drinking and shooting the shit. Today there’s a wayward squirrel crossing the patio on nimble feet.
Before he can knock, Sehun appears in the open doorway, cheeks flushed and out of breath. He's in his pink-and-white scrubs. His eyes are wide and red around the edges as he takes in Baekhyun's casual stroll.
Sehun is not the type of person to appear flustered in public. He’s the type of person to spend forty-five minutes each night applying charcoal masks and get into Twitter arguments about the most environmentally-friendly bubble tea chains. Through some stroke of good fortune, or more likely an offering to a demonic deity, he graduated top of his class from nursing school and has enjoyed a comfortable, if exhausting, life. He’s the definition of the word pretentious .
"Baekhyun," Sehun calls, his hand wrapped around the doorframe. "I need you to come help me."
Baekhyun hops up the porch steps. "What's up?"
"It's Chanyeol." Sehun shuts the door behind them. "Something happened, I think he's sick."
It takes a moment for Baekhyun to process those words and look up from toeing off his shoes on the carpet.
Their leather couch is atypically clean, but that's probably because Chanyeol is sprawled across it, shirtless, with his eyes closed. Blood spots across his bare chest. His hair is glossy-black with liquid, and from this distance it's impossible to tell whether it's blood or water.
Both windows are thrown open behind the couch, shrouding him in afternoon sunlight. Various medical supplies are stacked on the table ominously. It looks like someone staged a horror movie in here.
Baekhyun's heart leaps into his throat. He drops his bag and runs to the couch. "What happened?"
" Don't touch him . And—don't freak out," Sehun adds, crouching on the floor beside him. "Just put on some gloves. I need extra hands."
Baekhyun can't understand. He was just texting Chanyeol this morning, confirming their lunch plans. Everything was fine. He obeys—no touching—but scrutinizes. Chanyeol could be sleeping if not for the odd red gouges on his chest and the half-completed stitch through the deepest one. Blood oozes from the wounds and the scissors are covered in dried red-brown muck. He tries not to feel queasy.
"Tell me what happened," Baekhyun repeats, pulling on a pair of his own gloves. His hands shake.
"He came home delirious and running a fever—"
"Where did he go?"
"Let me finish." Sehun points to Chanyeol's shoulders. "Hold him down while I stitch."
Indignant and terrified, Baekhyun's hands close over Chanyeol's shoulders. His skin is familiar to the touch—Baekhyun has gripped these shoulders for various reasons throughout the years and his fingers fit perfectly above his collarbones.
Sehun carefully resumes the stitchwork. "He was talking gibberish about some yellow flower in the forest. He took off his shirt and lost consciousness." He pauses to cut the thread. Chanyeol twitches. "These are like insect bites spreading outward from the right atrium in a perfect mandala. I've never seen anything like it. They just—look intentional. And deep."
"Intentional insect bites? What the hell." Baekhyun studies the wound while Sehun cleans. "Why did he go back to the nature reserve at all? Or…”
But Chanyeol didn't say he went to the reserve, did he? The answer hits Baekhyun so hard he has to lean his elbows on the couch arm. His hands on Chanyeol's shoulders slip. Fuck. The forest. What if he'd gone into the mouth of the devil—Niamh's Wood?
As if coming to the same conclusion at the same time, Sehun's hands freeze around the hydrogen peroxide. They exchange a glance that says it all. If Chanyeol were stupid enough to wander into the woods, he could be afflicted with any manner of unnatural illness or curse, and they’d have no idea. The woods are forbidden for a reason.
"No." Sehun ducks his head and finishes disinfecting the wound. "He wouldn't have gone past the park."
"He knows better."
"Everyone knows better."
"But what if he did?" Baekhyun’s fingers leave white marks on Chanyeol’s skin. "You know he's—"
"A careless motherfucker?"
"I would say reckless, but sure."
Sehun sighs. “Well, you’re too soft on him.”
He's bent over the table, and despite years of med school and a cool head during a crisis—which Baekhyun hasn't actually seen before this morning—his hands are shaking, too. His face is turned away, toward the back window, where afternoon sun sprays halfway across the rug and illuminates the kitchenette counter. His body language says it all: this is bad.
Filled with an awful, nervous energy, Baekhyun starts pacing over the gray rug in the center of the room. He keeps his eyes trained on the popcorn ceiling, because looking at Chanyeol's crumpled body makes him feel off-balance and nauseated, like he might cry or puke or both.
This is wrong. Chanyeol should be laughing, restless, fidgeting in his own oversized shirt. Not still. Not silent.
"I don't know what could've happened in the woods," Sehun finally says. He laces his long fingers together. "We should still take him to St. Anthony’s. Have them run some tests. Maybe I'm missing something internal."
"Yeah." Baekhyun takes a deep breath. "Okay."
He forces himself to sit on the floor beside the couch. All his mother's warnings are swirling in his head, and he curses Chanyeol long and hard for being a dumbass and potentially screwing with nature. So many things could've gone wrong. Where does he even start?
There's one simple answer.
Baekhyun swallows. "Do you think... could this have to do with his geasa ?"
The rule that Chanyeol must follow his whole life, or die. His destiny. His curse.
Baekhyun doesn't want to think about Chanyeol somehow breaking his geasa . It's too horrible to be true—thinking that Chanyeol might be dying right there on the couch—but the circumstances are odd. Niamh's Wood, a mysterious illness, no known cause.
"If anyone knows, it's you." Sehun spreads his hands. "He never told me his."
"He never told me either."
Baekhyun reaches for Chanyeol’s hand, seeking familiarity and comfort. His fingertips touch something soft and foreign. A crumpled paper falls from Chanyeol’s palm, where he must’ve squeezed it tight even in his sleep. It rolls tentatively along the floorboards and collides with the couch leg.
Heart leaping, Baekhyun scoops up the paper and unfolds it. The paper is a map of Niamh’s Wood with Chanyeol’s handwriting scrawled across the top. The yellow fan-flower will send me home.
“Chanyeol wrote this.” Baekhyun turns it to face Sehun. “Look, it’s definitely his handwriting. What does it mean?”
Sehun frowns. A thundercloud has gathered on his face and he barely even reads the words scrawled over the map. “Sounds like a load of bullshit. Maybe delirium from the fever.”
It seems to be a real map, at least. The geography is detailed, drawn in thin black lines, and covers the entirety of the forest starting from Route 45 all the way until the capitol boundary. Three rivers weave together and intersect. Faded numbers at the corner proudly display a print date of 1982.
“Or…” Baekhyun swallows. He can’t believe he’s about to say this. “Or maybe there’s a cure. In the woods.”
Sehun shakes his head before the sentence is even finished. “We’re not playing a guessing game. Fuck that. I’ll take him in now for a CAT scan.”
“You should.” Baekhyun digs around in his bag for his phone, holding the map tightly in one hand. “And I… will…” His fingers close around the phone. “Call Jongdae.”
He has a bad feeling about the note. Chanyeol is rash but not wild, spontaneous but not stupid—he wouldn’t write something like this without good reason, fever delirium or not. The yellow fan flowers must be important. Maybe they’re herbs, a counter for some fast-acting poisonous plant that he accidentally ingested.
All Baekhyun knows for sure is that he trusts Chanyeol. If he said he needs yellow fan-flowers, he needs them.
“Fine.” Sehun sweeps his tools aside and begins collecting items from around the room to shove into his bag. Keys, a crocodile-skin wallet, Chanyeol’s leather bag with the salmon still wrapped inside, a flask of water. “Help me get Chanyeol in the car after.”
Baekhyun stands in the sunshine from the window and calls his oldest friend for the second time that day. It goes straight to voicemail and Jongdae’s chipper voice shouts, “This is Jongdae, you just missed me! Leave a mess—”
He hangs up. It would’ve been nice to hear a park ranger’s opinion on these mysterious flowers, but Baekhyun won’t kid himself—his mind is made up. He’s going into the woods. If there’s any way he can help without a medical degree, he needs to try. Goddammit, Chanyeol.
Things happen fast. An hour later, Chanyeol is installed at a comfortable room in St. Anthony’s and Baekhyun finds himself dropped off at the edge of the woods, tossed into a quest he never wanted. Like a reluctant knight stomping through a dangerous forest in search of a cure for his sleeping beauty.
“Don’t die,” Sehun tosses blasé words from the window as he drives away. “I’ll call you with any test results.”
The car disappears down the empty road. A tumbleweed blows past and catches in the roots of a tree.
When Chanyeol wakes up, Baekhyun is going to strangle him.
Unless Baekhyun gets strangled by his mother's ghost first. He can only imagine what she'd say if she saw him right now, toeing the grass at the edge of the gas station parking lot, completely alone and carrying enough gear for Everest and back. She probably wouldn't say anything at all. Just an eye roll and a disappointed tightening of her lips.
He walks up the road from the gas station, where a crooked wooden sign says NIAMH'S WOOD in faded yellow letters. The path ahead is hardly visible underneath a layer of stretching vines and mossy logs. A grasshopper the size of Baekhyun's palm skitters past his shoe. Is it a trick of the light, or are there more, a dozen or so skeletal creatures flitting through the bushes? The trees are so thick, he can only see dapples of light and layers upon layers of hypnotic green.
Baekhyun checks the time on his phone. 2:03pm. He squeezes the straps of his backpack. He can do this. He has to do this.
For Chanyeol.
"I'm not afraid," he says to the woods.
Baekhyun steps into the unknown.
IN DREAMS HE REMEMBERS—
One hot day during the summer before high school, while Baekhyun waits for the laundromat to finish cycling through his and his mother's clothes, perched on the kerb and crafting a twig maze for the ants, he hears a basketball bounce.
It's a unique sound. One he never hears outside the school gymnasium, since he's the only kid on his street. But somewhere here on the avenue, fifteen minutes' walk from his house, there must be a court and a player.
He peers through the cracked window to check the washing. Still sudsing and grating.
Baekhyun kicks the twigs away. He sets off to find the source of the sound. Basketball is way more interesting than ants.
Tucked behind the laundromat and a sit-down Italian restaurant, there's a kid in oversized Nikes shooting hoops. The court is fighting overgrown weeds and a rotting tree in one corner, where the asphalt meets the forest, but otherwise the area is clean and totally hidden from the street. Baekhyun recognizes the kid.
Oh, shit —but it's too late to turn around. The kid sees him.
"Hey, Baekhyun." Chanyeol stops dribbling and waves.
"Hi," Baekhyun says, freezing at the edge of the court. He didn't expect Park Chanyeol to know his name. Sure, there were only forty kids in their grade, but he and Chanyeol had never spoken beyond can you pass me a paper?
Baekhyun clears his throat. "What are you up to?"
"Practicing. You wanna play?"
"I don't really know how."
Suddenly he's hyperaware of how he dumb he looks—a kid wandering the streets during summer vacation, no friends to flock with, no teams or clubs or hobbies. He's proud of his jobs at home. He keeps his mom relaxed and comfortable. But he can't exactly show that off, and in the face of Mr. Park Popular with his myriad of well-known talents, Baekhyun feels... dull. Uninteresting.
But Chanyeol smiles. He's one of the few first-year students with no acne, and when his face lights up, he looks prettier and more sophisticated than anybody else in their backwoods high school. He bounces the ball towards Baekhyun and says, "I'll teach you."
"Sure," Baekhyun says, then misses the ball.
"Whoa." Chanyeol chases the ball and plants it on the asphalt. "Sorry, my bad."
He's hardly out of breath, even though the sun is high, and when he laughs it sends a twinge of embarrassment down Baekhyun's spine. Only thirty minutes left until the end of the wash cycle. Maybe he should just back out and avoid the humiliation. He's been admiring Chanyeol from afar for years, he's content to leave their relationship in the hypothetical.
"It's okay." Baekhyun shoves his hands into his jean pockets. "I should go anyway. Uh, I have—stuff."
"Are you sure?" Chanyeol's arms fall to his sides. The ball rolls a bit closer to Baekhyun.
Yeah, it's okay , is on the tip of his tongue. But a gust of summer wind rolls outward from the forest, tossing his hair into his eyes, and when Baekhyun shakes his vision clear, the basketball is nudging at his foot. Well. If that's not a sign, he doesn't know what is.
He still hesitates. "Maybe one game. Are you on the team at school?"
"Not yet." Chanyeol crosses the court and snatches the ball. He dribbles it between his legs, moving across the space with grace and confidence. "Tryouts are in two months. That's why I'm practicing. Here, make a free throw."
He hands the ball to Baekhyun. Their fingers brush.
Chanyeol points to a faded white line on the ground. "Stand there."
"Okay." Baekhyun almost trips over his own feet. His shoelace is untied. Great. Holding the ball with one elbow, he bends to tie it and straightens to see Chanyeol distracted, looking into the trees and frowning.
Baekhyun follows his gaze and sees... trees. Some swaying branches. A squirrel to the right, leaping from a low-hanging branch to a holey trunk.
He clears his throat. "Ready?"
"Oh." Chanyeol snaps around. His eyes are a little unfocused and he shakes his head slightly as if to clear it. Like a dog after a bath shaking water—and worries—free from his fur. "Yeah, sorry, thought I heard something. Okay, go for it. Let's see your technique."
With no hesitation, Baekhyun lobs the ball toward the net. It skims the bottom and bounces off the center of the backboard. Chanyeol catches the rebound easily, and Baekhyun expects laughter, but none comes.
"Not bad, you have great aim. Do you play shooter games?"
Baekhyun crosses his arms. "Yeah. Sometimes."
Whenever he goes to Jongdae's house, sure. Maybe once a month or so. Not enough to impact his hand-eye coordination, but he feels lame admitting to Chanyeol that he doesn't care much for violence. Even animated.
"Watch my wrist," Chanyeol says, and so they go.
It's actually fun. Chanyeol isn't intimidating like he seems. He's kind, if impatient, and laughs at himself more than he laughs at Baekhyun. Soon sweat beads on Baekhyun's forehead. He dribbles down the court and shoots. Miss—again. But Chanyeol slaps him on the back in support.
Baekhyun wipes his face with the collar of his shirt. "Show me one more time."
They play until Baekhyun abruptly remembers the laundry. He drops the ball like it's scalding and stammers an excuse. "I really have to go, sorry, um, I'll see you around."
"Yeah, no worries." Chanyeol spins the ball on his index finger. "I'm here pretty much every afternoon." With his free hand he points to the Italian restaurant. "That's my family's place. Just stop by if you want to play."
Baekhyun takes a closer look at the restaurant. Gold embossed font spells VIVA ARBOL over tinted windows. A tasteful fake grapevine drapes over the glass doorways. He'd never take a second glance at someplace like that—too expensive to care about, not when frozen lasagna tastes just as good. Probably.
He backs up toward the parking lot, toward reality, where the laundry awaits a dryer.
"Sure, sounds good." Baekhyun waves goodbye with no intentions of repeating this odd afternoon. "See you around, Chanyeol."
IN DREAMS HE IS REMEMBERED.
The woods are quiet.
Baekhyun unfurls the map from his pocket. He checks the compass strapped to his backpack. The path under his feet is rocky and starting to scatter like light through the leaves—but he's walking in the right direction. Probably.
Caw-caw-caw bursts from a bird above his head. Baekhyun startles and almost drops the map. Ahead the ground dips into a ravine and the path tapers off completely, leaving him to wander with shakey steps over the rocks and bushes. Here the trees grow so thickly together, their roots tangle in knots above the dirt. The light is dim and muggy.
Baekhyun wipes a trickle of sweat from the side of his face.
Don’t be afraid of the forest, he thinks. It's only trees and bugs.
His legs are starting to burn. His feet ache. After what feels like an hour, Baekhyun pauses at the crest of the ravine and sits heavily on a fallen log, disturbing a line of ants. He checks the time. Still 2:03pm.
A breath catches in his throat.
That's not possible. He's been walking for at least an hour. He unlocks his phone, but it doesn't seem to be frozen. Maybe there's something wrong with his automatic time zones? There's no signal, but that's to be expected.
Baekhyun takes a swig of water from his bottle. He should be more than halfway to the center by now, anyway, where a meadow is drawn on the map. Prime real estate for flowers. Only a bit further. He flexes his feet until the ache subsides, then stands.
A blistering crack! makes him whip around. High above his head, within the canopy, a branch is breaking from its trunk. Baekhyun watches it tremble and fall—directly over his head. He falls back, tripping over the log and scrambling away, but not fast enough. A sharp bundle of leaves scratches across his face and stings.
"Ow," Baekhyun gasps, rubbing at his face.
His hands come back clean. No blood. But he can feel where the leaves touched his cheeks and nose, hot like nettle, and he fumbles with the camera on his phone to check his reflection. There's a straight red line across his face, burning over the bridge of his nose, like a recent scar.
What the fuck?
Reenergized by fear, Baekhyun presses a palm to his cheek in hopes of numbing the pain and takes off walking westward. Fuck this place. He should've brought antibacterial cream. He doesn't want to waste drinking water to wash his face.
As he walks quickly over the underbrush, he tells himself, I'm not afraid.
The words become less and less true.
But Baekhyun doesn't slow down.
He thinks about one of his mother's favorite folk tales—and she had many—which she only told in the morning, over cinnamon buns, because it frightened Baekhyun so much the first time he heard it.
"This is the story of how Niamh's Hollow found the map of the world," she said, passing him a mug of steaming hot chocolate. "You should know it."
"I don't like this one. Can you tell me about the harp again?"
She shook her head in that serious way. "Listen to me, Baekhyun. Long before people came to Niamh's Hollow, there was the forest and its creatures. Back then we spoke the same language. The trees called for people to come, advertising an Eden for humanity, but when they did, they found terrible things. Pests and lakes of blood. Inside-out spiders. Trees who leaned upside down and drank hair from people's heads."
"Mom, that's gross."
"The people persevered further inward, but the horrors became worse. Some went insane and forgot who they were. Those who survived—who made it through the forest to where we are now—found the most beautiful hills and rivers. A safe haven, just like the trees said. But a few people were angry at the forest for making them suffer. So they went back to destroy it."
Her voice lowered to a whisper as she leaned over the table. "Legend says that as soon as they felled the first oak tree, the forest went silent. Nature took back its language from humanity. The community suddenly forgot how they'd gotten to Niamh's Hollow at all—their whole journey, their trials, their tribulations, and all those people lost along on the way. All forgotten. So they could never take revenge on Nature again."
"It's so sad," he said. "What a waste. To forget."
"It was a punishment for disrespecting the forest. The trees gave us geasa next, to keep humans from becoming too prideful. To keep us in our place, subservient to nature."
"But the forest killed people. Of course they disrespected it."
"We are nothing compared to the will of the Earth." She tapped her fork against Baekhyun's untouched plate of cinnamon bun. "Maybe those people were going to die anyway, maybe they already had geasa and broke them without knowing. That's why we obey our geasa and why we don't go into the woods."
"Sure." Baekhyun shoved a chunk of pastry into his mouth. "Hey, if everybody forgot their journey, where did the story come from?"
It’s not exactly a fond memory, but it’s one he thinks of often, and the words are especially vivid now as he finds himself nearing the center of the forest, checking and double-checking the compass, regulating his breathing and listening hard for any more surprises.
Obviously folk tales aren't true, but parts are based in truth. Moral of the story: The woods are dangerous. He knows that. Dealing with it face-to-face—literally—is just taking a toll on his anxious brain.
Then Baekhyun sees it. The herb.
A patch of tiny yellow flowers, shaped perfectly like fans, are sprouting from the roots of an enormous willow tree. Just beyond the roots, a stream gurgles over mossy rocks. The scene is picturesque and peaceful. Relief floods Baekhyun's chest and he hurries forward, picking over protruding roots and scuttling beetles.
"Finally," he breathes, reaching for a handful of flowers…
Baekhyun hesitates. Checks the stability of the willow tree. Checks the dirt for spiders, or ants, or any manner of unworldly creature. Checks the stream—
The stream is made of blood. Not water. Whatever he'd seen a second ago was a trick. Thick, red-and-brown liquid is tumbling over the bed of stones, staining everything, seeping into the dirt. A smell that Baekhyun didn't notice before rises from its banks, hot and rank and reminiscent of body odor. He covers his mouth and leans back, trying not to vomit on the flowers.
From the depths, a horde of bone-white tarantulas erupt. They cascade in writhing ripples outward from the midpoint of the stream, their little feet pinkening with liquid as they scuttle and slink over the water, like perverted angels.
Baekhyun breathes through his mouth and closes his eyes.
He rips a dozen flowers out of the ground and stuffs them in his pack. He turns and sprints the way he came, vaulting over rocks and around low-hanging vines, sucking lungfuls of clean air. A bird screeches behind him. He doesn't dare turn around.
He runs straight as an arrow until his lungs burn. Chest heaving, Baekhyun slows at the edge of a clearing and drinks deep from his water bottle. The sight of that river was awful, a thing of nightmares. He shivers and pushes the memories away, away, deep inside himself where he’ll certainly need therapy to excavate the horrors later. There's no time to be a coward now, he needs to stay focused.
He's done it. The herbs are in the bag. Baekhyun checks the compass—he's been running the right direction, thankfully—and his phone. 2:03pm. He doesn't remember what time he entered the forest, but that sounds fine. He should be back to Chanyeol before dusk.
Something feels off.
Baekhyun stays very still and very quiet. A gentle breeze stirs the leaves, but otherwise the forest is serene, with the faintest whisper of sound coming from somewhere ahead. A collection of fallen logs draws his attention. There might be a foxhole there, but he sees no movement, and the whispers fade, so Baekhyun forces himself to relax. It's probably just nerves.
Didn't he check the time before leaving the gas station? That's what's bothering him. He can't remember now. It seems idiotic not to keep track of how long he's in here. Baekhyun double-checks the clock—2:03pm—and commits it to memory. Shouldn't matter. He should be back home soon.
A burgeoning confidence spreads in Baekhyun's chest. Who knew he could do this? Take on the woods alone and succeed. Little baby Baekhyun who used to run from streetlamp to streetlamp walking home at dusk. He touches the pocket where the flowers are.
"I'm coming," he says to the trees. "Hang on, Chanyeol."