Chapter 4
She had become absolutely feral. She had no words to use, and was forgetting how to speak. But she found out that she did not need to. The animals around her responded to her simply by her thoughts and feelings. As if they could read her, or hear her in their heads.
The girl was still clumsy, trying to find her way in the forest and getting herself to properly accommodate into it. She was still stealing from the town. She managed to make her circle of roots a comfortable place by tucking a comforter into the space within, throwing in a few colorful pillows the caught her eye. She got herself a mosquito net that she stuck into a nick on the trunk of her tree, holding the other end up with the help of a long stick jammed into the ground right outside the circle. Now, the bugs wouldn’t bother her at night.
She lived off canned food, berries, and water from a nearby stream. But she was still a child who didn’t know a lot about taking care of herself. And it was getting boring to eat them and she wished she could have something nice. Something like ice cream, maybe.
But the wish was gone as soon as it came. What was ice cream? Not only that, she was losing the word from her head, too. Ice cream did not exist in her mind in any way or form. Not anymore. She knew she was forgetting again but it did not alarm her. She felt it was good that she was forgetting. She stopped wishing and crying for the things she left behind, and the things she couldn’t have. With no memories, there was no pain to endure. She liked it that way. And she liked her forest. She did not want to go back to the people of the town. There was simply no reason to.
She didn’t remember them. She didn’t remember it existed anymore.
And so her life began anew in the woods with the animals to take care of her and do her bidding. In return, she did them little favors like building their nests or giving them shelter under her tree from the harsh summer, cold nights, and occasional rain that no one would expect. Her tree’s canopy was thick and wide enough for them all.
It wasn’t just the smaller ones that listened to her. The bigger ones would drop by every now and then, giving her a share of whatever they were carrying before they left. Although she was forgetting a lot, she did not forget how to cook, faintly remembering pictures and memories of how it was done. She would use the match sticks she stole to start a small fire near the river, put a rock on it, and clean the meat. It seemed simple enough, although it didn’t taste really nice. But she was hungry and gouged it down without a care.
Because she had nothing else to do, she started to experiment. With leaves, herbs, berries and meat. Crushing them in small portion to see what they’d taste like, dousing meat in them and then cooking. Some days, it turned out great, and the others would be plain horrid. But she never let anything go to waste. She was too desperate to live.
It came to the point where she would follow the wild animals and see how they hunted for their fill. She tried imitating them but it didn’t seem to be working out for her like it did for them. But she got a sense of what was going on and managed her own techniques, taping knives to long sticks and practicing her aim. And she didn’t just aim for any animal, but for intruders. Those who did not belong in the territory and were a threat to others. A stag came in from elsewhere and tried to pursue the females, but they got annoyed by him so the girl took it upon herself and hunted him down before it could escape their boundary. She dragged it in, skinned and sliced it as nicely as she could, washed it, and fed on his meat, using her makeshift recipes. She washed the hide later in the stream and let it dry until every speck of blood came off, and she used it to wrap herself when she roamed around the day, and when she went to bed at night.
There were nights that disturbed her. She saw dreams she wasn’t quite fond of, but would forget as soon as she woke up. She saw the past. She saw memories that she knew belonged to her.
But then there were some that downright confused her, and she knew they couldn’t have belonged to her in any way. Those were the ones she remembered when she woke up, but she felt they were intrusive. She saw a community of people doing odd things. Chanting, moving in systematic ways, meditating. It was the meditating that got to her. That was something she felt confident in doing, knowing that it could help her glance deep within her and figure herself out when it came to her capabilities. And so she got up the next day, encouraged, and with an aim.
She shooed all the animals away and sat up straight in her bed, crossing her legs and straightening her back. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, feeling the air go past her nose. She exhaled, and felt the air leave and her chest compress. But it didn’t seem to be working as breathing was all she was doing and nothing was happening to her. She was definitely going wrong somewhere, but was yet to understand how. After a few more attempts, she gave up. With a sigh, she gathered her belongings to head to the stream to take a bath. She reeked of the hide and though smells were not too obvious to her as she had gotten used to them, the hide stood out in that aspect. Insects would try to get on and other animals would lick it in curiosity. She would run and roll around in it, getting dirt and twigs stuck in it.
She placed the hide over a long stick that stretched over the width of the stream. She secured the either ends of the stick on the ground over the stream and dipped the hide in it, using the shampoo she had to wash it to wash it off. When done and left to dry nearby on a tree to soak in the sun, she would then wash her clothes. She would wet them and scrub the stains away with a bristled brush, and leave them to dry, too. Then she’d undress herself and bathed. She always used a mug to gather water and pour over herself. She had an odd sense of feeling that she would contaminate the water if she herself bathed in it. She felt no shame in being naked and knew her animals stood guard to warn and protect her of intruders.
She used the soap and shampoo and let none wash away into the stream, but into the ground she stood on instead. The animals always found her smelling peculiar every time she took a bath, but they were not threatened by it. The baths never took too long and once she was done, she would sit in the light and allowed herself to be kissed by the sun. Once fully dry, she would beckon the birds to bring the stag hide to her and she would wrap it around herself and walk back to her tree to put on fresh clothes. She only had two tops and two bottoms to wear, but she was starting to grow out them and felt the need to cut them off their sleeves to be able to fit in them properly.
She was satisfied with what she had. She was happy. But she couldn’t help the loneliness that would take over her every once in a while. She had way too much time on her hands and that meant that she thought more than it was good for anybody.
****
She had more dreams the following nights. Sometimes she thought she was awake when still dreaming. And she would know what to do. She would sit down cross legged and meditate. And completely tune herself out to everything. She wasn’t sure how she was doing that, but it brought around whispers that were not quite…human. They were chants of – which she strangely recognized as – the others that were of her kind.
Her awakening was extremely disorienting because she awakened literally twice. She had experienced a dream within a dream and it confused her as to where all this information was coming from, but she knew what she had to do to harness her powers, and she tried again the next morning like she had in the last. She sat cross legged in her bed and meditated. But tuning out everything was not as easy as she thought it would be. Her eyes would startle open at the crack of a twig to see who was there. She felt safe, but the need to be very aware and alert did not leave her heart. It wasn’t the best of times, or maybe the best of places, to carry it out. So, she took to the tree and climbed it, reaching the top of it and settling on the somewhat leveled surface between all the branches.
She felt a lot better there, and she asked the squirrels to leave her be and keep guard. Closing her eyes, she tried yet again, tuning out everything. Breathing in silence as she tried to clear out her mind and erase all attention from everything that was around her and focus on the silence of her mind.
Fried chicken wings.
All right, not working, but what were fried chicken wings? And the thought and memory of it was soon lost in thin air as if it never occurred to her.
Cake.
Slides.
Christmas.
Jelly beans.
They would disappear as soon as they would come, emptying her mind off all remnants of desires her little child heart held. She could have no desires when the sole focus was on one’s self. She was not in this world for desires. She was here for a far greater purpose than to wish for and feast on food.
She sat there and allowed the thoughts to bombard her mind, as if letting it all happen was so very natural to her. She’d gotten used to forgetting. She’d gotten used to not caring. She’d gotten used to sacrificing already. And she was only nine and a half.
It took a while. It took so long to empty out her mind that evening fell upon her. And by the time she felt all was gone and she would finally be able to focus for real, she was too tired to try. And so she went off to sleep, knowing she needed energy if she had to pull it off.
****
She had no notions of whether all this was fair or not. It didn’t matter to her. She had other things to focus on. She had powers to gain control of. She had a greater purpose, and she knew that. The dreams told her that.
Her life tree made sure she knew that.
She woke up with a gasp, panting heavily from the nightmare. It had felt so absolutely real that she felt the impact of being hit on her skin still even when awake. It startled her to bits and she was a shivering mess and the cats nearby awoke with a jolt to her movements and discomfort, mewling as they moved toward her. They stepped into her bedding and climbed over her, licking her face and rubbing their heads against her body to calm her down.
She’d remembered something she wished she hadn’t. Parents, being beaten, accusations, rivalries. And it was all over in a blink and her heart calmed down. The girl couldn’t be more grateful for whatever it was made her forget of the past so easily. Although her heart and body couldn’t forget, her brain did. And that was all she needed to try and heal. And focus on her abilities.
But the night was not over as her nightmares came and went, filtering themselves out of her system, never to be remembered every again.
It had been a restless night. So restless that she didn’t wake up all day, and neither during the night to come.
The animals crowded around the tree, trusting that it knew what it was doing and that their protector would be all right, and maybe wake up a better and stronger person than before.
And she did the next morning. She achieved the meditative state within an instant of trying. The animals watched her as she floated from the bedding, her body starting to crawl with silver markings curling around her limbs into symbols and systematic patterns, glowing against the sunlight. Her eyes turned stark white, glowing with the same intensity as the markings.