As I reached the clearing at the Stone of Truth, the energy in the forest surged and raced toward me along veins under the ground, gathering and collecting in this one place, rising up through my feet to wake my sleeping cells, then trickling away again and returning to the Stone.
I closed my eyes and held my arms out, angling my face to the sky, while the whispers of Nature filled the silence, making all the tiny hairs on my body stand on end. I could hear the wind kiss the thin edges of every leaf, could feel the small droplets of sunlight sneaking through the canopy, dancing intermittently on the bark around my toes, could hear the smallest insects crawling beneath the soil, and hear even the brush of a bird’s wing on the sky. This was my song. This was where I could plug myself in to all that I was, and just exist, for no other reason than to be a part of something greater. Here, I could think clearly.
Here, I could focus on something other than the suffocating dread I had that something was missing.
Here, I could quieten my mind long enough to see the answers beneath all the questions.
“Auress?” a child called.
I slowly opened my eyes and lowered my arms, but as my gaze went to the Stone, a flash of gold hair caught my eye. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
A child’s face showed around a tree trunk; her cheeky smile challenging.
“What are you doing?” I called, but she ducked out of sight again—her high giggles echoing off everything around me. “Eve, is that you?”
She ran to the next tree, her hair trailing behind her like gold ribbons, but when I came upon her, she was gone again.
“Eve?” I called. “Please come out.”
I waited.
“Eve?”
She giggled again, this time appearing further away. I ran after her, my limbs opening up as I broke into a fast, human sprint, feeling the air expand my lungs like a breath I’d forgotten to take. I followed her all the way out to the clearing by the lighthouse, glad I’d decided not to walk naked today, and stopped dead.
“What the—?”
Trees had grown up overnight like blossoming buds in a time-lapse film, their luscious leaves casting shadows over the long grass, where the scent of apples and rotting cider wafted on the early fog, making sweet perfume in the air. I walked cautiously between the columns of trees, pinching the leaves on a few branches as I went to see if they were real. And as I came to a stop at the giant oak tree, centre to the orchard, I knew then that the child I saw must have been Evangeline.
“Auress,” she said, and my gaze went up the trunk to the tiny child sitting on the longest branch—one leg dangling down, her finger twirling a lock of hair into a curl.
“What are you doing up there?” I stepped closer.
She smiled and reached up to pluck something from between two branches, holding it out in her open palm after.
“Come down, Eve?” I offered my hand. “Please?”
She smiled, but shook her head.
“Why? Why won’t you come down?”
The smile grew, her eyes darting from my face to something behind me.
And a hand came down on my shoulder. I spun around and shielded my eyes, blinded suddenly by the high sun, seeing only a silhouette of a man there.
“Jeeze, Ara, I’m sorry,” Jason said, helping me stand from the folded position I took. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t,” I said, feeling silly. “It’s just the light. It blinded me for a sec.”
He laughed. “What were . . . what were you doing?”
I looked back at the oak tree. Eve was gone. “I was. . .”
“You have no idea, do you?” he asked, taking a step back from me.
I stood with my mouth open for a second. “I . . . no. Not really.”
He laughed again. “You were talking to someone.”
“Was I?”
“Yes.”
“What was I saying?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t in English.”
I felt my face pale. “It wasn’t?”
“No.”
My jaw angled slightly away from him then, my gaze drifting inconspicuously to the field. The apple trees were gone—the fog and the cool and the scent of the orchard fading with it. I rubbed my head. “I must have been sleepwalking.”
Jase nodded, thoughtful.
“What are you doing out here, anyway?” I asked. “It’s very early.”
“Early?” He looked up at the sky, then into the distance where the manor sat, its cream fascia rising up over the Enchanted Forest like a castle. “It’s after midday, Ara.”
“Oh. Um. Really?” I rubbed my head.
“Yes.” He drew both hands from his jeans pockets and walked over to sit under the old oak’s leafy bows. “Are you okay, Ara?”
“Yeah,” I said wistfully, my toes parting the long grass with each step, the temperature of the soil beneath it cool and moist as if the morning were new. I tucked my dress under my bottom and sat down beside Jase. “I guess I’ve just got a lot going on.”
He nodded casually, reaching between us to pluck a blade of grass from its roots. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Yes,” I said, but didn’t talk.
“You know—” He leaned forward, resting his arm over a bended knee, wrapping the grass around his fingertip like a green ring. “I was thinking about you before I ran into you.”
“You were?”
“Yeah.”
“All good thoughts, I hope.”
He lay back, crossing his hands under his head, his feet flat on the ground just by my leg. “I was just thinking how amazing it is that we’re both still here, you and I—that we can be friends—sit side by side this way after everything you’ve been through.”
“You mean after everything evil you did to me,” I joked, gently slapping his bony knee.
He lifted his head a bit and offered a sweet smile, that soft, Jason smile that radiated the kindness in his soul. “Yes, and that takes an unbelievable amount of strength, Ara, which is as scary as it is incredible.”
“Scary? How?”
“Because I can't even begin to imagine what it must have taken for you to survive what I did to you—both times. And yet you came out of that. Your scars healed, your heart healed and, somehow, you found the strength to not only move on, but forgive me,” his voice broke.
“Wow, you’re really cut up about all this,” I said, still making light of things.