A Good and Normal Time in the Woods
March 26, 2023 • Written by Sara Zephyr
Elowen ventured into the woods one night, feeling world-weary. She was looking for a way to feel better, or worse, or just something at all – lately, she’d just felt oddly and inexplicably empty. Each day she awakened tired, worked herself to exhaustion, and stayed up late–and tonight, she couldn’t sleep. On her way through the woods she stepped over a particularly gnarled root, marred by axe marks, and crossed into a clearing, surrounded by a circular ring of the six stumps of felled trees. She wished for a change.
Suddenly a musty smell filled her nose, and a dense humidity surrounded her. The sky above her emptied–nothing to be seen there but a blank void. Elowen looked around, at first mildly intrigued, and as she turned in a perfect circle she saw fungus and rot erupt from the empty stumps so forcefully that they splintered the wood along pre-existing cracks. Slime molds and mycelium rushed towards her in webs, and she was powerless to do anything but watch. She stood immobilized by the smothering humidity–and practically couldn’t breathe against the dark, pleasantly dank smell. Soon, the sickly warmth pulled her under, under, under, until she collapsed under the weight of the forest’s eternal sleep.
She awoke quite unusually. She felt renewed with life from the moment she opened her eyes – life seemed to be sprouting from her every pore and orifice. Elowen had slept fully from that night on through the next day, and at twilight began her walk toward home. Along the way, she spotted a family of deer that stared at her unblinkingly, before vanishing into the dark of the forest. She followed a path through the woods that was at first unfamiliar, but slowly revealed itself to be the route to her elementary school’s playground–from there, it was just a short mile’s walk to her house.
I’ll be home in no time! she thought. I hope my mother hasn’t been worrying.
• • •
A child, Ezio, sat in a near-empty playground, with his bike leaned against the chain-link fence nearby. Sitting in the mulch, organizing the wood chips into different lengths, colors, and textures, he gathered the ingredients for a woods-soup, which he planned to “cook” in the nearest hollowed out rock, filled with yesterday’s murky puddle. A precise selection of the best wood chips from each category and a handful of nearby grass later, the boy stirred his special concoction. He called to his sister, Filomena, to come help by adding the special ingredient–a mushy pile of leaves and pebbles ground together that he’d left near the indentation he’d carved and sat in while sorting the wood chips. When his sister didn’t respond, he sighed heavily in a manner beyond his years, muttering something about how older kids are no fun, and filled his hands with the oozing green goo. As he began to stand up, he heard a twig snap in the mouth of the forest, and suddenly Ezio became far more aware of the sinking of the sun than he was before. He looked to the woods, where a figure moved, with eerie stealth, out of a path that led into the forest. He froze, the slimy leaf bits and small wet rocks sliding bit by bit out of his hands, until they hit the ground with a wet squelch. In the same moment, in the dying light of evening, the creature was revealed to him–or at least, as much as he could see before he ran. His frantic bike ride home was filled with imagined shadows leaping out of every corner–oozing mold and sprouting fungus and always, always, with two, huge, branching antlers.
• • •
Elowen spotted a boy in the playground, intensely focused on his task, and began to hasten her approach–she knew him!
That’s Filomena’s little brother, Ezio!
Worrying that she had been gone far too long, she nearly exited the woods when she heard him call Fi’s name.
Fi must be worried sick about me! I totally forgot to call her last night!
Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, staring straight at her. She smiled, glad to see him, and continued to step forward, when he suddenly bolted for his bike, and disappeared from the parking lot onto the winding road towards his home. Puzzled, she advanced and spotted Filomena! She seemed distracted, but now was as good a time as any to apologize for last night. Elowen continued forward.
• • •
Filomena was listening to music on her headphones, hanging her head upside down as her back laid against the seat of a swing. As her brother concocted his latest forest-side stew, she had been lazily rocking back and forth. Her roller skates hung heavily at her feet, her helmet laying beside the metal beam from which the swing dangled. One hand absentmindedly twisted a lock of her loosely hanging hair, the other inspected the ridged lines of welding on each link of the chain in a repeating pattern. Something within Filomena sensed that something was off, although she couldn’t hear it – she looked towards the road, seeing her brother booking it towards home without her. She bolted upright, removing her headphones with her free hand and resting them around her neck. Looking around, she suddenly felt a stillness in the air as a humidity from the woods pressed itself against her, and she saw some kind of creature approaching. Whatever it was, it had scared Ezio enough that he fled for home without a word, and that was enough for her. Filomena slowly reached for her helmet, attempting not to make a sound and wincing at every gentle clink of the chain, and readied it in her right hand as a makeshift weapon. She stood slowly, putting her weight on the toe stoppers on her skates, and gazed ever-intensely towards the thing that was once creeping towards her, but now began moving at a more alarming speed – akin to the confident speed-walk Filomena made use of in a city with friends. There was something of a familiarity in the thing approaching her, but whatever it was, it was far past its prime – there was a leaking, dripping ooze from each orifice, and mushrooms blossoming like freckles upon the surface of its clothes and skin, even emerging between locks of hair. Most alarming of all was the presence of two large antlers protruding from the top of the otherwise humanoid being’s head.
As the being approached further, she readied her stance – squaring her hips, getting as solid a foothold as she could in her roller skates atop the mulch, adjusting and securing the helmet in her hand. Then the creature seemed to make some sound – the rasping of wind through trees, akin to the rubbing of bare winter branches together, but accompanied by an alien, chirp-like sound, as if a bird had been crossed with a theremin. Together, these frequencies seemed to merge into a pattern of speech, but it was entirely indecipherable. The being then “spoke” again and she tensed – it was now near enough to strike. At this distance, she could see the skin around the fungal protrusions bubbling up from the pressure behind them as more pushed to the surface. Between these growths she saw a pulsing slime mold, weaving its way across the skin in an organic, unsettling web. Bracing herself, Filomena brought her helmet up and swung with all her might towards the creature’s head, and it made a final warbling tone as it fell to the ground.
In the creature’s stillness, she recognized her friend, her best friend, who she had not seen in two days, Elowen, who had entirely missed her call last night with no notice, to whom Filomena had worried she had done something wrong. Now, without the threat of being approached by a strange entity, she was able to see clearly. Lying unconscious, Elowen looked almost peaceful, and there was something beautiful within her grotesque transformation. Her clothes were tattered, and her body was the host of an untamed, nearly-otherworldly fungal growth, and there were those unusual antlers protruding from her forehead, but there was also an ethereal beauty to her that was beyond description. Filomena knew what she had to do. She ran on her toe stops to the bin of toys just beyond the playground’s mulch, and dug through the assorted items searching for the sturdiest jump ropes she could find.
As soon as she felt everything was safe, Filomena made up her mind to find her friends and her brother and sort this out. The only thing left to do was to skate as fast as possible towards home.
• • •
When Elowen next awoke, it was night, but it seemed plenty bright to her–she supposed her eyes had simply adjusted to the darkness of the forest, but she soon realized that not only was she able to see color, instead of the deep grayscale of night, but each color seemed far more vibrant than usual. Her eyes felt wet, like she had been crying – but when she brought her hands up to her face, she felt nothing unusual present there at all. There also seemed to be quite a heavy weight on her head, one which she hadn’t happened to notice when she first awoke in the woods but was certain had been present throughout her walk to the playground. However, as she felt the top of her head, once again nothing seemed to be out of order. From what she could tell, Elowen’s clothes also seemed to be, remarkably, unscratched and otherwise unblemished, and she was altogether unscathed. She noticed too, that the musty smell and humidity must have gone, because she felt perfectly comfortable where she was. Well, not perfectly comfortable, for the next thing she noticed was a pressure around her chest, and when she looked down, she saw a bundle of jump ropes tied together around her waist that anchored her to the pole of the swingset.
She attempted to free herself, rattling the long plastic beads of the jump ropes together and sending resonating clangs through the metal of the poles of the swingset. She stopped only when she heard a rapidly approaching sound of wheels grinding across the old pavement of the battered parking lot.
• • •
When Filomena arrived home, she ran as gingerly as she could on her toe stops up the stairs to her little brother’s room, only to find it empty. She found Ezio, instead, curled up in her own room, in a tent atop her bed made up from her comforters, with seemingly every stuffed animal she had placed around her room sucked into the black hole of comfort he had created. She placed her helmet, with mushroomy slime splattered across the top, down on one of her dressers, and skated over her hardwood floor to the telephone on her wall. She quickly called her and Elowen’s two other closest friends, Ariya and Callum, and one after the other urged them to meet up at the playground–she would explain it all there. She asked the first, Ariya, to bring fresh water, a pot, a ladle, and a lighter. She asked the second, Callum, to also bring an old book with him–it was a history of the town, with a section on hyper-specific local myths that could be of use. Filomena also grabbed a hand-written foraging guide drafted by her parents, which detailed the local flora and occasional fauna, along with various hand-drawn maps of the woods, and dropped it into a small backpack that she swung upon her back. Her next order of business was to coax her brother out from under the blankets: she would need his help if they were going to be able to save her friend.
A few minutes of hugging and encouragement later, they were ready to go. They each grabbed a charm they believed would bring them luck – Filomena wore a necklace with a dried acorn on it that Ezio had made for her, and Ezio slipped a stone the size of his small palm which Filomena had given him into his pocket–and, fastening their helmets, they began as swiftly as possible towards their suffering friend.
• • •
When Callum and Ariya arrived, it was much worse than they had thought. Upon catching sight of the creature that Filomena claimed was Elowen, Ariya slammed the brakes on her bike, grinding to a halt. Callum was no less stricken with fear than she was – when he saw Elowen, he carelessly rode his skateboard into a patch of sand and toppled off. At first, they saw an unidentifiable form slumped against the swingset, bound by jagged plastic jump ropes. There was a strange smell in the air, alluring and repulsive all at once. The form before them was distorted by many bulging masses, interspersed with what looked like wet yellow veins pulsating with an eerie light. A pair of antlers speckled with glowing freckles of gold hung heavily from the head of the inhuman creature. It slowly lifted its head and turned to stare at them with empty eyes. They both recoiled and reached for each other as every instinct in them told them to run, to cower, to hide, to scream, to freeze. They stood, rooted to the spot, as they felt Nothing look at them.
In the creature’s gaze, they felt the full force of their insignificance, the eventual silent dismemberment of their forms through decay. They felt as if they’d never been born–as though the unimaginable, unfathomable, unmemorable emptiness that preceded them and that would one day follow them had joined them in their brief waking moments in the present. They would have stood frozen indefinitely, unmoving as their bodies became the hosts of maggots and their innards were gouged by crows, if Filomena hadn’t arrived with Ezio and snapped them out of it. Turning them both around, Filomena led them with a hand on each of their backs as they quaked and shivered towards a small nearby pavilion, guiding them both to one of the picnic tables beneath it. After a minute or two, they once again became responsive.
“Hey,” said Filomena, as gently as she could muster. “Are you guys okay?”
A stunned silence briefly followed, before Callum said, “Honestly? I’m not sure.”
Ariya piped up. “I’m scared, Mena. It was… hard, to comprehend what I saw back there. I don’t think I’ve ever been more intensely aware of my mortality, of what a small part I play in it all and it… it shook me. There was nothing there, I mean, Nothing nothing there. Is Elowen even in there, anymore?”
Ezio looked a little concerned, and looked up at his sister.
“Yes…” she said, “I think. Callum, I’ll need to take a look at that book you brought.”
He handed it to her, and she flipped to a page at the end of the myths and legends section. As she turned it around to face them, they noticed that there was no illustration of anything that looked like Elowen did–only a block of text, a map, and a picture of a clearing in the woods. Ariya held up the lighter she had brought, and, squinting in the low light, they were able to read the passage.
“As you can see,” said Filomena, “This should be pretty simple. We just need to find the site of transformation, collect the ingredients, and reverse the process. The hard part will be getting through to her. She can’t speak, but we have to assume that she can hear us. The specific form she took is unique to her, so we don’t know everything she can do, but Ezio has a plan to keep us protected. As long as we don’t touch her, we should be fine.”
“Will we be able to get through to her?” asked Callum. “Like, will anything we say to her even make a difference?”
“We have no choice but to assume that it will. She needs to see that we… care about her, that we’re there for her–she needs to know that she’s a part of this process too.” Filomena said, “We need her to be working with us, and we need to offer her understanding and kindness, just as we usually would, especially since I–well, let’s just say that each of our first reactions to her aren’t going to be conducive to her restoration.”
“So we just need to act normal?” asked Ezio, inquisitively.
“Yes, exactly,” she said, placing her hand gently on her little brother’s head. “She’s going through a lot right now. We need to show her that nothing regarding the way we care about her has changed or will change, and show her the things that bring us joy. She needs to know, or to be reminded, rather, what it is that we’re living for, why it matters, and learn how to find those things for herself, so that her mind can be receptive to the reversal process. If any step is completed imperfectly, she will be lost to us forever.” She took a shaky breath to fortify her nerves, and continued, “So, who’s ready to get started?”
• • •
As Elowen realized that it was her friends who approached, she calmed significantly. A sadness and a hollow, empty anger overtook her, and she leaned back against the pole to which she was tied, and she felt, though she still couldn’t see, ooze dripping out of every pore, sinking into the ground around her and contaminating it. She felt as if corrupting tentacles of decomposition were creeping out from the very core of her being–as if the deep despair she felt had manifested itself as a corroding force that made her impossible to touch. She felt as though she was deflating, leaking her unsightly inner being, and was certain that her friends would turn away from her for it. She had already frightened Fi, her closest friend, to the point of defensive violence, and was certain she deserved it. A rueful smile overtook her hopeless face as her friends gathered around her.
They sat, initially not revealing their emotions, around her, and began to speak. Filomena and Callum flipped through the two books and discussed what was to be done, matter-of-factly. There was no question about whether Elowen deserved to be saved, or if she should be left to sink into the earth–it was evident in every move that they made that her friends would do everything in their power to help her, and that their love for her was enough.
Ariya showed Elowen her reflection in a mirror-like metal slide in the playground, and she could suddenly see the source of their fear–her visage was awesome and frightening to behold, with eyes so black and hollow that aside from the normal, plump appearance of her eyelids, they seemed to recede into voids within her face. Mushrooms had sprouted from every surface, a living organism spreading out from every pore. She could feel it now, more intensely than before, creeping and winding its way beneath her skin. The mycelium burrowed and scraped like a million tiny needles–imperceptible on their own, but combined they felt like dragging a thousand tiny fingernails across a chalkboard. Generating an uncomfortable tingling and buzzing that resonated her bones, the ever-branching webs had become impossible to ignore. A dense, black sludge was oozing from her eyes and mouth especially–she could feel it dripping from her hands as well. Every outlet through which she interacted with the world was infected with this void made manifest. And most frighteningly, Elowen finally saw the antlers that had erupted from her head.
They said they had a plan to turn her back. They couldn’t tell her all of it, but it was very important that it went perfectly to plan, and that she trusted them to know what to do.
Ezio, the master of forest-side brews, began preparing a muddy sludge, mixed to the perfect consistency so as to slather their exposed skin with the substance. Filomena tasked Ariya and Callum with making sure Elowen would stay with them, while Fi and Ezio carried a gallon of fresh water, a pot, a ladle, a lighter, and the two books. Once the clay-like substance had dried to a malleable, protective boundary, Ariya and Callum began the work of mostly untying Elowen, and holding her warily but firmly with their mud-covered hands as they led her back to the forest path.
As they walked, Fi, Elowen saw, continued reading from the books, and would stop to look at the more tattered of the two before picking various plants along the way, dropping them into the pot Ezio was holding as she went. As Fi picked each one, she would bring it over so Elowen could smell it, excitedly describing what it was. Parsley! Thyme! Wild onions and garlic! They all smelled delicious, and they, along with the infectious passion Fi had for the foraged plants, brought a hint of a smile to Elowen’s face. Ariya and Callum, holding her hands and arms for their safety and hers, would occasionally let go of one of their hands at a time, to point out the shining of the stars, the pattern of the black trees against the inky sky, the burbling of a nearby hidden stream, the buzzing of bugs and the regular nighttime mumbles of forest creatures. Each of these details increased her awareness of the world around her, each one stirred up something in her soul. She could feel the interconnectedness of it all, in little bits at first, but it was growing. Even the decomposition to which she had become a host was a part of it–there was something woven in the fabric of the universe that said, in whispering tones: Hold on. Hold on, and we can show it to you. You can find what you don’t realize you’re looking for. You are of the earth, and it is of you. You are the stars granted sentience. You are the admiration the fungus holds for the wood, that the worm holds for the fruit. You are the love that a bird has for a seed, and that the river has for the stone. You are encompassed by all, and it encompasses you, but it is not empty. You are not insignificant. Through your eyes, the universe can be loved, and in turn, it can love you. Your time will end one day, and you will return your life to the earth, but not yet. Not yet.
Finally, they reached the clearing, and stood around the edge. Elowen did not notice at first, but Ezio had also collected six seeds along the way, and six cup-shaped rocks. They all felt some force draw them towards the center of the clearing, but Fi warned them all not to stand at that direct point, and especially not to turn in a full circle, or else the forest may bestow upon them a similar transformation to the one Elowen received. They sat her down in a particularly soft and warm pile of leaves, and set up a bonfire in the center of the ring, where they began to boil their water in the pot. Fi set the herbs aside, cut the vegetables, and added them to the boiling water. In the meantime, Ezio stuck his small fingers into the dirt in front of the six stumps, placing the seeds of each respective tree into those holes. After the holes were covered, he placed one of the cup-like rocks in front of each one, and soon alerted Filomena that he had finished by loudly wiping the dirt from his hands onto his pants. By that time, Elowen realized that she no longer felt the presence of the gooey substance–and hadn’t felt it for some time, though she could not pinpoint exactly when it had stopped. The mushrooms on her, however, continued to grow, and soon her two mud-protected friends picked each individual one off of her, and placed them in the boiling water as well. Fi finally crushed, ripped, and crumpled the herbs into the un-seasoned soup, when they all turned to look at Elowen, and she felt a surge of appreciation and love towards her friends. She still was unable to speak in words they could understand, but her eyes welled up with happy tears–and then, much to her surprise, Fi rushed forwards to collect those tears in a ladle. She then hurried to drop them into the soup, and gave it a final stir before ladling the soup into each of the thirsty cup-shaped rocks. The rocks must have held some strange power, and the forest must have intentionally left them where they had been collected for this purpose, for nearly two ladlefuls of soup fit into what one would suppose a quarter of a ladleful would fill. They set aside the pot with just a couple of ladlefuls left within it, and put out the fire so that they could empty the center of the clearing once more. As they did so, Ezio, proudly surveying the bowls and seeds he had set up, nearly turned a full circle before Filomena ran over and swept him into her arms just in time. Fi reiterated the importance of steering clear of the center, and came over to Elowen. Fi knelt beside her and gently, oh so gently, filled the ladle with soup and held it out for Elowen to drink. She repeated this with the final ladleful, with such a brimming hope and love in her eyes that Elowen hoped that the moment would last an hour. Filomena stood up and moved out of the way as Ariya and Callum led her once more into the center. After determining which direction Elowen had initially turned in, they each led her half-way in a turn in a circle in the opposite direction to, in combination, completely reverse the full circle of before, and as her friends all moved outside of the ring of axe-marked tree trunks, Elowen once more felt the forest calling her to sleep.
• • •
As Filomena watched, Elowen slept deeply for a few minutes as all manner of fungus and slime mold poured out of her and crept away back to the trunks, disappearing into the crevices from whence they came, taking the musty smell and choking humidity with them. They each had expected the antlers to fade, or to shrink back into Elowen’s head, but instead as the fungus left her they turned bleach white and fell onto the forest floor beside her. The stars, which had been briefly blotted out as her detransformation occurred, reappeared as Elowen stirred once more, seeming a bit groggy.
• • •
Elowen awoke feeling a bit tired, as usual. The night looked as grayscale as ever, the only odor she noticed was that of the semi-damp forest floor, and a weight had been lifted from her head. As she slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes, she heard Fi running over, and once she’d opened them she had barely enough time to accept the crushing hug she was being given.
“I’m so glad you’re back, Wen!” Fi said, nearly crying.
Upon testing her voice and finding that she could be understood, Elowen thanked her friends for their kindness and generosity, but still felt guilt and embarrassment weighing on her.
“You all did so much for me, I’m so sorry you had to see that. I know you must all–” Elowen stopped, and then started again. “You all saw a side of myself that I didn’t want you to see. I understand if you think differently of me now, and I hope that we can still be friends.”
“Of course we can!” Ariya and Callum said, nearly in unison, helping her up.
“Elowen,” Fi said, with extreme sincerity, “We want to see you grow. We want to support you in all things that make you happy, and to help you in whatever way we can against the things that don’t. We love you, and we want the best for you. There isn’t any part of you, no matter how monstrous it may seem to you, that is beyond our understanding and compassion. Now, let’s get you out of here.”
Ezio put his small hand in Elowen’s, and Filomena took the other, while Callum and Ariya gathered their remaining belongings. They began to walk out of the clearing, when Elowen paused.
“You know, I heard the forest whisper. While you were leading me back here, while you were comforting me, while I watched how passionate you are. I heard it and it’s full of love. And I know it will be hard, and I know it will take time but… I think I would like to be, too.”
With that, they all stepped over the threshold of the clearing together, and as they looked back they saw that their soup offerings had disappeared. Then they watched in amazement as the seeds that Ezio had planted grew before their eyes into young, healthy trees.
• • •
