Paper Forests

Chapter Four

We follow August inside a tunnel that slices cleanly through the rock. Inside, it is pitch black and I walk with my hand resting on his shoulder, trusting him to lead the way. Gracie's fingers are wrapped about my belt loop and Ansel is somewhere behind her, grabbing onto the hood of her coat. Loose stones litter the ground, causing me to stumble with each step. The absence of light means the absence of warmth as we descend deeper into the tunnel, so I concentrate on the heat of August's skin beneath my fingertips. He barely flinches when my grasp tightens.

Even after minutes of walking, the tunnel doesn't widen or brighten. I manage to cope with the darkness for a while, ignoring how it presses down on me, humming songs I don't remember the words to as a distraction. It feels as if I'm standing in a small room and the ceiling and all four walls are inching closer and closer with no way to escape. I'm not afraid of the dark or confined spaces but I have a fear of thing that lurk where they can't be seen.

Now, that fear seems irrational, especially since I'm now stuck in a world of perpetual half-light where you are confronted by decomposing corpses and monsters that burn their handprints into your skin.

My mother always taught me to fear the dark. She forgot to mention what happens in the light.

Seconds drag into minutes. Minutes melt into what feels like hours. The tunnel turns to the left before suddenly veering back to the right and I can no longer tell if we're approaching the surface or heading deeper into the ground. All I know is that there is now something glowing in the distance, a light that is only a miniature flash of gold on a canvas of black. It looks like candlelight.

"We're almost there," August mutters, mostly to himself again, as I'm about to point out my observation. I'm not sure where 'there' is but at least it's somewhere.

The light is further away than it looks but we soon enter a small cavern illuminated with the warm golden glow of three candles, spread out evenly around the space. the walls arch around one hundred feet up to giant stalactites and bat roosts. There's a table against the far wall and an image crudely drawn in charcoal on fraying cloth lays in the centre of it.

In the middle of the cloth, there is a large circle, a line splitting it in half and another line splitting one half into quarters. Small shapes and symbols decorate the blank spaces between the lines: circles, squares, and triangles. On the semicircle side, a circle has been scrawled in the centre with a small square above and below it. A messy triangle is beside the line which splits the semicircle in half. The shapes must be a code but the maker of what I assume to be a map didn't leave a note to say what they represent.

[image]

"This has to be the Forest," August says, tracing his finger around the edge of the biggest circle. He then moves on to the other shapes. "These have to be important places, like camps, or other caves like this. They could be places where people are, couldn't they?"

Gracie is too short to have a clear view of the map, so she rests her chin on the edge of the table and squints. "What do the lines mean?"

"I'm not sure. They could be boundaries or a way of showing different areas of the Forest. If I'm right and the shapes mark important places, we could be here." His finger drifts towards the triangle and the shorter line. "This could be the ravine."

Gracie looks at him as is he holds all the answers to this strange world. My expression shifts to match hers. Ansel looks less than impressed. "Why aren't any of you looking at the book?"

Three pairs of eyes flick towards him. He rubs at the handprint burnt into his arm as he stares at a spot on the ground. I look and there's a trunk hidden behind the table. A small leather-bound book, more like a journal, rests on top. The trunk itself is covered in an inch thick of dust but the book looks clean as if someone touched it recently.