Threnody (029).

(This is a 500-word-a-day novel project.)

That should be the national anthem of this place, Ryan said. Don’t let it bite you.

The steady road that had guided them for hours or years, who could tell, was dwindling as the trees thickened – and they were growing in height as well, until the grey sky was blotted out by the black tree canopy whose branches had been braided into one another for generations; before long they were weaving through the column trunks, the path lost entirely as scrub brush scraped against their pant legs.

I ain’t seen a single bug, Ryan said. I never thought I’d miss fucking bugs, but this whole time I never seen a one, I mean, except for them gigantic assholes fucks trying to bite my head off, hey, maybe that’s it, Jesse, maybe we just like got shrunk down real small, and then sent to another planet, and then we – HOLY FUCK!

Jesse flinched, her heart bursting in her chest as she prepared herself for one more fresh terror in this place that was endless with them. Ryan had his gun in both hands, pointing it at the nearest tree – and at the little boy that was leaning against it. No, Jesse saw, he was not leaning against it, he was part of it. His skin was pale, the same dead shade as the truck driver back at the river, or the others that Ryan had shown her here and there as they’d walked, collapsed where they’d been walking all alone and given up. There was no seam between body and bark; the pale and the brown becoming one, stretched together like putty. He was naked, his white hair fluttering in his gray eyes, and with his free hand, his left hand, he began to suck on his fingers while he contemplated them.

What is it? Ryan said, his hands shaking. The barrel of the gun danced around mightily before him. What the hell is it?!

Calm had washed over Jesse – before all of this, she realized she had never faced stress or fear, not in its truest, unrefined form. Now she knew the secrets that many people had learned before her, that the body has mechanisms to deal with the truly bad things that could send you right over the side of the mountain, screaming into insanity. The mind, pulling in all its chips to make sure that everything stays hunky dory, despite walking dead and tree children, simply pulls the shades down, says hush to all of that noise, and assures all the alarmed systems that everything is a-okay. Really. Swear to God.

She was able to stand without being afraid. She was able to look into the eyes of the little boy and not want to run. She was in shock, and she knew it, and she loved it.

Let’s go, Ryan said. Maybe it wants to eat us or turn us into trees or teach us how to dance but I don’t want nothing to do with that.