I left early. Early means here: before the fog notices itself. Before the ravens change places. Before the thing beneath the hut begins to shape my old name.
The forest was still flat, no wind, only that slow breathing in the ground. I took the totem, the knife, the map with the circle that wasn't in the center. And I took weight.
Not the boy the forest had taken yesterday; he was already spread in roots, in stones, in that cold hum that knocks the floorboards at night. I took the other one.
The one left lying in the snare field three days ago, between the firs where the soil stays wet. Not Delta. One of the earlier ones. A searcher. They had no radios, only hope. Hope like a rusty blade, still cuts, but you catch something in the wound.
I hadn't brought him right away. Sometimes you hold flesh back the way you hold wood back for weather, for visitors, for the forest when it asks by name. Today it had asked.
I dragged the body by the shoulders. Half stiff, half soft. The forest preserves differently. The skin was cold but not brittle, as if someone had laid him in earth and turned him now and then so he wouldn't bruise.
"You're late," said the altar, without saying it. "I'm here," I said, without moving my mouth.
The place where the roots run deepest lay darker than the rest,as if something larger once lay there, a tree, an animal, a man, a sin. Maybe all at once. The stone was almost black today, wet wood above it,veins of bark running into soil like fingers into flesh.
I laid the body down. Not gently. Not rough. Purposefully. The roots came at once. With the boy they had been curious, sniffing, hesitating, orienting in warmth. Not today. Today there was hunger in them. They slid in like cold fingers through warm fat,and found what they wanted: silence.
I watched. You watch. Who looks away lies. Who lies gets eaten.
The forest took him slower than it took the boy. The boy had been soft, light with hunger, full of last fear. This one was older, sinewed, smelling of metal and old sweat. The forest had to chew longer.
I held the totem closer. It vibrated against my fingers, a deeper tone than usual, not the small insect hum, more like lines in rain,like Graypoint before it burned.
Something pulled in my shoulders, then my ribs, then my teeth. My back stopped being heavy. The left ear cleared. The air layered itself: wet forest, cold soil, old blood,and far away that electric hum from what they call "lighttowers,"which are only fear stood upright.
And children?Not ahead. Not behind. Across. A laugh too short to be real. Mine. His. Ours. Not from the body. From before.
I stumbled back. Not from fear. From memory. Memories have tripwires. My hand hit the stone. Hardly hurt. I shouted anyway. Not because it was needed, because the voice wanted outbefore it dragged more words from me that I no longer want.
The laughter stayed. Three heartbeats. Four. Then it went back down, like a door closing under the ground.
"More," I said. Didn't know if aloud or in the head. By now it's the same.
The forest didn't answer. It only breathed deeper. That's how it says: You already know.
I stayed until the body was no longer a body,until the roots withdrew sated,until the totem settled back to normal. Then I stood. The fingers no longer shook. The back was smooth. The muscles ran clean, like oiled wire.
That's the trade. It gets flesh, voices, leftovers that aren't mine. I get: less pain, more hearing, sometimes a laugh that shouldn't still live. It wouldn't be a bad bargain if it stopped with me. It doesn't.
On the way back I didn't take the direct path to the hut. I went toward the circle, the one that isn't in the middle. The circle someone had drawn on the dirty map I'd taken from the first boy. Numbers beneath, not quite right; a crooked sketch beside them that looked like a tower.
The forest knew where it was. The forest dislikes circles not its own.
I marked the path with notches, not names. Shifted a stone, set a branch at an angle only I'd recognize on return. Who speaks my name loosens the mask. Who speaks my paths loosens the forest.
The ground leveled, then rose. The firs stood farther apart, as if they'd made room for someone. No birds. Bad sign for those who don't know signs. Good for me. Silence means something else is listening.
Then I saw it. Not the lighttower. The circle. No built ring. No ritual stones settlers like to make when they fear what they can't explain. A clearing that wasn't quite a clearing, a patch of earth smoother than the rest, as if someone had stood here often. Or as if things had landed here that weren't meant to stay.
In the center: tire tracks. Old. Deep ruts still in the subsoil, washed by rain but not erased. An imprint of metal feet, triangular, faintly rusted though nothing rusts the forest doesn't allow.
Graypoint was here. Not all of it, an outpost. An arm. An eye.
I walked to the center, slow. Smelled machine oil, burned plastic, that sharp itch of uniforms long boxed away. "Protocol," I said to the air. The word hung there like it had before. Nothing answered, but the ground tightened like a muscle.
They'd stood here, men with radios, rifles,those long antennae they lift toward the sky so the sky might like them. They had searched for the forest. For me. For what lives under the hut. For Graypoint. They thought they could bring back what was there. They thought you could put something that burns back into a box.
Father once said, They don't build for us. They build against what they refuse to name. And he had pointed at the power lines humming above our heads as if still alive.
I knelt and laid a hand on the ground. Cold. Not the damp-living forest cold. Another kind. The cold of concrete once there. Of metal once standing. Of tires that left too fast.
Under my palm, a crack. I scraped the earth away. Roots shallow. Beneath them, actual concrete. Gray. Old. With a ring set in, once holding a hatch. Someone had tried to hide it. The forest finished the job.
"Graypoint," I said again. The word heavier than in the morning, tasting of dust, current,and the smell of burned insulation foam.
I was back there. Not in the forest, under the lines. It had been hot. Flies sat on our lips because there was still salt. Men raised towers, not tall, just enough. "Only temporary," they'd said. The temporary lasts the longest.
Father beside me, his hand rough on my shoulder, not unkind, just steady.His face narrow from summer, eyes bright with distrust. "Remember," he'd said. "All of it. Don't ask. Just remember. Later we'll know why.""Why?" I had asked. I was still one who asks. "So we can leave before the others notice," he'd said.
But we didn't leave. They were faster. We believed. The old man came.
He wasn't really old, just looked it from seeing things that don't fit in speech. He'd given me the totem, wood that isn't, threads that aren't rope. "Keep it close," he'd said. "But never against yourself. "I'd laughed then. Not later.
Graypoint burned on a night that shouldn't have burned. It had rained. Not much, enough to glue the dust. Someone at the tower had cursed because the lines hissed though no current fed them. Then a light. Then a sound, neither thunder nor shell, something between,as if metal were singing before it tears.
We'd run up the hill, Father first, me behind. He already had the mask in hand. A cloth mask, gray, elastic tired,smelling of smoke, leather, his skin.
Down by the towers stood something that shouldn't stand. Not animal, not human, not machine. More like a fold in the picture. The air was thick, as if it had lost temperature. Men had screamed, not because they had to die,but because they didn't know what to describe.
"Protocol!" someone had shouted. "Open Graypoint protocol!"But protocols only help when they know what they're arranging.
The towers flared. Light that wasn't warm, light that cut,into ground, into air, into whatever that was. It breathed back. Slow. Not angry. Just old.
Then Graypoint burned. Not like wood. Not like houses. Like a line glowing from inside because too much runs through it.
I heard that hissing again, the same one I now heard faint on this not-quite-empty clearing. I pulled my hand from the concrete.
"Rule Six," I said to the air. "Everything they build burns. You just have to wait. "The forest nodded. It always nods when something helps make fewer people.
I stood. Made a circle around the circle, not visible, only in my head. This mattered. This was an entry. When they return, it will be here. Not the hut. Not the altar. Here.
So I drew the wires closer. A trip line between two smaller trunks, not deadly, just narrative. A ground snare, easy to spot for the trained,so they'd miss the one that isn't for them. Two markings that look like the forest's, bark scuffs, resin. In truth, waymarks for me. Not them.
"They come again," I'd said yesterday. They always do. Not because they think they can take me because they think they can box Graypoint again. Everything they box leaks.
On the way back to the hut I heard the hum again. Deeper. Closer. No vehicle. No chain. No rotor. A tower. A lighttower. Maybe not far. Maybe in the valley. Maybe just their attempt to see through the forest. It didn't let them. It let me.
The hut smelled of cold stove, leather, the damp photo in the wall. Under the floor, something moved not restless, waiting, counting how often I leave and return.
"You'll get yours," I said downward. "But not today."It scraped once. Then quiet.
I set the totem by the stove. It didn't hum. It was full. I sat on the floor. Sacrum on cold. Hands on knees. The map before me. The circle not in the middle. The extra mark I'd made because the numbers didn't fit.
I thought of the big one from yesterday, the scarred throat. How he'd said my name as if required. Maybe it was. Maybe that was his task: to find names. The old ones. The ones the forest kept. They call it missing persons. The forest calls it inventory.
He had seen me before the burning, under the lines, mask in hand, fingers black with soot, before the protocol. He was right. Before Graypoint I was just a boy with a father who understood too much. After Graypoint I was what the forest kept when the rest ran. Not because I was brave. Because I walked slowest.
"Rule Seven," I said to the ceiling. "Whoever leaves last, stays. "The wood answered with a short crack. Agreed.
Two crows called outside, not the usual croak, the other one,the one that means movement.Far off. Not near the hut. Closer to the circle. They were quick. Quicker than I liked.
I stood again. Knife. Mask. Totem. The three things I carry. Not the name.
I stepped outside. The air had thickened, metallic. Smelled like rain undecided. Between the trunks something moved that wasn't forest. Not voices...radio.
"…Sector C… new marking… impossible shift…"They'd found the circle. Of course they had. They search for their concrete like for children. They dig it out and hope the line remembers itself.
I didn't sneak. I never sneak in the forest. It knows where I am. I move so it can plan around me.
At the edge of the clearing I stopped. Three this time. Two with rifles. One with a device. No boy. No fresh ones. Men who had already run once. The one with the device held a rod that buzzed when angled down. He swore softly. "Something underneath. " - "Concrete?" - "Or something else.""Graypoint entry three-seven, open," one said into his mic. No reply. The forest was between.
They saw my wires. They didn't see the ground.
The first stepped over the line. Good. The second ducked under the visible snare. Better. The third, eyes on his device not the forest,set his foot exactly where the pressure trigger lay.
The forest pulled. Not brutal. Final. The root came from the side, not below, it had learned. Wrapped his knee, didn't rip...twisted. He fell sideways, the device hit the concrete,gave a short high tone that smelled of current.
The others jerked up their rifles. I stepped out. Not far. Enough. Mask on. Knife at the belt. Totem in hand. They saw me. One said nothing. One said, "Contact!"The third, caught in the root's grip, said my old name. Not all of it, just the start. Enough.
The forest tightened.
"Rule Eight," I said aloud this time, so they'd hear it:"Whoever says my old name stays longer."
And I knew that later, when it's quiet again,I'll have to return to the altar, that there'll be laughter once more, too short to be real, that Graypoint isn't done burning inside me.
But that's the trade. It gets what comes. I get what remains.