Orla tramped along the path they’d made through the trees, familiar with the way now, even though the new snow had covered their prints. Her once-muscular legs needed more protein; her body was withering. Her heart throbbed large and crooked. It had been dissected, neat lines drawn down and across, pinned at the corners: one black and sunken quadrant for Tycho, one for Shaw. The lower left quadrant bore an older wound, dry and shriveled, from the loss of Otto. The last quadrant pumped bubbly red while Eleanor Queen still breathed. If Orla lost her daughter, there would be no reason for her heart to continue circulating blood. (How she hoped her parents didn’t share similar thoughts, but she couldn’t worry on that.)
I will give Her myself.
She prayed that the strange, powerful spirit would accept her final gift, and leave her daughter alone.
It was only a few days ago they’d hung the paper chain around the tree. The sight of it made her wistful. Tycho’s fingerprints were preserved in the glue.
“I’m here,” she announced. “I’m here, and willing.” Her body wasn’t as strong as it once was, but she felt real pride for the vessel she could be. She’d worked hard, physically, for most of her life. She barely had the stamina for it, but it was the best way to show the spirit who she was—that she was worthy, tough, a suitable replacement for the magnificent tree: Orla danced.
It was time. The entity knew about her daughter; now She needed to approve of Orla. Toes pointed within her boots, she swept around the tree, a winter waltz in clumsy turns, her arms fluid and exaggerated. Clumps of snow had collected on the paper chain, and she lifted and dropped the chain as part of her dance, releasing the snow.
Sometimes she brushed an ungloved hand along the bark, seeking to strengthen the connection between herself and the strange being within the tree. The word hybrid suddenly came to her; like the fused fox-hare she’d seen in the snow, somehow a nineteenth-century girl had fused her soul with an unlikely but sentient ally. Would Orla become all of them when the spirit took her body?
Her thoughts became images. Orla showed Her the most difficult choreography she had ever mastered, and the passion she’d shared with Shaw. She showed Her how they’d made love—tenderly, then ferociously—and how she’d pushed out her daughter, her son. I created life. How she fed them at her breast. The unearthly radiance she saw in their questioning infant eyes. How, because of her, they grew and thrived.
Around and around she went. The movements came from within. They sped up and slowed down. And once she leaned forward until her chest was parallel to the ground, raising her right leg behind her—through the arabesque and into a penché until her toe pointed toward the sky. She held it there until her muscles started to shake, wanting to impress with her flexibility, her power. Her life force. All the while she played movies in her mind: Tycho’s tottering first steps. The evolution of his musical babbling into actual songs. Orla wished she could show Her how it felt to snuggle him in her arms while he giggled or drifted toward sleep.
The air around her smelled of Christmas mornings. A Fraser fir in an enclosed space. Freshly brewed coffee. Peppermint candy canes licked by red tongues. Chocolate candies chewed by small teeth. The scent of new items as they were released from their boxes. These imaginary smells hid the truth: a wild wood, relentless snow, their empty house. Distant wood smoke lingered and Orla wished the other remote families a better Christmas than she was having. Maybe one of them would stumble on her daughter, and she’d finally reconnect with the outside world.
She pressed her hands hard into the tree, so hard the edged bark seared her tender palms.
“But even after everything You’ve taken from me…I’ll give You myself. You need a home? You need a volunteer? Well, take my body. Do with it what You need.”
She expected a flash, an internal pop of light that indicated the spirit’s awareness. Or a vibration. A small earthquake. Or tiny floating flames in the branches above her. There was nothing. And without Eleanor Queen, she had no one to ask if the presence had registered her at all. Her movement, her images—had Orla gotten through on any level?
“I’m here! I want to help You! You can’t have…the young one, she’s too young to make such a promise of her own free will. But You can have me—I understand the sacrifice I’m making. I accept it. Please.”
Not so much as a gust of wind. The tree—and whatever resided within it—appeared dead, or at least unresponsive. Its bark was paler than that of the trees around it. As she looked upward, she worried for the first time that too much wind would send its lifeless branches, each the size of one of the neighboring trees, crashing onto her head.
“Hello? You can’t accuse me of not listening and then ignore my offer. This is what You wanted. You need a human. I am the only one who understands and is fully willing.”
A whisper of wind moved through the trees. She watched, unsure what to expect, but then everything grew still again. Was it possible…could the evergreen’s last living cells have died during the night? Or perhaps She had overextended Herself, coming to her as Shaw. If the tree died before the girl’s spirit moved on…could She be entombed now within Her former host? Safe as houses?
Could Orla go find her daughter and take her back to civilization?
She felt no sadness if the entity had died. But the lack of response started to anger her. She kicked at the tree, chipped away at the thick but surprisingly brittle bark.
“Wake up! You can’t terrorize my family because You want help and then refuse it when it’s offered! Wake the fuck up!”
A noise like a horn startled her, a deep, hollow sound. At first she mistook it for the reply she’d demanded, but then realized it was coming from a distance. It made an insistent lowing, like a Tibetan long horn. But as it moved closer, it sounded more animalistic. Behind it, she heard chuffing and grunts. And as it came nearer still, there was the crunch of trampling snow and breaking branches.
She pressed her back against the tree, eyes wide and alert for the first sign of the creature moving toward her. While she’d been gazing upward through the boughs, a fog had settled in behind her, obscuring the view, heightening her fear as the strange sounds reverberated in the gloom. As the call grew louder, she drew on her gloves, made fists. Ready to fight.
A mass of beasts moved on the horizon. In the murk, she couldn’t tell at first what they were, only that they were large, and there were a lot of them, ambling toward her through the trees. The low calling sounded again, this time very close. Louder.
Orla squinted, as if that would clarify their form. She was prepared to meet her end but didn’t like the not knowing; was she about to be devoured, or trampled, or killed in some fashion by that sorrowful cry? She saw the antlers first, massive and wide, poking through the fog. The animals moved at a steady, deliberate pace, but once she recognized them—moose, dozens of them, all snowy-white albinos—she didn’t doubt their intention to impale her against the tree.
She could’ve run for it, turned and dashed deeper into the forest than she had ever gone. Maybe they’d follow her, grunting and murderous, or maybe she’d just collapse from exhaustion and die lost in the snow. But she’d told her daughter to tell the police that she’d be at the tree, and that’s where Orla intended to stay. Let these beasts take her—she’d offered herself, after all.
Something akin to joy tingled across her skin. In Shaw’s form, She’d all but admitted She couldn’t do two things at once: if these creatures were here, then Eleanor Queen was elsewhere, heading away.
The moose spread out, surrounded her. She knew now; the white animals weren’t fully there but conjured by the spirit’s powerful magic. But, as Shaw had, they looked real, sounded real. The long-legged, knobby-kneed herd, heavy-antlered and shaggy-furred, came to a stop a few feet away from Orla. The lowing quieted, though some of the herd still grunted, chuffed.
They exhaled plumes of fog and Orla wondered if that was the source of the mist. Maybe she was inside their lungs. Maybe She had accepted her sacrifice, and Orla’s transformation—her journey—had begun. But then a final moose moved through the murk, a mighty beast, and headed toward her.
Orla’s joy blistered, burst, rotted into black, and her legs gave way. She sank to the ground, the bark ripping the fabric along the back of her coat, mesmerized by what she saw—what she didn’t want to see. From the ground, the animals loomed above her.
“No!”