I jumped over the water and ran back to the clearing, my heart still hammering. No one had noticed I’d gone anywhere, which was no surprise. I must have been gone for a bit longer than I’d thought, too, because Tomas was marshalling the troops. Mum was surrounded by munchkins. Dad was examining tree trunks, probably convinced that Tomas’s company had made him an authority already.
I looked around, feeling as if I’d stepped out of a parallel universe. Had any of that really happened at all? I looked down at my feet. They were still wet from my tumble in the stream. I was cold. Really cold, inside and out, and not just because of the temperature.
I knew right then that there would never be a time when I didn’t hate Storaskogen.
“Right,” said Tomas, over the hubbub of the children. “Now we’re going to move on to the old-growth forest. Remember what I’ve said before – be careful where you tread, and—”
One of the kids shrieked. Then another. The next minute they were all squealing and shouting and pointing. For a moment I couldn’t work out what the fuss was about. Then I saw it. Snow. Huge white snowflakes were plummeting silently out of the thick grey sky. It wasn’t one or two, either. Suddenly the air was full of the stuff. I could feel it landing on my hair and sliding coldly down my neck.
I’m no expert but I was pretty sure it was too early for snow, even up here.
Tomas tried to maintain order as the assembly of kids became a miniature mosh-pit. “All right, all right!” he shouted. “I think we’ll have to cut this expedition short. Let’s get ready to head back to the house!”
It took a good deal more yelling to get them back into their pairs again. Then Tomas went to the head of the column and led them all out of the clearing. I looked around, wondering whether the kid that had been communing with the screaming tree had come back to the group, but I couldn’t see him. I thought again about whether to tell Tomas, but I admit there was a tiny part of me that wanted to stick it to him. If the tree-hugger got all the way back without realizing that one of the tinies was missing, I figured that’d pretty much do it for his annoying Mr Moral High Ground image.
We wound back through the forest on the path that almost wasn’t and the snow kept on falling. The daylight seemed to leech away until we were walking through an inky blue-blackness edged by the endless trees. I kept thinking about what I’d seen in the old-growth forest. Every time I did, my chest felt heavy, an invisible weight pressing on it.
They’re just trees, I told myself. What are you so freaked out about?
At one point I stopped and looked back. The shadows seemed to be pouring out from beneath the firs, pooling in the space that made the path, except that now it was almost impossible to tell where the shadows ended and the trees began. The darkness blended into one dim blur of anti-matter that was swallowing everything. I looked up and through the gloom I saw that the tops of the trees were still. Maybe the coming of the snow had made the wind drop. But the thing was, I could still hear the sound the trees had made as the wind had moved them. Whoo-oosh. Whoo-oosh. It was still there, even though the wind wasn’t. For a tiny second, it sounded like words. Like voices, talking low enough that I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. And there, behind the whispers, was that other sound rising again, the one I had heard as I’d left the damaged old forest. That weird, haunting, lilting song. Was it a hunting horn? If it was, who was hunting? What were they hunting? There was nothing out here but trees.
The whispering grew louder as that noise went on and on. There was something massive about it all, something huge that I couldn’t get my head around. I was colder than I had ever been in my life. I could feel my breath in my throat like ice.
I turned round again. Of course, no one had noticed that I’d stopped. The group had got far enough ahead of me that I could only just make them out. For a second there, I almost panicked. I had a sudden image of myself from the outside, this tiny, puny human surrounded by a dense, dark forest that stretched on for God knows how far. From where I stood right then, the whole rest of the world could have become forest and I’d never know because I’d been swallowed by it. I could have been the only person left alive and how would I ever know? How would I ever find anyone, anything else other than trees?
In that second the song stopped but the whispering sound became louder still. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and I ran. I ran down the barely there path and I didn’t look back. The snow was still falling and the flakes were bigger now, fatter. By the time I caught up with the queue of kids, there was a thin layer coating the path beneath our feet.
After that first bout of excitement, the children seemed to have quietened down. Maybe they were tired. And weirdly, I was disappointed. I wanted them to be noisy. I wanted them to be the noisiest they had ever been in the whole of their little lives to drown out what was behind me. To chase away that darkness I had felt swarming around us, towards us.
It wasn’t until we got back to the house that I remembered about that one kid. I felt really bad – hell, if I’d felt that freaked out back there, what state must he be in? But then I saw that Tomas was doing a headcount. I couldn’t see the boy but there was no wailing and gnashing of teeth at the end of the exercise, so he must have been there somewhere. I just hadn’t spotted him, which wasn’t very surprising as when they had their red jackets on they really were all the same.
We trooped inside the house and shook the snow off our clothes and hair. I felt better once there were walls between me and everything out there. I mean, there was a reason people starting building shelters way back when, right? Shut the door, be safe, forget what’s outside. I could go with that.
“All right,” Tomas called. “I want everyone to go into the dining room and sit quietly at the table. I’ll see if I can get Dorothea to rustle up some hot chocolate, OK?”
There was a general running and shoving and squealing, which was less appealing than it would have been ten minutes previously.
“Do you think it’s going to lay?” Mum was asking, a little anxiously. She, Tomas and Dad were gathered around one of the windows.
Tomas nodded slowly. “I think it might. One thing’s for sure – I think we should cut this course short. I’ll call the coach and make sure it’s here to pick us up as soon as it can.”
“Oh – really?” Mum sounded disappointed. “You don’t – you don’t want to see if it does blow over?”
“I don’t think this is going to blow over,” said Tomas. His voice had an ominous tone to it that I couldn’t quite work out.
“Isn’t it early?” Dad asked. “I thought, even this far north…”
“Yes, it’s early,” Tomas said, still staring out of the window to where the trees were slowly being turned white. “I’ve never known it this early before. It makes me think…” He stopped and clamped his lips shut as if he hadn’t meant to say anything at all.
“It makes you think what?” Mum prompted, with a frown.
Tomas shook his head and then, after another pause, said, “It makes me think … it’s a warning.”
“A warning?” Dad repeated. “What do you mean, a warning?”
Tomas turned to look at him. “Put it this way. You won’t be able to log in the snow, will you?”
Dad stared at him blankly. Then he laughed. “You’re not serious? You think that – what? This is a warning from nature itself? I’ve never heard anything so utterly ridiculous in my life!”
Tomas turned away with a shrug. “You said that, not me.”
“It’s what you meant though, isn’t it?” Dad said. I could tell from his tone that he was partly amused but with one foot firmly on the road to being truly pissed off. “More mumbo-jumbo meant to scare the idiots from the south, right? Well, it won’t work. You hear me? It won’t work.”
Tomas shrugged. “Fine. But if I were you, I’d leave, too. Being stuck here without being properly prepared for a long winter is a bad idea.”
“What makes you think we’re unprepared?” Dad asked.
Tomas gave him a look. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But I’ve got to get these kids out of here. I can’t risk having them snowed in.”
He walked away.
“I’ll miss the children,” Mum said, to no one in particular.
The usual pandemonium echoed towards us from the dining room. I wondered what the house would be like without it and for once I thought I understood my mum perfectly.