“Damn.” We trudge on. He inquires after a squirrel, a rabbit, and a deer. They turn out to be, respectively, a squirrel, a rabbit, and a deer.
“We might not be discovering new paranimals left and right, you know.”
“Why not?” He leans away to examine a cardinal, which turns out to not be a cardinal because cardinals do not have fire smoldering casually from their tail plumage. “Something smells like it’s burning,” he notes. “We must be close to a cabin.”
“Or, we’re close to a bird that’s on fire.”
Morgan jumps back. “On fire?”
“Orisfire,” I amend. The bird trots forward, twittering. “There’s smoke where its wings should be.”
“See?” he crows. “What’d I tell you? No reason we can’t be discovering new paranimals left and right.” He withdraws his phone and activates the camera. It shuts itself off. “I wasn’t gonna share the pictures online!” he yells at the invisible forces thwarting his photography. “It would show up as a normal bird on camera, anyway.” He manages to get the camera working again, but the bird hurries off.
“Notice how it didn’t fly, though!” I point out. “Because it doesn’t actually have wings.”
Insensible to the weather now, he urges me to describe the animal in profuse detail, copying it all down on paper. “We’ll call it a conflagrinal.”
But the conflagrinal, as it turns out, is the only new creature of interest we come upon for quite some time. By dinner (a feast of canned chili and crackers), even Morgan’s enthusiasm has waned. We study a strange film floating in the rushes of a swamp. In spite of all the rain we’ve gotten, the swamp is stagnant and carries a pungent odor not unlike wet clothes that have been sitting in a washing machine for a week. “This could be a paranimal’s molt, maybe,” I say hesitantly, dipping a twig into the water. The film instantly wraps itself around the forked end of the twig, adhering to it. The beautiful iridescence reminds me of abalone, slug trails, the way oil in puddles refracts light. “Can’t say for sure, of course—”
Morgan is desperate for something new to grab his notice. “It is irrefutably from a paranimal. It looks silver to you and white to me.”
“That could be perspective.”
“Let’s bag it.”
My fingers have cuts on them from pulling back vines and branches to see if any of them are hiding caves. No such luck. We did find a trestle, but a trestle is useless if there aren’t caves nearby.
While I was preparing for this trip, I envisioned myself endlessly patient. One with nature, studying every leaf, rodent, and insect. Utterly enthralled, capable of sitting still for so long that my bones would groan when they moved again at last. Maybe I’d become so enamored of the forest that I’d never leave.
“I’m sore,” I grouse. “I miss my mattress. Sleeping on the ground sucked, and all I can think about is my ass.”
“All I can think about is your ass, too,” he replies distractedly, reviewing the never-ending expanse of trees.
I don’t know if I want to laugh or threaten him, and I’m still deciding when I hear voices again.
“One clamp of their jaws on your flesh and your lungs filled with water.”
I hold out a hand. “Stop.”
Morgan watches me closely, not saying a word. I tilt my head.
“Once upon a time, nobody went into the forest and came out of it alive.”
The words wink away. I think the forest spirits must be trying to communicate a warning, or a threat. “Somebody doesn’t want us here,” I murmur.
We roam deeper into violet dusk, the path becoming rougher, overgrown with wide, flabby mushrooms, split trees, and blinking yellow eyes crouched in the undergrowth. Myfeet ache from walking all day, my muscles are sore from carting luggage, and my eyes beg for sleep. Where did the brays go? Can they see us? Are they following?
The deluge lets up to a drizzle, tearing apart a low fog that drifts across the old wood like interstellar clouds. “You smell something burning?” Morgan asks.
I sniff. “A conflagrinal?”
We search the skies, at last locating a big puff of smoke that seems to be pouring from nowhere.
I can’t make out the chimney until I’m looking at the smoke, and I can’t see the roof unless I’m focused on the chimney. The only time a window is visible is when I’m staring directly at a door. It’s as if the tiny building pencils itself into the frame reluctantly, pieces at a time, not giving more than it has to. If I strain my eyes hard enough, I can just distinguish four dark, blurry exterior walls and a steeply pitched roof. The closer we step, the more solid it all becomes, as if waking up from a dream.
The cabin must predate many of the trees surrounding, as thick roots have coiled beneath its foundations and risen like the undead. It was constructed close to a creek, but erosion has widened the waters and now the building’s southwest corner is ready to fall in. A tiny pond, the sort you’d normally see koi fish swimming in, rests close by, its black waters rippled with leaves and yellow toads.
There are four doors, one cut into each side of the cabin. The one facing us bears a carving of an owl and the wordsNothing to See Here. On another, an oak leaf andThis Is a Tree, Nothing More.The third door has antlers growing out of itwhere a doorknob should be located, along with the sentimentYou’re Not Really Seeing This; and the fourth door, labeledOff You Trot,is frozen shut with a thick casing of ice. Every minuscule hair on my body stands up.
