Sacrificial Limbs

Asphalt cowers, quaking beneath Evangeline's prowling sedan. Vestiges of city life pass beneath her wheels as a brotherhood of stoned mountains pulls their bald head and snowy shoulders into view.

In the backseat, Emma giggles, scrunching her nose. She pantomimes wolfing down fistfuls of nuts and berries. Miss Selena chuckles. Her stomach growls too.

Catching herself, Miss Selena wrestles an acerbic smile into the corners of her mouth. She frowns patience into the rearview, connecting with her charge. Facing forward, shoulders back and down, Miss Selena trains her lovely lavender irises on the road laid out before her, her digits to 10 and 12.

From the seat of power at the rear, anchored beside her daughter, Evangeline darts anxious hazels from Miss Selena to Emma to Miss Selena. Her glower penetrates.

Emma pats her belly. Grumpiness growls beneath fluffy folds of crinkly crinoline and a well-worn dusty denim jacket. She swallows the hum summersaulting toward the tip of her tongue, reminded that silence is golden.

Emma smiles to herself, amused at the timing. Golden is all around. Its light falls even now, through the shuttered waxed windows of skeleton buildings crumbling along silent byways that blur as their bold sedan blows by.

Through the window, Evangeline spots intermittent signposts. Turn here. She motions to Miss Selena. And here.

They follow until what passed for passable is usurped by chunks of lumpy gravel cutting teeth on Evangeline's treads. All that remains is proof of loggers, lovers, and loners, their tracks lost, depressed in dried-out ruts.

Cut the engine.

No fanfare greets them.

Evangeline slips out one hesitant leg, and then the other. Her nimble frame follows suit. No explanations. No apology.

None is expected. Meals are not on the menu.

Miss Selena understands, if Emma does not. Sometimes childcare morphs into other duties as assigned. Miss Selena doesn't mind. Life isn't always a picnic. Besides Emma is a joy—no ordinary job. Nourishment can wait.

"Wait here," Evangeline orders.

Emma watches from the rear. Her raven haired mother trespasses, gingerly, following crumpled flagstone pavers. On either side are pools of sandy sludge the likes of which Emma has never seen.

Through the window Emma asks, can shoes come off yet?

Nearly out of range, Evangeline waves an indiscriminate hand behind her, distracted. The golden light is leaving.

"Please, Mommy?" Emma persists with a voice pitched perfectly. The pretty pink patent leathers are pinching.

Stay put.

She hears the whispers. There's work to be done, and quickly.

Changing strategies, Emma unleashes her innocence arsenal on Miss Selena. Umber eyes, lined with lashes black as butterflies, and that soulful, dimpled smile are magic enough.

Shoes off!

Emma's boundless enthusiasm cannot be contained, hunger pangs be damned. Her jacket gets jumbled, falling willy-nilly into the vehicle's belly. A swoosh of ruffles flits into the fields. In Emma's wake, dry lakes of fallen leaves pat down the earth.

No human sounds disrupt the residents. No bickering adults. No lamenting mourners come to praise their gods or raise the dead. No buzz of saws chains itself to the trunks of trees. No daggers drive into defenseless bark.

Emma finds this world irresistible! She wonders why they've never come here before.

Evangeline finds herself unsettled. In the pit of her stomach an emotion takes root: familiarity, nostalgia even. Like a waltz in a ballroom of a ghost ship beneath stars asleep at the wheel.

Evangeline cannot shake a suddenly sinking feeling.

The sprawling parkland finds itself as unsettled as Evangeline. Remote, tucked away, it knows itself to be a singular pinprick on the map. Elsewhere is the Great Land. Here is where the lungs of the past breath life into the future.

The waning meadow corners an abandoned chapel that bends at the waist. At the point where the L crosses its legs is the chapel's silenced mouthpiece: a towering arched red door. Leaned against the door's locked wrought iron handle, Evangeline conducts herself discretely. The only key in existence rises and falls between the hills of her breasts.

She cannot bring herself to twist the key. It can't be time. I'm not ready.

At the heart of the park, stacked behind a stone wall lingers the remains of a graying ghost of a swing set, a chipped and wobbly rocking horse, and a wooden carousel which, in its heyday, paraded a riot of colors. Now the arcane carousel creaks its disquiet. Its burnt sienna rust flakes, its raspy tune carried away on the whistling wind.

Breathless and awed, Emma halts. Her feet plant themselves. Her eyes widen. How had she not noticed?! Stood before her is the largest tree ever to take root.

Emma wants to squeal her delight, but she cannot get sounds out. Shock bites her tongue. Big Red is real?!

Nothing else competes for Emma's attention. Not the swing set, nor the rocking horse, not even the carousel. She pays no attention to the chapel, its mammoth door, its ambling low stone wall. No, Emma cannot be distracted, not even by the throng of circling birds, all of whom watch her like a hawk. Nor does she notice the ways she succumbs to the shifting sands.

In this moment, Big Red spies Emma too. He is mesmerized. He hadn't expected to like her. Not straight away. Maybe not at all. He had never considered a feeling like this. He hadn't planned for affection.

The air crisps. The wind whips. A patchwork of tiny black birds arises from the ash, spilt and slumped at the foot of the chapel's pyre. The birds conduct disharmony—twisted phrases, paltry prayers, songs of lament.

An underweight Robin spooks. He skedaddles, trailing twigs beneath frightened, flapping wings.

Not far afield, a murder of crows breaks ranks. Each takes up residence peppering the low stone wall, the chapel's roofline, the crown of the carousel, anywhere with a view.

They have come for a song. They stay for the show.

Emma tingles. So, too, does Big Red.

He has waited a lifetime. For Emma.

For millennia, Red has stood where he stands now, waiting, anticipating. Wondering if he can do what must be done. He watched his parents do it. Heard how his aunts and uncles did it too, and a generation of giants before them. And now, at last, he must take his turn.

Still, stationed at the wheel, Miss Selena spots Emma. She sees that something enthralls the child. But what?

Miss Selena cannot see beyond the chapel, beyond the silent carousel, the rocking horse, the swing set. The bright young woman cannot see beyond what is right in front of her. She shudders at the spectacle of birds. And at the sight of the child, who sinks into pools of shifting sands.

The child is sinking! Her sweet charge, Emma, is sinking! She shakes uncontrollably. All the while Emma smiles, looking into the void, eyes trained toward the sky.

Terrified, Miss Selena mobilizes. The child's life is in her hands. She's her responsibility.

Thrusting open the driver's door, Miss Selena dashes. Legs gun their engines. She spins out. Slips. Slides. Succumbs. Into the muck Selena goes. Sucker punched by Quick Sand.

Like Emma, Selena is stuck, trapped, and likely dying.

But Selena is something Emma is not. A sacrifice. Nutrients needed to feed the next generation. Her irises will give rise to the next great garden.

Evangeline can see that.

Desperate, Selena pulls at her legs. Slurp! She cannot gain traction. Slurp! She cannot break free. Slurp! She's in up to her ankles. Up to her knees. Up to her waist.

Selena twists and turns, heatedly trying to wrestle free.

It does not work.

Emma does not notice. All she sees is Big Red and the ghost forest settling in around him. Instantaneously, Emma is encircled by a thousand grey ghosts, hauntingly familiar trees nearly tall as Red but void of color, stripped of bark, watching Emma intently.

Stood at the center of all things is the very sentient being who has walked through Emma's dreams as long as she can remember. At last he has arisen, or awoken, or arrived.

Or perhaps—and far more likely—she has been delivered to him.

Emma cannot begin to grasp what is happening.

She heard the whispers from the car the moment her mommy opened the car door. Her ears filled with that distant hum she has heard all her life, in dreams. Or so she thought.

Could this be real? What could it mean?

Tender with the child but impatient, given the hour, Big Red requires Emma's full attention. She gives it freely, unaware of the danger. She is pure of heart. She has loved him all her life. And she is unafraid.

Seeing her love, her innocence, her willingness to save him and the generations to come, Big Red commands Quick Sand release the girl.

Freed, Emma rushes away from the grippy sands that bind. She rushes toward Big Red, waving her happiness with both hands high to the sky, her glorious dimpled smile beaming, she dashes deeper and deeper into the magnificent ghost forest, nearly reaching the roots of her hero.

Emma is unaware of the test, and that she passed.

All that matters is him. Big Red. And the army he commands.

Emma longs to scramble up his lattice of twisted branches. She imagines carrying herself across his skeleton frame. Countless times she has dreamed of crawling and climbing, higher and higher, playing in those vast recesses, discovering his charismatic canopy of crimson leaves, living on the edge of his lumbering limbs, seeing the world in all directions for as far as eyes can see. What wisdom awaits!

With the very thought of Big Red, Emma's heart sings.

She had imagined her birthday—tomorrow—would be the best day ever. But no. There can be no better time than now. Today is the happiest day of her life!

Until Emma notices the sloughing off. Red's brightly beaming body has begun shaking off its crimson. His leaves tumble and fall at her feet. His bark pales, slipping into amber-gray. His trunk squirms, rattles, shakes.

A shower of seedlings crashes down—squandered—atop densely packed clay. The seedlings remain sealed, lacking scalding fire to coax open their husks.

It's a travesty.

Trembling with unbearable sorrow, Emma rushes to retrieve what seedlings she might plant herself, but she cannot touch them. Her fingers cannot grasp them. She cannot touch Big Red's bark either. She cannot feel his roots, his trunk, not even his lowest branches. She cannot gain a toehold. Her fingers slice straight through!

Emma tries. She uses all her might. Everything goes into the attempt. She longs to feel the roughness of his bark against the smoothness of her skin.

Confused, inconsolable, Emma watches upper branches scale the highest heights, without her, soaring higher and higher, roots tippy-toeing, stretching as a ballet dancer stretches and arcs, elegantly, toward the impervious sky. All the while, his body breaks, dismissing twigs and branches with each dazzling move. Before Emma's eyes, Big Red awakens to the pain contained within the beauty, a beauty destroyed by a violent implosion, with a hurt she cannot alter or endure witnessing.

Emma wails.

All the while, Miss Selena fights, but cannot break the spell. Quick Sand owns her. He pulls her nearer, deeper, darkly down. Up to her ribs, her chest, her chin. She is immobile, begging for Evangeline, or Emma, or anyone. "Help!!!"

But Evangeline does not move.

And Emma does not move.

And Quick Sand will not stop.

"Help me, someone, please!" Selena's death cry cuts sharp as glass.

No help comes.

Emma cannot hear a thing but the whispering woods and the suffering of birds. She looks deeply into Big Red's watering eyes, touching his soul with her care and concern. She asks what she can do.

"Start a fire."

"But you will burn!"

"Yes, and all that surrounds us will be born again."

"But what about you? You have no legs to run away. You will be burned to ash."

"My children will outlive me. That is the nature of things, child."

"And you need my help?"

"Yes. To start the fire. It is your destiny."

"But Mommy never lets me play with matches. How can it be my—"

"She will come to you. She must. She has all—the oil, and the match."

Emma looks for her mother, but sees only that the grand red archway stands open.

"There is only one fire hot enough. Your mother, she has the key. She knows her purpose. And yours. She gave her word."

"I don't understand." Emma grapples with a rush of images bleeding into her mind's eye. She wants to please Big Red. But what he asks—

How could he ask her to do such a thing?

Evangeline emerges from the chapel through the opened red arch. She takes the cracked flagstone path. Her route follows the straight and narrow.

Evangeline walks directly toward Big Red, whom she cannot see, but he is there. She feels his presence before her. She knows, in every fiber.

Her stride softens upon seeing her flesh and blood, her darling daughter, Emma, whom she loves more than life.

The one things Evangeline cannot bring herself to take notice of is the crown swiftly sinking into sand. She takes comfort in the knowledge of a promise made long ago: that a garden of lavender lilacs will bloom for a thousand years.

Swiftly, Evangeline brings the sacred treasures to Emma. She can hardly think, for so loud is the song of trees and the birds who love them. Here stands the stand of ghost trees, chopped down to make life more or less bearable for humans. The sound is deafening.

The forest of ghosts comes into view, and Evangeline tears up at the sight. Each tree reveals itself in turn. Evangeline knows. It's time. Emma knows it too. Big Red is ready. His giant lungs give up the ghost. And all that oxygen will sustain the planet for a millennia, until his offspring stands at the gates awaiting a child who carries a match.

The sacrifice is humbling.

Evangeline remembers her oath. And why she made it.

It had happened one late evening, during golden hour, the night before her eighth birthday. She promised then that one day, when the time was right, on the eve of her daughter's eighth birthday, she would return to the Whispering Woods. And she would hum the song as she passed forward the oil. And the match, made of wood cut from a giant red sequoia.

Until then, Evangeline would protect herself, her daughter, and the world, and the key her mother's trembling hands once carved of bone.

***

Copyright © 03/17/2024 by Christy Munson. All rights reserved.