Twelve

I was in the darkest part of the forest.

But the azure eye that gleamed from the centre of the deer’s head shone a spotlight illuminating the path before me.

An internal reverie repeated my instruction not to look at her face.

I glanced up slightly, hovering away from the light of her third eye. The deer herself was gnarled and unmoving, as still as the moon, her antlers housing spires of firs and holly bristling a wicked path down her back, cascading into the emerald willow of her tail. Small drops of blood had dried and re-dried in places where the spiked leaves bit into her skin. She was at least four times my size and it was becoming increasingly difficult to determine where the forest began, and the outline of her body ended.

In the stillness of her stance was iron and saltwater.

My father would have reached for his crossbow, but he had never understood the riddles that are hidden in the Old Forest. There was something in the crook of his smile that made it obvious that he had forgotten what came to children effortlessly, the knowledge of the secrets that animals held. I’d remembered that the deer here held twelve truths, you just had to earn their trust to receive them.

We were in the information age after all. Forget crypto, secrets were the true currency to invest in, and I fully intended to complete this transaction.

I heard a stone crunch under the hoof of an Underling to the right of me and a wave of nausea reminded me that just behind the dark tree line, eyes, teeth, fingers and fur lingered. Look forwards I repeated internally, just one glance would haunt my waking days.

Breathe. Keep it together. This isn’t your first rodeo.

I pressed my palms together to steady my pulse and felt my nails claw into the back of each hand. The mark would show for days, but the grooves helped to ground me.

Breathe. Don’t raise your head, wait for her to speak, I willed myself to remember. To look in her eye before being invited to do so, would show deep disrespect.

“Girl.” The SheDeer spoke, her voice was soft but held a surprisingly northern lilt which carried gently through the trees of an otherwise silent forest. Her words caught in the leaves, but the trees pretended not to listen. She would have set the woods ablaze if she caught one gossiping about today’s events. A birch had once remarked to a spruce that she didn’t particularly care for the way the SheDeer had called for Spring so early. The resulting bushfire lasted for days.

I raised my head and looked into her third eye, knowing that if I flinched or glanced away that the unnamed shadows would have no hesitation to slice my throat.

I’d wager that they’d relish the opportunity. It’d be joy to them, sport.

“I come from Morena” I spoke, focusing all my energy into keeping my voice strong and preventing the creep from setting in. I didn’t want to be the girl that came all this way and tripped at the final hurdle. “I- I have a memory and request a transaction” I finished, awkwardly.

Less elegant than I’d pictured.

The SheDeer ignored the stutter and stared for a moment before blinking once with her giant central eye.

“Morena” She repeated, “Approach”.

While my mind wrestled with the very true notion that perhaps I was in over my head, my feet simply weren’t listening. Entranced by the light of the SheDeer’s eye, they pulled me forwards into the illuminated clearing until I was only a few feet from her. She stood firm, glistening with energy. The forest beat beneath her huge dappled form and I felt stillness in the glade as the trees held their breath.

I raised my head and took one deep breath, focusing all I had on my chosen recollection. She was waiting for payment, so I began.

“An August afternoon, walking with my father to the store and hearing the sound of rain chatter against awnings that most of the downtown shops had. I must have been, I guess, eight?”

All the needles in the world could drop at this exact moment and I still wouldn’t be able to hear them over the deep thud of my heart. Coward.

“I remember humming a tune I’d heard on the radio, and the feeling of his fingers pressing around my entire hand- as though the world couldn’t possibly be spinning when he had hold of me, and I remember the syrupy taste of the melted marshmallow that he’d always get on top of my ice-cream. I think they called it Güf.”

The silence remained unchanged, so I finished a little embarrassed “It was my favourite, that’s uh, why it was important.”

The SheDeer’s eyes widened at this, “a favourite?” she responded greedily, “are you sure you understand the terms, child?”

“My very favourite. I know the laws.”

“It is often that we don’t understand the cost of something until it is far too late” She replied, “but it is done”.

At the mention of the final word, I felt a deep pull in my chest and rain began running off of my fingertips. No, not rain, something more golden, sunshine, light made liquid which pooled down my nails and dripped gently onto the mossy ground beneath my feet. The ground hungrily absorbed it, and I saw the SheDeer swallow, once. As though I was recalling a dream, I remembered snippets of the past minute, awnings, ice cream, rain and then nothing. Slipping away from the probe of my mind, separating from my memories like oil pooling atop a puddle, I felt a deep draining coming from within. But just as quickly as it had started, it ended, and I looked around, lost.

My superior had said this would happen, that I probably wouldn’t recall the transaction, that along with the memory, the actual process of payment would be wiped from my mind.

I’d had my wisdom teeth out only a few years earlier and woke up what felt like seconds after the countdown, asking the nurses for a pen so I could write down a poem. The process was missing but the ache remained.

The area dimmed as the SheDeer turned her attention off of me, satisfied with the transaction.

“And the Truth?” I called out to her, as she began to move her long legs, heading home, deep into the forest, out of reach from mortals.

“At your feet” she replied, and she was right.

I slowly picked it up, felt its weight in my palm and pocketed it.

It sat on my desk for a long time until I’d worked it out and transacted it. It luckily wasn’t a large Truth but taking it on a hike through the Peruvian Alps added additional weight to an already hefty backpack. It fit neatly between my sleeping bag and melamine mug branded with a “Mount Cl-Everest” logo I’d picked up at a gift shop eons ago.

I’d needed the clear, thin air and the solitude to think. Sitting at midnight on a folded blanket in my hut, I’d eaten a stewed vegetable dish that my mother always made when I was feeling sick from school. It tasted slightly bitter, and I poked my tongue around in my mouth as though I was searching a cavity for a lost tooth.

This would become my twelfth.